Underwater thieves have evaded an array of laser systems that measure millimetric shifts in the Costa Concordia shipwreck and 24-hour surveillance by the Italian coast guard and police to haul off the symbolic booty of the ship's bell.
The giant cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio after hitting a rock on January 13th, killing at least 25 people. Seven people are still unaccounted for.
Prosecutors have accused Captain Francesco Schettino of causing the grounding by bringing the multi-storey Costa Concordia, which was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, too close to the shore.
Now prosecutors have opened an investigation to find out who filched the vessel's bell.
Judicial sources said thieves nabbed the ship's bell more than two weeks ago from one of the decks of the Costa Concordia, which is submerged in 26ft of water.
Investigators suspect more than one person was involved in stealing the heavy bell, etched with the ship's name and 2006, the year it was christened. Ships bells were traditionally used to signal half-hour intervals in a four-hour watch.
"I can only guess that someone took it as a sort of morbid memento," Giglio's mayor, Sergio Ortelli, told Reuters. "In my mind, the missing bell is of no importance. We have the ship's statue of the Madonna in our church, and that for us has much more symbolic meaning."
Divers recovered the metre-tall plaster statue of the Madonna in January from the ship's chapel and gave the statute to the parish priest of Giglio.
Reuters