Dorian Corey and the Mummy in Her Closet

Shortly after the death of prominent drag queen Dorian Corey, her caregiver, Lois Taylor, brought two men into her apartment in the hopes of selling them some of Corey’s handmade outfits as Halloween costumes. As they went through the bolts of fabric and boxes of feather boas, they discovered a green garment bag on the closet floor. However, when they Taylor to lift the bag, she found it too heavy. With the help of a pair of scissors, they opened it. Instantly the smell of decomposition hit them. The mummified remains of a human body lay wrapped in Naugahyde and plastic. How the mummified body came to be in Corey’s closet would remain a mystery.

Who was Dorian Corey?

Dorian Corey was born Fredrick Legg on a farm in Buffalo, New York, in 1937. In the 1950s, she worked in Buffalo as a window dresser in department stores and started performing drag before moving to New York City to study at Parson School for Design (Kleindorf, 1994). In the 1960s, Dorian traveled as a snake dancer in the cabaret drag show, the Pearl Box Review (Teveten, 2016).

In the 1980s, Corey was a popular drag queen in New York City Vogue Ball scene. She ran the clothing label Corey Design and created many of her ensembles.

The House of Corey

Within the drag community, prominent queens would take in up-and-coming queens, trans and gay kids, along with a smattering of straight boys and girls. These houses were named for the celebrated queens who ran them. The House of Corey, as with other houses, were family units. Many kids who came out to their parents found themselves on the street. Finding a place in a House gave them the support they needed that they couldn’t get from their biological families. A house was a gay street gang whose street fights took place at balls by walking the runway (Paris is Burning, 1990).

Dorian Corey’s 15 Minutes

Corey features prominently in the documentary Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston and the 1987 short documentary film, Wigstock: The Movie by Tom Rubnitz.

Harlem Ball Scene

Vogue Balls gave the Harlem LGBTQ community a chance to feel 100% accepted. The rules were simple: participants were there to be fierce, not shady. Everyone got applauded and supported. It’s was their Oscar moment (Paris is Burning, 1990).

Dorian Corey’s Death and the Discovery of the Mummy

On August 29, 1993, Corey passed away from AIDS-related complications at the age of 56. Shortly after Corey’s death, her caregiver, Lois Taylor, and two men entered Dorain’s Harlem apartment and found the gruesome green garment bag.

The mummy lay in the fetal position wrapped in Naugahyde, followed by a layer of plastic bags. Discovered inside the mummy’s wrappings were detachable beer can pull tabs (Kasindorf, 1994).

The detachable pull tabs, along with the Naugahyde, helped date the body. Since pull tabs came into existence in 1965 and started to be phased out by 1975 due to people accidentally swallowing them (drunk people are stupid), it served to reason that the body ended up in the bag sometime between ‘65 and ‘75. The use of Naugahyde was also widespread during the 1970s (de Pastino, 2015). But who was this accidental mummy, and how did it get into Corey’s apartment?

The Mummy

Detective Raul Figueroa used a proprietary technique to fingerprint the mummified remains and found they belonged to Robert “Bobby” Worley. Worley, dressed only in blue boxer shorts, suffered a single gunshot wound to the head before being wrapped and placed in the garment bag (Kasindorf, 1994).

Bobby Worley

Worley was born December 18, 1938, and had a criminal record. He’d been arrested for rape in 1963 and served three years in Sing Sing prison in New York. Most of those who knew Worley stated that he was estranged from his family and hadn’t seen them since the mid to late ‘60s. Worley’s brother Fred confirmed that he’d last seen his brother in the late 60s. Detective Figueroa used this information to date Worley’s death at around 20 to 25 years before his discovery in 1993 (Kasindorf, 1994).

When asked if Corey was trying to create a mummy when she wrapped the body in Naugahyde, Figueroa answered, “I don’t think so. People just wrap a body in whatever’s available. It’s just spontaneous. You wrap it up. Then you put it in a suitcase. Then you put it in the closet. They look at it periodically and wish it would go away” (Kasindorf, 1994).

Theories as to What Took Place

By all accounts, Corey wasn’t prone to violence. She mentored and mothered the children in the House of Corey. She possessed grace and poise, had quick wit and intelligence. Surely the mummy couldn’t be Corey’s murder victim (Kasindorf, 1994).

Taking cover

Perhaps Corey hid the body to keep someone, the actual killer, out of trouble? Being black in Harlem in the 1960s didn’t do one any favors. It stands to reason that murder, even accidental, could end badly for a black man, even doubly so for a member of the LGBTQ community (Kasindorf, 1994).

