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Q: "Famous physically dead persons coffins (with body) stolen" ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   2 Comments )
Question  
Subject: "Famous physically dead persons coffins (with body) stolen"
Category: Arts and Entertainment > Celebrities
Asked by: keyboard-ga
List Price: $2.40
Posted: 18 Sep 2005 10:10 PDT
Expires: 18 Oct 2005 10:10 PDT
Question ID: 569392
Hello Google Answer Experts:

I am wanting to get information of famous people that have been
physically dead whose physical body or coffin with physical body
inside has been stolen by other people for any motive.  Your answer
does not have to be specific from a particular region but any in
previous times.  Possibly there could be other facts concerning the
theft and I would also like some weblinks about these.

Hopefully this question is not too complex for some response and
should not take too long to answer.  Someone can even have some
knowledge through reading newspaper items about a famous person or
seen something on television or heard something on radio that could
answer this question.

Thank you
Answer  
Subject: Re: "Famous physically dead persons coffins (with body) stolen"
Answered By: tlspiegel-ga on 19 Sep 2005 01:26 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hi keyboard,

Thank you for your question.

http://www.celebritymorgue.com/evita-peron/

"Evita Peron died July 26, 1952, of uterine cancer in Buenos Aires.
Her body was stolen by anti-Peronistas in 1955 and hidden in Italy
until 1971. In 1974, Evita's remains were returned to Argentina for
burial in the presidential crypt."

*****

http://www.travelsur.net/facts133.htm

Eva Peron 

"Although Maria Eva Duarte de Peron, known throughout the world as
Evita, lived very briefly, her impact on Argentine politics was
enormous and continues today, more than four decades after her death."

[edit]

"In 1955, Evita's corpse disappeared, stolen by the military after
they had deposed Juan Peron. It was carried to Germany and then Italy,
where it was interred for 16 years under another name. After
negotiations, it was finally returned to her husband in Spain."

=========

bbc.co.uk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/17/newsid_2512000/2512129.stm

"1978: Charlie Chaplin's stolen body found
The coffin containing the body of Charlie Chaplin - missing since his
grave was robbed 11 weeks ago - has been found."

[edit]

"Swiss police have arrested two men - a Pole aged 24 and a Bulgarian
aged 38 - and say they have confessed to stealing the coffin 10 weeks
ago and reburying it."

=========

Bits and Pieces - whatever became of them?
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/England-History/BitsandPieces.htm

"It is quite amazing how many parts of the body belonging to famous
people in history, somehow become separated from the body itself and
turn up again, many years or even centuries later.

Queen Anne Boleyn (1507 - 1536)

After Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded in 1536 on the orders of her
husband, King Henry VIII, her heart was stolen and secretly hidden in
a church near Thetford, Suffolk.  Her heart was re-discovered in 1836
and re-buried under the church organ where it remains still."

*****

King Charles I (1600 - 1649)

"King Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and buried at Windsor Castle in
the same vault as Henry VIII.  The coffin was opened in 1813 and Sir
Henry Halford, the royal surgeon, performed an autopsy on the body. 
He secretly stole Charles' fourth cervical vertebra and for the next
30 years he loved to shock his friends at dinner parties by using the
vertebra as a salt-holder.

Queen Victoria, hearing of this, demanded that the bone was returned
to Charles' coffin immediately.  It was!"

*****

Louis XIV of France ( 1638- 1715)

"During the French Revolution the tomb of the French king was wrecked
and plundered.  His heart was stolen and sold to Lord Harcourt who
later sold it to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend William
Buckland.  One night at dinner, the Dean, who liked to experiment with
food, ate the embalmed heart!"

*****

Ben Johnson ( 1573 - 1637)

"Ben Johnson, the English dramatist, was buried standing up in
Westminster Abbey, but in 1849 his grave was disturbed during a later
internment.  The Dean of Westminster, William Buckland ( see Louis XIV
above), stole Johnson's heel-bone but it later disappeared and was not
found again until 1938 when the bone reappeared in an old furniture
shop!"

=========

Bodynapping Italian-Style
http://www.slowtrav.com/mindseye/030504.htm

"The coffin and body of a 92-year old man was stolen from the family
crypt on the shores of Lago Maggiore by persons unknown. The deed was
discovered in mid-March by a family caretaker assigned to place fresh
flowers on the grave each Sunday. The deceased was Italy?s most famous
banker, a cagey Sicilian dead since last June; the body had been laid
to rest in the mausoleum beneath that of his wife, Idea Socialista.
Speculation has followed that extortion is the goal of the theft
although no ransom has yet been demanded. In the past, the Mafia has
been known to ransom stolen corpses. A prominent corporate leader has
declared, "There is no limit to evil in Italy.""

