I f*** dead people

“I thought burying my sister was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do,” she told Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Nadine Allen. “I thought we could just put it behind us and lay it to rest, but when this happened, I re-lived her death all over again.”

“This” was one of two counts of gross abuse of a corpse for which morgue worker Kenneth Douglas was sentenced Tuesday. In all, Douglas pleaded guilty to having sex with three corpses when he worked at the morgue from 1976-92.

Douglas was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday for having sex with the corpses of Apling and Angel Hicks. That’s in addition to the three-year prison term imposed on him in 2008 after he pleaded guilty to having sex with the corpse of Karen Range who was murdered in 1982. He had sex with Range’s corpse which was bloody, its head almost severed and had been stored in the morgue cooler for hours.

Mishael Apling was just a young boy when his mother was killed.

Apling asked the judge Tuesday to send Douglas to prison for the maximum possible sentence.

“He raped a five-months pregnant dead woman,” Apling, now in his mid-20s, said.

The judge said Douglas’ crimes were depraved.

“There’s a reason we say ‘the dearly departed, may they rest in peace.’ What happened he isn’t even primitive. It’s depraved and inhumane,” the judge said.

Douglas, 56, of Westwood, apologized. “There is no excuse for my crime,” Douglas told the judge. “If I wasn’t under the influence, this never would have happened.”

Prosecutor Joe Deters believes Douglas violated many more corpses but he can’t prosecute those cases.

“He was, by his own admission, out of control,” Deters said. “If you extrapolated it, there are many, many corpses he did this to. ‘Scores’ is a good word.” But the prosecutor doesn’t have any evidence to prove those cases even though Douglas confessed to them.

“Just because someone confesses to something doesn’t mean they can be convicted,” Deters said. “We have to have evidence to prove a crime.” After DNA tests matched Douglas to semen in Range’s corpse, officials compared his DNA to body fluids on other corpses during the 16 years Douglas worked at the morgue.

Just two cases – those with Apling and Hicks as the victims – matched Douglas’ DNA.

Courtesy WLTX.com: Television, United States

Jason Somerville admitted killing his wife Rebecca Chamberlain (top left) and neighbour Tisha Lowry. Photos / Simon Baker, supplied

In Christchurch District Court this morning, Jason Paul Somerville, 33, admitted killing his wife Rebecca Chamberlain, 35, and neighbour Tisha Lowry, 28.

Police found the women’s bodies under Somerville’s Wainoni house in early September. Tisha Lowry was murdered in September 2008 after she disappeared while walking home. Rebecca Chamberlain was killed on August 30, 2009.

The summary of facts in the case says that Ms Lowry knew Somerville and went to his home between 10.50am and 12.30pm on Thursday September 25, 2008.

This was two houses from where Ms Lowry was living with her grandfather.

Ms Lowry had previously been to the home of Somerville and his wife, Rebecca Chamberlain.

Police say Somerville was home alone and answered a knock on his front door.

He opened the door to find Ms Lowry standing there and invited her inside.

“Once inside the address a struggle has taken place, [Somerville] grabbed Tisha around her throat with his hands.”

Ms Lowry struggled with Somerville, kicking and punching him, but he tightened his stranglehold.

“[Somerville] increased the pressure of the strangle to a point where the victim was no longer resisting and had lost consciousness. [Somerville] continued to squeeze her throat until he was certain she was no longer breathing,” the summary of facts states.

He then forced a pair of his wife’s underpants into Ms Lowry’s throat, before removing her jeans and underwear and having sex with her.

Somerville was due to attend a meeting early that afternoon. Being short on time, he left the body of Ms Lowry lying on the floor of the cupboard under the stairs of his house.

He returned about an hour later with the knowledge that his wife was shortly due home. He removed the manhole cover on the floor of the stairwell cupboard, which led beneath the house.

