Transcript of 1: Ed Gein | The Real-Life “Psycho” Who Shocked America

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Sure we have.

You're the boy that kidnapped my daughter from her father's funeral.

Is that not you?

This will be fine.

Regretting you in Cinemart, October 24. Book Now, Sur 12A.

Life can have a way of surprising you.

No regrets, right?

Hey, everyone. I'm Annie Elise, and today, Tuesday, October seventh, 2025, is a really exciting day Because up until now, you could only find Ten to Life, my original YouTube True Crime series, over on YouTube. Where like a million and a half of you subscribe and you watch our videos every single week. But now, drum roll, please. Today, you can officially listen to episodes of Ten to Life weekly wherever you get your podcast. But please, really quick, let me just interject. None of my YouTube besties panic, no need to. Those of you who prefer to watch, don't worry. You can still find everything on YouTube. Nothing is changing. But now, for those of you who prefer to just listen, whether you're driving, you're running, you're cleaning, whatever you're doing, I got your back, too. And we're on the podcast apps. So wherever you are right now, whether you are on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, all I ask is that you take a second and hit that follow or that subscribe button, whichever platform you're on, because it's the only way that you will be notified when we release our new episodes every week.

And listen, you're going to want to make sure that you get that alert because we have got some really wild cases in store for you, like the one I have for you today on today's inaugural episode. Today, I'm actually taking you back to an older case, but it is one that you've probably either heard about, whether you realize it or not. It's pretty infamous. And we're going all the way back to November 16th, 1957. It It was the first day of hunting season in the village of Planefield, Wisconsin. Most of the men in town celebrated by doing exactly that, hunting. So the downtown area on that day was uncharacteristically slow, which definitely wasn't normal for a typical Saturday. And on that day, Deputy Frank Warden knew that his mother, 58-year-old Bernice Warden, had probably been having a pretty slow day at her hardware store. So at around 5: 00 PM, he decided to stop by and pay her a visit. He opened the door. He heard the bells jingle on the door, alerting that somebody was there, really announcing his presence. But then he noticed something odd. When he walked through the door and those little entry jingle bells quieted down.

It was quiet, but it was too quiet. He called out his mom's name, but nobody responded. And then he saw something terrifying. The cash register was open, and there were some bills and some coins scattered around, almost like someone had left in a hurry, and almost like they hadn't even bothered to take all of the money, that they were just in a rush to get out of there. Now, the most concerning thing, though, was that he noticed some blood stains, and meanwhile, his mother Bernice was nowhere to be found. So right away, an investigation unfolded, and what the detectives would soon discover was something so horrific, so never before seen, that it would inspire hire the horror genre for years to come. Think Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates in Psycho. And just recently, Netflix even released the third season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series Monster, which this season revolves around none other than Ed Geen, a true monster in every sense of the word. Now, like with any movie or TV show that is based on a true story, it mixes in the truth with over-dramatized aspects of the story.

And that's very similar to what is happening with this Netflix series. In this, it dives into how different famous movies and Hollywood directors like Alfred Hitchcock Doc, chose to portray Ed Gean. So I figured, why not do a deep dive into everything that actually happened during Ed's life? Start to finish. His victims, his crimes, his very unique upbringing. I mean, every dark detail. I'm Annie E. Lees, and this is 10 to Life, your new weekly True Crime Podcast Obsession. Let's jump right in. Bernice Warden was the sixth person to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Planefield over a 10-year period, starting all the way back in 1947, which, considering the census in 1960, it showed that the population of Planefield was only about 660 people, which that seems like a pretty high amount of people to go missing, given how small of an area we are referring to here, right? Now, all the way back on May first, 1947, eight-year-old Georgia Weckler had been given a ride home from school and then dropped off right by her family's mailbox at at the end of their gravel road. Now, the mailbox was a good half mile from her house.

But considering the area and also the time in which she lived in, technically, she had made it home safe. I mean, what could go wrong a half a mile away from her home, right? Except by that evening, her family decided to call the local authorities because they were worried sick, saying that she had never made it home from school that day. When the investigators looked into it, the only real clue as to what happened were tire marks in the road, possibly indicating that someone had grabbed her, thrown her in their vehicle, and then taken off in such a hurry that their tires just skitted in the dirt. But where she was taken, no one had any idea. Understandably, the community was devastated. Families began to fear that their child could be next. Then, a few years later, on November first, 1950, two men named Victor Travis and Ray Burgess also disappeared after visiting a local bar in Planefield. Now, for whatever reason, the only available pictures that I can find are of Victor, but there are two men who went missing that day. They had driven to the bar that night, but the men, their car, and their hunting dog all came up missing.

