The choice of May 16 as the day of arrest aligns with the SwissInfo account’s detail that Wardas set a specific date and time for a final demand call. If that is accurate, it means the police knew approximately when to be in position. The payphone surveillance, already active, was concentrated and activated for that specific moment.
The arrest on Avenue de la Dôle was the culmination of seventy-six days of investigation — measured from the March 2 discovery to the May 16 arrests. This figure comes from the Swiss National Museum’s 2023 account. Other sources use different starting points. Crime Magazine says “a five-week investigation” followed the theft, which may count from when the ransom calls began rather than from the discovery of the empty grave. The Washington Post’s contemporaneous account says the theft occurred “about two months” before the recovery, which is consistent with the March 2 to May 17 timeline.
Wardas was arrested at the payphone at 9:30 a.m. The Crime Magazine account says he refused initially to name accomplices. Within hours, police had also arrested Ganev. Both men confessed to the theft.
Neither man was known to Swiss police before the arrest. They were, in the description used by contemporaneous reporting including the Washington Post, “Eastern European political refugees.” This description reflects their status as immigrants from communist countries — Poland and Bulgaria — living in Switzerland, where they had sought refuge. The political refugee designation reflected their legal status in Switzerland, not any claim to political persecution related to the crime itself.