After his 1957 arrest, Gein was declared insane. He went to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin. He didn’t go to prison. He went to a place with soft walls and art therapy.
He lived there for over 25 years. He was polite. He was quiet. He knitted little things and read westerns.
He was, by all accounts, a model patient. A creepy, grave-robbing, skin-suit-wearing model patient.
So, does a model patient suddenly snap and kill a nurse? The official records say no. Not a single nurse died mysteriously at Mendota during Gein’s stay.
Funny Detail #1: The "Nurse" Was Actually a Guard
This is where it gets hilarious. The supposed victim wasn’t a nurse at all. She was a female security guard.
And guess what? She didn't die. Her name was Diane something. She worked there for years after Gein’s time. Rumor killer, right?
Did Ed Gein kill a nurse in the hospital, as seen in Netflix's Monster
So where did the nurse story come from? Probably a mix of bad memory and good storytelling. A guard gets a little roughed up, and suddenly she’s a dead nurse.
