Speaker 1: Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Uh So, Tracy,
Speaker 1: you may remember that when we did the Devil's Footprints
Speaker 1: in the intro, I said, Hey, this sounds creepy, but
Speaker 1: it's really funny. Yes, don't say that. Don't be scared.
Speaker 1: This is opposite, kind of the opposite. It's really gross
Speaker 1: and pretty horrifying. Uh to some people. It may even
Speaker 1: sound a little bit romantic. In my opinion, it is not.
Speaker 1: We'll get into why. But it involves a man who
Speaker 1: loved a woman and his love for her continued long
Speaker 1: after her death. But whether she loved him back as
Speaker 1: a matter of some dispute. And according to the subject
Speaker 1: of this episode, Carl Tandler, she did, but according to
Speaker 1: her family she did not. And we don't actually have
Speaker 1: to guess at Tandler thought during all of this. We
Speaker 1: have his account, which he published some years after all
Speaker 1: of these events happened, uh, as a paid writing gig
Speaker 1: for the pulp comic Fantastic Adventures in heads Up. This
Speaker 1: is very dark stuff. We're talking about things like decomposition
Speaker 1: and people handling corpses, and it might not be suitable
Speaker 1: for younger history buffs or just people that are a
Speaker 1: little bit um queasy of tummy yeah, or in general,
Speaker 1: or just cumans who are pretty dark by horrifying things. Yeah. Tandler,
Speaker 1: whose name sometimes appears with a K instead of a
Speaker 1: sea in Carl was born in Dresden, Germany, on February
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, and he claimed that he grew up
Speaker 1: in a country castle that was haunted by a figure
Speaker 1: known as the White Woman, who he also called Countess
Speaker 1: Anna Costell. He believed this ghost was an ancestor who
Speaker 1: died in the eighteenth century. The Countess, her Carl's account,
Speaker 1: had been a beauty and was interested in alchemy, and
Speaker 1: at the age of twelve, Carl, who had a hearty
Speaker 1: interest in science himself, had a dream about the Countess,
Speaker 1: the first of many visions of her that he had
Speaker 1: throughout his life. As he matured, Tamsla remained obsessed only
Speaker 1: with science and invention. He wasn't a smoker or a drinker,
Speaker 1: and he also wasn't particularly interested in romance. That comes
Speaker 1: up over and over where in his defense of his character.
Speaker 1: He always comments that he neither smoked nor drink um,
Speaker 1: but that focus on science enabled him, again, according to
Speaker 1: his own account, to earn master's degrees in medicine, philosophy, mathematics, physics,
Speaker 1: and chemistry. He claimed by the time he was twenty four,
Speaker 1: Carl believed the ghost of the Countess visited him, sometimes
Speaker 1: making a ruckus breaking scientific instruments, and eventually, he said
Speaker 1: he she showed him the woman he was destined to
Speaker 1: be with. This is a beautiful, a young woman with long,
Speaker 1: dark hair. He would use this vision as sort of
Speaker 1: a guiding element of his life. After he finished his schooling,
Speaker 1: Carl traveled a great deal, and Tandler even admits in
Speaker 1: his own writings his account of his travels as a
Speaker 1: young man are lacking in details, writing quote, I can
Speaker 1: refer to these years only in the sketchiest manner in
Speaker 1: this magazine account, because all which matters is what leads
Speaker 1: up to my final meeting with the apparition of the castle.
Speaker 1: At one point he traveled to Genoa, he encountered a
Speaker 1: marble statue that looked like this, promised Beloved that his
Speaker 1: ancestor had shown him. The statue sat atop a grave
Speaker 1: of a woman named Elena, who had died at the
Speaker 1: age of twenty two. Tandler was so moved by the
Speaker 1: appearance of the statue that he began to weep, and
Speaker 1: he kept saying the name Elena over and over. He
Speaker 1: wrote that he next saw a spirit seemed to emerge
Speaker 1: from the statue and walk past him, as it may
Speaker 1: direct eye contact with him. He pursued this spirit into
Speaker 1: the streets of Genoa, but he lost her in a crowd.
Speaker 1: After this incident, Tandler kept traveling, and his journeys eventually
Speaker 1: ended in Sydney, Australia, where he settled down for a while.
Speaker 1: He got a job as an electrical engineer and an
Speaker 1: X ray expert. He also built rebuilt a torpedo boat
Speaker 1: that he used to go fishing and to explore. In
Speaker 1: May of nineteen ten, still living in Sydney, Tandler was
Speaker 1: visited by what he believed was a ghost, a spirit
Speaker 1: that entered his home, blew out his lamps, and then left.