When it came to figuring out whether foul play was involved, the fact that they had been out drinking before their disappearance was definitely considered. They weren't from Planefield. They were from a county over, and they were traveling through a town on a deer hunting trip. So that all coupled together, there were plenty of rumors as to what happened to them. Some rumors even included potential mob ties. But regardless, they were never found, and their disappearance was just another total mystery. To the residents of Planefield, it was just proof that things weren't like they used to be, and almost like everyone needed to be careful and keep an eye out for each other. But then the following year, there was another disappearance. This time, it was a 14-year-old girl, Evelyn Hartley. Evelyn had been babysitting for the Rasmussen family on the night of October 24th, 1953. The family lived in town and had a two-month-old baby. Evelyn had been instructed to check in by a certain time, and she was an obedient and by the book girl. So when the time came and she never checked in, the family got worried and they decided to head home for the night.

And when they got there, they immediately saw obvious signs of a struggle. Evelyn's glasses were on the floor, shattered. There were spots of blood on the carpeting. The baby that Evelyn was watching that night was luckily in bed, asleep and unharmed. But Evelyn herself was gone. The family also noticed that every door inside the house was locked, except for the one door in the basement leading to the back of the house. On top of that, one of the windows inside the home was open and it was missing the screen, which was later then found sitting on side of the house. And the family was absolutely positive it had not been like that before they left. The search for Evelyn became one of the biggest in Wisconsin's history. When investigators got to the scene, they found Evelyn's bra and underwear a few miles away from where she was last seen. And not long after that, they found a bloody pair of men's pants not too far from that spot also. The investigators did everything that they possibly could do to find her and to learn what had really happened. And at one point, they even started doing mass lie detector tests on boys that were of high school age near that area.

But the whole plan eventually got shut down for being too controversial before they could even test anyone or everyone that they had originally wanted to, but they were doing everything that they could. And Evelyn's disappearance remains this horrific mystery in not only Planefield, but throughout Wisconsin in general. And it was arguably this disappearance that really changed everyone in Planefield. Evelyn was young and innocent. Knowing that the person who did this to her was likely walking the streets of Planefield was unthinkable, but it was the harsh reality. And it was like nobody could really be trusted anymore. The next year, on December eighth, 1954, Mary Hogan, the owner of a Planefield tavern, also disappeared, and she was last seen at the tavern, which, like in Evelyn's case, there were clear signs of foul play and struggle. There was blood on the tavern floor, an empty bullet shell casing that indicated that she had very likely been shot. It was devastating. Investigators looked into her disappearance, but they didn't really have any clues other than what was found at the tavern, and they didn't have any strong leads. Maybe it was some drunk guy at the tavern who got upset with her for whatever reason and decided to shoot and kill her.

Now, of course, that doesn't make it any less horrific. It also doesn't change the fact that someone who was capable of looking a woman in the eyes and then shooting them was still out there on the streets of Planefield. It's very upsetting. And then for three years, things stayed pretty quiet until Bernice Warden went missing in 1957. Now, I don't want you to get confused thinking that all of these disappearances were all treated the same like it was one potential serial killer or something like that. Really, each one was treated as a separate entity. Victor and Ray's disappearance was the only one to even have a potential suspect, that being the mob as a whole, so really not even one particular person. All the other disappearances were up in the air as to what had happened or who was responsible. But something was different about Bernice's case, starting with the fact that her son Frank was the Deputy Sheriff. Now, that's not to say that the other cases weren't taken as seriously, but Frank definitely had a different motivation to use everything that he had ever learned on the job to figure out what happened to his his own mother.

Frank knew that every small detail mattered and that it could potentially lead them to the person who kidnapped his mother. So he started looking deeply into things, and right away, something stood out to him.

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I want to leave.

They're going to leave. From the author of It Ends With Us. Don't you want to know why they were together? I think my mom's going insane. And the director of The Fault in Our Stars. I don't know if you're doing properly.

Sure we have.

You're the boy that kidnapped my daughter from her father's funeral.

Is that not you?

This will be fine.

Regretting You in Cinemart, October 24. Book now, Sir 12A.

Life can have a way of surprising you.

More good. That's right.

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On the counter of the hardware store was a receipt, which back then, when you bought something, the clerk literally would write down what you bought on a piece of paper alongside with what it cost. And on this receipt, it was listed as a bottle of antifreeze, which, okay, totally normal. This was a hardware store after all. They sold antifreeze all the time, especially during that time of the year. So this clue could easily have gone unnoticed. However, Frank knew something that the other investigators didn't. You see, the night before, Frank had stopped by Bernice's shop while she was closing up. This was a pretty normal thing for him to do, just to check in on her, see how her day went, just like he did on the day that she went missing. And thank God he did on that particular day, because while Frank was there, there was a customer in the store. He was a local, and he was someone who stopped in the store a lot, and they both knew each other by name. He couldn't remember exactly what this guy had been buying, but he did remember one specific thing he said.

