Edward Gein was born in 1906 and was raised on the family's farm near Plainfield, Wisconsin. A shy, lonely boy, Gein grew to be a reclusive man. His alcoholic fater died in 1940 and his domineering, religious mother sternly warned Gein and his brother Henry against premarital sex. When Gein was 38, Henry was found dead on a brush pile. The next year his mother died, and he tried to raise her from the dead by'" will power." Failing this, he became depressed. Gein took to reading texts on female anatomy and in 1947 he began opening he graves of local women and taking portions of the corpses home, where he preserved them. This activity went undetected for years. In 1954, a local woman vanished, but though he was a suspect, Gein was not arrested. In 1957, the murder of a second middle-aged woman led to his capture. Gein lacked the necessary intellect and fear of pursuit to cover his tracks, so police soon followed the trail to his secluded farmhouse, where, amidst incredible filth and clutter, they found the remains of many women, all put to various utilitarian or decorative uses. The body of Gein's last victim hung in a shed, dressed out as a deer would have been. Gein confessed to killing the two women, who, he said, resembled his mother He noted that, being unmarried, he had never had sexual relations and that as a youth he had contemplated castrating himself. Despite the evidence, he insisted he had not committed necrophilia or cannibalism, but merely decorated himself and his house with female body parts. Suspected of having killed five other people, including his brother, he was found insane, and committed to a mental hospital ,where he remained until his death In 1985.

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