Karl Tanzler And His Corpse Bride: A Love That Would Not Die with Ben Harrison

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Speaker A: Introducing today's episode the love to Die. For love is immortality. A quote by Emily Dickinson for George Carl Tanzler, known later as Count Carl von Kossel, love and death would be something he would forever be linked with. He died with the belief that love could unite souls, survive death, and keep someone alive forever. He believed love could salvage beauty from the ravages of the grave. He wrote in his memoirs the following ever since the moon began to wane, elena had begun to sing in her casket with a very soft, clear voice, which became just a bit stronger from night to night. It was always the same old Spanish song about a lover who opens the grave of his dead bride. I could distinctly hear and understand its every word. This always lasted for no longer than perhaps ten minutes. And then she fell silent, as if expecting me to speak. Darling, I would say, very soon now, the moon will change. The hour approaches when I shall take you home with me. I will clean you and wash you and I will put on your bridal dress with veil and crown and all this as my bride, you will stay with me forever. This tangled tale of obsessive love would see him embark on a remarkable journey, one that began late at night, as he made his way down the stairs of a mausoleum and removed the inner casket containing a layon of hoyers's body from the outer one. It would see him struggle to lift her coffin over the cemetery fence as a foul liquid dripped down onto his finest clothes and the ground beneath him gave way. It's a journey that years later would see Elena's sister in the home of the man who had attended her sister so lovingly before her death. She'd been hearing stories and needed to talk with the good doctor von Kossel. It was a journey that endured all the way up to von Kossel's own death at age 72, as he continued to do all he could to keep a beautiful young girl alive. It's a story that continues to endure today. She is my everlasting joy. God bless her. Ex tenebras loosem, he wrote. Ex tenebris loosem.

Speaker B: Out of darkness comes light those were.

Speaker A: The final words of von Kossel's memoirs, a story so hard to believe, that we have to go back to the beginning. Born on February 1877 in Dresden, Germany.

Speaker B: George Carl Tanzler led a bizarre life.

Speaker A: Before he began working in the medical field. Skilled in fabrication and working his way into opportunities, Tanzler found himself in a.

Speaker B: Variety of jobs and locations that put.

Speaker A: Him in fields ranging from boat building to engineering.

Speaker B: It was at the end of a.

Speaker A: Ten year stay in Australia that World.

Speaker B: War I broke out, and due to.

Speaker A: His German origin, Tanzler was detained and eventually moved to the prison cells of Trial Bay on the coast.

Speaker B: He created an elaborate plan to escape by boat, but it proved unnecessary as.

Speaker A: The war ended and he was relocated to the Netherlands. In approximately 1920, Tansler married Doris Anna Schaefer, with whom he had two children. Six years later, however, he would become.

Speaker B: Restless, moving first to Cuba and then into Florida.

Speaker A: Within a year, his wife and children would join him. Tanzler, however, knew would soon leave once again, this time relocating to Key West in Florida.

Speaker B: He had no problem leaving his wife and children, for he knew they were.

Speaker A: Not meant to last.

Speaker B: He remembered clearly an encounter decades earlier.

Speaker A: When an ancestor's ghost appeared to him to show him his true future bride.

Speaker B: His memories of his birthplace and early life are clothed in romantic garb, he.

Speaker A: Would later write in his memoirs.

Speaker B: I was born in Dresden, Germany, in.

Speaker A: The townhouse of our family called the Castle.

Speaker B: But there was another castle, the Villa Castle, out in the country, and it.

Speaker A: Was there I grew up.

Speaker B: This later manor had the reputation of being a haunted house, and the white woman whom my mother told me appeared.

Speaker A: From time to time during the past.

Speaker B: Two centuries was supposed to be my ancestor, the Countess Castle, who died in 1765. Hers is quite a romantic history and.

Speaker A: The beginning of my relationship to Elena.

Speaker B: As a young boy, however, I had.

Speaker A: No interest in the family tree, and the existence of a ghost in the manor was never mentioned to me nor entertained.

Speaker B: True enough, at the age of twelve, I had a dream, or rather a vision, of a very beautiful girl in a white dress reclining on a rococo.

Speaker A: Satee, which I painted on a piece of paper.

Speaker B: Then, in 1927, Tanzler was working in.

Speaker A: A new profession and going by an entirely new name. Now calling himself Count Carl von Kossel.

Speaker B: He was making a living as a.

Speaker A: Radiology technician at a US. Marine hospital.

Speaker B: Egotistical and extremely opinionated, the count wore.

Speaker A: An imperial moustache and walked with a silver tipped cane. Though he was a highly intelligent man.