As he left the store, he turned around and told Bernice he would be back in the following morning for some antifreeze. And that person was a man named Ed Geen. Now, it's important to note that different sources say different things about the receipt. Some sources say that Bernice had written Ed's name at the top of the receipt, and that this was how they knew to look into Ed. Other sources don't even mention whether or not his name was on the receipt, just that Frank knew that Ed had been planning to come back to the store that day to buy the antifreeze. So just like that, Ed became the last person to have seen Bernice alive. Now, did that mean that he was the person who had done something to her? Not necessarily. I mean, remember, this is a small town, right? And everyone knew Ed. Apparently, the people around town almost felt bad for him. He didn't seem like a bad guy to them, just maybe an odd one. I saw one source say that a lot of people just wrote him off as being harmless but eccentric. Now, Ed was the type of guy to pretty much stay to himself.

He barely ever went into town, and even then, only to grab some basic necessities to do some odd jobs here and there. He didn't have any close friends, he wasn't in any relationship, and he really only had acquaintances that he saw here and there. Even as a young kid, Ed was always seen as being a bit of a loner. Neither Ed or his brother Henry really had a social life outside of school. They just went from their family farm to school and back again. The other kids noted that he always, too, had what they considered to be, quote, really weird mannerisms, even from a young age. For example, he'd be sitting alone, and then he would randomly just break out into a fit of laughter, Almost like he was laughing at a joke that he had told himself in his head. That's just one example, but you get what I'm trying to explain, right? None of the kids were really first in line to play with him or become his friend. Then there was the fact that he had a bit of a lazy eye and a speech impediment. We all know how mean kids can be when it comes to someone that they interpret as being different, right?

It can be challenging. To make things worse, when he was back at the family farm, his mother Augusta would preach to him specifically about having no friends, and had even punished him the few times that he did try to make any friends. Augusta was a very religious person, Lutheran, to be exact. Her faith was something that never faltered throughout her life, and she wanted to pass that strong sense of religion onto her sons. So pretty much every waking minute of the day, she was telling them about different passages in the Bible and the lessons that she felt could be learned throughout life in accordance with her religion. Then in the evenings, she would sit with her kids to read the Bible, which I totally get can be absolutely common in some households, sure. But Augusta, she took it to the next level. She was very hyper fixated on the immorality of the world, and specifically when it comes to the topic of women. She believed that all women were immoral, that they were promiscuous, they were dirty, they were sinful. Babies, kids, teenagers, full-blown adults, it didn't didn't matter. She believed that any and every woman, despite their age, their relationship with God, etc, they were instruments of the devil.

Yes, the devil. According to her, every woman was sent to Earth by the devil himself to test, corrupt, and drive the men away from God and the church. So yeah, super interesting take from a woman herself, right? I don't know if she believed that she was an exception or what, but all of that to say, these were the things that Ed and Henry were taught from a very young age. What is even crazier is that these weren't beliefs and opinions that Augusta kept to herself and her kids. If she ever saw a woman in public that was displaying those sinful traits, she would reprimand them herself. And because this case is so well-documented, I was even able to find an instance where that exact thing happened. And it does a pretty good job of showing the person that Augusta was. One time, Augusta and Ed had gone to one of their neighbor's houses, a guy named Smith. He lived relatively close to them and was a pretty dedicated customer of their farm, always buying straw for his horses from them. And at some point during the transaction, Smith's dog had come up and done something to bother him.

And instead of just shoeing the dog away like a normal person, Smith got really violent with it. Like as in, he literally started beating the dog to death in front of everyone. Then a woman came out of the house yelling at Smith, telling him to stop. Pretty normal reaction, right? Except Augusta was floored by this. She couldn't believe that a woman was telling a man what to do. Not only did Augusta believe that a woman should never tell a man what to do, but she didn't recognize this woman. She wasn't Smith's wife. Now, I'm not sure if he had a wife or if it was just the fact that a woman was in a man's home who she wasn't married to that really did it for Augusta and got her all worked up. But either way, she went nuts. She was screaming at her, calling her a harlot for being at this man's house, just so on and so forth. Never mind the fact that Smith had probably invited her over, or the fact that he was literally killing an animal in front of them. That wasn't evil in Augusta's eyes because it was being done by a man.

It was the woman in this situation who was the problem. And that was genuinely how Augusta felt about all women. But for Ed, his mom was the exception. He didn't see her as one of those evil women, just as she likely never saw herself as one of the evil women that she taught about. Ed saw his mother as caring, nurturing, God-fearing mother that he loved, so he really bought into whatever she told him. So when it came to her kid's friends, it didn't matter if they were boys or girls that he was trying to be friends with. Even though women to her were immoral and evil, Most boys were also sinners for one thing or another in her eyes, and really there was no winning either way. Everyone had evil in them. It was like she wanted to keep her kids as pure as possible from the outside world. So by 1957, it's no wonder that Ed didn't really change. He had lived like this since he was born, basically. But for Deputy Frank Warden, it felt like Ed's behavior was getting a little more and more concerning. He felt like Ed had really let himself go over the years.

