Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho by Harold Schechter

Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho Reviews

• 
  Paul Bryant

  Harold Schechter is an author with Tourette's Syndrome - consider some of his book titles:
  
  Deranged!
  Depraved!
  Fiend!
  Bestial!
  
  Now imagine inviting Mr Schechter to dinner....
  
  "Ketchup!"
  "Salt!"
  "Mayonnaise!"
  "Pickle!"
  "Hideous!"
  "Fiend!"
  "Vile!"
• 
  Johann (jobis89)

  Very solid and interesting true crime book. Maybe outdated at times in terms of mental health topics, but on the whole a great account of Ed Gein and his crimes.
• 
  Vicki Willis

  This is the kind of book that raises the hair on the back of your neck. A very chilling and gruesome retelling of Ed Gein's life. Starting back when he was child all the way to his death. It was horrifying and difficult to put down at the same time. Very engrossing and disturbing because of the effect on the town and society at that time. He, being the first of many killers, has a shock value of no other. A recommended read for anyone who enjoys this genre.
• 
  Susanne

  I think I dated this guy.
• 
  Lisa

  Mothers, be careful how you raise your boys, especially if you're an overbearing religious wackjob who thinks the best lesson she can impart is that all women are wanton, wicked and deserve to be punished as this could lead to a host of mental illnesses and some terrifying life choices on the part of your child...
  
  Ed Gein is infamous as the inspiration behind more than one of our cinematic bogeymen - Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill being the most notable examples, but as ever the truth is far stranger, more horrific, shocking and plain insane than fiction could ever hope to be (film audiences would reject half the occurrences within for being too outlandish to be plausible, but unfortunately this is all real.)
  
  Raised by the aforementioned mother and a weak-willed, alcoholic and abusive father, Gein was always considered an oddball, meek and polite but completely unequipped to socialise with others (early opportunities were halted by Mommy Dearest who, of course, thought that every friend Ed made at school was wicked and stopped him from seeing them). With his mother being a larger-than-life, almost God-like figure to him, his problems really started to bubble up once she died, leaving Ed alone in the world. Sealing up the rooms she lived in as a make-shift shrine, Gein lived in absolute squalor in the few rooms left to him, reading lurid true crime magazines (which will be blamed for the crimes by some *eyeroll*) and accounts of Nazi atrocities (some of which will inspire his grisly collection of memorabilia).
  
  Described as a voyeuristic, schizophrenic, fetishist necrophile and transvestite Gein fixated on women who resemble his mother, although as women who could never be as good as Augusta was, murdering and dismembering them in the most awful manner (the accounts of how the last victim was found seriously gave me the heebie-jeebies) though he was also a keen grave-robber, digging up yet more women, and taking body parts home with him. Collections of human heads turned into masks, chairs made from human skin, and body parts sewn into yet more furniture abounded through Ed's house of horrors (local kids had been telling stories for years of Gein's shrunken heads, which were written off by their parents as wild imaginations) and it is obvious that Gein's transvestitism went a lot further than most - instead of wearing women's clothing he much preferred wearing their skin (yeesh).
  
  As you can see, the subject matter is fascinating, and more than a little sensational, but it was mostly handled well imparting a fair amount of information in a very readable format. There was one instance (as there was in another of Schechter's books that I'd read) where the author presents an 'inside the mind of the killer' moment that I could have done without (I take exception in true crime books to the kind of recreations when no-one could really have known what was going on, and Gein's constant memory lapses, whether real or fake, made sure he never came clean about what had happened after Mrs Worden's murder) and I would have liked a lot more depth to the psychology angle, as well as more on what was behind the rash of 'Gein humour' as the local population struggled to come to terms with what had happened in their midst.
  