=========

Stephen Juan 
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/drstephenjuan/news_body_odysseys.htm

HAYDN 

"The world famous composer, Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) had his head stolen."

*****

MOZART 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791

"Only a few friends attended Mozart's funeral. His body was removed
from the reusable coffin and dumped in a mass grave."

*****

SWEDENBORG 

"Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) famed scientist, theologian, educator,
and mystic, spent nearly all of his 84 years in his native Sweden. But
he died away from home on 29 March 1772 and was buried at the St.
George of the East Church in London.

In 1908, the Swedish government sought to have Swedenborg's body
reburied in the great cathedral in Uppsala. When his body was exhumed,
it was discovered that his head was missing. An investigation revealed
that Swedenborg's skull was stolen some 50 years after his death by a
retired ship captain and amateur phrenologist."

*****

GOYA 

"Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was the most famous Spanish
painter of his day and arguably one of the finest painters who ever
lived.

Goya spent nearly his entire life in his native Spain. He died on 16
April 1828 at age 82 during a brief stay in France. He was buried in
the cemetery of Chartreuse in Bordeaux.

In 1899, the Spanish government obtained permission to transfer Goya's
remains to Madrid for reburial with great fanfare at the Church of San
Antonio de la Florida. The site was well chosen. Goya had painted the
Church's beautiful frescoes a century before.

But when authorities opened his grave in Bordeaux, to the shock of
all, it was discovered there was not just one, but two skeletons
inside. What was worse, there was only one skull. Decomposition was
such that there was no way of telling with certainty if the skull
belonged to one body or the other."

=========

http://classicals.com/music/FranzJosefHaydnhall/cas/65.html

"Haydn's head was indeed stolen shortly after his burial in 1809. It
was stolen by some students who were interested in the science of
phrenology, which is the study of skulls. It was all the rage in the
19th century. People believed intelligence was related to skull shape.
After ping through a series of owners it was reunited with it's body
in the 1950's. The full story of this and Mozart's skull can be found
in a book called "After the Funeral -The Posthumous Adventures of
Famous Corpses" by Edwin A. Murphy. Mozart's skull, despite forensic
testing, has not been conclusively identified with as belonging to the
composer."

=========

Church plea over woman's remains  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/4210064.stm
 
"A senior Church official has appealed for the return of a woman's
remains stolen from her grave during a campaign by animal rights
activists.
 
Gladys Hammond, 82, was related to the owners of Darley Oaks Farm, who
said last week they would stop breeding guinea pigs for medical
research.

Her remains were taken from a grave in nearby Yoxall, Staffs, in October."
 
[edit]

"Mrs Hammond's body was taken from her grave in St Peter's churchyard
in Yoxall on 6 or 7 October 2004, seven years after she was buried
there."

=========
 
EXHUMATION CELEBRATION  
http://www.who2.com/ExhumationCelebration.html

"England's long history of being ruled by monarchs was briefly
interrupted in the 17th century, when Puritan military hero OLIVER
CROMWELL ruled over a fledgling republic. It was a republic in name
only, and Cromwell ruled briefly as a dictator, called the Lord
Protector, from 1653 until his death in 1658. A few years after his
death, the country had returned to a monarchy and King Charles II
ruled. Cromwell's body was removed from its burial place at
Westminster Abbey and descrated. His head was severed and stuck on a
pole, where it stayed for twenty years -- a potent warning against
dissidents. His head was eventually recovered and reburied in 1960,
but nobody knows what happened to the rest of his body."

*****

"THOMAS PAINE, author of Common Sense, died penniless in 1809 and
nobody much cared. Except Englishman William Cobbett, who dug up and
swiped Paine's remains ten years later, hoping to smuggle them to
England. His goal was to build a shrine and rebury his hero.
Unfortunately, the remains were somehow lost along the way."

*****

"American Civil War general THOMAS J. "STONEWALL" JACKSON was not
exhumed, but his left arm was. General Jackson was one of the most
brilliant officers on the side of the Confederates, a former professor
of artillery tactics at Virginia Military Institute and a
distinguished veteran of the U. S. - Mexican War. Jackson was
seriously wounded by his own men as he returned from the battlefield
at Chancellorville, Virginia. His left arm was shot up and had to be
amputated. The arm was spirited away by someone and buried in a
nondescript grave near the site of the battle. Jackson was taken to a
safer place to recuperate, but died eight days later and was taken to
Lexington to be buried. In 1929 the arm was exhumed, placed in a small
box (it had been wrapped in cloth) and reburied at the Ellwood Family
Cemetery near Spotsylvania."

