French police accidentally recovered the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen 37 years ago from his grave at the Père Lachaise cemetery. The sculpture, created by Croatian artist Mladen Mikulin, was found in an apartment in Paris during a home inspection for a fraud case.
Jim Morrison was buried after his death at the age of 27 in 1971 in the popular Parisian cemetery, where the graves of Chopin, Balzac, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Isadora Duncan are located, among many others). The lead singer of The Who had a strong connection to Paris and lived in the Marais neighborhood, not far from the cemetery, until his death.
His lifeless body was found by his partner Pamela Courson in the bathtub of their shared apartment. His death was officially attributed to a heart attack "aggravated by high levels of alcohol," although unofficially it was blamed on a heroin overdose.
Only five people attended the brief funeral held on July 7, 1971, but thousands of fans and visitors to the Père Lachaise cemetery have religiously paraded past his grave since then. Ten years after his death, the bust dedicated to him by Mladen Mikulin was placed next to it, on which many admirers left graffiti and signatures.
The sculpture was stolen in 1988 and disappeared until it was accidentally found by the anti-corruption brigade of the Paris police. It is unknown if the sculpture will return to its original location. Other tombs, such as that of Oscar Wilde, have been subject to theft and vandalism at Père Lachaise, one of the main tourist attractions in Paris with 3.5 million annual visitors.