Transcript
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(upbeat music)
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If you ever thought your mom was a little too controlling,
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let me introduce you to Augusta Gien, Bible Thumper,
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Moral Enforcer, and all around Terror in a Housecoat.
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Her son Ed didn't just grow up sheltered,
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he grew up suffocated, with Augusta ruling his every thought
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and move like some kind of old testament dictator.
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And when she finally left this world,
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she didn't just leave a void,
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she left behind a man who didn't know
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how to function without her.
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So he got creative.
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Today we're diving into the twisted world of Ed Gien,
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a quiet little man from Plainfield, Wisconsin,
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who turned his farm into a grotesque monument
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to his mother's legacy.
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This story has obsession, isolation,
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and some very questionable DIY projects
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you definitely don't want to Google.
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But before we get into that story,
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if you like your true crime, brief and bingeable,
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you have found the right podcast.
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Tap the follow button now for access
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to at least two episodes per week.
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Welcome to 10 Minute Murder.
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(upbeat music)
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(soft music)
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Augusta Willamine Gien ruled her household
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like a fire and brimstone despot.
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Her reign extending over a remote plainfield
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Wisconsin farm where she kept a firm grip
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on her two sons, Henry and Edward,
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and her husband, George Philip Gien.
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Think family values meets totalitarian state.
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For Henry and Ed, growing up under Augusta's iron fist,
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meant that one thing was clear.
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Dad was the ultimate cautionary tale.
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George, a perpetually inebriated washout,
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shuffled through life with the ambition of a damprack.
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He'd recently sold his grocery store in La Crosse
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and dragged the family to a desolate farm,
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a move Augusta regarded with predictable disdain.
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To her, it simply cemented two facts.
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George was a waste of oxygen
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and her sons wouldn't dare follow his example.
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To prevent any generational backsliding into sin,
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Augusta became a one woman morality boot camp.
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Daily Bible lessons served as her weapon of choice.
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Often spotlighting verses about immorality,
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divine retribution, and everything
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that made eternal damnation sound like
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a guaranteed summer vacation.
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And if Augusta had a personal arch-nemesis,
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it wasn't alcohol.
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Though that earned a dishonorable mention, it was lust.
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Lust, she proclaimed, was the mother of all evils,
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and women, aside from herself, of course,
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were its unwitting agents of chaos.
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In the Geen household, morality wasn't just preached.
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It was policed.
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While Henry and Ed occasionally ventured
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into the outside world through school,
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Augusta's leash remained tight, making friends.
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That was just fraternizing with sin.
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The punishment for stepping out of line
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was swift and brutal.
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One particularly traumatic example
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occurred during Ed's teenage years.
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Augusta caught him in the bathtub
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in "Join some alone time," we'll say.
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Her reaction, she stormed in, grabbed him by the genitals
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and delivered a sermon about the curse of man.
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The scar at left on Ed wasn't just psychological.
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It was foundational.
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From that moment, Ed's path was forever
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marked by his mother's warped morality.
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Ed didn't just grow up sheltered.
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He grew up as if the outside world was a raging inferno.
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And Augusta was the only bucket of holy water that could save him.
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Every movie made was under her unyielding gaze,
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and she made it clear.
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His moral compass pointed to good only because she
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was holding the map.
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But even Augusta's iron grip couldn't stop the march of time or morality.
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When George Gein, her perpetually disappointing husband,
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finally succumbed to heart failure at 66,
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Augusta faced a harsh reality.
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Sure, he'd been as reliable as a three-legged chair,
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but now he was gone, and with him went their main source of income.
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By then, Henry and Ed were grown men chronologically,
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anyway, both in their 30s, but still tethered to the farm.
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Augusta reluctantly loosened her grip,
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allowed her sons to find odd jobs in the community.
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To her dismay, both men became likeable fixtures around town.
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But cracks in the family dynamic began the show.
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Henry, the older brother, started noticing
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that the Gein family wasn't exactly normal.
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By his late 30s, he realized that Augusta
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wasn't a savior protecting her boys from sin.
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She was a puppet master controlling every aspect of their lives.
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He even began quietly rebelling by striking up
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a relationship with a local divorced mother of two,
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a move that surely had Augusta clutching her pearls.
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Worse still, Henry started nudging Ed
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to rethink his blind devotion to their mother.
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Ed, however, was having none of it.
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Criticized Augusta blasphemy.
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For Ed, Augusta was the North Star, guiding his every move,
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and Henry's attempts at reasoning only drove Ed further
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into his mother's shadow.
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Then came the spring of 1944, a fire broke out
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on the Gein farm, and both brothers rushed to battle the flames.
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With the farm being miles from town,
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the fire brigade arrived late to the scene.
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By the time they got there, it wasn't the flames that shocked them.
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It was what Ed led them to in the field.
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Henry was dead.
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His body bore no burns, no signs of being caught in the fire.
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The corner ruled it as a heart failure,
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combined with his fixation.
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But the circumstances surrounding his death
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left a lingering unease.
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Whether anyone else felt this unease, Ed clearly didn't.
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With Henry gone, it was just him and Augusta
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trapped in their toxic cocoon.
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With no one else surround to temper her influence,
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Augusta's control over Ed became absolute.
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By day, she sent him out to earn money,
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for raiding him if he came back empty handed,
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or dared to veer off her prescribed path.
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By night, she softened, just enough to let him share her bed.
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A strange, codependent ritual that further cemented Ed's inability
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to see life without her.
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Together, they spiraled deeper into isolation.
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Their remote farm becoming a fortress of dysfunction.
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It was only a matter of time before they're already precarious existence
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tipped into chaos.