*****

"The legend of Santa Claus has its origins in the stories surrounding
ST. NICHOLAS, a 4th century bishop who became a saint of the Catholic
Church. After his death, he was buried near his church at Myra and his
grave served as a shrine for centuries. In 1087 his remains were
stolen and taken to Bari, Italy, where they became enshrined, boosting
Bari's popularity as a site for pilgrimage."

=========

17th-century poet's skull stolen, replaced
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040422-033042-5108r.htm

"An Italian analysis of what is thought to be the skeleton of poet
Francesco Petrarch, father of the sonnet, revealed his skull was
replaced by a woman's."

[edit]

"Marin has determined that while the body in Petrarch's coffin is most
likely the poet's, the skull -- which is broken into several pieces --
belonged to a female and could not be his.

"This must have been robbery," Marin said. "It is not, frankly, a nice business."

Petrarch, upon whose poems Shakespeare later based his famous sonnets,
is revered in Italy and is set to be celebrated this year on the 700th
anniversary of his birth.

His coffin is known to have been opened twice before Marin looked
inside this year. In 1630 a drunken friar and four accomplices broke
in through a corner of the tomb and stole some of the poet's bones --
but are not thought to have taken his skull."

=========

Nothing Found in Inner Chamber of Coffin of Laoshan Tomb
http://english1.people.com.cn/english/200009/26/eng20000926_51255.html

"Nothing has been found inside the coffin's inner chamber at the
Laoshan tomb in Beijing. Archaeologists found only decorative patterns
of silk fabrics when the outer chamber of the ancient tomb was opened
Sunday.

A senior archaeologist said thieves had stolen everything in the coffin. 

It took archeologists half a day today to open the lid of the coffin
inside the tomb dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24
A.D.).

The tomb was accidentally found early this year. Archeological
excavations have continued since then.

The 12-meter-tall tomb occupies an area half the size of a football field. 

Wang Wuyu, who is in charge of the excavation, said some of the
unearthed objects from the Laoshan tomb indicate that the tomb
occupant was a king of the Yan Kingdom."

*****

Archaeological Discoveries in 2000 - china.org.cn
http://www.china.org.cn/e-kaogu/2000/5.htm

========

Lincoln's Body Almost Stolen - THE 1876 ATTEMPT TO STEAL MR. LINCOLN'S BODY!

Thieves caught in the act after having the coffin partially out of the sarcophagus!
http://members.aol.com/RVSNorton1/Lincoln47.html

=========

http://www.savingantiquities.org/x-chinapresentation-03.htm

=========

keyword search:

famous dead people body stolen
famous bodies stolen out of coffin
famous corpses stolen
stolen from the grave

=========

Best regards,
tlspiegel
keyboard-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars and gave an additional tip of: $2.60
Thank you for your early response.  By the way I am a believer of Hare
Krishna-Universal Guru Form, and also I believe through evidence that
NASA/CIA/Pentagon/Secret Groups/Vatican had a link in physically
killing the Hare Krishna Founder because he preached/preaches that
there never were any moon landings.  Shame that Google has tied with
NASA into letting the world believe that moon landings happened,
announced on September 29 2005.

Comments  
Subject: Re: "Famous physically dead persons coffins (with body) stolen"
From: tlspiegel-ga on 30 Sep 2005 00:47 PDT
 
Hi keyboard,

Thank you for the 5 star rating, comments, and tip!

Best regards,
tlspiegel
Subject: Re: "Famous physically dead persons coffins (with body) stolen"
From: keyboard-ga on 12 Oct 2005 14:36 PDT
 
I hope you do not mind if I copy what I wrote in purple box over here
because the Google Answers software does not allow the contents in the
purple box to be listed during searches.  Guess I am doing a service
for other users!

"keyboard-ga  rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars and gave an
additional tip of: $2.60

Thank you for your early response.  By the way I am a believer of Hare
Krishna-Universal Guru Form, and also I believe through evidence that
NASA/CIA/Pentagon/Secret Groups/Vatican had a link in physically
killing the Hare Krishna Founder because he preached/preaches that
there never were any moon landings.  Shame that Google has tied with
NASA into letting the world believe that moon landings happened,
announced on September 29 2005."


Thank you very much Google Answers team.

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