Speaker 1: The ghosts stayed away until March seventh of nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: at seven pm, and then as he was eating dinner,
Speaker 1: it appeared to him fully visible. The same beautiful young
Speaker 1: woman that his ancestor had promised would be his bride.
Speaker 1: He approached the apparition, they embraced one another, and his
Speaker 1: writing about this moment describes a divine bliss before the
Speaker 1: spirit melt it away. But the spirit was gone but
Speaker 1: a moment before regaining its form in another room of
Speaker 1: the bachelor's home. She remained for a week, following him
Speaker 1: around the house, smiling as she observed him. She was
Speaker 1: silent and he didn't know her name, so he began
Speaker 1: calling her Aisha. He would later write quote, there was
Speaker 1: an incorporeal love between us which approached the divine. When
Speaker 1: the spirit left, Tandler reported feeling very depressed, although he
Speaker 1: was also confident that they would meet again and that
Speaker 1: she was his promised bride that the spirit of Countess
Speaker 1: Anna had told him about. But his anguish over it
Speaker 1: all manifested in physical illness, and he wound up being
Speaker 1: admitted to the hospital. As he began to recover, he
Speaker 1: discovered that his father had fallen into a coma and
Speaker 1: then died a week later, And that week coincided, according
Speaker 1: to Tandler's writings, exactly with his spirit visitors time with
Speaker 1: him right to the hour. Tandler had actually become a
Speaker 1: British subject while living in Australia, and he spent World
Speaker 1: War One in an internment camp due to his German heritage.
Speaker 1: Tandler wrote a lengthy account of his time in the
Speaker 1: camp for Rosicrucian Digest in nine. In this tale, he
Speaker 1: claims to have built an organ from debris with the
Speaker 1: assistance of fellow prisoners, who Tandler said, we're all Buddhist
Speaker 1: priests while imprisoned in the camp. The sounds kind of
Speaker 1: far fetched to me, as much of his writing does.
Speaker 1: After the armistice, the organ traveled with Tandler by boat
Speaker 1: back to Europe, and it was a harrowing journey, during
Speaker 1: which the ship he was on passed through a number
Speaker 1: of storms. When he finally arrived back home, only his
Speaker 1: mother and one sister remained there. His other sister had
Speaker 1: gotten married and moved to the United States, and his father,
Speaker 1: of course, was deceased. Carl felt completely unmoored back in Germany,
Speaker 1: and he was unable to resume any sort of life
Speaker 1: that resembled his previous one before the war, and so
Speaker 1: tam Ler, who at this point was in his late forties,
Speaker 1: left Europe. First, he traveled to Havannah, Cuba, arriving in
Speaker 1: late February. He stayed there for a few days i'm
Speaker 1: the carnival crowd to see if any of the women
Speaker 1: might reveal themselves to be his promised love. But on
Speaker 1: March one he headed to Florida, where his married sister
Speaker 1: was living. And while Tandler did not exactly love Florida,
Speaker 1: he thought that Cuba was a far more beautiful place.
Speaker 1: He purchased land and began working on a home there,
Speaker 1: but he soon needed to seek out work to keep
Speaker 1: money coming in. At that point, he had been basically
Speaker 1: living off a family money, and he soon began working
Speaker 1: at the Marine Hospital at Key West as an X
Speaker 1: ray specialist and pathologist. Coming up, we will talk about
Speaker 1: the moment that Tandler felt all of those visions had
Speaker 1: manifested in a faded meeting. But first we were going
Speaker 1: to stop for a quick sponsor break. It was in
Speaker 1: his position at the Marine Hospital that Tindler was called
Speaker 1: to draw blood from a patient on April twenty, and
Speaker 1: that patient was Maria Elena Milagrod Hoyos, and when Carl
Speaker 1: Tandler met her, he loved her instantly he believed that
Speaker 1: she was the woman that his distant relative had shown
Speaker 1: him finally in the flesh, their lives having followed the
Speaker 1: paths that would lead them to one another. There's also
Speaker 1: the sobering fact that this young woman whose blood he
Speaker 1: had drawn was listed as married on her records. Carl
Speaker 1: questioned briefly whether he was somehow cursed and had finally
Speaker 1: found his dream bride, only to immediately discover that she
Speaker 1: was in fact someone else's actual bride. In spite of
Speaker 1: this fact, though he he called his mood indescribably happy.
