Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (Part 1) | Morbid | Podcast | Forensic Files

hey weirdos I'm Elena I'm Ash and this is [Music] morbid morbid this is morbid today yeah
we're hitting a biggie today wa we're hitting a biggie and it's going to be real morbid and it's going to be real
morbid for about three episodes fantastic oh well we're doing Ed um yeah we're doing Ed guys as you know from
clicking on this episode I've only ever really heard this covered probably on like maybe like two other shows really
yeah it's covered on every podcast well I don't listen to like a lot of True Crime just cuz we do it a lot not cuz I
don't you know appreciate yeah exactly appreciate um but yeah hesitantly excited to hear your coverage yeah I
mean this is this is definitely one of those that like I said has been covered everywhere like that's I think that's
why we just like waited a little while and also because it's like a it's gnarly it's a heavy story it's a sad story it's
an awful story it's a gruesome story it's all those things and I knew it was going to be multipar so you got to like
you know you got to place those in the right spots yeah but you know what the time has come and you guys have asked
for this episode for a long time time so it's time to cover the man who you know is the
inspiration behind some of the most iconic horror characters multiple psycho is based after him oh Norman Bates
that's Ed [ __ ] I forgot that also confession I still haven't seen it we got to make you watch psycho oh no I
want to actually yeah we're gonna have we're going to do that on screen yeah we'll do it um you know Silence of the
Lambs Texas Chainsaw Massacre all of those things were at least in part inspired a little bit by this case
oh okay I forgot the Silence of the Lambs was at least little bits and pieces are taken you know for characters
or for the story for sure and I mean I see why it's a very strange and UNS settling case like this guy isn't
prolific when it comes to murdering people and prolific by standards of like how many people he murdered yeah uh but
he's prolific in many other ways many other not good ways depraved ways yeah and he also is a murderer he committed
horrible murders maybe of his own family who knows shoot and we will get into it
um but yeah so let's start off with just talking about who Ed G is ok let's go right into his pretty horrific childhood
oh good love that uh so Edward Theodor Gan was born August 27th 1906 in Lacrosse Wisconsin 19 6 also I know I
hate that I like both of those names Edward and Theodore yeah I mean they're great names that's the thing like
they're they're very these are just like names that are so palatable they are you
know it's okay if you like them it's okay if you like them uh but he was the second of two boys born to George and
the pretty Infamous Augusta Gan that name also pops off Augusta Augusta I would not [ __ ] with her mostly
because I know a lot about her Point like just like the little I've just been like leaking out this I need to say
something let me tell you about austa but austa well you know I say she's Infamous only because she seems to have
definitely played a role in twisting edg's mind into something that was kind of Beyond repair yeah for sure um it's
sad it's really sad like it's it's horrific how she treated her children I feel like this is very much a nurt
versus naturee flipped a bit so who's to say you know like cuz I it's it's so hard to
like that's a hard debate I feel like you can never pinpoint for sure but we always say and like it's pretty clear in
studies and such that like nurture has plays a role it just plays a role absolutely like it's it's not always the
that's that's the cause and nature is not always that's the cause it's the combo of both I feel like is always the
one that's the the ticking Time Bomb yeah I feel like in in every case it's probably like some
combo of both and it's just a matter of how much yeah which one is way more than
the other one you're right exactly and here I would say nurture was definitely The Higher One on the
scale the way it's cuz we have to remember like kids minds are so easily molded because they are just open to
whatever and like their caregivers are the ones that are going to be the ones that have the most influence over what
they think what they believe how they feel about themselves how they feel about the world around them it is very
easy to turn a kid into just whatever kind of robotic scary human you want to turn them into if you really go for it
and it sounds like Augusta really went for it she had an agenda here um and obviously something's wrong something's
wrong with ad something big wrong something's wrong with Adin on a cellular level there cuz the things he
did are just far beyond the scope of any imagination and like we say a lot of people have shitty childhoods and a lot
of people have shitty parents and a lot of people have caregivers that put [ __ ]
into their mind and somehow they are able to break out of it someday true or at least be able to manage enough to not
murder people and you know decorate their house with remains if you can manage not to do that I would say that's
best I I would say you're you're really you're doing well you're doing cuz also that's not [ __ ] easy no so
for real good job if you're like like cuz if you you know like trauma is trauma especially childhood trauma like
I can't imagine like the you know there's certain levels but it's like at the high level of childhood trauma I
can't imagine having to come out of that and become a functioning adult well I'm
27 and I'm still working on it so EXA so you know well done if you're working through it right now well done if you
have PL to work through it and well done if you have worked through it good job on all those good job guys um but George
and Augusta had wed in December 1899 and according to crimer writer Harold sh shreer shreer excuse me that's hard to
say oh that's hard to say it's sheer Sher there it is it's kind of fun to say Harold sheer uh he said quote their
marriage had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare that's a writer though that's
sentence is metal as [ __ ] but the reality is sad and horrible a lacerating nightmare y that'd be a really good band
had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare what a description you gave me everything I needed it's so
elegant it is and it gave me everything I needed to know about that marriage you
I know like a particularly lacerating nightmare got it got it that's not a marriage I'd like to be a part of no
definitely not so it's sad already you're like oh oh [ __ ] H so even by early 20th century standards for
marriage which was definitely not like let's get married cuz we love each other romance romance romance it was really
like you got to be practical with your marriage basically it's like for the best of the of the family kind of thing
right George and Augusta's marriage made little sense even by those standards like to those around them people were
like you sure you really that George had suffered a lifetime of hardship and as a
result well he had no faith in religion no faith in God he was not into that he had developed cripplingly low
self-esteem he had a tendency to judge himself so harshly like everything was his fault he believed wow he would put
everything on himself and I think he had also been kind of taught that like I think he had also grown up in a place
where he was the scapegoat that's sad um Augusta on the other hand was I'll give
it to her this she was a hard worker like if she Augusta is a hard worker she's just she's going to be a hard
worker she was industrious and she was also she had a strong work ethic very rigid sense of morality and that came
BEC from her being a deeply religious woman um she was also a Stern disciplinarian she was self-righteous
domineering and inflexible oh fun great qualities in a human and she is also someone who quote
never doubted for a moment moment the absolute correctness of her beliefs or her right to impose them by whatever
means on the other people around her by whatever means that's the part that really got me she sounds like a [ __ ]
nightmare to be honest like if you're like you believe what you believe if you think you have a right to impose those
beliefs by whatever means necessary on people who don't want that that's [ __ ] up also what does that mean by whatever
means necessary isn't it very ominous it's got a very ominous tone it truly does and again she was I'll give it to
her she was a hard worker and she probably could have thrived as a business owner if she had just become a
business owner and not decided to delve into the realm of being a mother yeah she doesn't very she doesn't sound very
motherly to yeah there's not a lot of nurturing Happening Here by you know conventional standards uh I again open a
business she would have killed it yeah but she did not um there wasn't really a honeymoon phase for the Gans I don't
think no I didn't I didn't really see that coming down the pike for them yeah it's not like oh the honeymoon phase is
over and now she shows who she is no like there it's you know again a marriage of practicality and I don't
even really know how practical it was nobody's really sure why this happened to be quite honest that's like really
sad cuz I feel like we say this so much but you think about like walking down the aisle taking vows the whole nine and
just for what for lacerating nightmare that sucks particularly lacerating nightmare yeah so her I mean she had
already kind of shown George who she was that she was you know very religious very strict very all this but her true
personality really revealed itself pretty quickly after they got married she was like well here it goes that's so
rough that like it was already pretty rough before they got married and then he's like all in and it's like H but
wait there's more yeah and George like I said he had crippling low self-esteem he
had zero self selfworth I mean he was already kind of a shadow of a guy at that point and he became even more of a
