Corpse made to ‘look alive’ for seven years by obsessed lover

In the stuff of nightmares come to life, one man dug up the corpse of a woman and spent seven years living by her side while attempting to make her 'look alive'.

Meet Carl Tanzler: a radiology technician turned grave-digger.

Tanzler was 53 years old and working as a radiologist in Florida in 1930 when he encountered Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos; a woman in her early 20s who went to Tanzler for treatment for tuberculosis.

Marie died when she was just 22. (Florida Keys Public Library)

Marie isn't thought to have harbored any affection towards Tanzler, but the doctor became increasingly obsessed with her and showered her with gifts while also attempting to cure her.

Even after Marie's death in 1931, Tanzler commissioned a mausoleum in Key West Cemetery for Marie to be buried in, and spent two years sitting by it each evening.

That is, until April 1933, when he decided he couldn't return home alone.

Instead, Tanzler exhumed Marie's remains and took them home with him, where he proceeded to turn her into something of a doll.

The doctor is said to have wired together Marie's limbs and stuffed rags into her torso in an attempt to make her body look filled out, as it would if she were alive.

He replaced her eyes with glass, created a wig out of the hair which had fallen from her skull, and wrapped her limbs in silk that he’d soaked in wax and plaster.

Tanzler attempted to make Marie's body look 'alive'. (The Florida Keys Public Library)

It's hard to even imagine the morbid sight, but Tanzler was seemingly satisfied with his work and kept Marie in his home for the next seven years.

It wasn't until 1940 that police and Marie's own family learnt what had happened to her body, after a passerby spotted Tanzler with Marie's body through the window of his home.

When Tanzler was found out, he was arrested and Marie's corpse was taken from him.

Speaking during a court appearance, Marie's sister said: "It was the most grotesque thing I have ever seen in my life."

The doctor was reportedly charged with 'wantonly and maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization', but the statute of limitations for the crime had already expired by the time he was arrested.

Marie's corpse was finally laid to rest once and for all in an unmarked grave at Key West Cemetery, but Tanzler allegedly refused to say goodbye and decided to pay homage to Marie by creating a life-sized effigy in her honour, which he is said to have lived with until his death in 1952.