November 12, 2019 ▸ History, People, True Crime

Episode 427: Carl Tanzler: The Tale of The Corpse Bride

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On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take a poke at some disturbing history and explore the life and love of Carl Tanzler. If you don’t know who Tanzler was, here’s a sneak peek—he lived with the corpse of the girl he obsessed over for seven years. But more on that later…

Carl Tanzler was born to a wealthy family in Germany in 1877. As a young adult, he studied many differing subjects and traveled a lot. In fact, he found himself in Australia when World War I broke out, and he (like all other Germans) found himself living in a prisoner of war camp until the end of the war. He tried to escape once, but was finally released to the Netherlands at the end of the war. Eventually, Tanzler made his way to Florida to live with his sister after marrying a woman in Germany and fathering two kids.

He took a job as a radiology technician in 1927 at a Marine Hospital in Key West. He lived apart from his wife and kids to do this job, but still supported them financially. Oh, and did I mention that when he was a child, he was visited by the ghost of Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel who told him one day he would find true love in a dark haired beauty? Well he did, and he did.

Because a few years after taking his job, he met Elena De Hoyos, a twenty-one year old tuberculosis patient. He fell madly in love with her and did everything he could to find her a cure, all the while giving her gifts and jewelry and professing his love, which she didn’t reciprocate. To heal her, he did radical, fringe experiments that the hospital didn’t know about, took an X-Ray machine back to her house, and gave her all sorts of potions and elixirs meant to find a cure.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. She died of TB, and Carl Tanzler paid for a lavish mausoleum to be built for her. He’d skip work nights to sit near her grave and sing her dark songs, and eventually she told him through the door to take her body home. So, like you do, he did. He took her home on a red child’s wagon and reinforced her corpse for endurance and love making. He lived with her for 7 years.

So what finally got Carl Tanzler caught? How did he preserve her two year old corpse once he got it home? What scheme did he have to infuse her body with cosmic radiation to bring her back to life like the bride of Frankenstein? How did he get her hair? How did he have sex with the body? Why did the city put her body on display for a dollar a pop? What did his wife think of all of this? What did he blow up with dynamite before leaving Key West? Listen, laugh, learn.

Visit our Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Tanzler

https://www.buzzfeed.com/agh/carl-tanzler-elena-hoyos-mummy-corpse-florida-key-west

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/10/09/carl-tanzler/

https://www.historicmysteries.com/carl-tanzler-in-love-with-the-dead/

https://mind-blowingfacts.com/carl-tanzler-corpse/

https://rare.us/people/carl-tanzler-elena-hoyos-florida/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/carl-tanzler

https://www.ranker.com/list/carl-tanzler-key-west-story/cheryl-adams-richkoff