Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield - REAL Crime Scene Locations 4K

sometimes i'm amazed at how quiet the world can be living in a city such as los angeles it's easy to forget that there are places like this that exist the middle of nowhere but truth be told there are little pieces of middle of nowheres hidden throughout the world you just need to know where to look sometimes it's just hidden right in plain sight and what i mean by this if i were to walk straight across this field there's a major highway running through wisconsin right now i'm standing on a back road in plainfield wisconsin now if you're a fan of haar i'm sure you know alfred hitchcock's movie the psycho it's based off of a book same title psycho and i'm sure again if you're a fan of horror you've seen texas chainsaw massacre or at least know of the villain leatherface they're all based off of one man one individual that lived here in plainfield wisconsin and technically only killed two people but most of his crimes he would go into cemeteries three separate cemeteries here in his hometown of plainfield and dig up freshly buried corpses he was known as the butcher of plainfield some even called him the plainfield goal the world knew him as ed gein for more than a century the movies have brought our most vivid nightmares to life often the fear is conjured from fantasy from imagining the unimaginable but it's even more frightening when the demons are real based on a true story just that small phrase that these events actually happened sort of makes the film much more both relevant and much more terrifying norman bates and psycho leatherface and the texas chainsaw massacre buffalo bill and the silence of the lambs each of these characters had its origins in the same true story the unspeakable crimes of a single man his name was ed gein is there's still some snow on the ground not as much as what we were experiencing earlier in wisconsin in the past couple days now right now we're driving down 2nd avenue to the corner of 2nd and archer and that's where ed gein's farm house once stood the plainfield wisconsin house of horrors whatever you want to call it look at [Music] this the trees are definitely starting to get thicker back here i you know what this is this is pretty much exactly how i pictured the surroundings would look for ed gein's farmhouse all right so here we are second and archer so where the hell are you this is one of those locations that's been completely erased from time because of the horrors that happened here the town people of plainfield wisconsin really want nothing to do with it now there isn't anything to line up so i'm going to put some photos of the way the house the farmhouse used to look but there still is a gate here i highly doubt it's the original gate but here behind this gate is the property that once belonged to the gene family this is one of those stories real life accounts when it comes to a serial killer that actually makes me sick november 16 1957 is whenever ed gein was caught and we're going to talk about that in just a moment but in 1958 almost i guess almost a year later the day before the farmhouse and the property were to be auctioned off it burned down there will be an option here palm sunday but this house and the personal belongings of ed gein will be conspicuously absent call it an act of god or whatever you will the main attraction will be missing reduced to a massive rubble by a mysterious fire arson of course if i'm not mistaken there was some nobody really knows let's just leave it at that there's all kinds of different theories online but nobody really knows except for one thing it burned down the day before it was to be auctioned people here in town were scared that his farmhouse and everything because of everything that was found inside the farmhouse that this place would become a bit of a macabre tourist attraction and they prevented that from happening by lighting the place on fire somebody did somebody did now let's give you a little bit of history about ed gein and his family and what happened here the backstory to the family now if you're familiar with the story of psycho norman bates his relationship with his mother owning a hotel creepy house on the hill and you never really get to see mother and it's kind of implied that she's always in this chair looking out a window correct well in real life ed gein his father his mother her mother his mother's name was augusta and his brother henry lived here in plainfield now father died of a heart attack it left ed henry and augusta taking care of the farmhouse now ed and henry were both handymen they worked around town they took care of things they fixed things they helped out here on the farm they were good boys they're good brothers now at some point there was a pretty big fire here on the farm and a lot of it burnt down the houses were fine but once they put out the fire they found henry face down dead now it was believed that he had a heart attack like his father upon further investigation later on they found bruises like he had been hit in the back of the head nothing ever came of it not too long after that ed and his mother there's a movie called ed and his dead mother not too long after that ed's mother augusta has a stroke and it pretty much keeps her immobilized she's stuck in the chair stays on the house and ed gein starts taking care of her and they become closer and closer and closer still for a fast forward a little bit further ed and his mother head down to the smith farm don't know where that is but