Apparently, Ed came into town less and less, making himself even more of a recluse than what he had already been his whole life, which was saying a lot. His clothes were always dirty. He smelled. His hair was always unwashed and matted down, and it seemed like he had almost given up on life. Sometimes that can make for a very dangerous person when they feel like they have nothing left to lose. So to Deputy Warden, there were some red flags about Ed. And honestly, he was their only real lead that they had gotten only a few days after Bernice went missing. So it makes sense that they would want to do their due diligence. Time is of the essence. So this all made Ed their person of interest. Now, when it comes to the exact timeline of events of what happened next, I have seen some conflicting statements. The majority of the sources that I used claim that Ed was taken into custody based on the suspicion of Bernice's disappearance alone. Apparently, they arrested Ed while he was out at a local grocery store. But what I do know for sure is that while Ed was at the police station, officers went out to search his farmhouse.

He actually had inherited and lived in this exact one that he had grown up in. And what they found when they got there is unlike anything you've ever heard before. And this is where things get really nasty and disturbing. So don't say I didn't warn you.

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I want to leave.

Then let's leave. From the author of It Ends With Us. Don't you want to know why they were together? I think my mom's going insane. And the director of The Fault in Our Stars. Hi, I don't know if you're doing properly.

I introduced Charlie Have.

You're the boy that kidnapped my daughter from her father's funeral.

Is that not you?

This will be fine.

Regredding you in Cinemas October 24. Book now, Sir 12A.

Life can have a way of surprising you.

No regrets, right?

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By the time they had arrested Ed and made it out to the farm, it was night time, and there wasn't any electricity in this old farmhouse. So the officers had to do their entire search using flashlights. They started by going through his shed. And from the outside looking in, it was a normal shed on this desolate and nearly empty farmland. But what was behind the closed doors of that shed was something that the investigators would never be able to unsee for as long as they lived. Inside was the unrecognizable body of a woman, headless and hanging upside down by her ankles from the rafters. Her wrists were tied together, and her body had been cut open from her vagina down to the sternum. Nearby, they also found the head of the woman inside a burlap sac, and it had been shot with a 22 caliber rifle. Now, finding these remains in the state that they were in was beyond horrifying. I mean, there is no other way to put it, but they were just one thing in Ed's self-made Museum of darkness. In Inside the house was an equally, if not more, disturbing scene. Now, first things first.

The house had been practically entirely boarded up, making sure that no one could see what was inside. In the kitchen, on top of the stove, they found what they believed to be the heart of the woman inside a plastic bag. They also noticed that the bowls in the kitchen weren't normal kitchen bowls. They were bowls that were made out of human skulls. Every to where the investigators turned. They kept finding bones, then pieces of skin, and this is so gross, but they also found masks that were made out of these faces from the skin. While searching the house, the investigators also found a box just lying around the house, almost like an old useless sports trophy from years past. But inside of this box was another decapitated head, and the skin from her face had been completely removed, which they did find in a container nearby. Her face had very clearly been carefully, like with surgical precision, been removed from her head and skull, creating a perfectly curated mask with eye holes and an open mouth. Horrifying. In a room nearby, investigators then discovered human lips attached to the window shade, a lamp shade made entirely of a human face stretched out around the whole circumference of the shade.

And there were also chairs found that had been upholstered with human skin where normal fabric should have been. And oh, guys, I'm not even done yet, if you can believe it, because in the room that Ed had turned into his bedroom after boarding up most of the house, it was actually even worse. Human skulls adorned each of his bedposts. There was a waist basket, again, made of stretched out human skin. There was a shoe box in his closet that contained nine different preserved vulvas, a belt made from multiple female nipples that had all been stitched together, a corset made from a female torso that had been skinned from the shoulder to waist area, still whole and still intact. If you didn't know any better, you would have thought that it was fake, like some twisted special effect from a horror movie like Texas Chainsaw Massaker or Silence of the Lambs. Again, this was the case that drew the inspiration for those films. Which can you just imagine that for a moment? You're walking through this true house of horrors. You are seeing masks made out of human flesh, skulls as trinkets around the house and as decoration on bedposts, body parts, human organs.

