The Texas Theodore Gein Research Paper

Notorious serial killers are often talked about years after their crimes were committed. The names most frequently mentioned are Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy; but let us not forget the Grandfather of Gore, Edward Theodore Gein. His story caught the attention of American authors, screenwriters, and horror fanatics everywhere. Gein’s isolated childhood, overwhelming love for his mother, and the direction she sent him in lead to a spiraling psychotic breakdown. This man and his horrors are the inspiration behind the chilling characters Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Psycho. How scary is it to think that the quiet, harmless neighbor next door could be such a twisted killer? The Gein family, later referred to as “the recipe for insanity”, was the beginning of the problem. Augusta Wilhelmine Crafter and George P. Gein were an oddball pairing. She was a strong, powerful woman with Lutheran beliefs. He was a chronic alcoholic who couldn’t keep a steady job. They already had one son together, whom they had named Henry George. The second child, Edward Theodore, came along on August 27th in the year 1906. The family of four resided in an isolated home outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. It is in

He had remained loyal and devoted when it came to giving her the utmost care and attention. However, after Augusta passed by a second stroke, Ed was left on his own at the “tender age” of thirty-nine. What is a momma’s boy to do when his momma is gone? The lost son would board up his mother’s room, later seen as a sort of shrine to her spirit. Ed took up small jobs around the area to keep himself busy. Often times he would be called by housewives to help with minor impairments around the home. The townspeople never suspected that harmless Eddie Gein would become a horrible