There is hardly anyone who does not know about Charlie Chaplin, the famous comedian who turned Hollywood film art upside down back in the twenties. This article is about the controversial incident where his coffin went missing from the graveyard, disturbing thousands of Chaplin fans.
Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day (December 25, 1977) at the age of 88 due to a stroke. Chaplin’s wife and children bury Chaplin’s body at the end of a solemn funeral in a cemetery near their home in the village of Cour-sherser–vevey, Switzerland.
The Bad News
“Sleep in peace” we say. But Charlie Chaplin was not able to get much sleep in peace. On March 2nd, 1978, Chaplin’s wife, Ona O’Neill, received a phone call saying that her husband’s body was no longer there in the cemetery. The family initially thought this was just a joke, still went to the cemetery just in case. They found Chaplin’s coffin missing, leaving only a six-foot-deep hole on the cemetery ground.
The Kidnappers Begin To Work
Putting an end to the curiosity, O’Neill gets a phone call soon after. It was from the kidnappers who kidnapped Charlie Chaplin’s coffin. The Chaplin family and the family lawyer continued to receive phone calls demanding a ransom of $ 600,000, not less than 110 million Sri Lankan rupees.
Plan B
All of the extortionists’ plans turned upside down when Chaplin’s wife refused to pay the ransom. “If he had lived, Charlie would have seen this request ‘ridiculous’.” Undeterred by O’Neill’s response, the extortionists decided to launch the second part of the plan. The extortionists began threatening, saying they would reduce the ransom if necessary, or else Charlie Chaplin’s daughters might be in danger.
Kidnappers wanted to make new proposals as well as bargain and threat. So they had to make phone calls repeatedly. In those days when there were no mobile phones available like today, so kidnappers had to use payphones along the highway for this purpose.
Kidnappers’ Plans Go Wrong
While police are searching for Charlie Chaplin’s body, they kept tracking down more than 200 telephone booths in the area while taking into account the weakness of the kidnappers. The constant threatening phone calls made the task of the police even easier.
Exactly two weeks after the crime, on March 16th, Roman Verdas, a Polish man, and his accomplice a Bulgarian named Ganzhou Ganev, were arrested at a telephone booth. The mastermind of the crime, Verdas, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison with hard labor, and Ganev was sentenced for only 18 months in prison, given his limited support for the crime.
Background
It was later revealed that the two, who had come to Switzerland as refugees. They had committed the crime simply because of economic problems. Verdas and Ganaw confessed that they did not want the issue to go this far and that they had originally planned to dig a few more feet right under where the coffin had been buried, then burry (later changed their mind due to torrential rain) and simply collect the ransom money. Verdas added that a similar crime story went in an Italian newspaper in 1977 prompted him to commit this crime.
In the year 2014, French filmmaker Xavier Bovis made the film “The Price of Fame” based on the incident.
Back To The Lodge
Later Chaplin’s coffin was found in a cornfield from where about 10 miles away from the burial ground. The family reburied the coffin with honor after a decent ceremony. This time the Chaplin family did not forget to put a layer of solid concrete and strengthen the tomb. The abduction of Chaplin’s body went down in history as one of the most unsuccessful abductions in the criminal world.
Sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com
https://www.theguardian.com/international
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