Dead wrong Police bust homeless man for necrophilia in Sunset funeral home.
By Ethan Fletcher Staff Writer [email protected] Published on Tuesday, April 20, 2004
A man was arrested and charged with sexual assault on an elderly woman's corpse Saturday, according to police.
The act of necrophilia allegedly occurred sometime Friday night when 48-year-old Mahdi Allah slipped into the Hogan, Sullivan and Bianco funeral home at 1266 Ninth Ave.
A funeral home employee discovered Allah Saturday on top of the corpse with his pants around his ankles, passed out drunk, according to police spokesman Dewayne Tully. Allah, a former employee at the funeral home, allegedly used a key to let himself in sometime the previous night, went downstairs and removed the corpse from a storage freezer before placing it on the floor.
He is being charged with two counts of sexual assault upon a person who is unconscious or unaware and one count of burglary, according to Tully. The investigation is ongoing.
Eric Bianco, manager of the funeral home, said Allah, who police say is homeless, worked as an attendant at the parking lot adjacent to the home. Bianco said he was "absolutely disgusted" when he heard the news. He added that he did not know Allah closely and had no idea how he had acquired a key to the business.
"This isn't something that has a whole lot of history that I can comment on, it's just something that doesn't happen," Bianco said. "It's an unfortunate situation and if there is one person to blame it is the person who did it."
Bianco said that he had already spoken with the family of the woman and pleaded for the media to respect their privacy.
Allah worked for only a couple of months, according to Steve Fujii, the owner of the funeral home, the adjacent parking lot, and two nearby Japanese restaurants on Ninth Avenue. He remembered Allah as always reading, and described him as extremely smart and well educated. Allah was homeless by choice and slept in nearby Golden Gate Park, according to Fujii. While working at the parking lot, Allah had briefly been allowed to stay in a studio apartment above the funeral home and was fired when he refused to leave, according to the property owner.
"I was shocked, he was such a straightforward guy, he was very intelligent," Fujii said. "But when I saw him (on Saturday morning), he was very drunk...he shouldn't have done it."
Allah, a former employee at the funeral home, allegedly used a key to let himself in sometime the previous night, went downstairs and removed the corpse from a storage freezer before placing it on the floor.
there are no laws in California that specifically address necrophilia.
"Trust me, we looked all over the penal codes. We looked everywhere. There is no charge for having sex with a corpse," Ivancevich said. "This is just one of those gaps that the legislature has not dealt with."
Ivancevich said there were laws against mutilating corpses and disinterment -- digging a body out of a grave -- but not against "having simple sex."