Ep 19: Ed Gein | Arts, Crafts, and "Skin"-Care

This week, we’re headed to Plainfield, Wisconsin, to meet the man, the myth, and the ultimate mother’s boy: Ed Gein.

While most people pick up sourdough or knitting as a hobby, Eddie took "DIY" to a level that changed the horror genre forever. We’re doing a deep dive into the Butcher of Plainfield, exploring how his isolated upbringing and an extreme case of "mommy issues" led to the most bizarre home renovation project in history.

From his midnight trips to the cemetery to his legendary (and terrifying) "craft room," we explore the man who inspired cinema’s most famous monsters—from Psycho’s Norman Bates to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface. Grab a drink and maybe a snack (actually, maybe skip the snack for this one), as we get into the "skinny" on Ed Gein.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

She's just preparing with this episode. Okie dokie. Hello guys, and welcome back to the Cold Spot Conventions podcast. My name is Stacey. I'm Vicky. And this is episode 19. 19. I think. Yes, it is. Episode 19. How crazy is that? I know. I'm actually shocked. We've done this for 19 weeks. I mean we've had consistently. Not consistently. That makes more sense. But yes, episode 19. And today we are going to be covering Ed Geen, which we have spoken, we've mentioned him a few times in the podcast, but not at length. We've just been like, oh, that guy with the nipple belts. That's what we remember. Sexy little nipple belts? Really not. You can tweak them though.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Um I can just picture numbers and just going, oh.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I mean he probably he probably did do that. Um, but yeah, so today we are covering Edgeen, who's creepy little bastard. Before we go into that, shall we spill our podcasts? Um, I don't have one. Welcome to the podcast. So Vicky's prepared. Do you know what shell she's prepared? Nothing. This is my information that I have come up with, and she's along for the ride. I tried, okay. The documentary was so boring that I almost fell asleep. What's the wrong one? Yeah, I know, but I thought, oh, this one's gonna be good because it's an Amazon one, and usually Amazon are pretty good at documentary. Oh, they're really bad. Yeah, this one was really bad. Wow. So I well, I mean, to be honest, I don't know if it was really bad or the fact that I was just so tired that I didn't pay attention.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Because Enzo was up last night and he'd so actually no, this is my poltergeist. Okay, we've got one now.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

So Enzo woke up the other night and he said, Mummy, my cameras are talking to me. And I was like, You fucking joking. So I was like, okay, what did they say? And he said it they didn't say anything, it was a really loud noise, and then I flew away.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Um Peter Pan?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yes. Buddy, I think that was a dream. Then he went, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Okay. So I went back up to bed and I was listening. Just in case, I was listening for ages. And then it's going, Bobby. And I was like, oh god, I have to get back down again.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So I went down and I was like, what's the matter?

SPEAKER_02 2:34

And he's like, it keeps talking to me over and over and over again. And I was like, no, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

I've been listening. But now everything in his room is creepy. Well, he said to me this morning, he was like, I don't want to wear a nappy to bed anymore. I was like, that's fine. We will try going to the toilet before bed, and I'll wake you up before I go to bed to take you to the toilet, and I'll leave the potty in your room. So when you wake up in the morning before me, you can just go straight to the toilet. And he was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. Went to go take him to bed that before I got here.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

And um he freaked out that his nap his potty was in his room. Yeah. The potty's gonna eat. His potty was too creepy.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

He did not want me to take it in there, he had a full-on meltdown. So it's now outside of his door, which I told him I'd put it in the front room because he was adamant I had to put it in the front room. Of course he was. So it's now it's outside of his bedroom. Your kid's weird.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah. So you're welcome. There's my polty guys.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

I've got a couple poltergeists, really. They're one of them's kind of the same as what it was last week. I am preparing to move house. We are on the final like finalizing stuff with the signing paperwork soon. And I still haven't really done much to move. No, there's nothing packed from what I can see. There's a boxer. Is it full? It is. It's full of tupperware because Malachi kept opening all the tupperware up. And I was like, fuck this. This kid's not having this anymore. Packed up. Do you know what the good thing about you moving? You're gonna find your spoons. I will find my spoons. They'll all be in Malachi's room.

unknown 4:10

I don't know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

It's literally in the bo I I keep seeing it when I go to put into bed, the spoons on like the door, the bit that we the door threshold. There's just a spoon. And I keep me needing to pick it up, but I don't. Yeah. I find all my spoons, which we oh that's that's a you know I'm saving some money there. Yeah. You don't have to go and buy any spoons. No, but I do need to wax Cass's carpet because You need to empty that bags. Have you emptied it? I have. Oh, okay, good. Um, but I'm borrowing Brian's bags because I need a bigger one. Because Cass keeps- Are you going to empty that one? I don't know. Uh Cass keeps sleepwalking and peeing on the floor. So his room smells like pee, and he needed to solve it. I know. Like there's a bathroom in the toilet. There was clothes on there before. And when I went in there, it was wet and there's pee all over them. And Cass sleepwalks. So I now need to wax his room a few times, get it really nice and clean so it doesn't smell like pea. And I've got some pea neutraliser you can borrow. Oh. Why do you pea neutralise it? Because I had Enzo when it was potty training. Oh. And it was all over my floor and everywhere. I just sus, so I just spray um what's that stuff called?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

The flora?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, that stuff. You knew because it was always a good thing to have.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Um I already said that. Anyway, we're talking about pea and random shit, and I think we should just move on to Bedgeen.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

I think we should. And his drawer full of vulvas.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

His what?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Vulvas? He has he had nine preserved vulvas in the chest. Wow. Yeah. So that's what we're getting into. I don't want to get into those vulvas, thank you. I know he was. Oh so even like a pretty thing to look at. Was it like lips and all? Did it have like the vagina attached to it or was it literally just the the vulva? It's like it's just imagine a vagina and then you just got the outside of the skin as well, flattened. Yes, the vulva. Yeah, no, but I mean like I mean like it's like the like the thigh skin. Like so there's like a an outside part, so it's like a hole one and it's preserved. Wow. So that is what we're geking, gekki, we are getting into today. Um so shall we dive right into the drawful of weirdness? Yeah, yeah, why not? I got muff diving. There's muffin more of that. Maybe he would have um liked going to Scotland and get one of those uh furry trouts. The what are they called? The furry muff. The furry trout, you know the Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. From what episode was that from? I can't remember now. That was like two weeks ago, I think. Um Okay then, let's get to it, shall we? Yeah. Yes. Okay, so I feel like the best place to start with Edgeen is family. Because his family is one of the biggest reasons why he was so fucked up in the first place. Well, with most serial killers, it's usually because the family's fucked up. Yeah. Mainly his mum. That sounds about right. Mm-hmm. His mother is mommy, you shoes.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Why is my velcro? Yeah. Why is a velcro on your garbo? Malachi.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Do I need to explain to it? Do I need to go into it anymore? I was like my foot screamed against it, and I was like, is that velcro? Or just food? It's probably a combination of both.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

