The truth behind the twisted crimes that inspired the films Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs...From Americas principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers (The Boston Book Review) comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, a mild-mannered Wisconsin farmhand who stunned an unsuspecting nationand redefined the meaning of the word psycho. The year was 1957. The place was an ordinary farmhouse in Americas heartland, filled with extraordinary evidence of unthinkable depravity. The man behind the massacre was a slight, unassuming Midwesterner with a strange smileand even stranger attachment to his domineering mother. After her death and a failed attempt to dig up his mothers body from the local cemetery, Gein turned to other grave robberies and, ultimately, multiple murders. Driven to commit gruesome and bizarre acts beyond all imagining, Ed Gein remains one of the most deranged minds in the annals of American homicide. This is his storyrecounted in fascinating and chilling detail by Harold Schechter, one of the most acclaimed true-crime storytellers of our time.