Analysis of Ed Gein's life, mental illness, killings, and overall full case.

1. Carolyn Dorricott
ED GEIN

2. • The startling disorder characterized by a broad spectrum of cognitive and
emotional dysfunctions including delusions and hallucinations,
disorganized speech and behavior, and inappropriate emotions (Barlow,
David Harrison, and Vincent Mark. Durand).
• Schizophrenia typically begins between the ages on fifteen and twenty-five
for males and usually has a later onset for females, sometime in their late
twenties
• The only way to test for schizophrenia is to assess the individual for
certain symptoms that correlate with the disease
• There is also no cure for this disease; there is only treatment and support
(Grohol, John M).
SCHIZOPHRENIA

3. • “A belief that would be seen by most members of a society as a
misrepresentation of reality” (Barlow, David Harrison)
• Known as “the basic characteristic of madness” (Jaspers, 1963, p. 93)
• Most well known type is called a delusion of grandeur; this is when they
mistakenly believe they are famous or powerful
• Delusions of persecution and this is when one believes that someone is
out to get them; this type of delusion can completely end a person’s career
and life
• Two very unusual types of delusions are called capgra’s syndrome, when a
“person believes someone he or she knows has been replaced by a double”
and cotard’s syndrome, when a “person believes he is dead” (Barlow, David
Harrison).
• deficit view of delusions; this is when a person believes that these
delusions come from brain dysfunctions that create these cognitions or
perceptions (Barlow, David Harrison)
DELUSIONS

4. • “The experience of sensory events without any input from the
surrounding environment” (Barlow, David Harrison)
• The most common is auditory hallucinations; auditory hallucinations can
be defined as, “hearing things that aren’t there” (Barlow, David Harrison)
• Individuals who experience hallucinations “appear to have intrusive
thoughts, but they believe they are coming from somewhere or someone
else” (Barlow, David Harrison)
•
HALLUCINATIONS

5. Paranoid Type
People who experience the paranoid type of schizophrenia are easier to
point out because of their delusions and hallucinations. However, these people
have relatively normal cognitive skills and affect and it is easier to be treated. The
delusions and hallucinations that they experience usually have a theme such as the
types of delusions (Barlow, David Harrison).
Disorganized Type
The disorganized schizophrenic type “shows marked disruption in their
speech and behavior; they also show flat or inappropriate affect” (Barlow, David
Harrison). These people may also seem very self-absorbed and will potentially
spend insane amounts of time looking into a mirror. If this type also experiences
delusions, they will be very unorganized and not focused around a central theme
(Barlow, David Harrison).
Catatonic Type
Lastly, people with catatonic type often have unusual motor responses,
engage in excessive activities, and display odd motions with their bodies and faces
(Barlow, David Harrison). These people will often mimic the words (echolalia)
and movements (echopraxia) of others (Barlow, David Harrison).
SCHIZOPHRENIA SUBTYPES

6. • Visionary Killers are those who commit murders because of what they perceive as an
internal or external voice.
• They are “serial killers that are driven by delusions or hallucinations that compel him
(or her) to kill a particular group of individuals” (Bartol, Curt R., and Anne M.
Bartol).
• These killers are psychotic, which means they suffer with a severe break with reality;
this is very rare for a serial killer to have a mental disorder because they are not able
to: think properly, plan their crimes, and overall actually commit the crime because
there is too much going on in their heads.
• Crime scenes are typically very chaotic and will have an enormous amount of physical
evidence (Bartol, Curt R., and Anne M. Bartol); this is because they are more focused
on the act of the murder and not hiding themselves from getting caught.
• To the typical non-psychotic eye, visionary killers are thought to have very random
victims unlike serial killers who have the ideal victim; visionary killers pick their
victims from their
• The visionary killer will sometimes come to believe that they are killing because they
are someone else or because they are killing for someone else, like god or Satan
VISIONARY KILLER

