All language subtitles for Psycho.The.Lost.Tapes.of.Ed.Gein.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

For this small Wisconsin
community of under 700 persons,

10 years of trying to forget

have been wiped away
in a single day.

The return of
the name of Ed Gein

means return of memories,

memories that many
have been trying to forget.

In 1957, this small-town
Wisconsin horror story

was being exposed to the world.

Ed Gein, he's the first

well-known
American serial killer.

But it's the fact that
he repurposed people's bodies,

and that's what... that's what's
so upsetting about him.

Ed Gein has been going to graves

and digging up,
excavating bodies.

He took skin
and fashioned lampshades with it

and upholstery
on his chair and couch.

I've never had a case
where a person wanted

to wear somebody else's skin.

I don't think I ever
heard of a case like that

in the annals of crime.

It might be satisfying
to defile dead bodies,

but there's nothing more
powerful than killing someone.

It's like he ran out of bodies,
so he decided to create his own.

I'd never heard Gein's voice.

So to now actually encounter
this incredible piece

of firsthand evidence
is astonishing to me.

- That's incredible. Yes!
- Oh, that's awesome.

- Yes!
- Yes!

I mean, no one knew
of the existence of this tape.

We've been debating
for years, like,

what did Ed Gein sound like?

I have been playing Ed Gein
in my brain for so long.

I don't know what to expect.

I mean,
this casts a whole new light

on the Gein case.

For a researcher,
we're always looking for data

that gets us closer
to the phenomenon.

He knows there are things
he can't tell the police.

The term "serial killer"
doesn't come out

for another 20, 30 years
after Ed Gein was caught.

I think it's why people adopt
some of the details for movies.

Gein was so enmeshed
with his mother

that he wanted
to become his mother.

Ed Gein was Norman Bates

and Norman Bates was Ed Gein.

The comparison between
the two of them was so right on.

Well, a-a boy's best friend
is his mother.

I've always been
interested in monsters.

I had actually been working
on a book about horror movies,

and it was then
that I discovered

that both "Psycho"
and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

had been inspired by Ed Gein.

I wrote the book "Deviant,"

which I consider the definitive
biography of Ed Gein.

I'd never heard Gein's voice.

Restless feeling.

There are some kind
of newsreel images of Gein...

one when he was arrested
and one at his trial...

but you don't hear Gein's voice.

So to now actually encounter

this incredible
piece of firsthand evidence

is astonishing to me.

Eddie is such a mythic figure,

hearing, you know,
this actual human voice,

it just makes these crimes
that much more real.

On this particular day,

pretty much
the entire male population,

as well as some of the female
population of Plainfield,

was out in the woods.

It was the first day
of deer hunting season.

Frank Worden, who runs the
hardware store with his mother,

Bernice Worden, returns from
a day of deer hunting.

As soon as Frank
enters her store,

he's stunned to see
a trail of blood

leading from the sales counter
out through the back.

And he also spots some
.22-caliber shell casings

on the floor.

He runs to the cash register,

and he notices
that there's a receipt made out

for some antifreeze.

Frank Worden had been
in the store the previous day.

Ed Gein came in asking
about the price of antifreeze

and also what Frank regarded
as pestering Bernice,

sort of floating the idea

of their going out on a date
roller skating.

So, immediately,

Frank Worden suspects
that Gein is somehow involved.

Eddie Gein was generally seen
as kind of an oddball.

People saw him
as somewhat simpleminded,

completely harmless.

How long did you say
you'd known Mr. Gein?

Well, I've known him ever since
he was a little boy.

He's lived here
all his life in this farm?

Well, I don't know
whether he was born here or not,

but the family moved up here
around 50 years ago, probably.

And, uh, I knew his dad
more than 40 years ago

when he used to
haul potatoes in town.

Frank immediately notifies
Sheriff Schley,

and Schley and a deputy proceed
directly to the farmhouse.

They approached the house,
Eddie's not home,

and they go around
to the woodshed.

There are no lights.

They enter the shed.
Completely dark.

Suddenly they're confronted with
this absolutely appalling sight.

Bernice Worden's naked corpse
strung up by her heels.

Bernice Worden,
this grandmother,

her naked body

is strung up from the rafters.

She's been split open entirely,
completely eviscerated.

Her head has been cut off
and is nowhere to be seen.

You know, she's up there
like some game animal

that's been dressed out
after the kill.

I'm looking
at the official autopsy report

on Bernice Worden's body.

It reads, in part,

"The body of a murdered
and mutilated woman,

Mrs. Bernice Worden,

has been found in the woodshed
of the old Gein farmhouse."

