Acts of necrophilia in Michigan could soon result in up to 15 years in prison under legislation introduced in the legislature on Wednesday.

Eastpointe Democratic Sen. Veronica Klinefelt told the media at a Capitol on Wednesday she was “shocked to find out that necrophilia is not against the law in Michigan,” and she felt compelled to do something about that, Michigan Advance reports.

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“I don’t know how common it is … even if it’s a very small amount of people, statistically, nationwide, that would do something like this, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a law against it, there still should be a law against it,” she said.

Senate bills 841, 842, and 843, known collectively as “Melody’s Law,” are motivated in part by the 2021 murder of Melody Rohrer, a retired 64-year-old nurse who was struck by a vehicle driven by Colby Martin as she walked along the roadside in Van Buren County. Martin then sexually assaulted the woman’s body in the woods in St. Joseph County.

The investigation showed Martin repeatedly searched necrophilia keywords on his phone a month before the incident, and a used condom found in his truck with Rohrer’s DNA was presented at trial, WWMT reports.

Martin admitted to hitting and killing Rohrer, but denied having sex with her body. He was sentenced to life in prison in July 2023, according to WPDE.

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“As it stands now, that this individual is released from custody he would even appear on any sex offender registry or have any other consequences imposed on him for having engaged in what should be a sex crime,” Rohrer’s husband, Richard Rohrer, said at trial.

Klinefelt told the Advance the family has since helped to shape the legislation she introduced on Wednesday.

“We have worked with her husband and her children to ensure that some of the things that happened to her after her death don’t ever happen again, or at least if individuals behave in that fashion, there’s punishment for it,” she said. “We’ve had input with them every step of the way on what we’re doing. It’s extremely important to them and I think it’s fitting that we’re gonna call it Melody’s Law.”

The bills would impose a series of penalties up to 15 years in prison for different degrees of contact with a corpse.

The legislation follows a similar bill introduced by West Bloomfield Democratic state Rep. Noah Arbit in January, House Bill 5410.

Rohrer’s case isn’t unique.

In October 2012, John White, 55, murdered 24-year-old single mother Rebekah Gay in Mount Pleasant, telling investigators he was intrigued by necrophilia and acted on his impulses. He was sentenced to 56 years in prison in March 2013, but killed himself in his jail cell four months later, Oxygen reports.

There was also John Armstrong, who killed multiple women in Detroit in 2000, telling investigators he left them along the railroad tracks so he could revisit their bodies for sexual gratification. Armstrong was later convicted for several of the murders, receiving multiple life sentences and an additional 31 years in prison, according to Oxygen.

Armstrong, 50, continues to serve out those sentences at Cotton Correctional Facility near Jackson, the Michigan Department of Corrections website shows.