Eddie Gein

Vaughn Hardacker here: At some point in a writer’s career, they will be asked: Where Do You

Get Your Ideas? It’s one of those questions that seems easy to answer until you’re standing

before a group or sitting on a panel looking at the faces of an audience. My first impulse is to ask

myself What humorous but insightful response can I give? The truth of the matter is that in my

case, there is only one answer: The real world.

Eddie Gein killer and grave robber.

In my novel SNIPER, I was influenced by the D. C. sniper killings. In THE FISHERMAN, it was Robert Pickton, a Vancouver, B.C., killer who lamented that his quest to kill 50 women had come up just short at 49. The inspiration for Black Orchid was the 1947 Black Dahlia case.

Possibly, one of the best examples of places where a writer can gather ideas is how I learned about the Wendigo. In 1989, I was teaching at a vocational school, and the students had to write a technical paper. I had the class meet at the local library where they were to research their paper.

To occupy myself, I wandered over to the anthropology section. I came across a book written by a Catholic missionary in the late 1800s. The section that interested me was the one on Native American myth and religion. The missionary was working with a tribe that was part of the Algonquin Nation located in northern Minnesota. The Algonquin-speaking people inhabited much of the northeastern corner of North America (from the Canadian Maritimes west to Minnesota). They called their gods Manitou. The most evil Manitou was the Wendigo. A cannibal who preyed on lost hunters (much of the myth was associated with the problem the people had with dealing with starvation in the winter months). The more a wendigo eats, the more it grows, which then requires it to eat more. The myth has the monster growing to a tremendous height. The missionary asked an old man: "Surely, you don't believe that such a being exists?" The old Indian replied, "No I don't ... but I saw its tracks once." The light in my head went on and resulted in my book (of which I've sold more than any other), WENDIGO.

Surprisingly enough, some of crime fiction’s most recognizable serial killers all came from a

single source: a relatively unknown and diminutive reclusive named Edward Gein. Born at the

turn of the century into the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein lived a

repressive and solitary life on his family homestead with a weak, ineffectual brother and a

domineering mother who taught him from an early age that sex was a sinful thing. Eddie ran the

family’s 160-acre farm on the outskirts of Plainfield until his brother Henry died in 1944 (it is

believed that Edward killed his brother, but it has never been proven) and his mother in 1945.

When she died, her son was a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor, still emotionally enslaved to the woman who had tyrannized his life. The rest of the house, however, soon degenerated into a madman’s shambles. Thanks to federal subsidies, Gein no longer needed to farm his land, so he abandoned it to take on odd jobs here and there for Plainfield residents, earning him a little extra cash. But he remained alone in the enormous farmhouse, haunted by the ghost of his overbearing mother, whose bedroom he kept locked and undisturbed, exactly as it had been when she was alive. He also sealed off the drawing room and five more upstairs rooms, living only in one downstairs room and the kitchen.

Following her death in 1945, his mental health disintegrated. After Gein was apprehended as a

suspect in a 1957 murder, the investigation of his home yielded a highly disturbed man who kept

human organs and fashioned clothing and accessories out of body parts. He spent the rest of his

life institutionalized, his story fueling the creation of such infamous movie characters as Norman

Bates (Psycho), Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill of The Silence of the Lambs), Leatherface (The Texas

Chainsaw Massacre), as well as numerous lesser-known hack-and-slash horror movies.

Surprisingly, when compared to Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway (the Green River Killer), and the

aforementioned Robert Pickton, Gein was more of a grave robber than a serial killer. He was convicted of two murders.

Gein's Room

Under questioning, Gein confessed to killing Bernice Worden and, three years earlier, a woman named Mary Hogan. Additionally, he admitted to digging up numerous corpses for cutting off body parts, practicing necrophilia, and fashioning masks and suits out of skin to wear around the home. (I am underplaying the horrific extent of Gein’s psychosis, but an internet search on him will bring forth the full extent of his illness and resultant crimes.) With that sort of evidence, authorities attempted to connect him to other murders and disappearances from recent years, but were unable to draw any definitive conclusions.

In early 1968, Ed Gein was determined fit to finally stand trial. That November, he was found

guilty of the murder of Bernice Worden. However, he was also found insane at the time of the

murder, and as such, he was recommitted to Central State Hospital.

Save for his attempt to petition for a release in 1974, which was rejected, the mild-mannered

Gein made virtually no news while institutionalized. Later that decade, his health failing, he was

transferred to the Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he died of cancer and respiratory

illnesses on July 26, 1984.

As I write this, it becomes increasingly clear to me that there is a great deal of truth to the old

saying: The truth is stranger than fiction.