  The most successful angle of the book was with regard to the media frenzy that Gein's crimes inspired, and the antagonistic relationship between the press and police. While a strong believer in press freedom, I also believe that can only be properly achieved when the press that you're dealing with have ethics, and unfortunately most of the mob of reporters behaved much more like those in trouble recently in the UK for hacking and other various underhand methods than journalists with integrity - happy to print anything, true or not, if it gave good story.
  
  As for just why Ed Gein has had such a lasting impression on our collective psyches, this book doesn't quite pin it down but gets points for making a decent attempt.
• 
  aPriL does feral sometimes

  'Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein' is one of those books almost all of you, my primarily gentle and, sad to say, mostly duplicitous readers, will deny having the stomach to read at all. Many of you already insist that books in the true-crime genre are beneath you, especially ones like this one, which describe the factual events of crimes so gruesome and insane most people will have nightmares after *not* reading, for sure, guaranteed. Yet, as we *do not* eat such stories up with secret avidity, somehow these type of true crime murders are the source materials for the majority of the fictional plots in movies, books and TV shows, not to mention the actual real-life 2,625 (est.) serial killers currently walking around in America.
  
  
  https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/t...
  
  
  
  * * marks the lies we tell
  
  
  Ed Gein was a real person whose recorded police interviews in 1957 and the collected evidence in his Plainfield, Wisconsin, farmhouse about his insane crimes have been acknowledged by thousands of media producers and writers to inspire them creatively. What does that say about them? About us, who plunk down billions of dollars to buy books, movies and DVDs with gruesome murders? Never mind, gentle reader. It's all * *.
  
  Alfred Hitchcock's fictional movie 'Psycho' and the iconic movies 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' and 'The Silence of the Lambs' have all been acknowledged to be directly influenced by Ed Gein's crimes. I know, gentle reader, all of you know of or have seen these movies or read the fiction novels upon which the movies are based. This is a fact that Google and/or Facebook probably does really know about you, gentle reader, whatever lies you tell me as well as your mom or your more intellectual arty associates.
  
  
  Movie trailer of 'Psycho' (Hitchcock really sets the mood):
  
  
  https://youtu.be/DTJQfFQ40lI
  
  
  Movie trailer of 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'
  
  
  https://youtu.be/Vs3981DoINw
  
  
  Movie trailer of 'The Silence of the Lambs':
  
  
  https://youtu.be/W6Mm8Sbe__o
  
  
  
  Remakes or sequels, which by the very fact so many exist because they cost millions to make, also put the lie to your supposed aversion or good taste, gentle reader:
  
  
  Psycho = Six, officially
  
  
  https://bloody-disgusting.com/reviews...
  
  
  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre = Eight, more or less
  
  
  https://www.imdb.com/list/ls077342584/
  
  
  The Silence of the Lambs = Four
  
  
  https://www.imdb.com/list/ls068786041/
  
  Of course, these movies are all so low-brow. Few would dream of soiling their intelligence with watching or reading such trash!
  
  Right? Right?
  
  *Ahem*
  
  In case, though, you are curious about the trash some readers root around in, I highly recommend 'Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein'. It is well-written, the tone is calm and reasoned, and the research is impressive (I wish a bibliography had been added though). It is icky, too. However, there are no exaggerations other than what newspaper and television journalists made up, which the author graphically describes with barely concealed snickers, well-deserved in my opinion. The actual depravities of Ed Gein are terrible even when described in the factual manner the author is careful to maintain throughout the book. Only mentally-ill people can easily do necrophiliac stuff like this. Even hardened combat soldiers and toughened police officers get lifelong PTSD if they endure burial duties too often.
  
  Seriously, gentle reader, we need to know and understand that these type of crimes are committed -often- in real life, in every type of family in small towns and in large cities. No place where people exist is immune from 'evil' if these acts are evil. Four out of ten people in any room have experienced childhood abuse. Personally, I think they ARE evil acts, horrific and damaging. Worse, violence and cruelty are often passed down for generations, cracking apart the most normal but vulnerable minds in childhood, passing on the trauma in different ways in adulthood to following generations.
  