It's just velcro.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Um, so yeah, his mum was an awful woman. She was very religious. She thought any woman that wasn't like a super religious person was a Jezebel, is what she would call them. So do not go near those Jezebels. Um and she So what is a Jezebel again? Because I was. It's very much like a slut. It's like a whore. Yeah. Okay, Jizzy Tinkerbell. I don't think Jezebel. I don't think that's aw that came in. That came in. It sounds like it. It does sound like it, and I like that. Jizzy Tinkerbell is 100% the new meaning of that word. Yes. Um I'm glad we've uh clarified that. Yeah, so basically any any woman that wasn't super religious or that she frowned upon, like didn't frown upon, frowned upon? Didn't frown upon? And I didn't. Which she didn't like. She was a Jizzy, Jizzy Tinkerbell.

unknown 8:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Um, and she would constantly say, only a mother would love you.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Why would you say that why is it with some of these like boy mums? Like I know we're boy mums, but some of them, especially like the American ones. I've watched like a TikTok and it's like my Monster-in-law series. And some of the boy mums are unhinged.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

I get it. Really fucking unhinged. I'll need someone to take mine away.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

They can go.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I will I will go out there and I will find him someone. He would he would be brilliant for him.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

I think that's an issue as you go out there and finding someone from a big thing. But he should go off and find his own person and you let them go.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, and I'll be like, okay, no, she's a nice person, you go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yeah. But I mean if she's an asshole, I will say. Unless she's a Jizzy Tinkerbell. Then maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, then I'll be like, and so you need to rethink your choices here.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Yeah. But basically, she would constantly just tell him on repeat, like, only a mother would love you. So you can imagine what that'd do for a child and a man living with his mother.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, only a mother can love you.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Yeah. Basically saying that he's really fucking ugly and nobody would want him. That's basically what she was trying to get across, and that she he wasn't what's a bitch. Yeah, what and she would constantly say, like, I was really trying for a girl. You can't try to and then I was stuck with you. She was like, I've only had sex, I only had coitus with you, or not coitus, but I'm saying coitus. I can't remember what she said, but it's basically along the lines of I only had sex with your dad um twice. And I told you that. And that's only and that was to try and conceive a girl, and basically saying that she was disappointed that she was received two boys.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

But how did she think it worked? Because it's not down to her or the position.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

No, she just wanted to the man. I think she just wanted a girl, that's what she was trying to say, and she was disappointed. So her name was Augusta. Augustus Glub. She was German. Um, by the way, just to let you know. Um, and she was a fanatical, deeply religious woman who followed a harsh version version, oh my god, not virgin, version. Well, she was before she met his dad. Of Lutheraniism. I'm assuming that I'm assuming that's like a very religious belief system, you know. Like some like she was like a like the highest of it as well. Like she was like Jesus is everything, pretty much. Um, and she hated men.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

I kind of gathered from the way she was like, I only slept with your dad twice. Yes, so she and I got two boys.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

How dare you? That's basically it. Only a mother would love you. So she despised her husband, George, um, because he was an alcoholic and her eyes um and in her eyes a failure. She freed I don't blame him. I would drink too if I had someone like that in my life. Jesus Christ. And like the thing is she would frequently pray for his death in front of her sons.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

She hated him that much.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Well, do the job yourself. You want a job done properly, you do it your fucking self.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

So she believed the world was rotting with sin and she moved her she moved the family to a hundred and fifty-acre farm specifically to insulate isn't insulate? Yeah, it's right, insulate Ed and his brother Henry from the fit the from the filth of other people, especially women. So she wanted to literally isolate them.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

So she hated men and women.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Oh yeah. It only like She's not really leaving any legal. No, I think if they were like her and like super religious, maybe she would like them, but everyone in her eyes were just despicable people. Um and do you want to know something fun? Go for it. Every afternoon she would read the boys' graphic passages from the Old Testament focusing on death, retribution, and the whoredom of women. Wow. Fun bedtime stories. She she read the best bedtime stories. And I thought Hansen and Grattell was bad. So Augusta didn't just raise Ed, she possessed him. Like she was in his head at all times of the day. Whenever Ed tried to make a friend or showed interest in a girl at school, Augusta would shame him, calling him dirty or just like his father.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Shame.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Pretty much, yeah. It was pretty much like that. To the point she would read passages to him whilst he was sh like naked. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

So while Henry, the older brother, eventually started to rebel against her, Ed became her ultimate soldier. Um, and he was like pathologically submissive to her. He didn't just obey her, he worshipped her as the only source of truth in the whole entire world. Which is the worst. That's how you form these crazy people. They're just the family is what makes them most of the time. Yeah. And some damage to the frontal lobe. I'm hoping that Malachi doesn't turn out like that. He has hit his head so many times. He just needs hopefully I'm not psychotic enough to raise his cereal. I mean, you're like a true crime, but you you're not the one to raise that in your own home. If I started seeing it, he's definitely getting sectioned. Early intervention. He's wanted to kill the neighbour's cat. Guy, but you know. He was like, Malachi. Let's get you in there. Some people are coming to see you later. They're just gonna sedate you for a while. So, um she frequently told Ed that women, other than herself, of course, were vassals of sin.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

And the devil's playground. Oh. So this created a massive psychological knot in Ed. Um, he was fascinated by the female body, but taught to be terrified of it. Let's talk about his father.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

His father was a violent alcoholic who is largely a failure in Augusta's eyes. I think everyone's a failure in her eyes, to be fair though.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah. Even her own children, apparently.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah. She hated her children. He worked various jobs, carpenter, turner, grocery store owner, but was often unemployed. I mean, he does sound like a piece of shit, to be fair. It doesn't sound like a great husband, but then being an alcoholic, you're not really gonna be able to hold down a job well, are you? No, and I guess you have a wife like that, I don't imagine you wanting to be sober at any point in your life. At the same time, you really wouldn't want to be home. No. So you'd want to be out working. Yeah, that's very true. But often, um what's happening? So yeah, he frequently beat Ed and Henry, reportingly hitting Ed so hard in the head that it caused his ears to ring. Probably the start of him being a crazy person. I mean, I think his mother started that one, but I think the damage to the to the brain kind of helped move things along. Yeah. So he also had his brother, he was his older brother called Henry Gane. He was Ed's only sibling. Well, Henry shared the same upbringing, he began to rebel against his um against his mum's suffocating influence as he got older. Maybe he didn't get hit as much as Ed in the head. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Also, the firstborn is usually like the most outspoken.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yeah. And then like the youngest is usually like mummy's baby. Mm-hmm. So that kind of makes sense. Yeah, so this created a rift between the brothers as Ed remained obsessively devoted to her. Yeah, mummy's boy. Pretty much, yeah. So in Arya's at it now. If you can hear a baby in the background, I'm sorry, Arya is being loud in the other room. She's been taken care of, but yeah, she's not just locked in the room, she's with her dad. But she is in just the other room and I can hear her. Yeah. So in 1914, Augusta moves the family from La Crosse, Cross, La Crosse, I wouldn't say lacrosse because it's just lacrosse with an E at the end. La Crosse. Let's go La Crosse, that sounds better. I don't know. In like to a to a 150-acre farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin. So she chose the location specifically for its isolation to keep her sons away from sinful outsiders.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