I mean, it is so haunting. He even had made pants out of the skin of female legs. There were multiple different masks of faces that all belonged to people's loved ones. Some other notable things that were found inside the farmhouse were multiple different preserved noses, random bones just lying around, and also a collection of fingernails. It took the investigators and everyone that they called in for back up an entire week to search this farmhouse and the surrounding acres. And aside from the rooms that Ed had boarded up in memory of his mother Augusta, who had passed away by this point, the rest of the house was a total mess, almost like to a hoarder level, just a disaster. You could barely even walk through some of the rooms, and there was just stuff thrown everywhere. So they really had to dig through everything to determine what was trash and what was junk and what was actual evidence? But obviously, the next step for the investigators was to talk to Ed. And surprisingly, Ed told detectives what they needed to hear, who these women were. Ed confessed that the first set of remains that they found belonged to Bernice Warden, who went missing from her hardware shop back in 1957.

He confessed to using a 22 rifle from inside the store, specifically with his own bullet that he bought from the store. And that first face that the detectives found that had been scanned? Well, that was Mary Hogan, the tavern owner who went missing in 1954. But what about all the other crazy stuff that was discovered inside his house, right? Well, Ed also admitted to something else that wasn't murder, but it was just as sick and twisted, and it would explain all of the body parts inside his home. Ed confessed that around 1947, he was reeling from his mother's his death that happened a couple of years earlier. She was only in her 60s at the time of her death, but again, for the time, that wasn't necessarily unheard of, not to mention she had already suffered a stroke that left her almost completely paralyzed. Then, four days after Christmas, in 1945, Augusta had a second stroke, and this time, she didn't come out of it alive. It was a pivotal turning point in Ed's life. Her death did something to him, like it had unlocked something in him that had been hiding in the shadows for so long.

It was now just Ed on this big empty farm, and all he thought about was Augusta and how much he missed her. Everything in the house reminded him of her, all the way to the point where he boarded up any of the rooms that she had regularly used. First, it was the entire upstairs, then the parlor room downstairs, then the living room that she always used. Next thing he knew, more than half of the house was boarded up, almost like an old abandoned home with nobody living there, except Ed still was. Then by 1947, Ed said that he began digging up graves. But eventually, that didn't feel like enough, and that was when he decided to start the grave robbing, which The term grave robbing honestly feels like it doesn't even do it justice with what he actually did. Because when I think of grave robbing, I think of someone searching for lost treasure, jewelry that maybe is buried with loved ones, possessions, things like that. But Ed didn't care what was on the inside of those caskets. He just wanted the bodies. He wanted to rob them of the bodies. And he particularly looked for women who were middle-aged, searching for any type of resemblance to his mother.

He also looked for fresh graves where the bodies wouldn't be too far gone into the natural decomposition process. It was clear that Augusta's death had unraveled him. He was trying to preserve her memory within the home, boarding things up and essentially turning the entire house into this shrine in memory of her, and almost trying to recreate her, bring her back to life. He claimed that this happened regularly from 1947 to 1952. But eventually, he got bored with it. That feeling that he got from robbing graves and creating different things out of the body parts just didn't feel as thrilling anymore. So that was when he decided to kill Mary and Bernice. He'd never actually experienced killing the person whose body parts he was going to mess around with. Everyone else had died from their own things, whether it was natural causes or whatever. And the point is, they hadn't died at the hands of Ed. So Bernice and Mary were now something thrilling and new for him. Which you might be thinking, how the hell did he not get caught when he was grave robbing for years? It's pretty crazy to imagine, but it was actually pretty easy for him.

First of all, he would do these grave robbings at night in very rural areas where grave robbings had never been an issue before. So it's not like there were people at the cemetery who were on watch at all hours of the night. Secondly, he would choose fresh graves, meaning that the dug up dirt was still fresh. It had no grass that had grown over it. So when he dug the caskets up, stole the bodies, and then reburried the caskets, the graves essentially looked the exact same. Nobody would have ever thought anything different if they came back to their loved ones' graves to grieve and to set flowers or do whatever. In fact, the graves all looked so untouched that when Ed first confessed to the majority of the remains in his house being from dug-up graves, the investigators thought that he was lying. They assumed that he had probably just kidnapped and killed multiple different people, just like with Mary and Bernice. A news article published on November 25th, so a little over a week after Bernice first went missing, claimed that the investigators didn't believe that Ed would have been able to pull something like that off overnight, especially alone and at his age.

But he was like, Yeah, well, go check it out. You'll see that I'm not lying. Ed gave them the names of two women, Eleanor Adams and Mabel Everson, both women who were buried in the Planefield Cemetery. And sure enough, when they excavated the graves, both caskets were empty. And apparently in the above one of the caskets were dentures and a wedding ring just lying around, which they assume that Ed had just thrown them after he retrieved the bodies. And there are even more strange details when it comes to Ed and his grave robbing days. Apparently, he described being in a days when he was in all of these cemeteries. And when he estimated how many times he went to different cemeteries, he claimed that it could have been upwards of 40 times. However, where he claimed that during most of those visits, he would come out of his days almost like this state that he was in, and he would leave the graves and go home, taking nothing. He said that he could only remember actually robbing around nine different graves. But to this day, nobody knows exactly how many graves Ed actually robbed, which is insane.