7. • Born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin
• Father George Gein and mother Augusta Gein, and older brother Henry
(Jenkins et al.)
• Family was of the lower-middle class due to his father being an alcoholic
and therefore, unable to maintain a steady income
• His parents loathed each other, however because of a strong religious
background, they stayed together out of fear of divorce
• Due to this strong religious background and obsession with social
corruption, Ed Gein’s mother decided to move to an isolated farm to raise
her two boys, which led to a very poor social development for Eddie
(Jenkins et al.).
• Ed Gein attended school until he was in the 8th grade, but later dropped
out due to strong influence from his mother and having to work on the
farm as a form of income (Jenkins et al.)
CHILDHOOD

8. • Bullied at school for having a lazy eye and for being incapable of adapting to
social cues
• Ed’s father abused him for coming home crying about being bullied by other
children, which lead to a permanent trauma on Gein’s head (Jenkins et al.)
• Mother convinced Ed and his brother that they were not allowed to make
friends or form any relationships with anyone, except her and if they attempted
to do so, she would beat them for socializing with other children (Jenkins et al.).
• She feared that her two boys would be corrupted by society; therefore she
forced them to promise to always remain virgins and stay away from other
women (Jenkins et al.)
• However, Gein’s mother was not completely successful in keeping away her
son’s from having sexual pleasures; at one point in Gein’s childhood, he
witnessed a hog being slaughtered by his parents and ejaculated from this
sighting (Jenkins et al.)
CHILDHOOD

9. • After Gein’s father’s death, Ed and Henry had to take on jobs in the
community to bring in some form of income
• Ed and Henry began to build trustworthy relationships with the town’s
people by becoming local handymen and through Ed taking on local
babysitting jobs (Jenkins et al.)
• Gein was in his early 40’s and still eligible for the military draft; he was
taken away from his home to perform a physical exam, but failed and was
sent back due to the growth on his left eyelid and impaired vision (Jenkins
et al.)
• At this time, Henry started to rebel against his mother and her teachings,
Eddie was mortified and Henry died due to ‘mysterious circumstances’ in a
fire near their home (Jenkins et al.)
• When Ed led the second search party for his brother, he led them directly
to his body and said, “funny how that works” (Blanco)
ADULTHOOD

10. • Shortly after Henrys death, Ed’s mother fell very ill; she suffered from
strokes and eventually passed from her second stroke at 67 years old
(Jenkins et al.)
• The death of Augusta Gein crashed Ed’s whole world; this is what truly
sparked Ed’s criminal activity and schizophrenic tendencies at age 43.
ADULTHOOD

11. • After the passing of his mother, he was unable to cope with her absence,
driving the development of delusions and other schizophrenic symptoms,
such as the belief that he could will the dead back to life
• He was extremely lonely without his mother and was left to live in the
farmhouse alone since Ed had no other friends or family.
• His loneliness led to him hearing voices in his head and having visions of
his mother still being alive, which quickly led to Ed wanting to find some
physical way to bring his mother ‘back to life’
• He started by grave robbing at the local cemeteries but his hallucinations
then turn into delusions that make him believe that he is an instrument of
god and that god is telling him to kill to bring his mother back to life
(Channel, Discovery)
MENTAL ILLNESS

12. MENTAL ILLNESS

13. • Shortly after these hallucinations, Gein began to hear voices of his mother
to commit to certain acts, specifically killing women.
• His ‘dead mother’ was commanding him to kill these women and because
Gein perceived these commands as real, he experienced a total break from
reality
• He killed two women who, were around the same age as his mother and
had similar physical features as his mother.
• He also collected the body parts of these women he killed to make a body
suit to “bring his mother back to life” (Jenkins Brandie)
MENTAL ILLNESS

14. • When Gein would kill his victims, they would be killed by a gunshot
wound to the head.
• He would kill these women because they resembled his mother and he
wanted to “preserve” his mother’s soul in the “woman’s suit” he was
making.
• Gein’s murders were only meant to accomplish this end, he did not torture
these women and he had killed them by shooting them in the head.
• Ed would use the bodies in any way he saw fit and this can be seen in the
various things that were found around his house
• Gein would use: skulls as bowls, bones as table legs, skin as lampshades
and couch covers, nipples as belts, full corpses as decoration, and even had
a head in a box.
• His house was a mess and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since his
mother had passed away, however, his mother’s room was not touched; it
looked like it was preserved (Channel, Discovery)
CRIME SCENE