So Ed was incredibly shy in his strange mannerisms, like laughing at his own internal jokes. Whenever he tried to make friends at school, Augusta punished him. So she he wasn't allowed friends. Um he was the he was only allowed to leave the farm for school, otherwise his life was chores and scripture. Sounds so fun. It does sound like the making of a crazy person.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah. He's isolated and alone.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

All the time, and just with his mum. Despite his social awkwardness, Ed was a good student, particularly in reading. He was fascinated by adventure stories and later anatomy, and he also liked detective true crime stories as well. Oh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Wow. I like how that uh comes in handy later on.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Bit of anatomy and true crime.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah. He was also obsessed with the Holocaust, because it was happening at the same time as all of us. Oh. And that is something I'm gonna go into in a second.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

It's not really something somebody should be obsessed with while it's happening.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

No, he liked, yeah, he he was he found his he had seen pictures of the way the Jews were being kept at the camps and he liked to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Mm-hmm. See, normal people would be like, oh my god, that is awful. Mm-hmm. Somebody needs to do something. Yeah. But Letty's over there going, Oh, look at that. Pretty much. And you see those ribs. When you Oh dear. Like a naked necklace out of those nipples. I told you, I was so tired that things are being weird. So his dad died of heart failure. But from what I've been killing him. Yeah. But to be fair, from what I've heard allegedly, I I don't know. It seems more like he was pushed to death. From what I've seen and read, it she was very happy when her husband died, and she was like, We never have to go through that again. And they were like dancing. Wow. So and she was like, I'm gonna put some music on. Your dad's dead to celebrate. That's basically that's the way it seems. So I think it was more of um oh creaky chest syndrome. I didn't hear that. Jesus, this chair's gonna break. It seems more like that's what really happened, but we're just gonna say his father died of a heart failure. But probably not. Edgeen's inspiration for a lot of stuff came from a various of different things. Um was to do with the way his mum brought him up and the complicated issues he had with like sexuality, sexuality and stuff, and the other part is his Nazi, like he wasn't um against Jews or anything, he just liked the way they were being treated almost. He's fucked up. Yeah, and then we'll go into that too. So let's just roll off a few things, okay? So he had a transgender impulse. What? So So he liked transgenders or he wanted to be one. He wanted to be one. Right, okay. But obviously, against everything that he's been taught, yeah. He's obsessed with his mum. He would like masturbate wearing his mum's laundry, like her bra and pants.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Wow. I mean I'm not to one to you know what is it called? Yuck someone's yuck someone's yak or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

I I already heard that term today. Yeah, that is it. Yeah. I'm not one to do that. But your own mother's clothing it's weird. That's where I draw the line. It's incest. I draw the line there. So in nineteen 1944, Henry dies, his brother. So the brothers were burning um mass vegetation vegetation when a fire got out of control, and Henry was found dead in a section of the property the fire hadn't actually reached. So so with bruises on his head as well, might I add. They ruled it an accident at the time. But many many modern investigators suspect Ed murdered Henry because Henry had begun to criticize their mother. And that's one thing that I've seen in the documentary that I watched is that he killed his brother. And he like one thing with Ed Geen is that he's also schizophrenic.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Well, he would like disassociate with a lot of stuff. Um he would see people that weren't there, and like he would see his brother being alive, but he's actually dead because he killed him, and all that fun stuff. So it was almost like all these things that are alleged because no one really tried and it it makes me wonder was his mum schizophrenic too? Most probably.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Because of the idolite because like she's thinking like all these women are evil, they're sinful and all these men are sinful. And like, is that where she gets that from? Because it is genetic.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Yeah. It is, and his mum's crazy, so and then in 1945, following a series of strokes, his mum dies. And this was obviously a big thing to Ed because he was obsessed with his mum. Oh, now he's all alone. He was now 39, by the way, and lived with his mum. I wonder. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

I was thinking that he was still quite young.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

No, no, 39. Um, he had never lived alone and had no other identity outside of her. So he's been raised with her the whole time and now she's dead. Which is where he turns into a psycho.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Well, yeah, because he doesn't know any differently. He doesn't know anything. No. 39 years and fucking hell. I couldn't imagine. I love mum to bits. I would have been. Jesus Christ, I would not be able to live with her for 39 years.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Love her to bits, but we'd kill each other. Yeah. Not physically.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

But we would drive each other crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I don't think you could live with anyone. Like, like I wouldn't have lived with any family member for that long.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

No.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Especially mum. Sorry, mum, but nope. I love you, but you're ADHD and you constantly decorate your life. It's literally like Harry Potter's moving staircases. When you go to her house, you're like, where are we? I was in the front room, but I suppose this is the kitchen. Or like, Mum, I swear you had a table there. Oh yeah, no, I moved that upstairs and I put this down here instead.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Like, Mummy, kitchen's a different colour. And then she's like, Yeah, I'm gonna paint it again. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. So Edgeen's inspiration wasn't a single event, but it was a it was a toxic cocktail of his mother's fran like fanatical teachings and a deep sedated identity crisis after her death. Um and he had some really sick twisted fascination with anatomy. So when his mother died in 1945, Gean didn't just grieve, he began to do a desperate psychotic attempt to become her and bring her back to life. Wow. So yeah. It's just so wrong. So the primary inspiration for everything Gean did was it's basically all for his mum, is where it all started from. So she had spent decades telling him that women were vessels of sin, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

So after she died, Ed felt that he could felt he could only be whole again if he literally inhabited her skin. Well, how did that even make sense? He began studying anatomy books and stories of sex reassignment surgery, which was just starting to hit like the news, and you know, you you you could kind of have certain surgeries done back then, probably re-botch surgeries, but you could get some done to become a different gender, and that's when it all kind of just started bubbling up.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