Somerville dragged Ms Lowry’s body and lowered her through the manhole and left her lying semi-naked under the house before putting the cover back over the manhole and cleaning the house in anticipation of his wife’s return.

Ms Chamberlain returned to the home about 3pm that day and had no knowledge of what had taken place in her absence.

The following morning Ms Chamberlain left the house to attend a meeting, which Somerville knew would keep her away from the house for the majority of the day.

“[Somerville] has gone beneath the house and removed the remainder of the clothing worn by the victim. He again sexually violated her body by having sexual intercourse with her,” the summary of facts states.

“He then dug a shallow grave near where she lay and buried her body along with the clothing that she had been wearing.”

Ms Lowry was reported missing by family on September 28, 2008. A police investigation began and Somerville was spoken to on October 5, 2008, as part of routine inquiries in the area.

Somerville told police that he and his wife would often see Ms Lowry on the bus and about four weeks earlier she had knocked on their front door asking for another person.

Somerville also said that Ms Lowry came inside his house and they talked about the real estate agents that he was using to sell the property.

Somerville told police Ms Lowry had walked around his house and that he originally had assumed she was going to use the toilet.

He said after a short time he found her in their bedroom looking through the wardrobe and that he then asked her to leave.

The summary of facts says that about 9.30am on Sunday August 30, 2009, Somerville woke and attempted to have sex with his wife in their upstairs bedroom.

“She has not welcomed his sexual advances and has repeatedly said no to him.”

Somerville then went downstairs to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee before returning to the bedroom and trying again to have sex with his wife.

She has again refused and this angered Somerville. He placed his arm around her neck in a headlock fashion and tightened his grip, compressing her airway.

Once she was unconscious, Somerville felt for a pulse, but found none.

Somerville then placed his fingers on top of vital arteries and applied firm downward pressure to ensure there was no chance of his wife regaining consciousness.

He then took a pair of underpants and stuffed them into his wife’s throat.

“Once he established that the victim was no longer alive he proceeded to have sexual intercourse with her,” the statement continued.

“He dragged her body out of the bedroom, along the hallway, down the flight of stairs, where he forced her through the manhole in the stairwell cupboard and buried her body in the sand underneath the floorboards.”

About 2.15pm on Sunday August 30, 2009, Somerville phoned the Christchurch police and told them his wife was missing.

He told police she had left the house about 10.30am that day to go to church.

He said that she left without her house keys, which he felt was out of character and that her handbag, cellphone and bank cards were also left at home.

Somerville told police that his wife was a recovering alcoholic who was on medication for depression and that she had previously tried to harm herself after drinking.

On September 2, 2009, police spoke with Somerville again and established that his wife had still not returned or made contact with him.

The following day, Somerville went into the New Brighton police station and told police that he had discovered his wife’s prescription glasses and wedding ring in their letterbox at his house where they must have been placed overnight.

When interviewed further, Somerville admitted that he had killed his wife and Ms Lowry.

In explanation, Somerville said he had become angry with Ms Lowry and killed her. He also stated that he killed his wife because he felt deep anger at being rejected for sex by her.

Judge Noble remanded Somerville – listed as unemployed – in custody until November 27 for a pre-sentence report.

The Crown said the issue of preventive detention may arise at sentencing and it is likely to call for reports on the psychiatric state of the accused.

Somerville’s only previous appearance before the court was on a traffic related matter.

His house has been the subject of repeated arson attacks since the discovery of the women’s bodies.

Courtesy New Zealand Herald

Some people see ID tags.. others see love notes

According to court documents, James Howard Patton, 38, is free on a $1,500 bond after being charged with a class A misdemeanor.

An investigator with the Houston Police Department was looking into allegations of Internet harassment lodged against Patton by his ex-girlfriend when an April 2 search warrant turned up several photos on Patton’s computer.

It was unclear from court documents whether there was more than one corpse and one incident.