  We truly are a society which is paying for our sin of not treating mental illness quickly or adequately, before it turns into something monstrous. And so many of us live in denial of cruelty and evil created by mental illness. In this sense, such evil is the fault of most of us. Hiding your head in a hole in the ground to avoid reality may mean the rest of you will follow, in pieces. The adult crimes which were caused by mental illness enhanced by childhood abuse or poverty is common, gentle reader. I have been touched by such crimes - and I bet you have too, however you may have softened it in your mind, or denied it, or reframed it only happening the one time...etc.
  
  I direct my childhood anguish into black humor and a fascination with the macabre, still trying to make sense of it all, maybe mixed in with some neurotic OCD, probing over and over like one does with a tongue on an aching tooth. But I also love reading well-written books like this one, being seduced by its literary language, slightly amused tone, and research. It is a very good book, not only about Ed Gein, but also about the indifference of neighbors, the social circus of media and legal professionals driven by an obviously salacious, but publically only righteous, population of consumers without any true sense of what personal decency and responsibility is, and the benefits of psychiatric care received BEFORE bad trouble starts. The author does not convey any opinions but those of the people involved. The opinions above are only mine.
  
  I recommend this book, but with severe warnings to those still experiencing any flashbacks from any personal traumas.
  
  
  Harold Schechter, the author, is a professor at Queens College, the City University of New York.
• 
  Brad

  I have to hand it to
  Harold Schechter. There are few in the true crime genre who can turn spin a creepy yarn the way he can.
  
  
  Deviant: The shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho" is written more like a novel than an act of reportage. The reporting is still there, but Schechter is quite adept at hiding the reportage under a sneaky tale-telling voice, that sucks his readers in to the horror he's conveying and makes us want to reach the mysterious revelation even if we already know the outcome.
  
  Ed Gein, is the prototypical American serial killer. He was the inspiration for Robert Bloch's now immortal character Norman Bates, and most horror movies owe some debt to the crimes of Ed Gein. His mother's farm house -- where he lived, killed and crafted after her death -- was a charnel house of horrors, filled with the victims of his killings, his collection of body snatching bits and pieces, and all of his human leatherworking.
  
  Yet somehow Schechter's Deviant filled me with pity and sorrow rather than horror and revulsion.
  
  Of all the serial killers I have read about, Ed Gein seems the most deserving of pity, and Schechter's Deviant deepened my feelings. What made him do what he did seems so clear, so much a fault of outside forces or forces beyond his control -- abuse, isolation, mental illness, gender dysphoria, religious fervour, neglect -- that I couldn't and can't muster anger at Gein for his crimes. Listening to Deviant (as I listened rather than read this book), I couldn't help wondering at how many points Gein's crimes could have been avoided by even a modicum of intervention.
  
  When the last chapter finished pouring into my ears, I found myself thinking again of
  Stephen Crane's
  Blue Hotel, and the idea that we are all guilty. All of us. And that Gein, and his even nastier brethren, are simply the manifestations of all our sins.
• 
  Medhat The Fanatic Reader

  This was one of the most disturbing books that I've read in a while!
  
  Deviant is a character-study of Edward Gein, the notorious killer, serial-ghoul, whose crime will always be memorable, mostly for the inspiration that it contributed to the making of Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs.
  
  The book was extremely well-written and very graphic that it drove me sick. Regardless of how it made me feel while reading it, I gotta say that I never found myself bored due to the manner of how it was written, which is like a novel, and the book ended-up being very interesting.
  
  After reading Deviant, I might take a break from true-crime books - Yes, it's that disturbing!
• 
  Book Concierge

  The subtitle is all the synopsis anyone needs: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”.
  
  The residents of Plainfield Wisconsin were more than a little concerned when the owner of a local tavern disappeared in December 1955. She was a middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense attitude and a somewhat mysterious past, but who would want to kill her? Yet the evidence was clear: a pool a blood on the floor, a spent .32-caliber cartridge nearby, and a bloody trail indicating the body had been dragged out the door to a spot in the parking lot where presumably it was loaded into a truck.
  
