Charlie Chaplin certainly needs no introduction. The British actor and director, who conquered Hollywood, made his mark in the history of cinema in a special way. Films such as “Toddler” or “Dictator” found their place in the canon of world cinematography, and Chaplin with his very character became an inspiration for subsequent generations of filmmakers.
No motive, no crime
Charlie Chaplin spent the last years of his life with his fourth wife, Oona O’Neil, and their children in the Swiss town of Corsier-sur-Vevey. On Christmas Day 1977, Oona informed the media of the actor’s sudden death. A few days later, a modest funeral ceremony was held, which was broadcast on several television stations. The peace of the Chaplin family was short-lived as, little more than two months after the funeral, a terrible discovery was made. There was a pit where the actor was buried, which of course meant the theft of his remains.
Charlie Chaplin with his wife Oona in 1959 Graziano Arici / Bridgeman Images/East News
The news spread around the world very quickly, Interpol was involved in the search for the coffin, and some sources say that there were even two thousand policemen. The services interrogated almost the entire village, which resulted in testimonies about hearing the sounds of pickaxe strikes the night before the discovery. In addition, it was possible to identify wheel tracks, but unfortunately the investigators quickly lost the trail. The hardest part of the search was the lack of a clear theme. There have been a lot of theories about fans stealing the actor’s body to make it into a relic. There were also the English who wanted to bury Chaplin in his homeland, which was supposedly his wish. There were also rumors of Jews stealing Chaplin’s body from a Christian cemetery for proper burial, and fascists taking revenge for parodying Hitler in The Dictator in 1940.
After a few days, Oona received a call from the thieves who demanded 600,000 from her. ransom in Swiss francs in exchange for the return of her husband’s body. The woman declined without thinking, adding that Charlie would have thought it absurd. When that didn’t work, the criminals threatened to harm her children. Reportedly, the negotiations lasted several weeks, and during that time the telephone in the Chaplin house was constantly tapped by the police.
A Pole, a Bulgarian, two nephews
On May 16, more than two months after the theft, to the surprise of the thieves, Oona agreed to their terms. This was, of course, a deliberate operation to catch criminals attempting to pay the ransom. One of the policemen pretended to be a chauffeur and, driving the Chaplins’ Rolls Royce, was to reach the agreed place and catch the thieves. It wasn’t without a mishap, because the local postman recognized the family’s car and followed it on his bike. This aroused the suspicion of the police, and as a result an innocent man was arrested. Due to this situation, the officer was unable to deliver the ransom at the agreed time, so the entire operation was lost. However, nothing is lost, the policemen decided to surround all the telephone booths in the town, waiting for the thieves to use one of them to renew the negotiations. After more than two months, on May 17, 1978, the Swiss police managed to capture the thieves of the coffin with the remains of Charlie Chaplin, just at one of these booths.
The criminals turned out to be two mechanics, 24-year-old Pole Roman Wardas and 38-year-old Bulgarian Gantscho Genev. As a motive, they pointed to an attempt to solve financial problems, and the inspiration was a similar situation in Italy, which they had read about in a newspaper. The coffin with the actor’s body was hidden by them in a cornfield, as it turned out, less than two kilometers from the Chaplin house. When the family retrieved Charlie’s remains, they naturally decided to rebury him, but this time they secured the tomb with two meters of concrete.
Six months after the arrest of the thieves, two convictions were handed down. Wardas, as the brains behind the operation, was sentenced to four and a half years of hard labour, while Genev was given an 18-month suspended sentence due to his diagnosed intellectual disability. The defenders of the Bulgarian asked for a light sentence due to the impaired ability to perceive right and wrong. Both men admitted their actions, expressed remorse and even sent a letter of apology to the late actor’s wife.
The story of the abduction of Charlie Chaplin’s remains may not be particularly popular, but it has not escaped the filmmakers. In 2014, the French director Xavier Beauvois, a two-time winner of the Cannes Film Festival for “Remember You Will Die” and “God’s People”, decided to make this story into a film. The film “The Price of Fame” was even advertised in Poland with the slogan “about two people who stole Chaplin”. The main roles are played by Benoît Poelvoorde and Roschdy Zem.
Interestingly, one of the characters is played by the Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki, the creator of films such as “Caramel”, “Where now?” or “Capernaum”.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
