In 1978, two men stole the corpse of Charlie Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland.
Immediately after the body snatching, Chaplin's widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of some $600,000, which she refused to pay, saying that her husband would have thought the demand “ridiculous.” The callers then made threats against her two youngest children.
After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics—Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria. Busted, the criminals led police to Chaplin's body, which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from his family's home in Corsier.
In December 1978, Wardas and Ganev were convicted of grave robbing and attempted extortion. Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin's 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. 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, where he remains, in peace, to this day.
No comments:
Post a Comment