Carl Tanzler

[Steve Dekorte]

Carl Tanzler or sometimes Count Carl von Cosel (February 8, 1877 – July 23, 1952) was a German-born radiologist at the United States Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida who developed a morbid obsession for a young Cuban-American tuberculosis patient, Maria Elena Milagro "Helen" de Hoyos (1910–1931), that carried on well after Hoyos succumbed to the disease in 1931.[1] In 1933, almost two years after her death, Tanzler removed Hoyos' body from its tomb, and lived with the corpse at his home for seven years until its discovery by Hoyos' relatives and authorities in 1940.[2]

Carl Tanzler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carl_Tanzler

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Steve Dekorte

Carl Tanzler or sometimes Count Carl von Cosel (February 8, 1877 – July 23, 1952) was a German-born radiologist at the United States Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida who developed a morbid obsession for a young Cuban-American tuberculosis patient, Maria Elena Milagro "Helen" de Hoyos (1910–1931), that carried on well after Hoyos succumbed to the disease in 1931.[1] In 1933, almost two years after her death, Tanzler removed Hoyos' body from its tomb, and lived with the corpse at his home for seven years until its discovery by Hoyos' relatives and authorities in 1940.[2] Carl Tanzler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In some ways, Tanzler reminds me of

Dr. Phibes

The_Abominable_Dr_Phibes

.

[G. S. Carnivals]

I refer you to this older thread:

Real life love story. Ligottian in nature? Weird nonetheless - THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Odalisque]

I copied and pasted this from a link from the earlier thread. I've taken the opportunity to correct some of the typos, but many more have probably slipped through:



Amazingly, it is a true story of a man who loved so obsessively and took the notion of love beyond the grave.

In the 1920's, Carl Tanzler (later known as Carl Von Cosel) emigrated from Germany to the the Florida Keys, in the United States, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters. Von Cosel had worked as an X-ray technician and inventor, barely making enough to get by, but claimed to be a former submarine skipper and owner of nine college degrees. In 1934, he found employment at a Key West hospital in the tuberculosis ward. Shortly after bring his family to join him in Florida, he and his wife, Doris, separated.
Dr. Carl Von Cosel
A recent author of the story, Ben Harrison, describes Tanzler at this stage of his life as; "fifty years old - an imaginative, impractical inventor, scientist, electrical wizard and sometimes ingenious liar" who had "already begun to mix fact and fantasy in the search for his dream lover." Von Cosel became a lonely man and his lonliness was transformed when he fixated when a new patient arrived at the hospital, suffering with the affliction.



A poor Hispanic 22-year-old young woman, a former Cuban entertainer, Elena Hoyos, (photo at right), was universally acknowledged to be a great beauty and Von Cosel, then working as a ward technician, was soon captivated, despite her rebuffs of his advances. He quickly became determined to help Elena, even cure her, using unconventional methods. There is was never any evidence of a romance between the young hispanic beauty and Von Cosel, but in his mind and will, he intended to rid her of the disease, with the ultimate aim of forming a lasting love attachment.
Her desperate family, knowing the severity of her illness, gave Von Cosel permission to try his unusual methods in an attempt to cure her. The hospital staff was dubious but with his nine 'degrees' and ocassional eccentric brilliance, they let him try his approach on Elena, knowing they could do nothing themselves to save her. Using an odd mix of chemicals, herbs and even reportedly X-ray treatments, he attempted to stem the tide of her tuberculosis. It was sort of an early attempt at chemotherapy, but with untried methods.
Despite his efforts, Elena Hoyos died leaving Von Cosel despondent and once again, alone. Von Cosel got permission from her family to build her a mausoleum. There, Von Cosel used formaldehyde and other chemicals and spices to preserve the body, secretly visiting it nightly. He had a key made that no one but her sister knew about. The Hoyos's trusted Von Cosel and since he seemed to love her in life (even though it was an unrequited love), they were understanding of his fondness for visiting her grave. They did not know he was inside attempting to preserve Elena. Von Cosel paid for and built an above-ground burial vault which included a telephone so that he could communicate with her and a strange airship whose function he refused to state. During these nightly visits, he would talk to Elena's corpse and said later that one night he saw her ghost in the mausoleum. He claimed she appeared to him from that time after every night and they would have long conversations and she expressed her love for him. These nocturmal visitations continued for two years until he lost his job at the hospital and moved to a remote shack. But he wasn't alone in his shack, for he had stolen Elena's body from the mausoleum!
There he placed her body on a large bed, enough to sleep two, curtained with a cloth veil. He continued his work on her decaying body as the chemicals could only delay her body from mouldering for so long. He rubbed her entire body with strange oils and chemicals and then later had to reconstruct parts of her face with morticians wax to reform her features. He later admitted to spending long pleasant nights talking to her and professing his love.
Not seeing Von Cosel outside Elena's tomb for over seven years, her sister began to suspect something was amiss. She notified the authorities and they searched her mausoleum only to find it empty. Elena's sister instantly knew who had taken her sister's body and found Von Cosel's shack and confronted him. He kindly invited her inside, and to her horror, she saw what appeared be a wax dummy in the likeness of Elena laying on the bed. He told her that he and Elena were happy and in love and invited her to come back again and visit. The sister was livid and horrified and went to the police.

