Based on the amount of bizarre news out of the Badger State over the years, Wisconsin could give Florida a run for its money as more deserving of its very own Fark label. Three notable murderers — Jeffrey Dahmer, Julian Carlton, Chai Vang – came to mind when I spotted this first-day account of the 1957 arrest of Ed Gein on the front page of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune.

Wisconsin Farmer Admits
‘Killing for Seven Years’

New Victim’s
Body Found
Hung in Shed

By TRYGVE M. AGER and WORTH BINGHAM
Minneapolis Tribune Staff Writers

WAUTOMA, Wis. – A pale, five-foot tall farmer curved his fingers into claws Sunday and told police “I’ve been killing for seven years” while crime laboratory experts sifted through bones found in a human slaughterhouse on his farm.

HUNG UP by the heels and “dressed out like a steer” in the farmer’s shed was the decapitated body of Mrs. Bernice Worden, 58, Plainfield storekeeper who had been missing since Saturday afternoon. In and around the shed were the bones of an estimated four or five women.

Clippings were found in the junk-littered house detailing violent deaths of a number of women in Wisconsin whose slayers have never been found, authorities revealed.

Jailed in Wautoma was the farmer, Ed Gein, 50. He at first denied taking Mrs. Worden to the farm, but later admitted it, authorities said. The farm is six miles west of Plainfield.

Mrs. Worden’s body had been cut open and the internal organs removed, authorities said. Her heart was found in a pot on the stove.

SEVERAL items of children[’]s clothing were found near the shed, authorities said.

The ashen-faced farmer told police he had ten skulls on the farm, but refused to say where they came from.

“It appears to be cannibalism,” said District Attorney Earl Kileen.

When Gein was asked by authorities to re-enact the crime he stepped toward the officers with his hands curved into claws, according to Herbert J. Wanserski, Portage county sheriff.

WAUSHARA county sheriff’s deputies were reportedly considering moving Gein to another location following reports that feeling in the community was rising against him.

Kileen said the man would be arraigned in county court today, but said a specific charge had not been determined.

The discovery came on the heels of the disappearance of Mrs. Worden from her downtown implement shop Saturday.

A blood-spattered store pickup truck that disappeared with its owner was found near the Gein farm later in the day. Gein was arrested shortly afterward on a neighboring farm.

THE VICTIM’S son, Frank, who operated the store with her, returned from deer hunting at 5:15 Saturday to find the store locked.

Ed Gein and Sheriff Arthur Schley. (Minneapolis Tribune photo by John Croft)

Letting himself in with his own key, Worden saw a pool of blood on the floor and noticed the cash register was missing. He notified Sheriff Arthur Schley of Waushara county.

Gein’s arrest came after deer hunters told Schley they had seen the farmer driving the Worden truck earlier in the day.

The crime recalled several similar disappearances in the same general area of the state.

“THERE IS some possibility that we may have the murderer of Evelyn Hartley,” Kileen said. Gein is originally from La Crosse, scene of the famous abduction four years ago.

There too, bloodstains on the garage of a home where she was baby-sitting offered evidence that the 15-year-old girl had put up a struggle. La Crosse is about 100 miles from Plainfield.

AUTHORITIES also speculated that Gein might be the missing link in the still unsolved disappearance of eight-year-old Georgia Jean Weckler in 1947.

Georgia disappeared from her parents’ home in Fort Atkinson, Wis., May 2, 1947. Authorities said then that all clues indicated the child was taken “with criminal intent.”

A convict at Waupun state prison, already serving a life term for rape and murder, “confessed” the murder in December of 1947.

The man who the Waupun convict said was his companion in the crime, however, denied any knowledge of it under a lie detector test.

A second convict, in Nebraska, also “confessed” the murder. Authorities labeled it “vivid imagination.”

From nearby Stevens Point, came Sheriff Wanserski to question the suspect about the mysterious disappearance of Mary Hogan, 54, in December, 1955.

The woman disappeared from her dingy crossroads tavern in Stevens Point, leaving a spilled cup of coffee and a pool of blood on the floor.

THE TAVERN had been robbed of more than $3,000, but a trail of blood leading from the barroom ended in the tavern parking lot. The body has never been found.

It was reported that a skull X-ray, dated Sept. 9, 1939, and bearing Mary Hogan’s name, was brought to Wautoma last nigh by a Portage county deputy sheriff.

Worden told authorities Gein visited his mother Saturday and asked her to go roller skating. Worden said his mother refused with the comment she had not roller skated “for years.”

The farmer then asked him if he was going deer hunting, Worden said, but Worden refused to answer.

Mrs. Worden, a slight, gray-haired woman, had no known enemies, according to police. She has a married daughter living in Lincoln, Neb. Her husband, Leon, died in 1931.

Mrs. Worden operated the store with her son since the death of her husband. She lived alone in her home six blocks from the store.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Kileen said of the farmer’s shed. “I couldn’t sleep a wink Saturday night.”

	Gein’s kitchen was a bit messy, to say the least. (Star Tribune file photo)

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