I know he said around nine, and maybe that is the truth, but over the years, people have wondered, is it even possible for the amount of human that were found in that farmhouse to have only come from nine people? Well, I guess technically, 11, if you count Mary and Bernice. But imagine going to a grave in Plainfield, thinking that your great grandmother is buried there. Only for her casket down below to be empty, even though no one had ever suspected that she could have been a grave robbing victim of his. That might actually be someone's reality out there. Maybe even some of you who are hearing this story right now. It's so unnerving. I mean, who knows? So understandably, a lot of people in the Planefield community just wanted to know one thing here. Why? Why dig up graves? Why skin people? Why did Ed kill anyone at all? As human beings, we all want explanations. We want anything that can help our brains understand these complex and horrific situations better. And well, Ed, he had an answer, one that he thought was simple, even though I highly doubt that anybody else would agree. He hadn't just done this for fun.

There was motivation behind it.

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He wanted to create what he called a quote, woman suit, all so he could become his mother, quite literally living inside of her skin. Her death had been so hard on him that he couldn't imagine going on with his life without her. And if he could, in his own weird way, quote, be inside of her skin, then it would be like he didn't have to live without her at that she could live through him. They say that everyone mourns the loss of those they love differently, but this definitely takes the cake as the craziest shit that I have ever heard. However, the true number of people he killed is also pretty up in the air, just like the grave robbing victims. But there is one death in particular that has people curious about if his first victim wasn't any of the women that you have heard about up until this point. But instead, people wonder if he could have been responsible for a death within his own family from 13 years earlier. It was a typical day for the Geen brothers back in 1944. Ed and Henry had been working on the farm, burning away some of the marsh vegetation that was on the property, but at some point during the day, the fire had gotten out of hand, and Ed had to call in the local fire department.

It took a minute because this was farmland and there were a lot of acres to handle, but finally, they got the flames out, and Ed thanked the crew and they left. No big deal. But only Ed had talked to the firefighters that day. Later, long after they left, he called the local authorities, telling them that his brother Henry was missing. And broadly enough, he had been missing all day. He claimed that Henry had specifically gone missing during the fire when they had both gone their separate ways trying to put it out. But he hadn't mentioned that to the firefighters earlier. This was the first time he was bringing it up. So the authorities and a bunch of people from the community gathered with lanterns at this property, at the Geen Farmhouse, and they started searching for Henry. And eventually, someone found him. But it wasn't good. Henry was lying face down, dead on top of the burned ground. Now, his body, interestingly enough, hadn't been burned. They declared Henry's cause of death as heart failure. He was just 43 years old the time, and it was the same thing that their father had died of just a few years before.

So heart issues did likely run in the family. Maybe Henry had been trying to put out the fire and had collapsed right then and there. I mean, remember, it was 1944, and we're talking about a tiny rural farming community. There wasn't some complex investigation into this. Henry's death was brushed off as random and unfortunate. In fact, the police refused to accept that Henry had died of anything other than natural causes, and they refused to conduct an investigation. They also didn't allow an autopsy to be done. Apparently, it was found that Henry had some bruising on his head at the time of his death, which might not seem like a lot, but now when you combine it with Ed's stories of that day, the fire, he and Henry not being on the best of terms, and what we're about to get into, people are wondering if foul play was involved. Somehow, the county coroner was able to later change Henry's cause of death from heart failure to asphyxiation. I know it doesn't really make any sense. Like I said, there was never an in-depth investigation, but his brother Henry's death was pretty suspicious, given everything that came to light years later.

People really started to question what had happened to Henry that day, and they started to wonder if Henry could have even been Ed's first victim. It was treated as an accident at the time. And Ed's victims, even those whose graves were robbed, were all people who were similar to his mother. So Henry would have definitely been different. But it also doesn't make it impossible. Even though we will most definitely never know the answer, I got to say, I could totally see it, especially since Ed saw Henry as someone who had been corrupted by outside influences and evil. More than that, he was someone who Ed felt had disrespected their mom, Augusta. Even though Ed and Henry weren't too far apart in age, they could not have been any less alike. We know, Ed believed everything their mother told them, but Henry just wasn't buying any of it, especially the older he got. But there was a specific moment that caused a huge shift in the family dynamics, which could explain why Ed would hate his brother enough to maybe kill him. Ed and Henry were still living at home on the farm when their father, George, died of heart failure.