  Nearly two years later another middle-aged store-owner disappeared from Plainfield. But this time authorities quickly honed in on the mild-mannered little man whom everyone thought of as odd but harmless. What they found at Ed Gein’s farmhouse, however, would shock not only the residents of Plainfield, but the entire nation. The gruesome case captured the attention of a novelist, who wrote Psycho based on Gein’s story, and that captured the attention of Alfred Hitchcock.
  
  Schechter writes a detailed account of Gein’s upbringing (as best as he could re-create it), the events and suspicions of the townspeople, his trial and his life in a mental institution. I was too young to know the details at the time the crimes were committed, but I vividly remember the renewed interest when Gein passed away. I’ve always like “true crime” books, and this is a pretty good, though not great, example of the genre.
  
  
• 
  Gene

  This book has so much significance for me. It happened only 60 miles from my home where I grew up, he was sent to Waupun Correctional facility where I lived after he was determined insane, and my Father worked at that facility. I visited that place many times with my father but don't remember seeing Ed Gein but I probably was shown him. This is a well written book detailing the happenings that was immortalized in the movie Psycho which was written by another individual from the area. My understanding is that Silence of the Lambs was also taken from this incident.
• 
  Fishface

  Excellent study of the Midwestern serial killer -- the basis of the fictional characters Buffalo Bill, Norman Bates and Leatherface. Also played by Steve Railsback in a biopic, which should tell you a great deal. Proves that in America, anyone can become a big star if he has a low IQ and very weak personal boundaries.
• 
  Karen

  I've always heard about Ed Gein and what he had done but never knew the details. This book not only gives details but also has little tidbits about other monsters I'd never heard about. When all is said and done Ed Gein was a sicko genius.
• 
  Miriam on hiatus

  5 stars audio
  2.5 stars story
• 
  Laura Peden

  This book made me throw up a couple times. Shoe boxes full of vaginas, belts made of nipples, skin suits, decapitated corpse hanging in the room upside down and mutilated. A horrific true account of Ed Gein and his crimes. Make sure you have a strong stomach if you read/listen to this one.
• 
  DAISY READS HORROR

  After reading this I am simply floored. This is one of the best true crime books I have ever read. It gets into very vivid details on Geins and his crimes. I have to admit, part of the reason why I finally picked this book up from my bookshelf is because I went to see the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie (Which I liked). My liking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies began when I was in my teens. It was later on that I learned that “Leather Face” as he was called was an actual real life killer. It was just so intriguing to read about what Geins did. His actions were very horrific and very gory. Here is some new information about him and his crimes that I did not know about until I read this book:
  
  1. I never knew he was a short man (he stood only 60 inches). The book kept referring to how the people of Plainsfield were shocked that “the little man” had committed such shocking murders.
  
  2. Geins made dining room, chairs out of the skins of his victims. I knew he made face masks that he wore out of the skins but I never knew about the chairs.
  
  3. In the 50’s when this happened it became common to hear “Gein jokes” about the crimes he comiited.
  
  4. He lived and committed his crimes in Wisconsin and not Texas.
  
  5. He made belts out of human lips and women’s vulva’s.
  
  6. The Gein farmhouse was burned by unknown suspects during the time that Gein was standing trial for his insanity.
  
  The author really excelled in describing the little town of Plainsfield, Wisconsin during the 50’s when Gein lived there. I was deeply engrossed in the book that I felt like I was in the small town watching all of the events unfold before my eyes. It seems like lately I have been reading up celebrities and famous events of the 50’s & 60’s. Also known as Hollywood’s Golden Era. These were the times when I love Lucy was popular, Elvis Presley was rockin’ away, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe were known for their beauty…. And when one of America’s most gruesome murderer lived and committed his acts. It almost seems impossible that this all happened in the same era and time. But it did and it was real. I highly recommend this book to any true crime reader and or people who want to read on Ed Geins.
  
