Ed Gein

The mind of a normal 6-year-old boy and how it developed into something feared by people. Ed Gein.

Like most serial killers, Gein was a deranged and mentally ill patient who seek blood for the way people had treated him all those years growing up. He had a rough childhood, his father- Phillipe Gein was beaten to death in a local marketplace after it was revealed that he killed a family of 5 or at least he tried killing a family of 5. He had a plan to break into the Smith residence at midnight and bludgeon everyone inside to death with a sledgehammer which he did but the only flaw was, the youngest member of the family- John Smith who was 6 at the time ran away through a broken window. He later explained to officials what had happened, they had a sketch made of Phillipe to catch and sentence him to death. He was being transported to prison after being found hiding in a shack near the docks. On the way to the prison, an angry horde approached the vehicle and beat him to death on the spot. Gein was excluded from a lot of if not all activities that took place in the school or the park when playing. He fretted for his father but more so for the fact that his life would forever be changed. He ran away to Wisconsin at the age of 11 to have somewhat of a new start. He worked at a local cafeteria for a couple of weeks before deciding he wanted to be a writer but the world wouldn’t let him, he interviewed at various companies and news houses to write but none would hire him because of his past as the son of Phillipe Gein. It got to his nerves and he finally lost it, he “achieved” his first victim by kidnapping a 12-year-old boy and eating him alive. When all this was found out, he was sent to a mental asylum and was kept locked in a basement with no food and water in hopes of him getting back his sanity. People were shocked, he was alive and still mental. When he was set loose to have his first meal in months, he tried to break through the gate but was swiftly stopped by the guards and was then kept in a cell. One day when being served his daily meal, he acted as if he had just got a heart attack, a guard came into his cell to help but little did he know, it was all fake. He never had a heart attack all he wanted was to get the guard’s gun and keys to the door, he kept the guard as a sort of shield for himself till he got out of the asylum which, when he did, shot the guard to get more time to run away. he hid in the woods and spent the day there. Later, he would go on to run away to Michigan for yet another fresh start or for the kindling of his dark and mentally ill conscience. He got a job at a local news outlet like he previously wanted but it did not just feel the same to him. When he ate that 12-year-old boy, he had this weird, creepy and horrifying yet comforting feeling. He wanted to achieve another body but this time of a woman in her mid-twenties. He made good relations with his colleagues that included a particular twenty-one-year-old Hannah Smith. Remember John from the family that was bludgeoned by Gein’s father? Ed was furious after hearing the name that got his father dead. He had found his next victim, all he wanted was to get the blood of a SMITH on his hands even if it were not of the same family. He decided he would plan this encounter that he was going to have with Hannah. He secretly followed her for a couple of days before finally deciding how to and where to act. He’d offer Hannah a lift back home as she always took a cab then he’d start up a normal conversation with her about the day at the office or the party they had gone to a week ago. They were driving on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. The car’s tire went out. Gein tried to not panic and fix the tire or at least he pretended to. When he opened the car’s trunk, he grabbed a saw, a big one and went up to Hannah and told her to come out as he needed help with the car. Gein grabbed her by the neck, covering her mouth into the bushes and got on top of her.