shadow yeah like this is not going to help yeah he just withdrew into himself unfortunately he began drinking very
heavily alcoholism shortly followed things got so bad at one point because it was a constant House of like
according to all the sources we could find that it was a constant House of the two of even before kids them just being
miserable with each other and like George just kind of retreating into himself drinking and kind of isolating
and him B and her berating him so it's just that kind of awful environment of just neither one of them are doing well
with each other you know and not something you would ever want to bring kids into no but back then obviously I
know it was like yeah not as easy to not have kids of course but if you could have a perfect world here you if you
could choose like just black and white probably don't right right but but at one point George snapped and hit Augusta
oh that's not the answer Bud silence is not the answer and Shear wrote at that afterwards quote she would draw herself
to her knees and pray fervently for her husband's death what like outwardly I don't think God is like down
with that like I don't think God is down with you hitting people either no I think this is none of this is really
this is awful yeah it's not great so not surprisingly I would say Augusta's views
on sex as a whole uh were extreme uh even for those Among Us who consider themselves the most Pious I would say
that her views are a little scary oh no um sex before marriage was just out of the [ __ ] question I mean
unquestionably a sin you will die for and burn in the pits of hell like don't do not pass go do not collect $500 like
you death bye wow um but even within marriage sex between husband and wife and only husband and wife of course
always uh was unpleasant and just a responsibility necessary to procreate like something [ __ ] we just have to do
it and it's only to have kids that's it it reminds me in Gilmore Girls of Lane Kim and her mom Mrs Kim yes when Lane's
getting married and she's trying to like explain to Lane you know the wedding night and Lane's like no no no I got it
and she's like no let me explain it to you and she says if you're lucky you only have to do it once like me oh my
God and Lane's just like ah if you're lucky that's so sad if you're lucky you only have to do it once oh my God and I
was like oh my that's that stuck with me which like go Miss cim a but like like just once just one time and then never
again [ __ ] that sorry and that was Augusta's view on it just like have kids that's it and out of religious
obligation have kids wow so this is all like not great this is wild this is so dark yeah you ain't seen nothing yet I'm
like this is so dark and then I just sit my poppy yeah I'm just like just wait until part two oh good uh but be you
know Augusta seems like she's a little intolerant of anything and is certainly anything less than Perfection she also
kept immaculate home immaculate which like good for her like good for you keeping an Immaculate home I suppose
that's tough to do especially you know when you're living in 1906 without a Swiffer it's really without a Swiffer I
feel like it's really dusty in 1906 really dusty but she kept it but that was part of her like obsession with
perfection too it wasn't like she just liked her home clean it was like All Is Lost well there's that whole phrase I'm
sure she lived by cleanliness next to God godliness I think you had it right yeah wait I think we said said the same
thing I think you said Next to Godliness which I think is right I think it's close to I I said like down the block or
something from it it's it's in the it's in a nearby County to Godliness I think uh but but like given that giving her
obsession with perfection her intolerance for essentially anything her attitudes towards
sex it's pretty unclear besides religious obligation why she would have thought children was her path in life I
think just cuz you supposed to quot um and I think it was like social expectations it was also 1906 not a lot
of ways to prevent that from happening I suppose except that they were having sex
only to have kids right so that was the agenda here so I think it was a religious and social obligation for sure
um but it certainly wasn't out of love for the need to nurture another living thing doesn't sound like it but whatever
the case Henry Gan was born in January 1902 this is Ed's older brother okay and was followed four years later by Ed now
in the early years of Ed and Henry's lives George struggled to keep the family afloat he was working you know
just whatever jobs he could find to provide even the most essential of needs it was tough
times after a few years he went into business for himself and he opened a small meat and grocery shop in 1909
which is like okay George nice um but George had no business bu sense no experience whatsoever definitely not
experience owning a business of that kind or any kind of that so the store just started falling downhill went into
financial problems oh no and Augusta's solution to this issue was just push her husband aside and take over the
operation of the store okay she put him in the position of a clerk she said you're you're nice to people she said
demoted and then while this you know this didn't do anything to improve their uh domestic relationship I imagine if
you already hate each other working together is not the answer probably not great and especially her demoting him
and just taking it over but one thing about Augusta she going get it done she's going to get work done she's going
to do it her work ethic and determination were exactly what was needed for this store okay and she did
turn things around in a very short period of time and she ended up managing them into a place where they were
financially sustainable nice all right okay Augusta again it feels like this is where Augusta would have thrived she you
know she didn't enjoy domestic life not I think out of again social and religious obligation she felt like that
was her Duty and that was what she was supposed to do but I think if she could have opened her mind a little bit she
would have been a great business woman just that way just demote him to go take care of the kid exactly like hopefully
he's got his drinking under yeah because again she that's the other thing it's like we also have George falling into
the Shadows here and you know his alcoholism is kind of taking things over it ends up [ __ ] with his health later
like you know it's and obviously you know he did hit her so it's like this is just not a great situation for anybody
it's just like damn man oh man it's all bad it's all bad it's all bad and um again just become a business owner and
then the world would have been one less edgin you know that's always something to strive for but although things in the
business were doing well you know finally at home things were definitely not not great following Henry's birth
Augusta struggled to bond with him when he was little um and that's and seemed almost resentful of his presence and I
wondered quickly I was like could this be undiagnosed postpartum and I do wonder if that played a role in here but
when you read a little more into it it doesn't feel like it has the Hallmarks of that kind of situation okay it feels
like it's just who she is she this wasn't the path she was planning to take like out of a want to take it yes it was
more out of a expectation yeah and then it's also I think what happened I think if she had had she really wanted a girl
yeah and I'll explain why in a second but I think if she had had a girl she would have been a little
more bonded okay or what she saw as bonded in her own head you know what I mean like not a conventional Bond I
don't think I don't think I just don't know if she was capable of that kind of kind of thing to be honest but because
it was a boy she really wasn't happy she had always maintained a I mean bottom of
the barrel opinion of men like they're all bad they're all horrible and again she wanted a girl so she was very
disappointed when she had a boy I'm wondering about like what her upbringing was like yeah she grew up she was raised
in Germany oh wow okay yeah so there's not a lot known about her upbringing but you know who knows yeah but she saw so
when she got pregnant for a second time she saw that as an opportunity to get what she wanted and then she got another
boy yeah uh so she was equally disappointed but Shea writes quote Augusta was not the kind to give in
Despair and she took the swaddled newborn in her arms and made a sacred vow this one would not grow up to be
like the rest of them this one she promised would be different okay which sounds like that
that could have the whisper of a promise you know pretty all right like it's a little okay like you're just like oh
okay are you you like love him into be a good man you know like is that that no and also like him and his brother are
not that far apart so why can't they both be good ones exactly I don't understand because Henry was like
neglected and abandoned by her like just totally yeah I don't want anything to do
with you and then I think so I think she looked at Henry as like that's the mistake I didn't want that
then she has another child she's like well that's also a mistake but she's like I guess I should try to fix this
one like make it what I want both girl and Ed became something like a pet to Augusta and again this is not to to say
that she treated him with kindness and compassion and love and nurturing because unfortunately some people don't
do that to their pets no she just focused a lot of time on him mostly bad attention and the way that she saw it
was if I can't have girl I can't have the or even the child I want in any way because she just did not see these
children as the ones she wanted she figured you know what at least Ed I can shape him into being at least something
resembling what I want if not physically at least in character oh no so for years
Augusta would berate Ed at every opportunity and because her her main plan here and this is what makes me
think this is more just like austa is an [ __ ] yeah because it's like she had a