"The body had been found
hanging by the heels

from the roof bars...
decapitated and eviscerated.

Head and viscera had been found
in the same location,

the vulva in a box,
and the heart in a plastic bag."

So after Schley and his deputy

kind of collect themselves
a little bit, they go back,

and they're able to enter
the house through the shed,

which adjoins the house.

And immediately they start
stumbling on these other

utterly horrific,
utterly nightmarish sights.

On "The Last Podcast
on the Left," we like to

what we call
is "defang the monster."

But somebody like Ed Gein,
whose sheer...

for lack of a better word...
playfulness of his crimes

and what he was like
as a person,

mixed with what he actually did,
is extremely unique.

You see in his house too, like,

truly it's... it's an
exteriorization of his own mind.

Meanwhile, Ed has been located

at the home
of this neighbor of his,

and they take Gein into custody.

Ed Gein,

there's been so much out there
about him in popular media.

For a researcher,
it's, you know,

we're always looking for data

that gets us closer
to the phenomenon.

I wanted to hear
the man himself.

Most serial killers
that we know of,

at least through the history
of serial killing,

are quite aware
of what they're doing

and are very intentional
in their actions

and just show no remorse.

For us, as social
and behavioral scientists,

we can guess
at their motivations

and the things that are driving
them to commit violent crimes,

but usually the words
coming from the mouths

of the people themselves
are the best source.

My immediate reaction
to listening to Gein

is that he displays
little or no emotion.

He's being interviewed
for the very first time

about years of behavior that's
quite bizarre and ghoulish.

And you have to imagine
that this guy's been living

inside his head
for a lot of years.

He wasn't being
overly defensive,

and he wasn't being really angry
or he wasn't acting annoyed.

I mean, it's almost like
this was a nonevent,

which is kind of interesting
given the time period

that this whole thing
took place.

I think we have to remember
this is, like, in the 1950s.

This was a time when there was
a kind of idyllic notion

of the American family.

You work hard,
you have, like, a house

with a picket fence and two kids

and that kind of thing.

Ed Gein's arrest must have been
a massive shock

to the American psyche
and to the world

because it disrupts
this picture.

He's a kind of meek,
unremarkable man

who could have been
your neighbor.

And there's something eerie
about that

that is disruptive
to our collective ideas

of what is a monster.

Ed was born when his parents

were living
in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

They were owners of a small
kind of general store.

He was the second child
born to the family.

We know very little about
Ed Gein's older brother, Henry.

From what we know
and what we gather,

George Gein was a somewhat
feckless, unreliable individual.

He was also evidently
an alcoholic.

George Gein,
his life began in tragedy.

It's... Ed Gein's entire
upbringing from, you know,

40 years before he was born,
it's like it was ordained.

George Gein,
coming to Wisconsin,

his entire family dies
crossing a river,

and he was adopted
by a different family.

He is in no way whatsoever
wanted.

And then, of course,
becomes a drunk.

Having a father
that's an alcoholic,

when he's drunk
is prone to violence,

is a rough spot to be in...

well, for anyone, but
particularly in a place where

there's little or no likelihood
of being rescued.

That abuse can later on manifest
in so many different ways.

One can only guess at what
some of the escapist fantasies

might have been for this guy.

His mother was the... the better
of two choices, obviously,

even if she were
somewhat aloof or cold

or might have been
overly controlling.

From all available evidence,

Augusta had been raised

in a very, very stern,
strict Lutheran household.

In many ways, she fits the model

of a classic
kind of religious fanatic

who is obsessed with the evils
of the sins of the flesh.

The lips of a strange woman
drip honey,

and her mouth is smoother
than oil.

Ed was subjected
throughout his childhood

to Augusta's harangues
about the evils of womanhood

and the decadence and corruption
of the modern world

and all the evil temptations
that Ed might be exposed to.

You cannot hide
behind your beauty.

Your beauty has made you evil.

Augusta, she was a harrowing
influence on Ed Gein.

Ed Gein,
he grew up under the shadow

of his mother's fanaticism.

So I think he probably had this

very paradoxical relationship
to his mom

where, on one hand, she was
the source of everything...

his life, his sense
of right and wrong...

but on the other hand
felt resentful.

Ed was a very
extreme pathological form

of what used to be called
a mama's boy.

Augusta was a saint
who could do no wrong.

Whenever he spoke about her
after his arrest,

he would...
he would burst into tears.

When you have someone who's
chronologically an adult male

but yet they're...
they're psychologically fused

with their mother,

the worst-case scenario is a
kind of a psychological incest.

