Augusta Gein, Ed Gein's Mother: The Real Story of His 'Abnormal Love'

Augusta Gein, the mother of serial killer Ed Gein, features prominently in his story. Ed Gein's unhealthy obsession with his domineering mother was a key narrative in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Psycho, which was based on the Plainfield, WI, murderer.

Gein told authorities that "he killed some of the dead women because they resembled his mother," UPI reported in 1984. Psychiatrists described him as having an "abnormal love" for her, the story says.

The Gein story is being told by Ryan Murphy on Netflix as the latest installment in his Monster series. Lauri Metcalf plays Augusta Wilhelmine Gein in the series. According to the Wisconsin State Historical Society, between 1947 and his arrest in 1957, Gein “is believed to have robbed graves in three local cemeteries and killed at least two people.” Ed Gein even "made chairs and lamp shades out of human skin which he carefully tanned for that purpose," the Society quoted a judge as saying.

A 1974 article in the Times-Tribunedescribed how Gein wanted to be freed from a mental institution where he was sent in the 1950s. The article describes him as “mild and soft-spoken and somehow that was even chillier.” And the story described Augusta Gein in vivid detail down to her "stiff sateen dresses."

According to that article,

• Gein lived with his parents, George and Augusta Gein, and older brother Henry on a “rundown 195-acre farm seven miles from Plainfield,” described as a “village of 680 residents about 125 miles northwest of Milwaukee.” (Whether he killed Henry Gein is a matter of dispute.)

• The other Geins were described as “unneighborly and uncommunicative.”

• Augusta Gein “dominated the household. She was a stern woman who generally wore stiff sateen dresses and had straight dull hair drawn tightly to a prim knot at her nape.”
• The article says Augusta “would warn Ed over and over about women. They were hand-maidens of the devil. She didn’t include herself, of course, in that category.”

Both his father and brother died in the 1940s.

Ed Gein Nursed His Mother, Augusta Wilhelmine Gein, When She 'Had a Paralytic Stroke'

Eventually, the article says, Gein’s mother “had a paralytic stroke. Ed nursed her himself, but for his tender care she died. He turned her room into a shrine.”

In 2001, a film suggested that Gein “had incestuous longings and was so obsessively lonely that he tried to bring Augusta Gein back to life,” The Los Angeles Times reported. “In time, he would imagine her commanding him to kill, and he may have even wanted to become his own mother.”

The only way to discuss PSYCHO is through the people who inspired it — Ed Gein and his mother Augusta. pic.twitter.com/od6ywitMyb

— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) January 25, 2020

A 1958 article in the New York Daily Newssays that Augusta Gein “was not the sort of wife or mother to be wished on any man. She ruled her roost in stiff sateen dresses, which she herself contrived to conceal every womanly contour. Her straight, lusterless hair was drawn tightly across her scalp and fastened in a prim chignon in back."

Ed Gein 'Worshipped' His Mother Augusta, News Articles in the 1950s Say

Gein “worshipped his mother,” and the Daily News article claims he performed his first grave robbery after going to Plainfield Cemetery to visit his mother’s grave.

Augusta Gein was described as an “austere and forbidding mother.” In 1957, the Nashville Bannerrevealed that Gein's mother was "German-born."

She taught her sons to play violin, zither, and the accordion, that story says. Deeply religious, she believed women shouldn't "wear corsets, patent-leather shoes, nor dresses that showed their ankles," according to the Nashville Banner.

Gein's dad, George Gein, "died of a heart disorder in 1940." Augusta Gein would only live for five more years. Henry died the year before she did. And then Ed Gein was alone.

"Several strokes" left Gein's mother an invalid for months before she died, according to the Banner story.

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