Lisa Marshall, a spokeswoman for Earthman’s parent company, Service Corporation International, said the photos recovered from Patton’s computer were taken in 2004, before he was employed by Earthman at 8303 Katy Freeway.

She said Patton was taken out of service when the allegations surfaced and no longer works for the funeral home.

“These are very disturbing allegations,” Marshall said. “I hope people understand that this incident is unusual and is not indicative of what we’re like as an industry.”

Patton could not immediately be reached for comment.

Courtesy Chron.com

Well, last week another exhibit opened up in Zurich, and this one is sparking controversy for a different reason. “Cycle of Life” depicts corpses in various sexual positions. Lawmakers in Germany are demanding the copulating cadavers be banned, leaving Gawker wondering aloud, “If everyone is dead, is that still necrophilia?”

A fair question. Our take: Puritanical hang-ups aside, there’s nothing inherently dangerous about sexual positions. When you’re already propping up skinless, potentially murdered human beings for all to see, the pose in which you fashion them seems rather moot. What say you?

Courtesy Blogs.citypages.com

Jose likes dead people

Authorities said murder suspect Jose Perea was found aboard a bus bound for Mexico on Monday evening.

Investigators said Perea strangled 40-year-old Helen Hancock on Friday night.

Authorities believe that the crime took place at Perea’s trailer at tghe Parkside Mobile Home Park in Charleston, South Carolina.

Perea allegedly picked up his two roommates from work and then showed them Hancock’s body.

Fearing their own lives, the two fled but didn’t keep quiet.

South Carolina officials told WCSC-TV that they have information that Perea may have actually slept with Hancock’s corpse before dumping her body.

The victim’s friends decried the alleged acts and remembered Hancock as a loving daughter and mother.

Authorities said they were able to get Perea before he was able to flee into Mexico.

Perea is currently held at the Cameron County Jail where he will be extradited back to South Carolina.

Courtesy ValleyCentral.com: Television, United States

Kenneth Douglas

His sentence was almost as shocking: 18 months in prison.

Last year, through a fluke of legal developments and DNA testing, prosecutors discovered Douglas’ necrophilia. In September, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge William Mallory Jr. sentenced Douglas, 55, to the maximum penalty allowed under the 1982 version of Ohio’s abuse of a corpse law.

The maximum penalty has since gotten even more lenient: 12 months in prison. That’s the same penalty for shoplifting items worth more than $500.

State Rep. Dale Mallory, D-Cincinnati, the judge’s brother, introduced House Bill 29 to increase the penalty for necrophilia to up to five years in prison.

The bill is getting support from prosecutors, including Dennis Watkins of Trumbull County.

“Most people I know would tell you that you don’t have sex with dead people. That’s worse than shoplifting,” Watkins said.

“I very much support Dale’s bill,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters. “This is off the charts shocking, these types of offenses.”

Deters declined to discuss reports by the Cincinnati Enquirer that his office is bringing more charges against Douglas for having sex with other corpses.

Courtesy Dayton Daily News

Blow me

What is abnormal may not necessarily be unnatural, according to sexologists who study the outer limits of the human psyche.

And, increasingly, as seen in a plethora of new books and films — not to mention thousands of sites on the Internet — kinky sex is getting more attention.

“To badly paraphrase Alfred Kinsey, [who pioneered sex research in the 1940s and 50s, filming couples in flagrante in his Indiana attic], ‘the only unnatural sex act is the one you can’t perform,’” said Robert Dunlap, a California sex therapist and filmmaker.

Paraphilias — or socially unacceptable sexual practices — are more common than most ordinary “vanilla” teleiophiles [those who desire adults] would imagine, according to Dr. Judy Kariansky, a sex therapist from Columbia University.

Though there is no hard data on what whether a spike in interest means a spike in actual activity, experts say anecdotally that couples are showing a marked interest in exploring new sexual intensity.

In his 2001 film, “Beyond Vanilla,” Dunlap interviewed more than 200 subjects who had one common denominator, some type of fetish — bondage, flogging, knife play and fire, among others.

