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True Stories


THE WOMAN OF HIS DREAMS DIED. BUT HE DIDN'T LET THAT PULL THEM APART

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True Stories


THE WOMAN OF HIS DREAMS DIED. BUT HE DIDN'T LET THAT PULL THEM APART

By Addison Nugent

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Images from an undying obsession.
SourceComposite, Rich Burns/OZY


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Dr. Carl von Cosel’s obsession with a former patient didn’t stop when her heart
did. 

By Addison Nugent

April 18, 2019
 
        

More than 6,000 people came to the viewing of de Hoyas.

Source Monroe County Public Library/History Department

The body of Elena Milagro de Hoyas went on display at the Dean-Lopez Funeral
Home in Key West, Florida, in 1940. But the onlookers who flocked to view the
body, covered in mortician’s wax and paper-mache, weren’t drawn by the morbid
curiosity that led crowds to famous corpses like the Elephant Man or the
deformed fetuses in formaldehyde jars that were common oddities in the
19th century. Instead, it was a story.

It was framed as a love story between Elena and her doctor, Count Carl von
Cosel. And like most good stories, this one had a twist: It all took place after
Elena’s death. The strange amalgam of synthetic and decayed organic parts that
visitors to the Dean-Lopez Funeral Home paid to see lived with Dr. von Cosel for
seven years, sitting down with him for dinner, dancing with him by the fireside,
even sharing his bed. 

 

Born Carl Tanzler in Dresden, Germany, the good doctor had fabricated his
aristocratic last name along with his title. He claimed to have been a submarine
captain in World War I and an accomplished inventor. He also claimed to have
held nine university degrees — accomplishments that are now considered
embellishments of the truth at best. One thing that is known: At the age of 43,
while still in his native country, Tanzler married a young woman with whom he
had two children. The family emigrated to America in the mid-1920s, changing
their last name to “von Cosel” in the process.

 
        

Von Cosel claimed he’d been a submarine captain in World War I and an
accomplished inventor.

Source Monroe Public Library/History Department

But soon after arriving at their final destination of Zephyrhills, Florida, Dr.
von Cosel decided that family life wasn’t for him and promptly abandoned his
wife and children. In 1927, he took a job as a radiological technician at the
U.S. Marine Hospital in Key West, where he kept mostly to himself and was known
as a kind, shy eccentric. That all changed on April 22, 1930, when a 20-year-old
Cuban emigré, Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyas, was admitted to the tuberculosis
ward.

 
        
  

Unable to bear the thought of losing the love of his life, von Cosel dedicated
every waking moment in his laboratory working to find a miracle cure.

Source Monroe Public Library/History Department

 
        

Elena Milagro de Hoyas.

Source Monroe Public Library/History Department

To von Cosel, it was a meeting of two souls. But two obstacles stood in the way
of their love: First, Elena — a known beauty with raven black hair in which she
often wore a rose — was utterly unaware of the doctor’s infatuation, and second,
she was dying of tuberculosis. Unable to bear the thought of losing the love of
his life, von Cosel dedicated every waking moment to finding a miracle cure.
Ignoring hospital procedure, he administered homemade tonics and medicines to
Elena, and even made house calls at the de Hoyas’ family home, attempting to
cure her with electrical equipment of his own devising. Despite his best
efforts, Elena succumbed to the illness on Oct. 25, 1931, at the age of 21.

Von Cosel, devastated, paid for her remains to be placed in an opulent stone
mausoleum at the Key West Cemetery. Without fail, the doctor visited Elena’s
gravesite every day for two years. Her family saw his grief as that of a
dedicated physician, destroyed by his inability to save her. But von Cosel did
not simply lay flowers at the tomb’s doorstep and weep. He had a key — the only
key, in fact — and would enter under cover of darkness to spend time with the
corpse of his beloved.

 
        

De Hoyas’ stone mausoleum at the Key West Cemetery.

Source Monroe Public Library/History Department

Two years after Elena’s death, von Cosel’s nightly visits to the mausoleum
abruptly stopped. The Hoyas family found this odd, considering his apparent
dedication to the memory of their daughter, but they were happy that he was
finally moving on. He could be seen about town, buying women’s clothing, jewelry
and perfume at the local shops. His neighbors even reported seeing two shadowy
figures dancing in the doctor’s foyer. It seemed that von Cosel finally had a
new woman in his life.



But in October of 1940, Elena’s sister decided to pay von Cosel a visit and
discovered the identity of the doctor’s mysterious love interest: the corpse of
her long-dead sister. Horrified, she immediately alerted the local authorities
who determined that von Cosel had stolen Elena’s body from the cemetery and had
been living with it for seven years. 

 
        

Von Cosel had stolen Elena’s body from the cemetery and had been living with it
for seven years.

Source Monroe Public Library/History Department

 
        

The airship built by Count Carl von Cosel.

 
        

The corpse of de Hoyas.

In 1933, the doctor had removed Elena’s corpse from the mausoleum and
transported it via a toy wagon to a makeshift laboratory he had built inside of
an old airplane. There, he “resurrected” his lost love with the help of
paper-mache, mortician’s wax and rags. He placed glass eyes in her empty sockets
and inserted wires into her limbs so that he could easily manipulate her
posture. Upon closer inspection, investigators found a carefully placed
cardboard tube in Elena’s genital region, the use of which is best left to the
imagination.

As the years went by, von Cosel’s postmortem bride continued to decay, but the
doctor devised an array of methods to subvert this natural process. He doused
Elena’s body in oils and disinfectants to mask the smell of rotting flesh and
replaced her now bare scalp with human hair. By the time Elena’s sister arrived
for her fateful visit, the corpse looked like nothing more than a life-size
paper-mache and wax doll.

> Instead of a depraved necrophiliac, the public saw von Cosel as a lonely and
> sad romantic. 

Von Cosel appeared in court on Oct. 9, 1940, for “wantonly and maliciously
destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization,” but the charges
were eventually dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired.
Questioned during the hearing, von Cosel revealed plans to finish the airship
that would transport Elena’s body “high into the stratosphere, so that radiation
from outer space could penetrate Elena’s tissues and restore life to her
somnolent form.”

Though the case turned into a media circus, the general public was
surprisingly sympathetic toward the demented doctor. Instead of a depraved
necrophiliac, they saw him as a lonely and sad romantic. “I think the most
fascinating reaction to this strangest-of-the-strange story was the overwhelming
public support for Count von Cosel,” says Ben Harrison, author of Undying Love,
a book about von Cosel and Elena’s “love” story that was adapted into a
musical. 



After the frenzy of the court case, Elena’s corpse was transported back to Key
West Cemetery, but not before von Cosel asked that it be returned to him. The
request was denied, and her remains were hidden in an 18-inch casket buried in a
secret spot to keep anyone from disturbing them again. Von Cosel constructed a
life-size effigy around Elena’s death mask and lived with it until he died on
July 3, 1952. 

 
        

Von Cosel holding de Hoyas’ death mask.

 
 * Addison Nugent, OZY Author Contact Addison Nugent


April 18, 2019

TOPICS

 * Death
 * Florida
 * HISTORY
 * LIFESTYLE
 * Love
 * Love Curiously
 * Medicine
 * United States



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