Rating:

Another So-So Ed Gein Book

Author: Adam King

My friend and I have recently started watching the third season of Monster, which focuses on Ed Gein’s story. I’d previously read Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”, which was more focused on Gein’s effect on popular culture (including movies such as Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre) than on what he actually did. I still felt, after reading it, that I didn’t really understand the true breadth of the story. Was Gein a serial killer or a grave robber or both? Who did he kill and why?

Since Monster has reignited my interest in the Gein narrative, I picked up the Audible version of Evidence of Evil for a long road trip. I was disappointed again.

Author Adam King focuses on what was found in the Gein house, drawing us a gruesome picture of a murdered and essentially field dressed woman in a shed, various body parts in drawers (including vulvas), furniture made from human skin, and a torso skin suite, which Gein himself claimed to wear. King also focuses on a small portion of the aftermath of Gein’s arrest, giving us some portions of investigative transcripts and allowing us to hear the killer talk in his strange, non-committal tones. It painted a better portrait of the crimes themselves, both suspected and confirmed, than Deviant did and gave us a small insight into the trial and the nature of declaring Gein as “unfit” or ultimately “insane,” something that was difficult because the killer did showcase an understanding of right and wrong.

See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Where the narrative goes off-track, however, is in the background. We get a glancing reference to Gein’s diagnosis of schizophrenia, which seems pertinent, but no explanation. Who declared that he was schizophrenic. When? Did this, in any way, impact his crimes or his understanding of what he had done? For example, was he having hallucinations that caused him to supposedly forget his murders? Were these hallucinations, if they existed, a part of Gein’s fetish for preserving dead flesh? Was this relevant or not? We’re never told. It is just a glancing mention, as if it is such common knowledge that it need not be addressed. This is ultimately unacceptable, and, again, we fall into sensationalism instead of creating an accurate, well researched, and comprehensive portrait of the man behind the crimes.

The narrative also fails to discuss Gein’s tumultuous family life, something that Harold Schechter does a much better job of in Deviant. Gein’s alcoholic father is only tangentially mentioned. Gein’s abusive mother is only briefly mentioned and with little detail. We’re told only that she thought sex before marriage was wrong and advocated for Gein to wait until after marriage. That’s the only thing that is mentioned. There is far more to Gein’s mother and her beliefs, which included an essential hatred of women, something that I feel is far more relevant to Gein’s targeting of women who looked like his mother.

The trial portion of the book isn’t especially in-depth. It’s more of a summary, with a few highlights. While transcripts and in-depth details are mentioned in the book summary, they’re not here. Perhaps they are in the appendix . . . but by the time I finished the book, I had no interest in listening to the hour-long appendix.

A note on edition: DO NOT go for the Audible edition. One of the claims to fame for this surprisingly well rated book is the 20+ crime photos. You do not get those in this edition, for obvious reasons.

Also – the Audible edition is read by a computer. It does ok(ish) for a computer, but that’s not saying much. It mispronounces Gein’s name several times, reads out the URL in its entirety for the attributions to all 20+ of the images that you do not see, and is generally unpleasant and monotone. There was no effort put into this edition at all, and what merits the book might have are otherwise destroyed by the narration.

In the end, I feel like I have a better understanding of what Gein was accused of doing (including the suspected murders and reasons for those murders) than I did before, but less of an understanding of the actual man, his history, and his motives. As for the trial – a Wikipedia summary would have given me the same amount of information. It’s ok, I guess, but why are there no decent true crime books on Gein?

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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