He sexually abused Hannah before grabbing the saw to cut her tongue out alongside one of her ears. he cut off her thighs and ate them in front of her; Raw but he did not stop there, He carved a tick mark on her back as a way to symbolize that Hannah had been “achieved” by him. Gein left the scene and the car and started prepping a getaway car because he knew the cops would be on his tail soon as they had found Hannah’s body a day after the incident. He bought a cheap second-hand car from the money he had got working with the news outlet and stashed all of his tools and the pictures that he took of Hannah in the back. He ran away to Chicago and laid low for a while to take things slow and to not raise any suspicions. Hannah and the way she was tortured was all over the news, people were asking questions as to why had Gein left the news outlet a day before Hannah’s body being found. Gein knew this could happen and changed his name to Larry. He also said that he had moved to Chicago from Texas a few days back. Larry was a basic, boring and normal adult living in his mid-thirties. He got a job at a Pizza shop to earn some cash for when and if he had to run away again. He delivered pizzas like usual until arriving at the doorstep of a 27-year-old mother with a 3-year-old daughter. He was perplexed on whether or not to kidnap such a young child only to later end her life but his mind kept telling him of all the disturbance such a scene would cause. He decided it was time for yet another “achievement”. He noted down the address and kept a close eye on the daughter and mother. The mother dropped her 3-year-old Lily at a daycare every Thursday. Gein planned on distracting the mother and grabbing the child as swiftly as possible. He threw rocks at the mother’s car when she had just parked at the daycare. When the mother got out to see who was throwing rocks at her car, Gein came up behind the car, grabbed Lily shut her mouth and got into his car only to go to his apartment. He duct-taped Lily’s mouth as soon as he reached the house and started setting up cameras around the living room as he wanted to shoot the whole incident. He waited for it to get dark so that he could get away quickly after perpetrating the crime. Gein started grabbing all the tools he’d need for the “achievement”. He cut Lily’s fingers, her ears followed the same. He then cut out her thighs and limbs to eat, then carved yet another tick mark but this time on her forehead. He shot the whole incident on his camera and downloaded the file onto his phone before finally leaving Chicago. Lily’s body was found when the landlord came to ask for his rent, he was in complete blow and disgust. When the cops arrived, they were disgusted as well to find the body of a three-year-old cut like this. Her mother got to the scene and she felt as if nothing was left in this world for her to live on. She fretted for Lily and did nothing other than cry. The cops had started investigating the case. Media houses started highlighting the “achievements” of Gein again and it made him happy but disgusted at the same time. He had gone to Texas and this time had changed his name to Tommy who worked at a local grocery store. Tommy was an average guy working to earn some quick cash. He came across all different sorts of customers which included a particular 43-year-old Audrey Windsor. She was one of those customers who like to complain about everything. She was not happy with the variants of products being sold and the type of decor that was inside the store. Tommy or Gein was not happy with the way Audrey treated him, he was mad at her and wanted to end her life just because he could. What Gein did not know is that Audrey was the sister of an ex-police captain; Arthur Windsor. He served in the police force for 20 years and would go to any extent to protect his family after his father was killed in a hit-and-run case. He had installed a GPS tracking device in Audrey’s car to help her if something were ever to go wrong. Gein wanted to make Audrey suffer the same way he did Hannah but this time, it was going to get a lot more brutal. Audrey always bought groceries from the store each Thursday. Gein made note of it and followed her back to her house. He wanted to make the world hear Audrey’s screams.

He decided that he would follow her on a cold Thursday evening until they reached a lonely road that Audrey used to take daily. Gein would bump his car into Audrey’s to lure her into his trap which he did and dragged Audrey into the bushes. He got all the tools he would need out of his trunk and placed them on a make-shift table that he placed in the bushes. He had a saw, pliers, gasoline, a carving knife, a shotgun and his smartphone. He went live on Facebook to stream the incident to people all around the world. Arthur noticed that the GPS tracker he had installed in Audrey’s car was giving out signals to his smartphone indicating something might have gone wrong. Arthur immediately called the current police captain- Charles and told him what had happened. Charles promptly got to work and told officers to find Audrey. One officer just wanted to check his phone for a quick second but what he found was much more, he came across the live stream that Gein had started and the police force quickly traced down the location of Gein’s stream and identified him as the “Achievement Seeker Killer”. This information quickly got to many news outlets around the area, and they all followed upon it promptly. All this while, Gein had already started hurting Audrey. He had cut off her fingers before pinching her ears with pliers. He later cut off one hand. Audrey was crying for help. She was in pain and had started trying to cut loose, trying to run away. Gein was laughing, he watched her in all that pain and felt satisfied. He wanted to carve the tick-mark on her forehead. Just as he could do it, the police arrived and Gein panicked. He was so in shock that all he has been doing these past few years might come out with his real identity. He swiftly grabbed the shotgun from his table and shot at Arthur’s kneecap and started running away. Charles stopped to help him but told the rest of the officers to catch Gein. He knew he’d be caught if he hid amongst the bushes so he hopped onto a bike and cycled his way to the grocery store he worked at in the city and hid in one of the many deep freezers in the back. Arthur and Charles got to the store following the other officers. The police force covered all the exits of the store and asked people to not come outside. Gein was panicking because he knew the only way to get out was through the front gate. If he tried to flee, the cops would shoot at him. Gein thought of a way to exit the store. He still had the shotgun with him. He made a plan to shoot at Arthur or Charles to distract everyone and make an officer his shield. It was a risk but also the only thing he could do. As soon as he got out, he was tackled by two officers before being shot in the kneecaps by Arthur and Charles. He was then handcuffed and sent to solitary confinement to be interrogated a day later for all of his inhumane crimes. All the big media houses were pumping out the news of this serial killer known as the “Achievement Seeker Killer” being caught. Everybody was in shock especially the families of Hannah, Lily and the twelve-year-old boy he had deceased a couple of years ago.

When Arthur and Charles alongside a few other officials interrogated Gein and asked him why he had done it, he simply replied “It felt good”. Gein was later sentenced to death in 1998.

-Aditya Kumar