When asked “What is kinky?” academics, doctors, lawyers and even a congressman, shared fantasies like, “sex with a taxi driver in the back seat,” “pouring candle wax on his testicles,” “arresting someone and patting them down on the bar,” “being gang-raped by many sets of twins, or better yet, triplets.”

The film was widely praised and used by the University of Minnesota medical department at conferences on human sexuality and development.

Today, Dunlap is in negotiations for release of his latest film, a biography of the life of Xaviera Hollander, the madam who brought kinky sex out of the closet in 1971 with her book, “The Happy Hooker.” His documentary earned early acclaim at numerous film festivals.

Also out this year are two books that appeal to those interested in sex outside the normal boundaries and that explore a world where pain, pleasure and often guilt intertwine.

Dominatrix Orders Human Barbecue

One, “The Other Side of Desire,” is a journalist’s exploration of “the far realms of lusting and longing,” including that reference to the pain aficionado who ordered her “servants” to barbecue her willing submissive.

Another, “The Adventurous Lover,” which is part of the new “Joy of Sex” series, is a handbook for couples who want to experiment in a safe environment.

‘No One Damaged by Book, Movie’

“It’s a totally new revolution and it’s really exploded,” Dunlap told ABCNews.com. “The Internet has changed everything. So many people can go online and say, ‘This is me. I love this. I am finding like types.’”

And for those who think this phenomenon might encourage anti-social behavior, he counters, “I don’t think anyone was really damaged or hurt by book or movie.”

Columbia’s Kuriansky agrees that “what’s weird, sick or kinky for you is what practitioners defend as ‘normal’ for them.”

“Credit, or blame, the Internet, making information available in such a level playing field that outrageous acts have become so accessible they seem mainstream,” she told ABCNews.com.

Throughout history kinky sex has emerged in myth, literature and in anthropology. Urban legends still persist that Catherine the Great had a special relationship with her horse.

Dunlap cites studies that in some African cultures, older women guide younger boys into their manhood and are “revered.”

Couples Search for Intensity

But today, according to sex-perts, couples are looking for more intensity in sex lives, and interest in sado-masochism appears to be rising.

“After the pain threshold is crossed, they describe a type of ecstasy called ‘flying,” Dunlap found in his research. “It is no longer painful and gives an entirely sexual as well as psychological, transcendent place. Flying is bigger than any drug.”

British relational therapist Susan Quilliam, whose revision of the 1972 classic, “Joy of Sex” sold 30,000 copies in three weeks when it was released this year in the U.S., confirms, “A lot is changing culturally.”

“First of all, we live in a more sexualized society and there’s the Internet,” she told ABCNews.com. “Interest groups communicate with each other and reinforce their identity.”

“It gives people permission and normalizes it and encourages them to explore the outer boundaries of their preferences,” she said.

And now, her spin-off book, “The Adventurous Lover,” is being billed as “perfect for the couple who want to push the boundaries: sections include fantasy, fetish, sex-clubs, foursomes and bondage.”

Quilliam, who doles out advice on her “Sex in the City” radio show, has seen an increased interest in BDSM or bondage, dominations, sado-masochism, as well as “swinging.”

Creating a “safe” arena for experimentation is critical, she said, and couples should have special words, should they be uncomfortable, to call for “an immediate halt to the activity.”

Dangers of ‘Swinging’

As for swinging, there’s always the danger that one partner will fall in love someone other than their mate in a menage a trios. She also warns, “Be careful, very careful if have a fantasy and you’re putting it in to reality. It often disappoints.”

“It has to be safe, sane and consensual,” she said.

And, according to Quilliam, it’s a slippery slope when it comes to what is consensual, especially in one of the fastest growing paraphilias on the Internet — cannibalism.

“You slice off a piece of somebody and together you fry it and cook it and eat it,” she said. “There’s a Web site for almost anything.”

