Grave robbers steal Charlie Chaplin’s body
In one of historys most famous cases of body-snatching two men steal the corpse of the revered film actor Sir Charles Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey located in the hills above Lake Geneva near Lausanne Switzerland on this day in 1978.A comic actor who was perhaps most famous for his alter ego the Little Tramp Chaplin was also a respected filmmaker whose career spanned Hollywoods silent film era and the momentous transition to talkies in the late 1920s.Chaplin died on Christmas Day in 1977 at the age of 88.Two months later his body was stolen from the Swiss cemetery sparking a police investigation and a hunt for the culprits.After Chaplins widow Oona received a ransom demand of some 600000 police began monitoring her phone and watching 200 phone kiosks in the region.
Oona had refused to pay the ransom saying that her husband would have thought the demand ridiculous.The callers later made threats against her two youngest children.Oona Chaplin was Charlies fourth wife (after Mildred Harris Lita Grey and Paulette Goddard) and the daughter of the playwright Eugene ONeill.
She and Chaplin were married in 1943 when she was 18 and he was 54 they had eight children together.The family had settled in Switzerland in 1952 after the controversial Chaplinwhom his enemies accused of being a Communist sympathizerlearned he would be denied a reentry visa to the United States en route to the London premiere of his film Limelight.After a five-week investigation police arrested two auto mechanicsRoman Wardas of Poland and Gantscho Ganev of Bulgariawho on May 17 led them to Chaplins body which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from the Chaplin familys home in Corsier.That December Wardas and Ganev were convicted of grave robbing and attempted extortion.
Political refugees from Eastern Europe Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplins body in an attempt to solve their financial difficulties.Wardas identified as the mastermind of the plot was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor.As he told it he was inspired by a similar crime that he had read about in an Italian newspaper.
Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence as he was believed to have limited responsibility for the crime.As for Chaplin his family reburied his body in a concrete grave to prevent future theft attempts.
