Waking the Dead: Necrophiliacs arrested in Mississippi

Reading like the plot of a low-budget horror movie, the press was awash with the ghoulish story of the twins Nicholas and Alexander Grunke today, who were arrested after illegally excavating the corpse of Laura Tennesen: for the express purpose of sexually violating her remains.

Waking the Dead has been running for about a year now and in that time we've covered some pretty horrible stuff: body-snatching, death in all its gruesome facets, murder and the dark history of surgical science. But all of this pales into insignificance in the face of an almost unbelievable story which made the press today.

From the London Metro:

'Twin brothers and an accomplice have been arrested Wisconsin, America after they tried to dig up a girl's corpse and have sex with it.

Police received an anonymous tip-off that the three men were on their way to the cemetary to dig up a grave in rural southwestern Wisconsin.

Nicholas Grunke had openly lusted after Laura Tennesen - who died in a motorbike accident last month - when he spotted her picture in the obituary column of a local newspaper.

Three days later, on Tuesday, twins Nicholas and Alexander Grunke, 20, and Dustin Radke, 20, were charged in Grant County with attempted theft — and attempting to have sex with a corpse.'

More:

From the London Metro

Artwork:

Photograph by damien - taken in Highgate Cemetery, London, England. Manipulation by miss w. tod

Waking the Dead:

Full list of all articles in the Waking the Dead series

Is it just me or does the accomplice kinda look like Elijah Wood?

yep. he does.

The strangest thing about this story is that the headline indicates it happened in Mississippi--when it obviously took place in Wisconsin! (The locale may be close to the upper Mississippi River but is hundreds of miles north of that state.)

The regional media played it up, evidently forgetting that necrophilia's nothing new--& that teens can show amazing stupidity. Gotta laugh at their names, too: Two Grunkes & a Radke! The only other Radke I know of pitches for the Minnesota Twins.

The saddest thing about this story is that they are charged with 'attempted' rape. They're not even good at being perverts.

also, and i should have said this above, the really sick part of all this stems from the obvious idiocy of the criminals. without getting into the viler details, the poor girl had been dead a month. a great deal happens to a human body in that first month...

they should probably be glad they didn't get to fulfill their wish.

she wasn't dead a month...she was buried on the wednesday of the week that these sicko's came. They cam on saturday. So just a few days in the ground. i am from cassville, was very close firends with laura, she was in my class, and a great friends, its very sick and disturbing the ideal of what has happened.

I feel especially bad for her parents who buried their oldest son ten years ago, then their youngest daughter, then they have to deal with this crap.

I hope these guys get whats coming to them!

Scott,
my sympathies on your loss. I too am glad these guys were stopped.

I can't even begin to imagine how horrific this must have been for the family.

Thanks for setting us straight on the details and for dropping by.

The article says they "excavated" her body. But all they got done was a 3x3 foot hole about two feet deep (exposing the top of the concrete vault). Sloppy journalism all the way around.

Wonder what it's gonna be like in jail for these guys. This is some sick sh*t.