Like Norman Bates in 'Psycho,' Ed Gein Was Pathologically Obsessed With His Mother
Augusta Gein was a bit of a boy mom.
Published Aug. 28 2025, 1:19 p.m. ET
What is it about some mothers and their sons that is so deeply inappropriate? Of all the works inspired by Ed Gein's crimes, Psycho is the only one that references the bizarre relationship between the killer and his mother.
Naturally, the movie didn't get it 100 percent right, but the feelings it evoked were certainly close to what Gein reportedly experienced: obsession, fear, and a codependency like no other. What did Ed Gein's mother do to him? Here's what we know.
Ed Gein's mother was a deeply religious person who despised women.
A little more than two weeks after Gein was arrested in connection to the death of Bernice Worden, Time did an exposé on the killer. According to the December 1957 piece, Augusta Gein was a deeply religious woman whose ire was mostly focused on modern women. She railed against their shorter skirts, makeup, and hair, which by then was styled in loose waves around their shoulders. Gein would grow to hate women as well.
Augusta spent much of her time reading the Bible to her two sons. She was born to German immigrants from Prussia fled their country in the mid-19th century during the great Old Lutheran exodus, per The New Zealand Herald. The teachings of the Old Lutherans are heavily rooted in the idea that all of humanity is destined to go to hell because everything they do is tainted with sin. This is how you get Augusta telling her sons that sex is a sin.
Marriage reportedly made Augusta miserable, but her religious beliefs wouldn't allow her to leave. To add insult to injury, she always wanted a girl but ended up with two boys. Because of this, Augusta raised Gein to be more sensitive. She also kept her son isolated from the world by scolding him whenever he made a friend. Every possible pal was always described as a bad person who came from a horrible family. Gein never left the family home.
Gein turned his mother's bedroom into a shrine after she died.
Augusta died from a stroke on Aug. 29, 1945, five years after her husband passed away and one year after her other son, Henry, died from mysterious circumstances. Gein was alone in the only home he ever knew, prompting him to board up her bedroom and sitting rooms. They were treated almost as if they were in a museum.
For the next 12 years, Gein turned his childhood home into a house of horrors. He was arrested in November 1957 in connection with the deaths of two women: Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan. When police searched the house, they found Worden's body hanging by her heels in the kitchen. She had been eviscerated and dressed like a wild animal. Worden's head was in a box, and her heart was in a plastic bag.
Evidence of Hogan's murder couldn't be identified, as the house contained numerous parts from bodies that Gein exhumed from a local cemetery. Authorities found 10 skins of human heads as well as assorted pieces of human skin — some between the pages of magazines, some made into small belts, some used to upholster chair seats. They also found a box of noses. Psychiatrists at the time attributed the murders to Gein's hatred of other women, which was taught to him by his mother.