He was 66. Still fairly young in the grand scheme of things, but for the 1940s, not too crazy. And the family wasn't really all that heartbroken about it. Or at least Ed and Augusta weren't. Augusta had despised George for years and whatever she said and believed, so did Ed. Now, Henry may have felt differently. I'm not sure. It's not as well documented. Augusta, like the majority of women at that time, didn't work. She stayed at home raising Ed and his older brother Henry while also taking care of all the household duties. So when George died, they basically now had no income. So that left Ed and Henry to make sure that everything ran smoothly and the bills were paid. And they both did a bunch of odd jobs, not unlike their dad, and just trying to make ends meet. But George's death hadn't exactly brought these brothers together. Henry was helping out with the family property and the expenses, but he was also trying to branch out and live his own life. He was in his late 30s, and to be fair, a lot of people in that era died in their 60s. I mean, their dad's death had confirmed that for him.

So Henry was like someone in this midlife crisis, just figuring out what his next step was going to be and not wanting to waste Any more of his life away, he started dating a woman in town. She was divorced and had two kids, and the experience was really eye-opening for him. Pretty soon, he knew that he loved her and he wanted to move in with her and with her kids in the near future. He wanted them to be a family. But Ed was pissed. In his head, it was almost like he just assumed that he and Henry would live with their mom forever. After all, other women were evil, right? So now the fact that Henry was in love with one of these women and planning on moving in with her, it felt like he had turned to the dark side, I mean, as far as Ed was concerned. And Ed expressed these concerns, which only resulted in him and Henry falling out even more, having even more of a fractured relationship. Then, one day, Henry told Ed how he really felt about everything. He told Ed how his attachment to their mom was unhealthy, worrisome.

He tried to engage in a healthy debate with Ed over some of Augusta's more intense teachings that they had been force-fed over the years, but Ed was not having it. To him, it was just the devil getting to Henry. Augusta had warned Ed of these very kinds of things. He just never thought that it would play out in someone so close to him. Sin could come into people's lives in a multitude of ways. But Ed knew deep down that it was the woman that Henry was seeing who was tainting his soul, and that he was just sitting back and allowing it to happen despite everything that their mother had so lovingly taught them. So it's safe to say that Ed and Henry didn't really get along, and maybe so much so that Ed wouldn't even bat an eye at killing him. But technically, technically, technically, Mary and Bernice were the only two people to ever die at his hands. He can't even be classified as a serial killer by the qualifications of three or more people, even though a lot of people do refer to him as a serial killer. However, the true number of people he killed is also pretty up in the air, just like the grave robbing victims.

Then there are all the weird disappearances around Planefield that I went over earlier. Ed never confessed to any of them, and there was never enough evidence to say for sure that he was involved. But I have to admit, the dots that people have connected over the years are pretty interesting. For example, eight-year-old Georgia Wechler, who went missing after getting a ride home from school back in 1947, we talked about her, some witnesses claimed that they saw a dark-colored 1936 Ford Sedan driving near the family home that day around the same time that she would have disappeared. And at the time, Ed owned a black 1937 Ford. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe that was a super common vehicle in the area and everyone owned one. But then there was Evelyn, the babysitter who went missing in 1953. After Ed's arrest, the investigators specifically asked him about Evelyn, but he denied having any involvement. Her remains also were never found at his house as far as the investigators could tell, which doesn't really line up with everything that we know about Ed. We know that he would keep them as trophies, usually, but it was still concerning.

He even took two lie detector tests that specifically asked about Evelyn's case, which, of course, we know can be faulty, but he passed both of them. The only thing that the investigators were able to really ever prove that connected him, and I use that term very loosely, was the fact that he was allegedly visiting a relative who lived a few blocks away from the house that Evelyn was at when she was babysitting the same time that she would have gone missing. So again, coincidence? I'm not sure. There's a reason why her case is still unsolved 71 years later. I mean, you could argue that Georgia and Evelyn didn't fit his MO. They were kids, and he was most likely targeting women like his mom, more middle-aged. And with that, Henry also definitely was an outlier. But I also noticed something that could potentially be a pattern, though, again, maybe just a total coincidence. Henry And Georgia and Georgia's deaths and disappearances were both in May. The other victims and potential victims either disappeared or were killed in between the months of October to December. So I guess I'm curious, do you at all find that to almost seem like a pattern.

I mean, sure, these deaths and disappearances were spread out all throughout the years. But does there come a time when you say, How odd is it that multiple people are going missing in Planefield during the month of October? Or whatever the month is. Also, not to be grotesque, but going back to the belt that was made out of nipples sewn together. We know most people only have two, right? So how do you get a belt with more than that on there if there are not more victims, which I guess could be argued with the grave robbing victims, but it makes me wonder. I don't know. Like I said, maybe I'm just thinking too deeply into it and finding patterns that really aren't even there, but I do want to know what you guys think about all of that. I'm just trying to look at anything and everything that could indicate that Ed killed way more people than we even know about. Then there's the fact that most of the body parts found in Ed's house were taken to the state crime lab, photographed, and then disposed of, whatever that even means. It's not like, and not to be graphic, but just to be real, it's not like each nipple and each vulva was reunited with the rest of its body to be sure that everything lined up and that the authorities were aware of every single victim.

