Edward Theodore Gein, also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, was an American murderer and body snatcher. 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 trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein also confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan, in 1954, and hardware store owner Bernice Worden, in 1957.