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1931, 56-year-old Carl Tanzler was working at a hospital in Florida when he fell in love with a 22-year-old Cuban-American woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. When the couple met, de Hoyos was dying from tuberculosis - a terminal condition in the 1930s. Throughout the last year of her life, Tanzler reportedly showered the young woman with gifts and even purchased an expensive mausoleum when she passed. After her death, Tanzler visited de Hoyos’s grave, singing Spanish love songs to her. He later claimed that her spirit encouraged him to remove her from the grave and take her home. So, one night in 1933, allegedly haunted by these ghostly requests, Tanzler carried de Hoyos back home in a wagon. Over the next seven-plus years, Tanzler preserved the woman. He replaced her skin with silk and wax, stuffed her body with rags to keep its shape, and used perfumes to disguise the smell. It wasn’t until 1940 - when de Hoyos’s sister, Florinda, stormed into his home with police in tow - that the truth was discovered. Tanzler wasn’t actually prosecuted because the statute of limitations on his initial crime had already lapsed