Claim: “Charlie Chaplin is buried beneath 6 feet of concrete because in 1978, his body was stolen.”
Fact.
Three month’s after Chaplin’s death, his body was stolen by two men and held for ransom. The men were caught after their demands were refused. Chaplin’s body was re-buried with concrete reinforcement in order to prevent further theft.
According to BBC News:
The comedian’s body was dug up in March 1978 by two men who reburied it in a cornfield, and began demanding a ransom from Chaplin’s lawyer. Taken from the village cemetery in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, where the comic actor had spent the last 25 years of his life, it was returned to the same grave three months later, following the arrest of the grave robbers – refugees from Poland and Bulgaria. This time, however, the vault was made of reinforced concrete. The village gravedigger who discovered the theft said there was no chance of the body again being spirited away at night. “You would need a pneumatic drill to open that vault,” he said. “And that is bound to make a lot of noise.”
Source
Yasser Arafat: 10 other people who have been exhumed (BBC News Magazine: November 27, 2012)
