Sofa King Podcast

This episode takes a look at the ghastly life of Ed Gein, the Plainfield Butcher. Gein was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho as well as the serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs and Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. How can one man be the genesis all of these horrific film characters? Give us a listen to find out. Gein was born at the turn of the century to a wildly religious zealot of a mother and an alcoholic father who worked tanning animal skins when he wasn’t drunk (spoiler alert, the skin tanning comes in useful later in Gein’s life…). As Gein grew up, he came to idolize his domineering mother and lived with her, never having gone on so much as one a date, until her death when he was 39 years old. Gein’s mother died shortly after she had a stroke thought to be induced by the death of Gein’s older brother Harold (who died under rather mysterious circumstances). Once alone, Gein earned the reputation as “Weird Eddy” the guy who lived alone in an empty farmhouse. He d