plan here and her plan was to break Ed completely so that she could he would literally just worship her and he she
could control his every thought yeah and that's [ __ ] up like that's not just to think that way is so
maniacal and your own kid yeah and he would she would tell him that he was stupid tell him you did pointed out
every mistake he made would humiliate him any slip up he made was a big deal and she would just make him feel the
lowest of the low that's sad and would always remind him only a mother could love you so she literally told him no
will ever love you only your mother could love you mean and it's like and it's literally like you are such a
[ __ ] waste that only I could love you so like don't even bother I can't imagine treating number one anybody this
way but I can't imagine treating a child this way a child your child yeah only a
mother can love you can you imagine like hearing your mom say those words like that's really [ __ ] up so [ __ ] up as
we know going to do some very traumatizing and again her whole idea was to make him fear her respect her and
worship her and worship her yeah big time and that is so diabolical it is that that's exactly it it's so [ __ ] up
so while she would never be capable of recognizing it her very abrasive personality and I mean
self-righteousness had left her feeling isolated from everyone around her like she was going to admit that but she was
she was isolated I mean who would want to hang out with a woman to be around and George loathed being around her and
did everything he could to stay away from her or just avoid catching her eye like any of her attention this is so sad
and again in Ed she saw an opportunity not to build a lasting relationship through trust and love and nurturing and
compassion but to manipulate and twist him into who someone who would love her no matter what and would desperately
seek her approval and praise that was the other part of the equation was she needed him to desperately need her
praise and approval cuz nobody else really did it sounds like and some and in all of that together would mean he
would never leave her and that was her whole idea is you will never leave me and that's not why you have children you
want to send them off into the world yeah you want to hope that they come back out of their own valtion to be with
you right so this is unhealthy and with few other influences to contradict any of this abuse it didn't take long for Ed
to become totally reliant on her for all social emotional any of his needs he relied on her for everything every move
he made and years later whenever anyone would ask about his mother he would literally become tearfully sentimental
and would say she was like nobody else in the world wow like he was even when she died even he was like she was
everything because he she had just ingrained that she had beaten it into him it's
literally like a it's wild also what a way to word that yeah cuz cuz I think she might have not been like anyone else
in the world she was unique when Ed was s years old Augusta decided the family could make more money farming than they
would operating the store so she sold off the business and relocated the family to a small farm outside Camp
Douglas which is about 40 minutes outside lacrosse and you know while it was true that she did believe there was
going to be a good future in farming it was like you know it was that time it felt like it was a good move she did
have another motive for this it was to get her family particularly her youngest her young and impressionable and baby Ed
away from the urban in what she believed to be evil landscape of Lacrosse uhuh but for unknown reasons the farm outside
Camp Douglas didn't work out and then less than a year later they moved again uh so in 1914 they ended up settling on
a one 195 Acre Farm [ __ ] I wish and it was in PL fields which is a pretty small
really rural community on the other side of the state and to be honest their Farmstead when compared to everyone
else's was very sprawling it was a twostory huge and like there was a two-story home there was like a bunch of
out buildings a large barn there was like all kinds of stuff um and the property was actually purchased and
owned by Augusta and back then that's like virtually unheard of exactly unheard of it's real
estate and business anything would like this is why it was strictly in the domain of men at that time and again
Augusta really had the chops to be a thriving businesswoman if she had just changed her [ __ ] tune yeah but if
fleeing Urban moral Decay truly was her intention she couldn't have picked a more appropriate location to be honest
like it was the right move they near nearest neighbors were like a quarter mile away damn and the house was
surrounded on all sides by Meadowland trees Fields like it was total isolation and Augusta liked it um that's a lot to
bring a child like kids into though like kids don't need to be isolated the isolation is tough that is a tough thing
and she was isolating because she said the religious and moral standards of plane Fields were scandalously low she
had determined wow right after getting there according to Augusta I'm sure they were probably like some of the most
religious people ever and she's like not enough literally in reality planfield the people there were as hardworking and
God-fearing as most of the other rural Midwestern communities of the time go I had a feeling but looking down on them
allowed Augusta to feel morally Superior which is what she lived for right uh in
fact she not only deemed the town to be of low moral character but also concluded that the churches there were a
lot in plane Fields were insufficient to provide moral and religious guidance for
Ed in particular and she said nope I'm going to take the responsibility on of providing religious instruction to him
oh goodie yeah now in their new home she continued to dominate Ed's life I mean occupying every moment of his time
nitpicking at everything he did in fact the only time Ed had any break was the hours that he was at school but there he
kind of faced a different set of problems so he was living in constant stress and abuse and manipulation all
kinds of things obviously at home so nobody can really tell what kind of student he would have been if he wasn't
going through all that he did like so I guess so I mean things were what they were so he did struggle in the classroom
but he was an Avid Reader okay he was a very good reader um living an isolated life on the farm like you were pointing
at and being completely cut off from peers and potential Friends by his mother Ed was incredibly lonely and like
had and like socially you feel weird being like that's so sad that Ed was lonely like we always say the kid feel
bad for the kid not the adult really [ __ ] yeah and on the off chance that he did make any kind of like fleeting
connection with someone from school just like a friend the relationship was immediately cut off because when Augusta
found out about it she would be like they're from an awful family no way like you are not to speak to them they're
evil she would literally cast them out as evil like they're a demon in a child's body you are not to talk to them
what the [ __ ] so terrify that kid to be like oh [ __ ] like I can't tell where
these demons are in kid bodies oh my God to go that far I can't imagine not wanting my child to make friends any
friends what yeah and the isolation and loneliness made him seem odd to other kids at school obviously and even when
he tried to like imitate their normal social behaviors he would come off as like really robotic and like sometimes
inappropriate like he just didn't know how to do it and he had a congenital lazy eye oh and he also had a growth on
his tongue that impeded his speech sometimes oh no so he would often get picked on yeah of course decades later
when he underwent a series of psychological testing for his crimes his IQ was determined to be very average wow
so he was not like below he was not high above he was just average so he was struggling strictly from a social from
social and just yeah and like an emotional kind of situation but um he only made it as far as 8th grade and he
graduated 8th grade at 16 and then he stopped school oh wow to work on the f eth grade yeah exactly so things at
school might have been bad for Ed but they were definitely no better at home at this point um while the idea of
owning a farm made sense to Augusta at the time uh she and her husband had no farming experience I was I was wondering
yeah and they didn't have the money to hire someone who did or pay for the Machinery that you know would make the
work less ardu and terrible yeah so instead they just worked all day just to produce enough food to feed themselves
and nothing more to really show for their work awesome and things only got worse by the time Ed and Henry reached
their teenage years cuz now they were spending the majority of their time working on the farm but their father's
heavy drinking had finally caught up to him and in addition to being you know to
him having significantly decreased productivity because of this he was getting sicker he started exhibiting
signs of Psy ological decline as well oh wow uh with no additional money to hire
help there was really nothing they could do except take all of George's slack on
the three of them so Augusta Henry and Ed are just working to the Bone damn now not in school and completely cut off
from the outside world at this point Ed was isolated on the farm with only his brother and his mother and his brother
is like kind of ambivalent to him right now like they're they're like they're fine like they're not mean to each other
they're not but like I think Henry was struggling in his own I'm sure way and Henry had a much different view of
Augusta than Ed had yeah and we find out later that it Ed had no idea Ed did not
know how Henry felt this just we all love Mom we all worship mom like see and that leads you to believe too cuz I know
we were having like the nature versus nurture discussion that like something in that nature is off yeah because for
Henry to see that like this is and also having like the exact same experience as
