- We’ve watched ‘Corpse Bride’ but this is ridiculous.
Love is blind, they say. When you find the one to grab hold of your heart, it doesn’t matter who they are.
With all that said, if your beloved has been dead for the past few hundred years, you probably should look for someone… Fresher.
This is the bizarre case that faces the authorities in Peru. A couple of years ago, the country’s police arrested Julio Cesar Bermejo, who was spotted carrying a suspicious large bag.
There was reason to take him in, because inside the bag was his “spiritual girlfriend.” That is to say, he was carrying a mummy estimated to be up to 800 years old.
Yet, to Bermejo, their relationship was as good as real. After all, he had been living with the mummy, which he called Juanita, for the past three decades.
It seems his closest associates had accepted the outlandish relationship as well. After all, he was carrying the mummy because his friends had wanted to see it.
However, researchers evaluating the mummy had to break some shocking news to Bermejo. It turns out that when his dearest still had flesh, blood, and a beating heart, he was a man.
For now, the authorities are puzzling over what crime — if any — they should charge Bermejo with. But if being in love is a crime, he’s guilty as charged.
What’s in the Bag?!
The strange case of the corpse bride kicked off in February 2023. The police in the city of Puno took note of a man who was acting very drunk at a local park.
That man was Bermejo. Not only was he obviously intoxicated, but he was also carrying a large thermal bag. You know, the kind pizza delivery drivers use to keep your pie warm — only a lot bigger.
The cops asked Bermejo to open the bag, and he complied. Much to their horror, the police officers were faced with the corpse of Bermejo’s girlfriend.
Or, well, the corpse that was Bermejo’s girlfriend.
Inside the bag was a desiccated human mummy. Bermejo explained that this was his “spiritual girlfriend” and he had brought her out with him because his friends wanted to see her.
And with that, they took the corpse-carrying man into custody.
A Loving Relationship
When interrogated, Bermejo shed light on how his bizarre “relationship” began. It turns out that he and Juanita, as he called the mummy, had been dating for 30 years.
However, he didn’t acquire the mummy. His father did.
When Bermejo was but a baby, his father — for some reason — brought the mummy home. He grew up with ancient human remains in his house, and it got to be normal to him.
Over time, he grew strangle attached to the pile of old bones. Soon enough, they were engaged in a genuine relationship, at least in Bermejo’s mind.
He talked about the mummy to the police as if it really was his living, breathing girlfriend.
“It sleeps in my bedroom, with me. There’s my bed, the TV set and next to it, there’s Juanita. I take care of it,” he said.
Se Llama Juan
However, under Peru’s laws regarding the protection of national heritage, Bermejo wasn’t allowed to keep Juanita. The mummy went into a lab, where researchers got to work, attempting to date the mummy and figure out who the person was in life.
Soon enough, they had a date range in hand. The mummy was anywhere between 600 and 800 years old, quite possibly predating the Spanish conquest of Latin America.
They also discovered something else. The mummy wasn’t Juanita.
He was Juan.
At the time of his death, the mummified person had been a roughly 45-year-old man. He had been about 4 feet, 11 inches tall and had been buried in a fetal position, typical of pre-Colombian burials in the region.
With that, the authorities got to thinking what they could charge Bermejo with. It wasn’t like he acquired the mummy, and he certainly treated it with great care.
As far as we can find out, the question over what crime Bermejo has committed remains unresolved. That said, the case does highlight the ongoing problem Peru has with ancient relics.
More specifically, the problem is that people keep stealing the country’s treasures. Peru sits on a veritable gold mine (often literally) of ancient Inca artifacts, and unscrupulous treasure hunters keep taking them away — sometimes before they’re officially found.
And we can promise you, these people don’t treat whatever they find as gently as Bermejo treated Juan/ita.