Speaker B: The line between genius and madness was.

Speaker A: Often blurred with his rampant scientific discussions.

Speaker B: Inventions and projects, one of which included.

Speaker A: An aeroplane that he was restoring in an empty area at the back of the hospital.

Speaker B: The truth of the matter was that.

Speaker A: The count more than likely purchased a wrecked airship and dragged it there for restoration.

Speaker B: But Tanzler insisted that he'd actually constructed.

Speaker A: The entire vessel from scratch with giant hollow wheels that would allow him to drive it on the surface of the water.

Speaker B: The hospital was willing to overlook his.

Speaker A: Eccentricities simply because he was a highly competent worker, something that was desperately needed in the severely lacking hospital facility.

Speaker B: April 22, 1930 was a routine day at work for Tanzler when he was.

Speaker A: Called in to take a blood sample from a young woman.

Speaker B: She was nervous about the needle and.

Speaker A: Covered her face with her hand.

Speaker B: Upon pricking her finger, Tanzler apologized, but.

Speaker A: When he looked up, her hand was.

Speaker B: Moved, her face revealed, and he realized.

Speaker A: Who he was treating.

Speaker B: It was the woman.

Speaker A: The ghost showed him his true future bride. Her name was Maria Elena Hoyers, known simply as Elena. She was 22 years old, and she was dying. When Elena was officially diagnosed with tuberculosis, Tanzler launched into action, making it his personal mission to save her life. He treated her daily, running a battery of tests and even offering to fly her to Europe for better treatment. He went to her at her parents home, bringing record players and good music, medicinal wine, fruit and every form of medication he could find. Once the progressive disease tied her permanently to her parents home, the count obsessively tried to visit her with an extensive array of self made elixirs, pinctures and medicines that provided no results. He brought hospital equipment to the home, showered her with jewels and clothing, and resorted to using electric shock therapy from homemade machines. By Friday, October 23, 131, it was clear Elena was in a very exhaustive state. She'd been drifting in and out of consciousness and was perspiring heavily from a fever that made her struggle for breath. Tanzler still clung to the delusion that there could be a cure and that she would heal again. He later wrote, I had hopes that despite the extensive damage, the lesions would heal. I had hopes that when Elena was out of danger, we would get married. As long as she lived, I never abandoned hope. Elena Hoyes was close to death, and her friends and relatives knew that the end was coming closer. It was a situation Tanzler could not admit to, and he continued to the very end with his hopes and treatments. All of this would prove futile, and on October 20, 531, Elena succumbed to the disease. Tandler would learn the news whilst working at the hospital that day. He immediately rushed to be by her side. He wrote, we could hear the people moan and scream. There was a big crowd around the house. We had to break a passage through the people. Hoping against hope that something could be done. I requested all the people to get out of the room. Then I went down to my knees before the bed tested her breath and heartbeats. But there was nothing to be done above the screams of the people. I placed the phoradic testing electrode on her neck so that it covered the nerve region. There was no reaction. That moment, Dr. Gaily arrived. He, too, examined her to find that all life had gone.

Speaker B: For most people, this is where the.

Speaker A: Tie between medical caretaker and patient would end.

Speaker B: But Tanzler's obsession only grew, and he.

Speaker A: Insisted to Elena's parents that he pay for her funeral.

Speaker B: Despite all of his efforts, they never liked the count and all his offerings.

Speaker A: And promises for their daughter.

Speaker B: But after her death, the family's dislike.

Speaker A: Seemed to be loosened by their grief.

Speaker B: When Tanzler said he was going to care for her after death, elena's mother.

Speaker A: Gave him a bag of her daughter's long hair that she had cut off years earlier.

Speaker B: When he told them he was going.

Speaker A: To rent and stay in Elena's former bedroom in their home, they allowed it.

Speaker B: Partially because they needed the money he.

Speaker A: Would pay for rent.

Speaker B: They also accepted Tanzler's offer to build.

Speaker A: Elena a grand above ground memorial tomb.

Speaker B: What they did not realize was that once it was built, the doctor had her buried body exhumed, brought to a.

Speaker A: Funeral home and placed in a new casket. Dressed in the finery he had gifted.

Speaker B: Her in life, the local mortician gave.

Speaker A: Tanzler a key to the funeral parlor and embalming room. He insisted that he perform all of this himself.

Speaker B: Once Elena was placed in her new crypt. Tanzler visited it every day, sang to.

Speaker A: It and continued to bring her gifts.

Speaker B: This was acceptable to Elena's family, but.

