Buzz
It’s customary for people to wish the deceased "rest in peace." Yet, even when these words are spoken, they don’t always reflect true intentions. One example is bodysnatchers who sold corpses to satisfy scientific curiosity. Grave robbers, too, were a part of this dark history. Often, those disturbing the dead were impoverished and driven by desperation.
Throughout history, various reasons have led people to tamper with the deceased, especially if the individual was well-known. The famous, unable to protest, have had their body parts stolen after death. While some were returned, others vanished without a trace. Below are ten of the most eerie instances of stolen body parts from celebrated figures.
10. Haydn’s Head
When composer Joseph Haydn passed away in Austria in 1809, he was one of Europe's most renowned musicians, if not the most famous of his era. Despite the public grief, the ongoing war led to his hasty burial without the grand ceremony his status deserved. However, his grave near Vienna was always meant to be temporary. Haydn’s patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, intended to move his remains to a more fitting tomb.
When the prince finally made arrangements to relocate Haydn’s remains over a decade later, he was astonished to find that the composer’s skull was missing. All that was left behind was the powdered wig that should have rested on his head.
It turned out that Haydn’s head had been taken by admirers who wished to measure it. They were apprehended, but refused to return the authentic skull. In a bizarre twist, they tried to pass off other skulls as Haydn’s. The genuine skull was finally returned to Haydn’s body in 1954, 145 years after his death.
9. Galileo’s Fingers
It would take more than twice the 145-year wait that Haydn’s skull experienced for the fingers of the famous Italian astronomer Galileo to be recovered. Unlike Haydn, whose head was stolen before being moved to a proper tomb, three of Galileo’s fingers and a tooth were taken during the transfer of his body to a new sarcophagus in Florence in 1737. Galileo had died nearly a century earlier, in 1642, and was initially buried quietly because the church saw him as a heretic.
However, the church’s influence diminished under the Medicis, who erected the “Monumental Tomb of Galileo Galilei” to honor the astronomer’s contributions. Ironically, the individuals who stole Galileo’s fingers did so for the same reason that religious followers had once taken body parts from saints – they sought to possess a part of a hero.
At one point, one of Galileo’s fingers was removed and ended up in a science museum in Florence. In 2009, the remaining fingers surfaced at an auction, carefully preserved inside a glass jar.
8. Mary Magdalene’s Hand
Had Galileo been officially declared a saint, and had he lived between the ninth and twelfth centuries, his admirers’ strange actions wouldn’t have been so unusual. During that period, competition for relics was so intense that monasteries often stole them from one another. There were even professional relic traders.
Relics were big business; possessing the right ones would attract pilgrims and bring prestige to a church or monastery. Additionally, the theological belief that “the whole was in each part” suggested that even a small fragment of a saint’s body contained all of that saint’s power.
This led to events like the one involving Bishop Hugh of Lincoln in 12th-century France at the Abbey of Fecamp. The monks there claimed to have St. Mary Magdalene’s hand, the woman who had known Jesus. The English bishop reportedly bent down to kiss the hand, but at the last moment, he bit off a chunk to take with him.
7. Louis XIV’s Heart
In 1715, Louis XIV passed away after a lifetime of indulgence in extravagant feasts. He almost reached 77 years of age, but his love for food had taken its toll. Severely overweight and suffering from a gangrenous leg, possibly caused by Type 2 diabetes, he succumbed. Following the tradition for deceased French kings, his body was divided into three parts: heart, body, and entrails.
His stomach was reportedly twice the size of an average human’s. However, this doesn’t imply he would have approved of one of his organs being consumed. After his death, his embalmed heart was kept at a Jesuit church in Paris. It was stolen during the French Revolution and eventually came into the possession of the Archbishop of York.
In 1848, the Archbishop received a visit from William Buckland, a man with diverse scientific and theological interests, including a fascination with unusual foods. Buckland, who claimed he would sample a piece from every animal, took the chance to cross humans off his list when he learned that his host possessed Louis XIV’s heart.
6. Oliver Cromwell’s Head
Louis XIV was not the only monarch disturbed by the upheaval of the French Revolution. James II, who died in exile in Paris in 1701, met a similar fate to Louis. His body was dissected, and some of his intestines were sent to a church in a Paris suburb. When revolutionaries attacked the churches in 1789, it was believed that all traces of the last Stuart king had been lost. However, his intestines were rediscovered when the church was demolished and rebuilt in 1824.
