The Concubine Corpse
A morbid true story told from the fictional POV of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, the real-life corpse bride of eccentric necrophiliac Dr. Carl Tanzler.
From the moment we first met, the little German man made my skin crawl, yet, to my dismay, he seemed my best hope for survival. We knew tuberculosis was deadly—my sister had already died of it—and we’d seen many others succumb to the disease, but he said he knew of some experimental treatments that he would try on me for free. I would do almost anything to get better, and my family was desperate for a cure.
My full name is Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, but everyone calls me Helen. I was born in Key West in 1909, the middle child of three sisters. Our family immigrated there from Cuba. Papi made cigars, and Mamá worked hard at home, teaching us to cook and sew. Before I got sick, I loved going dancing and watching Rudolph Valentino movies, but mostly, I loved to sing.
When I was 16, I married a boy named Luis, but he left and went to Miami after I had a miscarriage. Then, I got sick. This doctor, who called himself Count Carl von Cosel—a name he chose to convince us all he had ties to royalty—was willing to do more than most, and he kept coming around with new ideas that might save me. His given name, though, was Karl Tanzler, and Dr. Tanzler is what I call him. I’m not here to help him fulfill any more of his fantasies.
Dr. Tanzler worked as a radiologist, but he claimed to have nine university degrees, and he wore a watch he told everyone was a gift from the Russian czar. At 53, he seemed to know his stuff and walked around Key West with an air of confidence and distinction, even if we all thought he was odd. To me, though, he was more than odd. He was a creeper.
It was the way he looked at me. From the first time we met at the hospital, there was an unsettling hunger in his eyes. His touch lingered too long. He was too eager. Yet, he was the only one who believed there was a way to cure my deadly disease, and we wanted to believe him. His experimental efforts to improve my health did nothing to change my condition, but at least he was doing something that gave us a shred of hope. Over time, though, his affections became too much.
When he started asking me to marry him, I politely declined, but inside, I was repulsed. I was only 21, and he was like a grandfather with his grey ring of hair encircling his bald head and little round glasses. Besides, I was still legally married to Luis, and Dr. Tanzler had a wife and two children he was estranged from. Regardless, my mom always said to be nice to people who were nice to me. He was old, though, and I had zero attraction to him. He wouldn’t leave me alone, so despite his being so willing to try to save me from tuberculosis, we all decided he needed to keep his distance. His experimental treatments of potions, elixers, and electrodes hooked up to makeshift machines started making my parents uncomfortable. We told him to stay away, but he wouldn’t listen. We finally moved without telling him where we went. But Key West is a small community; even more so in 1930. He stalked me and found me.
As I continued to decline, we accepted his help again. When he repeatedly proposed, I evaded the subject. We all disliked him, but again, I wanted to live. My family wanted me to live. Until I didn’t care anymore. I was 22 now, and Dr. Tanzler had twice brought me back to life via electric shock therapy. It was so awful, and everything was so awful, I was ready to just give up. Mostly, I didn’t want to see him again. I told my family not to call him next time I had an attack. I said to call for a priest, and just let me go. I left this world on October 25, 1931, but he wasn’t done. My corpse became his plaything.
He convinced my bereaved parents to let him move into my bedroom and paid them $20 a month (about $400 today) to live there for a time. He was very generous, and we were not wealthy. He also paid to have me embalmed and bought me a burial spot in a mausoleum that only he had the key to. Dr. Tanzler came to see me every night, bringing gifts and things to mask the smell. Alone in the crypt, he would do and say things he never got to do while I was alive. He finally had me all to himself. I know what you're thinking, and yes, he did do those things. I could not refuse. But he also tried to bring me back to life, tried to stop my decay, worked to preserve his idea of me, the one he believed he was destined to be with because of some dumb childhood premonition.
When people finally started talking about his nightly visits, his mental acuity was questioned enough to warrant him being fired from the hospital, but that only gave him more time to be with me. He realized he couldn’t keep coming to my mausoleum due to public scorn, so one night, he smuggled me out, carrying me in a wagon to his home, to his bed, where I would stay for the next seven years. Sometimes, though, ever a romantic, he would pick me up and dance with my body.
Years had passed since my death, but Dr. Tanzler worked to keep me intact as I skeletonized. He added stability to my bones with wire, replaced my rotted skin with fabric coated in wax and plaster, and stuffed my body with cloth to fill out my figure. He stuck glass orbs in my eye sockets and gazed into them, wishing, praying for a spark of life. He made me a wig of my own hair and sometimes dressed me in new clothes. Dr. Tanzler doused me in perfumes and sweet-smelling oils. He even fashioned a tube and put it where my vagina used to be, with cotton stuffed in the end where medical examiners later confirmed the presence of sperm. I could only silently scream.
All the while, he was met with side-eye all around town. People had seen him dancing with what they assumed was a doll. Others knew he was buying women’s clothing. The old man was even building a plane so he could take us to a high stratosphere where my body would be reanimated. People talked, but would he really have a corpse in his home? Finally, my sister went to his house to confront him and saw me there. Though I looked different, she knew. Dr. Tanzler was incredulous, claiming he owned me. He pointed out to her that he had paid for my mausoleum and spent the last nine years doting on me, whereas my sister went on with her life and did nothing for me. Why should she care? But she did care, and she notified the police.
He was arrested on charges of desecrating a gravesite, but in the trial, the charges didn’t hold up, as it turned out the statute of limitations for that crime had expired. Meanwhile, he held his ground, saying he did it all because of his deep and unyielding love for me. Puke.
When the story hit the news, they viewed him as a hopeless romantic—a man so in love that even death and putrefaction could not diffuse his devotion. No one cared what I thought or what I wanted. I, a dying woman, was stalked and harrassed for a year and a half before my corpse was kidnapped and repeatedly raped. I spent my last days alive feeling a nauseating sense of repulsion toward this overbearing man who relentlessly inserted himself into my life and my family’s lives. History has often framed what he did to me as some kind of love story, but there was no love reciprocated from me.
Later, much came to light in his writings that insinuated he hastened my death by putting poison in the elixers he would give me. Some say he rationalized that I was dying anyway, and since I rejected him in life, in death, he could finally have me. Which he did. None of that, nor any of the rest of what he did to me, seemed to matter, though, to those who came from far away to get a look at me after I was rescued.
See, even though police finally took my body from Dr. Tanzler’s home, the sensational story only continued the exploitation of my long-dead body, because the funeral home that possessed it put it on display, charging $1 per view. People came from far away to see what he had done to me. Then, nearly a decade after I died, in 1940, I was laid to rest in a secret location in an unmarked grave, where I could get some much-needed GDP&Q.
When Carl Tanzler died in 1952, he was found in his home lying on the floor. He’d been dead for days before he was discovered. Near him, wrapped in a silky robe, lay a wax replica of yours truly.
Sources:
https://www.historicmysteries.com/history/carl-tanzler-in-love-with-the-dead/9617/
https://historyhub.info/twists-in-a-twisted-tale-the-exploitation-defilement-and-murder-of-elena-hoyos/
https://gizmodo.com/undying-love-carl-tanzlers-mummified-dream-girl-1710663454
https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/voncosel
Yikes. That said, this story would make a great gothic horror novel, from her POV.
I know this story quite well, but I love how you "breathed new life" into it with the unique approach. Bravo!