Mortified families are suing a county in Ohio where a morgue attendant admitted to having sex with up to 100 female corpses.
Kenneth Douglas worked the night shift at the Hamilton County morgue from 1976 to 1992 before being charged and convicted of gross abuse of a corpse in the cases of Karen Range, Charlene Appling and April Hicks in 1991 and 1992, TV station WCPO in Cincinnati reports.
After his lewd acts were revealed in 2008 thanks to DNA testing, Douglas admitted in a deposition that he had brutally raped and assaulted up to 100 different female corpses waiting to be autopsied during his nearly two decades working at the morgue.
Years later, families in search of relief have now claimed that the county ignored warning signs of Douglas’ gruesome wrongdoings and claim the morgue was well aware of what had been going on at night for all those years.
The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a jury would be able to conclude the former coroner and morgue director failed “recklessly and wantonly” to supervise Douglas, according to WCPO.
Douglas, who is currently serving his prison sentence, has blamed his despicable deeds on his abuse of alcohol and drugs, adding that it would have never happened if he had been sober.
“I can’t explain this at all,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters told WCPO when Douglas pled guilty in 2012.
When Douglas’ wife came forward and tried to tell the morgue supervisor that her husband kept coming home with the smell of sex and booze on him, she received a surprising response.
“He said, ‘Whatever happens on county time and on county property is county business’,” she said.
Al Gerhardstein, an attorney with one of the families suing Hamilton County, is now saying that the County ignored all the warning signs that pointed to Douglas’ sick behavior.
“The county had plenty of notice that Douglas was coming to work and was present at work while he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs,” he said.
“Had he been stopped, these women would not have been abused,” he added.