Speaker A: They were unaware that Tansler was regularly.

Speaker B: Having conversations with the dead woman and.

Speaker A: That he had a phone installed for the hours that he could not be there in person.

Speaker B: For two years, he faithfully visited her.

Speaker A: Until one night he decided it would be his last visit to the tomb. Under the COVID of darkness, he piled Elena's casket into a small red wagon and then left the cemetery.

Speaker B: Now, with Elena back in his hands.

Speaker A: Tanzler began the project that he failed.

Speaker B: To complete while she was alive fixing her, curing her. In the middle of the night, he.

Speaker A: Would go to his plane and begin a process that he felt would bring Elena back to life, bring him back to him.

Speaker B: But his plan was interrupted when the new head of the hospital informed him.

Speaker A: That he could no longer keep his plane on the grounds.

Speaker B: When he found a small shack for.

Speaker A: Sale with a separate building and some seclusion, Tanzler finally left his residence at Elena's family home.

Speaker B: The plane containing her corpse was attached to a car and driven to his new residence by none other than Elena's brother in law, who had no idea.

Speaker A: What horror lay inside.

Speaker B: Once settled in this new location, he.

Speaker A: Was able to commence bringing his bride back to him inside a shed that became his laboratory. Over the course of seven years and through a second move to a new secluded home, Tanzler worked on reconstructing Elena. Using wire coat hangers, he reattached her.

Speaker B: Bones, obtained a pair of glass eyes and filled her body with rags.

Speaker A: To replace her rotting flesh, he maintained a regime of coating fabric with wax.

Speaker B: And plaster and applying it to whatever.

Speaker A: Remained of her once vibrant visage.

Speaker B: He painted her a new face, dressed her in fine clothes and placed a wig on her head a wig made.

Speaker A: From her own hair given to him by her mother years before.

Speaker B: He submerged her body in tanks of liquid and used electricity to try to.

Speaker A: Reconstitute and restart her blood and breath.

Speaker B: She was propped up in chairs, sung to, talked to and continually presented with.

Speaker A: Gifts, including Christmas presents and a white silk wedding dress. Eventually, Elena was moved into Tanzler's house, where they shared meals and a bed.

Speaker B: It was the bed that Elena had died on. Her family told Tanzler to take it.

Speaker A: With him when he moved out. He constantly poured antiseptics chemicals and perfumes on the floors, covered her with layers of silk and wax and insisted that.

Speaker B: Her body, which had now become somewhat.

Speaker A: Mummified and weighed less than 50 pounds.

Speaker B: Was coming back to life.

Speaker A: So consumed was Tanzler with caring for.

Speaker B: His dead sweetheart that in 1934, after.

Speaker A: The death of one of his own children suddenly to dipttheria, he could not.

Speaker B: Leave and attend the funeral despite emotional.

Speaker A: Pleas by his lawful wife to return to help provide emotional and financial support.

Speaker B: He could do neither. All that he had to give was.

Speaker A: Being given to Elena.

Speaker B: Key west was a small community, and.

Speaker A: As time went on, the activities of the count generated more and more whispers. Why was he still buying clothing and jewelry?

Speaker B: Why would he need so much perfume? And then there was the strange sighting reported from a local boy who was.

Speaker A: Tanzler dancing within his house.

Speaker B: On October 140, Elena's brother in law.

Speaker A: Mario, who had previously and unknowingly helped move the airplane holding the corpse, reached out to Tansler.

Speaker B: He wanted him to come to Elena's grave. When he arrived, he found a crowd.

Speaker A: Waiting for him, including Mario's wife, Elena's sister, Nana.

Speaker B: Nana was not well.

Speaker A: She was diagnosed with the same disease that had killed Elena so many years ago.

Speaker B: And today she wanted to see the.

Speaker A: Proof that her sister was still resting comfortably in the tomb.

Speaker B: Tanzler reacted with hostility. Why should he open it for her? Why was there a crowd there?

Speaker A: Tanzler accused Nana of breaking into the crypt and stealing the jewels he had given her sister before her death.

Speaker B: As tempers cooled, nana once again spoke to Tanzler, this time asking him to please let her see her sister, saying.

Speaker A: That if she could only see that Elena was okay, it would give her peace.

Speaker B: This request made sense to the warped mind of Tanzler and he asked that.

Speaker A: He speak to her privately at his house.

Speaker B: If Nana wanted to see that Elena was being cared for, he would show her.

Speaker A: When Nana, Mario and Tanzler arrived back at his home, he exercised no restraint.

Speaker B: When they approached the door, they walked.

