Edward Theodore Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), popularly known as the Plainfield Ghoul or the Butcher of Plainfield, was an American murderer and corpse snatcher. Gein’s crimes, committed in and around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gained national attention in 1957 when authorities learned he had excavated corpses from local cemeteries and fashioned trophies and souvenirs from their bones and skin. Gein also admitted to killing two women: Mary Hogan, a bar owner, in 1954, and Bernice Worden, a hardware shop owner, in 1957.
Gein was initially ruled unfit to stand trial and was institutionalized.
By 1968, Edward Theodore Gein had been declared competent to stand trial; he was found guilty of Worden’s murder, but legally ill, and was remanded to a psychiatric facility. On July 26, 1984, at the age of 77, he died of respiratory failure at Mendota Mental Health Institute. He is interred in Plainfield Cemetery, adjacent to his family, in an unmarked grave.
Where is the real Ed Gein house?
The site of Ed Gein’s house is just a few miles southwest of Plainfield, WI, on the corner of Archer and 2nd Avenue. The home burned down in March 1958, and the new owner demolished all of the outbuildings in the years that followed.