they go there and to pick up straw now when they get there the mother augusta witnesses mr smith beating a dog all accounts the news say that he that mr smith beat the dog to death and ed's mother augusta pretty much lost it but what really pushed her over the edge what really pissed her off is there was a woman that mr smith wasn't married to that came out of the house to see what all the commotion was and she went off on a tangent and called her the smith harlot amongst a bunch of other things and kept ed little eddie from visiting mr smith again because of the smith harlot it sounds familiar right it's almost like the book the movie is taken from real life you just change the location and it's practically the same story right yeah well i run the office and uh attend the cabins and grounds and and do little uh errands for my mother the one she allows i might be capable of doing would you go out with friends well a boy's best friend is his mother the movie psycho is one of alfred hitchcock's most well-known movies and it's pretty freaking terrifying to this day and it's probably because pretty much the entire story is taken from the real life ed gein crazy right i tried searching for old maps or crime scene drawings about the gene farm house here where everything was can't really line it up now straight ahead where jessica's walking it looks like at one point there was a driveway that went back that way but also today there's another driveway that goes there so i'm not entirely sure which one now let's say here go ahead and stop right there let's say for instance all the photos of ed gein's farmhouse were taken from right where i'm standing okay so they would have pulled in um the front of the house is what we're looking at behind the house was a shed i guess you would say all farm houses have them now the day that ed gein was captured what was found in that shed i'm sorry what was found in this entire house was beyond disgusting but what was found in that shed it just defies anything you could think of i'm a little hesitant about reading this because honestly it is a bit too much it's making me a little queasy but history is history and you need to remember these things searching the house authorities found whole human bones and fragments a wastebasket made of human skin human skin covering several chair seats skulls on his bed posts female skulls some with the tops sewn 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 which was his second victim his second confirmed victim mary hogan's skull in a box bernice warden's entire head in a burlap sack bernice warden's heart in a plastic bag in front of gene's pot belly stove nine vulva in a shoe box a young girl's dress and the vulvas of two females judged to have been about 15 years old a belt made from the female from female human nipples four noses a pair of lips on a window shade drawsting straw drawstring i'm sorry a lampshade made from the skin of a human face fingernails from female fingers this is just small bed ed gain not aside from doing odd jobs around town fixing things he also did a lot of babysitting for a lot of the families he was very good with kids right uh there was a young boy i think he was like 14 or 15 who used to come over to the farmhouse and play and after ed gein was caught he told the authorities that he'd had no idea about all this stuff but he knew that ed gein had a collection of shrunken heads that he collected i think whenever he was in the army or his dad was in the army it turns out those shrunken heads were actual face masks that he would take and then he would stretch and pull over his head again texas chainsaw massacre all of this pretty much came about after his mother died he absolutely lost it for some reason when she died he went to the cemetery within a day or two and dug her up skinned her and made a suit so he can wear his mother and be close to her over time after he was caught he admitted to going into three separate cemeteries here in plainfield wisconsin 40 different times around 30 of those he said he woke up in a days and he left the 10 other ones he actually brought back freshly buried remains of people that in his hometown the authorities didn't believe them i mean it's 1957 right i mean hearing this you don't really believe it the authorities didn't believe them so they had ed gein take them to the cemeteries and point which plot he dug the remains from what he was doing as people died he would go out there and dig the fresh graves take valuables and whatever he can to make his collection out of and then he would fill in the holes so the fan the town had no clue so there was even one account whenever the police dug up one of the graves they opened up the coffin and the body was gone and the crowbar was laying there in its place he left it behind and covered it back up we do not glorify these monsters which is odd because you see their horrors that they've done to society in entertainment and horror so it's this weird kind of fascination that we as human beings have like right now it's cold but my legs are shaking because this is probably the messed up most messed up location we've ever done and there's nothing here as you can see it looks beautiful am i right it's beautiful but here on this property the nightmares are just unimaginable now one of the things that we love doing here at the grim life collective is walk history try to make sense of some of the the facts the different dates how things happened and with that being said let's paint a little picture what you're looking at right now