Chaplin, Gogol and other famous people abducted after death

Sometimes thieves dare to steal the contents of graves. There may be many reasons for this: sometimes fans do not stop chasing their idols even after their death, someone is trying to make money on the ashes of celebrities, others want to save the remains from destruction.

Let's recall the most high-profile abductions of great people after death. The bodies of many were never found.

Most often in history, the relics of saints were stolen. So it happened in Venice, whose patron saint is St. Mark the Evangelist, whose symbol, like the symbol of the city, is a lion. Today, the relics of the saint are kept in the main altar of St. Mark's Cathedral in the central square of Venice. But Mark has never been to the city itself, Venice was founded much later than his death.

There is a legend that when Saint Mark was returning from Aquileia to Ravenna, the ship on which he sailed stopped on an island, where an angel appeared to the saint in a dream and said that it was here that Mark would find his last rest. The prediction came true when the Venetian merchants Buono and Rustico secretly took the relics of the saint from Alexandria, where he was buried. Moreover, they hid Mark's body among barrels of pork, which, as is known, Muslims cannot touch. The story of this legendary abduction is immortalized today on the frescoes of the cathedral.

The remains of Grand Duke Yaroslav the Wise have not been found to this day. It is only known that they disappeared from St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev in the XX century. In general, according to the documents, the sarcophagus of the prince was opened more than once. The first time was in 1936, then in 1939 and in 1964. The fourth autopsy took place in 2009. Together with the remains, scientists found the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia, dated 1964. Two years later, in 2011, the results of the genetic examination appeared. It turned out that the remains of two women were in the sarcophagus. And some belong to the time of Yaroslav himself, while others are a thousand years older (Scythian settlements). But the fate of the prince's ashes still remains unclear.

According to one version, the ashes of Yaroslav the Wise could have been taken out of Representatives of the UGCC of St. Sophia Cathedral, taking them along with the icon of St. Nicholas the Wet in 1943. The icon, by the way, was found in 1973 in Holy Trinity Church, located in New York.

The belated discovery of the loss also happened to the ashes of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. During his lifetime, he was recognized as a heretic and expelled from Florence, so after his death he was buried in one of the churches in Ravenna. As with most geniuses, recognition came to Dante only after death. Then it was decided to solemnly reburial the poet in his native land. And what was the surprise of the participants of the ceremony when, after opening the coffin, it turned out to be empty.

According to one version, the remains of Alighieri were hidden in advance by Franciscan monks who tried to protect the poet's body from the wrath of the pope, who dreamed of burning a heretic.

Fortunately, Dante's ashes were found. It happened by chance, during the restoration work in the church of San Francesco, where the great poet was originally buried. A box with a plaque was found in the wall, from which it was clear that Dante's remains were placed there in 1677 by Antonio Santi.

It's right to say that from genius to madness is one step. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, known to us all from school, was "with oddities" during his lifetime. He often had seizures, accompanied by depression to such an extent that one day he said: "Hanging or drowning seemed to me like some kind of medicine and relief."

As you know, the writer was terribly afraid of being buried alive, in a so-called lethargic dream: "My body should not be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear." The strangeness continued after his death, when during the reburial of Gogol in 1931, the writer's skull was not found in the coffin!

Today, there are many different versions about who did encroach on Gogol's ashes, but Nikolai Vasilyevich's head remains in an unknown place. Literary critics believe that the story of Gogol's skull was reflected in Bulgakov's work "The Master and Margarita" in the scene with the death of Berlioz.

Charlie Chaplin

In 1978, two intruders decided that they could make a good profit by demanding money for the ransom of Charlie Chaplin's remains. And on March 1, they managed to steal his coffin, located in the tiny Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey (where the actor lived for a quarter of a century). The widow was presented with demands in the form of 650 thousand dollars, which at that time was a fantastic amount.

The widow, of course, did not have such money. Therefore, she refused, saying that "Charlie would find it ridiculous." And at the same time, the woman went to the police. The kidnappers were caught pretty quickly. They were immigrants from Bulgaria and Poland. They admitted that they hid the remains of Charlie Chaplin 15 kilometers from the cemetery. Soon they were returned to their former place. And so that no one else would try to steal them, the actor's grave was "hidden" in a concrete cocoon.

Kurt Cobain

In 2008, a robbery occurred at the California home of actress and singer Courtney Love. In addition to valuables and jewelry, the robbers took a lock of hair and the remains of her husband, the leader of the famous Nirvana group Kurt Cobain. The inconsolable widow told the press that she was then on the verge of suicide: "It was all I had left of my husband. I took the remains with me everywhere to feel that Kurt was still with me. Now I feel like I've lost him for the second time."

Cobain's ashes were found a few months later by the German artist Natalia Stellmach, who stated that she had acquired Kurt's remains in order to smoke them at the closing of her art exhibition and free the musician's soul from the "information circus".

The last high-profile attempt on the ashes of celebrities occurred from December 31, 2013 to January 1, 2014. This time the target turned out to be the remains of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. It happened at the Golders Green crematorium in London, where the ashes of many British celebrities, in particular Bram Stoker, are kept.

But the criminals, obviously, were frightened by something, and they hurried to escape from the crime scene empty-handed, however, badly damaging the ancient Greek urn where the ashes of Freud and his wife Martha are kept. The crime still remains unsolved.

Charlie Chaplin

Kurt Cobain