But he was like, Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah, I get to see my mother. But they didn't have a lot of money, this family, okay? They weren't rich, they were quite poor.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Well, not poor, but they weren't Well, I mean, with the with the dad who'd be an alcoholic and can't hold done.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

They had the farm, but that was basically all they had. They didn't have money as such. Yeah, they had assets. So because he couldn't afford or access a surgery, he decided to create a female body of his own. So he began ex um exhuming the bodies of middle-aged women from local graveyards who resembled his mother. Why not just dig up his mum? He would then tan their skin to create leggings, masks, and a vest. Um and then he would wear that to stimulate being a woman.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Why why not just buy leggings and tights or whatever?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Just buy the stuff. Um because he wanted to be the vessel. He wanted to be in the vessel that would be where his mum would be, you know, like he wanted to be that.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Um and so skin suit. He Yes, exactly that. So he was fascinated by stories um of uh headhunters in the South Pacific Pacific and Nazi um atrocities like Auswitch and all of that stuff that's happening. And so he was obsessed. I don't know if you heard of it before, um, but there's there was a thing called the bitch of I cannot pronounce it, it's a German word. Um Brickenword? Brickenword, Buck and Maud, Buch Buchenmord, I don't know. Anyway, she he was obsessed with this, like it was like a comic book almost featuring this woman. Um and she was called the Bitch of Butch Butchenmord. I don't know I I'm slaughtering that no pun intended. Um but anyway, he refers for he refers to this one um as it was the most notorious figures of the Holocaust, and she was the wife of Carl Otto Koch Koch Koch, I don't know, he was the um commandant, the commandant of the Butcher Mard and my I he was basically the commandant of the uh concentration camps of two of the concentration camps. Right, okay. Basically the wife of this man, she would she was the first person to start allegedly skinning the Jews. Oh wow in the concentration camps. Um and she would make lampshades with their skin. That is gross. So he would see these comics or this magazine that she was in, and that is where he learnt the art of flaying a human flesh and making furniture out of it. That is just gross. Yeah, it's pretty fucking gross. So that is where the source of his craziness came from.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

I mean, I I've been seeing why he's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah. And yeah, like I said, he was just obsessed with like the concentration enhanced and all of the horror that was going on. He was very interested in like true crime, murders, anything like that. This bitch bitch of boochumbuchum bum. This lady that he's obsessed with, yeah. This um wife the wife of this command I'm gonna call him and I'm not 100% sure what he was doing, but it sounds like that's what he was interested in. He was doing something horrible to innocent people. Yes, him, and then she was fillet of fish and just putting them in the lampshade. Pretty much, yeah. So headlines all across the US screaming about the woman who made lampshade of human skin, and that's how we saw it. Um, and for men like Geen, who was obviously already obsessed with anatomy and taxidermy, this turned a dark fantasy into a proven possibility. So Gean was a skilled trapper and woodsman. He already knew how to tan deer hides, by the way. So he already knew the process.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Well, yeah, he made himself prayer leggings, didn't he?

SPEAKER_02 31:46

The um Yeah. Oh god. So yeah, he would just he he had learned how to do all of that, so it was just the biggest trigger for him to start doing. Did he make any shoes? I don't know. Well, I do know, but And then paint them red on the bottom and call them Louis Vuittons. I don't think I'm I'm ignoring that one. So we've covered up to when his mother died. After his mother died is when shit started getting real with Ed. So this is the transition from being a weirdo. The thing is, that's the one thing I do want to mention about Ed is that people were like, he was harmless. Like he was no one, if that makes any sense. Like he was nobody, yeah, like no one people knew him, but he wasn't anyone special. Like no one was like, oh, he would be a murderer. He had a weird, like he was very like low-spoken voice, very calm voice, bit stupid, but dumb, but uh like Lenny. Lenny. That's exactly it. Lenny. That is what he was like. Um and no one thought he killed the dog. Yeah, he means to. Or the pretty lady. Yeah. But anyway, no one would think that he would be this crazy person that would be sewing people together.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Pretty much How could he not? That's that's what scares me the most. Who is the normal looking? Well, you could walk past somebody and they could be a psycho. Yeah. And they could be a serial killer. Apparently there's in the UK, there's three to five serial colours like at one time. Like right now, there's either three there's around three to five serial colours constantly. Where? In the UK.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Lovely. Yeah. I'm gonna sleep well tonight. Mm-hmm. So you think you'd like that little uh bit of information? I loved it. In 1946, Ed's shrine in his house. So in 1946, Ed has a shrine in his house, okay? Okay. I mean it doesn't surprise me given how weird he is, but oh my god, is it to his mother? It is oh oh no. Yeah. It is to his mother. Mum, I love you, but I'm never having a fucking shrine for you. Definitely. I mean that's that's just that's a lot. Sh he is a lot. So after Augusta died, Ed boarded up the room that she used most. So he the rooms that she used most, so the parlour and her bedroom, and most of the upstairs, to be honest. Um, and he kept them in pristine museum-like condition. While the rest of the house where he lived, um descended to squala. It was gross.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Well, yeah, his mum used to do the cleaning and also for him.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

I presume. Well, yeah, he did chores, but he didn't do the cleaning and stuff, he done like the manly chores then weren't allowed to clean. So this behaviour signaled as an inability to move past her death and that laid the groundwork for his later attempts to recreate her through his groot and crimes.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Imagine that though. You raise you didn't raise, you drag up a child so badly that he becomes a crazy ass serial killer who not only kills loads of random people, but he also digs up a load of people. And then makes things out of them. Yeah. And wears them.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

I mean some fucked up parenting. Yeah, and like around this time that he's creating the shrine for her in the house, he has just found that bitch of Bushenwald, or whatever she's called. Um, so that's happened around this time too, which is a great combination. I'm just gonna call her the lamp lady. The lamp lady, yeah. Let's call her lamp. Lampy. Um and then he so in in 1947, Ed makes his first trip to the Plainfield Cemetery. Mm-hmm. Um he claims that he was in a daze.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

So he he digs up the body of a woman who he didn't know personally, but who fit the Augusta profile. How did he know that if he didn't know her personally? I think he didn't know her, like could go up her and talk to her, but he m probably uh knew her name and what she had looked like. Right, okay. Um and this begins the mark of the five-year period where he makes approximately 40 nighttime visits to local graveyards. Wow. Just chilling with Casper. And all the other little ghosts. Yeah. Making his little meat suit. His little meat suit. It's so gross, honestly. So between the late 1947 and 1952, Ga Geen had made, like I said, an estimated of 40 nocturnal visits to local cemeteries. Um he had three of them, which is Plainfield, Spirit Land, and Hancock.