• 
  Krista the Krazy Kataloguer

  Unbelievable! I'll never complain about my neighbors again!
• 
  Kristen

  I initially started this book in 2015, but had to DNF it since it was an ILL and was due back at the library. Anyway, I was very happy when I saw Libby had it as an audiobook!
  
  If you don’t like gory pics, I highly recommend the audio and careful web searches on Gein. I don’t think the book mentioned it, but Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs is somewhat based on him. I’ve seen the pictures of the contents of Gein’s home and while I’m not squeamish, they are incredibly disturbing and burned into my memory 😳😳.
  
  I’ll have to get the book again sometime to see if the errors I did catch were by the author or narrator. The Book of “Revelations” instead of Revelation was the first. The second was saying Gein was 60” in height, but I thought in pics he looked average compared to others pictured, so I went to Google which says he was 5’7”. I rewound it several times and only heard 60” and not 67”.
  
  Otherwise an excellent serial killer book. Highly recommend for any true crime fans.
• 
  Kim

  This book was originally recommended to me by a psychiatrist I worked with when I worked in mental health. It's the story about the original psychotic killer, Ed Gein, the basis for "Psycho" and "Silence of the Lambs"'s Buffalo Bill. I've actually read the same author's book on the serial killer H.H. Holmes so I expected it to be pretty good.
  
  I wasn't disappointed. This was generally an excellent telling of Ed Gein's life, his crimes, and the public revelations of those crimes. My only real criticism of the book is that it shows its age a bit (it was written in 1989) in dealing with subjects such as transvestism, gender confusion, and some psychological details. It's fairly obvious the author isn't an expert in psychology because he uses some really doubtful quotes and psychological interpretations in places. For example there's a point where he seems to refer to Kraft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis as a reliable source of information whereas anyone who's read it knows that's a joke. (Kraft-Ebing considered masturbation a sign of sexual deviance, for example.)
  
  Beyond that, though, I'd say this is probably the book to read if you're interested in learned about the fascinating story of Ed Gein. What I take away from this, as a former mental health professional, is that Ed Gein was something of a "perfect storm" of innate and genetic schizophrenia, extreme childhood abuse (physical and mental, but most relevant is the mental), isolation, and suggestibility. Thankfully these kinds of convergences are rare, and hopefully the problem more likely to be detected earlier than it was in Gein's case. But it makes for fascinating, and at times scary reading. I probably shouldn't have read most of this late at night.
• 
  Bryn D

  This is the story of the guy who inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs. Like Dahmer, a little pitiful man named Ed Gein, raised by a dominant mother and abusive father, drifted into insanity after the death of his mother and proceeds to murder two women, rob the graves of several others and uses their body for multiple goulish ends.
  
  Easy read, well written, but overly simple; this book does not delve significantly in depth into the mind of Gein but just explains the facts that overwhelmed Plainfield, WI in 1957. I read it in two sittings and feel confident I know enough of what happened. Pretty good book, but not really worthy of my library for the long term, as Capote's "In Cold Blood" which was outstanding.
• 
  Miriam Smith (A Mother’s Musings)

  I love anything to do with gory serial killers, and this is about a true life one, which inspired the Pyscho, Texas Chain Saw Masacre and Silence of the Lambs.....need I say more? Sadly I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it is very shocking and saddening for the victims and families involved, but I was engrossed and read in virtually one sitting which is very unlike me. Not for the faint hearted but would definetly recommend.
• 
  Miss Jimena

