Born in Dresden, Germany in 1877, Carl Tanzler
claimed to have descended from aristocratic
stock.
Fanciful even as a child, in later years he
recounted a story of being visited in his
youth by a long-dead ancestor, Countess Anna
Constantina von Cosel, who gave him a vision
of a beautiful, dark-haired woman whom she
said was his one, true love.
As a young man he either forgot the vision,
made the whole story up later in life, or
decided to settle because in or about 1920
he married a different woman.
Together (although in stages), they immigrated
to the U.S. with their kids and settled in
Zephyrhillis, Florida in 1926.
Perhaps realizing he couldn’t avoid his
fate, by 1927, Carl had left Zephyrhillis
(though they didn’t divorce), changed his
name to Carl von Cosel and made a new home
in Key West, Florida, where he found work
as an x-ray technician at the U.S. Marine
Hospital.
A few years later, in 1930, a young, beautiful
dark-haired woman went to the hospital for
treatment of a lung condition that was eventually
diagnosed as tuberculosis.
As x-rays were required, Maria Elena Milagro
de Hoyos, known as Helen, ran into Carl who
was awestruck – he claimed to have instantly
recognized her as the woman of his childhood
dream.
elanaAlthough it’s not clear if Carl ever
told Helen about his supernatural vision,
he was soon professing his love for the young
woman and showering her with jewelry and clothing.
And, as she continued to decline due to her
illness, when he offered to make house calls
to treat her, the help was eagerly accepted.
More enthusiastic than educated, however,
Carl’s “remedies” were little more than
additional x-rays and strange concoctions.
Despite his and the actual doctors’ best
efforts, Helen died on October 25, 1931.
Carl’s offer to pay for her funeral was
gratefully accepted by her family, and rather
than settling for a simple grave, he had a
sizeable mausoleum built.
In gratitude, Helen’s mother gave Carl some
of Helen’s hair as a memento – a decision
the family later regretted.
tombVisiting her crypt in Key West Cemetery
nearly every night for the next year and a
half, Carl later claimed that Helen’s spirit
visited him and asked him to get her out of
the tomb.
Obliging, in April 1933 he crept into the
cemetery (presumably after dark) with a small
wagon and secretly removed her body and took
her back to his home.
With the passage of so much time, Dead-Helen
must have been quite a sight.
To reverse the effects of time (and decay),
Carl employed a number of techniques, including
re-attaching her bones with wire and coat
hangers and filling her now deflated torso
with rags to get her back to the right proportions.
Over these structural supports, Carl made
a kind of skin out of silk, wax and plaster
of Paris, put glass eyes in her sockets and
fashioned a wig for her from the hair her
mother had given him.
Carl then dressed her in style, including
jewelry, stockings and gloves.
To prevent any further decay and disguise
the smell, Carl also employed a fair bit of
preservatives as well as disinfectants and
perfumes.
airshipNot content to only be with Dead-Helen,
Carl also hatched a plan to create a plane
to carry her body, as he put it, “high into
the stratosphere, so that radiation from outer
space could penetrate Elena’s tissues and
restore life to her somnolent form.”
Seven years later, Dead-Helen’s sister,
Florinda, after hearing some strange rumors
of Carl’s extracurricular activities, including
someone spotting through a window Carl dancing
with a life-sized “doll”, arrived at his
home, demanding to see the doll.
What she discovered was that it was no effigy
of her sister at all, but the carefully preserved
remains of Helen.
The authorities were immediately notified
and Carl was arrested, but as the statute
of limitations for grave robbing had already
ran, the charges were dropped.
Later investigations revealed a bit of Carl
and Dead-Helen’s “life” together, which
included dancing and spending each night lying
in bed together.
It’s not clear if Carl engaged in necrophilia;
while some researchers claim that a paper
tube had been inserted in Dead-Helen’s vaginal
cavity, others claim that as this “evidence”
was only revealed in 1972, it was not credible.
Even if true, this also doesn’t say one
way or the other whether he had intercourse
with the corpse- a paper-tube being presumably…
uncomfortable…
corpseMoving on, as if Carl’s desecration
of Helen’s corpse wasn’t enough, after
the authorities were finished with the body,
Dead-Helen was put on public display in a
local funeral home – where more than 6,000
people came to gape at her.
She was finally laid to rest in 1940 in a
secret location and an unmarked grave.
Carl was able to keep a death mask he had
made of Helen (or Dead-Helen, it’s not clear)
and he attached this to a life-sized sculpture
he had fashioned in her image.
He returned to Zephyrhillis where his wife
(they had never divorced) apparently helped
to support him, although they lived separately.
His autobiography, Fantastic Adventures, was
published in 1947, and he became a U.S. citizen
in 1950.
Dying at home in 1952, Carl was supposedly
found with his arms wrapped around a Helen
doppelganger.
However, the accuracy of this report isn’t
clear and accounts from otherwise reputable
sources further differ as to whether this
was the death-mask-sculpture Helen or if it
was actually Dead-Helen, whom he had secretly
re-acquired somehow.
