Who Did Ed Gein Kill? What to Know About Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden By Jessica Sager

Ed Gein is one of the United States’ most infamous killers.

In the 1950s, Gein, nicknamed “The Butcher of Plainfield,” was a killer and grave robber who used his victims’ skin and other body parts to make clothing, masks, chairs, a lampshade and more household items. Gein’s crimes are dramatized in the Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which premiered on Oct. 3.

Gein was ultimately arrested in 1957 after he was linked to the disappearance of a local hardware store owner named Bernice Worden, per History. Authorities later found Worden’s dismembered body — and his gruesome creations — in his Wisconsin farm house.

While Monster viewers may learn about Gein’s crimes, they may be surprised by the number of slayings that have actually been linked to him. Here’s everything to know about Ed Gein’s victims.

Ed Gein confessed to two killings

Gein has admitted to murdering two women: Mary Hogan and Worden.

Worden, 58, was born in Canton, Ill., on May 9, 1899, and moved to Plainfield, Wis., with her parents when she was a child. She ran a local shop, Worden Hardware and Implement Store, that her late husband, Leon, founded.

According to Worden’s obituary in the Stevens Point Journal, she was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star (a co-ed masonic group) and the local American Legion Auxiliary. She was survived by her son Frank Worden, daughter Miriam Walker, three brothers, one sister and four grandchildren.

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In Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein, locals alleged Gein once asked Worden on a date, but he denied it, telling investigators, “No, I never asked her that way. It was just in a joke. You see, this roller rink has opened up here, and I said, ‘Do you skate?’ And she says, ‘No.’ I says, ‘Well, I’d like to have somebody go with me to hold me up because I’ve never rollerskated in my life either.’ ”

On Nov. 16, 1957, Frank alerted police that his mother was missing when he entered the family store and saw a pool of blood on the floor and Gein’s name listed as the last receipt Bernice wrote, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Worden was found dead later that night in a woodshed adjoining Gein’s house, hanging from her heels. Her body was decapitated and eviscerated.

Authorities found the remains of a missing woman in Ed Gein’s home

Gein’s other confirmed killing was of Hogan.

Hogan was reportedly born in Germany and moved to Portage County, Wis., from Cicero, Ill., around 1949. Hogan was married twice, but was single at the time of her slaying, per the Stevens Point Journal.

Hogan owned a tavern in Plainfield, but only opened it up in the daytime to customers she knew personally, citing her fear of strangers. She lived in the same building that housed her tavern, where she reportedly often hid large sums of money.

Hogan was last seen alive in her tavern on Dec. 8, 1954, between 4:40 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. At that point, a neighbor came in and saw bloodstains throughout the space, according to the Stevens Point Journal.

In recordings unveiled in Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein, Gein told authorities he’d been in Hogan’s tavern “probably three times” before murdering her. Locals recalled Gein joking about Hogan when she was missing, but they didn’t take it seriously at the time.

Authorities found Hogan’s skull in Gein’s home, and he later admitted to killing her, per TIME.

Gein’s victims reminded him of his mother

Gein had two stated motives for the murders of Worden and Hogan, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Wisconsin winter made soil too hard to dig up graves of already-deceased people, and his victims reminded him of his late mother, Augusta Gein.

Gein was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, per A&E Crime + Investigation.

“His schizophrenia made him feel very lonely and abandoned by his mother and perhaps is why he heard voices telling him to get another mother,” forensic psychiatrist Carole Lieberman told the outlet in March 2025.

Most of the bodies in his house weren’t from his murder victims

Most of the body parts in Gein’s home — which he fashioned into clothing and household items — were from corpses he dug up from a local cemetery. One of the graves he exhumed adjoined that of his mother’s, according to TIME.

Gein told investigators that he read the local Plainfield Paper and followed obituaries so he could dig up fresh graves with softer soil, per Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein. He admitted that with some of the corpses he exhumed, he’d only take their heads and sex organs.

He later told authorities that he’d be in a “haze” when killing and robbing graves, explaining, “[I] said, ‘What am I doing?’ It scared me, you know, because I realized then that what I was doing was wrong, I shouldn’t do anything like that.”

Gein added that he’d often “come to” when he got home.

He was never convicted of murder, despite admitting he killed two women

Gein was never convicted of his crimes because he was declared mentally incompetent, according to The New York Times. He was ultimately remanded to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Wisconsin.

He died on July 26, 1984, of a lung condition. He was 77 years old.