Rockport, Texas - The strange tale began in 1948 when the curator of the old Houston Museum of Antiquities caught a glimpse of his wife slipping into one of the museum’s supply rooms.

It seems Dr. Leland Stovall’s wife, Janice, was having a frolic with the building’s young janitor. Silently checking on what his wife was up to, Dr. Stovall saw her making love with the custodian.

He waited until the janitor left on his rounds, and then he rushed in and beat his wife to death with an antique bronze statue.

The killer curator was afraid he’d be spotted if he tried to sneak his dead wife’s body out of the museum, so he spent the night embalming her and bandaging her from head to toe. By the next morning, his dead wife was a mummy.

He did her up in the same manner as the ancient Egyptians. On the outside he used bandages from some of the authentic mummies at the museum to give her just the right look.

A couple of days later he placed her in the mummy exhibit, along with a plaque describing her as a princess from the period just after King Tut.

For the next six months, throngs of Houstonians viewed the exhibit. The corpse of the curator’s wife lay there, in a glass case, and thousands of people walked by and looked at her. Museum visitors were convinced they were viewing the remains of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian princess.

The wily widower reported his wife missing and the police were convinced she’d run away.

Unfortunately, Dr. Stovall’s pride in his work was to lead to the discovery of his bizarre crime.

Stovall was so proud of his creation that, after a night of heavy drinking, he boasted to a colleague that he’d committed the prefect crime.

The colleague notified the police and told them where to look for the body.

The whole thing was so weird that, at first, the police though it had to be a joke.

But when the mummy was examined, underneath the bandages, they found Janices’ body.

Dr. Stovall pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

At his sentencing, Dr. Stovall told the court, “I don’t understand why I should be punished at all. My wife was just an ordinary woman - and I made her immortal.”

The Houston Museum of Antiquities, stigmatized by events surround the ghastly murder, finally closed it’s doors in 1952.

Dean Terry for Our Strange World