First Posted: 2/23/2015
CINCINNATI (AP) — A lawsuit filed by the families of three women whose corpses were sexually abused by a morgue attendant and who are accusing county officials of negligence did not go to trial Monday as scheduled.
The lawsuit against Hamilton County and former county officials was set for trial before a jury in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. The lawsuit also accuses those sued of causing the families emotional distress. It seeks unspecified damages from the county and the estates of a former county coroner and a former supervisor in his office. The two officials died while the lawsuit was pending, but their estates were named in their place.
Court officials and an attorney in the case said Monday that they are not allowed to comment, and court records don’t show why the trial was delayed or a new trial date.
Former morgue attendant Kenneth Douglas was convicted in 2009 of violating the corpses in 1982 and 1991 and was sentenced to six years in prison.
The lawsuit says Douglas regularly drank and used drugs while on duty and officials should have known that he could harm corpses. Douglas’ wife had called his supervisor complaining he was coming home from work drunk and “smelling like sex,” and the former morgue director knew he had run-ins with the law and other personal issues yet continued to schedule him to work alone at the morgue, according to court records.
Court records also say Douglas admitted having intercourse, while drunk and high on drugs, with the bodies of the women whose families are suing. The first case dated to the 1982 stabbing death of 19-year-old Karen Sue Range. The corpse abuse was discovered 25 years later after authorities conducted DNA testing for a court appeal in the Range slaying case and found that semen in her body was a match for Douglas.
A county attorney said in earlier arguments that no one could have anticipated Douglas would sexually abuse corpses.
The lawsuit says the conduct of those sued caused the women’s families “intense suffering, anguish, anger, severe emotional distress, humiliation and embarrassment.”
