From childhood, Gein had been ambiguous about his masculinity. He also developed a deeply unhealthy fascination with the intimate anatomy of the female body and he avidly read medical encyclopedias and books on anatomy as well as pulp horror novels and pornographic magazines. He was also particularly interested in the Nazi crimes of WWII and the medical experiments which they performed on Jews in the concentration camps.

Soon he began to experiment for himself by digging up female corpses by night in various Wisconsin cemeteries. The first corpse came from a grave less than a dozen feet away from the last resting place of his mother. For ten years Ed followed the same procedure. He would check the newspaper for fresh burials, then visit the graveyard at the time of a full moon, get either the whole corpse or occasionally, just the parts he wanted, fill in the grave and take home his loot.

Once safe in the farmhouse, he would dissect the bodies, and separate and keep certain body parts - the heads, livers, hearts, intestines and sex organs. Then he would skin the body and drape the whole skin over a tailor's dummy. Sometimes he would wear the top, complete with breasts, which he called his "woman's suit", and dance round the homestead under the night sky, which gave him intense gratification.