unknown 37:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

That's the name of the the cemeteries, if you would like to know that. They're like, it's funny how he'd say he doesn't remember things only when it relates to a crime. So he would remember what he done like yesterday or something like that if it's not crime related. But the moment it becomes a crime, it's oh I don't know. I don't know. Oh that that must have been true because I don't remember that. Yeah, how much of it is him being crazy and how much of it is him being smart? Yeah. So smart smart people can act crazy. They can do it well. He would read the local newspapers to find women who had recently died, which is how he found specifically middle-aged women who physically resembled his mother, Augusta. Well I suppose there'll be like photos of them in the obituary, yeah. And then he'd be like, that one's mine. I'm gonna get some skin off that one. This is basically reading the menu, isn't he? He is.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

He claimed Well, that one's got brown hair and blue eyes. I would take that one.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

He claimed he would drive his forward sedan to the cemetery in a trance-like state, and he and if he woke up before reaching the gate, he would turn around and he wouldn't proceed.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Uh-huh. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Yeah, I I believe you not. He was a skilled manual labourer and he would dig up the fresh graves often before the earth had settled and removed the bodies. He reportedly only took the bodies of women, though he did exhume some of his own female relatives. Imagine they've probably been dead for a quite a long time as well. Yeah. They're probably just gunned him by that, or like bloated.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

And he would transport the remains back to his farm, entering through the back and taking them to his workshopping quotation marks, which was the kitchen and shed area. I suppose so. In America it's quite common for the bit for them to be embalmed. Whereas in the UK they're not really embalmed. Yeah. I guess so. So they would have been preserved for the yeah. Preserved Yeah. So Gene applied the taxmodermy skills he used on deer to human remains. Deers and humans are very similar. Hmm. They're very similar. Um he did murder a few people as well, allegedly. But uh Did you also know that apparently he never actually went hunting? He never actually hunted. So this is another thing that was on the documentary that was saying, I don't know if you've got it on your notes or not, so sort of spoiler. I have I don't think I have. He would go around to the neighbours and be like, hey, I've got some deer meat that I shot off. And, you know, do you want some deer meat and stuff like that? But he never actually went hunting. So they're presuming it was human. Yeah, they've got I do go into a little bit of that. Um there's no he he always denied cannibalism.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Um, but there was a lot of evidence in his house that suggested that something was going on. Yeah, they found a human heart on the stove, didn't they? And I will go into that in a minute. So that I'm if I'm just remembering little tiny bit from what I gathered earlier. So he only confesses to two murders, but they were both instrumental. Like he didn't mean for them to die.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Oh, I accidentally stabbed them 64 times in the chest.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

I didn't mean to. I slipped and fell. So his first victim was called Mary Hogan. Um, she was born around 1903, she was age 51 at the time of death. Um, she was a tavern owner in Pine Grove, Wisconsin. She was known for being a robust, tough-talking woman who ran a local hangout called Mary's Tavern. So on December 8th, 1954, um, he decided to kill her. So psychol psychologists believe that she was a trigger for Gean. Um, she was a middle-aged woman who, despite being the same age as his mother, was sinful. Um and in aught in Augusta's eyes anyway, um, because she served alcohol and she swore.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Oh my goodness. How dare she!

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Yeah, and Gean later told the police she was nothing but a big, fat, foul mouth mouthed woman.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:40

Because, you know. Lovely man. Delightful. Um, Gean shot her in the head with a 32 caliber pistol in the tavern. He dragged her body back to his truck and took him back to her back to the farm. And police found her face, which in quota H marks is a death mask, and her skull. But do you want to know what the skull was for? Oh no. It was for a bowl. For a bowl. He would eat out of it. See the way you moved your hand made me think that he was playing puppets with her skull. No. So I was like, oh my god, it's got its own little puppets. No, so when so then when the police finally had arrested him and they went in there, yeah, there was a bowl. It was not a bowl, it was a skull. And that's what he used to eat beans out of. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Uh when I just oh I have no bowls. I'm just gonna use a skull. He called it has his special bowl.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

I mean it was his best big. I know some cereal players keep like keep like little uh tokens, but he keeps usually it's like hair or you know I've not been hair attached to it, I don't know. Oh fucking skull. Usually the cereal bowl. It's like You can kind of imagine, you know, the night before Christmas when the guy, the the creative possession takes his skull off and scratches his brain. That's what it's kind of like. Yeah. But it had beans in it. Um, and then when asked about her disappearance by locals, Gean would ironically joke joke, she's at the farm right now. And he used to joke about it. Like he used to like say, Oh, I've made whatever out of someone, and he just wouldn't, they would just be like, Oh, it's fine. Serious. Serious. But he was being serious, but people would just be like, okay, alright. We just didn't believe him.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

It's crazy at it again.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

Yeah, and so he's like, no, I've actually been wearing her face as a mask and eaten beans out of her head. So, like I said, he's only been um he's only what's the word? Confessed to two murders. So the last murder was called Bernice Warden, and it was around 19 um 1899, she was age 58 at the time of her death. The own she was the owner of Warden's hardware store in Plainfield, and she was a respected widow in the community. So on November 16th, 1957, um it was more of a crime of convenience and freshness, in quotation marks. Uh Gean was a frequent customer at her store and he knew her schedule. It was opening day of deer hunting season, so he knew the town would be empty. He needed a fresh body to complete his woman's suit, in quotation marks. Wow. And um chose Bunny's because her build. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

So he shot her in the head with a 22 caliber caliber rifle from the store's display rack. He used the store owner's truck to transport her body to his farm, and within hours of her disappointment appearance, her son, a deputy by the way, found a receipt for antifreeze and made out um that was a made out to uh that was made out to geen. Uh when the police raided the farm that night they found her her in the woodshed. She had been decapitated and dressed out like a deer. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

She was hung upside down by her ankles with a torso split open. Her head when heart were found inside the house in a burlap bag.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

I mean usually when somebody's like, I'm gonna go kill someone, they shoot him and leave.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

He did not do that. He had other plans.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

That's it. I I heard about her one on documentary, and they said he took her car, but then he walked like six miles back to his car to pick his car back up and take it back to the farm.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Of course he did. So it wasn't just like I'm just gonna take and put her in my car, I'm gonna take her car, walk six miles back. He's very it does make you think he's just he's using the insanity card. But he's thought out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

He's not stupid, but it's like, oh, I can't leave my car there.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