Speaker 1: Tandler identified the cause of Elena's illness soon after they
Speaker 1: met tuberculosis. In the nineteen thirties, tuberculosis was often still
Speaker 1: a death sentence. Carl knew that there were places abroad
Speaker 1: that could probably successfully treat Elena, and he even offered
Speaker 1: to send her for treatment elsewhere, but Elena and her
Speaker 1: family refused. Tandler had learned that Elena's husband had left
Speaker 1: her and was not in the picture anymore, so he
Speaker 1: dedicated his every energy and resource to trying to cure
Speaker 1: her himself. He treated her with radiation at the hospital,
Speaker 1: but also planned additional treatments and then he rededicated himself
Speaker 1: to the restoration of an airplane that he had been
Speaker 1: tinkering with. His intention was that he would cure Elena
Speaker 1: and they would fly away together to an island in
Speaker 1: the South Seas that he claimed to have discovered and
Speaker 1: thus owned. That is not how it works. There are,
Speaker 1: as we said, a lot of far fetched things in
Speaker 1: his accounts of his life. Uh, this is also a
Speaker 1: really good time to mention. In addition to the fact
Speaker 1: that you may have noticed, we have not mentioned Elena
Speaker 1: falling in love with Carl Tandler, but she was also
Speaker 1: much younger than Carl, who also, by the way, was
Speaker 1: calling himself Count von Kozel. She was only twenty when
Speaker 1: they met, and he at this point was fifty three
Speaker 1: years old. Per Tandler's account, Elena's treatment was hindered by
Speaker 1: her family. He was willing to do almost anything for her,
Speaker 1: and he characterized them and his writing as being distrustful
Speaker 1: of the medical knowledge and advice that he offered. Carl
Speaker 1: also had dreams about Elena, and at one point he
Speaker 1: wrote her a letter detailing one of them. In response,
Speaker 1: her sister visited Tandler at work at the hospital and
Speaker 1: told him to dream no more. He felt that his
Speaker 1: dreams included premonitions of what was to come. Regarding Elena's health,
Speaker 1: Carl continued to write letters to Elena, writing in one quote,
Speaker 1: so often you have said that I am too old
Speaker 1: for you. But listen, Darling, I never count my years,
Speaker 1: neither do I count yours. If you were a mummy
Speaker 1: five thousand years old, I would marry you just the same.
Speaker 1: I swear it's not for selfish reasons that I want
Speaker 1: this marriage, but because I can do so much more
Speaker 1: than a boy your age. I can offer you my science,
Speaker 1: my experience, my capacity to save your life and this
Speaker 1: apart and on top of my undying love. You want
Speaker 1: to get well, don't you? And you want to see
Speaker 1: the world. Don't you remember that time we did the
Speaker 1: episode about Thomas Day and his and you were really
Speaker 1: angry the whole time. Yeah, that's how I feel about
Speaker 1: this episode. Oh me too. Um, Yeah, there's so much.
Speaker 1: He kept proposing to her. She kept saying no, and
Speaker 1: she would often say no, you're too old for me.
Speaker 1: But he just kept going after her and just relentlessly
Speaker 1: pursued her. All of his letters to her kind of
Speaker 1: treat her like a child, and like she should just
Speaker 1: inherently trust him. It's very weird and troubling. Um. But
Speaker 1: Elena did visit the hospital again, although because there was
Speaker 1: no privacy, she and Carl didn't speak much um. That
Speaker 1: same day, though, Tandler received word that his mother had died,
Speaker 1: and he actually believed, similar to how he thought that
Speaker 1: a ghost had visited him when his father was in
Speaker 1: a coma, that a higher power had made Elena visit
Speaker 1: that day to offer him comfort. Elena's family moved, Neither
Speaker 1: they nor their neighbors would disclose their new address to Tandler.
Speaker 1: He did not give up, though, and eventually a friend
Speaker 1: of the family he was worried about Elena's failing health,
Speaker 1: pointed him to their house. Yeah, Elena was very, very
Speaker 1: sick in this time, and this woman, presumably out of
Speaker 1: a good intention, thought like, here's a medical professional and
Speaker 1: this girl needs help. Um, So she gave up their location,
Speaker 1: but he pushed his way into their home. Any more
Speaker 1: or less took over whether the family had distanced themselves
Speaker 1: from Tandler because they were fearful of science, as his
Speaker 1: account indicates, or they were weirded out by this elderly
Speaker 1: man's obsessive behavior with Elena. We do not know for certain,
Speaker 1: we only have his side of this story, but they
Speaker 1: acquiesced to his presence at this point, likely because Elena
Speaker 1: was in a really, really bad state in terms of
Speaker 1: her health and they were just desperate for any sort
Speaker 1: of help. He started electric current treatment with Elena. You
Speaker 1: let other members of the family experience it as well
Speaker 1: so they would know it wasn't harmful. He also gave
Speaker 1: Elena throat sprays to try to address her cough, including
Speaker 1: one that had gold dissolved into it, but she didn't
Speaker 1: like any of these. Yeah, he kind of was off
Speaker 1: doing his own sorts of medication, concoctions, and treatments. Carl's
Speaker 1: diary tells the story that he claims was Elena asking
Speaker 1: him to take care of her body after her death,
Speaker 1: which she felt was imminent in the fall of nine.