Ed like mostly I know she kind of like picked on Ed more well I think that's that's where the thing bends a little
that's the fork in the road and she kind of just abandoned Henry like she didn't
want anything to do with him but he saw her for what she was but he so he saw that and he was angry because he was
being treated as nothing and probably berated and abused and whatever like right but Ed was the he certainly got
abused he certainly got braided but it was an obsess iive kind of like I'm molding him to be what I want him to be
but Henry was just isolated completely from her and so I think the way that he saw it was
like like I hate her I don't like her I obey her because I'm scared of her and he will eventually tell Ed this and
we'll see where that leads but see even I feel like that's still such a nature thing like in like that small capacity
because with him like Henry undergoing all those same circumstances like that we were just saying like you could see
him turning out [ __ ] up too like absolutely the fact that he was abandoned and she treated him so shitty
exactly so there's something interes yeah there's something off in both ways for sure but yeah he just we'll find out
when he but but in this in these moments Ed was thinking that Henry is in the same boat right he's not see he's not
understanding that like this is a different scenario so it's interesting what happens when he finds that out oh
good now and Al also his parents are just completely unstable in every way imaginable so he doesn't have a lot to
go to so to cope he would Retreat into books and fantasy a lot and as you Grew Older those fantasies increasingly
included included women he was being told constantly that women are evil wh women are morally bankrupt women are
disgusting women will ruin you awesome like he was literally like like it was hammered into his head but he's a
human like he's and he's a young boy at this like it's just natural and giving her given her feelings about sex in
general and the wickedness and immorality of the locals Augusta swiftly and strongly addressed her son's growing
interest in women he was like oh this is not going to this is not going to work so he she focused nearly all of her ey
on the corrupting influence of modern women she just started hammering this [ __ ] in that was like the main thing of
all her religious teachings to him now cuz she saw that he started just like liking girls yeah like having a crush or
something or just being like wow she's pretty right like and she was like nope can't have that I'm the only woman for
you it's like oh wow okay now despite having literally no experience with basically no experience with modern
women whatever she believed modern women to be Augusta had seen enough in the newspaper and magazines to know that
they were morally bankrupt and no son of hers was ever going to sink as low as to
associate with women oh my not going to associate whenever the subject came up mostly because she would bring it up
because she was obsessed about it she would immediately reach for her Bible and begin quoting scripture and
according to Shear she would take both of her boys by the hand and make them swear to her that they would keep
themselves uncontaminated by women uncont became too stressing to resist she would say even the sin of Onan Onan
I think was preferable to the vess of fornication Dave looked it up and it's a passage from Genesis where it basically
says that Onan or Onan I don't know he pissed off God because he quote spilled his seed on the ground instead of into
his wife no I'm leaving so masturbation we're talking about she's saying they're
both sins fornication and masturbation are both saying masturbation is I'd rather you whack it than touch
disgusting women and she told Ed in order to show he loved her he had to stay a virgin or
he didn't love his mother oh that is on so many levels fizzy fizzy [ __ ] and this is like a 17 18yearold boy oh God
that she's sitting there saying you have to stay a virgin or you do not love me that is putrid that is that's rancid
that is Rancid oh my God yeah so not great uh and it should go without saying that you know
given the dire circumstances on the farm the just unending isolation and the overwhelmingly negative and twisted
influence of his mother uh the Gan family stood no chance of getting any better at this point does it sound like
it not great so by the late 1930s I and this is just like depressing it's like after a lifetime of misery
abuse heavy alcoholism and just being a Shadow of Yourself George G's Health had declined to the
point where he was barely able to get out of bed and he could not leave the house wow so finally on April 1st 1940
George Gan died from heart failure at age 66 much to the relief of his wife and children who were sick of picking up you
know the slack of the farm while also taking care of him oh yeah okay I hope his next life was better I I hope I hope
something like damn what a that's a rough cuz it sounds like he had a rough life leading
up to like childhood and everything it just never got better so for the last several years of his life George's
family had basically viewed him as a burden at that point which is I know it's all depressing um but now that they
were free of that burden all it kind of did was free them up to work more yeah uh and at the same time the American
Military entered World War II the following year and still eligible for the draft Ed was called to nearby
Milwaukee for the exams that would see if he was eligible for military service um had he been deemed eligible and sent
to Europe the G farm and Augusta's life probably would have crumbled into ruins to be honest yeah uh but fortunately for
her the Army rejected Ed because of a growth on his left eyelid which caused the lid to droop and slightly impaired
his vision a little bit oh okay his mother was very relieved so he was not eligible for military service without
their father to care for Ed and hen began taking odd jobs around planfield in order to help support their mother
and keep the farm running yeah and uh although like he had only gone to school until eth grade and had struggled he was
Ed Gan was very Adept at like manual labor cuz obviously he had done a ton at the farm he learned a lot yeah um so he
had no trouble finding work around town like installing Windows you know do fixing roofs like doing these little odd
jobs like other hand stuff he was known as like a local handyman okay you could call Ed and he'll fix that [ __ ] he's
good at it what a thought um and surprising oh there's another thought here so surprisingly he also had no
trouble finding work as a babysitter what a [ __ ] thought yep many of the families in and around
planfield hired him as a babysitter can you imagine knowing growing up as a child that Edan babysat you said that
man babysat my ass babysat my ass what and I mean like that sounds ghoulish mortifying that sounds ghoulish it
sounds that is a baller two truths in a lie though baller two in a lie you [ __ ] win that game you better use
that don't lose that don't uh maybe do lose that though time honestly you don't want to think about that but honestly
thinking about like the awful hideous rancid acts he is going to commit later in his life that sh that is rightfully
shocking to think of him as a babysitter oh yeah but when you really think about
this okay it makes a little bit of sense because paqua Edan is stunted I don't know where
he's stunted but he's stunted of course that boy has no social skills to to even
consider he feels very weird around his peers he doesn't know how to act he feels judged he he's terrified he's
always feeling the eyes of everybody else on him but with kids he feels like I can just hang with them like he's
literally I think these and these kids all they care about is that you're being nice well it was probably a him to like
have fun cuz he never had had fun in his childhood I think these kids probably helped him have fun and it's like all
these kids care about is that you're nice and you're playing with me they don't care that you're weird and he was
nice to them and he was nice and he played with them from everything could find nobody had problems with their kids
with him when he was like of that age right that's [ __ ] crazy like a teenager kind of thing like there was no
reports of anything weird happening no reports of him like hurting a child or wow not being anything but a very decent
babysitter that people kept hiring over and over again that's so interesting and
I think it's partially because like he he probably related better CU they had the social skills that he had which is
none to to see that's really sad like you don't need to act a certain way around kids they just care that you're
funny and you hang out right you know so when you think of it that way you're like okay like maybe I can see cuz it
was shocking to me that like people kept hiring him I was like is everyone all right in planville but planfield but I
get it I mean he seems by all reports that and how would they ever [ __ ] well that's the thing how are you
supposed to know and at this point it doesn't seem like he showing any quote unquote signs of what he's going to
become it seems like at this point he's a weird kid he's just a weird odd shy like painfully shy CH kid yeah which
probably endearing to people that he was shy like he wasn't like the scary thing
right so it's like again if he's being good with the kids how would these people have any other idea that he could
become this monster you know but now the time working outside of the home and away from
Augusta proved to be positive for Ed and Henry um but it was Henry who like really benefited from the whole thing
head had always been a little defiant when it came to his mother's strict rules cuz again different situation
between the two of them and he always had a very tumultuous relationship with her yeah so Ed kind of reluctantly left
his mother's side to go do these jobs like he was not happy to be away from her interesting yeah but Henry thrived
when he was away from the oh I'm sure he was probably like thrived let's live baby yeah like he was like see you later