15. • The part that was messy was his sections of the home where he was trying
to bring his mother back to life; his mother’s room was not touched
• His delusions and hallucinations caused him to be very unorganized except
when it came to the women who controlled his psychosis
• Ed Gein never understood who he was because of his strict family life; he
only truly understood who his mother was
• When looking at the crime scene, one would see a mess of body parts,
organs, and a full woman skin suit, but knowing that he was trying to bring
his mother back to life, one can understand what he was trying to tell the
rest of the world
CONNECTION BETWEEN MENTAL
ILLNESS AND CRIME SCENE

16. • Mary Hogan suddenly disappeared from her tavern and was never seen
again (Blanco). When police assessed her tavern, they noticed signs of a
struggle and found a bullet cartridge for a .32 caliber pistol
• Bernice Worden was a 58 year-old woman who owned a hardware store in
Plainfield, Wisconsin. On November 16, 1957, Bernice Worden
disappeared under unusual circumstances much like Mary Hogan (Blanco).
Upon examination of her hardware store, police did find blood on the
floor. When the store receipt records were checked, it was discovered that
Ed Gein was the last person to purchase something from the store.
Bernice Worden’s son also stated that he saw Ed at the store right before
his mother disappeared. This gave police enough motive and they
promptly went to Ed’s house to see if they could find any evidence
VICTIMS AND KILLINGS

17. • Confessed to murdering both Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden. He also confessed to
digging up dead bodies and taking trophies from them. Ed was thoroughly cross-
examined by police, but they could never get a straight description of events because
Ed would claim that he blacked out during the crimes. He was not remorseful about the
crimes, and it became apparent that he almost didn’t understand the gravity of what he
had done
• He was going to be charged with murder and robbery, but he was declared
schizophrenic by a psychiatrist, and found unfit to be tried in court. The judge
ultimately had Ed committed to Central State Hospital, a mental hospital, on January 6,
1958
• 10 years later, on January 22, 1968, Ed was finally declared competent enough to stand
trial. On November 14, 1968, Ed Gein was found guilty of first-degree murder for
shooting Bernice Worden (Jenkins et al.). Though he was found guilty, the court also
found that Ed was not sane on the day of the murder. This ultimately led to Ed not
being guilty for the crime by reason of insanity. This roundabout trial eventually ended
with Ed going straight back to Central State Hospital
TRIAL

18. • Gein’s obsession is one of the most influential factors that contributed to not only to
the murders of his brother Henry, Hogan, and Worden but the development of his
mental disorders at the time of the murders.
• After the passing of his mother, he was unable to cope with her absence, driving the
development of delusions and other schizophrenic symptoms, such as the belief that he
could will the dead back to life
• Sexual Psychopath
• While his specific motives are unclear in whether he was curious about what it felt like
to be a woman or if he wished to become a woman, he would wear this suit usually
during the nighttime.
• Ed Gein had mental illness and addiction running in his family, so this also had an
impact upon why he went on to murder and rob graves later in his life.
• Since Ed was not allowed to have friends in school because of his abusive mother, he
learned to be socially awkward and because of his biological defects, his peers bullied
him; this bullying taught Ed to associate bad things with people. These associations
could potentially have helped his killings because the people, in his mind, were already
bad.
MOTIVE

19. • There was no way to know that Ed Gein was mentally ill and that he was
killing these people because he was not known in the community and
because there was no way of knowing his motive since his primary crime
scene were so sparse in information about his mental illness
• The only way that could have stopped Eddie was his mother recognizing
his mental illness or catching him in the early stages of his criminal activity
when he was grave robbing.
• The trial was also something that was executed well because he was one of
the first to be seen as incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness;
before Ed, there was not a lot of research on the mentally ill and it was
difficult to use that in a court
• He was placed in a mental hospital for the rest of his life instead of a
prison, which happened to a lot of offenders that were mentally ill.
ASSESSMENT