Mr. Douglas' favorite brothel.
“Castration would not be too severe a penalty in my mind,” Lori Range wrote from her Florida home in a letter to Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge William Mallory.
Range is the mother of Karen Range, the 18-year-old whose nearly headless body Douglas had sex with the day Range was murdered.
That wasn’t the only time Douglas had sex at his second-shift job at the morgue.
Douglas, 55, of Westwood, told authorities that he often got high and drunk while at the morgue and invited women into the morgue where he partied with them and had sex.
Douglas admitted he was an attendant at the morgue when he pulled the cold, nearly headless body of Karen Range, who was murdered that day, from the cooler and had sex with her.
He also told authorities he had sex with other bodies when he worked there – all female victims.
Prosecutors and police are continuing an investigation into potential other victims.
“Whatever DNA we have collected is being tested,” Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier said today.
There are “less than a dozen” DNA samples taken from bodies being tested to see if Douglas had sex with them while he worked at the morgue from 1976-1992.
Those tests should be completed by the end of October.
If the evidence shows Douglas had sex with other bodies, Piepmeier said additional charges would be brought.
Piepmeier, a veteran prosecutor who had tried dozens of murder cases, said this case has bothered many, especially families of murder victims whose bodies were at the morgue when Douglas worked there.
“They all have the same question: Could this have happened to my daughter? The only answer I can give them is, I don’t know,” Piepmeier said.
Douglas told the judge today that he apologizes to Range’s family and his family for the shame he brought them.
“Twenty-six years ago I had a lot of problems,” Douglas said. “I had a (big) drinking problem. There was a lot of times I wouldn’t remember what happened the night before.”
Douglas, a 1971 Hughes High grad and U.S. Army veteran, has suffered for decades with depression.
“I believe this had tormented you for a number of years and has contributed to your years of depression,” Mallory said.
Norm Aubin, Douglas’ attorney, could provide no motive for the crime.
“This has torn him up. Even he doesn’t know why he did this,” Aubin said.
Mallory sentenced Douglas to the maximum penalties – 18 months in prison for gross abuse of a corpse and 18 months for violating probation on a drug charge.
It was that drug charge that allowed authorities to finally answer the question of who had sex with Range’s body.
Range was murdered in her Roselawn home in 1982 by door-to-door soap salesman David Steffen.
Steffen is on Ohio’s death row because he was convicted of murdering and raping Range. Steffen admitted he killed Range and nearly beheaded her but always denied he’d raped her.
In 2006, a review of Steffen’s case shocked authorities when it was revealed that the sperm inside Range’s body didn’t belong to Steffen.
Officials were stumped for two yeas as to whose body fluid it was. Then, when Douglas was arrested for violating probation on the drug charge, his DNA was taken. It matched the sperm inside Range’s body.
When confronted by authorities, Douglas admitted he had sex with Range’s body when he worked at the morgue. Her body was in the cooler awaiting an autopsy the next day when he wheeled it into a morgue room, covered her head, got atop the gurney and had sex with the body.
Douglas said his family has suffered for his crimes. His wife is undergoing dialysis and he provided her with help for that and getting to doctor appointment. Aubin said after Douglas was charged with gross abuse of a corpse, her home was often visited by television reporters, resulting in an upset landlord evicting her.
Courtesy Cincinnati.com
Tags: Crimes, Necrophilia, Sex in Strange Places