Sick Cases of Necrophilia

Necrophilia is defined as “sexual intercourse with or attraction towards corpses.” Legally speaking, U.S. law books do not specifically use the word or address “necrophilia,” as it is a rare type of paraphilia. Nonetheless, it is illegal to have sex with a dead body since the deceased cannot consent. Instead, most countries charge individuals found to have had sex with a dead body with crimes such as “Abuse of a Corpse” or “Sexual Assault”. Necrophilia is defined as an illegal act in the UK and South Africa.

Popular necrophiliacs include Ted Bundy, Dennis Nielson, and Jeffrey Dahmer. This list looks at other, less popular cases of necrophilia for your morbid pleasure.

Alexander Grunke

In July 2010, then 24-year-old Alexander Grunke was found guilty of attempted sexual assault after he, his brother Nick, and friend Dustin Radke drove to the St. Charles cemetery in Cassville, WI, where they planned to dig up the body of a 20-year-old woman who died the week prior in a car accident. Grunke told prosecutors his brother wanted to have sex with the corpse.

The group stopped to buy condoms and drove to the cemetery. The group planned to exhume the body and transport it to another location for intercourse. They were frightened away by a car and then stopped by police who arrested them.

“Nick said numerous times over the years how he’d love to have sex with a dead body because he wouldn’t want to have a woman to come home to holler at, or complain or nag at him,” Radke said.

Radke was sentenced to one year in prison, while Alexander was sentenced to 60 days in jail and his brother Nick to two years in prison.

Grunke also was ordered to register as a sex offender and provide a DNA sample.

Kenneth Douglas

Ohio morgue worker Kenneth Douglas admitted that he committed sexual crimes against dead bodies during his night shift. Douglas worked as a morgue attendant from 1976 until 1992.

Over the 16 year period, Douglas proposed that he abused over 100 dead bodies, including that of a six-month-pregnant woman.

“I would just get on top of them and pull my pants down,” Douglas can be heard saying in a disposition video after his arrest. In the same video, Douglas’s wife said she attempted to alert authorities because her husband would come home smelling like beer and sex.

The crimes came to light in 2008 after a DNA sample taken from the body of a murder victim matched Douglas’s.

He was sentenced to 18-months in prison.

Domonique Smith

In 2019, Columbus, GA, resident, Dominuqe Smith, pleaded guilty to breaking into a funeral home and raping a corpse more than three years after the incident occurred. Security cameras captured Smith going in and out of rooms where corpses were kept at Hill-Watson Funeral Home. Superior Court Judge Ron Mullins sentenced Smith to 15-years in prison, 12 of those to serve.

Kenny Whitehead

Police in Bibb County, Georgia, responded to a call complaining about two people having sex on the front steps of the Daybreak Day Resource Center located on Walnut Street.

Police found the "couple" having sex and ordered them to separate. He told the man, 55-year-old Kenny Whitehead, to get dressed. The female was unresponsive. Paramedics arrived and determined that the unidentified woman had been dead for some time.

Whitehead was charged with Abuse of a Corpse and later charged with murder and rape of that woman.

Bryan Hathaway

Bryan James Hathaway was 18-years-old back in 2006 when he was driving down the road and spotted a dead deer lying on the side of the road. Nothing unusual. Most of us have either hit a deer while driving or seen the poor, deer victim but having sex with the carcass usually isn't the first thought on our mind. Or second. Third. Or millionth. EWWW.

But then again, we all aren’t Hathaway who pulled over to the side of the road and began to have sex with the deer.

Exactly how Hathaway’s actions became known to police is unclear but he did go to jail and was convicted of gratification with an animal. The judge sentenced him to psychiatric treatment.

A year earlier, Hathaway pleaded no contest to “felony animal mistreatment” after he shot an Arabian horse for the purpose of having sex with its corpse.