Carl Tanzler and Elena Hoyos

The patient

Georg Karl Tänzler was born in Dresden in 1877 and moved to the United States in 1926. He took a job as a radiology technician at the Marine Hospital in Key West under the name Carl von Cosel. By his own later account he had seen visions since childhood of a dark-haired woman who was his destined love. On 22 April 1930 a young Cuban-American woman, Elena Milagro Hoyos, was brought to the hospital to be tested for tuberculosis. He decided she was the woman.

She was in her early twenties and her prognosis was poor. Tanzler treated her with tonics he made himself and brought X-ray and electrical equipment to her family’s home. He gave her jewelry and clothes. No evidence has surfaced that she returned his feelings.

The tomb

Elena died at her parents’ home on 25 October 1931. Tanzler paid for her funeral and, with the family’s permission, commissioned an above-ground mausoleum in the Key West Cemetery. He visited almost every night. In April 1933 he removed the body and took it away at night, by two accounts in a toy wagon. The Key West Art and Historical Society says he moved it to a wingless airplane he had built.

Seven years

What he did next is documented by the people who later examined the body and by his own account. He wired the bones with piano wire and put in glass eyes. As the skin decomposed he replaced it with silk soaked in wax and plaster of Paris. He dressed the body and put rouge on its cheeks. Accounts differ on whether he kept it in the aircraft, at his house, or both. He is said to have moved it more than once.

Discovery

In October 1940 Elena’s family heard rumors and went to see for themselves. The body was found and Tanzler was arrested. He was reportedly examined by doctors, found competent, and charged with wantonly and maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization. After a preliminary hearing in October 1940 the charges were dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.

The body was examined and displayed at the Dean-Lopez Funeral Home, where the number of people who came to see it is given as almost 7,000 (Key West Art and Historical Society) or as many as 6,800 (Wikipedia). It was then reportedly reburied in an unmarked grave in a secret location to stop anyone from taking it again.

After

Tanzler moved to the Zephyrhills area of Florida, where his family lived, and wrote his memoirs, reportedly published in a pulp magazine in 1947. He died in 1952. An effigy of Elena, reportedly made from a death mask, was found in his home. Public opinion in 1940 was reportedly often sympathetic to him. The Key West Art and Historical Society keeps related artifacts, including pieces of the mausoleum plaque.

The most detailed book-length account is Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion That Defied Death affiliate link by Ben Harrison. Prefer a library copy? Try Open Library.

What we know

• Tanzler met Elena Hoyos at the Marine Hospital in Key West in April 1930. She died of tuberculosis on 25 October 1931.
• He paid for her mausoleum, and in 1933 he removed her body from it.
• The body was found at his home or aircraft in October 1940, and it was put on public display.
• Charges were dropped because the statute of limitations had expired. Tanzler died in 1952.

What we don’t know

• What Elena thought of him. No evidence she returned his feelings, and nothing in her own words.
• Whether he abused the body. In 1972 two physicians who attended the 1940 autopsy recalled a paper tube, consistent with that claim. No contemporary photographs show it, and no such evidence was presented at the 1940 hearing, so historians disagree. We treat it as contested.
• A 1982 article described a note supposedly written by Tanzler confessing to poisoning her. We found no independent confirmation and are not relying on it.
• Whether, as one author claims, he had secretly gotten Elena’s real remains back before he died. His obituary describes a wax figure, and we have no evidence for the claim.