Tag Archive for: Michael Jackson

A Missing Corpse?

When it comes to mysteries, few things are as bone-chilling as the thought of a missing corpse. After all, shouldn’t the dead be left alone? Not necessarily. Grave robbing can—and has—happened.

Michael Jackson’s family is said to have selected Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California for his burial, feeling that it was a more secure location for his body. They needn’t go back too far in history to find reason for concern. Elvis Presley’s remains were the target of an unsuccessful “body snatching” plot, and in 1978 Charlie Chaplin’s body was removed from his grave. His widow refused to pay a ransom, so poor Charlie was later discovered left in a cornfield by his frustrated abductors.

The idea of stealing a body for ransom goes back to the late 1800s. In 1876 a plan to take Lincoln’s body was foiled, but the body of Alexander T. Stewart, one of the wealthiest merchants of the Gilded Age, was successfully removed, and this crime set off a major fear among the well-to-do. Woodlawn Cemetery, the interment site of Jay Gould, established a security force after robber baron Jay Gould was placed in the family mausoleum there because there had been threats that his body would be taken.

Of course, grave robbing used to have a “practical” purpose—digging up bodies was one of the methods necessary to obtain bodies for dissection and medical study. Often the “procurer” made his living by obtaining bodies and/or organs for doctors or medical schools, but sometimes the medical students themselves had to get their own bodies. Documents left by the students indicate that the procurement of bodies was actually quite stressful. One fellow wrote, “No occurrences in the course of my life have given me more trouble and anxiety than the procuring of subjects for dissection.” With his friends at Harvard, this fellow, John Collins Warren Jr., created a secret anatomic society in 1771 called Spunkers, whose purpose was to conduct anatomic dissections.

Body snatching presented a terrible problem for the families of the deceased. They commonly set up watch over the body until burial, and later, relatives would take turns watching over the grave for a few days to be certain it was not dug up afterward.

Today fears of body snatching are primarily limited to those where there is enough ‘fame value” that the body parts would do well on eBay. In the meantime, most people today will be allowed to “rest in peace.”

Kate Kelly

Kate Kelly is a corporate speaker and successful author of more than 25 nonfiction titles. She is a veteran of both local and nationwide talk and news programs and has been quoted in publications such as Time and The Wall Street Journal. She has appeared on World News Tonight, Good Morning America, The View, The CBS Early Show, Fox and Friends, and on CNN, MSNBC and The Fox News Channel. For more interesting bits from American history, check out http://www.americacomesalive.com/blog

Too Many Days of Rain

No, this post isn’t about the weather. It has been a strange couple of days in the celebrity world in terms of deaths, what with the losses of Ed McMahon (not so surprising at 82), Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and pitchman Billy Mays and I had some thoughts I wanted to share.

I’m finding myself having a hard time getting worked up about the death of Michael Jackson and I’m wondering why that is. Well, deep down inside, I know what it is, but for right now, let’s just leave it alone. I do feel terrible for the surviving family members, and particularly, his children—two of who have their collective future hanging in the balance while their birth mother decides whether or not she wants to be a participating mother as opposed to someone who carried them for nine months and then left shortly thereafter. The whole situation has a decidedly carnival air about it, just as the poor man’s life did. And that leaves me sad, but not with a grief that I can’t overcome, which is how I’m seeing some people depicted on television.

I can’t say that I was surprised by the too early and untimely demise of Michael Jackson at all. Part of me was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner.

We also, as a media-hungry society, watched as Farrah Fawcett died a slow and painful death from cancer. I felt worse about her passing, maybe because I know the pain of being a cancer patient, or maybe because I related to the fact that despite being perfect looking, she had a less than perfect life marred by the addictions of a grown son who had to visit her in shackles. Although her family and friends claimed that she had no idea that her son was in jail, I think she knew. I think that she was fully aware until the end that her little boy had lived a less than stellar life and was suffering the consequences. Don’t ask me how I know this or why I think this but I think that behind that glorious smile was a pain that only a parent with a dark secret like that can hide.

It was with great sadness that I had to let child #2 know that Billy Mays, champion pitchman, had died. Nothing gives child #2 more joy than the “Mighty-Putty” commercial in which with just a piece of this magic putty, an elephant can pull an eighteen wheeler. Kid begs me—and I mean BEGS me—every time the commercial comes on to buy Mighty Putty, going on to list the innumerable uses it might have in our own home. They are too embarrassing to list but put end to end, amount to a punch list that would probably stretch down our street to the Hudson River below. He was crestfallen when he heard that his hero had died. I think I may actually get the kid some Mighty Putty to alleviate his grief.

Between these celebrity deaths, plane crashes, the fallen troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pictures of protestors being gunned down in the middle of the streets of Iraqi protesting the election (I hope this gives the non-voting Americans—and you know who you are—pause), I can barely stand to watch the news. You would think that all around us was death. But truly, all around us is life. And that, we should celebrate. Because every day is a gift to be treasured and too often, we treat as something that we are owed.

And so finally, I’d like to remember someone who wasn’t a celebrity, but just a very kind man and someone who our family considered one of a kind. John “Mac” McVeigh died on Friday at the age of 67, of an untimely and massive heart attack. He was my father’s oldest and dearest friend and was someone who could light up a room without sucking all of the oxygen out of it. He once told me when I was very small that “God never gives you more than you can handle” and I remembered those words, even as they were used as mere platitudes throughout the years by lesser men and women to describe situations that didn’t rival the ones he faced. He loved his “Reezie,” his kids, and his grandkids. And he loved his friends and treated them like special gifts bestowed upon him. He told the longest, most meandering stories that you could imagine, but eventually, those stories would come to an end, and you would be richer for having heard them. To say that he will be missed is a massive understatement, but if we can all carry around just a little piece of John’s love of life around with us in our hearts, we will all be just a little bit better. And happier.

Maggie Barbieri