charlie chaplin He starred in many incredible stories throughout his acting career, but none as striking as the one in which his body was involved.
The famous actor and filmmaker died on December 25, 1977 at the age of 88, his remains being deposited in the Corsier-sur-Vevey cemetery. What nobody expected is that on March 1 of the following year they received a call saying that someone had desecrated his grave to remove the body.
“Charlie would have found this ridiculous.“
Shortly after, the grave robbers contacted Oona Chaplin, fourth and last wife of the author of ‘City Lights’ or ‘The Great Dictator’, to make their demands. In exchange for returning the body, they demanded an amount equivalent to about $600,000, but Oona refused to make the paymentas “Charlie would have found this ridiculous“.
And Oona would refuse again when the ransom was changed from $600,000 to CHF600,000 just a few days later, and again when it was later lowered to CHF500,000. He was not going to give his arm to twistNot even with the threats to the safety of her two children.
The police tried various traps for the criminals, but they managed to get away with it until they made another phone call to Oona Chaplin in May, who had given permission for the police to tap her line. And it is that the authorities had made an incredible deployment by placing agents monitoring the 200 telephone booths in the area.
The police finally arrested Roman Wardswho soon confessed what had happened, pointed to Gantscho Ganev as his accomplice and soon led the authorities to the cornfield where they had temporarily hidden Chaplin’s body. Both were sentenced, but the only one who had to serve it was Wardas, considered the mastermind of the crime, who would also confess that he was inspired by a similar case that had taken place in Italy.
For its part, Chaplin’s family returned his body to the same cemetery, but this time with additional protection on his tombstone to prevent something like this from happening again.