Monster: The Ed Gein Story – What happened to Ed Gein? Details explained in depth 

Notorious serial killer and grave robber Ed Gein, the focus of Ryan Murphy's latest Monster: The Ed Gein Story on Netflix, may not carry the same infamy as Dahmer or Ted Bundy, but his gruesome legacy is just as terrifying.

Ed Gein, infamously dubbed as The Plainfield Ghoul and The Mad Butcher, confessed to killing two women, a hardware store owner, Bernice Worden and a saloonkeeper, Mary Hogan, in 1957. He was also linked with several other eerie disappearances in the late 1950s in Wisconsin.

Additionally, the police also linked Ed Gein with exhuming female corpses from local graveyards to fashion their skin and bones into keepsakes. The notorious serial killer wanted to create a physical 'woman's suit' like her mother and 'literally crawl into her skin'. The police found battered skulls, Worden's human heart, Hogan's skull in a box and many more horror paraphernalia from his house in Plainfield, Wisconsin.

While the Monster: The Ed Gein Story killer confessed to killing the two women, he was found unfit to stand trial and was instead sent to a mental health facility, where he remained till his death in 1984.

More on Monster: The Ed Gein Story in our story.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story – What happened to Ed Gein?

Ed Gein's horrific streak came to a halt in November 1957, when Bernice Worden's son, Deputy Sheriff Frank Worden, discovered that the serial killer was the last buyer from her mother's hardware store. The police found Worden and Hogan's remains from Gein's 'House of Horrors', following which, he also confessed to both the killings. However, he refused to accept the claims of necrophilia and cannibalism.

On November 21, 1957, Ed Gein was arraigned on the first-degree murder of Bernice Worden at the Waushara County Court. As depicted in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, his defense pleaded not guilty by reason of sanity, following which he was deemed unfit to stand trial. Additionally, Gein was also diagnosed with schizophrenia and was sentenced to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

In 1968, Ed Gein was retried in court after a doctor reported him to be mentally able to counsel in his defense. While the serial killer had confessed to Mary Hogan's murder, he was tried for only one murder, that of Worden, due to prohibitive costs.

Ed Gein underwent two trials in 1968 with Judge Robert H. Gollmar (without a jury) on the charges of insanity and first-degree murder. A psychiatrist claimed that Ed Gein had confessed to different accounts of Bernice Worden's murder. While one account claimed the killing was intentional, the other claimed that the gun was fired accidentally.

The Monster: The Ed Gein Story killer was found guilty by Gollmar for Bernice Worden's murder. However, the judge found him "not guilty by reason of insanity," and he spent the rest of his years in a mental facility, the Mendota State Hospital in Madison.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story-- The aftermath of Ed Gein's trial

The Plainfield Ghoul died on July 26, 1984 (at the age of 77), due to respiratory failure caused by lung cancer, at the Mendota Mental Health Institute. He was buried between his parents and brother in the Plainfield Cemetery with a marked gravestone, until it was stolen in 2000. While the authorities discovered it in June 2001, they placed it in storage at the Waushara County Sheriff's Department, leaving his gravesite unmarked at present.

Additionally, Monster: The Ed Gein Story killer's House of Horror was destroyed in a suspicious house fire in 1958, ten days before it was scheduled to be auctioned. The land was later sold and is currently empty. Lastly, Gein's Ford Sedan, the vehicle he used to transport Worden and Hogan's bodies from their respective stores to his house, was bought by carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons at a public auction for $760. The American funfair owner charged 25¢ admission to see the infamous Ford Sedan.

Ed Gein's story also became popular in American culture and became the inspiration for Robert Bloch's 1959 suspense novel, Psycho. English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock immortalized Ed Gein's twisted tale in his 1960 adaptation of Bloch's novel, where Norman Bates' character was modelled after the infamous serial killer. In addition to Bates, American pop culture is rife with Ed Gein's fictional counterparts, including Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs and Dr. Oliver Thredson in Murphy's 2012 TV series American Horror Story: Asylum.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is streaming on Netflix.

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