Table Of ContentSMALL TOWN
WISCONSIN
by Verna King Gruhlke
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SMALL TOWN
WISCONSIN
by
Verna King Gruhlke
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MADISON, WISCONSIN
First Edition
Library of Congress Card Number 77-165-336
Copyrighted, 1971 by Verna King Gruhlke, All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America for
Wisconsin House, Ltd., by Straus Printing
and Publishing Co., Inc., Madison, Wisconsin
Designed by Dru Maki
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Cannibalism, USA 1
2. Frieridly Village . . 10
3. The Reverend and Mrs. Warren Baxnes 13
4. The Unhappy Days 18
5. Let's Get A way . . 27
6. Several of My Parents' Favorite People 35
7. When Men Ate Angels' Food 47
8. Spanish Flu and Fruitcake 60
9. Village Characters 66
10. Little Girls Are Cuter 75
11. What Did You Do for Excitement? 82
12. Old Gxandma Jew 92
13. The Little Black Book 96
14. The Show's the Thing 104
15. The Chatauqua Is Coming! 112
16. Culture, Limited .. . . .. 117
17. Santa Claus and the Town Drunkard 126
18. County Fair . ......... . ... 133
19. Dad's Irish Relation and the County Fair 143
20. Fresh Breeze from Canada 148
21. For Love's Sake Only 158
22. Wautoma Is Invaded 163
23. Wautoma Adjusts, Reluctantly 169
24. Homeless Near A Thousand Homes 177
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"To Lydia & Margaret with Love"
I-Cannibalism, U.S.A.
Imagine waking up some morning, turning on a radio or
picking up a newspaper, and being confronted with the news that
your hometown ai·ea, the scene of your nostalgic daydreams, is in
reality the setting for one of the most heinous crimes of the
present day. This is exactly what happened to me in November,
1957, when Ed Gein, an apparently harmless little farmer living in
Waushara County, was suddenly discovered to be one of the most
monstrous criminals of all time.
The story began when Mrs. Bernice Worden, who ran the
hardware store in Plainfield, Wisconsin, disappeared and her son
found bloodstains in the store. Mrs. Worden had been working
alone that Saturday morning and not many people recalled having
seen her; the town was almost deserted since most of the men in
the vicinity were out deer hunting.
The last entry in Mrs. Worden's sales book revealed that she
had sold several quarts of antifreeze. Her son recalled that Ed Gein
had been in the store several days previously saying that he would
be in again soon to purchase some.
Smely there was no reason to believe that mild-mannered
soft-spoken Ed Gein, fifty-one years old, who often hired QUt as a
baby-sitter for his neighbors, would have anything to do with the
disappearance of a woman as popular and attractive as Mrs.
Worden. But acting on a hunch, her son told the sheriff about the
antifreeze, and the sheriff drove out to Gein 's farmhouse to look it
over.
How horrified he must have been to step into the dark
summer kitchen and see there in the shadows Mrs. Worden's nude
body, hanging by its feet, headless, and disembowelled exactly as
if it were the carcass of a deer! But that was not all - fmther
investigation revealed ten other human heads in the house, some
carefully wrapped in cellophane; a chair upholstered in human
skin; and vests made of skin and parts of women's bodies which
Gein admitted wrapping about himself as he spent the long
evening hours alone in his dreary out-of-the-way farmhouse.
Eai·l Riordan, the district attorney, took one look around the
kitchen of Gein's house and said: "This is cannibalism." And well
he might, for Mrs. Worden's heart was soaking in a pan of water as
if being prepared for cooking and her liver was sizzling in a frying
pan, already half consumed.
Gein was immediately taken to Wautoma, Wisconsin, (my
home town and the county seat of Waushara County) where he
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was locked up in the county jail. Earl Riordan went over to the
post office and asked my brother, who is the postmaster at
Wautoma, if he would like to come over to the jail and see the
most incredible thing that he (Earl) or anyone else had ever heard
of. Robe1t, my brother, went to the jail having heard nothing of
the story except the disappearance of Mrs. Worden, and was
ushered into the presence of Ed Gein. Hours later, after having
heard the full confession of this little farmer, he came home to his
family thoroughly sickened and horrified.
Gein 's confession revealed him to be an incredible murderer.
A psychiatrist from Chicago who examined him later said he was
"one of the most dramatic human beings ever to confront
society." In spite of the weird tale which Gein unfolded in the jail
at Wautoma late that Saturday afternoon, the full measure of his
evil deeds will probably never be told in detail. Much of what he
had to say was too fantastic for human belief and for that reason
will not be told; yet later investigations showed he had been telling
the truth. Then, too, Mrs. Worden had many relatives whose
feelings and right to privacy were respected by not revealing all of
Gein's horrendous acts to a shocked but very curious public.
Gein admitted killing only two women, but he said the
human heads found in his house had been stolen from graves. At
fil:st there were spine-chilling doubts that this claim of his could be
true, but subsequent investigations again showed he was not lying.
The question uppermost in the minds of the residents of
Plainfield and Wautoma, and indeed of the entire nation, was:
How had Gein come to b~ the fiend that he was, living in filth
behind drawn shades and locked doors, reading detective stories
and textbooks on anatomy and embalming?
The key to the mystery seems to lie with his mother, a
strong-minded woman who told her son that all other women were
sinful - and he believed her. Her husband and another son died,
leaving her and Ed alone in the filthy gloomy farmhouse. She
suffered a long illness during which Gein nursed her tenderly.
When she died in 1945, he nailed the door of her room shut and it
was not opened until the death of Mrs. Worden plunged the entire
house into the limelight and showed it for what it really was - a
house of horrors.
Psychiatrists who have studied Ed Gein say that he has a split
personality which causes him to be torn between a feeling of love
and hatred for women; he may also be a victim of necrophilia, or
love of the dead. One expert declared that this case is unparalleled
in history, and scientific study of it may help to detect any other
Geins who may be living undetected in our midst. Horrible
thought!
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