Demented Love

November 28, 2015

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-- It is here that you will find the dark of the heart --

-- the strange and bizarre --

Because we all have a bit of darkness buried deep within us, a curiosity for that which lays hidden and out of sight from the person which we let others see in the light!

ENJOY!

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THE DEMENTED LOVE

OF

DOCTOR CARL VON COSEL

     Some time in the 1920's, a man named Carl Tanzler (who later became Carl Von Cosel) immigrated from Germany to the United States, leaving behind in Germany a wife and two young daughters and settled in the Florida Keys. He'd worked as an x-ray technician and inventor, barely able to make a living but claimed to many that he had been an ex submarine skipper and had nine different college degrees. In 1927, he found employment at a local Florida Keys hospital in their tuberculosis ward using the name Carl Von Cosel and shortly thereafter, he sent for his family in Germany who came to live with him. But his marriage ended shortly afterward, the reason for it's ending is not quite clear.

     Many years before, Von Cosel claims to have been visited by a long dead ancestor, the Countess Anna Constantia Von Cosel who revealed to him the face of his true love, an exotic dark haired woman. It was in April of 1930, while working in that Florida Keys hospital that he met such an exotic dark haired woman by the name of Elena Milagro de Hoyos who had come to the hospital for tests. Elena was by all accounts, a most beautiful woman and according to Von Cosel, he'd recognized her as the woman from his vision decades earlier. The daughter of a local cigar maker, Elena was married to a man named Luis Mesa but the two were separated with Mesa having left her after the miscarriage of their daughter, and moved to Miami. Elena was eventually diagnosed with having tuberculosis, which at the time was always fatal. Von Cosel, with his self-professed medical knowledge, attempted to treat Elena in all manner of ways, using a variety of medicines, as well as x-ray and other medical equipment brought to the Hoyos home with the hopes of curing her, all the while professing his love for the exotic beauty, showering the family and Elena with gifts of jewelry and clothing, but not a shred of evidence exists showing that his love was reciprocated by her. And despite Von Cosel's best efforts, Elena died from tuberculosis on October 25th, 1931 at her parents home in Key West.

     Von Cosel paid for Elena's funeral expenses and with the permission of her family, commissioned the construction of an above ground mausoleum in the Key West Cemetery, which he visited almost every night. But his obsession with Elena was great and one night in the spring of 1933, Von Cosel entered the cemetery and removed Elena's body from her resting place and transported her remains to his home. Von Cosel would often relate to those who interviewed him that Elena's spirit would often come to him while he sat there at her grave and serenade her with her favorite Spanish song and he often spoke of how her spirit would beg him to remove her body from the grave.

     He would hold the bones of her decaying body together using wire and coat hangers, and fitted her with glass eyes. As her skin decomposed he used silk cloth soaked in wax and plaster of paris and made a wig out of her hair when it too began to fall out. He filled her corpse with rags in order so the body would keep it's original form and into her abdominal cavity he poured vast amounts of perfume and disinfectant and other chemicals to forestall the effects

of decomposition and to keep the odor away. He dressed her body in jewelry and fine clothing and kept her in his bed. There were even stories of how he fashioned a tube which he inserted into her vaginal area so that he could have sex with her!

     It wasn't until sometime in 1940 that one of Elena's relatives had began to hear rumors of Von Cosel sleeping with Elena's disinterred corpse and notified authorities. When Elena's body was discovered, Von Cosel was arrested on a number of charges including the wonton and malicous destruction of a grave and removing a body without authorization. He underwent psychological testing and was found competent for trial. Elena's body was examined and then placed on display at the local funeral home where it was viewed by nearly 7,000 people before being removed and re-buried in a secret location to prevent further tampering. As for Von Cosel, he was eventually released since the statute of limitations for the crimes he had been charged with had all expired.

     In 1944, Von Cosel moved to Pasco County Florida, where he wrote his auto-biography which later was published in Fantastic Adventures. He obtained citizenship in 1950, in Tampa and separated from his obsession, he used a death mask of Elena to create a life size effigy of her and lived with it until his death in 1952. It was said that upon the discovery of his body, he was clutching the life size effigy of Elena. His body was found on the floor of his home, three weeks after his death according to reports...

Isn't love grand.....

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