Are some serial killers created? An observation, by Len Howlett

I had been to North Miami Beach High (no, but I was sure spaced out by the time I graduated --an old throwaway punchline from Rowan and Martin's "Laugh In") to a seminar on teaching A.P. Chemistry, and there was a lunch break with a convenient little neighborhood deli across the street.

I went into the place and had a seat at a table in the small, almost full dining area which may have had a dozen tables in it. A guy I recognized from the seminar came up to my table and asked if I would mind if he sat in the chair across from mine. I invited him to join me. He was a personable guy and told me that he was from Queens or Brooklyn, or whatever borough it turned out that Dave Berkowitz lived in during his adolescence. The talk was light, and I was a curious figure to him since I was possibly one of the few people that he ever met with a Southern accent who loved Manhattan.

So, the talk went on, and it ranged from topical stuff to teaching and its pros-and-cons. I observed that maybe the best or worst of our tendencies embodied the vast potential that inadvertently plays a part in shaping future lives, which in the end, was more important and long lasting than anything they could possibly retain of the facts of Chemistry.

"After all," I said, "we could influence their view of the academic and the adult world just through example, either for the better or the worse. Then I made a statement--mostly in-jest-- that I didn't want to feel like I had helped make any serial killers or engendered resentment that twisted young psyches. Looking back, I can only believe now that I must have been reacting to some recent news about a case that was still active, and I was regarding my corned beef and half-a-sour pickle when I felt the stillness of a significant pause and a rather sobering, quiet response from him.

"I may have," he said. I looked up to catch the light humor I would expect to see in a satirical reply. It wasn't there. He was somber, like someone who feels the gravity of an act gone bad and the silent record of guilt.

He added, "Not as a teacher, but as a student."

"How so?" I asked.

There was another significant silent space and a measured response. Then he said he went to the same high school that David Berkowitz did and asked if I remembered who that was. "Of course, I did," I replied. He had been in the same class as Berkowitz.

I asked what kind of kid David was: his reply was the expected description of a friendless, lonely boy who ate every meal alone, sitting in the cafeteria at a table by himself. My lunch companion said with detectable guilt that he had been one of a group of four boys who would sit the next table over and ridicule and harass him every day while David sat and wordlessly ate his lunch.

The topic he remembered most frequently was the question, "So what you got planned, Dave? You got a hot date? I hear all the girls taking about you? They really like you. They're crazy about you, Dave." You know, the usual compassion of high schoolers and humanity when it's allowed to distract attention from it's own loneliness and self-doubt.

Then he said, "So, I come home one day some years later and open the paper and who do I see on the front page being led away by the police wearing that frightened smirk that I had watched him walk around with for years in high school?" He said he recognized Berkowitz immediately, even before he read his name, even though he hadn't thought about him in some years. And then, he said that he often found himself wondering--if just maybe--he had played a part in what happened later. "Maybe, maybe not," was all that I could say.

But nowadays, I think about it and the unknown consequences of unthinking actions.

Ed Gein (2000) review

Modern American horror began on November 16th, 1957 in a little farming community named Plainfield, Wisconsin: This movie gets a lot more criticism than it generally deserves. Indeed, it is extremely low-budget, but it basically nails the whole point of Ed Gein better than anyone ever has, or possibly ever will. What seems to disappoint most people is the fact that the film sticks so closely to the story of what actually happened, rather than the speculations and additions. Not that Eddie didn't kill anyone, mind you...

The reality is, Ed Gein was not a serial killer in any respect, and murdered only two women whom he may have felt resembled his dead mother. It's unknown factually beyond that, though he might have killed his brother in an argument when both men were hunting. The photograph to the right is of the body of his second victim, Bernice Worden. What he is most remembered for, in reality, are the ghoulish excavations he committed, and his "articulations" of dead bodies.

It's very difficult for us to imagine in our current era how much of a bombshell Ed Gein was in late-1950s America. People didn't talk about mental illness or domestic abuse in those days. In fact, it's my own humble opinion that we still haven't entirely coped with the knowledge of such aberrant-behavior.

Why do people do such things? There really are no answers here, which can a very disturbing reality in a modern world that appears to have explanations for nearly everything. But sometimes, there are no clear answers. The makers of "Ed Gein" have shed some much-needed light on what is really known about Gein's metamorphosis into a full-blown ghoul. Surprisingly, a great deal of the psychological subtext of his life has leaked-into films "based" on his "true story."

