The early international press coverage, the police investigation, and the active Interpol involvement made the situation far more complicated than Wardas and Ganev appear to have expected. They held the coffin in the cornfield and waited.
Part Five: The Demands, the Family’s Response, and the Problem of Proof
Several weeks after the theft — the contemporaneous Washington Post account says the family began receiving ransom calls “several weeks” after the theft — a man calling himself “Monsieur Rochat” contacted the Chaplin family’s residence.
Roman Wardas had obtained the telephone number for the Chaplin estate by posing as a journalist. This detail appears in the SwissInfo account of the case and is consistent with other reporting. The Manoir de Ban’s number was not entirely private — the estate had staff and received calls — but it was not publicly listed in a way that would make it accessible to a random caller. Wardas obtained it under a false identity, establishing a pattern of tactical deception that characterized the whole scheme.
The demand was $600,000. The currency denomination in various reports is given as dollars, which in a 1978 Swiss context would likely have reflected a dollar-denominated demand or been converted from Swiss francs; the SwissInfo and Crime Magazine accounts consistently report $600,000.
The initial response from the family was to stall. This was coordinated with the Swiss police, who immediately began tapping the telephone at the Chaplin residence. Jean-Félix Paschoud, the family’s lawyer, was designated to conduct the sham negotiations. His role was to keep Wardas talking — and calling — long enough for police to work.