Many serial killers like to keep ‘trophies’ of their victims – but one sick American murderer took his love of keepsakes to a whole new macabre level.
Ed Gein’s crimes shocked the world when he was eventually caught in the 1950s and locked up in an asylum for life.
He was dubbed the real-life ‘Leatherface’ after his love of wearing the faces of his victims as a mask inspired the character in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies.
As well as murdering people, Gein had also dug up women from the local cemetery and turned their body parts into decorations, furniture and crockery for his home.
Police found women’s genitalia and noses stashed around the house, faces turned into lampshades and a belt made fashioned from women’s nipples.
There were also human skulls used as decorative bedposts and lips as a curtain drawstring.
It was also thought that Gein had sex with the corpses of women he’d dug up from graves but he denied this – saying he wasn’t into necrophilia because “it was too smelly”.
