That Time Charlie Chaplin’s Body Was Stolen and Held for Ransom
Charlie Chaplin had ‘em rolling in the aisles. However, his death was far from a laughing matter. You could say he turned in his grave. Or rather, someone else turned him.
A final resting place in Switzerland proved less than tranquil. Find out what happened when Chaplin’s body was stolen and held for ransom…
The Little Tramp’s last journey
Chaplin lived in Switzerland during the last decades of his life. The US government objected to his left-leaning politics and private life, so he’d settled far away. The iconic star passed away on Christmas in 1977, aged 88.
His family laid him to rest near Lake Geneva, specifically the village of Corsier-sur-Vevey. Burials and Beyond writes that actor James Mason also went on to be buried there.
A couple of months later, however, the Little Tramp’s body was gone. Spirited away to who knows where. Yet Chaplin’s widow wasn’t in the dark for long. She received a call from the mysterious “Mr. Rochat,” asking for the princely sum of approximately $600,000.
What did Oona Chaplin do? If the robbers hoped for a quick payday they were about to get a shock. History writes she “had refused to pay the ransom, saying that her husband would have thought the demand ‘ridiculous.’”
Demanding money didn’t work, so things turned nastier. The Chaplins’ children were mentioned, a dastardly move designed to strike fear into the family’s heart. Again, Oona Chaplin and co held firm.
The whole deal was shaping up to be a disaster for the criminals. And there was worse to come. As they tried to manage this unruly situation, the net closed in on them.
Who stole Charlie Chaplin?
Swiss authorities tapped Oona’s phone, according to Smithsonian Magazine. For good measure, they had “every one of the area’s 200 phone booths monitored by detectives.”
It took a few weeks but finally, the body snatchers were bagged. Their names were Roman Wardas and Gantscho Ganev. As reported by The Guardian at the time, Wardas was a 24-year-old refugee from Poland. Ganev was 38 years old from Bulgaria.
Both worked as mechanics, with Wardas driving the scheme forward. The idea reportedly came from a story Wardas saw in an Italian paper.
As described by The Independent, police “set up a fake ransom involving a policeman dressed up as the chauffeur.”
In court, Wardas explained that he had asked his friend Ganev to help him in stealing the coffin, believing that the ransom would help them both survive in an environment where employment had not come so readily to them. Both were political refugees. Wardas had left Poland in search of work, but was virtually destitute in Switzerland and saw the body theft as a viable financial decision. The pair had disinterred the coffin and placed it in Ganev’s car who drove it to the field, where the body was reburied in a shallow grave. Wardas explained in court that “I did not feel particularly squeamish about interfering with a coffin…I was going to hide it deeper in the same hole originally, but it was raining and the earth got too heavy.”
They’d hoped to make a fortune from the audacious Tramp grab. Instead, they landed behind bars. Wardas faced over four years of hard labour, History notes. Ganev received an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was “believed to have limited responsibility.”
What happened to the body?
Charlie Chaplin’s corpse was located in a local cornfield. The pair had dug a new grave for safekeeping and transported the coffin from Corsier-sur-Vevey in Ganev’s vehicle.
Wardas and Gantscho made headlines with a story that was part comedy, part tragedy. In a development Chaplin may have approved of, family lawyer Jean-Felix Paschoud asked for “Mr. Rochat” to stand up. Wardas rose and Paschoud said “Good morning,” getting a laugh in court.
Once Charlie Chaplin was back at home, the family surrounded him with a concrete tomb. Never again would someone desecrate the resting place of Charles Chaplin. Unless they had a chisel and a lot of patience.
Wardas & Gantscho’s story became a movie
In 2014 a movie called The Price of Fame dramatized the affair, using different names for the wrongdoers. Made with the family’s blessing, it starred Benoit Poelvoorde and Roschdy Zem.
Quoted by The Guardian in 1978, Wardas said he “did not feel particularly squeamish about interfering with a coffin.” Ganev explained that he wasn’t perturbed about grave robbing. “Death is not so important where I come from,” he said, though was surprised at the response to the crime.
Both men showed genuine regret for their actions and wrote letters to Oona, who accepted their apologies. Speaking to the Independent, Chaplin’s son Eugene recounted that ‘The wife of the nicer one wrote and said ‘We’re so sorry’. My mother wrote back and said: ‘Look, I have nothing especially against you and all is forgiven.’ Oona passed away in 1991 and is buried alongside her husband. A plaque was also put up by the owner of the cornfield.