A German-born radiology technologist named Carl Tanzler sounds like a normal physician who treated people until one of the facts about him shook the world. This story can be called the most romantic story, but by psychopaths, the story of love that forced that man to go to any extent to keep the love of his life with him, even after her death.
In 1931, Carl Tanzler had a patient whom he had to treat for tuberculosis, and he fell in love with her, so much so that he brought her corpse home, dressed her as new as life, and lived with her corpse for seven long years. He fell in love with the daughter of a cigar maker and a homemaker, a Cuban-American woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, Carl saw her as his dream come true when he saw her walking into the hospital.
What happened next was her treatment as she was suffering from tuberculosis and was brought to the hospital by her mother after becoming ill. She was the doctor’s dream come true as he often dreamt of a dark-haired woman being the love of his life when he was young. The story became crazier as time passed by, here’s how.
Carl’s Obsession with Hoyos
Despite the incompetency to treat tuberculosis, Carl was determined to save Hoyos anyhow, he used specially made tonics, elixir, and several medicines, but nothing seemed to work out on her. Her condition became critical, and despite all the effort, she succumbed to her illness in October 1931, leaving her family and her caretaker/lover heartbroken.
Carl Tanzler was devastated and wanted to buy a pricey mausoleum in Key West Cemetery to lay her remains there with her parent’s permission. The obsession grew crazy over time, Carl used to visit Hoyos’grave every night for nearly two years until he lost his job for unknown reasons. Everyone who knew him found his behavior strange, but no one couldn’t have guessed the real reason behind it.
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His obsession grew so much that in April 1933, he removed Hoyos’s body from the mausoleum and housed it with him in his bed, which would save him his nightly visits to her grave and let him stay with her always. It sounds creepy and horrifying about what Carl Tanzler did, he now had a task to keep Hoyos’s decomposed body intact, but he also had plans for that and managed to do it.
Carl’s Maintaining Hoyos Corpse
Carl had gone utterly crazy in love and obsession, and he did not realize what he was doing, he looked up all the DIY methods to keep a dead body intact. To do the same, he fixed her decomposing skin with silk and plaster of Paris and made glass eyes to keep her face intact, he also stitched her bones with a piano wire as well as used coat hangers to keep her skeletal intact.
He used different perfumes, flowers, and disinfectants to prevent the rotting odor, and he stuffed her chest and abdominal cavity with rags to keep them in their original shape. Carl had also dressed the corpse of Hoyo in a dress, gloves, and jewelry and routinely applied wax on her face to keep it “alive”. He shared his bed with her corpse for the next seven years, following the same routine.
The entire town was talking about Carl purchasing women’s stuff, and a local boy also witnessed him dancing with what he assumed to be a huge doll from his window, this led Hoyos’ family to suspect that something was wrong.
Discovery of Tanzler’s Obsession
In 1940, after hearing all the rumors, Hoyos’ sister arrived at Carl’s residence and witnessed a life-sized effigy of her departed sister. She became suspicious and called the police, later the police disclosed that it was, in fact, Hoyos’ corpse, which Carl had been housing for a long time. He was arrested for grave robbing, and the incident shook the world when it became the headline. After the autopsy, the doctors realized the fine work that Carl had been doing on a corpse for seven long years, it was also revealed that there was a tube inserted between her legs into the vaginal cavity for intercourse, but Carl never admitted to committing any necrophilic acts.
The statute of limitations had expired, and Tanzler was set free, Hoyos’ body was eventually returned to the cemetery, and it is believed that Carl created a life-sized effigy of Hoyos and lived with it until he died in his apartment in 1952, and was discovered after three weeks of his death. The obsession that Carl had with Hoyos still shocks some people to their core of how can love make people go out of their limitations and do anything for it.