Speaker 1: He quoted her as saying, if I must die, all
Speaker 1: I can leave you is my body, for I am
Speaker 1: only a sickly girl, so I can't marry you while
Speaker 1: I am sick. But you will take care of my
Speaker 1: body after I'm dead, won't you. According to Carl, he
Speaker 1: promised that he would, and in his mind, he considered
Speaker 1: this to be their marriage. Bow He also wrote a
Speaker 1: note for Elena to keep in case of emergency, claiming
Speaker 1: that he was her husband and that she was of
Speaker 1: sound mind. And he did this after rumors began to
Speaker 1: circulate that her family was considering having her move to
Speaker 1: an asylum. So by the time Elena died on October,
Speaker 1: Carl Tandler considered himself to be her husband, and he
Speaker 1: had established an adversarial relationship with her family. Even so,
Speaker 1: when Elena died, the family, which had a little money,
Speaker 1: let Tandler handle all the funeral arrangements. Yeah, he basically
Speaker 1: swooped in and said he would pay for everything, and they, grieving,
Speaker 1: agreed to it. Carl describes in his writing feeling as
Speaker 1: though Elena's eyes were looking into him at the visitation
Speaker 1: before the funeral, even though her eyes were closed. While
Speaker 1: intellectual he knew she was dead. He wrote, quote, my
Speaker 1: heart with far greater force told me she is not dead.
Speaker 1: And he wrote this of the funeral's conclusion, quote, A
Speaker 1: strange kind of new life now began for me. It
Speaker 1: was something like a rebirth after these last two oppressing
Speaker 1: and depressing years. Now at last, nobody could take my
Speaker 1: Elena away from me. Although I could not see her
Speaker 1: any longer, I felt her presence all the time. Carl
Speaker 1: then moved into Elena's room at her family's home. The
Speaker 1: Hoyos family had told Tandler that they didn't want to
Speaker 1: live there anymore because of their grief. That house only
Speaker 1: held memories of their ailing Elena, and he said that
Speaker 1: if they moved, he was just going to rent the
Speaker 1: house himself or buy it outright, and they ended up staying,
Speaker 1: and so did he. He also decided that Elena's grave
Speaker 1: wasn't safe or watertight, so he built her a tomb,
Speaker 1: to which he had the only key, and he disinterred
Speaker 1: her body to have it placed inside this tomb. Handler
Speaker 1: spares no details in discussing Elena's body as they found
Speaker 1: it when they disinterred it. In his diary, he noted
Speaker 1: that she had been decaying and that the lining of
Speaker 1: her coffin had fallen down and stuck to her face
Speaker 1: and body, and he spent hours carefully removing it. He
Speaker 1: then cleaned and treated the body with preservative, and he
Speaker 1: sprayed it with Eau de cologne. When Elena's body was
Speaker 1: placed into the tomb, Tandler made sure it was under
Speaker 1: the best possible conditions to prevent further decay. He visited
Speaker 1: this tomb, which he compared to a small house, every evening.
Speaker 1: He claimed he felt a piece when he was there
Speaker 1: that he had nowhere else. After eighteen months of visits, Elena,
Speaker 1: he said, began talking to him. She would ask if
Speaker 1: she was truly dead, and told Carl she wanted to
Speaker 1: go live in his home. He promised that she could,
Speaker 1: and he brought her a gift every evening, things like
Speaker 1: handkerchiefs and pieces of jewelry, and he planned for the
Speaker 1: time that he would bring her home and dress her
Speaker 1: in a wedding gown and live with her as his bride.
Speaker 1: He believed that he could hear her singing to him
Speaker 1: when he visited, and he also felt that at times
Speaker 1: Elena was controlling his body, sending him signals to show
Speaker 1: him things to do, including how to get her out
Speaker 1: of the cemetery without being observed. Tandler rented a house
Speaker 1: adjacent to the cemetery so that he could first move
Speaker 1: Elena's body into it and then move it via car
Speaker 1: from that spot. Under a new moon, he took the
Speaker 1: casket from the tomb and put it on a child's wagon,
Speaker 1: then covered it with a blanket and set out across
Speaker 1: the cemetery. Sometimes you'll read accounts of this that are
Speaker 1: kind of abbreviated, and they say he took the body
Speaker 1: in a wagon, and it kind of sounds like he
Speaker 1: folded up the body into the wagon, but now he
Speaker 1: there was a coffin on top of it. Uh and
Speaker 1: Tandler wrote of this walk quote, all of the cemetery
Speaker 1: was alive with souls which came out of the graves
Speaker 1: from all sides, moving and thronging around us. It was
Speaker 1: indeed like a stable among the departed. As they moved
Speaker 1: up on all sides. It was like a great divine
Speaker 1: wedding march for me taking place. He moved the body
Speaker 1: into the rented house near the cemetery, but it took
Speaker 1: some trouble. When Tandler put Elena's body in the tomb,
Speaker 1: he had placed it in a double casket with an
Speaker 1: interior chamber that was filled with a preservative fluid. There
Speaker 1: was a leak during the move, but Tandler managed to
Speaker 1: minimize how much liquid was lost, and then he moved
Speaker 1: Elena's body to his plane two days later. This is
Speaker 1: the same plane that we mentioned earlier that he was
Speaker 1: restoring with the intention of flying Elena wherever she wished.
