Key Takeaways:
- Ed Gein’s mother, Augusta Gein, was a domineering, strict, and very religious matriarch who largely isolated her two sons from the outside world.
- Experts have hypothesized that her overbearing nature led Ed to develop an unhealthy obsession with Augusta.
- After her death, Ed preserved areas of the family’s farmhouse as a macabre shrine to his mom. He fell further and further into a deadly and disturbing psychosis that was eventually uncovered in 1957.
Before he became etched in history as the “Butcher of Plainfield,” Ed Gein was a Wisconsin farm child devoted to his mother, Augusta. But as Ed grew older and his devotion turned to obsession, it became clear Augusta’s hold over him had spun out of control—with deadly results.
Augusta’s inescapable influence on Ed and his crimes are one of the focal points of Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Premiering October 3 on Netflix, the new season of the popular Ryan Murphy–led crime anthology stars Laurie Metcalf as the demanding Augusta Gein.
As news of Ed’s atrocities came to light—including two admitted murders and a series of grave robberies—so did his unusual relationship with Augusta. Although her no-nonsense parenting methods might have tried to protect her son from the evils of the world, it’s believed they fueled the evil urges within him.
Augusta was a religious fanatic and strict disciplinarian
Augusta Wilhelmine Gein was born on July 21, 1878, and married George Gein in 1900. The couple had two children together: Henry in January 1902 and Ed in August 1906.
According to a 1957 Time article, Augusta was a “domineering wife” and “the undisputed head” of their family. Raised in a strictly religious household, she brazenly imposed her beliefs on her young children by frequently reciting the Biblical story of Noah and the great flood. She predicted a similar calamity would happen again in response to the immorality of women and lamented modern fashion accessories such as short skirts and lipstick.
Augusta’s marriage was another source of tension. Forensic psychologist Carole Lieberman told A&E True Crime that George, who owned a grocery store prior to the family’s 1914 move to Plainfield, Wisconsin, was an alcoholic who often forced parenting duties onto his wife. Left in charge, she didn’t allow allow her sons to interact with other children outside of school and frequently gave them chores around the family’s farm.
Experts have hypothesized her tyrannizing behavior affected Ed and caused him to develop an Oedipus complex. As he grew into adulthood, Ed never went on dates, and his unhealthy obsession with his mother intensified—eventually to a sickening fault.
Ed cared for his mother up until her death
By the mid-1940s, Ed and his mother found themselves even more isolated from the world. George had died of heart failure in 1940 at age 66, followed by Henry in 1944 under mysterious circumstances. Henry had gone to put out a fire near their farm with Ed, who said the two became separated during the incident. However, Ed was able to help police quickly locate his brother’s body. More curiously, although Henry’s cause of death was ruled an asphyxiation, the 43-year-old had bruises on his head—suggesting he was struck with force.
We’ll never know if Ed had any role in his brother’s death. In any case, he had his mother all to himself, at least for a little while longer.
Soon after Henry’s death, Augusta suffered a severe stroke. Ed cared for her inside their remote, rustic farmhouse, which had no plumbing or electricity. But after suffering a second stroke, Augusta died in December 1945 at age 67.
Ed was devastated by Augusta’s death. He closed off rooms inside their farmhouse and preserved them as a macabre shrine to his mother. Eventually, though, these quirks evolved into something darker.
Ed claimed his mother’s absence motivated his crimes
Ed later told investigators a “force built up in me” in the years after his mother’s death. “He had no other person to communicate with or talk with and, consequently, he just turned to his inner fantasies, his other interests, and found that without mother he didn’t know what he was going to be doing,” Dr. George Ardnt, a psychiatrist, told The Biography Channel.
Ultimately, his obsession with Augusta helped spark Ed’s criminal actions. Police discovered the scope of his misdoings upon his 1957 arrest in connection to the disappearance of 58-year-old Bernice Worden. Not only did he admit to killing Worden—and also 54-year-old Mary Hogan three years prior—but Ed had also exhumed multiple graves to collect body parts for modification as home and clothing items.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ed said his deep connection with Augusta made him want to become more like a woman. After frequently visiting her grave site, he began digging up corpses so that he could wear their skin. Ed also claimed that Worden reminded him of his mother.
The latter suggests Ed’s mental illness—psychiatrists diagnosed him with schizophrenia after his arraignment—clashed with his devotion to Augusta. “His schizophrenia made him feel very lonely and abandoned by his mother and perhaps is why he heard voices telling him to get another mother,” Lieberman, the forensic psychologist, said. “After he was caught, some former classmates described his strange mannerisms, including seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. That would have been auditory hallucinations, and he was probably having a little conversation in his head with these voices.”
Ed was initially ruled unfit to stand trial and committed to Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. By 1968, he was found guilty of Worden’s murder and deemed insane at the time of the crime. The deeply troubled killer remained institutionalized until his death in July 1984. He was 77.
Augusta became an inseparable part of Ed’s infamy
Appropriately enough, Ed was buried in an unmarked grave between Augusta and his brother, Henry, at the Spiritland Cemetery in Plainfield.
Just as the gruesome methods of Ed’s crimes were adapted into popular horror fiction, so was his link to Augusta. This is most evident in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 thriller Psycho, in which Anthony Perkins’s character Norman Bates has a demented fascination with his mother. “Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother,” Bates famously opines.
It’s easy to imagine Ed saying the same thing about Augusta.
Watch Monster: The Ed Gein Story starting October 3
Actor Laurie Metcalf hasn’t offered any hints about her portrayal of Augusta, who appears in the opening moments of the latest trailer for Monster (Editor’s note: This trailer contains graphic images that might not be suitable for all audiences). “Eddie, you’re a mess. Only a mother could love you,” she tells Ed, portrayed by Charlie Hunnam.
Hunnam told Tudum his high-pitched voice for Gein is a reflection of the infamous mother-son relationship and Augusta’s desire to have a daughter. “It was what Ed thought that his mother wanted him to be,” the actor said. “As she was really his only human contact in the world, he developed this thing to try and make her love him.”
See the pair onscreen starting Friday, October 3, when all eight episodes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story arrive on Netflix.
Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.