Speaker A: In and made their way through the rooms with Tanzler. Finally stopping at a very familiar bed.

Speaker B: He calmly said, come here, Nana, and.

Speaker A: See how beautiful Elena is resting in her bed in her silken garments and with all her jewelry.

Speaker B: Come and see.

Speaker A: She could not have it better anywhere. I think that will pacify you now.

Speaker B: With those words, Tandler pulled back a curtain and presented to Nana her long dead sister, encased in plastic, paint, silk and jewels.

Speaker A: Five days later, on October 5, the count received a knock on the door.

Speaker B: And when he opened it, he was.

Speaker A: Met by a motorcade of cars and.

Speaker B: Two sheriffs who entered to find the.

Speaker A: Body of Elena dressed in a flimsy.

Speaker B: Neglige adorned with jewels and resting in a canopied bed, fresh flowers placed in her hair. The exchange was nearly calm one with.

Speaker A: One sheriff producing a warrant charging Tanzler.

Speaker B: With the possession of a body a.

Speaker A: Charge the old man did not deny.

Speaker B: He answered some questions, told the deputies.

Speaker A: How he serenaded her nightly with a.

Speaker B: Pipe organ he constructed and planned to.

Speaker A: Fly away with her in an aeroplane he was building when she returned to life. Shortly after, Tanzler was quietly led to a police car outside.

Speaker B: The last glimpse Tanzler had of Elena.

Speaker A: Was her body inside a wicker basket being placed inside another car.

Speaker B: As news broke, the reaction to Carl.

Speaker A: Tanzler and his Corpse Bride turned the recluse into a celebrity. With photographers and reporters swarming the courthouse.

Speaker B: Where he sat, confused as to why he was there and why there was.

Speaker A: Such an annoying fanfare brewing outside.

Speaker B: Tanzler was booked on the charge of.

Speaker A: Wanton and maliciously demolishing, disfiguring and destroying.

Speaker B: A grave, and he was placed in.

Speaker A: The county jail to wait until his hearing.

Speaker B: While he sat in jail, alone and secluded, the world outside was printing his.

Speaker A: Name all over the newspapers.

Speaker B: His thoughts were only of Elena and.

Speaker A: What could possibly be happening to her while she was away from his care.

Speaker B: He was alone, but the exact opposite.

Speaker A: Could be said for her.

Speaker B: While Tanzler sat in jail, the remains.

Speaker A: Of the young woman he called his.

Speaker B: Bride were laid out at the Lopez.

Speaker A: Funeral Home where thousands of people were.

Speaker B: Coming to see her some to pay their respects and others to see the.

Speaker A: Shocking sight of Tanzler's handcrafted corpse.

Speaker B: On October 8, 1940, the lawn of.

Speaker A: The courtroom swarmed and buzzed while the count sat inside, waiting to go before the judge.

Speaker B: Dressed in a bow tie and with a pristine beard, three things had to be addressed the desecration of the grave, the theft of the body and Tanzless sanity.

Speaker A: Those inside the courtroom heard the terrifying account of Elena's sister, Nana, before hearing the words of the count himself. He explained in detail how he moved.

Speaker B: The body, his process of reconstructing her, and that his purpose and all of.

Speaker A: That was to bring her back to life.

Speaker B: According to the count, there is always life left in the body that can.

Speaker A: Be brought back through the proper process.

Speaker B: The process was not one to be completed on earth, though the aircraft he.

Speaker A: Had been building was a key part in the resurrection.

Speaker B: The plane, Eleanor's aircraft, was the vessel.

Speaker A: That was going to carry them into outer space where the radiation would revitalize her body.

Speaker B: The judge listened but did not sympathize with the man, and he stated right.

Speaker A: Then that Elena's body would under no.

Speaker B: Circumstances be returned to Tanzler, that it.

Speaker A: Was going to her sister to be buried in a location that he would never know. Tanzler continued to alternate between a jail cell and a courtroom, with further information coming from him and also from a surprise letter from his long forgotten wife.

Speaker B: Doris Tanzler, who wrote to the sheriff that his fractured mental state was the.

Speaker A: Main cause of their separation.

Speaker B: On October the 10th, newspaper headline screamed.

Speaker A: The unexpected news that after an evaluation.

Speaker B: Tanzler was found to be sane, despite.

Speaker A: Local doctors expressing their belief that he was the exact opposite.

Speaker B: The opinions on both Tanzler and his.

Speaker A: Actions varied wildly from fascination and sympathy to horror and vengeance.

Speaker B: But on October 19, 1940, the final.

