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Redefining Hard-Up Young Men

By John Mesirow

I'm having a hard time thinking of anything that compares to what brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke were planning on doing. They saw a young lady's picture with her obituary (I think you have an idea where this is going), and thought she was attractive. So, naturally, they decided to dig her up and have sex with her corpse. Fortunately, things did not go as planned. As reported at investigation.discovery.com,

On the night of Sept. 2, 2006, a concerned citizen called the Grant County Sheriff's Department and reported a suspicious vehicle that was parked by the St. Charles Cemetery. When Officer Brent McDonald arrived on the scene, he observed Alexander Grunke walking towards the vehicle. According to the criminal complaint, Grunke was sweating profusely and appeared to be nervous.

Oh, and somehow, the brother managed to convince a friend, Dustin Radke, to help them.

"Complainant is informed by Sgt. Kopp's report that Radke informed him that he had brought Nicholas Grunke to the Cassville Cemetery the first part of the week, that Nick wanted to come down and locate L.T.'s grave, that Nick asked him to help him dig up L.T.'s body so that he could have sexual intercourse with her, that Nick wanted to take her back to a pre-selected location behind his house, that he did assist in digging up L.T.'s gravesite, and that they had stopped at Wal-Mart in Dodgeville on the way down and bought condoms because Nick wanted to use them when he had sex with a corpse," reads the Sept. 5, 2006 criminal complaint filed by Chief Deputy Jack Johnson.

The charges? Attempted theft and attempted sexual assault. The defense? No sexual assault because the victim was already dead. Did the Judge agree? He did, and his decision was upheld on appeal, but the state appealed that decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Guess how many states have a law that specifically bans necrophilia? Just 16 (and Wisconsin isn't one of them). You can read more (a fair amount) here.

Full post as published by Legal Juice on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).