The caretaker of the small cemetery at Corsier-sur-Vevey arrived for work on the morning of March 2, 1978, and found what should not have been there: an open grave.
The coffin that had rested in that plot since late December — a heavy oak box containing the remains of one of the most recognizable human beings of the twentieth century — was gone. Tire tracks led away from the disturbed earth. Someone had worked through the night with shovels, crossed the cemetery grounds without being seen, loaded a 135-kilogram coffin into a vehicle, and disappeared into the Swiss countryside before dawn.
Charlie Chaplin had been dead for sixty-eight days.
His widow, Oona, was living with her youngest children at the family estate a short distance away in Corsier-sur-Vevey, the village above Lake Geneva where the Chaplins had made their home since 1953. She had buried her husband of thirty-four years in the local cemetery after a private funeral, in the place he had chosen to spend the last quarter of his life. Now she was told that his grave was empty.
Swiss police from the Canton Vaud opened an investigation. In the early hours after the discovery, they had almost nothing to work with. No witnesses. No credible motive. No demand had been made. The cemetery was small, the village was quiet, and investigators could not immediately say whether the act was politically motivated, an expression of obsession, a deliberate insult, or something stranger still.
For weeks, the grave stayed empty. Rumors moved faster than the investigation: that Chaplin’s remains had been spirited to England by devoted fans, that the theft was the work of right-wing provocateurs, that the coffin was hidden somewhere in the Alps. The family’s lawyer told journalists that statements attributed to Oona in early press reports were “a complete fabrication.” The magistrate leading the inquiry said investigators were “mystified” and that nothing new had developed after an entire week.