Carl Tanzler is one of Key West's most celebrated eccentrics. There are tours. There is merchandise. The story is usually told as a dark romance — a man so consumed by love that he couldn't let go.

Florinda "Nana" Medina was Elena de Hoyos's older sister. She was the one who finally went to the police. She reported what Tanzler had done to her sister's body and the town turned her grief into a carnival. 

Nearly seven thousand people lined up at the funeral home to look. The charges were dropped on a statute of limitations technicality.

Nana died of tuberculosis in 1944, four years after she opened the tomb.

Key West still sells the postcards.

"The Woman Who Opened The Tomb"

by Roz Stevens