Charlie Chaplin’s Body Stolen by Grave Robbers
On the rainy, moonless night of March 2, 1978, two men entered a small village cemetery on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, to commit a macabre crime.
After a bit of stumbling around in the dark, they located the grave of the world’s most renowned comedian, Sir Charles Chaplin, who had just died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of 88.
They began to dig, dreaming of the fortune that would surely be theirs thanks to the massive ransom payment the Chaplin family would no doubt shell out. After the two robbers, 24-year-old Roman Wardas and 38 year-old Gancho Ganev, extracted Chaplin’s coffin from the grave, they transported it to a cornfield and re-buried it to await their big pay day.
The next morning it was obvious something was amiss in the Corsier-sur-Vevey cemetery. The pile of freshly-dug earth and the open, empty grave told the tale of what had transpired the previous night. One of the Chaplin's employees was quoted as saying, “Lady Chaplin is shocked. We all are. We can only wonder why; why should this happen to a man who gave so much to the world?”