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For a time, life on the Geen farm limped along
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in its usual dysfunctional rhythm,
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until Augusta suffered a debilitating stroke, paralyzed,
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but still very much in control.
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In spirit, at least, she now depended on Ed
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as her full-time caretaker.
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And Ed, ever the devoted son, was glued to her side
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when an incident in 1945 tipped their lives into chaos.
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While buying straw at a neighboring farm,
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Augusta witnessed something that sent her into a fury.
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The farmer emerged with another woman.
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A woman he wasn't married to.
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For Augusta, this was the ultimate moral failing.
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A front row seat to the very sin she loathed the most.
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The stress triggered another stroke.
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This one, fatal.
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Augusta, the immovable force in Ed's life, was gone.
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With his moral compass shattered, Ed was set adrift, unanchored.
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His first move preserved Augusta's memory
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in the most literal way possible.
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He boarded up the room she used, the entire upper floor
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and the sitting room, leaving them frozen in time,
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like a shrine to her oppressive legacy.
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Meanwhile, the rest of the house descended into squalor,
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reflecting the unraveling of Ed's mind.
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Ed didn't need to work anymore, thanks to a farm subsidy
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from the government, so he cut himself off completely.
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He filled his days with Nazi-themed articles
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and stories about Ilsy Koch, the witch of Butchenwald,
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whose gruesome hobby of crafting household items
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from human skin struck a disturbing cord with him.
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For nearly a decade, Ed's world shrank
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to the size of his derelict farm.
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But then, in the winter of 1957, his hermetic life
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came crashing down.
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When 58-year-old hardware store owner, Bernice Warden,
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vanished from her shop.
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Her son, the local deputy sheriff, noticed something was off.
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The cash register was open, blood stained the floor,
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and the last receipt was for a gallon of antifreeze
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she sold to none other than Ed Geen.
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Ed was promptly arrested, and what authorities found
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that his farm was beyond anything they could have prepared for.
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Bernice's body had been shot and then hung in a shed,
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processed like a deer.
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But this was only the beginning.
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The house was a grotesque treasure trove of human remains,
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meticulously repurposed into furniture, utensils,
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and even clothing.
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Among them, Cobb discoveries were human bones
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scattered throughout the property, chairs
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pulsed with human skin, skull bowls, literal skulls turned
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into bowls, a bin crafted entirely of skin.
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And Ed's prized piece, a suit made from women's skin,
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complete with leggings, a torso, and mask.
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Investigators determined that Ed wasn't just a killer.
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He was also a grave robber.
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Over the years, he had made more than 40 trips to cemeteries,
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digging up freshly buried women to harvest body parts
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for his grotesque projects.
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Ed confessed to two murders, Bernice Warden and Mary Hogan,
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a 51-year-old tavern owner who had gone missing the year before.
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While he was suspected in other disappearances,
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no concrete evidence tied him to additional murders.
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And courts, Ed pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity,
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citing schizophrenia as the root of his behavior.
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The courts agreed, and he was sent to a hospital
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for the criminally insane.
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After nearly a decade of treatment,
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Ed was declared fit to stand trial for Bernice Warden's murder.
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The trial lasted a week, and while he was found guilty,
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the judge ultimately ruled that Ed was still insane.
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This technicality spared him from a prison sentence,
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sending him back to the institution
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where he would spend the rest of his life.
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Ed died in 1984 at the age of 77, leaving behind
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a legacy of horror that continues to haunt true crime lore.
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His twisted devotion to Augusta and the unimaginable crimes
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that spawned cemented his place as one of the most infamous figures
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in American history.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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That's 10-minute murder for today.
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Brief and bingeable true crime.
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I'm Joe, the host.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to listen.
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If you're a new subscriber, welcome.
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Make sure you are subscribed on all the platforms
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that you'd like to listen to podcasts and connected
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with the show on social media.
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Links are at 10-minutemurder.com.
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And if this story today about Edgene,
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if you've never heard the name Edgene,
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first of all, I find that a little bit hard to believe.
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I think that you have.
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You just don't realize that you have.
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Chances are that you do know the name,
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and you know that Edgene inspired numerous countless horror
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movies, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates and Psycho,
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Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lamps.
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I could go on and on.
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And now, monster, the Netflix series, season three,
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is going to be coming out.
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At the time of this recording, it's not out.
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But it's going to be coming out.
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Season one was focused on Jeffrey Dahmer.
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Season two, the focus was the Menendez brothers.
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So season three is going to be Edgene.
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And the person playing Edgene, kind of surprising to me.
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Jack's Teller from Sons of Anarchy.
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I can never remember that guy's name, Charlie, something.
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And you're probably shouting right now, trying to tell me.
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But I can't hear you.
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Shout louder.
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No, I starting to get it.
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But he's going to be playing Edgene, which is weird to me
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because Charlie's a handsome guy.
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And it reminds me of when, also named monster, the movie
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monster with Charlie's Theron, where she played Eileen
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Mournos, the serial killer.
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They ugly to hurt up real good to play in that movie.
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So I'm looking forward to that coming out.
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And I hope it's good.
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The first two seasons were pretty good.
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So I think that this one should be good as well.
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That's going to do it.
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That is your episode for today and a little reminder.
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If you're into the brief, bingeable concepts,
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but not necessarily murders all the time,
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like you get with 10-minute murder, we're still going
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to be here.
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And by we, I mean me, because it's just me.
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I do another podcast as well.
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It's called 10-Minute Mystery.
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Same kind of vibe as this one, but it's about mysteries.
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So if you enjoy that kind of thing,
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check it out, 10-Minute Mystery.
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And if not, that's cool too.
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Thank you so much for listening to "10 Minute Murder."
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
