The SERIAL KILLER Serial by Jessie Horsting
ED GEIN: IN THE FLESH continues
Even though he was on his way to pick up Ed Gein for questioning, Deputy Dan Chase was not convinced that the quiet little man could have had anything to do with the violent act at Worden's. However, when Chase questioned Gein, whom he found sitting in the Hill's driveway, he immediately got different versions from Gein of his activities that day. When questioned further, Gein abruptly blurted out, "Somebody framed me."
Deputy Chase asked, "Framed you for what?"
"Well, Mrs. Worden."
"What about Mrs. Worden?" asked Chase, who hadn't yet mentioned why he was questioning Gein.
"Well, she's dead, ain't she?" Gein said.
Chase asked, "How do you know she's dead?"
"Well, they were talking about it in there," said Gein, indicating the Lesters. Gein's stuttering reply was all the convincing Chase required. Chase radioed to Schley that he had Gein in custody. The Sheriff and other officials proceeded to Gein's farmhouse to look for evidence. Nothing could have prepared them for what they found.
At about 8:00 PM, using flashlights in the dark, the men entered the house through the summer kitchen, a screened-in shed attached to the house. Caught in the flashlight beams, suspended upside down from the ceiling by a length of wood threaded through her tendons, hung the body of Bernice Worden. She was naked, slit from her pubic mound to just under her collarbone, disemboweled and decapitated. The cavity had been washed clean, in the manner of dressed livestock. The men continued the search of the house with flashlights and kerosene lamps. Entering the kitchen, (pictured left) they were staggered by the smell, the filth and the accumulation of rubbish. A small path led through piles of newspapers, old cartons, bits of food, empty tins and unwashed dishes. The washbasin was filled with sand. Boxes of pulp magazines, feed sacks and dirty clothing were piled helter-skelter around the room. On a shelf above the stove was a coffee can filled with old wads of chewing gum, surrounded by half-filled containers of moldy liquid near a set of dentures. On the stove itself were several unwashed tin bowls. In front of the stove, wrapped in a plastic bag, was the heart of Bernice Worden. Nearby, wrapped in newspaper, were her entrails.
On the kitchen table, amid discarded clothing and old papers, was the top half of a skull Ed used as a soup bowl. He would later tell investigators that he got the idea from a magazine. One of the kitchen chairs, on closer inspection, had a seat rewoven from strips of human flesh. An investigator later commented that," It was not a very good job." Bits of dried fat hung from the underside where Ed had not cleaned the strips carefully.
A portable generator and floodlights were brought to the farmhouse. More chairs were found to have been reupholstered with flesh. In the room off the kitchen which Ed used as a bedroom, they saw two skulls impaled on his bedposts. A crude lampshade and wastebasket made of skin were near the nightstand, as well as a belt which appeared to be made of several female's nipples dried and sewn together. They found a knife with a handle fashioned from human bone and several more skull caps. In Ed's bedroom, they discovered a shoebox with eight dried vulvas and one fresh one. Some had string attached to each side and one appeared to have been painted with silver paint. The fresh vulva had been recently salted and was determined to fit the area missing from Bernice's body. They found a collection of four human noses in another container, sets of lips and other parts from various heads. The flesh from four faces were stuffed with paper and hung on the wall, and five other faces were found elsewhere in the room. The hair was still attached to these "masks" which had been carefully peeled from the skulls and preserved. Some had lipstick applied to the lips.
They discovered several pairs of leggings fashioned from skin and a complete female upper front torso that had been dried, with strings attached to the sides so it could be worn. Behind a kitchen door, bundled into a bag, was the dried face and hair of another female which was identified by one investigator as that of Mary Hogan. The rest of the house had been closed off and investigators now moved to search the other rooms. Opening the door to the downstairs parlor, they were stunned to find the room tidy and undisturbed. Other than a layer of dust over the furniture, nothing was out of order in the parlor nor in his mother's room. The upstairs of the house was virtually empty, and the investigators concluded that the remains of Gein's madness was confined to the two downstairs rooms.
Sifting through the rubble in the two occupied rooms, investigators discovered dozens of defleshed bones, assorted noses, breasts and lips from an inestimable number of bodies. Late in the night, Bernice Worden's head was discovered in a burlap sack hidden beneath a blanket in the summer kitchen. Two long nails, bent as hooks, protruded from her ears, with a length of twine attached to the nails so the head could be conveniently hung. The coroner's examination of the head revealed the entrance wound from a .22 caliber at the back of the head, just above the hairline, X-rays revealed the bullet lodged just behind the left eye, The mutilations, they determined, had all occurred after death.
Gein was questioned that night by Sheriff Schley and District Attorney Earl Kileen. Although Ed admitted being at Bernice Worden's store, and admitted seizing her body and butchering it, he insisted he did not recall the events of her death. Later, Ed would admit that he had loaded the Marlin rifle he had been handling, and that it had discharged, and that the bullet had struck Bernice Worden, but that the shooting had been unintentional. He would maintain that the shooting was accidental the rest of his life. He at first denied any involvement in the death of Mary Hogan, or the disappearances of Evelyn Hartly, Georgia Weckler or Victor Travis, but later confessed to the killing of Mary Hogan.
His explanation for the great number of bodies and body parts present in the home was that he had robbed nine graves in local cemeteries between 1947 and 1954, He could not recall all the graves he robbed, but did recall the name of Eleanor Adams, whose grave he claimed to have robbed on an August night a few hours after her burial. Mable Eversen was another, both in the Plainfield cemetery, Gein claimed to have made over forty visits to the Plainfield and Springfield Cemeteries, though he only took bodies on "nine or ten" occasions. Upon exhumation, the graves of Adams and Eversen had indeed been violated and the authorities ceased further exhumation.