Speaker A: Stunning ruling was made.

Speaker B: Due to seven years passing since the time of his crimes, Tanzler could not.

Speaker A: Be legally punished for what he had done.

Speaker B: There is no doubt that if the.

Speaker A: Parties had pushed the issue, tansler could have been put in prison.

Speaker B: But the judge and many of those.

Speaker A: Involved seemed to want to forget the entire ordeal and bury it as quickly as possible.

Speaker B: Along with Elena's remains, the final burial.

Speaker A: Of the long dead woman was handled.

Speaker B: By only three people the cemetery sexton, the undertaker of the Lopez Funeral Home and the Key West police chief. The goal was to keep her burial location top secret, and accomplishing this meant.

Speaker A: One last set of horrors for Elena.

Speaker B: Her nearly mummified body was dismembered, placed.

Speaker A: In an 18 inch box and buried by the trio in the middle of the night.

Speaker B: Tanzler was released from prison in November.

Speaker A: 1940 and returned to a vandalized home.

Speaker B: With no means to support himself. He wrote I was a very bitter man. Charges had been brought against me that.

Speaker A: I was a violator of the grave, a ghoul, a fiend of society.

Speaker B: There was an avalanche of misinterpretation, sensational.

Speaker A: Press stories which accused me of being.

Speaker B: A sexual pervert, a necromancy, a maniac, while being confined for court hearing.

Speaker A: Worst of all, they had removed Elena's.

Speaker B: Body, that body which I had treated.

Speaker A: First to preserve it in its unearthly.

Speaker B: Beauty and then to reunite with its souls which had always been with me.

Speaker A: In the scientific efforts of over seven years.

Speaker B: To the shock of many, including.

Speaker A: The Count himself hundreds of people began.

Speaker B: To visit him at his home and.

Speaker A: In desperate need of money Tanzler began charging them for a tour of his.

Speaker B: Home, his laboratory and the relic of Elena's aircraft. His chief means of survival in Key.

Speaker A: West came purely from the generosity of others.

Speaker B: He was a spectacle, a story, a sideshow and despite there being some positive attention the negative was wearing heavily on him. He decided to move back to his.

Speaker A: Original Florida home where he had a sister.

Speaker B: The night before he left Key West, he had one thing to accomplish one.

Speaker A: Last visit to Elena's former tomb.

Speaker B: He was armed with dynamite and 24 hours after his visit the stone tomb of Elena exploded.

Speaker A: By then, he was already in his new location. No formal investigation was conducted.

Speaker B: Tanzler's life with his sister was not free from curious spectators but it gave.

Speaker A: Him the peace he needed to spend time inside Elena's aircraft writing his memoirs.

Speaker B: While writing to publishers and pitching his personal account which he felt would clear.

Speaker A: His name of wrongdoing.

Speaker B: He looked to painting and he crafted.

Speaker A: Many images of himself and Elena flying.

Speaker B: In their aircraft portraits of her and.

Speaker A: Images of the two of them escaping the cemetery together.

Speaker B: In 1944, Tanzler moved into a house of his own where he created a.

Speaker A: Shrine to Eleanor complete with a casket.

Speaker B: Plaster, death masks, portraits, flowers and anything.

Speaker A: Else that he felt belonged in his tribute.

Speaker B: His legal wife would meet up with.

Speaker A: Him on a weekly basis where they would sit on a bench by a park. She would give him $2.50 to buy sardines and a few staples something that kept him from starving to death.

Speaker B: They would talk for a while and.

Speaker A: Then they would part ways again. It was in July 1952 when people began to notice that they had not seen Tanzler walking about.

Speaker B: It was usual to see him walking.

Speaker A: In search of wild flowers. Concerned neighbours called the local sheriff to check on the frail and aged man.

Speaker B: When he arrived at the home he.

Speaker A: Found the badly decomposed Tanzler on the.

Speaker B: Floor of his home next to a.

Speaker A: Table with a casket.

Speaker B: He had died weeks before without anyone knowing.

Speaker A: Inside his small home, authorities found another.

Speaker B: Body a second reproduction of Elena complete.

Speaker A: With a wax head and painted face.

Speaker B: The flowers in the death mask had completely dried their petals falling to the table. On August 14, 1952 the Count was.

Speaker A: Buried in a modest grave.

Speaker B: At his feet lay his young daughter.

Speaker A: Who had died in 1934.

Speaker B: He was later joined by his first wife, Doris. In 1977, the rubble of Elena's tomb was left in place where it was eventually taken over by plant life and.

Speaker A: His heirship was given to a neighbour.

