From the Vault : Ernst Doepke — The Prince of Body Snatchers

Podcast: Southern Ghost Stories · Southern Ghost Stories

Opublikowano: 2026-10-10

In late 19th-century St. Louis, privy cleaner Ernst Doepke built a macabre fortune as the "Prince of Body Snatchers"—getting paid by the city to bury unclaimed paupers, secretly digging them back up to sell to medical schools, and reselling their stolen coffins for extra cash. His brazen operation crossed every line when he exhumed his own dead brother, sliced off his decomposing beard as a parlor keepsake, and later dug up his own mother's grave under the cover of night. In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories, Allen Sircy reveals the shocking true crime saga of a resurrectionist who be...