Speaker 1: Yeah became their home for a while. Carl called Elena's
Speaker 1: cabin on the plane the ship's hospital, and he carefully
Speaker 1: unpacked her from her coffin. This segment of Tandler's recollections
Speaker 1: is a fascinating combination of scientific description and really twisted
Speaker 1: and weird romantic interlude. He writes of the mold and
Speaker 1: slime which were consuming her body and how carefully he
Speaker 1: had to remove those, trying as best he could to
Speaker 1: preserve her skin, and then within just a few paragraphs,
Speaker 1: he also talks about how beautiful she looked once he
Speaker 1: had draped her with a silk veil, and how she
Speaker 1: was worried that he wouldn't love her anymore, and he
Speaker 1: quote sank gently into the coffin to her and kissed
Speaker 1: her as if she were alive. He took samples from
Speaker 1: the body and examined them in the hospital lab and
Speaker 1: was very happy that there were no dangerous bacteria in
Speaker 1: the mix. He felt that dying had in a way
Speaker 1: cured Elena of her tuberculosis. He washed her hair, cleaned
Speaker 1: maggots from the body, cleaned her skin, alluding in his
Speaker 1: writing to special ingredients that he used on her skin
Speaker 1: that he wished to quote to keep secret. In a moment,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about just what Tinseler's intentions were for Elena's body.
Speaker 1: But first we're going to take a break, so we
Speaker 1: could all use a little uh so sure in a
Speaker 1: from all of the dead body talk, and we're going
Speaker 1: to hear from one of our sponsors. So Carl Tandler's
Speaker 1: intent was to resurrect Elena. He wrote over and over
Speaker 1: that all of his restoration efforts were aimed at perfecting
Speaker 1: her so that when she awoke, she would be her
Speaker 1: beautiful self. He was adamant that even after eighteen months
Speaker 1: in the grave, she was in better shape than some
Speaker 1: of the living patients that he had treated. He fed
Speaker 1: the body, dispensing quote nourishing fluids to her orally. He
Speaker 1: claimed that Elena gained twenty pounds this way, and that
Speaker 1: her various lacerations and wounds were healing. He wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: even the expression of her face changed to divine happiness.
Speaker 1: She did not require words to express herself. Her face
Speaker 1: was so much more eloquent than words could be. He
Speaker 1: also made plaster casts of the body to have a
Speaker 1: permanent record of Elena's beauty, and when he discovered that
Speaker 1: the silk that he had covered her face with had
Speaker 1: bonded to the skin, he left it in place and
Speaker 1: he painted over it with beeswax and balsam. Tandler was
Speaker 1: still working at the Marine Hospital during this time, and
Speaker 1: when the hospital administration had a leadership change, it meant
Speaker 1: that Carl's airplane was no longer welcome and its parking
Speaker 1: space on hospital grounds, so he moved it to the beach,
Speaker 1: taking the plane through town as though it was on
Speaker 1: a parade, enjoying his secret knowledge that Elena's body was
Speaker 1: in it in a flower laden cabin. Yeah, he even
Speaker 1: talks in his writing about how they went by her
Speaker 1: family and they were all waving at him in the plane,
Speaker 1: not knowing that he had their relative inside, which is
Speaker 1: makes me growling. On his beach parcel of land that
Speaker 1: he had arranged, he built a structure that was to
Speaker 1: be his laboratory at home, as well as a hangar
Speaker 1: for the plane. This was all one big structure, and
Speaker 1: once they were moved in there, he continued his work
Speaker 1: always with the goal that he was going to bring
Speaker 1: Elena back to life. He played music for her because quote,
Speaker 1: it was a means to apply the cosmic laws of
Speaker 1: vibration through harmonic sound waves. He also applied electricity and
Speaker 1: was adamant that all of his work was part of
Speaker 1: an exact science. By soaking Elena in his liquid plasma quote,
Speaker 1: incubator Tandler said he had reversed the embalming process to
Speaker 1: prevent insect problems and desiccation. Tandler treated the entire body
Speaker 1: as he had the face, with a layer of silk
Speaker 1: coated with wax and balsam. He also kept the body
Speaker 1: dressed and lying in bed, and remarked repeatedly on its
Speaker 1: beauty in his writing about this whole process. As Carl
Speaker 1: tended to Elena and his work to bring her back
Speaker 1: to life, years passed. He celebrated holidays with Elena's body
Speaker 1: and then moved again just before the summer of nine.
