In 2012, a gravedigger was checked at night not far from the Pantin cemetery. He appears from Thursday for violation of burial and aggravated theft. Two of his former colleagues are also implicated.
On November 26, 2012, around 2:40 a.m., police officers noticed two men near the Pantin cemetery, in Seine-Saint-Denis. They are equipped with gloves, headlamps and a crowbar. One of them, a gravedigger, carries a small bag, which the agents discover contains eleven gold teeth covered with fresh earth. In his car, other teeth, jewelry and an electronic scale.
10,000 euros of gains
The man, now 35, appears from Thursday in Bobigny with two other gravediggers. He is being prosecuted for violation of burial and aggravated theft. He is suspected of having organized trafficking, reselling gold from graves – teeth, crowns, bracelets, rings – to Parisian jewelers. An activity carried out on one’s own account or for colleagues in exchange for a commission.
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Placed in custody, the man admitted having extracted teeth of a jaw during a “digging” carried out to empty an abandoned grave, according to a source close to the investigation. For three years, between 2009 and 2012, the gravedigger, who, according to his colleagues, had “always his balance on him“, would have touched more than 10,000 euro in this way.
“A usual practice”
His two former colleagues, aged 47 and 81, are on trial only for aggravated theft. They claim to have recovered teeth when cleaningdemanded by their hierarchy, of concessions “fallen into disinheritance“. “Golden teeth are the last things that remain, with the bones, in ancient graves, supports Yves Crespincounsel for the main defendant. Collecting them when cleaning abandoned graves is a common practice for gravediggers.”
According to him, the legal qualification of theft is not applicable. “My client admits having taken teeth that he considered to be abandoned objects, which belong to no one“, he says. The city of Paris, owner of the cemetery and civil party to the trial, “has no right“on these objects, assures the lawyer.
Precedents
“There is a protocol when cleaning concessions“, details Frederic Beaufilswho is defending another defendant.”The gravediggers must be two. The objects found are consigned to a small box and sent to Père Lachaise for incineration.“But according to him, these instructions are obsolete when the vault is reopened for a burial, and new objects are then found:”There are no instructions there. Getting them back is something everyone does.”
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Contacted by AFP, the lawyer for the town hall of Paris did not wish to speak. In 2000, seven gravediggers had been sentenced to two years in prison, including two months closed by the Montpellier Court of Appeal (Hérault). They were judged for “violations of graves, thefts and attacks on the integrity of corpses“. More recently, in Lyon, four cemetery officers were indicted in 2013 for having stolen gold jewelry and teeth from corpses and recovered headstones with the aim of reselling them.
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