The mind of a serial killer is like a labyrinth, each step deeper reveals something so striking that one gets baffled by the discovery. If Ed Gein’s house, with the disturbing manner in which he preserved it, stood as an exteriorization of his psyche, then I would say the bond he shared with his mother, the impact she had on him, shaped his thought process and the motives behind his unspeakable acts. Ed Gein disrupted the collective idea American society held of what defined a monster. Nobody could have imagined that a meek guy, who would have gone unnoticed in a crowd of people, was capable of such horrifying acts. There is so much that you can say about a man like Ed Gein, but I believe that if you really want to understand the man and figure out how he turned into that psychopath, you have to talk about this relationship, the dynamic that he shared with his mother, Augusta Wilhelmine Gein.
What kind of impact did Ed Gein’s mother have on him?
Born on 21st July 1878, Augusta was raised in a very strict Lutheran household, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that she was a religious fanatic. Had she kept her religious beliefs to herself, things wouldn’t have turned out so bad for Ed Gein, but obviously it was impossible for her not to pass her values to her son when she shared a rather bizarrely intimate relationship with him. Augusta believed that the evils of sins of the flesh would lead the modern world to decadence. She told Ed Gein from a very young age that he shouldn’t have any sort of sexual relationship with women as apparently that was against the wishes of the Almighty. I am a staunch believer in the fact that fanaticism has a grave impact on a tender mind and deprives people from gaining a balanced worldview. By “balanced,” I mean that a child should be allowed to form his own perspective: Yes, I am not denying that the culture, the family values, and the religious beliefs of the parents do have a huge impact on one’s personality, but still, if they are not extreme in nature and if a person is given the space to form their own opinions, then things do not turn out so bad, like they did in Ed Gein’s case.
The experts believed that Ed Gein was psychologically fused with his mother in the most bizarre manner. They said that he shared a very paradoxical relationship with her, and her presence had a harrowing influence on him. He was what we refer to today as a mama’s boy, but in the most extreme manner. It would have been best for Ed Gein if he would have been able to extricate himself from his mother, but obviously that was not possible, as for him, his mother was his world. Augusta had a controlling nature, and at times she got worried about the kind of influence decadence would have on her children. It was because of this reason she convinced her husband to move to Plainfield, as she saw La Crosse as a personification of evil and wickedness. The saddest part about being raised in a fanatic environment is that a person is stripped of the chance to shape their own ideology. They are conditioned to see the world only in extremes, in black or white, good or evil, with no space for any other opinion. A conflicting viewpoint that does not align with their perception of the world is deemed to be wrong. Life becomes a two-dimensional construct for them, which is far from how the real world operates. This narrow worldview doesn’t just limit their perspective; it stunts their emotional and psychological growth to a great extent. And it is in such suffocating conditions that individuals like Ed Gein are created, people whose distorted realities are born out of the inability to experience freedom of thought.
Did Ed Gein kill his brother?
As per the official report, a 43-year-old Henry Gein died of a heart attack in 1944, after he got stuck in a bush fire. However, there are people who believe that that is not an accurate account of his death. There was a fatal wound on the back of his head, which was never thoroughly investigated and his death was ruled out as an accident. According to researchers and experts, Henry saw Augusta, his mother, for who she was. He had realized that her presence and personality were going to have a grave impact on his brother’s psyche. He wanted to find a way to separate Ed Gein from their mother, but obviously that couldn’t happen. Not much is known about the relationship Augusta had with her elder son, but obviously there were things he did that she found absolutely blasphemous. Henry fell in love with a girl who already had a child with another man.
And that was something that Augusta couldn’t accept. I mean, here was a woman who was teaching her sons that having a sexual relationship with somebody was a sinful act, so you can imagine what she would have felt when she would have gotten to know about Henry’s relationship. Though there is no solid proof, researchers believe that Ed Gein killed his brother because he didn’t want to share his mother’s love. It was a bizarre notion, but Ed Gein probably wanted his mother exclusively for himself. He was like a possessive lover who didn’t want anybody around his special person.
What impact did Augusta’s demise have on Ed Gein?
Soon after Henry’s demise, Augusta suffered a stroke, and she ended up bedridden. Ed Gein took care of his mother and kept her like she was a baby. He got into bed with her, caressed her, dressed her, and did whatever he could to comfort her. But there was another side of him that was not able to make peace with this relationship. Ed Gein was not able to accept that a woman, who was almost godlike, at least for him, was reduced to such a state.
On December 29th, 1945, a 67-year-old Augusta suffered her second stroke, the one that had killed her. She died at the Wild Rose hospital of cerebral brain hemorrhage. Meanwhile, her son was never able to cope with such a loss, at least psychologically. It felt as if his fuse had blown and his entire world crumbled. That’s when the madness began: that’s when he started doing things that no man could have ever imagined. There was a desire to resurrect his mother. He went to her grave, but I believe that at the very last moment he changed his mind because he felt that it was disrespectful. So he started collecting proxies, i.e., dead bodies that were buried near his mother’s grave. I am not sure if he just wanted to fill the void that existed in his life by digging up graves, or if his perverse sexual arousal patterns were the main reason behind him doing so. One of the most bizarre things that Ed Gein did was create a human suit, made out of the skin of the deceased women whose corpses he had exhumed. Maybe that was his way to resurrect his mother and bring her back to life and to fill the void in his life that nothing else was able to fill. Ideally, as researchers believed, he wanted to exhume his mother’s corpse, but he changed his mind maybe because he felt that it would be disrespectful to do that. The fact that his life was turned upside down after his mother’s demise and the kind of trauma he endured made me think that he might have had sexual relationships with her too. There is no evidence to prove that fact, but researchers over a period of time have found certain hints that have led them to make that deduction.