is the corner of the gain family property i don't know if you can make out the stop sign in it that's the corner of second and archer street now if we were to go up to that stop sign and make a right that would take us about seven miles to get to plainfield wisconsin all right so on the night of november 15 1957 i do believe ed gain goes in town and he stops at a hardware store that is owned by a woman by the name of bernice warden right it was it was one of his two victims again he only killed two people he put an order in for antifreeze she wrote out a receipt and then she disappeared the next morning the shop never opened up hunting season a lot of people believe that everybody was out in the woods hunting everybody not many people thought too much about it all right later on that day around five o'clock around time to close bernie swarden's son who was a deputy shows up the doors are locked he gets in finds the cash register is open there's blood on the wall and bernice is nowhere to be found quickly they see that the last transaction was for ed gene his name was right there armed with the receipt that says ed gain on it they track him down he was at a a grocery store not too far from the hardware store they go inside they arrest them and then they come out here and they search the farmhouse for bernice now here is where things get really nasty that shed that was behind the farmhouse they found bernice warden hanging back there upside down um decapitated and she was gutted like a deer which means essentially she was split she was split yeah we've seen it in movies again people draw on real life i mean the movie terrifying the movie hannibal texas chainsaw massacre you've seen this crime scene so many times yeah we're not going to show the photo you can find it but trust me you've seen this crime scene what i'm about to say i've only ever said one other time and that's whenever we visited the location where jeffrey dahmer's apartment building once stood in milwaukee usually i hate when history good or bad is torn down but i am very happy that this place that somebody burned down the farmhouse and nothing has been built on the property since now if we keep going back that way there are new sheds back there but the fact that nothing is here that they did their best to erase what happened here i commend them for it our next stop is the plainfield cemetery here in plainfield wisconsin this is the final resting place of ed gein himself as well as the two people that he admitted to killing mary hogan and bernice warden mary hogan she's in an unmarked grave they found her remains determined it was her and they put her in an unmarked grave but ed gein he's here without a headstone and bernice is here and we're going to find her as well as expected ed gein spent the rest of his life in prison well not exactly prison uh he was deemed criminally insane so he spent the rest of his life up until he died july 26 1984 from respiratory failure inside in an asylum on july 26 1984 ed gein died of respiratory failure he was 77 years old [Music] there wasn't too much emotion at that time there wasn't much talk going on in town other than he's gone he's dead edging ended up being buried in the most appropriate place for him right next to his mother in the plainfield cemetery you know ever since her own death in 1945 it had been his great dream to to get back to her and finally in death he had achieved that he is actually buried here in plainfield right next to his parents his tombstone has been stolen countless times so it's no longer here you from what i understand i mean there might be something there now that somebody put but from all accounts his tombstone's not there but the spot between his parents is so you can easily see and visit him if you want to call and visit i mean just to just let's just say see history there are two graves in the united states that i've always wanted to visit not because i was excited to see him but just out of this weird fascination with true crime the first one being charles stark weather who's buried in lincoln nebraska and the other one is the grave the final resting place of ed gein it's one of those stories he's one of those monsters that does not seem real but he is the grave to the left is henry gene which was ed's brother the one in the middle is augusta ed's mother and the one on the far right is his father george and you can see right in the middle there that there's this indentation somebody has taken some grave dirt that is where ed gein is buried the butcher of plainfield the plainfield ghoul the man responsible for so much i'm just going to say disgustedness horridness in the world i know i'm going to catch some sort of hell for saying this but even though he was a monster and he definitely had some something messed up going on upstairs but at least he's buried here with his family sounds really twisted to say mother augusta w again 1878-1945 father george p gean 1873-1940 basically the death that started it all the family in the game family here in plainfield and there's ed's brother henry g 1901-1944 this is the kind of stuff that gave me nightmares more than any of the movies was reading about people like ed gaine right next to his mother in a way it's pretty much exactly where he belongs right there's a black spot on this earth which is ed gein if the story of ed gein doesn't make you sick i mean it should it it has to but another twist of fate for some god-awful reason bernice warden the woman who owned the hardware store that ed gein went to and purchased antifreeze