Speaker 1: Tandler claimed it not long after the move, Elena began
Speaker 1: to wake up and moved one of her fingers ever
Speaker 1: so slightly and turned slightly to gaze at him. But
Speaker 1: this was, in his account, a fleeting improvement. For the
Speaker 1: next several years, he continued trying to maintain the body,
Speaker 1: but he had started to realize that he was losing
Speaker 1: ground just the same it was. This was roughly seven
Speaker 1: years since Tandler had taken Elena's body from her tomb,
Speaker 1: and it was then that things began to unravel. While
Speaker 1: Carl Tandler had been careful to take Elena's body out
Speaker 1: of the cemetery without anyone seeing him, and while he
Speaker 1: had moved his corpse bride to his airplane under a
Speaker 1: similar cloak of darkness, he was that very careful about otherwise,
Speaker 1: not drawing attention to himself. For one thing, after he
Speaker 1: had visited Elena's tomb every single night for a year
Speaker 1: and a half, which everyone knew he did, he had
Speaker 1: abruptly stopped. He occasionally went back to check him on
Speaker 1: the actual structure over the years, but it was a
Speaker 1: rarity and people noticed this change in behavior. And for another,
Speaker 1: he continued to buy gifts for Elena and the sixties
Speaker 1: something bachelor buying dresses, perfume, jewelry, and flowers also raised
Speaker 1: some eyebrows. People started to wonder where all of those
Speaker 1: things were going. Elena's sister eventually confronted him. She wanted
Speaker 1: Tandler to open up the coffin in Elena's tomb. He
Speaker 1: refused to do so. She became angry, but then she
Speaker 1: said she just wanted to see her sister, and he
Speaker 1: said that he would let her do that. He revealed
Speaker 1: that Elena was in his home in her state of preservation.
Speaker 1: Tandler seems to have thought that Elena's family was going
Speaker 1: to be really pleased to see how well he had
Speaker 1: cared for her, but the initial reaction on her sister's
Speaker 1: part was disbelief. She didn't think this was really her
Speaker 1: sister's body. But then Elena's sister, who was named Florinda
Speaker 1: and went by Nana, asked Handler to just please return
Speaker 1: the body to its casket. She kind of was coming
Speaker 1: out of this weird state of disbelief and just wanted
Speaker 1: her sister to be buried properly, but Tandler refused. Four
Speaker 1: days later, two sheriffs arrived at Tandler's home. They took
Speaker 1: Elena's body to a funeral home. Carl Tandler was taken
Speaker 1: into custody. Quote accused of wantonly and maliciously demolishing disfiguring
Speaker 1: and destroying a grave. The story of Carl Tandler von
Speaker 1: Kosl and his corpse bride got picked up by gossip
Speaker 1: circles and the press immediately. He basically became instantly famous,
Speaker 1: and there were photographers on hand for every step of
Speaker 1: the legal proceedings. He was held on a thousand dollars bail,
Speaker 1: and he was put in the county jail, where he
Speaker 1: prayed to die so that he could be with Elena forever.
Speaker 1: But during his time in jail, sympathizers to Carl Tandler's
Speaker 1: situation brought him food, they offered him consolation. Key West's
Speaker 1: most experienced lawyer offered to take up tam Lur's case
Speaker 1: free of charge. Carl was pretty open with the authorities
Speaker 1: about his situation. He explained to them and to the
Speaker 1: press that he could not bear to think of Elena's
Speaker 1: body rotting away in the grave, and that he really
Speaker 1: believed that he could restore her and bring her back
Speaker 1: to life. His hearing was on October eighth, nin and
Speaker 1: the time between the arrest and the hearing, Elena's body
Speaker 1: was on public display at the funeral home that it
Speaker 1: had been moved to thousands of people went to look
Speaker 1: at her, and the overall public opinion was favorable to Tandler.