In 2003, a computer technician advertised on the Internet for a well-built male prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed. His willing victim agreed to have his penis cut off, which was flambéed and served up to eat together before the victim died, according to the BBC. The courts debated whether the act constituted murder, because the victim had solicited the act.

Universal Taboos; Incest, Cannablism

Another taboo, incest, has also been in the news. In 2007, a German brother and sister challenged the law so they could continue their relationship.

According to Hani Miletski, a Maryland sex therapist and author of the 2007 book, “Mother-Son Incest: The Unthinkable Broken Taboo Persists,” a search for the words “mother son incest” yields nearly two million links on the Internet. Clearly an abusive behavior, she said it “breaks down the natural development of boys’ sexuality.”

Miletsky wrote another book — “Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia” — after one of her patients admitted a “love affair” with his dog. She interviewed nearly 100 men who had indulged.

“People do it with all kinds of animals,” she told ABCNews.com. “A lot of people are into dolphins and other sea animals.”

“We also found a minority who prefer animals to humans,” she said. “It’s like a sexual orientation and they marry animals and treat like spouse whole love affair.”

Such was the case with one man who had a relationship with his horse, according to Daniel Bergner, whose book, “The Other Side of Desire,” just arrived in bookstores.

“I find I am closer to horses,” the zoophile told his therapist, citing the “trust factor.”

Guilt-Ridden Husband With Foot Fetish

Bergner follows the journeys of four characters: a guilt-ridden husband with a foot fetish, a man infatuated with his step-daughter, a dominatrix who finds ecstasy in the pain of others and an advertising executive who is attracted only to amputees.

Bergner said he sees his characters as “metaphors for our own states of longing” and explores whether sexuality is defined by genetics, as many neuroscientists believe, or through “cultural scripts.”

Studies by sexual anthropologist Gilbert Herdt reveal that in Papua New Guinea young boys are shepherded through their budding sexuality by engaging in ritualized homosexual oral sex with adolescents, ultimately embracing heterosexuality and siring children.

“Experience molds us,” Bergner told ABCNews.com. “There’s a sense that a charged experience, whether it is shame, or the opposite — and pain can easily get mixed with pleasure — leaves a sexual imprint.”

Jacob, who was so ashamed of his foot fetish that he would not share the “monstrosity” with his wife, had struggled painfully through school. One psychiatrist suggested that the fetish began fear, as Jacob looked down, away from the teacher’s gaze.

“That moment of terror got translated into an erotic sense of feet,” Bergner said. “What we fear, we take control of.”

Sympathy for Some

Though some of the sex acts witnessed — including a sado-masochistic orgy led by a dominatrix known as the “Baroness” — revolted Bergner, he said he felt sympathy for his characters, especially Ron, who creates ads with perfect models, and Laura, who lost both legs in a car accident.

“These two people have transformed each other’s lives,” he said. “Lust and love here are inseparable and redemptive.”

Bergner and others who have interviewed those who cross boundaries most humans would regard as dark territory, say the compulsive power that compels them is part of the universal human story.

“No one wants to talk about Freud any more,” he said. “One thing he knew that no scientist or psychologist displaces is that this drive is so central, so essential, and so powerful. The fact that we are living with that kind of powerful drive within in us is inherently threatening.”

“Part of me thinks people are more receptive and comfortable taking risks sexually,” said Bergner. “But part of me thinks we are pretty much afraid — afraid because the force of the erotic is pretty strong and probably anarchic, and therefore, maybe we worry that if we step a little over the boundaries, we might not be able to step back.”

Courtesy ABCLocal.go.com: Television, United States

Stiff stiffy stiff

Charges against Michael Montel Williams grow out of the June 17, 2006, discovery of the body of 26-year-old Sherry Lynn Smith at the Hampton Inn on Shallowford Road.