They came and took what they assumed to be a dummy to the local morgue to be autopsied. The "dummy" (pictured above left, from the autopsy) was actually the long decayed corpse of Elena Hoyos; her bones held together with piano wire, her skin had been treated with wax, her eye sockets filled with glass replacements, and she'd been perfumed to mask the odor of decomposition. This was terrible enough, but what the investigators found next was truly repulsive.





Von Cosel had reconstructed many parts of her body, her eyes, nose, and most disturbingly, her vagina to which he added a tube that permitted sexual intercourse. He had been having sexual intercourse with the corpse of Elena Hoyos for as many as eight years!
The case eventually went to trial where amazingly the majority of the public, especially women, were firmly behind Carl, seeing him as a man who loved a woman so much that he was unable to let her go. In his confession he stated that he had planned to use the airship to take the both of them "high into the stratosphere, so that radiation from outer space could penetrate Elena's tissues and restore life to her somnolent form." Many people sympathised with Von Cosel after hearing his story and a Latin love song was even composed based on the subject. Von Cosel was only imprisoned for a short time and Elena's body was buried in a metal cube which was buried in a secret location.

Before the burial there was another bizarre incident. So much attention had been given in newpapers, press accounts and court records that the authorities thought it would be best to show the people Elena's body before her secret burial.
[shown here].
They placed her body, still grossly decayed and with a silken, waxy face, in a trailer cart and allowed the curious throngs to view her before her second burial. One ten-year-old boy, now in his 60's, said:

"I've never been able to forget that sight. It didn't even look like a human anymore. So much reconstruction and decay....it was the scariest thing I've ever seen. Her face was an odd white-ish color that looked more like a wax dummy than a woman's face. And she had horrible, black, staring, glass eyes. I still dream about that sight."

It seems that the press did not divulge the details of the necrophilia before showing her corpse and had the general public known about that aspect there probably would have been less sympathy for Von Cosel. Declared sane, Von Cosel was not charged with a crime because the statute of limitations on grave robbing had expired. Elena Hoyos was eventually buried at a secret location. Von Cosel, separated from his love, used a death mask to create a life-sized dummy of her, and lived with it until his death in 1952.

[G. S. Carnivals]

"One Sunday evening in November I learned rather more about Serena Cockayne. After working all afternoon in the study I looked up from my desk to see her sitting in the corner with her back to me. Distracted by a professional problem, I had left her there after lunch without thinking, and there was something rather melancholy about her rounded shoulders and inclined head, almost as if she had fallen from favour.

As I turned her towards me I noticed a small blemish on her left shoulder, perhaps a fleck of plaster from the ceiling. I tried to brush it away, but the discoloration remained. It occurred to me that the synthetic skin, probably made from some early experimental plastic, might have begun to deteriorate. Switching on a table-lamp, I examined Serena's shoulders more carefully.

Seen against the dark background of the study, the down-like nimbus that covered Serena's skin confirmed all my admiration of her maker's genius. Here and there a barely detectable unevenness, the thinnest mottling to suggest a surface capillary, rooted the illusion in the firmest realism. I had always assumed that this masterpiece of imitation flesh extended no more than two inches or so below the shoulder line of the gown, and that the rest of Serena's body consisted of wood and papier mâché.

Looking down at the angular planes of her shoulder blades, at the modest curvatures of her well-concealed breasts, I gave way to a sudden and wholly unprurient impulse. Standing behind her, I took the silver zip in my fingers and with a single movement lowered it to Serena's waist.

As I gazed at the unbroken expanse of white skin that extended to a pair of plump hips and the unmistakable hemispheres of her buttocks I realized that the manikin before me was that of a complete woman, and that its creator had lavished as much skill and art on those never-to-be-seen portions of her anatomy as on the visible ones.

The zip had stuck at the lower terminus of its oxidized track. There was something offensive about my struggling with the loosened dress of this half-naked woman. My fingers touched the skin in the small of her back, removing the dust that had accumulated over the years.

Running diagonally from spine to hip was the hairline of a substantial scar. I took it for granted that this marked an essential vent required in the construction of these models. But the rows of opposing stitch-marks were all too obvious. I stood up, and for a few moments watched this partly disrobed woman with her inclined head and clasped hands, gazing placidly at the fireplace.

Careful not to damage her, I loosened the bodice of the gown. The upper curvatures of her breasts appeared, indented by the shoulder straps. Then I saw, an inch above the still-concealed left nipple, a large black mole.

I zipped up the gown and straightened it gently on her shoulders. Kneeling on the carpet in front of her, I looked closely into Serena's face, seeing the faint fissures at the apex of her mouth, the minute veins in her cheek, a childhood scar below her chin. A curious sense of revulsion and excitement came over me, as if I had taken part in a cannibalistic activity.

I knew now that the person seated on her gilt chair was no manikin but a once living woman, her peerless skin mounted and forever preserved by a master, not of the doll-maker's, but of the taxidermist's art.

At that moment I fell deeply in love with Serena Cockayne."

J. G. Ballard - "The Smile"