MADISON, Wis. -- Ed Gein, whose bizarre murders in a Wisconsin hamlet inspired Alfred Hitchcock's movie 'Psycho,' died Thursday of a respiratory ailment at the Mendota Mental Health Institute at age 77.
Gein was a small man who was considered something of an oddball in his hometown of Plainfield but still was thought of as a harmless handyman who often babysat children. His quiet demeanor made his revelations of murder, grave robbing and dismemberment in the 1940s and '50s even more shocking.
He was found mentally incomptent and never convicted of the crimes and he spent the rest of his life in mental institutions.
Gein, who had been ailing for several years, died at 7:45 a.m. Several years ago there was a hearing on possibly releasing him but a judge ruled against it, saying Gein would become an object of ridicule and curiosity.
Gein had lived a reclusive life on a farm with his mother until she died in 1945. He admitted killing and butchering two women and looting the graves of about a dozen more in moonlight forays into cemeteries. Gein told authorities he killed the two women because they resembled his dead mother for whom psychiatrists said he had an abnormal love.
The grave robberies occurred between 1944 and 1952. The slaying of Mary Hogan, 54, a tavern operator, occured in December 1954. The other killing was Bernice Worden, 58, a Plainfield hardware store operator, in 1957.
Law enforcement authorities investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Worden went to the dilapidated Gein farm and found her body hanging by the heels in the woodshed, dressed out like a deer. Inside the house, they found 19 skulls, shrunken heads and death masks made of human skin.
Furniture was fashioned from human remains. Clothing and bracelets appeared to be made of human skin and hair, and human heart was found in a pot on the kitchen stove.
Parts of human bodies were found scattered throughout the nine-room house.
Authorities eventually substantiated part of Gein's story, determining that 10 graves had been uncovered and the bodies brought to his home.
Gein's crimes resulted in a book by Robert Bloch, which was used as the basis for Hitchcock's classic terror film.
He was diagnosed as a chronic schizophrenic, and a mysterious fire consumed his farm about a year after the grisly discoveries.
