“If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.” -- Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade

Last month, Teaneck, N.J., police arrested 24-year-old Anthony Merino, a lab technician at Holy Name Hospital, for allegedly having sex with a 92-year-old woman's corpse.

Approximately one-week prior, the Associated Press published an article about a teacher in Tuscola, Texas, who was placed on paid leave and faced criminal charges for allegedly distributing a book to minors about a murderer who has sex with his victims' bodies.

That same week, the Wisconsin Legislature took no action on a proposed bill that would formally criminalize necrophilia. Why, you might ask, was such a bill even proposed? Because of three young men from Wisconsin – brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke, both 20, and their friend, Dustin Radke, also 20 – who concocted a bizarre scheme in August 2006, to dig up a young woman’s body so Nicholas could have sex with her corpse.

The three men were arrested after attempting to dig up the corpse and were charged with attempted theft and attempted third-degree sexual assault. However, during their trial, the men's defense attorneys successfully argued that the sexual assault charges had to be dismissed, because the law reads that the victim must be alive or that their death must occur as a result of a sexual assault. The judge had no choice but to rule in the defense's favor, and the attempted sexual assault charges were dropped. Instead, the judge recommended the three men be charged with criminal damage to property.

There have been multiple other cases of necrophilia in the news this past year. If you take the time to set up a Google alert, you’ll be astonished at just how often these incidents occur.

The famous European Psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Guislain, first coined the term “necrophilia” in 1860. At that time, necrophilia was used to define a category of “insane destroyers.” Dr. W. A. F. Browne, first superintendent of Crichton Royal Dumfries, invented the word “necrophagy” fifteen years later. Dr. Browne defined necrophagy as an instance of cannibalism, without any erotic connotations. The final definition of necrophilia came in 1901, when a man by the name of Alexis Epaulard wrote a paper on vampirism and necrophilia. Within his work, Epaulard suggested that anyone who loved corpses, platonically or not, should be called a “necrophile.” Epaulard also introduced the term “necrosadism” as a designation for those who mutilated corpses.

Today necrophilia is simply defined as the erotic attraction to corpses. The age, gender, and or species of the corpse, have no relative bearing. The corpse may be young or old, male or female, human or animal. The individual preference lies with the perpetrator and may vary consistently from case to case. Those most prone to committing acts of necrophilia generally have an uncontrollable obsession, a usually erotic interest, or are stimulated by corpses. It is unknown as to when these urges first manifest, and popular opinion seems to vary on the underlying causes.

The medical community considers necrophilia to be a “paraphilia” - a condition in which an individual’s sexual arousal and fulfillment depend upon fantasizing about and/or engaging in sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme. Paraphilias can revolve around a certain object, such as undergarments or shoes, or a particular act, such as self-mutilation or voyeurism. Someone suffering from a paraphilia can be distinguished by his or her preoccupation with an object, or his or her behavior to the point of being dependent on that object or behavior for sexual gratification. In most cases, these individuals find it impossible to achieve sexual gratification unless they fantasize about their Paraphilia.

The origin of necrophilia remains unclear. Ancient Egyptians are believed to have indulged, as well as the Mochica people, a Pre-Inca civilization from about 100 to 700 A.D. Cases have also been found in New Guinea and the Middle East.

One of the first documented cases dates back to the 1800s, when Sergeant Bertrand, a 25-year-old soldier in the French army, was arrested for grave robbery. The evidence against him was somewhat questionable, but his own words revealed the extent of his depravity.

“From my earliest childhood, I masturbated without knowing what I was doing,” Bertrand allegedly told authorities after his arrest. “I did it openly, without hiding myself. Towards the age of 8 to 10, I began to think of women. The desire for them developed in me only towards my 13th or 14th year. Then I knew no more restraint and masturbated seven or eight times a day. The mere sight of an article of feminine attire was enough to cause an erection. During the act of masturbation my imagination transported me to a roomful of women, all at my disposal. I would in my mind torture them in every possible way, according to my desire. I would imagine them as dead before me, and would defile their corpses.”

Bertrand said that when his fantasies ceased to fulfill his desires, he started having sex with the bodies of dead animals. This, however, was only a temporary solution and over time it did little to hinder his “darker” desires.

In 1847, Bertrand was walking through a graveyard, when he happened upon a fresh grave. Unable to control his desires, he exhumed the corpse and began to mutilate it. According to his later confessions, it was during this act that he experienced one of the most intense orgasms of his life.

From there, Bertrand continued to exhume and mutilate corpses for sexual gratification, but as with the dead animals, it eventually became harder for him to achieve sexual gratification. He later confessed that during one particular excursion he discovered yet another way to obtain pleasure from a corpse.