Speaker 1: This never stops wearing me out. But we'll get to
Speaker 1: that somewhere at the end. Florinda's testimony and the hearing
Speaker 1: conveyed her horror at what she had discovered when Tandler
Speaker 1: showed her Elena's body. The judge also asked Handler if
Speaker 1: he had had a sexual relationship with the corpse, to
Speaker 1: which the count replied that he had not. Carl went
Speaker 1: on to say that he was a scientist and that
Speaker 1: he was working on bringing Elena's body back to life
Speaker 1: to rejoin her spirit, which continue you, but the judge
Speaker 1: was quick to point out that in seven years he
Speaker 1: had made no progress in that regard. Then Tandler, in
Speaker 1: a really brazen move, asked to have Elena's body back,
Speaker 1: and he was, of course denied. A court appointed physician
Speaker 1: determined that Tandler was mentally in quote a borderline state
Speaker 1: characterized by certain obsessions with other actions. Normal assessments of
Speaker 1: his mental state by additional specialists contradicted one another, but
Speaker 1: the final assessment was that he was saying, I don't
Speaker 1: want to excuse anything he's doing here, but it seems
Speaker 1: clear to me that he had a problem. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: of the exact same mind. The determination was that Elena
Speaker 1: was to be reburied in a place that Carl Tandler
Speaker 1: would not know about. He later wrote of this decision, quote,
Speaker 1: I was thunderstruck. This was not fair, this was monstrous.
Speaker 1: She to be buried again after all my work. To
Speaker 1: the judge who gave him this news, he said, quote,
Speaker 1: it is the end of everything for me. I protest
Speaker 1: against this inhumane decision. Things became even more complicated when
Speaker 1: the deputy sheriff received a letter from a woman named
Speaker 1: Doris Tandler, who said she was Karl's wife, that they
Speaker 1: had been separated for eleven years. She offered any and
Speaker 1: all help that she could in the form of information
Speaker 1: about Carl's mental health. Carl Tandler did not deny that
Speaker 1: Doris was his wife, though he said that they had
Speaker 1: separated sixteen years earlier after she tried to shoot him. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also had a daughter with Doris, and per her account,
Speaker 1: he had abandoned the family. There's also another daughter that's
Speaker 1: in the mix that seems to have passed away at
Speaker 1: some point on October eleventh, it was announced that Carl's
Speaker 1: case would go to trial in November. His bail was
Speaker 1: posted by two friends from his hospital days, Benjamin Fernandez
Speaker 1: and Joseph Zorsky, who recalled his care of Elena which
Speaker 1: she was in the hospital. They believed that his intent
Speaker 1: was pure. On October were twenty two, it was announced
Speaker 1: in the Miami Herald that Carl Tandler von Kostl would
Speaker 1: not be tried as the statute of limitations had run
Speaker 1: out on any crime that he could be charged with.
Speaker 1: Tandler began giving tours of his lab for a quarter
Speaker 1: of person. He also wrote his account of his time
Speaker 1: in Australian prison for the Rosicrucian Digest and eventually Fantastic Adventures.
Speaker 1: To make money, he moved to Zephyr Hills, Florida, to
Speaker 1: get away from the notoriety that he had in Key West,
Speaker 1: and this is where his remaining sister lived, as well
Speaker 1: as his estranged wife and daughter. The same night that
Speaker 1: Carl Tandler left Key West, Elena's tomb was blown up
Speaker 1: with dynamite, and while the sheriff said that Tainsler didn't
Speaker 1: set the blast, rumors of course swirled that he had.
Speaker 1: He had trouble settling in at his sister's home, and
Speaker 1: his wife Doris eventually stepped in to help him out
Speaker 1: with the transition. Eventually, in four Carl moved out of
Speaker 1: his sisters to a place of his own, where he
Speaker 1: built a shrine to Elena and lived with an effigy
Speaker 1: of her that he made from the casts he had
Speaker 1: taken of her body. Early on, tuberculosis claimed the lives
Speaker 1: of Elena's family one by one. They were all deceased
Speaker 1: by the mid nineteen forties, which is why we do
Speaker 1: not have an account of this whole thing from their perspective.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty, Carl Tandler became a US citizen. He
Speaker 1: died in his home two years later at the age
Speaker 1: of seventy six, alone except for his Elena effigy. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the most troubling aspect of Carl Tandler's story is the
Speaker 1: fact that it is often framed as being incredibly romantic,
Speaker 1: couched in phrases like he couldn't bear to be without her.
Speaker 1: But it's important to remember that, based on everything we know,
Speaker 1: Maria did not have romantic feelings for Carl. She turned
Speaker 1: down his proposals politely, citing their age difference as the reason.
Speaker 1: But it seemed as though she truly had no such
Speaker 1: feelings for him. Even if she had had such feelings
Speaker 1: for him, she didn't consent for him to do this
Speaker 1: with her body. Right. Uh. He makes that statement that
Speaker 1: she asked him to somehow take care of her body
Speaker 1: after death, but that is strictly his assertion. We have
Speaker 1: nothing to back that up. So in exhuming her body
Speaker 1: and making it part of this odd marriage, he was
Speaker 1: acting entirely counter to her own wishes, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, according to Tandler's account, it was Maria's dying wish.