In addition to the body, detectives searching Room 128 discovered Williams – who had suffered minor cuts – and a tape detailing an alleged murder-suicide pact. According to the tape, which Williams narrated, the defendant smothered Ms. Smith and then committed a sex act on her after she was dead.

Detectives found Ms. Smith’s nude body on a bed, concealed under a pile of covers. Williams was sprawled on the floor between the two beds in the motel room, but, although one arm was cut, he was not seriously hurt.

According to police, Williams indicated on the cassette tape that he and Mrs. Smith had made a murder-suicide pact which required him to kill her and then take his own life.

Tuesday, Travis Smith testified that his wife would never have participated willingly in such an arrangement.

“Sherry didn’t believe in suicide,” he said. “She was dead against suicide.”

An over-the-road truck driver, Mr. Smith said he left on a trip to Florida on June 11, 2006, and received a strange telephone message the next day from his wife.

“I had to listen to it five or six times before I could make it out,” he testified. “It kept breaking up . . . She said she had to be gone a few days.”

Worried because he knew his wife, “a real homebody,” had no plans to go anywhere, Mr. Smith said he decided to return home immediately and arrived late that night.

Waiting for him, he said, was a note written in pencil – but signed in ink – in which his wife said she needed “some time alone . . . (and would) come back in a couple days or sooner.”

His wife’s car was missing, he noted, and her glasses were gone. But her contacts, makeup and numerous other personal items had been left behind.

He immediately began trying to find out what had happened, he said. Before long, he said, his wife’s mother told him she had “got hold of a guy who dropped (Williams) off” near the home Mr. Smith shared with his wife in Cowan.

He was familiar with Williams, Mr. Smith explaiined. His wife had dated Williams prior to their marriage in 1999, he said, and started seeing Williams again in 2005 when the Smiths separated and subsequently divorced.

Mr. Smith said he met his wife in 1999 and married her in 2002. They separated and divorced in 2005, he explained, but had reconciled and were living together again at the time of her death in June 2006. “We were going to get married again on Aug. 3, the same date we got married the first time,” he said.

After he and his wife got back together, he said, they had to change their phone number because Williams kept calling and leaving obscene messages about Mrs. Smith. Williams also mailed his wife a package containing “an open box of condoms, some lubricant, things like that,” Mr. Smith recalled.

After learning from his mother-in-law that Williams had been near his house, he said, he contacted police and reported the car stolen and his wife kidnapped. Then he started searching for her everywhere he could think of, he said.

On June 13, 2006, he said, “Sherry called my cell phone around noon . . . She said she loved me and asked me to tell her I loved her.”

He pleaded with her to tell him where she was, he testified, but she said she couldn’t.

Suddenly, he said, “I heard a man holler, ‘Hey!’ Then the phone went dead.”

That was the last time he ever heard from his wife, he said.

Another witness, Gruetli-Lager resident David Scissom, said he was a friend of Williams and received a call from him on June 12, 2006.

“He wanted me to take him to see a girl,” Mr. Scissom explained. “I dropped him off (not far from the Smith home, which is located near a wastewater treatment plant) . . . He had a backpack with him. He told me to come back for him in two or three hours, and took off walking.”

When he returned as requested, Mr. Scissom said, “(Williams) wasn’t there so I went home.”

Over the next few days, he said, he received a number of calls from Williams saying he was with a woman and was going to remaiin for a while.

“He left messages on the phone saying her family was crazy and they were going to run off together,” Mr. Scissom said.

Under cross examination, he said Williams never identified the woman he was with as Sherry Smith.

In opening arguments, District Attorney Bill Cox told the jury that Williams smothered Ms. Smith at the Hampton Inn, then had sex with her after she was dead.

He said the jury in the courtroom of Judge Rebecca Stern should find Williams guilty of murder and abuse of a corpse.

However, Jonathan Turner of the public defender’s office said the couple had a suicide pact. He said Williams tried to carry out his end of the bargain but survived.