“When I arrived at the cemetery, I dug up the corpse of a girl from 15 to 17 years of age. There, for the first time, I gave myself up to the mad embrace of a dead body. I cannot describe my sensations, but all the joy procured by possession of a living woman was as nothing in comparison with the pleasure I felt. I showered kisses upon all parts of her body, pressed her to my heart with a madman's frenzy. I overwhelmed her with the most passionate caresses. After having regaled myself with this pleasure for a quarter of an hour, I started to cut the body open and pull out the entrails, as I'd done with all the other victims of my madness. Then I replaced the body in the grave, covered it lightly with earth, and returned to the barracks by the same road I had come.”

Bertrand’s secret lifestyle came to an end in 1849 Paris, when he was caught exhuming a freshly buried corpse. While he was unable to recall exactly how many corpses he had exhumed during his three-year spree, he surmised that the figure was somewhere between fifteen and twenty.

In March 1849, following a military court marshal, Francois Bertrand was sentenced to one year in a military mental hospital. It is unknown what happened to Bertrand after his release. It is highly unlikely that he was cured; however, there are also no records to indicate that he was ever arrested again. The most feasible explanation would be that he simply honed his skills and continued to fulfill his desires throughout the remainder of his life, without detection.

Bertrand, however, was not the first or the last to indulge in the darker side of human nature. During the 1930’s, Count Karl Tangler Von Cosel, a 60-year-old Russian ex-patriot, moved to the United States and settled in the Florida Keys. Within a year of his arrival he fell in love with a nurse. However, their romance was to be short lived and she died not long after their meeting.

Devastated by her death, Von Cosel attempted to revive her using electricity, but his attempts were futile and he eventually gave up, placing her in a mausoleum. However, unbeknownst to anyone, he later recovered her corpse and brought it back to his home.

From that point on, Von Cosel became a recluse and rarely strayed from his home, preferring to spend all of his time with his dearly departed love. Von Cosel may have gotten away with his dirty deeds had police not been tipped off that the mausoleum was empty. Upon securing a search warrant for Von Cosel’s home, investigators were shocked to find him in bed with his dead lover’s corpse.

Police were stunned when they discovered Van Cosel had given his dead lover new breasts, arms and legs, and an artificial vagina, that he had been using for sexual intercourse.

In his defense, Von Cosel said that he had been building an airship, in which he was planning to fly his deceased lover into the stratosphere, so that “radiation from outer space could penetrate her tissues and restore life to her somnolent form.”

Following a brief trial, Von Cosel served a minimal sentence for his actions and lived the remainder of his life as a lonely recluse.

Perhaps the most famous necrophile of the 20th century was not a male, but a female named Karen Greenlee, an embalmer's apprentice at Memorial Lawn Mortuary in Sacramento, California. In 1993, Greenlee made headlines around the world when she was caught in a hearse with a male corpse she was supposed to deliver to a cemetery two days prior.

When police took her into custody, Greenlee was in a daze and high on prescription drugs. Charged with interfering with a burial, the case may not have gone any further, had Greenlee not left a lengthy letter inside the casket, in which she confessed to having sexual relations with at least 40 deceased males.

“Why do I do it? Why? Why? Fear of love? Relationships? No romance ever hurt like this ... It's the pits. I'm a morgue rat. This is my rat hole, perhaps my grave.”

When confronted with the letter, Greenlee admitted that she had previously been caught breaking into funeral homes, but that she had been allowed to run away. The funeral directors allegedly let her go because they feared the bad publicity. In addition to funeral home break-ins, Greenlee also admitted to entering fresh tombs and molesting corpses.

Greenlee allegedly told police she achieved her sexual gratification by rubbing her clitoris against the dead men's limp members. She also said the smell of a freshly embalmed corpse excited her.

Because California did not have a law against necrophilia, Greenlee was sentenced to 11 days in jail and fined two hundred and fifty-five dollars for stealing the body and the hearse. The judge also recommended that she seek medical treatment for her “odd” sexual fetishes.

Necrophilia is as prevalent in today’s society as it ever was, perhaps more so. Type the word into Google and you’ll get over 700,000 hits. In the last decade alone dozens of websites have popped up on the web where people can intermingle and share their hidden desires. One website in particular, Rob's Necrophilia Fantasy, claims to provide visitors with “information on necrophilia and related sexual interests to broaden your own personal awareness of your own sexuality, and human sexuality in general for research or personal enlightenment…”

Another website, Necrobabes.org, is run by a woman named Vicki, who writes on her site: “Basically, I've always enjoyed playing dead. This fantasy started at an early age, but, now I have a way to share my fetish, with my friends.”

In reality, a fantasy is just that, a fantasy. But I think I’ll stick with the living for now…