he was like YOLO see you and again this distance and finally breaking away from what I can only imagine is a completely
stifling and suffocating environment on that farm I'm sure it was [ __ ] awful oh yeah this gave Henry a little more
perspective on Ed's relationship with Augusta like even more so he was able to see like something's wrong here yeah he
had always found it a little more than strange their relationship but I think he really like was like wait a second
and the brothers really it was the only thing they never saw eye eye on they were always pretty pretty decent with
each other wow because again while Ed held their mother in the highest esteem it came as a shock to him when he
learned that Henry [ __ ] loathed her and obeyed her out of pure fear wow he was shocked and he was angry he was like
what do you mean you don't love her like what do you mean you loathe her what are
you talking about and he was like [ __ ] her like are you kidding me have you looked at our life what so they
disagreed vehemently on their opinions about their mother and this was the first time they' ever like come to this
at one point but Ed loved his brother very deeply according to him and after the passing of their father he was kind
of the only other person that Ed had in his life and he was the only one in his life who didn't Dominate and consume him
right so it's like this is a very different relationship but I almost think that he didn't even know how to
handle that kind of relationship yeah I mean that makes sense that he wouldn't know if Henry was Ed's last connection
that even somewhat approximated some kind of love and support or anything like that which it sounds like he might
have been that connection came to an end on May 16th 1944 a fire broke out on the G Farm
according to Ed he and Henry had been burning some grass and vegetation near the Marshland on the property when the
fire escaped control okay and they needed to call for volunteer firefighters to help put out the fire
now despite Ed's explanation there's always been a little confusion about how this fire started whether it was
intentional or not and how it got so far out of control but whatever the cause when the firefighters got there
pretty quickly and were able to get the fire extinguished but when the smoke cleared Henry was nowhere what and so
they gathered a search party to look for Henry and Ed seemed to lead the search he first told them I don't know where
Henry is like I have no idea then he led the search team directly to Henry okay who was found laying face down dead from
what later was going to be determined to be a heart attack a heart attack there's
also reports that it's asphixiation that he died of okay but I saw more heart attack than
fixation what members of the search team and volunteer firefighters couldn't understand was how Henry had seemed to
have died as a result of the fire yet neither his body nor his clothes showed any signs of smoke or fire
damage also there were bruises on his head that could not be explained what and when the fire
investigators mentioned all this to Ed Ed's reply was and I quote funny how that
works what funny how what works it it doesn't work actually Ed I think Henry is Ed's first murder you think and I
think he killed him because he could not handle what he had found out about his mother wow or I think that austa said
something that led that Ed's Twisted mind took as kill him what the [ __ ] and I think it's kill
him be alone with Mom oh I really hate that a lot I think it's a little mixture of all of those things and how do you
think he did it that he ended up with bruises and a heart attack I think he probably
beat him over the head with something or hit him in the head with something didn't do like a typical autopsy they
didn't do any autopsy oh there was no autopsy so they said this looks weird let's not do anything about it they were
like yeah weird cool cool cool yep so I think that his brother Henry is his first personally that's strange and just
the response of like funny how that works funny how that works and led them right to him yeah like too weird so what
the [ __ ] and he was far away from the fire yeah what exactly it doesn't make sense no
one wanted to investigate this hello no do you think they were scared of this family I don't even think so I think
they were just it's the 40s they were just like e whatever put on their they put on their Fedora and walked away oh
no not Fedora I think when Henry after Henry Died Ed's last tie to reality was severed essentially yeah and he was now
left alone on the farm with Augusta with big mama which uh to be honest is probably likely how she would have
preferred it all along so she was probably fine with that unfortunately it wasn't long before Ed's life was upended
again because just a few months later his mother who he had always saw as indestructible began complaining that
she was feeling sick and faint she rushed her to the nearest hospital and they learned Augusta had suffered a
stroke and she would need to be on bed rest for the foreseeable future um he was at the hospital and home on the farm
just doting on her wherever she was refused to leave her bedside spend his days waiting on her and his evenings
reading to her from the Bible like he was forever watch next to her that's sad it is sad by the fall of 1945 she
appeared to be making some pretty significant improvements actually and had even begun to walk around a little
bit that's good with Ed's help um and so he it seemed to boost his spirits he thought she was going to you know she
was coming but unfortunately those Spirits were crushed in late December when austa had
a second stroke and this time it was much more severe yeah so Ed got his mother rushed to the hospital but it was
too late augustae died December 29th 1945 at the age of 67 years old wow young I know a life full of hatred will
do that to you that'll do it and Ed boarded up Augusta's bedroom and kept it as a museum and shrin to
her got to do what you got to do Allah Norman now yeah now in the span of 5 years Ed
had lost the three people who were his entire world his entire world yeah that's it that's the farthest reach he
had but when his mom died it unored him that's a different way kind of solitude that's a different kind like he's been
alone his whole life in my opinion but but this is I can't like psychologically none of us can
understand what was happening here because the damage that had already been done to that that psyche there like
there's a vacancy within that psyche exctly yeah wow yeah and again like regard no matter what
happened for as long as he knew Augusta was the driving force in his life like he what what do you do like you relied
on she made sure you relied on her for every [ __ ] part of your being yeah and when she's gone that's the thing she
did I'm like did you think of that Augusta that when you're gone what the [ __ ] is he going to do well no I think
it was a very self-serving it is that's the thing it was a very a shortsighted way of doing things it's like because
when you're gone man I know he and I think that's it she's like not my problem when I'm gone so that's exactly
it that's whatever and it's like that's so [ __ ] up like cuz what the [ __ ] did
you leave the world here like I can tell you you left Ed [ __ ] Gan that's what you left like Jesus but now without her
there on the farm he was like you said a totally different kind of a loan and he
had none of the skills necessary to deal with the grief right because you need to
like children need to be taught how to process emotions properly because they don't [ __ ] know how or you you need
need to hold their hand through it so they can understand how to do it themselves and he was never taught that
neither was Henry neither one of them so now he's dealing with this like overwhelming grief and has no skills
whatsoever to deal with it this is this was such a recipe yeah it really was the
whole thing it's all bad but in the years before Henry and Augusta's deaths the G Farm had been it had become
unsightly and kind of in need of some repairs like you know it was weather beaten like it just regular wear and
tear but it was kind of becoming like a little little over the top I mean that's
a huge Farm to maintain on your own yeah like some of the windows needed to be replaced like roofs needed patching like
that kind of [ __ ] but he was good at that [ __ ] he was good at that [ __ ] but
they all required money to do that the Gans didn't really have any so they did the best they could while all of them
were together but after Henry and austa died Ed simply let it just fall to ruin like cuz he was also in grief the lawn
had become overgrown with weeds the pastures were you couldn't even tell they were pastures anymore and he sold
off all the animals oh wow um and the hulking farm equipment was just left to rust in the yard it's like you should
have sold that too bro yeah so it's no longer an operating working farm and so Ed had to look somewhere else to make
money um so he worked briefly for the town clearing brush from the roadside but eventually fall you know he kind of
fell into a routine of like odd jobs and then continued the babysitting and this is him in like his
early 40s huh which I was shocked by that like I could understand the younger ID like
you know the teenager just like babysitting your kids whatever especially in the 40s it's like sure
watch my kids yeah like whatever teenagers is available they're just like sure yeah but like what's going on here
I don't know I don't know I can't say that I'll necessarily make that choice in my life you won't have Ed babysitting
your children just like a 40-year-old man babysitting your children I yeah this was a strange one for me but
apparently by all accounts nothing came out of of those situations so this is so
uncomfy but again this is from the 40s so who knows you know so his experience on the farm in the past meant that you
know he had at least enough experience that when Harvest Time came he was able to find work on other Farms too so he
