Of all the serial killers on this list, Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein, also known as the Butcher of Plainfield, is one of the most disturbing. His murders and grave-robbing habit led him to be the inspiration for everyone from Norman Bates (Psycho) to Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). As a young man, Gein became obsessed with his religious fanatic of a mother and began robbing graves containing recently buried female bodies after she died in 1945. He'd cut off body parts as souvenirs (and then return the rest of the body to the grave), which led to him experimenting with necrophilia and human taxidermy.
He tanned the skins of the corpses to make corsets, leggings, belts made from female nipples, and masks (much like the Buffalo Bill character in Silence of the Lambs) so he could make a "woman suit" and become his mother. He eventually went on to kill two women in his town in 1957. Once caught, Gein pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a criminal mental hospital. Around a decade later, he stood trial again and was found guilty of murder and sent to the Central State Hospital in Wisconsin and the Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he later died of heart failure in 1984.
(Michael Wincott's portrayal of Gein in Hitchcock is pictured above)