That just wasn't the case. Place. It was like multiple different puzzles just thrown together where all of the pieces are colliding and nothing really comes together to make complete sense. So the majority of the body parts were unclaimed. How can we ever really be sure how many people there were or weren't? It's both a terrifying and a heartbreaking thought. Now, there are some other theories that have been shared over the years. Both Ed and the characters based off of him started to get the reputation as not only a sadistic killer, but a cannibal. Now, where exactly these rumors started, I have no idea. I mean, it makes sense. But from my research, there was never any actual proof to indicate that Ed was a cannibal. Cannibalism was something that he never would confess to doing, but people certainly did have their suspicions about it. Apparently, it's rumors that he was very well known for giving people some meat that he claimed was venison. And even before his crimes were discovered, nobody really ever thought anything of it. Afterwards, though, people were pretty horrified because come to think of it, nobody really had known him to be much of a hunter.

And then there was the fact that Bernice had been hung like a deer. So maybe Ed didn't hunt animals at all. Maybe he only practices hunting skills on human beings. So people worried after the fact that every time Ed had come to town handing out venison, that maybe they had actually been ingesting human meat. But who knows? Like I said, that is all just hearsay, but I definitely would believe it. Maybe he never specifically was a cannibal, but forced others to be one without their knowledge, which is somehow worse, right? I mean, I don't think he was above doing something horrific like that. So now, back in 1957, Ed was arrained on just one count of first-degree murder for the death of Bernice Warden. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Now, during this time, he was formally evaluated and diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he was ultimately found incompetent to stand trial. For the next decade, he stayed in a maximum security state hospital. Then, in 1968, he was found to be competent enough to stand trial, and he was found guilty. But then in a second court proceeding regarding his sanity, he was again found not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was ordered to spend the rest of his life in a mental facility.

In the end, he was only really held responsible for Bernice's death. The courts claimed that Mary's death was never part of the legal process due to prohibitive costs. I mean, I guess regardless Regardless, he would have been put into this mental facility for the rest of his life, but it just feels like there's no accountability for the majority of the crimes that he did, which is just frustrating and really sad. Ed's case has just grown to Fame over the decades, if that's what you even want to call it, but it's pretty clear why. And in a lot of true crime cases, there's a perpetrator, victims, a motive, etc. But in this case, there are so many things that are left unknown. We don't have a clear number of victims. We don't have names of every grave that Ed ever robbed. Yet if you ask someone who knows true crime or serial killers, and you ask them whether they know exactly who Ed Geen is or not, chances are they do already have a pretty solid idea from everything that's out there about him and everything out there that is based on him. And obviously, his crimes were used as the haunting inspiration for so many horror movies just because they were so unprecedented.

Just one of a kind in the most negative way possible, things that will stick with you for life. After Ed's arrest, the farmhouse and everything inside, aside from the actual body parts, was supposed to be auctioned off on March 30th, 1958. Go Ghost Hunter, Zack Bagans, actually claims that he owns a cauldron that was found inside Ed Gean's home that was used to dispose the internal organs. He even dedicated a whole room to it in his haunted museum in Vegas. Apparently, he bought it from someone who said they purchased it at the auction, though I did see that there was a fire 10 days before the auction that destroyed most of the things inside the home. So whether or not that story about getting it from someone who was at the auction that day is true. I I don't know, but it's pretty interesting if it is. I personally would never want any memorabilia like that ever. So as for Ed, Ed ended up dying in 1984 at the age of 77. And despite being dead for over four decades, his crimes are still just as talked about as if they happened yesterday. It's hard to forget about something as gruesome as what he did.

I'm not sure as a society, we will ever be able to forget what happened. Which thank you guys so much for watching this case. I know it was heavy. I know that it was a lot to take in, and I really, really want to hear your thoughts. So drop a comment below or leave a review. Let me know what you think. And now, as you learned at the beginning of this episode, today we launched 10 to Life as a podcast. But what I didn't say, and what maybe some of you have already noticed, is that this is not the only episode that you're getting today. This is actually one of two episodes that you can watch or listen to right right now. We're also reopening another wild story for you that you may have heard before, but not like this. If you're watching on YouTube, I need you to hit that subscribe button, or if you're listening as a podcast, hit the Follow button and go check out the other episode that just dropped today. It's seriously nuts, and it is another case that I really wanted to break down with you and share with you.

And even more than that, I want to hear your opinions on it. So thanks again for tuning in to Tend to Life. I will see you next time, and as always, stay safe. Bye.

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