Confirmed On the morning of November 16, 1957, 58-year-old Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared. The hardware store's truck was seen driving out from the rear of the building at around 9:30a.m. The store saw few customers the entire day; some area residents believed that this was because of deer hunting season. Frank Worden told investigators that on the evening before his mother's disappearance, Gein had been in the store and was expected to return the next morning for a gallon of
antifreeze. A sales slip for the antifreeze was the last receipt written by Bernice Worden on the morning that she disappeared. That evening, Gein was arrested at a West Plainfield grocery store, and the
Waushara County Sheriff's Department searched the Gein farm. Worden had been shot with a
.22-caliber rifle, and mutilations were made after her death. Searching Gein's house, authorities found: • Whole human bones and fragments • A wastebasket made of human skin • Human skin covering several chairs • Human skulls mounted on bedposts • Female skulls, some with the tops sawn off • Bowls made from human skulls • A
corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist •
Leggings made from human leg skin • Masks made from the skin of female heads • Mary Hogan's face mask in a paper bag • Mary Hogan's skull in a box • Bernice Worden's entire head in a burlap sack • Bernice Worden's heart "in a plastic bag in front of Gein's potbelly stove" • Nine
vulvas in a shoebox • A young girl's dress and "the vulvas of two females judged to have been about fifteen years old" • A belt made from female human nipples • Four noses On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his
paraphernalia. Gein admitted to stealing from nine graves and led investigators to them. Allan Wilimovsky of the state crime laboratory participated in opening three test graves identified by Gein. The caskets were inside wooden boxes. The top boards ran crossways, not lengthwise. The tops of the boxes were about below the surface in sandy soil. Gein had robbed the graves soon after the funerals, while the graves were incomplete. The test graves were exhumed because authorities were uncertain as to whether the slight Gein was capable of single-handedly digging up a grave during an evening. They were found as Gein described: one casket was empty; another casket was empty but contained a few bones and Gein's crowbar, and the final casket had most of the body missing yet Gein had returned rings and some body parts. Thus, Gein's confession was largely corroborated. Soon after his mother's death, Gein began to create a "woman suit" so that "he could become his mother—to literally crawl into her skin." During the state crime laboratory interrogation, Gein admitted to shooting 51-year-old Mary Hogan, a tavern owner who had been missing since December 8, 1954. Her head was later found in his house, though he denied any memory of the details surrounding her death. A 16-year-old youth, whose parents were friends of Gein and who attended baseball games and movies with him, reported that Gein kept
shrunken heads in his house, which he had described as relics sent by a cousin who had served in the Philippines during World War II. Upon investigation by police, these were determined to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from corpses and used by Gein as masks. During questioning, Sheriff Art Schley reportedly assaulted Gein by banging his head and face into a brick wall. As a result, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible. Schley died of heart failure in 1968 at the age of 43, before Gein's trial. Many who knew Schley said he was traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and this, along with the fear of having to testify, especially about assaulting Gein, caused his death.
Suspected Gein was considered a suspect in several other unsolved cases in Wisconsin. In November 1957, authorities confronted Gein with missing persons cases that had occurred between the death of his mother and that of Worden. Their suspicions were further aroused after the discovery of Hogan's remains.
Lie detector tests failed to implicate Gein of any other murders, and his psychiatrists concluded that his violence was only directed to women who physically resembled his mother. • Georgia Jean Weckler (8) disappeared near her home in
Fort Atkinson at approximately 3:30 p.m. on May 1, 1947. She was given a lift home from grade school in
Jefferson by a neighbor, who dropped Weckler off at the lane that led from
U.S. Highway 12 to the Weckler farm. Weckler was last seen pausing to open the family mailbox and removing a stack of mail. Witnesses reported seeing a dark-colored, possibly black,
1936 Ford sedan with a gray plastic spotlight in the vicinity that afternoon. Gein owned a black
1937 Ford. •
Evelyn Grace Hartley (14) went missing while babysitting a 20-month-old girl at the home of
La Crosse State College professor Viggo Rasmussen on the evening of October 24, 1953. That evening, her father Richard called the Rasmussen residence several times after she failed to check in as planned at 8:30 p.m.; he received no answer. Concerned, he drove to the Rasmussen house to find the doors were locked, the lights and radio on and items scattered all over the house. The living room furniture had been moved around to different places, as were Evelyn's school books. Richard found her shoes in different rooms, one shoe upstairs and one downstairs. He found his daughter's broken glasses upstairs. Richard did not find Evelyn in the house. After his arrest, Gein was questioned regarding Hartley's disappearance, but he denied involvement and passed two lie detector tests. Police found no trace of Hartley's remains during a search of Gein's property. • Victor Harold Travis (42), a resident of
Adams County, went off to hunt deer in the company of acquaintance Raymond Burgess on November 1, 1952. In the late afternoon, the pair stopped for refreshments at Mac's Bar in Plainfield for several hours. At around 7 p.m., they both left the bar, got into Burgess' car and drove away. The hunters, along with the car Burgess was driving, were never seen again, and no trace of them was ever found. Travis and Burgess had been hunting on the property next to Gein's farm, despite his objections to them hunting on the day of their disappearance. • Gein has been tentatively linked to the June 1954 disappearance of his neighbor James Walsh (32). Walsh and his wife lived near Gein, who performed chores for Mrs. Walsh after her husband went missing. ==Aftermath==