Most successful of all--naturally--is Hitchcock's "Psycho," but Steve Railsback and Chuck Parello have shown us a very clear scenario into why Ed Gein became the man we know-of today. Gein was basically bisexual and had a strong desire to BE a woman, like his domineering mother. Gein's real problem was being schizophrenic, however. The addition of the strident religious fanaticism of his mother probably didn't help, as many sufferers hold a fascination with the cosmological.

As stated in "Psycho" so well, he wanted to "...become his mother," in a sad-attempt to "bring her back to life." His father was a pathetic drunk, and as is well-known, his mother had a god-like dominance (coupled with religious-fanaticism and sociopathological attitudes) over the young boy. Ed was also deeply traumatized by an incident on the family farm where he saw his parents slaughtering a pig--Ed was unable to assist them, and was often called a "panty-waist" by his mother.

The incident, and a few others, are reenacted convincingly by Parello and company, and much of the film takes-place in Gein's head (where it belongs). Feeding his insanity with detective pulp-magazines, published accounts of cannibalism and head-hunting in the South seas, and a deep fascination with the Holocaust and war crimes committed under the Third Reich, it was clear that Ed Gein was obsessed with death. In time, he would attempt to embrace and control it, wearing the tanned-skins of cadavers that he had stolen from a nearby cemetery. Ed Gein was a ghoul, not a serial killer, and he sometimes wore the skins taken from these bodies so he could be a woman. Insofar as anyone can tell, all the "parts" came from deceased women.

Also interesting is the story behind Gein's brother Henry and his mysterious death. While it could be viewed as speculative, it's known that Henry was found dead (allegedly of a heart attack while hunting) with bruises to the back of his head. A fire had been started around his body, pointing-to Gein again, as he must have panicked after murdering his brother and either tried to dispose of the corpse or create a scenario that would explain-away his involvement.

The film also speculates on whether Gein fed human flesh to people he knew--this is unknown, but some of the stories around Plainfield attest that he did, and that hunting deer was repugnant to him. The detail is pretty amazing, with some incredible asides by Railsback that add to our understanding of Ed Gein. One scene has Gein at the local watering-hole mentioning how he'd like to have a sex-change, which was explosive news at that time, from Sweden.

This event --like nearly all others in the film--really happened, and Gein's comments were taken as they often were: a joke, that he was pulling everyone's leg. That's how Ed Gein was viewed--a leg-puller, an oddball flake and a shitter. He wasn't taken seriously, which is why it was so hard for people in Plainfield to comprehend what he was up to out at the farm.

There are a few continuity errors: the headlights of a car are clearly from the 1990s in one insert-shot, and there are a few moments where the production design could have been closer to what 1950s America looked like. But, all-in-all, what you have here is the definitive film on Ed Gein. It's all here, in all its pathetic glory. This is what happens when someone is neglected by family and society, both spiritually and medically; this was simply a sick man who needed help. Nobody did so until it was too late, leaving just another example of how we are not a very proactive culture.

It's telling that Augusta never had her son taken to get help, and one has to assume she was also deranged in a way that found expression in the sickest, darkest pages of the Bible--especially her fixation on the Book of Revelations, a tome that should be read as metaphor only. None of this is sexy and exciting to gorehounds and thrill-seekers who come to a film like this, not to learn something, but merely to stimulate their hunger for viscera. Grow-up.

An excellent film! How can you lose with ole' Steve Railsback, anyway? He bankrolled this one, and it was a wise move, they got a lot of bang for their buck. If the movie says anything, it's how insensitive we were as a culture at that time. Hardly anyone thought it that strange that Ed Gein had shrunken-heads hanging from his bedroom walls. His excuse was taken at-face-vaule: he'd gotten them from a relative who had fought in the Pacific during WWII.

Trophies of this sort were common, but should have been taken as a good example of the sickness and psychopathology of their owners. During the late-1950s, people might have thought it odd, but rarely would have blinked over it. That's how sick a culture we were at that time, and we aren't out of the woods surrounding Plainfield yet. We haven't coped entirely with Ed Gein as a culture yet, let alone Jeffrey Dahmer. Pity poor Ed, he's earned it.

Postscript: It seems possible Mr. Railsback was a target-for-death of Robert Blake at one time!