In 1988, Corey moved ten blocks to a new apartment. Some speculate that the body was already in Corey’s new apartment when she moved in, and she took up residence with her new roommate. The idea of her lugging the body to her new apartment seemed ridiculous to those who knew Corey (Kasindorf, 1994).

A possible burglar.

Worley was known to swim in criminal currents. Another theory has him breaking into Corey’s apartment, where she shot him in self-defense. Harlem in the 1970s was a rough place, and violent crime had its way with the citizens. Many presumed that Corey owned a gun for protection. Soon after news of the mummy hit the streets, Corey’s friend Jessie Torres aka Topaz, stated that Dorian had a .22 pistol she bought from Topaz after her sister shot her lover and needed to get rid of the gun (Kasindorf, 1994; Tveten, 2016).

A love affair gone wrong.

Friends think that Worley and Corey had an affair, and Worley couldn't come to terms with being into men and things got violent as they sometimes do. The other option was that Worley, working under the pretense that Corey was a woman, flew into a rage when he discovered Corey was biologically male. In both of these scenarios, Corey acted in self-defense (Kliendorf, 1994).

Kasindorf’s interview with Fred Worley appeared in the May 2, 1994 edition of New York Magazine. Fred confirmed that Bobby Worley did indeed have known relationships with “transvestites.” Fred Worley figured that he and Corey had a consensual relationship. However, Bobby Worley being a heavy drinker, possibly fought with Corey, and it ended with Bobby getting shot.

Fred Worley claimed that Bobby lived with him and his family for a short time after his release from Sing Sing. A few weeks after Bobby moved out, he called Fred and told him that he was dating Corey. Bobby sounded drunk at the time of the call (Kasindorf, 1994).

In the interview, Kasindorf offered up Corey’s name to Fred because he couldn’t remember the name Bobby had given him. Kasindorf thought that this was too convenient and that Fred just wanted to tie up loose ends.

Could the body have been placed there after Dorian’s Death?

Pepper La-Beija knew Corey in the ‘60s and stated that she had been in both of Corey’s apartments and never smelled a body. To her, the whole thing didn’t make any sense. Pepper also stated that Corey never had a husband named Bobby, and she didn’t believe the two had a relationship. She felt that someone else put the body in Corey’s closet after she got sick, and that Corey had nothing to do with it other than storing the garment bag, ignorant of its contents (Kasindorf, 1994).

One of Corey’s former lovers claimed to have entered her apartment numerous times, accompanied by his German Shepard. The ex-lover stated that neither he nor his dog had even smelled anything out of the ordinary (Kasindorf, 1994).

A Possible Confession

According to Trisha Zigenhorn’s article in Did You Know, a friend of Corey’s claimed that she confessed on her death bed to committing a murder. Supposedly the police interviewed this friend, but nothing more came of it (Zigenhorn, n.d.).

The Short Story

Lois Tylor found a handwritten short story on yellow paper that she handed over to the police after discovering the mummy. It was a story about a man who wanted sex reassignment surgery to make a boyfriend happy and how the whole affair ended in revenge. It sounded a lot like what may have happened between Corey and Worley, but no one will ever know for sure (Kasindorf, 1994). The story contained facts and tidbits pulled from Corey’s life, but every writer does that.

The Rumored Note

Some sources mention a note found pinned to the mummy. The letter reads: "This poor soul broke into my apartment, and I was forced to shoot him" (Cunningham, n.d.). Deeper digging found no mention of the note in the official police investigation, and it appears to be nothing more than a rumor.

References

Cunningham, Michael. “A Slap of Love.” Open City Magazine and Books #6.

de Pastino, Blake, (2015). At 50, Ring-Tab Beer Cans Are Now Officially Historic Artifacts. Western Digs.

Kasindorf, Jeanie Russell. “Mummy Dearest.” New York Magazine. May 2, 1994. 50-56.

Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston, performed by Brooke Xtravaganza, André Christian, Dorian Corey. Academy Entertainment Off White Productions, 1990. Netflix.

Tveten, Julianna, (2016). “A famous Drag Queen, a Mummy in the Closet, and a Baffling Mystery.” Atlas Obscura.

Zigenhorn, Trisha L. (n.d.) “The Enduring Mystery of the Mummy Found in a Drag Queen’s Closet. Did You Know Fact of the Day?

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