Was Ed Gein a Cannibal? What the Evidence Really Says By Sean Neumann

Ed Gein may have used human skulls as soup bowls, but was he a cannibal?

That question has swirled recently in the wake of the new season of Netflix’s true-crime drama series Monster, which documents the life and crimes of the infamous killer.

Gein, whose killing spree throughout the 1950s gained global media attention as the grisly details of his perverse murders came to light, ultimately confessed to killing two women and robbing countless graves over the years before he was finally caught in 1957.

The quiet and reserved Plainfield, Wis., farmer became known as “The Butcher of Plainfield” after authorities revealed how Gein would dismember human bodies and repurpose everything from their skin to their limbs to make household items, face masks, and even kitchen utensils. 

But while the Ryan Murphy-directed Netflix series raises questions about Gein’s actions, multiple media reports in the past have previously cleared up the lingering mystery surrounding the killer’s affinity for the human body.

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“Apparently Gein practiced neither cannibalism nor necrophilia, but preserved the remains just to look at,” TIME reported in 1957, answering the questions often raised soon after his arrest that year. 

Gein reportedly kept tabs on local obituaries to keep an eye out for fresh bodies being buried at his local cemeteries, according to TIME. The lonely farmer would then go dig up the gravesites he read about in the paper and steal body parts to preserve, according to TIME.

PEOPLE previously described how Gein’s complicated relationship with his mother partly inspired the gruesome crimes he committed in the years after her death in 1945. Citing psychologists’ contemporary evaluations, TIME wrote that Gein’s development “had somehow been arrested so that he continued, childlike, to perceive people as mere objects,” which influenced his fascination with using the deceased’s body parts. 

TIME reported that, according to the psychiatrists, cutting up body parts and preserving them “satisfied two contradictory urges” for Gein: “to bring [his mother] back to life and have her with him always, and to destroy her as the cause of his frustration.”

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While Gein read books about cannibalism, according to A&E, his interest in human anatomy never turned to hunger. Instead, according to the network, Gein found bodies unappealing in a cannibalistic and sexual way because, as he told investigators after his arrest, “they smelled too bad.”

Although Gein confessed to killing two women — while authorities discovered remains connected to at least 10 women on his property — the killer was found not guilty by reason of insanity, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Instead, Gein was confined to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wis., where he remained until he died at the age of 77 in 1984.