Ed Gein Stitched a ‘Woman Suit’ to ‘Become’ His Mother — The Real Horror Behind ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Killer

Ed Gein’s deep attachment to his late mother shaped his isolated life in haunting ways. That fixation would eventually draw national attention — and influence the creation of some of Hollywood’s most chilling characters, including the killer in the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.

In the 1991 blockbuster based on Thomas Harris’ 1988 bestseller, a character known as Buffalo Bill murders and skins women, eerily echoing Gein’s mode of operation. Comparably, Norman Bates in the 1960 film Psycho develops a split personality of his mother and commits murder while dressed as her. Gein’s crimes continue to inspire Hollywood, most recently in the third season of the Netflix anthology series Monster, which began streaming Oct. 3 and stars Charlie Hunnam as Gein.

Gein’s house of horrors came to light in November 1957 when police arrived at his farm in Plainfield, Wisc., investigating the disappearance of local hardware store owner Bernice Worden.

Authorities discovered Worden’s body — decapitated, mutilated and hung upside down like a deer in the barn — but that was just the beginning. Inside the house, they found human skulls and other miscellaneous body parts. Also recovered was a lampshade and a “woman suit” stitched from the skin of corpses which Gein had robbed from local graveyards, A&E reported.

Gein admitted to exhuming the corpses and using the skin to recreate and become his mother, who died of a stroke in 1945. Unlike typical serial killers, Gein was only charged with killing two women — Worden and missing tavern owner Mary Hogan — but was never convicted after being deemed mentally insane, per History.com. 

According to A&E, forensic psychologist Carole Lieberman said Gein’s strict upbringing with a devout Christian mother, who only allowed him and his brother to leave the home for school, left him with an unhealthy emotional attachment to her. She raised them to believe that the world was sinful and corrupt.

“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 told the outlet, calling it an “oedipal relationship.”

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“[Gein had] a sexual, romantic attraction to his mother,” Lieberman added.

Gein’s older brother became more independent as they got older while Gein stayed in isolation with his mother, Augusta. But after his brother mysteriously died while putting out a brush fire on the property in 1944, his mother had two paralyzing strokes — leaving him as her caretaker until she died a year later, A&E reported.

Authorities believe the loss of his mother fueled the violence, as he reportedly told investigators in his confession that a “force built up in me” in the years after she died.

Gein’s alcoholic father died four years before his brother.

Dubbed the “Butcher of Plainfield,” Gein remained institutionalized until his death in 1984 at the age of 77 due to complications from lung cancer.