He said there was a faulty autopsy in the case, and he said it is more likely that the victim died of taking an overdose of a heart medicine than from being smothered.

In what the assistant public defender called a “very bizarre case,” Williams made a tape while in the motel room with the dead woman. He said on the tape they agreed to commit suicide together. He said Ms. Smith wanted him to kill her first, saying she might not be able to follow through on her own suicide.

Williams said Ms. Smith agreed before she died that he could have anal sex with her, noting that she did not like that type sex while she was alive but gave him permission to do it after she was dead.

DA Cox said the tape recording also includes two hours of “small talk” between the couple – apparently just before she died. He said there was no indication she was planning to kill herself. He said she left no suicide note or recording.

On the tape, Williams said, “The pills weren’t working right. She picked the no-breathing way. I didn’t like it.”

He also said, “She tried liquor. She decided to have me do it this way (smothering).”

Williams said on the tape about having sex with her after she died, “I know it sounds sick and weird.”

Assistant Public Defender Turner said the case is about “two people in love who made a tragic decision.”

He said they loved each other, “but could not find a way to be together.”

Attorney Turner said the first officer at Room 128 found items scattered all over the place, though nothing was broken. He said there was vomit all over the room.

He said the couple had arrived at the motel four days earlier and appeared happy and in love to a desk clerk that day and two days later.

He said there were a number of empty pill bottles in the room, and he said Williams had bought 72 sleeping pills the night before at Walgreen’s.

Courtesy the Chattanoogan

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

Raping, necrophiliac, homosexual ducks.. who knew?

It may have ruffled a few feathers, but it earned him the coveted Ig Nobel prize for biology awarded for improbable research, and next week he will be recounting his findings to UK audiences on the Ig Nobel tour.

Ducks behave pretty badly, it seems. It is not so much that up to one in 10 of mallard couples are homosexual – no one would raise an eyebrow in the liberal Netherlands – but they regularly indulge in “attempted rape flights” when they pursue other ducks with a view to forcible mating. “Rape is a normal reproductive strategy in mallards,” explains Mr Moeliker.

As he recounts in his seminal paper, The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard anas platyrhynchos, he was in his office in the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, when he was alerted by a bang to the fact a bird had crashed into the glass facade of the building. “I went downstairs immediately to see if the window was damaged, and saw a drake mallard (anas platyrhynchos) lying motionless on its belly in the sand, two metres outside the facade. The unfortunate duck apparently had hit the building in full flight at a height of about three metres from the ground. Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard (in full adult plumage without any visible traces of moult) was present. He forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head.

“Rather startled, I watched this scene from close quarters behind the window until 19.10 hours during which time (75 minutes) I made some photographs and the mallard almost continuously copulated his dead congener. He dismounted only twice, stayed near the dead duck and picked the neck and the side of the head before mounting again. The first break (at 18.29 hours) lasted three minutes and the second break (at 18.45 hours) lasted less than a minute. At 19.12 hours, I disturbed this cruel scene. The necrophilic mallard only reluctantly left his ‘mate’: when I had approached him to about five metres, he did not fly away but simply walked off a few metres, weakly uttering a series of two-note ‘raeb-raeb’ calls (the ‘conversation-call’ of Lorentz 1953). I secured the dead duck and left the museum at 19.25 hours. The mallard was still present at the site, calling ‘raeb-raeb’ and apparently looking for his victim (who, by then, was in the freezer).”

Mr Moeliker suggests the pair were engaged in a rape flight attempt. “When one died the other one just went for it and didn’t get any negative feedback – well, didn’t get any feedback,” he said.

His findings have provoked a lot of interest – especially in Britain for some reason – but no other recorded cases of duck necrophilia. However, Mr Moeliker was informed of an American case involving a squirrel and a dead partner, although in this case it is not known whether the necrophilia observed was homosexual or not as the victim had been run over by a truck shortly before the incident.

Courtesy the Guardian: United Kingdom