But it does make you think, how is he just was he schizophrenic or was he just really clever at playing the part of like right, I'm done this, if I'm too insane, I could that I can plead, I don't I can plead insanity. Yeah, and then I don't get killed for it. Whereas, you know, if you said, Oh, I actually know I did do that, they'll be like, right, kill him. So there was two unconfirmed deaths, um, like two unconfirmed victims, shall I say, that investigators suspected Geen for, but he never admitted to it. Yeah. So But she probably did do. Yeah. There was a because apparently there was like a sheer volume of material found in his home, but they could never he never admitted to it, basically. So the first one was Georgia Walker. Georgia Walker, um, and she disappeared in May or May 1st, 1947. She was an eight-year-old girl who vanished while walking home. Uh, Gean denied this, but police found small articles or clothing that did not belong to adults. So they assume it was her. And then there was another girl called Evelyn Hartley, and on October 24th, 1953, she was a 15-year-old babysitter from lacrosse. Um, blood was found at the scene, but nobody, and Geen was in the area at the time, and from what I've seen in the documentary, he so he he took a babysitting job, apparently. Um, I don't know if it's true or not, though. It's just I've only seen it on the documentary that I watched, but who knows if it's true. But from what I've seen on there, he took this babysitting job, he then took the kids to his house, scared the shit out of them of putting his mother's face on, took them back, and he got fired from the job, and then this was the babysitter went back to the job because she she had polio or something, and then she was coming back after being ill and looking after the kids, and then he was like, You stole my job.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

Oh, for fucking. And that's why I hate when people do that, they're like they fuck up. They blame everyone else for their fuck up. I'm like, uh-huh. No, you got yourself fired from that from being a stupid idiot.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 49:52

So the two victims that he did kill that we have confirmed, um, do you want to know what he did to the bodies? Oh god. So he would dress out the bodies by removing the skin in large sections to keep it intact. He used some methods that he he used the same methods he used for deer hides um to preserve the human skin, tanning into a leather so he could sew it. He created a full-bodies uh female bodysuit, including leggings made from human leg skin and a vest with breasts. So he confessed to wearing this around the farm at night, pretending to be his mother.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

Mmm. That's just let's dive in to what the police did. I mean Like what they found, not did.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

I was gonna say, I I would suspect that they, you know. So I wanted to kill him. I wanted Especially since one of the victims was somebody's mother.

SPEAKER_02 51:00

Yeah, no, I didn't mean did, I meant what they found when they arrested Geen. So let's go into the arrest because I don't think we covered that part yet, have we? Well, I mean, basically it was when that woman, the last one he murdered, yeah. When the deputy Yeah, they found her and then they went to arrest him. Hung like a deer. Yeah. Yeah. Ah so. The official inventory from the 1957 raid on the Geen farmhouse is extremely specific as the police had to distingu distinguish between parts taken from two murder victims and parts taken from the grapes.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

I would hate to like distinguish between the two.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

I don't know, but can you imagine doing the inventory of the body parts? Imagine the smell. Apparently it was awful. Well, yeah, you got rotten flesh. According to the official reports inventory submitting during the investigation. Here is the breakdown of the specific body parts and artifacts found. Oh, artifacts. Oh, very fancy. So this is the head and facial collection. We have a collection. Theuristic collection. It's like the the summer collection. It's a bad collection. I do not see ASOS wanting to advertise that summer collection. Some people collect stamps, some people collect shoes, some people collect skin masks. So nine skin masks. Wow. Yep. These were the tan skin from faces of the women. They were stuffed with paper to retain the human shape and hung on the walls of his bedroom. That would have been terrifying. Was it just like the face or was it like the hair as well? It was the face. It wanted to wear the mask. Okay, because when you said that stuff of paper, I imagine like he like had the whole well not the skull, like it removed the skull and just kept like the hair and face and stuff it with paper. But if it was a face mask, then I'd say, yeah, just the face. Can you imagine walking into that room and seeing these faces on the wall? That's just a little bit. So the smell that he must smell when he puts them on his face. Don't. So there were ten skull tops. The upper top. Mm-hmm. They were the upper portions of human skulls. Several were used as soup bowls, and some were mounted on his bedposts. How lovely. Yep. Decorative. Bernice Warden's head was found in a burlap bag. And Mary Hogan's skull was found in a box that had been cleaned of skin.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

Huh.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

So um he hadn't quite got round to making those ones and to with bowls. Apparently he didn't have he hasn't finished his collection of toppleware and No. Hmm. He didn't need that many suit bowls. So the women's suit and apparel. So there was a torso vest. It was a tunic made from women's torso, including their breasts, and this was a centrepiece of his suit.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Leggings. There was a pair of leggings made from skin of human legs, from the hip to the ankle, designed to be worn under the vest. There was a nipple belt. Why is that so funny? It's so gross, but it's so so it was a belt fashion from a series of human nipples sewn together. I all I can imagine is remember like in like the early 2000s when you had those big bouts.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

I was literally thinking the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

That's all I can imagine it looking like. That is just crazy. He had a necklace of tongues. So you just think it's would he just randomly like get one of the tongues and like lick the nipple with the tongue? Oh, don't. We have to by the way, we do not find what he did funny. No. We just we have to make fun of the the depressingness. Yeah. Um we have dark humour.

unknown 55:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 55:34

So if you haven't realized that already, then we don't mean it's by We don't we don't think what he did is funny. But it's kind of weird and funny at the same time. Not that he kids did people. I'm gonna stop talking. So the next they understand. The necklace of tongues, they were several human tongues dried and then strung together. Wow. I don't know what a dried tongue looks like. I mean, if it's dried, I'd suggest it's probably quite small. Mum, go away. I hope you heard that, Mum. I just muted you on Facebook and then you call me. So when you watch when you're listening to this on Friday, know that I'm mad at you and you need to stop calling me at inconvenient times. On Tuesdays in the evening, don't call. Yeah. Oh, she's trying to call me now. Mum, stop it! You should put her on the we should answer and put her on the on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

Oh let me call her back.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Oh god. Alright. I'll put her on FaceTime. Hello. Hello. You are currently on our podcast right now.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

By the way, we've we've just told everyone how annoying you are at calling at inconvenient times. And shamed you. So we thought we would just get you on here.

unknown 57:06

Oh fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

You you interrupted the the necklace of tongues, mum. And the nipple belts.

unknown 57:12

The what?

SPEAKER_02 57:13

The necklace of tongues and the nipple belts.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

What is your subject this week?

SPEAKER_01 57:19

Edgeen.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

Ah, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:26

Yeah. So you'll be able to hear yourself on Friday.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

Can you just edit me out, please?

SPEAKER_02 57:34

No. That's all you get for calling during recording.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

I thought you must be, so I tried calling Stacey as well and you both hung up on me. Are they doing something together?

SPEAKER_02 57:46

It's almost like we do this every Tuesday. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Anyway, I need to talk to you. I don't want to talk. Well we'll we'll talk to you talk to you after the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

Okay, how long are you gonna be? Probably like half an hour.

unknown 58:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

All right then.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

I'll speak to you in a little See you later. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 58:09

Love you. Bye. Inconvenient, mum. Right. So she interrupted the nectar. We'll talk about nectar's tongues, yes? Yeah. So now we are on the there's also a window shade pool. You know, like the little curtain little pools, you think you pull the curtain shade?

