The theft of Charlie Chaplin's coffin
Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, 1978
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977, aged 88, at his home in Corsier-sur-Vevey, above Lake Geneva, where he had lived since leaving the United States in 1952. He was buried in the village's small cemetery. On the night of March 1 to 2, 1978, the grave was opened and the coffin vanished.
Shortly afterward, the family began receiving phone calls demanding money in exchange for the body. The widow, Oona Chaplin, refused to pay. The culprits were two immigrant mechanics, a Pole and a Bulgarian, who wanted the ransom to open a workshop. A large police operation, with a tap on the family's phone and surveillance of public phone booths in the region, led to the arrest of the two on May 17, 1978.
Sources
In the game
The Oak Coffin
Above Vevey, Tuesday, March 14, 1978, 10 pm. In the drawing room of a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva, a black telephone is wired to the police recorder, and nobody takes their eyes off it.
The coffin was found buried in a cornfield near the village of Noville, on the Rhône plain. Both men were convicted of desecrating the grave and attempted extortion. Chaplin was reburied in the cemetery at Corsier-sur-Vevey, this time in a reinforced-concrete vault, to prevent the theft from happening again.
