For some people, that's what love is
1) To keep her in good shape, von Cosel brought in a regular supply of preservatives and perfumes, but Maria Elena's corpse eventually began to deteriorate. Using piano wire to string her bones together, von Cosel replaced her rotted eyes with glass eyes and her decomposed skin with a mixture of wax and silk. As her hair fell out, he used it to make a wig to put on her head. Stuffing her corpse with rags to keep her from collapsing and dressing her in a bridal gown, he kept her by his side in bed. Dr. Michael Baden pointed out on HBO's Autopsy that the man even inserted a tube into her decrepit corpse to serve as a vagina for making love. He also played a small organ to her as she "slept."
2) From the bodies he dug up, he cut off the heads and shrank them, putting some on his bedposts. He also formed lampshades from the skin and soup bowls from the skulls.
Eventually Ed just went ahead and dug up his own mother. Rather than get a sex-change operation, he simply made himself a female body suit and mask out of the skin, and he would wear this outfit to dance around outside.
3) As Brian Masters, author of the definitive biography of Nilsen put it, he was "killing for company." Before he ever killed, he'd experienced an erotic attraction to death, so he would spend hours lying in front of a mirror, pretending to be dead.
4) One night John pulled up to her home and pulled out a large package wrapped in a red bow.а Carrying it in and placing it on her carpet inside, he urged her to unwrap it.а She did, and before her lay a desiccated corpse, remarkably preserved.
John told Wendell she could have it all to herself for four days. Immediately, she made a death mask for a memento.а Then she took the corpse to bed.а To her mind, this was the greatest gift that anyone had ever given her.