Kidnapping Charlie Chaplin

In private the Chaplin family were receiving threatening calls.  It took the kidnappers took two weeks to pluck up the courage to call Lady Chaplin.  Lady Chaplin was so deeply upset that the call was taken by her daughter, Geraldine.  The kidnapper threatened to shoot Geraldine’s younger brother and sister unless his demands were met.  He wanted £330,000 and would call back.   Lady Chaplin was in no mood to yield considering that ”Charlie would have found the whole thing ridiculous”.  Jean-Felix Paschoud, the family lawyer, arranged  to take the calls.  The police had already tapped the line and were installing listening devices in public phone booths across  Lausanne.   There was hope. The kidnapper was lowering his demands in each successive call.  Then came an ultimatum. The kidnapper would call back the following morning with instructions for the final ransom. 

The police were ready.  They kept watch on over 200 public phone boxes and made an arrest the following morning.  They arrested Roman Wardas, a Polish motor mechanic.  Wardas immediately confessed but refused to name his accomplice.  The police quickly worked through a list of acquaintances.  The accomplice was Galtischo Gamev, a Bulgarian motor mechanic. 

When the pair were questioned it was discovered that they were highly incompetent.  Wardas had read a newspaper report about a grave-robbing in Italy and had decided to give it a go.  The pair had taken the corpse fifteen lies from Corsier, to a cornfield on the edge of Lake Geneva where Wardas used to go fishing. Neither could remember precisely where they had buried the body.  The police had to locate it using mine detectors.  Wardas was sentenced to four and a half years of hard labour. Gamev was given a suspended sentence of 18 months.

The corpse was reburied in a tomb lined with concrete in the little cemetry of Corsier-sur-Vevey.