ended up killing her bringing her back to the farmhouse stringing her up and just doing unthinkable things to her she's buried in the same cemetery and a stone's throw from where her killer is buried and jessica's already walked ahead of me again there's no way of knowing where mary hogan she owned a tavern in town there's no way of knowing where she her final resting place is she was one of the people that the the bones and the remains and they just decided to keep it secret so there it is so this is the warden family plot so if you're standing in plainfield cemetery and you're looking directly at the warden family plot bernice her final resting place is right in front of it bernie c 1899-1957 now just gonna be honest this doesn't sit right with me i mean i get it plainfield is a small town but there are what three other cemeteries here and for some reason bernice warden is buried almost right next door to the gene family in fact right now i have them both in the same photo in the same shot now filming this particular video it feels a little a little weird i mean this is probably the most disgusting horrifying crime that i know of and and i do this for a living and at the same exact time i feel like we're walking through open fields and through the forest and really showing you nothing a lot of times when crimes like this happen the town the community the society people do whatever they can to forget it or to erase it becomes a black stain on their town i mean because of ed gein plainfield wisconsin will live on forever i mean his name will live on forever in both movies as well as in true crime books and and the way people study criminals it's just i i don't know i don't know if it's because i've donated most of my life to seeking out the darker things and then we've been really seriously going on these adventures and seeking out these places for the past five years um this one just feels different right it's very bizarre it's not just a tale of brutality it's not just a tale of rage and violence or anything like that it's also grave robbing mutilating bodies and for the most part especially as a female aha's victims were female and what he did to the corpses were female and it's a it's a weird sexual perversion too at the same time but also at the same exact time he went on record and said that he never had sex or did any sexual acts with any of the bodies because they smelled too bad but the fascination is obviously there yeah because of the body parts he he ultimately was trying to and this is just putting it bluntly basically you get the feeling the more you study that he was trying to recreate or resurrect his mother the only woman he ever had love from or interaction right when his brother henry was still alive and he got married and he left the farm he expressed a lot of concern that edward edward edward um ed was getting too close to his mother and it really pissed ed off and it got to the point where henry was telling ed listen mom isn't the angel that you think he is that she is and he just freaking lost it he was overprotective he loved her it was all he knew i mean even today in 2022 50 some odd years later plainfield wisconsin there's really nothing here respectfully there's really nothing here it's just i don't know it's a psychological curiosity why minds work the way they do nature versus nurture you know there's a lot of that argument here and we don't know enough about his upbringing to draw on that factor but it it makes your mind spin it really does the realest monster i could think of in real life personified and at the same time there's nothing here to go oh that's ed i mean his he's there but his name's not even there you know what i mean it's like it's like it doesn't exist how can something so horrible exist but it does a little bit ago i said that there's really nothing here in plainfield and i couldn't have been more wrong now i'm going to correct myself that where we were at was probably about like seven miles outside of town that's where ed gain lived now right now we're walking down main street here in plainfield as you can see by this giant billboard on the side of the building here on the other side of this about a block down is where bernice warden her hardware store was right now we're walking down to the intersection of maine and north now you see that building that's across the street to the right of jessica it is a hardware store well it's vacant now in the past it was a true value but back in the 1950s that is where the wardens hardware store was now the sun is playing tricks with me but right about where jessica is standing where this photo was taken now at the time back in 1957 right where we're standing right now there were it was a gas station you can see gas pumps in this shot now if we get a little bit closer you can see that this portion of the building right there has the word wardens on it and you can also see that building across the street a little bit in the background it changed a little bit but how cool is that now in the same photograph i'm going to show you in just a moment you can see this building in the far background and right next to it like it's attached to it you can see a smaller building almost like a little shed and it has a bit of a slanted roof now if you look right over here let's see if i can get it you see the change in the brick on the wall it's like a 45 degree slant that is this is the the exact spot where this smaller little shed-like building was and you can see it in this photo right there you can see that big building