On this day, Nov. 16, in 1957, police went to Ed Gein’s Wisconsin farm home to investigate the disappearance of a woman and discovered some of the most grotesque crimes ever committed.Bernice Worden’s headless corpse was found hung upside down in a shed.
Gein confessed to exhuming corpses from graveyards to make trophies and masks from their bones and skin. He chose women who resembled his mother and created “women suits” so he could pretend to be female.
Gein was found guilty of two murders and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.
The story of Ed Gein inspired several fictional killers, including Norman Bates from “Psycho,” Buffalo Bill from “The Silence of the Lambs” and Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
— Scott McCabe
