Serial Killers Around the World - Part Three

Edward Theodore Gein might have made headlines over four decades ago, but movie makers have never let us forget his crimes by making movies like Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even though many other serial killers have passed Gein up on his number of victims murdered, Gein has far surpassed them mentally than anyone else documented.

Born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin on August 8, 1906, his father a hardworking man and his mother although a homemaker, made all the decisions. The family, especially his mother was devoutly religious and warned her two sons about the evil on the outside, however she did not oppose to them masturbating continuously. In the early 1940's Ed Gein's father passed away and nearly four years later his brother had went missing while fighting a fire. By 1945 his mother whom he learned to love passed on from a series of heart attacks, the final one killing her while arguing with neighbors. Gein now alone, nailed his mothers door shut, never to reopen it again.

All through childhood, Gein felt as if he was not who he should have been. He even thought about amputating his own penis, due to his lack of masculinity. He then consider transsexual surgery, but even then the cost and the whole process in itself was enormously expensive and risky. This is when Gein searched out ideas to make himself female somehow. By 1947 and 1954, Gein decided that grave robbing was the alley he would take. An estimated 40 graves were broken into and whole or parts of corpses were taken out of them. Some of the corpses were returned to their final resting place, however Gein confessed that not many of them were that fortunate.

Gein's house was another story. Inside of his house were skulls mounted on bedposts, severed skullcaps that were used as serving bowls, mobiles that were made out of lips and labia's, and one of Gein's favorite pieces a belt made of nipples he would wear around the house for fun and enjoyment. Even the chairs and lamp shades were made out of human skin. Gein's state of mind was surely one of not so many. His rituals of dressing up in a woman's skin was not enough to satisfy his need to be closer as a woman, and on December 8, 1954, Gein decided to leave the corpses alone and kill his own.

51 year-old Mary Hogan vanished from the bar that she had managed in Pine Grove, Wisconsin. Police who investigated the crime, found a pool of blood from the victim, and one used cartridge from a .32 caliber gun. Again on November 16, 1957, Bernice Worden vanished from the hardware store that she owned. Once again there was blood on the floor, but this time, Worden's son had seen his mother go out on a date with Gein, never to return. Authorities went looking for their prime suspect. The results of their search would give them nightmares for the rest of their lives. The headless body of Bernice Worden hung inside of an old shack behind Gein's house. She had been gutted like a wild animal and her genitals had been removed. Her heart was inside the house in a saucepan ready to be cooked and eaten by Gein.

Arrested and charged with the two murders, Gein was found mentally incompetent and was unfit to stand trial. He was then committed to Central State Hospital in Wisconsin. In July of 1984, Ed Gein passed away from a heart attack in Goodland Hall, the last mental hospital that he had been transferred to . Many people over the years have tried to take his headstone or pieces of it. And on June 21, 2001, the last parts of Ed Gein's headstone were stolen. "I had a compulsion to do it." Ed Gein

Bela Kiss is known in Hungary as the serial killer who got away with 17 murders. A family man, Bela Kiss started killing his victims at the late age of 40. His wife Marie who had been nearly 15 years younger than him had found a new lover once the two had moved to the village of Czinkota. Not even three weeks had gone by and Marie had supposedly ran off with her lover Paul Bikari. Once alone, Kiss decided to hire an older woman as a housekeeper. The woman who was very devoted to her job would turn her head as numerous older women would come and go from Kiss' home.

With the war approaching quickly in Europe, Kiss decided that he would start collecting metal drums, telling neighbors and curious people that he was filling them with gasoline as a precaution. While he had been collecting his drums, two widows vanished, Schmeidak and Varga, who had been missing for almost three weeks according to family and friends. But the police never looked towards Kiss because he was such a nice mannered man.

Then in November of 1914 Kiss was drafted into the military. After 18 months, military officials were informed that the quiet, well mannered Bela Kiss had been killed in combat. The town in which he had lived had already forgotten about him until soldiers started looking around for people who had stockpiled gasoline. One person who had remembered Kiss, also remembered that he had stored barrels of gasoline behind his house. Soldier than were aware of the drums and had gone to Bela Kiss' home where they located 7 metal drums, but when the soldiers opened the drums, gasoline is not what they found. Instead, soldiers found the bodies of seven widows in alcohol. The search of Kiss' house revealed that the widows had replied to an ad "lonely widower seeking female companionship".

A close friend of Kiss revealed to police that there had been many more drums than seven, and as soldiers searched, they came up with over 17 more. Two of which had the body of his wife and her lover , the rest were occupied all by lonely widowers. Then in 1919, Kiss was spotted on the Margaret Bridge in Budapest. Authorities had realized that Kiss had switched papers with another soldier, to perform the ultimate escape. Then in 1932, a New York homicide detective swore that he had seen Bela Kiss in Times Square, but with the commotion of all the people he was unable to apprehend the man he had thought was Kiss. Then in 1936, an unknown source told police that Kiss had been working in an apartment complex as a janitor, but as always Bela Kiss got away.

Unfortunately no one ever knows what happened to Bela Kiss. No one knows if he really died during the war, or if he survived and moved to New York City. What is known is that over 60 years have past and no one knows what or where Kiss ended up. It is clear that he strangled and killed 16 women and one man and got away with it.