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More than two weeks passed after Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's death before a final resting place for his body could be found. Both Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy had publicly stated that they would not permit the body to be buried within their jurisdictions, forcing the funeral director to search for a cemetery elsewhere.
It's not entirely unexpected that no one wanted the body. Beyond the distaste of having a terrorist buried near loved ones, there was genuine fear that a grave like Tsarnaev's could become a target for vandalism, protests, admirers of jihadist ideologies, or other disturbances. (Tsarnaev's burial site remains undisclosed.)
Tsarnaev wasn't the first notorious figure to face this dilemma. Following the death sentence of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Congress passed a law preventing military veterans convicted of capital crimes (such as McVeigh) from being buried in military cemeteries. McVeigh's remains were cremated and scattered in an undisclosed location by his attorney. Similarly, terrorist Osama bin Laden was buried at sea after Saudi Arabia refused to accept his remains for repatriation.
After World War II, the Soviets feared that Adolf Hitler’s partially cremated remains, found by the Red Army outside the Führerbunker, would attract neo-Nazis, and any unprotected gravesite would inevitably become a shrine. The KGB took action to destroy the remains and dispose of them in secret. Three agents burned the body in the woods of Germany and scattered the ashes into the wind.
The family of Leon Czolgosz, the man who assassinated President William McKinley in 1901, requested his body, but officials refused and chose to destroy it instead. Drawing from Walter White’s playbook, they buried Czolgosz in the prison where he was executed, placing his body in a coffin filled with quicklime and sulfuric acid to hasten its decay.
In certain instances, one person’s disposal is another’s admiration, and eliminating a fallen villain hasn't always been a challenge. The bodies of the five Palestinian terrorists killed by German police during the 1972 Munich massacre were handed over to Libya, where they were honored by enthusiastic crowds and buried with full military ceremonies.