was able to do that you know the rest of the time he was like the handyman doing
all that stuff but other than that he could just be found sitting at home among piles and piles of trash
and Dusty old antique objects and debris that just cluttered every livable space
you look at pictures of that place it's so sad it's horrifying it's like hoarding uping such a psychological such
illness yeah and while she like I said while Augusta was alive she kept it meticulous it was very clean obviously
he's going through something with the fact that like he wasn't able to keep it up like you would think that she
ingrained that so much him that he would want to do it for her but but I think he
just he couldn't it sounds like and without the tether to her yeah his real illnesses and his real like sick mind
just broke loose very much so the like the the term UNM is really yeah perfect for what he was at this point it's sad
too because this could have been like such a beautiful home oh yeah at pictures of it I'm like wow it's
gorgeous now I'm going to give a quick trigger warning for what I'm going to talk about next because I am going to
talk about like because he got into Nazi stuff so I just want to give that quick
little trigger warning that it's going to be brief I'm not going to go into anything graphic or anything like that
but just the mere mention I just want you to know that it's I'm going to be talking about it for a minute I know
that's that's hard um now he's alone in the house you know and I want you to pay
this is the 40s he's got no money he's this place is just lit by a lantern oh my God you know like just he's sitting
there alone I'm just looking at pictures of the inside of this while you're talking he entertained himself with
crime and Pulp magazines that had I'm literally looking at a photo where there is a detective magazine laying top a
pile of garbage yeah and the thing is like these we've talked about these before in some of the cases where like
perpetrators became obsessed with these kind of magazines so I think when the your mind is already in a bad place
these are not the greatest places to go no um but since the war these pulp and crime magazines had become preoccupied
with horror stories about the real life Horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the war and among the stories that
fascinated him most were those about Elsa Koke the so-called [ __ ] of booken Wald oh no the wife of Nazi Commander
Carl oke who was in charge of the concentration camps at booken Wald um he held no official position within the
third or she held no POS official position within the Third Reich but um she was known because remember she was
called the [ __ ] of buen Wald yeah she was known for her enthusiasm for cruelty
and Terror oh um and it honestly made her one of the most notorious figures in the Nazi party that's how bad she was um
she was known to have collected the bones and skin of those killed during the Holocaust and she would later have
them made into ornaments decorations lampshades among other things that is beyond um as one of the most monstrous
figures to emerge during what is already a [ __ ] dark period yeah Koch's actions were literally the stuff of
nightmares it sounds like it like literally the stuff like you can't conjure the kind of Cruelty and Terror
that she inflicted but that made her real life exploits perfect fod for the pulp and horror magazines of the day oh
wow so he's he's just taking this in this is his for this is his only Touchstone to reality is just taking all
this in all the time you wish that he had just read like better home in gardens right just like get on a
handyman trip you know like on your own property like get it learn how to have an herb garden DIY yeah just like that
would have been so nice different DIYs different DIYs wi exactly it's like just you know just I never I'm like just to
anything else yeah I think it's just like when you think about it you're like how does your mind and I I guess you
have to be like broken in so many ways and that's why none of us can understand it yeah is like why do you want to go
that route you know like why that can't make you feel good but I guess it does make some people like Twisted people
think they're feeling good you know the human mind is so scary instead of doing something productive or that makes you
feel like you're doing something or creating something of use like but again just
broken in so many ways we can't even fa um and again to Ed whose grasp on reality had always been somewhat tenuous
uh the stories about Koke and the other evil figures from the SS were fascinating um particularly those that
sexualized figures like Coke because that was a thing what and um Irma Greece who was another female figure in the
Nazi party oh yeah they were like their horrible behaviors would become like fetishized and like sexualized oh that's
heinous um to him they were interesting because to him they seemed fictitious they didn't seem like real people um
kind of like his like pirate stories that he would read because remember he was very much into fantasy um and his
favorites that he liked to read about in fantasy like fiction was those involving
fictional head hunting tribes and other you know brutal cultures that were again
fictitious yeah that would keep trophies from their victims like shrunken heads or drums made with human skin and bones
oh so these are like fantasy stories that but they're [ __ ] up someone who is like of you know like functioning
mind and body can read and say wow what a tale right like that was CRA he's reading it and being like this is real
and this is what needs to happen in my life oh yeah so this guy who's like sitting here and he's and he's just
consuming things about Nazism and like the fetishizing of these horrible women in the Nazi party and then he's also
reading these detective magazines so it's like he's getting on one hand these awful stories about these [ __ ]
monstrous women that are being sexualized for doing monstrous deeds and then on the other hand he's reading
these detective magazines where women are usually like the like sex you know like femal not even that like they're
usually just like the sex object that's like the bad guys tied up the sex object
and like you know I mean you get the pictures of yeah oh I didn't even know that's what you were talking about those
mag okay so you're getting two very conflicting very extreme very horrifying portrayals of women right and
you're getting like I don't know what I couldn't imagine what is happening in this what a storm of awful happening in
this Farmhouse like I can't even and then he's sitting there like trying to reconcile all the [ __ ] that has been
twisted up inside of him since he was born it goes without without saying that the profoundly rigid and very archaic
worldview that augustae put inside of her son the ugliest of which was reserved for women and sexuality like
really hammered those two things in had a very deep Twisted influence on Ed and in the absence of literally any other
meaningful social connections or even casually contradicting opinions to hers he only heard her opinion and view on
everything that was it her views became his views even if he mostly kept them to
himself those were what he knew that's all he knew so sitting there alone in this dark empty like completely
cluttered and dirty Farmhouse with only gruesome stories and his even more gruesome imagination to keep him
company that [ __ ] started to warp big time Big Time and you add in like the grief and confusion and anger this is
just a a recipe for disaster so it was blending Augusta's hateful rhetoric with violent often like really [ __ ] up
sexual fantasies born out of that Pulp Fiction that he was consuming and it was only a matter of time before he was
going to snap and he was going to bring these fantasies into his reality right it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the
lines between reality and delusion started to blur blur with Ed because it was all kind of [ __ ] up yeah but by
most accounts that triggering event was the death of his mother in 1945 that's where people point to uh not long after
she was buried in fact Ed began to feel as though he were living in a complete Haze and sometimes he would move around
just thinking he saw her thinking he heard her he would smell things that he suspected weren't there like he was
losing it losing a GP on reality cuz again he's so [ __ ] isolated so isolated and sometimes he would just
have these like feelings he said that people were watching him in other times he said he could hear his mother's voice
or he would catch her scent in the house oh my but there were other voices he said too he could hear other voices and
he said these voices were laughing at him and mocking him oh that's really sad and so he said he learned to cope with
this by laying still and picturing his mother's face that was the only way he knew how to
cope oh man but after a while even that wasn't enough to control his urges oh my
God Ed had been religiously visiting his mother's grave obviously daily yeah and
a little more than a year after Augusta's death he began toying with the idea of having her back I forgot about
this part of the story so he dug her up one night yeah he took her head off yep and he kept it and he was intending to
quote unquote shrink it like he had read about in those fiction stories he ended
up using a book he had to preserve it somehow interesting so that's happening which
we're going to get a little more into his uh grave robbing Adventures don't worry but first let's talk about The
Disappearance of Mary Hogan okay so following Augusta's death Ed probably would have lik to have just shut himself
in the darkness of The Farmhouse pretending his mother was still alive and just reading his horrible stuff he
was reading but he needed income so he had to go into town to work a little and buy supplies essentially babysit and he
was weird he had strange habits he had like peculiar ways but a lot of the residents of planing field field were
like we just felt bad for him yeah like he wasn't mean he wasn't like a dick he wasn't bothering people we just felt bad
