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The writers of fiction often take elements from true crime stories and apply them to their stories. It is more frightening and horrific to know the monster is real, not an alien from another world or apparition.

Ed Gein has inspired fictional killers in some Hollywood’s most shocking and terrifying films: Norman Bates in Psycho; Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs; and Leatherface in Chainsaw Massacre. Gein’s story is so bizarre and deviant it reaches out to our darkest curiosities.

Bernice Worden disappeared from the store where she worked in Plainfield, Wisconsin, on November 16, 1957. Police immediately suspected Gein, who was known as the town’s oddball, and went to his home. They discovered Worden’s decapitated body hanging in Gein’s woodshed; her body gutted and dressed like a deer. Further investigation revealed gruesome body objects: bowls made from skulls; nipples stringed unto a necklace; and furniture upholstered with human skin. Gein cooperated fully with officials, confessing to two killings and years of grave robbery. He exhumed corpses for his twisted hobby.

The community was stunned to learn the extent of Gein’s depravity. Augusta Gein had been dead ten years when police discovered a boarded up doorway and her room kept in pristine condition. Gein underwent a month long psychological evaluation which uncovered a history of childhood abuse and alcoholism. The Gein family settled onto a farm in Plainville where isolation contributed to a strange upbringing. Gein was of average intelligence, completing seven years of school before dropping out to work the farm. Ed lived alone with Augusta until 1945 and her death that year caused Ed to spiral out of sanity into a dark and desperate world. He worked as a handy man and was well respected in the community, even though he was viewed as a bit “odd” and held at arm’s length distance.

Behind closed doors, Gein was overcome with loneliness, and turned to local cemeteries for human contact,  substituting dead bodies for relationships with living people.  He watched the obituaries to know when burials occurred. He skinned many of the corpses, covering himself in costumes culled from various body parts.

On January 6, 1958 competency hearings began and psychiatrists testified that Gein suffered for schizophrenia and delusions. Gein was deemed insane and incompetent to stand trial. He was sent to Central State Hospital for the criminally insane, where he was viewed as a model patient though he still exhibit strange behaviors. In 1968, Gein was deemed competent to stand trail for the murder of Bernice Worden and found guilty. He spent the rest of his life instutionalized.

Tracy Edwards was approached by Jeffrey Dahmer and asked to pose for photographs. Edwards went to Dahmer’s home, unsuspecting of the terror awaiting him. Dahmer drugged and cuffed Edwards, holding him at knife point and threatening to kill Edwards. Edwards remained calm and was able to escape. Many were not so lucky. Once summoned, police made one gory discovery after another: photographs of dismembered victims; a human head in the refrigerator; a heart in the freezer; and a tub full of three human torsos. The collection of body parts was the accumulation of thirteen years of killing.

Dahmer confessed, detailing seventeen murders beginning when he was eighteen years old. Dahmer’s first victim, Stephen Hicks, was a hitchhiker who he dismembered and discarded in the woods near his home. He was repulsed by what he had done and turned to alcohol to numb the horror. He couldn’t suppress his desire to kill for long. He began to frequent gay bars finding victims willing to go to hotels or home with Dahmer. Each victim was drugged, molested, killed and then dismembered.

While Dahmer didn’t fit the usual profile of a serial killer, such as history of abuse, financial disadvantages or psychological problems, he was antisocial and fascinated with dissection. Dahmer began to associate sexual arousal with dissection and dismemberment. Dahmer didn’t enjoy the killing, but it was means to an end for Dahmer. He wanted a completely compliant partner that didn’t make any demands for reciprocation.

He cannibalized his victims and kept trophies, a way of keeping them close. He claimed he suffered from a mental illness; necrophilia, which drove him to kill in order to find sexual partners. He wasn’t insane though, because Dahmer always knew what he was doing was wrong. He made every effort to hide his activities and was able to lie to cover up his crimes, even talking his way out of several close encounters with police. 

The jury believed Dahmer was sane and guilty of every murder in which he was tried.

The fascination with serial killers has only grown with each case more graphic and repulsive then the last. Serial killers are defined by the body count they leave in their wake, garnering public attention and capturing our curiosity.