SPEAKER_00 58:31

Oh right, yeah, yeah, the little pulley thing.

SPEAKER_02 58:32

Yeah, yeah, he made one of those out of human lips. Human lips.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

You say lips or lips? Lips? Lips. Oh. Lips I mean a window she pulled out of lips?

SPEAKER_00 58:47

I don't even know how that would work. I'm just trying to think of how it works. Like a you know like the Oh is it like the thing that keeps the curtain open?

SPEAKER_02 58:59

Or is it like the pull cord that you have on a blind? I think it's a pull cord on the blind. That'd be quite strong. I guess lips are quite tough.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

I don't know. I mean if it was one that keeps the curtain open, that would be more understandable.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

Is it pull? I don't know, and I don't want to s I kind of want to know what it looks like, but I also don't. Yeah. I'll just leave that up to the imagination, I think. So do you want to leave this up to the imagination as well? So we're gonna go into the genital collection. Ooh. How fancy. This is the higher end. This is like the Anne Summers collection.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

So the love honey honey. Yeah, we went from ASOS. We're going to Yeah. To you know. Went ASOS to Victoria's Secret. To now Love Honey. And Bonderer. And all the other ones. Anne Summers. Uh okay. So there was a shoebox collection. Okay, so we've got Louis Vuitton's. Yeah, well, they are the uh this is the collection containing nine vulvas. Oh, okay. So not Louis Vuitton's. No, it's more like the car collection, Volvo Vulvas.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

Actually, what we called Nino's Clark. Because he had a Volvo at one point.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

Well he he has Ed Keane's collection.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

Um there was salted remains. Salted. One of the vulvas was painted with a silver paint and had been salted. A preserv a prov preservation technique used by a used in taxidermy.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

So it was a preserved shiny vulva. It was she got a vajazel.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

She did get vagazel, whoever this lady was. So Gin admitted to wearing these parts while he was stressed in his skin suit to further become a woman. Maybe when it was being really fancy, he put the silver one on.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

I mean, how did he wear it though? Did he open them and put his dick through them so that this can like poking out, or did he tuck it in and then put the vulver on the outside? Pass.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

Leave that one up to the imagination. I don't know. Don't know. I'm not I'm not going into that one. So this is the household furniture and utensils collection. Ooh. Mm-hmm. He's got IKEA. I guess it's a build-it-yourself one that he's collecting. Yeah. It's a DIY. We do not mean to offend anyone. I feel like I need to keep saying that. So this is there was four kitchen chairs, mid-match inset. So these seats have been reupholstered with strips of human skin.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

There was leather chairs.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

Mm-hmm. There was lampshades, so made from the skin of human face. This was the most direct parallel to the the Elise Coach report, the lady, the lamp lady.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

Um there was a waste paper basket because why the fuck not? No, and that person was so bad they became a bin. They were literal trash. Um, and that was made from a section of human skin. Mmm, he made a hand drum. Oh yeah, a bit of music. A drum made from a coffee can with skin scratched stretched over the top of it. Lovely. I don't know what he did. Maybe he was playing the drum whilst dressing as his mom. I don't know. He was probably singing a lovely song. Probably. So there was bone implements, so various knives and spoons made from human bones.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

I mean, I suppose they'd be good strong utensils.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:00

Um there was a heart. There was the um the heart of Bernice Warden, which was found in a plastic bag near the stove.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:09

There was a box of scraps. Oh. Like the little arts and crafts box. Yeah. You have scrap bits of ribbon where you have scrap bits of flesh. So there's a box of scraps, so there's various pieces of skin and bone that Keena had not quite processed yet. Um, and that was just there. Like it was just like a, oh, what might get to you, might make you into a glove. Maybe you need some winter gloves. Like a paper chain. That'd be the worst Christmas decorations that he would create.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

All the best. You never know. I don't think it would be the Krampus might approve.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

Krampus would approve, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

I don't think spoon liquor would improve much though.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

No, because it's not a spoon, he'll be licking human bone.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

So yeah. So now we've spoken about that. I do want to quickly say, because I forgot to say it earlier, um, I didn't forget, we kind of started it, and then I went into the itinerary and sort of talk about the actual raid itself. So the police arrived at Gean's Farm um on the 16th of November 1957. Um, because there was no electricity, they searched with flashlights. Yeah, I would not want to search place and have a death face mask staring at me. So in the woodshed it was dark and the deputy felt something brush against his shoulder. Oh. He thought it was a deer carcass, but when he shone the light on it, he found Bernice Warden. She had been dressed out, like I said, like a deer, um, beheaded, gutted, and hung upside down from the rafter by her ankles using a crossbar.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:02

Lovely.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:03

Yeah. Such a lovely man. He's he's just a piece of shit, isn't he? Yeah. And then they go into the house and obviously there's just people everywhere. And it's not like a fun party kind of people everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

It's an arts and crafts for one.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:23

So one of the biggest uh questions that people ask a lot is was he a cannibal? Like we said earlier. I mean, sounds like he is. Yeah. Um, and it's largely because is the way his story was, it's a lot like Hannibal Lecter, like he just kind of went under the radar and fucked people up.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

The thing is, like, you have that many body pieces.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

Where's the meat? Well, yeah, so um when investigators searched the kitchen on November 16, 1957, they found several items that led them to spend. Suspect cannibalism. So there's a heart on the stove, which was Bernice Warden's heart, and it was found in a plastic bag near a pot on the stove. Some reports claim it was in the pan, ready to be cooked, but the official police report's inventory simply stated that it was in the kitchen area. There was organs in the fridge, so Pele's found various organs stored in the refrigerator and in shoe boxes throughout the house. I just I can imagine the smell. So some of the human skull tops had been used as bowls, reportedly contained a greyish, semi-dried substance. The police initially suspected it was soup made from human remains. Mmm. Lovely. During Geane's interrogation, Gean was surprisingly candid about the grey robbing and the murders, but he drew a fine line at eating people. He said they smelled too bad when he was asked if he ever practiced cannibalism or had sex with the bodies, which was necrophilia. Gean expressed disgust and he told the investigators that the bodies smelled too bad for him to consider doing anything like that. Uh and Gean insisted that he his interest was purely structural. He wanted to use the skin and bones to recreate his mother, and he vowed that the internal organs were a waste or biological scraps rather than food.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:32

Gross.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:34

Um do you know that there's a certain STI that you can only get from sleeping with a corpse?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:46