and then the small building with a slanted roof right next to it crazy right a lot has definitely changed in the small wisconsin town of plainfield but a lot of it still remains the same i'm having a really hard time though just imagining somebody like ed gein driving through town stopping in this building right over here for antifreeze and then shooting bernice warden in the head and then taking her out to the farmhouse just on the outskirts of town at the same time this place is just so peaceful here in plainfield there are three different cemeteries that are in close proximity to the geen farm house first one being plainfield where ed and two of his victims were buried the other two they're relatively close what you're looking at right now a spirit land cemetery one of the three like i said where gene would sneak into in the middle of the night at least 40 different times he told investigators and he would sneak into these cemeteries dig up freshly buried people take them back to his farmhouse and then his twisted imagination would would take over look at this gate spirit land cemetery now as far as i know it's darn near impossible to find out which graves ed dug there's got to be some sort of record on it now again he would wait until somebody in the town in the area died and then he would go out at night within days dig up the freshly dug up soil and then cover his tracks whenever he was done fill in the hole dogs are going crazy that's another thing we always encounter barking dogs leaf blowers i don't think they're used to visitors there's just one house nearby that's it that's right that's a small cemetery so i think we're about the middle right now so i'm just gonna do a quick 360 view of this place and that's it it's pretty surreal to be walking through this cemetery knowing what happened here a baby goal i know it was the middle of the night whenever gene would come here and do his grave robbing but it's such a small cemetery if you look right over here to your left just behind those stones you can actually see a road now the middle of the night there's probably not much traffic there's not much traffic now but i would think that you know he would probably want to be hidden from sight right but i guess it really all depends on where these people were buried that he would dig up probably back this truck in there's enough trees around and this was back in the 50s so people didn't really live as near cemeteries as they do now but if we wanted to i'm sure we could scour the headstones and find that year right but that would be a lot of work and some some don't even have ears written on them though so i keep going back to the thought that i find it so incredibly hard to imagine that this took place in this small town i mean i guess it just goes to show you just never know where something like this is going to happen always be aware of your surroundings those who are close to you and even more so those who are not after he was arrested different locals they they didn't think anything of it seeing headlights driving through the cemeteries in the middle of the night as they drove by it definitely is pretty eerie to just kind of stand here at this point in this video we have visited all three cemeteries that gene would dig graves and take people back to his farmhouse that it's mind-blowing right like a lot of places here in plainfield things have been torn down anything that was associated with ed gein now bernice warden she was the only murderer that gene was charged with but the other person mary hogan that he confessed to killing she owned a bar it was a tavern that was located right here on this property right behind where those trees are this is the driveway that went up to it now one night after closing ed gein shot her put her in the back of the truck and took her back out to the farm for years i'm talking years it was a cold case nobody knew what the heck happened to her was she dead was she alive did she run away did something happen to her nobody had no clue after gene was arrested one of the detectives the officers recognized her severed head in a bag in his house and he confessed to it as far as i know these are the only locations that still exist today in one way shape or form telling the story of ed gein about i think probably about an hour southeast of here is the jail where he was arrested they took him down and they put him there um that's still there you can take a tour of it they're closed today they have these weird hours so we're not going to be able to make it down there but other than that there's really not much to see anymore with that being said thank you for joining us on another dare i say grim adventure uh an adventure that i've been wanting to make ever since i first read about it in fact i think ed gein the story of geen this was the very first true crime story i have ever came across and what a doozy it is until next time happy halloween is

Channel: grimmlifecollective

Views: 477,904

Keywords: Ed Gein, Ed Gein Documentary, Ed Gein Bailey Sarian, Ed Gein Trailer, Ed Gein Band, Ed Gein House Location, Ed Gein Infographics, Ed Gein Movie Clips, Ed Gein American Psycho, Ed Gein Eleanor Neale, Ed Gein Arrest Footage, Ed Gein Serial Killer, Ed Gein True Crime, Serial Killer Documentary, Serial Killer Interview, Serial Killers, Serial Killer Stories, Ed Gein The Butcher of Plainfield, Ed Gein The Plainfield Ghoul, Ed Gein THE GRIMM Life Collective, True Crime, History

Id: oaRQrgHtwcA

Length: 42min 43sec (2563 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022