A Brief History On March 2, 1978, comic actor Charlie Chaplin suffered the indignity of having his coffin stolen from its grave in Switzerland. The grave robbers held Chaplin’s remains for ransom, but were soon caught and the coffin, complete with Charlie, was reburied, this time with reinforced concrete. Digging Deeper Chaplin was not the only celebrity to be victimized by grave robbers, and today we look at two other notable cases. Thomas Paine, American revolutionary, was improbably dug up in 1819 by an Englishman that brought the body to England for a more ceremonial interment, but lacking funds, he…
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A Brief History On February 27, 2015, Russian physicist Boris Nemtsov found out personally why publicly taking issue with Vladimir Putin is dangerous to his health. A liberal leaning politician, Nemtsov had become a vocal critic of Russian dictator Putin since about 2000, ultimately leading to the assassination of Nemtsov. Digging Deeper Nemtsov had expressed fear of being murdered at Putin’s behest only a couple weeks before the murder, a murder by five Chechen men contracted for the killing. Nemtsov was gunned down while walking across Moscow’s Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge shortly before midnight. Despite being the victim of a crime,…
A Brief History On February 22, 1974, US Army veteran Samuel Byck failed miserably in his attempt to assassinate President Richard Nixon, when he was unable to successfully hijack a DC-9 jetliner in order to crash it into the White House. Digging Deeper Byck first stole a .22 caliber pistol and used it to hijack a jet at the BWI airport, shooting a police officer and both pilots in the process. Eventually, Byck was wounded by a police officer shooting through a window in the jet, and Byck then shot himself. Another notable bungled presidential assassination was the first ever…
A Brief History On February 19, 1978, Egyptian commandos raided Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus in an attempt to rescue hostages taken in the hijacking of a Cyprus Airways Douglas DC-8. The Egyptians were not authorized by Cyprus to engage the hijackers, and a firefight broke out between Cypriot forces against the Egyptians, resulting in at least 18 Egyptians killed and another 18 wounded, while eight Cypriots were wounded. Digging Deeper A pair of terrorists had assassinated two Egyptians at a conference in Cyprus, and then took hostages to the airport and boarded a jetliner. Not allowed to land anywhere…
A Brief History On February 18, 2013, eight robbers dressed up as police officers hit the Brussels Airport in Belgium with a brazen diamond heist that netted the crooks $50 million worth of the precious stones. Digging Deeper Using a van and a car made up to look like police vehicles and wearing police type uniforms while armed with AK-47 type rifles, the robbers entered the airport through a hole they cut in the perimeter fence and intercepted the load of diamonds as they were being transferred from an armored truck to a Fokker 100 jetliner operated by Helvetic Airways.…