You know, how did they...
they come to be so close,

and why was he unable
to extricate himself

from this relationship?

This was the only person that he
had any enduring contact with.

So if there's any intimacy
in his life,

it was with his mother.

And by that I mean, of course,

emotional
or psychological intimacy.

Now, we don't know if there was
any physical or sexual intimacy,

but it can't be ruled out.

When you want to understand
this type of psychopathology

that is so strong
and so deviant,

it's not just a result
of poor parenting,

he hated his mother,
his mother did this to him,

his mother did that to him.

This is much, much deeper
than that.

There's so many people
that are brought up

in all of these
bizarre sorts of ways.

Almost none of them go out
and do what Gein did.

Some people have
described Augusta

as being a rigid Christian woman

who sees sex as sinful
and women as sinful,

and Gein was to promise
his mother

never to have sex with women,

stay by yourself,
everyone's a bad, bad person.

That's not Christianity.
That's mental illness.

And I think
the biggest component

that Ed Gein got from his mother
is some sort of mental disorder,

not necessarily her poor
parenting, which never helps.

But there's some level of mental
illness with the both of them.

Augusta seemed to see
wickedness and sinfulness

all around her.

She came to see La Crosse

as kind of a Midwestern
Sodom and Gomorrah.

And so she finally persuaded her
husband to move to Plainfield,

this small farming community.

It was a little town of farmers.

There was no irrigation
like there is now.

It was what you call
a poor community.

Well, nobody was better or worse
than the other guy

who was all equal... poor.

When I first knew about Ed, see,

I was only eight,
nine years old, is all it was.

And he was just part of the...
part of the group.

But he was always pleasant

and not troublesome
or anything like that.

I mean, he was just different.

I don't know how
to explain "different,"

but he was just
kind of different.

You got Bernice Worden here.

Yeah, Augusta and Henry

are about 100 feet to my left
down there.

I think one of his victims
is right behind us in the trees.

My family came down
from Quebec, Canada,

and we lived in Wisconsin.

We loved the weather,
loved the people.

Good place to live and raise
your family.

It's right here.

I was driving through Plainfield
a couple times a week

and I noticed
that hardware store

and I started reading
the books on Ed Gein

and really got obsessed with it.

So I started researching it
right after that

and wrote two books on it.

Everybody say "hi" to Ed.
This is it.

Well, it kept getting stolen.

Got George on the end,
and you got Augusta here.

Ed's here,
and Henry's on the end.

A lot of people come out here
and visit Ed

and take some of his mother's
tombstone apparently.

There's a lot missing compared
to the last time I was here.

A lot of history within
Plainfield is right there.

April 1, 1940,

George died from
basically drinking.

He didn't do nothing.
He just basically drank.

So once he died, the boys

started working more
around town,

earning money
to support the family.

So he wasn't really missed.

- Heil!
- Sieg heil!

Henry had to go down
for the draft in '42.

The first number drawn
by the secretary of war

is serial number 158.

Henry got rejected
because he was too old.

Henry seems to have
been the more,

let's say,
well-adjusted of the two,

though it wouldn't be hard to be
more well-adjusted than Ed Gein.

Henry kind of saw Augusta
for what she was,

and he wasn't going
to let himself be

totally dominated by her
in the way Ed did.

There's some evidence
that he, you know,

was trying a little bit
to wean his younger brother

away from Augusta's influence.

It's not like Henry Gein
was the normal brother...

- No.
- Who would have been

just fine
had he moved to Milwaukee.

Henry Gein actually
kind of creeps me out

almost more than Ed,
because it's like, Henry,

you could have gotten
the fuck out of there

if you wanted to, whereas, like,

Ed is obviously mixed
a little different.

These guys are spending
many nights on the front porch,

you know, sitting in
front of their mother,

her reading them sections
from the Bible.

And Henry, at this point,
he wants to get away.

Ed's brother might have been
urging Ed to leave,

talking about
how terrible Mother was.

Maybe he couldn't tolerate it.

Maybe he found that
so offensive.

And maybe...
maybe he was jealous

of his brother's ability
to break away.

They're in their early 40s
at this time,

and Henry, for the first time,
brings up to his brother,

"Do you think maybe you're
a little too close to Mom?"

- Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo!
- Ooh! Don't do that.

- Not good.
- Don't say that to Eddie.

I can understand
the older brother saying,

"Well, this really isn't a place
I want to wind up staying."

Whereas Ed just couldn't.
So he was stuck.

It's kind of like being
psychologically enslaved.

You know, like, no one
physically tied him to a chair,

but he was kind of
psychologically

tied to the chair.