Speaker 1: He said that she and I should live together. But
Speaker 1: whether or not that's false, he really did seem to
Speaker 1: believe it. Tandler biographer Ben Harrison noted in his book
Speaker 1: Undying Love that it was entirely possible that Carl's time
Speaker 1: in the internment camp had left him with some serious
Speaker 1: problems that could explain some of his bizarre and difficult
Speaker 1: to parse behaviors. He wrote, quote, Indeed, if these traumatic
Speaker 1: memories are at all accurate, one may theorize that this
Speaker 1: interval of imprisonment may have been the triggering mechanism for
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress syndrome, causing von Kozel's later agitated at
Speaker 1: mental states and altering his sense of reality, but also
Speaker 1: his theories of life, death, and spirit. He definitely seems
Speaker 1: to have had delusions for sure. To this day. The
Speaker 1: exact location of Elena's final resting place is not known.
Speaker 1: It was chosen by the Key West Chief Chief of
Speaker 1: Police at the time, who was bien Venito Perez, as
Speaker 1: well as Benjamin Sawyer of the Lopez Funeral Home and
Speaker 1: Otto Bethel who was the cemetery sexton. Yep, and none
Speaker 1: of them ever divulged where that location was in There
Speaker 1: was an attempt made to raise funds for a feature
Speaker 1: length film telling Tandler's story, and that project, which was
Speaker 1: to include puppetry to recreate the events of the maccab Tail,
Speaker 1: was from a fairly sympathetic point of view, but it
Speaker 1: failed to get its funding through Kickstarter. Uh. I continue
Speaker 1: to be befuddled by people who romanticize this story. I
Speaker 1: will confess me to you. I don't understand it. I
Speaker 1: just don't understand. I don't understand how you land there. Well,
Speaker 1: and even if we just erased the entire everything that
Speaker 1: happened after her death. Just the part where he was
Speaker 1: badgering her while she was hospitalized, Like that is already
Speaker 1: not romantic. Yeah, I mean her entire family moved to
Speaker 1: get away from him, which to me is a pretty
Speaker 1: keen indicator that they didn't want anything to do with him.
Speaker 1: And even if they made that decision because they were
Speaker 1: scared by science, as he alleges, which I think seems
Speaker 1: not to be the case if they were going to
Speaker 1: a hospital for treatment. Even if that were the case,
Speaker 1: they have still sent the clear message that, like, you're
Speaker 1: not welcome in our lives. So it becomes very weird
Speaker 1: to me that people are then like, but he still persisted.
Speaker 1: He just he loved her so much, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: I mean he may have, but that doesn't make it. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is like the very very far extreme of the
Speaker 1: romantic comedy behavior that is really stalking. Yeah, anyway, do
Speaker 1: you have listener mail? That's less I do it in
Speaker 1: short because this episode is a little long, and it's
Speaker 1: actually a thank you. Um. It is a cute little note,
Speaker 1: but it came with gifts that we have already received.
Speaker 1: It says Holly and Tracy. You ladies always do such
Speaker 1: a great job. At first, I may not have ever
Speaker 1: heard of the topic of each podcast, but by the end,
Speaker 1: I have learned so much, whether it is happy or sad.
Speaker 1: These Starbucks reusable cups are to be filled with whatever
Speaker 1: keeps you ladies going. I made the cozies myself. The
Speaker 1: purple one is for Holly, the candy corners for Tracy Um.
Speaker 1: Thank you ladies for listening Colleen. Colleen actually brought those
Speaker 1: to us at our live show at New York Comic
Speaker 1: Con presents UM and they are awesome and I have
Speaker 1: been using mine a lot UM and it's so sweet.
Speaker 1: Colleen also made us cute little um pumpkins last year
Speaker 1: and yeah show, so we have been very spoiled by
Speaker 1: Colleen and her her skills. So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I love it. I drink a lot of coffee, so
Speaker 1: it's always good to have more travel cups because I'm
Speaker 1: not always good at washing them in a timely manner.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you may
Speaker 1: do so at History Podcast at house to works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also reach us across the spectrum of social media,
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Speaker 1: in History. We are also at missed in history dot com,
Speaker 1: where you can check out every episode of the show
Speaker 1: that has ever existed, going all the way back to
Speaker 1: the beginning, long before Tracy and I were involved. There
Speaker 1: are also show notes for any of the episodes that
Speaker 1: Tracy and I have worked on together. So come and
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