Speaker B: Where it became a playhouse for children.

Speaker A: The three men who buried Elena, police Chief Bienvenido Perez Lopez funeral home undertaker Benjamin Sawyer and cemetery sexton Otto Bethel never revealed the location. It was a secret they took with them to their graves. Her burial location has never been found. Despite much speculation and interest, what happened to Elena's body died with Tanzler. With no trial and evidence in the public domain, all people could do was gossip. It wasn't until 19 72, 20 years after Tanzler's death and 32 years after his competency hearing, that an interview with doctors involved with the autopsy seemed to reveal medically what had been happening and thus confirm much of their macabre gossip. Without autopsy, photographs and evidence submitted into court records, these claims of necrophilia have not been received well by all who've researched the case. Tanzler's final words are haunting ones was Tansler seeking the light or was he consumed by a melancholic madness, an obsessive love that saw him consumed by the darkness? I leave it to you to discern if either Tanzler or Elena had peace in life or in their deaths.

Speaker B: Joining me next is Ben Harrison, musician.

Speaker A: Playwright and author of Undying Love the Shocking Drew West Story of a Passion That Defied Death. In writing this definitive and mesmerizing tale.

Speaker B: Of the most obsessive love imaginable, ben.

Speaker A: Harrison did his homework thoroughly, studying numerous press accounts from the 1930s, as well as the von Kossel memoir.

Speaker B: What makes Undying Love so special are.

Speaker A: The interviews Ben conducted with those old enough to have known the story participants and the way things were in Key West during the 1930s. The book also includes eight pages of compelling, unforgettable photos. Danny Elfman, musician, composer, record producer and actor who purchased the film rights to.

Speaker B: Undying Love, wrote of the book ben.

Speaker A: Harrison separates fact from myth and untangles the thread of intrigue in this gothic tale of obsessive love and melancholy madness.

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Speaker B: Hi, Ben.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker B: Do you want to just start by.

Speaker A: Telling us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker C: I'm Ben Harrison, and I was raised in South Texas. I moved to Key West in 79, and I began having an interest in Key West history because it's pretty fascinating. And one of the stories that I came across early on was the story of Count Von Castle and the beautiful Elena Oyos, which is the subject of this podcast interview. And the name of the book is Undying Love.

Speaker D: It's a fascinating book that chronicles a rather complex story with a lot of facets to it, one of which is this complicated figure of the count and his rather intriguing personality.

Speaker A: What initially drew you to researching and writing the book? Ben.

Speaker C: He is the story. Poor Elena happened to be the person at the time. He was a faux count. He was not really a count. He was born Carl Tonsor. He claimed that he had nine different degrees in engineering, metaphysics. None of those were true. When he migrated to the states, immigrated into Key West and Florida. He claimed that he was Count Carl Von Castle, and he wouldn't have been the first European to upgrade his lineage, but he obviously had some skills as an X ray technician, and that's how he managed to get a job at the Marine hospital here in Key West. And that's where he met the lovely Elena, taking an X ray of her chest.

Speaker E: And at the time, he was already married, wasn't he? So when he met Elena and became.

Speaker B: Obsessed with her, he was married, he had children.

Speaker E: And yet this session was really quite profound. I mean, it was very much prominent and evident before her death and what subsequently happened. And I think that's an element of the story that sometimes gets overlooked. They kind of focus on the end part, but forget that this was quite a long story between the two of them.

Speaker A: And his connection with her and connection.

Speaker E: With her family and what he was doing was quite long standing as well.

Speaker C: Well, it was tragic in a way, too, because here one of his daughters, one of his two daughters died from diphtheria, and Doris, his real wife, contacted the camp and said, carl, I need help emotionally and financially. And he gave neither and really ignored her at that point, which shows the depth of his obsession over this girl who had died from tuberculosis. To really abandon your family and your own and one of your daughters is pretty profound. You don't know whether she just happened along at the right time for him, but obviously there was some grand connection that who knows what makes somebody fall head over heels in love with somebody. And she was very much alive when he did fall in love with her. He saw these Cuban beauties, and he realized that none of these beauties was her. So he came to Key West, and that's where he ultimately saw her and fell in. Love with her. And he was obsessed from the very beginning and his obsession never ended. It began with that first X ray which he describes very vividly in his memoirs. And that's what makes this story so fascinating is that he describes everything that he does in his memoirs which I quote very freely in the book because that gives you an insight into his mind, which was pretty interesting.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker D: And what we see is this obsession to keep her alive at any cost. The treatments he gave her were quite severe.

