Carl Tanzler’s Famous And Macabre Case Of Necrophilia
Few cases of necrophilia are as famous as that of Carl Tanzler. The true story of a man who, surprisingly, took his obsession with a woman beyond death.
Carl Tanzler (later known as Carl von Cosel) was able to exhume the corpse of what he considered the woman of his life, in order to continue having sexual relations with her.
The necrophilia either necrosexuality It is a type of paraphilia that is characterized by a high level of arousal through contemplation, contact, mutilation or mental evocation of a corpse
Having sexual relations with corpses is not only considered socially unacceptable, but is punishable by prison, since it is understood that the dead person would not have consented to this act while alive.
Carl Tanzler: a famous case of necrophilia
America was considered the land of opportunity. For decades, many immigrants settled in the United States of America in search of a better future. This is what Carl Tanzler, a German radiologist, did.
Tanzler emigrated to Zephyrillis, a city in Pasco County, Florida. He arrived with his wife and two daughters, but shortly afterward he left his family to move to the island of Key West, near Miami. There he rented an x-ray machine at the US Navy Hospital, and changed his name to Carl von Cosel.
One day in 1930, Tanzler’s life changed forever. He was in his early fifties at the time and had an affair with his patient Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. She suffered from tuberculosis and her mother took her to the hospital in search of treatment for her pathology
Tanzler had visions during his childhood of the woman of his life
As a child in Germany, Tanzler reported that he had visions of an exotic girl, the supposed woman of his life When he met María Elena, he thought she was the woman in her visions. That is to say, this 21-year-old Cuban woman was his true love.
Thanks to his crush and despite the fact that Tanzler did not have enough training to treat this pathology, and in addition to the patient’s few possibilities of cure, he himself carried out Elena’s treatment from his parents’ house.
But María Elena Milagro de Hoyos worsened due to her illness, and on October 25, 1931 she died. So, good old Tanzler paid for the funeral and built a mausoleum for María Elena in the cemetery on Key West Island, all of this with the consent of his family. She visited his grave every night for a year and a half after his death.
His obsession with María Elena and the exhumation of the body
But soon the obsession with María Elena became macabre. Tazler later said that Maria Elena’s spirit sang to him in Spanish as she sat near her grave, and begged him to take her with him. In April 1933, Tanzler exhumed the Cuban girl’s body and took it to her house with a toy car.
When the body was in his house, He dedicated himself to preserving it in unimaginable ways Since it was in a considerable state of putrefaction, he glued its bones with hangers and wires, put glass eyes in its eye sockets, and replaced the rotting flesh with silk cloth treated with wax and white plaster. Tanzler stuffed rags into the abdominal cavities and chest to maintain the illusion of the human form and put on a wig that Maria Elena usually wore. To hide the putrid smell, the radiologist used liters and liters of perfume.
Tanzler had sexual relations with the corpse of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos
I spent entire days and nights with the body, I even danced with it. In addition, Tanzler had sexual relations with the corpse.
After a while, rumors reached Maria Elena’s family. Her sister Florinda went to Tanzler’s house, and to her enormous surprise, she discovered her sister’s body. Without thinking, she called the police and Tanzler was arrested.
The case became very famous and had a lot of media coverage After her arrest, María Elena’s body was buried in the cemetery so that she could rest in peace. When Tanzler was released from prison, she wrote an autobiography of herself that was published in Fantastic Adventures.