Later on in his life,
Henry actually found a girl

that he wanted to move in with,
and she actually had a...

had a child of her own.

And that was against everything
Augusta taught him.

And I think that's
what happened when he died.

The reason why he died...
because Ed got upset.

This is a newspaper article
from May 19, 1944.

"Funeral services were held here
this afternoon for Henry Gein,

42, town of Plainfield farmer,
who died of a heart attack

while trying to protect his farm

from the ravages of a grass
and brush fire."

And the evening, several hours
after the search began,

found the dead body
of Mr. Gein lying facedown.

Apparently, the man
had been dead for some time

when he was found

and it appeared that death was
the result of a heart attack.

It was a normal
farming afternoon when Ed Gein

and his brother Henry were out
in a field burning brush.

Supposedly, Ed was separated
from his brother,

and Ed ran back to town.

Ed ran back to town, said
he couldn't find his brother,

and the police came out,
and Ed led them right

to where Henry was laying
facedown in the grass,

and there was a bump
on the back of his head.

And so they basically ruled
that he died of asphyxiation,

and the police
stopped investigating.

Such accidents were not uncommon

because when you start
a brush fire,

you know, there's a great deal
of smoke involved.

And there had been other people

who had died
of smoke inhalation.

All I heard is that
they thought that Ed had

maybe murdered his brother,
but we don't know that.

I don't know.

Heard that he was
jealous of his brother.

Don't know that either.

Ultimately, we'll never know.

And only Ed Gein would know.

But the circumstances
of the case

and when we look
at his life history

and the intense attachment
that he had to his mother,

you could come up with
a very plausible explanation

that he wanted to have
his mother to himself.

We all know he did it.

Shortly after Henry died,
Augusta suffered a stroke.

And suddenly Ed found himself

taking care of his mother.

Ed suddenly has a one-on-one
relationship with his mother,

this person
who is his everything.

Augusta had always been the one

who had taken care of Eddie.

Now he found himself
dressing her and feeding her,

helping her.

Augusta, she was bedridden.

And Ed actually used to climb
in bed with her and stroke her

and stuff and caress her
and that and make her happy.

Took care of her.
Kind of the way he wanted it.

Of course, Eddie was very,
very devastated

to see this woman who he'd
always regarded as godlike

suddenly reduced
to this kind of state.

Augusta died on December 29,
1945, a year after Henry.

The descriptions they have
of Ed Gein at her funeral...

his face covered in snot,

saying that she was too good
for this world.

Ed Gein was so obsessed with her
and so ensconced

in the world that she created
for him that a fuse blew.

Ed really only had
one close relationship

in his whole life.

He wasn't close to his brother.

He hated his father.

You know, Augusta was
his entire emotional world.

And now she was gone.

He was living in squalor.

Once his mom
is no longer around,

he's left to his own devices.

He feels this tremendous
sense of loss and trauma,

and he descends
into this darkness.

So from that point on,
Ed really becomes obsessed

with resurrecting
his mother somehow.

He went to her grave
and prayed every night

for her to rise from the grave.

I mean, he would go night
after night... "Please rise.

Please, Mother.
Please come back."

These are Ed Gein's
medical records

dated December 19, 1957.

It reads,
"After the death of his mother,

he felt that he had
a special power

whereby he could raise
the dead to life

by an act of his willpower."

I guess he couldn't
tolerate the idea

of being separated
from his mother

despite the fact she was dead.

I guess the idea that he might
be able to possess her corpse

or her body would be
a source of comfort for him.

There could have been a
part of him that was fearful of,

you know, digging up
his mother's corpse

and realizing that that was,
you know, a shell of his mother

and it wasn't actually
his mother anymore.

It raises more questions.

What were you planning
to do with your mother?

Like, were you going to stuff
her and turn her into a doll?

Was there some kind of a desire

to physically be
with his mother?

And in that sense,
I do mean sexually.

Watch out for the ice.

This is the gravesite
of Eleanor Adams.

This is one of the graves
that was actually exhumed

a couple days
after they caught Ed.

And they got down to the casket.

They opened it up,
and it was empty.

Augusta's buried probably, say,
about 12 feet off from here.

It's so close.
I mean, very close.

So Mom would have been
watching him.

The other bodies served
as proxies...

you know, close to his mother,
but not quite his mother.

In Gein's case,
he was following this.

He knew when
there was a funeral...

he read about it in the paper...

and would dig the corpse up
almost the next day

or that evening.
Why?

Because the dirt at that point

would be very soft and
it would be easy to get out.

When the judge is sort of
telling him

and reviewing details
with him in the case,

he kind of goes along
with the details

and says, "Yeah,
that's probably what happened."