so if they had the time they would kind of indulge him as he talked about like that [ __ ] he was reading in like crime
magazines and stuff they just like yeah totally wow um and it never really occurred to anyone that Ed seemed to
have an inordinate fascination with stories about lust killings and other violent crime only later they were like
that was a little weird um that's interesting to me that like he was just like shooting the [ __ ] with people
talking about this and nobody in the moment was like it's a little concerning that that man lives all alone and talks
about nothing except for Less killing that's strange a little weird yeah uh they they kind of viewed his fascination
with this stuff as they viewed his awkwardness with women you know he was odd he was probably emotionally stunted
he had progressed really emotionally not much Beyond adolescence thanks to his domineering mother they all knew Augusta
so they were like you know he just you know he's just weirdo he and it's not his fault so you know people just
tolerated Ed and were nice to him like everybody was nice to him nobody was a dick um but no one really went out of
their way to check in with him on the farm after his mother's death like they would check in on like with him when he
was out and about they'd be like how you doing right what's going on like how's the farm but nobody was going out of
their way at yeah and since no one paid him a lot of attention when he was around or they just didn't care really
few if any people noticed when Ed stopped coming into town very often he stopped those um he retreated very
deeply even more deeply into that Farmhouse isolating increasingly indulging that
dark imagination he had and again the one place he would only go was like what ended up being Mary's Tavern it was in
town when you would go into town he would just stop at this place it was really the only place you would go okay
outside of like you know a little store to buy supplies and um this was kind of a CD bar located in
Pine Grove and given his father's alcoholism he wasn't a drinker okay um and but his interest in the bar wasn't
really that it was really who was serving the stuff at the bar he first noticed the proprietor of Mary's Tavern
Mary Hogan when she opened the bar in 1949 and he was fascinated by her immediately which is sad because you
wonder if it's like did he know what to do with that yeah yeah or did he accept it or was he how was he fascinated by
her like like did he think she was pretty did he want to strike up a conver like if he had known how would he have
wanted to strike up a conversation but then what he does you end up being like well [ __ ] you're a
monster that's the thing like these different like M again like he didn't have a chance but he's a [ __ ] monster
of course like of course I know I don't know why I said it like that I'm just really shook right now it's as you
should be um but yeah he was fascinated with Mary Hogan uh throughout his early life he
had you know he had expressed like I said at least a passing attraction to women in the general sense he expressed
it out until his mom was like you should die for that but Mary Hogan was the first woman that Ed seemed to be very
taken with uh born in 1901 in dusenberg Germany Mary came Germany like his mother yeah just like Mama Mary came to
plan Field's area from Chicago in 19 49 where she had at least one husband in a very murky past few facts are really
note about her life and there are plenty of wild unsavory rumors floating around
planfield including speculation that she had mob ties oh okay uh it was just like
the rumor mill with her yeah but to Ed she was an amazing figure that reminded him in many ways of his mother awesome
physically and in her commanding presence he's looking to to replace his mom very much so
uh but if augustae was a paragon of all things good and right in the world according to Ed Mary Hogan was the exact
opposite oh no according to Harold Sher quote Hogan was a foulmouthed Tavern keeper with a shady even Sinister past
oh man Mary sounds hilarious she kind of does now on the afternoon of December 8th 1954 planfield resident Seymour
Lester headed down to Mary's Tavern to get some ice cream for his daughter He Came Upon a terrible scene oh no he
entered the tavern and he quote found found the tavern empty in blood stains leading from the barroom through the
door to a spot where a car or truck had been parked not knowing what happened only that there was clearly violence he
reported the discovery um and the man who came was VIIs Waterman he took his time getting
to the scene and then took even longer reporting The Disappearance to the sheriff so nobody was moving fantastic
moving and grooving here that's always what we're looking for yeah it's really great now during their search of the bar
in the living quarters out back Sheriff's deput confirmed that Mary Hogan was definitely nowhere to be found
and it looked like someone had been shot inside the bar oh wow um there was a large amount of Blood on the floor and
they discovered a 32 caliber cartridge on the ground o the area behind the bar had been rifled through like the cash
box um where the neighbors believe she kept all the money was like pulled out uh and they believe she kept large
amounts of cash there uh but the only money they found with some crumpled up $1 bills and a roll of nickels uhoh
according to those who knew her Mary was very fearful of strangers and kept the door locked during the day she would
only open that door to people she knew which meant her attacker was likely someone she knew right aside from the
large amount of blood and really small amount of evidence there was really nothing else to show what happened to
her and during their canvas of the house houses around the tavern deputies learned that the neighbors had seen
quote a dark green 1950 or 51 Dodge pickup truck with wooden racks parked outside the tavern on several occasions
in the weeks leading up to her Disappearance in fact one neighbor claimed to have seen that truck driving
nearby that same evening that she went missing in quote there was something covered with a tarp in the rear oh but
they were unable to get a look at what it was according to neighbors the truck was memorable because it was missing a
license plate mm now based on the evidence collected at the scene Sheriff Harold Thompson put out an alert for the
truck and notified surrounding counties that Mary Hogan was nowhere to be found but they weren't really hopeful that she
was going to be found alive at this point because according to Crime Scene technicians who had processed the scene
quote the amount of blood loss by the shooting victim assumed to be Miss Hogan precludes the possibility of her being
alive wow now investigators theorized Hogan had been at the bar drinking a cup of coffee when the Intruder arrived and
based on the state of the register in cash boox they figured it was likely the motive was robbery at the time her
disappearance was just one of many Mysteries that was baffling local and Regional investigators in 19 47
8-year-old Georgia weckler disappeared after a neighbor gave her a ride home from school and dropped her about a half
mile from her house before driving away oh man hundreds of locals aided in the search for Georgia and there was a big
reward offered for information leading to her her return but other than a few reports of like a black sedan near her
house at one point they never found her wow she's disappeared oh that's awful and then that happened again a few years
later in October 1953 a 15 18-year-old Evelyn Harley disappeared while babysitting for a family friend in
Lacrosse so the father of Evelyn was unable to reach her by phone so he went to the house where she was babysitting
and he knocked on the door but no one answered oh wow so he spotted Evelyn's glasses and one shoe on the floor
through the living room window and so he made his way inside through an open basement window and he found his
daughter's belongings but she was nowhere to be found outside he found footsteps and a trail of blood leading
away from the house and later during their investigation of the scene investigators found additional blood
trails and evidence that Evelyn had been forced into a car nearby the house oh God they never found her what yeah and
there were others there were men women children all who disappeared under mysterious like abductions but they were
never followed up like there was no Ransom no attempt to contact the families their bodies were never found
just disappeared and this wasn't Ed and this wasn't Ed huh not that they could not that they could prove and in the
months and years that followed Mary's disappearance it seemed that it was just another one in line of those
disappearances I'll get the [ __ ] out of there and a year later on her the anniversary of her disappearance one
local paper paper published a follow-up article saying quote authorities investigated all possible leads but
nothing more appears known today than when the situation was first discovered on December 8th
1954 unlike the others though investigators would eventually learn what happened to Mary Hogan yeah and it
was going to be a lot worse than any of them could have ever imagined yeah and I'm going to leave you there I had a
feeling that's a lot to process for everyone involved there's a lot there's a lot coming in part two sad that's
really sad that she was just operating a Tavern like doing her best yeah she's just doing she's running a business
keeping everyone happy and this man's comes and this man becomes fixated on her because he's a
creep oh wow all right yeah well we're going to go do something that's good for our brains after this yeah and uh with
that being said we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep hit weird but not as weird as Augusta cuz she kept
it the weirdest up until Ed and not as weird as Ed never as weird as said I was going to give you that warning next time
or maybe never cuz I feel like you don't even need it you should know that you should definitely know that yeah
[Music] wow

