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More recently....in 1978, Charley Chaplin's body was stolen from the Lake Geneva cemetery and held for ransom, the theives demanding $600,000 to return the corpse to its rest. The Swiss police tapped all 200 pay phones nearest to the Chaplin residence and it paid off, two mechanics and political refugees from Eastern Europe, Roman Wardas and Gantscho Ganev, were finally nabbed and forced to reveal where they had stashed the body (buried in a cornfield.) Chaplin's corpse was returned to his original grave, and a layer of concrete was added to discourage future body snatchers.
Wardas, as the "mastermind" of the inept ghouls, got four years in prison. Ganev got off with a suspended sentence.
I wonder if that's why so many celebrities these days choose to be cremated ?
Since the soul has left the dead body I wouldn't care if someone dug up one of my relatives and held him/her for ransom. They would be in for a big surprise when I told them I don't care what you do with the body.
It still happens every once in a while but not as often as it did in the 1800s. They would steal bodies from the graves and sell them to medical schools for dissection. Some counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln's body so they could ransom it and get their chief engraver out of prison. Mostly it was the poor people in potter's field that got snatched. Whenever I read about these cases I always picture Vincent Price and Peter Lorre creeping around a cemetery late at night with shovels.
In the 1930's, a small group of grave robbers tried to steal the remains of Moses Austin, the father of Stephen F Austin, from the cemetery in Potosi, Missouri. (Moses is remembered as the "Grandfather of Texas." He negotiated the first treaty with the Mexicans to take the first group of white settlers into Texas, but he died of pneumonia in Missouri before he could lead the settlers. His son Stephen led them instead.)
The grave robbers were from Texas, and they thought Moses should be buried in Texas alongside his son Stephen. They were caught by the police at two in the morning, trying to dig up poor old Moses. There was a shootout in the cemetery that killed one of the grave robbers. The other four were arrested and were placed on trial for grave robbing. All were found guilty and were sentenced to a public hanging in the courthouse square in Potosi, Missouri.
In the 1930's, a small group of grave robbers tried to steal the remains of Moses Austin, the father of Stephen F Austin, from the cemetery in Potosi, Missouri. (Moses is remembered as the "Grandfather of Texas." He negotiated the first treaty with the Mexicans to take the first group of white settlers into Texas, but he died of pneumonia in Missouri before he could lead the settlers. His son Stephen led them instead.)
The grave robbers were from Texas, and they thought Moses should be buried in Texas alongside his son Stephen. They were caught by the police at two in the morning, trying to dig up poor old Moses. There was a shootout in the cemetery that killed one of the grave robbers. The other four were arrested and were placed on trial for grave robbing. All were found guilty and were sentenced to a public hanging in the courthouse square in Potosi, Missouri.
I never heard of that before, I didn't even know he was buried in Missouri.
And then there were the infamous Wm. Burke and Wm. Hare, who found the job so monetarily beneficial that they took to the annoying habit of not waiting for people to die first:
And then there were the infamous Wm. Burke and Wm. Hare, who found the job so monetarily beneficial that they took to the annoying habit of not waiting for people to die first:
Mort safes were used , a metal contraption put over a grave to guard it from robbers, it was left there until the body decomposed.. others were buried in vaults in cemeteries with metal cages built around them..
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