I chose two more newspaper clippings as the source of my third blog post. However, this time the newspaper was the Oshkosh Daily Northern and was dated ten years after Gein’s final victim and arrest. I selected this source because the information I read was very different then anything I had read prior. In this article it showed the behind the scene aspect of things while interrogating and persecuting Gein. This article was also very interesting because it was written a decade after Gein’s apprehension. After Gein’s arrest he plead insanity. Due to this the hospital staff was willing to certify that there was no danger and was fit to participate in a trial. I chose to incorporate this source because I had not found other sources that took you through the trial or the hassle of inadmissible evidence.
The articles from Oshkosh Daily Northwestern show kairos because they were published while the judge was tentatively scheduling preliminary motions and discussing dates of the trial. It was during this time that County Judge Andrew Cotter decided that the evidence against Gein was sufficient for a trial to be held. These articles also show rhetorical distance because the purpose is to inform the citizens in Oshkosh of the progress and decisions being made in the Gein case. The writing style is very formal and uses third person tone. The author does a good job of not voicing there opinion or stance on the Gein topic.. This is valuable because the topic of Gein being sane and guilty or insane and guilty was a very controversial topic.
The two articles I read were not argumentative but rather informational. County Judge Andrew Cotter ruled that the state had shown that Gein had probably murdered Bernice Worden. He also decided that the evidence against Gein was enough for a trial to be held. Cotter called Arthur Schley, sheriff at the time Gein’s case broke, as the only witness. Schley repeatedly said that he didn’t remember the details of the case that occurred ten years ago. Cotter discovered that “Gein’s right to remain silent and to have an attorney were violated after he was arrested” this made the confession by Gein unusable and something that should be excluded as evidence. After talking to Schley’s interogating partner, Wilimovsky, he revealed that Gein’s “confession” was made while the two of them were alone in a room with Gein and that no written records were made of this conversation. After further questioning it was discovered that Schley didn’t remember whether he got a search warrant or received permission from Gein to enter his house after the murder was committed (__). They also revealed that there was no record that a search warrant was ever given. Schley argued that witnessing Bernice Worden’s body hanging from the ceiling was enough evidence to demonstrate that a crime had been committed. It was during this time that Ed Gein’s attorney, William Belter, argued that Gein could be set free even though he is found to be guilty of killing Worden. This would be possible if Gein was found guilty of killing but innocent of the crime of murder by reason of insanity where he would be sent back to the state hospital for further tests. It would be possible for Gein to be set free if the hospital staff was willing to certify that there was no danger Gein would commit murder again.
I think that this source was very helpful in answering questions I had about what happened to him after he was arrested. This was important because it was only after his arrest that it was discovered that he was schizophrenic and needed to be housed in a mental hospital. It was also interesting to read about all of the police rules and regulations that were broken in Gein’s case. I had not read this information anywhere else so it was fascinating to read about. In some ways though it’s hard for me to believe that so many rules could be broken during Gein’s interrogation because he was such a huge deal in the small town of Plainfield.
These newspaper articles do not exactly correlate with my research question but they do shed light on what happened to him after his arrest and what his life was like after being apprehended. This source had value in the sense that it talked about the aftermath of Gein’s robbing and murdering phase as well as the consequences of not only his actions but also of the sheriff that didn’t follow protocol. I wish that they would have talked a bit more about the points that directed them towards Gein being mentally unstable and why if the hospital staff thought he was a model patient didn’t they allow him to be free. From here I want to explore more of why Gein was never released back into the public.
My research has cumulated to me being more and more curious about what motivated Gein to rob graves and what led to the rest of his life being in a mental institution versus freedom. The more I research the more I think that the town folk were aware of what was going on in Gein’s house but they were so full of denial that they refused to believe that anyone could possibly do such things. I have found that the more I research the more intrigued I become and the more questions I obtain.
Work Cited:
“Order Ed Gein Tried on Murder, Robbery” Oshkosh Daily Northwestern 22 Feb. 1968. Access Newspaperarchive.com. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
“Trial May Be Without Jury” Oshkosh Daily Northwestern 22 Feb. 1968. Access Newspaperarchive.com. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
I agree that the more I research the more question I come up with. I also find it interesting that so many rules were broken at the time of his arrest, but in my opinion I think there was too much of an emotional connection with Schley due to the fact that Worden’s son was Schley’s best friend. I think that a different officer should have been sent to Gein’s farm and a lot of these rules wouldn’t have been broken. I really like where you are going with this topic, we are covering the same topic but are going at it with different approaches and I think that is really cool!