Not since Jack the Ripper or H.H. Holmes had a criminal so thoroughly shocked and captivated the public imagination; yet Gein’s crimes went far beyond what anyone imagined a person could be capable of. Indeed, he has served as the basis for some of Hollywood’s most iconic horror films including Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And, while he is only known to have killed two people during his active period, the list of crimes he is suspected of having committed is long and likely to remain a source of speculation for a long time to come.

Thank you to the magical Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research!

References

Associated Press. 1968. "Gein prosecution winds up murder testimony." Capital Times, November 9: 9.

—. 1968. "Gein ruled fit to stand trial." Green Bay Press-Gazette, January 16: 1.

Capital Times. 1958. "Bar Gein house admission fees." Capital Times, March 12: 4.

—. 1957. "Claims ten skulls came from graves ." Capital Times, November 18: 1.

—. 1958. "Gein insane, psychiatrist tells court." Capital Times, January 6: 3.

—. 1957. "Nearly wed gein, woman reveals." Capital Times, November 20: 1.

—. 1957. "Plan to open at least two." Capital Times, November 23: 1.

—. 1957. "Weeping Gein joins minister in prayer." Capital Times, November 22: 1.

—. 1957. "'Won't believe' graves robbed ." Capital Times, November 19: 1.

Daily Tribune. 1954. "Believe Bancroft tavernkeeper was slain." Daily Tribune, December 9: 1.

—. 1944. "Rites today for the man who died in Roche-a-Cri fire." Daily Tribune, May 19: 1.

Engel, Dave. 2005. "Whatever happened to Mary Hogan?" Daily Tribune, December 5: 6.

La Crosse Tribune. 1957. "State pushes murder charges against ." La Crosse Tribune, November 22: 1.

Portage Daily Register. 1957. "New rifle in shop used in slaying storekeeper." Portage Daily Register, November 19: 1.

Schechter, Harold. 1998. Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho. New York, NY: Gallery Books.

Stevens Point Journal. 1958. "Ed Gein's real estate sold for under $4,000." Stevens Point Journal, March 31: 1.

—. 1958. "Gein farmhouse leveled by early morning blaze." Stevens Point Journal, March 20: 1.

—. 1958. "Open house at Gein farm draws crowds." Stevens Point Journal, March 24: 1.

—. 1957. "Results of lie test announced." Stevens Point Journal, November 20: 1.

—. 1954. "Woman's disappearance hints slaying at Pine Grove tavern." Stevens Point Journal, December 9: 1.

United Press. 1957. "Hospital gets ready for Gein." Capital Times, November 23: 2.

United Press International. 1968. "Ed Gein found guilty of 1957 murder in Plainfield." Capital Times, November 14: 2.

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Brief Summary

Ed Gein's traumatic childhood and mother's influence led to his infamous crimes.

Key points

The Morbid Topic. Elena and Ash dive into a heavy and gruesome story that has been widely covered.
A Lacerating Nightmare. A quote describes the troubled marriage of Ed's parents, George and Augusta.
Augusta's Manipulation. Augusta berates Ed, aiming to break him down completely for her control.
Isolation and Abuse. Ed's life is marked by isolation and manipulation from Augusta, leading to deep emotional scars.
Ed's Struggles at School. Despite being an avid reader, Ed struggles socially and academically due to his home life.
George's Decline. George's health deteriorates, leading to his death and the family's relief.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Their marriage had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare.

Elena quotes a writer describing George and Augusta's marriage.

6:52WatchApr 8, 2024

Tension

70/ 100High tension

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