Posted on 10/31/2007 11:33:56 AM PDT by NYer
A 24-year-old New York City man remains jailed after he was found allegedly having sex with a 92-year-old woman's corpse inside the morgue of the hospital where he worked.
Anthony Merino, who works as a lab technician at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J., was arrested Sunday after police responded to a call from a security guard at the hospital. The guard reported witnessing the lab technician sexually desecrating the woman's dead body, according to police.
"This is a first," Lt. Dean Kazinci, spokesman for the Teaneck, N.J., police, told ABC News. "When you think you've heard and seen it all, something like this happens."
Kazinci said the security guards at the hospital told police that they caught Merino in the act of necrophilia. They transported Merino to the police station, he said, and charged him after conducting a police interview.
A spokesman for Holy Name Hospital released a statement to ABC News calling the allegations a "heinous crime."
"We are horrified and saddened for the family of the patient and are completely empathic and sympathetic to them," the statement reads.
Merino had only been working at the hospital for 14 days, according to the statement, and had passed a criminal background check before he was offered the job. The hospital also notified the dead woman's next of kin after contacting authorities.
Merino was arraigned Monday on a charge of desecrating human remains, a second degree crime in New Jersey. A judge set bail at $400,000 with conditions that included Merino surrendering his passport and submitting to a psychological evaluation. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, if convicted.
In addition to working part time at Holy Name Hospital, Merino also had a part-time job as a histology technician at Overlook Hospital in Summit, N.J.
Janina Scheytt Hecht, a spokeswoman for Overlook Hospital, confirmed that Merino worked for the hospital from Sept. 10, 2007, until Monday. "He has been terminated," Hecht said, adding that Merino was subject to a background check there before he was hired. She also said no one had filed a complaint against him during his short tenure on the staff.
Necrophilia is a psychological condition that falls under the umbrella category of paraphilia, according to Michael Fogel, the chair of the forensic psychology department at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Paraphilia involves fantasies and sexual urges in which people are aroused by nonhuman objects or pain or humiliation of oneself or a sexual partner.
"It's an extraordinarily rare condition, but it's also a very real condition," said Fogel, who previously served as the director of the Sex Offender Evaluation Unit for the Illinois Department of Corrections. In more than 1,500 evaluations he performed in that role, he said, not one involved the condition of necrophilia.
Fogel said the psychological exam will be critical to understanding what type of risk Merino may pose. He also cautioned against simply calling the suspect, if he is, in fact, convicted of the crime, "nuts."
"In these type of cases, it's a sexual attraction that the individual has," he said. "That's what they're aroused to, it's what they have sexual fantasies about."
Maybe to get them to press charges? Grandma WAS violated, after all.
And people wonder what the phrase “coarsening of the culture” really means.
If you knew that that was the last sex you would ever have for eternity, would you complain?
Did the Massachusetts Supreme Court allow marriage to the dead yet?
I must say it was kinda creepy.I mean....a ***dead*** person?
No..household pets will be next...barnyard animals will be after that and *then* they'll come to the dearly departed.
Too bad burying him alive is considered cruel and unusual.
So very true. Its just another lifestyle between two consenting adults (one being dead).
No. Its a matter of public record, and when the family found out they would sue for not being told.
Ah the good old days, when they would have just shot the guy and saved the family the shame.
Pets are next?
I’m totally voting for minors as the next target of the left’s “anything goes” agenda.
The APA changed its ruling on homosexuality as a mental disorder a while back, and pedophilia will be next.
Beastiality will probably follow, but not necrophilia.
You’re right - to press charges, they probably had to ID the corpse for the court, thus informing the family would be essential.
“Coarsening of the culture” doesn’t quite capture this trend; perhaps “rape of the culture” would be franker.
IIRC, that mummy was a CHILD. Ewwwwwww!
Blue state...............The state, not the victim...........
But it was tooooooooo late, Ethel done looked!!!
Bwahahahahaha!
Only if they vote.....Democrat.......
“They don’t tell, they don’t swell, and they’re as grateful as—”
...wait a minute, that ain’t right.
Sam was a classic..I miss him.
The phrase “downwhirl spiral” also comes to mind, as well as “morally bankrupt”.
The woman was dead, which means she was going to be voting Democrat for Hillary in 2008.
No, but seriously, folks, we should feel sorry for poor Tony here. It must be truly hard for him to find women who are his intellectual equals.
I’m sure he’ll get a stiff sentence.
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