Vevey, Switzerland

A young Polish refugee told a Swiss court yesterday that he dug up Charlie Chaplin’s body and tried to sell it to the comedian’s family because he was in financial trouble.

Roman Wardas, a 24-year-old car mechanic, said he was out of work, and going through hard times when he read a newspaper report about a similar case in Italy. “As a result I decided to hide Charlie Chaplin’s body and solve my problems,” Wardas told Vevey District Court at the start of his trial.

Together with 38-year-old Gantscho Ganev, a Bulgarian, Wardas is accused of desecrating Chaplin’s tomb in a village graveyard and attempting to extort $600,000 from the Chaplin family.

The coffin containing the comedian’s body disappeared last March, just over two months after his death at the age of 88 last Christmas Day. It was found two-and-a-half months later, buried in a cornfield beside Lake Geneva, and returned to its original resting place – this time in a theft-proof concrete tomb. Wardas said he asked his friend Ganev to help dig up the coffin at Corsier-sur-Vevey, near the mansion where Chaplin lived for 23 years.

“I did not feel particularly squeamish about interfering with a coffin,” he said. “I was going to hide it deeper in the same hole originally, but it was raining and the earth got too heavy.”

Wardas said in answer to a question by Court President Roland Chatelain: “I left my country is order to be free, but found it difficult to get steady work in Switzerland. He said the coffin was lifted out into Ganev’s car, then reburied in a field 20 kilometres (about 12 miles) farther along Lake Geneva.

Then, using the pseudonym “Mr Rochat,” he made several calls to the Chaplin mansion demanding a ransom and eventually threatening violence to Lady Oona Chapin’s younger children if he did not get the money, Wardas said.

Co-defendant Ganev told the court: “I was not bothered about lifting the coffin. Death is not so important where I come from.” He said he had been gaoled in Bulgaria far attempting to flee to Turkey, but had eventually succeeded in escaping to the West, finding work as a car mechanic in Lausanne. Ganev said that after using his vehicle to move the coffin and helping to rebury it he took no further part in the affair.

But the Bulgarian, who said he only joined Mr Wardas’s plan believing that the risks were minimal, became alarmed at the impact on the public of the coffin’s disappearance, according to a psychiatric report requested by Ganev’s lawyer.

There was laughter in court when the Chaplins’ lawyer Mr Jean-Felix Paschoud, who received most of the ransom calls, asked from the witness stand to be introduced to “Mr Rochat.” Rising nervously to his feet, Wardas was bid a courteous good morning by the lawyer.

Police at the desecrated grave of English film actor and director Charlie Chaplin in the cemetery at Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, March 1978. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

Wardas was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labour and Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was believed to have limited responsibility for the crime.