Police in Italy were able to stop the theft of a Ferrari. No, I’m not talking about the new F12berlinetta (MSRP $379,866). Nor am I talking about the 1961 Ferrari 250GT California ("Che bella"). I’m referring to the one and only Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the sportscar empire who died in 1988.
As Ben Guarino reports in the Washington Post, "Italian authorities said Tuesday they’d foiled a plot concocted by Sardinian bandits to break into the cemetery, abscond with Ferrari’s casket and hold his remains for ransom." At least they weren't going to sell it for parts.
The group being held responsible is Anonima Sequestri, which CNN describes as "a Sardinian criminal organization that has a history of kidnap-for-ransom crimes." But Italian law enforcement quickly shifted into high gear and put the brakes on this operation—at the moment, 34 suspects have been arrested. Fast and furious they ain't! (I know, I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this story.)
But what is it with Italian grave robbers? I was reminded of Domenico Leccisi, the neo-Fascist who, on April 23, 1946, stole the body of Benito Mussolini. (The dictator's grave was found empty on Easter Sunday.) As I explained in a 2005 piece for Policy Review,
For more than three months, Mussolini’s corpse was crammed inside a steamer trunk, hidden in a village, taken to the mountains, and kept inside a monastery. After police apprehended Leccisi and agreed to certain clerical demands for a Christian burial, the body was placed in the chapel of the Cerro Maggiore convent outside Milan. Between 1946 and 1957, his whereabouts remained a state secret — not even Mussolini’s family knew where he was. As Sergio Luzzatto relates, "By declining to return the body to the Mussolini family, the Italian government wanted to prevent Il Duce’s grave from becoming, for better or worse, a shrine."
It kind of did turn into a shrine when Mussolini was reburied in 1958 (lots of men showed up in black shirts giving stiff-arm salutes). Eight years later the family of the dead dictator received a package containing slivers of Mussolini's brain. The U.S. government had taken the sample back in 1945 and tested it for syphilis at St. Elizabeth's in Washington, D.C. The tests turned out negative.