STAFF AT a historic cemetery in Genoa are being investigated for allegedly stripping gold fillings, jewels and artificial limbs from corpses for resale.
Seven employees at the wooded Staglieno cemetery, built in 1851, are suspected of having secretly amassed their booty in a workroom where buyers purchased materials by the pound.
Zinc stripped from coffins, as well as wooden coffins themselves, stolen seconds before cremations, were also up for sale, reported Genoa daily Il Secolo XIX.
The resting place of Giuseppe Mazzini, who helped found the Italian state, Staglieno was described by Ernest Hemingway as “one of the wonders of the world” after he visited.
The staff are said to have carried out some thefts during the shifting of skeletons from graves to ossuaries 20 years after burial. Police were reportedly tipped off by a co-worker who supplied photographs and mobile phone footage of the fillings and fake limbs, telling officers the grave thefts had been taking place for years.
During their inquiry, police stumbled upon nine human femurs left in a bin.
Mariangela Danzi, the director general at Genoa town council, said that the suspected thefts were possibly due to the “psychological degradation” caused by spending too much time around corpses.
"What has happened is symptomatic of stress which may prompt deviant behaviour or depression," she said, adding that she was looking into rotating cemetery staff more often and introducing psychological monitoring. "In any case, what has happened fills me with horror." – ( Guardianservice)