November 1957. Deer hunting season in Wisconsin.
While the men of Plainfield were out in the woods, someone else was hunting too.
That night, police found a woman hanging upside down in a farmer's shed. Headless. Gutted like a deer.
Then they opened the door to his house.
The farmer's name was Ed Gein. Quiet. Polite. A little odd. The man who did odd jobs around town and babysat the neighbors' kids.
The woman was Bernice Worden, 58, owner of the local hardware store. The last receipt she wrote that morning was for a gallon of antifreeze.
For Ed.
Inside his filthy farmhouse, deputies found:
A lampshade made from a human face.
Chairs covered in human skin.
Bowls made from skulls.
Skulls mounted on his bedposts.
Masks made from women's faces.
Bernice's head in a sack.
Her heart in a bag by the stove.
But a few rooms were spotless.
His mother's rooms. Sealed off since she died in 1945. Untouched. As if she might walk back in.
Gein confessed. For years he had crept into graveyards at night, digging up women who looked like his mother.
He was making a "woman suit."
So he could become her.
Bernice wasn't the first. Tavern owner Mary Hogan had vanished in 1954. Her face was found in his house, in a paper bag.
And the "shrunken heads" he once showed a teenage friend, saying they were war souvenirs?
Real human faces.
He was declared insane and locked away for life. When his house burned to the ground months later, he just shrugged.
"Just as well."
His story became Psycho. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The Silence of the Lambs.
But for the people of Plainfield, it was never a movie.
It was the nice man who watched their children.
Would you have trusted him? π
He offered to plead guilty to murder for a cheesesteak.
This week, an accused killer in Florida told a judge his price: a Philly cheesesteak, fries and a 20-ounce Pepsi.
But to understand that lunch order, you have to go back to a leg floating in a Tampa bay.
November 11, 2021.
Fishermen in Tampa's McKay Bay spot something in the water.
At first, they think it's a mannequin leg.
It isn't.
On the leg is a tattoo. Three hearts. Three names.
Greg. Sean. Zach.
Police post the photo online. It spreads all the way to Erie, Pennsylvania.
Where, that same day, a mother had reported her daughter missing.
Her name was Stephanie Crone-Overholts. 47. A mother of three.
The names in the hearts were her sons.
Weeks earlier, she'd been living out of her car. At a McDonald's, she met a 69-year-old man named Robert Kessler.
He offered her a place to stay.
His home in Lutz, Florida.
He gave her his little daughter's bedroom.
His daughter was 8. She later told detectives what happened next.
Stephanie and her dad argued about money. Stephanie asked for $200 so she could leave.
The next day, she was gone.
Her dad said she'd left with her boyfriend.
The girl had never heard of a boyfriend.
After Stephanie was gone, the girl said, her bedroom smelled bad.
Her father promised to redecorate it.
Then detectives searched the house.
Investigators say they found Stephanie's blood:
On his shoes.
On the kitchen cabinets.
On a mattress.
In his van.
In the little girl's bedroom.
Witnesses say they saw a man matching his description throwing bags and bins into the bay. Police pulled bins from the water.
More of her remains were inside.
Prosecutors say she was stabbed four times in the neck.
Then cut into at least seven pieces.
Kessler told police she had moved out weeks before. Police say he lied.
He pleaded not guilty. For five years, the case stalled over whether he was mentally fit for trial.
Now he's 74. Blind. In a wheelchair.
And on the first day of jury selection, he made his offer.
A guilty plea, "to save the taxpayers."
For a cheesesteak with onions and mayo. Fries. A 20-ounce Pepsi.
The judge said that in almost 40 years, he'd never heard that request. Trading food for a plea, he said, would be "wrong in a thousand ways."
Kessler took the offer back.
The next day, as prosecutors began laying out their case, he asked to leave the courtroom.
The trial started without him.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
The internet will remember the cheesesteak.
But somewhere in this story is a tattoo with three hearts on it.
Greg. Sean. Zach.
Remember her name: Stephanie Crone-Overholts.
He offered to plead guilty to murder for a cheesesteak.
This week, an accused killer in Florida told a judge his price: a Philly cheesesteak, fries and a 20-ounce Pepsi.
But to understand that lunch order, you have to go back to a leg floating in a Tampa bay.
November 11, 2021.
Fishermen in Tampa's McKay Bay spot something in the water.
At first, they think it's a mannequin leg.
It isn't.
On the leg is a tattoo. Three hearts. Three names.
Greg. Sean. Zach.
Police post the photo online. It spreads all the way to Erie, Pennsylvania.
Where, that same day, a mother had reported her daughter missing.
Her name was Stephanie Crone-Overholts. 47. A mother of three.
The names in the hearts were her sons.
Weeks earlier, she'd been living out of her car. At a McDonald's, she met a 69-year-old man named Robert Kessler.
He offered her a place to stay.
His home in Lutz, Florida.
He gave her his little daughter's bedroom.
His daughter was 8. She later told detectives what happened next.
Stephanie and her dad argued about money. Stephanie asked for $200 so she could leave.
The next day, she was gone.
Her dad said she'd left with her boyfriend.
The girl had never heard of a boyfriend.
After Stephanie was gone, the girl said, her bedroom smelled bad.
Her father promised to redecorate it.
Then detectives searched the house.
Investigators say they found Stephanie's blood:
On his shoes.
On the kitchen cabinets.
On a mattress.
In his van.
In the little girl's bedroom.
Witnesses say they saw a man matching his description throwing bags and bins into the bay. Police pulled bins from the water.
More of her remains were inside.
Prosecutors say she was stabbed four times in the neck.
Then cut into at least seven pieces.
Kessler told police she had moved out weeks before. Police say he lied.
He pleaded not guilty. For five years, the case stalled over whether he was mentally fit for trial.
Now he's 74. Blind. In a wheelchair.
And on the first day of jury selection, he made his offer.
A guilty plea, "to save the taxpayers."
For a cheesesteak with onions and mayo. Fries. A 20-ounce Pepsi.
The judge said that in almost 40 years, he'd never heard that request. Trading food for a plea, he said, would be "wrong in a thousand ways."
Kessler took the offer back.
The next day, as prosecutors began laying out their case, he asked to leave the courtroom.
The trial started without him.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
The internet will remember the cheesesteak.
But somewhere in this story is a tattoo with three hearts on it.
Greg. Sean. Zach.
Remember her name: Stephanie Crone-Overholts.