The Disturbing True Story Of Carl Tanzler And The Corpse He Dug Up And Lived With For Seven Years

Carl Tanzler fell in love with Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a young tuberculosis patient at the Key West hospital where he was a radiology technician — but his fondness grew into an obsession after she died in 1931.

In 1930, a radiologist named Carl Tanzler fell in love with a young patient he was treating for tuberculosis. Though Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos didn’t return Tanzler’s affection, he grew obsessed with her — and that obsession continued after her death in 1931.

Tanzler spent more than a year sitting by the mausoleum he’d commissioned for Elena each evening, singing to her corpse and speaking with her spirit. Then, one night in April 1933, Tanzler exhumed her body and took it home with him.

He wired Elena’s limbs together, replaced her skin with wax, and stuffed her torso with rags to maintain its form. For the next seven years, Carl Tanzler slept next to the corpse of Elena de Hoyos as if she were still alive.

Authorities and Elena’s family learned of Tanzler’s disturbing actions in 1940. Police arrested the radiologist and took the corpse — but that still didn’t stop Tanzler from carrying out his bizarre love affair.

Carl Tanzler’s Early Life In Germany And Australia

Carl Tanzler was born Georg Karl Tänzler in Dresden on February 8, 1877. He grew up in Germany, and during his childhood there, he had dreams of a dead ancestor named Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel. In these visions, von Cosel reportedly showed Tanzler the face of his true love.

Tanzler moved to Australia at some point soon after the turn of the 20th century. An autobiographical note in a story he wrote for a 1939 edition of The Rosicrucian Digest states that he was living in Australia when World War I broke out, and because of his German heritage, he was placed “in a concentration camp for ‘safe-keeping.'”

He returned to Germany after the war, where he married Doris Schäfer and had two children in the early 1920s. By 1926, Tanzler had decided to move his family to America, and they settled in Zephyrhills, Florida. The following year, he accepted a job as a radiology technician at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Key West and left his wife and children behind to move south.

Three years later, he caught his first glimpse of the woman from his childhood dreams.

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