The story in brief
Plainfield, Wisconsin, November 1957. On the opening day of the hunting season, the woman who runs the hardware store disappears, and her son finds the last slip in the sales book. The case of two murdered women inspired Psycho and other horror films, which invented almost everything else. This is the story of Bernice Worden, of Mary Hogan and of the village that refused to become a legend. An account of real crimes, without violent detail.
The chapters
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Chapter 1 · 5 min · Free
Opening Day
Three famous horror-film villains owe something to the same case. Before the films, there was the opening day of the hunting season in a Wisconsin village.
Sources: Associated Press (18 November 1957); Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein (1981); Harold Schechter, Deviant (1989)
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Chapter 2 · 4 min · Free
The Farm
Two roads on the same night: one leads to the suspect, the other to his farm. This story stays outside the house.
Sources: Associated Press (18 and 21 November 1957); Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein (1981); Harold Schechter, Deviant (1989)
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Chapter 3 · 4 min
The Tavern Keeper
An empty tavern, a remark that sounded like a joke, and a village that becomes the talk of the whole country.
Sources: Harold Schechter, Deviant (1989); Life (2 December 1957); Scott Hassett, “Our Psycho”, Isthmus (2007)
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Chapter 4 · 5 min
Legally Insane
A man who cannot be tried, a house that burns before the auction, a car shown at a fair. And, ten years later, a double verdict.
Sources: The Post-Crescent (7 January, 20 and 21 March 1958); The ruling of Judge Robert H. Gollmar (1968); Harold Schechter, Deviant (1989)
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Chapter 5 · 5 min
What the Films Made Up
A novel, a Hitchcock film and more than half a century of cinema. What really came from Plainfield, and what was invented.
Sources: Robert Bloch, Once Around the Bloch (1993); Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (1990); FBI, Serial Murder (2008)
What you’ll be able to tell
This story belongs to the journey “The Modern Hunt”. By the end of it, you can tell how psychiatry, the press, codebreakers and profilers changed the hunt.
Stories in this journey
- Febrônio: Acquitted for Life
- Ed Gein: The Man Behind the Horror Films
- Zodiac: The Cipher Letters
- Chikatilo: The Killer the USSR Said Couldn’t Exist
Sources
- Associated Press (November 1957)
- The Post-Crescent (1958 and 1968)
- Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein (1981)
- Harold Schechter, Deviant (1989)
- Robert Bloch, Once Around the Bloch (1993)
- FBI, Serial Murder (2008)