  As a result of my interest on famous serial killers, I came across this book. After previously having found a book about the famous cultist, Charles Manson, I wondered if maybe there was any piece of information about the killer that has always intrigued me the most: Ed Gein.
  I took the plunge and bought this book on Amazon. I must say that it's well written, no complicated language is used and the thread is awfully easy to follow. It definitely grabbed me from beginning to end. Schechter explains what was that that took hold of Gein's mind and pushed him to perform the aberrations he did. I think there is enough information for us to understand how his mind worked.
  People have complained about not being deep enough, but I'd suggest another kind of research since this book (I'll venture to say) was written for the curious and maybe criminology amateurs and not for psychiatry or psychology students.
  In the end not only does the author illustrate who was Ed Gein and what he did, but he also shows what was going on his mind. Additionally, he explains the legacy in the film industry that was born after Gein's crimes were discovered. Movies like "Psycho", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and "The Silence of the Lambs" are just a few examples. So yes, this is a very intriguing book and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes criminology and exploring the dark depths of the human mind.
• 
  Jlsimon

  This book goes over the crimes and adjudication of Ed Gein.
  
  One of the things that makes this case particularly interesting is that it was successfully adjudicated as an individual that was judged to be incompetent to stand trial. Gein was determined to not be able to distinguish between right and wrong, and unable to assist in his own defense. This hardly ever happens in a serial killing. In fact, although there are surely other cases that have been successful in this, I can't think of a single other case of a book written that the defendant was found to be incompetent to stand trial. 10 years later he was found competent and stood trial, but still it was interesting.
  
  I would recommend this case study to individuals that are interested in how sexuality might influence deviant behaviors. More specifically I would recommend this book to individuals who are interested in if sexual repression is a contributing factor to psychosis.
  
  This case study is also beneficial to individuals who are interested in if bullying/self-esteem is linked to psychosis, and individuals looking for correlation between intelligence levels or emotional intelligence levels to psychosis.
  
  I would recommend this book to individuals who engage in true crime books for academic reasons rather than those that are interested in the personal stories. This book is closer to the writing style of Truman Capote than Ann Rule or M. William Phelps.
• 
  Jenna

  What a strange little man. This was a fascinating and tough read. Even though there wasn't that much killing, it was all the other weird and unusual obsessions that really got under my skin. Plus, how is it possible that someone who was only proven to have killed 2 people, inspire some of the scariest and most iconic movie killers of all time!?! Incredible.
• 
  Dave Risner

  Definitely a good read for the unitiated. Schecter comes off a little boring describing Wisconsin and dropping the word "oddball" one too many times, but the people in that area at the time did the same.
  
  He's great at describing the atrocities committed, but can keep it all within the context of Gein being a terribly mentally ill man.
  
  Would recommend it to all!
• 
  Val

  If you like true crime stories, like me, and are fascinated with serial killers, like me, you will probably like this book.
• 
  ˜”*°•.˜”*°• Sheri •°*”˜.•°*”˜

  Horrible story about a pitiful man. Not only did Ed Gein confess to killing two women (though he was linked to more missing women), it was also discovered that he exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. His childhood was not a happy one, with a father, a violent man who died of alcoholism, and a mother who was domineering and verbally abusive. Ed adored his mother and when she died he was left alone and isolated.
  
  Because Ed lived in a small town and appeared to function normally, he was able to hide his crimes in plain sight. He may have been thought of as a weird hermit but no one had any idea just how mentally ill he was. I’m not convinced he even understood that his crimes were horrific.
  
  It’s a well written book but for me if there’s one problem, it’s that there are too many details and a lot of repeating of these details. Lots of details about the effect on the town and the sheriff that I didn’t care that much about knowing.
  
  Frightening.
• 
  Scot Parker

  Deviant is a gripping story of true crime, an investigation into the history and mind of Ed Gein, one of America’s most notorious serial killers and the inspiration for Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence of the Lambs, and of course Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask.” This book is deeply disturbing and quite fascinating. It’s worth a read, but only if you’ve got a strong stomach.
  
• 
  Honor

  Well worth a read if you are into true crime, I can see why this is considered to be 'the book' on Gein, it is balanced and informative, delving right into his life.