Speaker A: Do you want to just give us.

Speaker D: Some insight into that period of their lives?

Speaker C: Ben von Kossel was, in his mind, the most brilliant person in the world and he almost felt it as though he had a connection with God in that he could see the supernatural the same way that the deity could. He was also a talker, and he was a better talker than he was a doer. None of his inventions ever worked. None of his wingless airplane never flew. His inventions for this wingless airplane never worked. His attempts to bring her back to life were really one was a Frankensteinish electrical contraption that really just shocked her. The other was pretty shaky medically. As far as the radiation treatments, I don't know whether he even really gave them to her or not. But his mind and reality were not connected that closely. And this obsession of his never ended until his death. And the sheriff found him after no one had seen him for quite a while in Zephyr Hills after he had left Key West. And he was there on the floor beside a lifelike character of Elena that he had reconstructed from one of his death masks. First she dies, so he pays for the burial but he's worried about the groundwater harming her beautiful form. So he has her taken out of the grave and while he builds this very elaborate mausoleum for which takes about a year and then he puts her back into this mausoleum but he can never sit still around her. He was left with just her in the mausoleum. And that's when he came up with this rather fantastic thought that she's singing to him from the grave. And the song that she was singing was named Labova Negra the Black Wedding and it was written by Alberto Villon, a Colombian romanticist. And it was written in Spanish. And the only way he could have found out about this was through Elena, in my opinion which makes the story even a little more fascinating. But this Labolda Negra is about a man whose lover died prematurely and he is so distraught that he digs her up from the grave, takes her to his home and puts her on a bed of flowers recites his wedding vows with her and then commits suicide. Now, this is the song that von Castle believed that Elena was singing to him from the grave. And that is where he received the authority to take her home with him, which is what he did. And during that period, the seven years that he kept her, he constantly tried to bring her back to life to talk to her. And he even claimed that she did come back to life briefly.

Speaker D: And this is the darker element of the story, because he does disturb her body from its resting place and bring her home with him, where he brings her jewelry, flowers, clothes and all manner of gifts, all the while deceiving her family, who believes she's resting in peace at the mausoleum, carrying on as if she's there.

Speaker C: In his mind, she was.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker E: And I think that's why your title for your book is a very fitting one, because it truly is this Undying love. It's a very twisted, romantic love story in a way, but very dark. It's very unpleasant and uncomfortable to think about. And again brings up that question of you have to wonder what his state.

Speaker A: Of mind was, what he was really.

Speaker C: Thinking when I wrote the book and it was published in the late ninety s and unwittingly the book. Has become probably the best source of really, history, a history of the of key west during the 1930s, because I was able to interview a lot of people who were still alive, who knew the characters, who knew von castle, who knew Elena, and that gave it really a new dimension. But he seemed to be sane in most other areas except for this obsessive love for Elena.

Speaker A: So if we jump forward seven years.

Speaker D: What were the circumstances that led up to his arrest?

Speaker C: I think you need to sort of understand key west during the 1930s was the Depression, and it was a worldwide depression, but it was especially for the United States, it was a difficult financial period, and for Key West. Every person I interviewed, despite the economic hardship, they had a little gleam in their eyes because in recalling that decade, there was plenty of food, there was all kinds of fish. This is an island. You could just walk out a couple of hundred yards and get lobster, fish. They had gardens, so you could have fruits and vegetables. There was also commerce with Cuba at the time, so there was produce coming in from Cuba if you had any money. But there was also rum coming in from Cuba. There were enough cigar makers so you could still have a good stogie if you wanted one. There was plenty of housing because the cigar industry had moved to Tampa, so there really wasn't much need for money. People got along very well, bartering this for that. But in a community this small and this tight knit, there's no such thing as a secret unless one person knows it. And so eventually it was going to come out that something fishy was going on. I remember Mrs. Weekly at Faustos saying she was very curious as to why he was coming in, buying all of this soap and all day cologne. It just seemed out of character. And just an accumulation of these sort of hints and disturbing findings and sightings by young kids led the sister to confront von Kosley. He also quit keeping the mausoleum up. He started letting it go to waste, which was another clue. So when she confronted him, he eventually confessed and said, let me show you how beautiful she is. And I can't imagine how horrified she was at the sight of her sister there who had been really mummified. She'd been recreated with plaster, wax and gauze and cosmetics, and so she looked kind of like a mummy.

Speaker A: Elena, sadly, in all of this, almost got lost.

Speaker B: Do you want to tell us a.

Speaker D: Little bit more about her?

