october 1 2008
Man jailed for sex with corpse
26-year-old crime, discovered through DNA, results in 3 years

Former Hamilton County morgue worker Kenneth Douglas was sent to prison Tuesday for three years after admitting he had sex with a corpse of a murder victim 26 years ago - a sentence the victim's mother said was woefully inadequate. Castration would not be too severe a penalty in my mind," Lori Range wrote from her Florida home in a letter to Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge William Mallory. Range is the mother of Karen Range, the 18-year-old whose nearly headless body Douglas had sex with the day she was murdered. That wasn't the only time Douglas had sex at his second-shift job at the morgue.

Douglas, 55, of Westwood, told authorities he often got high and drunk while at the morgue and invited women there, where he partied with them and had sex. He admitted that while he was an attendant at the morgue, he pulled the body of Range, from the cooler and abused her corpse. He also told authorities he abused other bodies when he worked there - all young females. Prosecutors and police are continuing an investigation into whether there are other victims. Whatever DNA we have collected is being tested," Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier said Tuesday. Less than a dozen DNA samples taken from bodies are being tested to see if Douglas abused them while he worked at the morgue from 1976-1992. Those tests should be completed this month, and Piepmeier said more charges could be brought.