Dewey Decimal364.1/523/092
SynopsisFrom the author of "top-drawer true crime" ( Booklist ) books comes the definitive account of Ed Gein--the man whose shocking crimes inspired Psycho , The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , and The Silence of the Lambs . The year was 1957. To his Wisconsin neighbors, Ed Gein was a slight, Midwestern farmhand with a twisted little smile. To an unsuspecting nation, he would become one of the most notorious crime figures in history, having lived for ten years in his own secret world of brutal murder and unthinkable depravity. Here is the grisly true story of "the Butcher of Plainfield," a deranged killer whose fiendish fantasies inspired such works as Psycho , The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , and The Silence of the Lambs . More horrifying than any movie or novel however, Deviant dares to explore in chilling detail the life and times of one of the most twisted madmen in the annals of true crime--one who still haunts us to this day--and how he transformed his small, nondescript farmhouse in the American heartland into his own private and inescapable domain of ghoulishness and blood., The truth behind the twisted crimes that inspired the films Psycho , The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , and The Silence of the Lambs ... From "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" ( The Boston Book Review ) comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, a mild-mannered Wisconsin farmhand who stunned an unsuspecting nation--and redefined the meaning of the word "psycho." The year was 1957. The place was an ordinary farmhouse in America's heartland, filled with extraordinary evidence of unthinkable depravity. The man behind the massacre was a slight, unassuming Midwesterner with a strange smile--and even stranger attachment to his domineering mother. After her death and a failed attempt to dig up his mother's body from the local cemetery, Gein turned to other grave robberies and, ultimately, multiple murders. Driven to commit gruesome and bizarre acts beyond all imagining, Ed Gein remains one of the most deranged minds in the annals of American homicide. This is his story--recounted in fascinating and chilling detail by Harold Schechter, one of the most acclaimed true-crime storytellers of our time.