Speaker C: Well, Elena was really she was just a young girl who became terminally ill, and it was tragic. She was young, vivacious, part of the Cuban community here. They danced at the Cuban Club. She was married at the time she contracted tuberculosis, so that was really her only worldly experience, was her marriage to a local fella. And it didn't last very long, because when she became ill, he decided that he would rather leave than possibly contract the disease himself. And that really is the totality of her experience with him and with life. Now, after her death, she was transported all over the place. She went to the funeral home three times. The original time when she was disinterred while the mausoleum was being made, and then the final time when she was put out for a final viewing seven years after she had died.

Speaker A: A huge part of what you undertook.

Speaker D: Was speaking with the community and the family.

Speaker A: So what has been some of the.

Speaker D: Responses, if any, of Elena's family and the Count's family?

Speaker C: Well, the family wasn't happy about it at all, I don't think the heirs and the survivors, of which I believe there may be some in Tampa, they just were horrified by the whole thing, wanted nothing to do with it. We just wish people would be quiet about it. I was able to interview a daughter and granddaughter of Von Castles, the one surviving daughter and the granddaughter, and it's been a very difficult cross for them to bear and something they have not been able to let go of. So even after this ordeal that she went through, the family still suffers kind of the tragedy that kept on reappearing in their lives.

Speaker B: You can understand the attention the story.

Speaker D: Garnered for both sides and how the aftermath of that must have been terribly difficult. Like you mentioned, the tragedy that kept.

Speaker A: Giving, one of the difficulties maybe tied.

Speaker E: Into that was the fact that there.

Speaker D: Was no trial, so no resolution.

Speaker B: What was the community's response to the.

Speaker D: Lack of prosecution and to the Count himself in the aftermath?

Speaker C: This is the irony of the story. The public was overwhelmingly in favor of the count. They were enamored with the count. They thought he was the most romantic person in the world. And it was 1940 when he was found out which was the dawn of or the dawn the beginning of World War II, really. And so here was illustrative of one of the letters that was sent to the city of Key West on his behalf. One of the writers said, well, here in this time when we are about to see the death and destruction of thousands and thousands of people here one man is at least trying to bring someone back to life. And even if the ODS are a million to one he is still more honorable than those trying to bring death and destruction.

Speaker B: The other person in this story is.

Speaker D: Of course, the count's legal wife who he abandoned emotionally and financially through quite difficult times, particularly losing a child in that period of her husband's absence. Her reaction in response to her husband from his arrest and release is quite extraordinary with her going as far as writing to the court and supporting him.

Speaker B: Back in the community, keeping him fed.

Speaker D: And giving some small companionship each week when they would meet briefly.

Speaker C: Well, she must have been the most generous person in the world or forgiving or something compassionate because after he left Key West and he left Key West because he was afraid people were going to find out too much and he moved to Zephyr Hills. His sister, I'm sure, was horrified when he pulled in with three trucks loaded with all of his junk, including the wingless airplane. He lived with her for a while before he moved into a place all of his own. But he was going to starve unless Doris, his real life wife, gave him some money and she did. Every week they would sit on a park bench and she would give him part of her $15 a week salary and that was the only income he had. And that was enough to keep him at least in sardines and crackers until they found him dead in I believe it was 1957.

Speaker D: How far did this story spread?

Speaker C: Story was all over the world. One local who was stationed in California was a celebrity because he actually had known Elena before she died. It was in newspapers all over the country. It was in newspapers in Europe as well. So it was fascinating then. It is still fascinating, and I think there are several reasons. One is Key West is I don't know whether you're familiar with the island but it was a very strategic port until the Panama Canal opened in 1914 and the ships became steamships and much larger than Key West was able to accommodate. But Key West is a very close knit town and everybody knew everybody. And so the world was changing very rapidly especially with the onslaught of world war II. And so people were weighing in on this all over and it was a welcome relief. It was a relief to talk about something other than Germany.

Speaker D: For anyone who is interested in following this up by finding out more about Ben or getting access to his book.

Speaker B: Undying Love, I will make sure to.

Speaker D: Include in the podcast description notes, as well as the website all relevant links to Ben, to his book and to his social media pages. So make sure to go give him a follow and to check him out. I highly recommend the book. It's something I think you will really thoroughly enjoy.

Speaker B: Just to get this perspective of the.

Speaker A: People involved, the community aspect, which is.

Speaker D: An incredible and unique contribution to this.

Speaker A: Part of the story.

Speaker D: I think.

Speaker B: A huge thank you to my special.

Speaker D: Guest Ben, and to everyone who's been listening. See you next time. Bye for now.