Killer Ed Gein Got Caught Because of a Purchase He Made — Here's What Happened

Prolific true crime author Harold Schechter might be the world's foremost expert on Ed Gein, the killer who would later be dubbed the Butcher of Plainfield. Back in 1989 he published his first book titled Deviant, which was about the depraved crimes of the Wisconsin farmer.

In a conversation with true crime author Laura James, Schechter revealed that what interests him the most is why some killers enter into the zeitgeist while others fade away.

Schechter is fascinated by who becomes a legendary figure in the genre and who simply vanishes into the annals of history. Gein was not a serial killer. People find his story captivating based on what Gein was trying to do when he became a grave robber, intent on keeping his mother alive in a very sick and twisted way.

Like many killers, Gein wasn't a genius. Police caught him because Gein made a foolish mistake. Here's how it happened.

On Nov. 15, 1957, Gein went down to Worden Hardware & Implement store to ask its proprietor, Bernice Worden, about the price of antifreeze. He returned the following day, when deer season was starting, per the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center (SCHRC).

This is significant because that would mean much of Plainfield would be occupied.

Gein was also interested in buying a new .22 gun, which is why he brought a .22 shell along with him. At the hardware store, it was just Worden and Gein, who asked to see one of the guns.

After Worden handed it to him, Gein loaded it and fatally shot the 58-year-old woman. When her son returned to the store hours later, he found a trail of blood and a receipt for antifreeze with one name on it: Ed Gein.

That's when authorities headed to his farm, only to discover a true house of horrors.

According to Time Magazine, Gein was finishing a dinner of pork chops, macaroni and cheese, Dickies, coffee, and cookies when police knocked on his door.

They found Worden's body hanging by its heels in Gein's kitchen. She had been eviscerated and field-dressed like a deer. Her heart had been removed and was in a plastic bag on the stove. Worden's decapitated head was found in a cardboard box.

When asked about Worden's murder and what he did to her body, Gein said he was "sort of in a daze-like" state. He also admitted to another murder that occurred three years prior in 1954. Gein first met Mary Hogan in 1951 when he stopped by her tavern in Pine Grove.

The 54-year-old bar owner reminded Gein of his late mother, a fact he could not stop thinking about.

Gein returned to the bar on Dec. 8, 1954, and shot Hogan. He then dragged her away, leaving bloodstains all over the establishment, per the Stevens Point Journal. Although Gein remembered what he did before and after Hogan disappeared, he told authorities that he had no memory of that day.

Hogan's face had been removed from her skull and fashioned into a mask that police found while searching his house. Other, more disturbing items were found, but Gein claimed those came from dead bodies.