Watchmen writer Alan Moore’s 1989 graphic novel From Hell used the 1888-1891 crimes of London’s Jack the Ripper as a bloody overture to the coming violence of the 20th century, and even now the serial killer’s trail of carnage seems hard to top. Well, it was until November 16, 1957, when Wisconsin farmer Edward Theodore Gein was arrested at his family home. A human heart was cooking on the stove, and out in the barn its owner’s headless body had been hung upside down, gutted like a deer. Hollowed-out skulls, a female skin suit, and other more disagreeably fleshy body...