Morgue worker admits to sex with more bodies

By Kimball Perry • October 19, 2009

Kenneth Douglas added to his ghoulish count Monday, admitting he had sex with two more bodies while he worked at the Hamilton County morgue.

Douglas, 56, of Westwood, pleaded guilty to two counts of gross abuse of a corpse before Visiting Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Niehaus. He could be imprisoned for a maximum of three years at his Dec. 10 sentencing.

Douglas was employed for 16 years, from 1976-1992, as a night attendant at the morgue. He told authorities previously that while there, he invited women in and partied with them with drugs and alcohol. He also admitted to having sex with bodies being stored while awaiting autopsies.

He is currently serving a three-year sentence for having sex with another corpse – that of Karen Range, a 19-year-old murder victim who was nearly beheaded in 1982 and had been in the morgue cooler for hours.

Douglas said nothing Monday except to give respectful, short answers to routine questions from the judge.

The corpses he admitted Monday to abusing were those of two homicide victims awaiting autopsies:

• Charlene Edwards, 23, also known as Charlene Apling, was strangled to death. Douglas said he had sex with her body Oct. 1, 1991, on the day she died. She was six months pregnant when she was killed by Mark Chambers, in his Avondale home. Chambers originally was charged with murder but accepted a plea bargain and was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sent to prison for 10-25 years. He was paroled in 2000.

• Angel Hicks, 24, was pushed from a third-story window and died from blunt trauma. Douglas said he had sex with that body Dec. 8, 1991. Tyrone Williams was charged with murder in the case. He was acquitted months later at trial. There was a question whether Hicks was killed or committed suicide.

Douglas pleaded guilty without a plea deal. Assistant Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier said his office would offer no deals to Douglas.

After Douglas pleaded guilty in 2008 to having sex with Range’s corpse officials conducted an extensive investigation comparing Douglas’ DNA to that of other bodies in the morgue during the time Douglas worked there.

Initially, officials feared there could be dozens of other victims, based on what Douglas told them. They were able to indict him on two additional charges.

“He told us he was out of control,” Prosecutor Joe Deters said in March after Douglas was indicted on the two charges he pleaded guilty to Monday.

Douglas was first caught when he violated his probation on a previous conviction on drug and alcohol charges, and his DNA was taken by officials and placed in a database. The database showed Douglas’ DNA matched that of the semen left in Range’s body.

That was good news for David Steffen, who spent 26 years on Ohio’s death row for Range’s murder but who insisted he never raped her. Now, Steffen’s attorneys are using Douglas’ acts to try to get Steffen off of death row.