Gein's crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety in 1957 after authorities discovered that he had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned keepsakes from their bones and skin.

Gein died at Mendota Mental Health Institute from respiratory failure resulting from lung cancer on July 26, 1984, aged 77.

[6] Augusta, who was fervently religious and nominally Lutheran,[7] frequently preached to her sons about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking and her belief that all women were naturally promiscuous and instruments of the devil.

She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting verses from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation concerning death, murder and divine retribution.

He also owned a local grocery shop but soon sold the business and left the city with his family to live on a 155-acre (63-hectare) farm in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin,[11] which became their permanent residence.

Gein was shy; classmates and teachers remembered him as having strange mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes.

[14] Apparently, Henry had been dead for some time, and it appeared that the cause of death was heart failure since he had not been burned or injured otherwise.

[15][16] Police dismissed the possibility of foul play and the county coroner later officially listed asphyxiation as the cause of death.

Around this time, he became interested in reading pulp magazines and adventure stories, particularly those involving cannibals or Nazi atrocities,[12] specifically concerning Ilse Koch, who selected tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins.

[23] Frank Worden told investigators that on the evening before his mother's disappearance, Gein had been in the store and was expected to have returned the next morning for a gallon of antifreeze.

[23] A sheriff's deputy[23] discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed on Gein's property, hung upside down by her legs with a crossbar at her ankles and ropes at her wrists.

[40] When questioned, Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952,[41] he had made as many as forty nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state.

[42] On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother[43] and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia.

"[52] During state crime laboratory interrogation, Gein also admitted to shooting 51-year-old Mary Hogan, a tavern owner missing since December 8, 1954, whose head was found in his house, but he later denied memory of details of her death.

[55] During questioning, Sheriff Art Schley reportedly assaulted Gein by banging his head and face into a brick wall.

[60][61] In November 1957, authorities confronted Gein with a list of missing persons cases that had occurred between the death of his mother and Worden.

However, lie detector tests exonerated Gein of any other murders, and his psychiatrists concluded that his violence was only directed to women who physically resembled his mother.

[62][63] On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

"[88] Gein's Ford sedan, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at public auction for $760 (equivalent to $8,000 in 2023) to carnival sideshow operator, Bunny Gibbons.

[90] Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute due to respiratory failure, secondary to lung cancer, on July 26, 1984, at the age of 77.

[91] Gein's story has had a lasting effect on American popular culture as evidenced by its numerous appearances in film, music and literature.

Gein served as the inspiration for a myriad of fictional serial killers, most notably, Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre),[92] Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs),[92] Garland Greene (Con Air), and the character of Dr. Oliver Thredson in the TV series American Horror Story: Asylum.

The pair planned secretly to exhume Gein's mother from her grave to test a theory, but never followed through on the scheme, and eventually ended their collaboration.

[94] Gein's story inspired American grunge band Tad to write the song "Nipple Belt" for their 1989 album, God's Balls.

[95] Gein also inspired American thrash metal band Slayer to write the song "Dead Skin Mask" for their 1990 album, Seasons in the Abyss.

"[97] In 2012, German director, Jörg Buttgereit, wrote and directed a stage play about Gein's case titled Kannibale und Liebe, at Theater Dortmund in Germany.

[98] According to George W. Arndt, news reports at the time of Gein's crimes spawned a subgenre of black humor called "Geiners.

"[99][100] In 2022, Gein, portrayed by Shane Kerwin, appears in the first season of Netflix's anthology series Monster as a possible inspiration for Jeffrey Dahmer.