Kenneth Douglas Pleads Guilty to Sexually Abusing Two Corpses

October 23, 2009

In the 30 years that I've been researching criminal cases and writing about them I have, almost needless to say, come across some pretty sick and demented individuals.  The case you are about to read about surely has to fall somewhere on my Top 20 list, making it a contender for the grand prize winner as the sickest of the sickest.  It was covered thoroughly by my colleague, David Lohr, on his Criminal Report Daily blog, and I am thankfully merely updating this ghastly case here without having to go into a lot of detail.  Having said that, readers beware—this case is disturbing.

To recap this sordid affair, nearly 27 years ago, in 1982, 19-year-old Karen Range opened her door to salesman David Steffen, who beat her and slashed her throat so severely that he nearly decapitated her.  Because of the presence of semen found inside Range's body, police at the time believed that Steffen had also raped her.  Steffen was originally convicted of Range's rape and murder and was sentenced to death.  Steffen was cleared of Range's rape, however, because of DNA analysis that was completed later on (please see Accused Necrophiliac May Have Violated Other Corpses as well as Convicted Necrophiliac Charged in Two Additional Cases) criminal issues involving Kenneth Douglas.  Douglas, it turned out, had been convicted of drug trafficking in 2008 and had been ordered to provide a DNA sample which was then matched to the semen found inside Range's body.

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Douglas, now 59, was employed as a night attendant at the Hamilton County, Ohio morgue from 1976 to 1992, and was purportedly responsible for checking Range's body into the morgue shortly after her murder.  Police believe he had sex with Range's cold, nearly decapitated corpse sometime within four hours after it had been refrigerated.  Convicted in 2008 of the charges, Douglas was serving a three-year prison stint when he was indicted on two additional charges of sexually abusing corpses.  According to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, DNA evidence linked those two cases to Douglas.  Although he had initially pleaded not guilty to those latest charges at his arraignment in February, he changed his plea to guilty to two counts of gross abuse of a corpse on Monday, October 19, 2009.

The charges to which he pleaded guilty this week also involved two female homicide victims who had been killed in 1991.  Douglas faces a possible sentence of three additional years in prison on each count when he is sentenced on December 10, 2009.

Photo Credits: Police file photo's

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Comments

[Helen Carson]

I don't know where else to post this comment because most blogs don't have general comment spots. It's unrelated to the story here: but why don't you update your Natalie Wood information at this site? Aren't you aware of the newly released book titled "Goodbye Natalie Goodbye Splendour" that solves this decades old mystery? You should investigate this closed case.

[Sean]

So many cases have been buried in the
files and no one cares. When a person is
missing, hiring a private investigator
or private detective would be best
decision to prevent any sad incident. Sometimes people don't have courage to
talk about this but truth can be found with help of
investigators.