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Ed Gein

Also known as: Butcher of Plainfield, Plainfield Ghoul

Active

1954–1957

Region

Plainfield, Waushara County, Wisconsin, USA

State

WI

Kind

Serial

Status

Convicted

Victims

2

Ed Gein, a reclusive farmer from Plainfield, Wisconsin, was arrested in November 1957 after Bernice Worden disappeared from her hardware store and her body was found on his farm. Investigators also found items he had made from remains taken from local graves, and he confessed to killing tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954. He was first found unfit for trial and committed to a state hospital. When he was finally tried in 1968, the judge found him guilty of Worden's murder but legally insane, so he was committed to a mental hospital rather than sent to prison. He was never tried for Hogan's death, and he died in a Madison mental health institute in 1984.

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Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

• Mary Hogan · December 8, 1954

  She ran a tavern in Pine Grove. Gein confessed to her killing but was never tried for it.

• Bernice Worden, 58 · November 16, 1957

  She owned the hardware store in Plainfield; her son was a sheriff's deputy.

Timeline of locations

1. December 8, 1954
   Hogan's tavern, Pine Grove (Abduction, approximate area)

   Mary Hogan disappeared from the tavern she ran in Pine Grove, Portage County, in December 1954.

2. November 16, 1957
   Worden's hardware store, Plainfield (Abduction, approximate area)

   Bernice Worden was reported missing from her hardware store in Plainfield.

3. November 16, 1957
   Gein farm, town of Plainfield (Recovery site, approximate area)

   Gein had lived alone on the family's 155-acre farm since his mother's death in 1945. Bernice Worden's body was found in a shed on the farm, along with remains taken from graves. Gein confessed there to killing Mary Hogan. The house burned down in March 1958.

4. November 16, 1957
   West Plainfield (Arrest, approximate area)

   Gein was arrested on November 16, 1957, in West Plainfield, a since-vanished crossroads about three miles west of Plainfield.

5. 1958
   Central State Hospital, Waupun (now Dodge Correctional Institution) (Prison)

   Found unfit for trial, Gein was committed to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. After his 1968 trial found him guilty but insane, he was returned there.

6. July 26, 1984
   Mendota Mental Health Institute, Madison (Prison)

   Gein was moved to Mendota in the late 1970s and died there of complications of lung cancer on July 26, 1984.

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Sources

• Ed Gein (Wikipedia)
• Ed Gein (Biography.com)

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.