I did, yes. I can't remember where I heard that. Because there was a woman there's there's been a few stories of these women finding out the horrible way, but there's one when she slept with a man and she then went and got tested.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:02

And they were like, Um, have you been sleeping with a dead body? Because I think she had like this rash on her face from where he had like kissed her and she was like, No, like that's gross. And they're like, Well, you've got this like STI, right? Um, and that's how they had found out that he had been sleeping with dead bodies and he had worked in a morgue. So, yeah, little fun fact. That's if you know someone who's male and works in a morgue, well even females, if you know somebody who works in a morgue, test them.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:45

I can't even imagine why someone would think, yeah, that looks good. I can't even go near a dead animal. No, I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:56

Like Like I've I've had to deal with dead bodies before and at no point did I think well that looks nice. I just don't get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

How someone can uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:11

Um so once Gean was first arrested in 1957, he was evaluated at Central State Hospital for the criminally insane, and here is what the doctors actually found.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

So he was unfit for trial. So initially he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial, he couldn't understand the charges against him or help in his own defence because his grip on reality was gone. Uh no, I just think he was that clever that he was playing stupid. Yeah, so Gean claimed he didn't remember the murders or the grave robberies, clearly. He described being in a daze or in a trance. Uh, this is a classic symptom where the person dis uh dis disconnects from their actions almost like they were watching a movie of someone else doing the crimes. So he'd do this for so long, for so many years. Five years, yeah. Five years.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:11

So he was in trance the whole time then. Because he was digging up the bodies and then he was sewing them all together.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:17

So you're living in a house of horrors. And then you're wearing them as if they're your mother. You're dancing around the house in your mum's outfits. How is that you've been in trance for the whole time?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:27

Or are you s you like yourself when you're stitching them up?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:31

Like, oh, I don't know how this body got here, but I'm just gonna stitch it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:35

Um, doctors noted that he had a flat effect. Uh, he could walk he could talk about the most gruesome details of skinning a human being with the same tone of his voice, um, someone would give to talk about the weather. Like he didn't feel like the horror of what he had done because his brain had re-categorized those victims as objects or parts.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

Because he turned them into objects.

unknown 1:10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

That's why. Because of his like dining room furniture.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:06

He's been eating soup and crap out of their heads. Yeah, so he was a model patient as well, of course. Um, once he was once he was medicated and in a structured environment, the hospital, um, he became a model patient. He wasn't crazy in the way people imagine. He was like he wasn't like screaming or violent or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

No, he just was.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:33

He was a gentle, polite, soft-spoken man. This is actually common with certain types of schizophrenia schizophrenia with without the triggers of his lonely farm and his mother's memory. And then Monster simply went back to sleep. Or did he just got get what he wanted? He got his fill of killing a bunch of people and then didn't have any.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:59

Yeah, and then they medicated the fuck out of him. So he was like, oh, I'm in I'm in Dulaliland now.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

I'm just quite happy in this padded cell. Yeah. Um, and so after Geen and all this type of stuff, there was a movie called Psycho that came out, and that was inspired by Ed Gean's story. So, and that's how the whole movie came about. And then there was also in Chain to the Chains and Massacre, there was uh someone called like Tanface or something like that, and that was also kind of meant to be linked with Ed Gean. There's just a lot of stuff. A lot of the um I feel like I miss I might have missed some parts, but there was so much stuff about him, it was hard to get like all of the information, and lots of it is alleged. Yeah, like it's like this could have happened, but no one really knows if it definitely happened. Literally the documentary I watched. It's like he might have slept with his mother, but he might not have. Yeah, like he might have eaten this person, he might not have. His relationship was very weird with his mum. Um, so yes, 100% he could have, but no, there's no reports he was very cagey about that type of thing. Um if you're gonna play crazy, you would lean in that. If you were actually gonna pla properly play crazy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:23

You'd be like, this is my childhood, this is the reason why. I can't help it, I'm just mentally not okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:30

But instead, he's played the I was not with it for five years. I don't remember any of it. Except I can detail I can tell you exactly what happened with the dead bodies, and I don't really care. It's like I can tell you what I'd done with them, but I don't know where I got them from.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:46

Yeah. I don't remember killing them. But I can tell you how I can sew them up and make them into an armchair.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:52

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

Like, that just doesn't make sense. Um, and I hope you know that like the nice thing is that he died. Edgeen is dead, he passed away on July 26th in 1860 um in 1919 at the age of 77. And he died in the Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin. Uh the death was respo respiratory and heart failure due to cancer. Well probably from eating dead bodies.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:26

Probably other people He deserved.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:29

I mean, if you're going to eat your body, it can cause random shit to happen. Like you're not supposed to eat human meat. You're not meant to. It can make like your face fell up and everything. Yeah. But um, that is stormed gene. Lovely. I really wanted to learn about nipple belts and nipple full of vulvas.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:49

Did you not?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:51

I mean you can buy them online, you know, you don't have to make your own box of them. What? Preserved Well, you can buy latex ones or whatever they are. Silicone. Technically, he made he was the star of the latex ones. He founded Ant Summers. Oh no, no, he was not. Right. So if anybody listening and you thought to yourself, I really want a Volva. Buy one online. That's silicone. Don't go, don't go stealing somebody else's. You can paint your own. If you really want to. No, I mean like paint your own silicone one, not. Oh, okay. Not like yeah, we're not we're not stealing people, okay? Stealing their body parts and putting them in a shoebox. Shoebox of shoe. This was a weird episode to record.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

Um and uh thank you guys for listening for so long. Again, it was like another long episode, but there's so much information to put out there. I didn't want to give too much information that I wasn't sure what was true, what wasn't true.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:54

There's lots of stuff going around and sorts of Chinese whispers of things that happened. So that is the story of Ed Keen. And the crazy nipple belts. And the crazy nipple belts. Well, um, I think again this week we're just gonna end that here. Yeah. We won't do the we'll next time we'll do the Wid Rather. Okay. Or some weird story that we'll come up with. But I feel like we're both tired and it's we started the episode late today, so. Yeah, and I've got to drive home and it's windy as hell. It is, it's somewhere nice. I do not want to drive home, but I'm tired. Thank you so much, guys, for listening. And if you could give us a like and a share and all of that fun stuff on TikTok and Instagram, we're just shoving all of the information out here. Just follow us on social media. Yeah. Everything's in the show notes. Maybe you listened this far. Let us know what your favourite um piece of inventory. I feel like that's not there should not be a favourite one. Okay, the one that you found m most disturbing. What you think the collection should be called?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:02

Ed Springtime Collection.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:07

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:09

Meats. Okay, we're stopping now. Um anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:25

Thank you guys so much for listening. Um, and we will see you next week. See you next week. Bye.