Random People Who Were Found Living with Dead Bodies (14 items)

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  (#1) Carl Tanzler

  • Person

  Though married with children, radiologist Carl Tanzer fell in love with raven-haired tuberculosis patient Elena de Hoyos in April 1930. He was convinced he had been dreaming about her for decades, and he gave her many gifts. He tried to save her with several unorthodox methods, but she eventually perished in October 1931 at age 22. Tanzler designed and built her a crypt, and he sat by her coffin every night to talk to her.

  Then he took her body out of the crypt, tied her body parts together with piano wire, fitted her with glass eyes, made her a wig of human hair (her own), and covered her skin with wax. In time, she looked perfect. For the next seven years, he played music for her at night and slept beside her.

  Tanzler was eventually arrested.
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  (#2) Woman Makes Boyfriend's Corpse NASCAR Buddy

  When 67-year-old Charles Zigler passed in December 2010, that didn’t put an end to his TV-watching days. His longtime girlfriend, Linda Chase, kept his mummified corpse propped up in a living room chair, glassy eyes trained on the fast cars going in circles on the screen. When police discovered Zigler’s body in 2012 - 18 months post-mortem - Chase admitted she had been cashing his social security checks. “I’m probably going to prison,” she said.
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  (#3) Man Turns Wife's Corpse Into Real Doll

  After Le Van’s wife passed and was buried in 2003, he began sleeping on top of her grave every night. When the weather got nasty, he dug a tunnel down to the casket so he wouldn’t get rained on. In November 2004 - more than a year later - he finally dug up the body and took it on home. To keep his wife’s corpse nice and fresh, Van molded her skin with plaster and clay and dressed her up. In 2009, he reported that she slept on the bed with him.
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  (#4) Legally Blind Brooklyn Hoarder Unknowingly Lived With Her Son's Corpse

  “It’s like some reverse Psycho scene,” an unnamed law enforcement official told Fox News after a woman in Brooklyn was found living with her son's corpse in September, 2016. The woman, Rita Wolfensohn, a legally blind hoarder, may not even have been aware her son passed in her house.

  The remains were discovered by Josette Buchman, Wolfensohn's sister-in-law, who found what was described as a "completely intact" human skeleton wearing jeans, socks, and a shirt, lying on a mattress, surrounded by clutter. The state of decay indicated the man pass maybe 20 years prior.
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  (#5) Older Woman Lives With Husband And Sister, Both Corpses

  When Jean Stevens's husband, James, passed in 2000, she still had her twin sister June for company. But when June passed in 2009, Jean, 91, was very lonely. She somehow had the graves of both her husband and her sister exhumed and brought their bodies home so she could see and talk to them.

  Stevens sat James down on a couch in her detached garage in rural Pennsylvania, and she propped June up in a spare room in the main house. She spoke to the two corpses, dressed them up in "accessories," and spritzed them with perfumes that they liked.

  When questioned, she said, "I think when you put them in the (ground), that's goodbye, goodbye. In this way, I could touch [them] and look at [them] and talk to [them]."
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  (#6) Man Murders Girlfriend, Hides Body On Bedroom Floor

  Police found 39-year-old Melinda Raya in July 2011 in bed, two months after Erik Grumpelt, 35, murdered her. He had been living with her the whole time and confessed to killing her.
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  (#7) Widower Leaves Corpse In Bed For Five Months

  In 2005, husband Howard Lewis, 68, kept his wife, Elizabeth's, passing a secret from friends and neighbors. He went on working at a shop in South Wales, and when asked, said she was "fine." When police were finally called in after five months of no-sees, they found the body of Elizabeth, 79, still in the bed where she passed. Friends speculated Howard was in shock and denial.
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  (#8) Father Hides Wife's Self-Induced Passing From Children

  One Sunday night in 2011, Parthasarathy argued with his wife, beat her soundly, and left the room. When he returned some time later, he found his wife, Saraswathi, hanging from the ceiling fan with a noose made of her sari. Rather than call for help, he cut her down himself, and she passed soon after. For the next four days, he kept his wife's body locked in the bedroom, slept in the hallway, and told his children (8 and 5) that their mom was sick. Neighbors eventually called police to investigate the foul smell of her decomposition.
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  (#9) Man Lives With Wife's Corpse After Failed Killings

  Early one week in 2010, Phoenix police got a bizarre call from a 56-year-old man who said he had shot his wife. When they arrived at the house, they found the body of the 66-year-old woman in question, who had been shot with a handgun the Friday before. They also noticed the caller had shot himself in the face, but was still alive.
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  (#10) Women Share Homes With Late Husbands

  In June 2009, a concerned neighbor summoned police to the house of a 70-year-old Pasadena woman who was acting strange. There, they found her husband's badly decomposed body sitting upright on the couch. He had been deceased for about two or four months. The woman was taken in to be treated for dementia.

  Across the other pond (the Pacific one), news broke in March 2012 of a woman in Khabarovsk, Russia, also living with her late husband. When the 72-year-old needed medical assistance, doctors showed up to her apartment and were surprised to find a mummified corpse lying in a bed.
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  (#11) Grieving Widow Sleeps Next To Husband For A Year

  In November 2013, a grieving Belgian widow was discovered to have been living with her husband's body for nearly a year. Too traumatized to report his passing, the woman, 69, slept beside her husband, Marcel's, corpse, despite its smell and advanced stages of decomposition. The couple was discovered when a landlord noted they hadn't paid their rent since 2012. Marcel, 79, was suspected to have passed of an asthma attack.
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  (#12) Family Keeps Grandfather Around To Collect Checks

  In 2010, Tokyo resident Sogen Kato lived* to see his 111th birthday, making him the oldest man in town.† When local officials went to his house to honor him, they were turned away by family members. Upon investigation, police found Kato's mummified skeletal remains dressed in pajamas lying in his bed, where they had been for an estimated 30 years.

  *did not live
  †not the oldest man in town

  As for their side of the story, Kato's daughter and granddaughter claimed innocence. They said the Man of the House had retreated to his bedroom more than three decades ago to become a "living Buddha." After his wife passed in 2004, Kato began receiving widower's pension payments, totaling more than $100,000 - some was withdrawn by the time his body was discovered.
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  (#13) Woman Hides Husband Until He Resurrects

  When he was about to pass, Lucio Chacue, 61, asked his wife to keep his body hidden in their house in the Colombian countryside because he would "come back to life." Thirty days later, there was still no sign of a revitalized Lucio, and neighbors began asking where his body has gone. Colombian officials found he body in the master bedroom.
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  (#14) 90 Year-Old Lives With Three Dead Siblings

  When Elaine Bernstorff passed in the late 1970s, her surviving siblings Anita, Frank, and Margaret kept her body around the Evanston, IL, home they shared. Notoriously private, and known for being packrats, the Bernstorff's never let others enter their cluttered house. Everyone assumed it was because the Bernstorffs were embarrassed of their messy home. They had no idea the family had been concealing their sister's body for more than three decades.

  Frank passed in 2003 at age 83. The remaining sisters covered him with blankets and put him in another room, away from Elaine. Then Anita passed in May 2008 at age 98, leaving the last sister all alone.

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