He's not denying it, but he's
also not confessing to it.

So I think he's sort of taking
this kind of, like,

passive approach
to his role in this.

He has been going to graves
and digging up,

excavating bodies
and using their body parts.

That process, you know, is
very difficult in its own ways.

There's practical challenges
that come with digging a body up

that is typically buried
six feet underground.

Clearly, he had a number
of fantasies or ideas

about what needed to be done
with these bodies.

I mean, there was a reason
for digging up these graves

and taking these women out.

Someone doesn't wake up
one day and say,

"I think I'll go out
and start digging up

bodies in a cemetery."
No.

This begins
10, 15, 20 years earlier

in the offender's mind,
in his fantasies.

Now, sometimes fantasy serves
as a substitute for action,

but other times, fantasy paves
the way for later action.

In Gein's case, it's pretty
obvious that his fantasy

was so strong, he actually
acted it out and did it.

There's a kind of fantasy life,

and then there's actually the
reality of, like, dealing with

bodies that have decomposed
very badly in the ground

for sometimes years.

That's right.

It's quite bizarre.

I mean, after all,
how many bodies do you need?

He wanted the bodies
and he mutilated the bodies

and desecrated the bodies.

But what he did with the body
parts is itself extraordinary.

He would dig up these corpses

and... and bring them back
to his farmhouse

and dissect them and... and
fashion different artifacts

out of the body parts.

The word that people
used over and over again

after they discovered the house
was "revolting."

And that to me was
the perfect adjective

for what was going on in there.

These little bowls
made from human skulls

that he'd eat beans out of.

You know,
you'd walk into his room

and he's got skulls
on each of the four...

on each of the four bedposts.

He's got a box full of vulvas
with little ribbons

- wrapped around them.
- Somebody's jealous.

He was a voracious reader of
the kind of pulp men's magazines

that were very, very popular
at the time,

which would have articles
about things like headhunting.

He would sit there
and read these books,

you know, these true crime
books, true crime magazines.

- He loved...
- Just eating beans.

Eating beans, reading about
Nazis making lampshades

out of human skin.

These acts seem to have
been modeled to some extent

on the Nazi atrocities
that were coming to light

and being published
in these pulp magazines.

For a guy like Ed,
discovering photographs

or newsreels from World War II,

maybe he couldn't have imagined
that before he saw it.

In the Gein case, he took skin
and fashioned lampshades

with it and upholstery
on his chair and couch.

The fact is, when you
see all the bodies piled up

and you see people
as disposable,

you understand that people
were experimented with...

if you're inclined
emotionally or psychologically

to that type of thinking,

even if you don't want
to admit it,

it grabs your attention
in sort of the wrong way.

There was apparently
a belt he made out of nipples.

It was this totally
nightmarish environment.

I think the notion of
using the human flesh or skin

to make objects
or to upholster a chair

or something like that
is kind of peculiar.

Almost suggests to me
that you are finding comfort

in that these skulls
are keeping you company

and that you're so disturbed

that you feel that
you're surrounded by people.

Gein isn't disinterring bodies
because he's lonely

and has nobody to talk to.

This is very perverse behavior.

And the... the level
of his disturbance

goes really to the core
of his personality

and to the core
of his sexual dynamics.

The sexual instinct itself
is very, very strong.

But the sexual instinct itself
is complicated,

and there can be perverse
sexual arousal patterns.

Look what
he's creating items from.

Most of it's genitals
and vaginas and nipples

and these sorts of things.

When Gein looks at what he did

and he sees the heads
all over the place,

this is very arousing to him.

This is very stimulating to him

because look at the domination
he has over these people.

He can cut them up.
He can desecrate them

in all these various ways.
He has total domination.

That is very, very arousing
for somebody like Gein.

He is on record saying
that he didn't have

sexual relations with corpses.

This may come
as a shock to people...

Criminal defendants
don't always tell the truth.

They lie all the time.

So you really can't go
by what Gein said.

When you look at his behavior,
notwithstanding his denial

that he had sex with the bodies,
is he capable of it?

Obviously he's capable of it.
Look exactly what he did.

There were these rumors
that he was a cannibal.

In the Gein case, when
the police entered the home,

they saw a human heart
in a frying pan on a stove.

Now, it doesn't take
a lot of imagination

to raise the question...
What's he doing

with a human heart
in a frying pan on a stove?

I mean, did he eat
some of the body parts?

That's not unheard of.

Could he have eaten
some of the victims?

The answer is,
obviously he's capable of it.

There's very little that Gein
is not capable of.