James had been exiled for his attempt to restore absolute monarchy in the British Isles, but there would be no return to that era after Oliver Cromwell defeated the monarchy during the English Civil War. While not a monarch, Cromwell, as head of state, was first buried in Westminster Abbey. However, following the monarchy’s restoration, royalists exhumed his body.
Initially, Cromwell’s body was hung from scaffolding. Later, it was decapitated, and his head was placed on a spike. The body was never seen again, but Cromwell’s head passed through many hands over the years. At one point, it was even part of a traveling show. Shockingly, it wasn’t reburied until 1960 at the University of Cambridge.
5. George Washington’s Dentures
Although George Washington’s dentures weren’t technically part of his body, they likely contained pieces from others. During Washington’s lifetime, dentures were often made from both human and animal teeth. By the time he became president, Washington had already lost all his teeth and would go through at least six sets of dentures in the remainder of his life.
The set of dentures that was stolen also included ivory and gold. Contrary to popular belief, they were never made from wood. Instead, they were uncomfortable and unsightly, causing his cheeks to appear puffed up.
In 1981, a set of George Washington’s dentures was stolen from the National Museum of American History, in what seemed to be an inside job. Previously displayed in a dental exhibit, they had been moved to a locked storage room for safekeeping due to a series of thefts just before they disappeared. Surprisingly, almost a year later, the lower half of the dentures was found in one of the museum’s storerooms.
4. JFK’s Brain
The last confirmed sighting of JFK’s brain was inside a stainless-steel container with a screw-top, kept at the National Archives. After his autopsy, the brain was transported there without incident, having been briefly stored in a filing cabinet and an evidence locker. However, nearly three years later, in October 1966, it was discovered that the brain and other autopsy materials had disappeared.
In the five decades since, no one has uncovered who took it, where it went, or why. This mystery has fueled countless conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s assassination. Some believe the brain was stolen to conceal the fact that Kennedy was shot from the front, not the back. Others have speculated that his brother, Robert Kennedy, took it to prevent people from learning that JFK was suffering from severe illness or using many medications.
3. Blackbeard’s Skull
Though Blackbeard only spent a brief time plundering ships, his legacy as a pirate has endured far more than any other. Surprisingly, there’s little to suggest he was particularly violent, but during his final battle against British Lieutenant Robert Maynard’s forces in 1717, he fought fiercely. Before the confrontation, Maynard made it clear that he intended to bring Blackbeard back, either alive or dead.
Blackbeard, however, refused to surrender, stating that he would “neither give nor take quarter.” The British navy offered him none, tricking him into boarding their ship, where he was shot at least five times. His head was severed and displayed from the bowsprit of Maynard’s ship as he sailed to Virginia, where the governor mounted it on a pike. This is where the story takes a strange turn.
When it was eventually taken down, Blackbeard’s skull was said to have been silver-plated, and over the years, several people used it as a punch bowl. Among them were a tavern in Williamsburg, dinner party hosts, and even a fraternity. The skull, thought to be his, is now said to be locked away in a museum in Massachusetts.
2. Kurt Cobain’s Ashes
Given the name of his band, it only seemed fitting that Kurt Cobain’s ashes would be scattered at a Buddhist temple after his death in 1994. However, not all of them were scattered there. A portion of his ashes was also spread in the Wishkah River in Washington, and the rest allegedly ended up in a handbag shaped like a pink bear.
This pink bear-shaped bag was kept in a closet by Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love, until June 2008, when she claimed that a friend had stolen it. But that was just the start of the bizarre story. A few months later, an Australian artist named Natascha Stellmach claimed to have the ashes. She refused to reveal how she obtained them, only saying it was “kind of magic,” and explained her plan to smoke them.
According to Stellmach’s website, she invited six volunteers to join her in the act, but it was carried out in private and was never documented. However, the tale takes one final twist. A spokesperson for Courtney Love later stated that Cobain’s ashes had never been stolen at all.
1. Stalin’s Body
Joseph Stalin’s body remained intact and its location was always known, but it was eventually moved from the original burial site that he had chosen. This site, where his body was displayed next to that of Vladimir Lenin, was a public display for many years. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, has been preserved behind glass since his death in 1924, using various chemicals and an electric pump to maintain the humidity.
Stalin had envisioned the same fate for himself as Lenin, and for a time, he received it. When he passed away in 1953, the public still revered him as the hero who had led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II. However, with Nikita Khrushchev rising to power, the process of 'de-Stalinization' began.
Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s brutal actions and tarnished his reputation, eventually convincing the Soviet people that Stalin’s body should not be displayed like Lenin’s. In 1961, his body was removed from Lenin’s tomb and reburied nearby, alongside other lesser Soviet leaders.
