Judy Dodge Cummings - Tomb Raiders: Real Tales of Grave Robberies

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ISBN Softcover: 978-1-61930-622-6
ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-61930-620-2

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When the dead are laid to rest, prayers are chanted and hymns sung. The coffin is lowered into the ground and the burial vault is sealed. Mourners dry their tears and return to their lives. Silence falls over the graveyard. Bodies are left to slumber for eternity in their final resting places.

But the dead do not always rest easy.

Sometimes, their peace is shattered when grave robbers come to pay their respects. On a moonless night, these shadowy figures creep into the graveyard. In some cases, only a day or two has passed since the dead person was buried, but in others, more than a millennium has gone by.

The thieves exchange hurried whispers. A match is struck, a lantern lit. When the burglars find the grave they seek, they plunge a shovel into the ground or slice a saw through a padlocked vault. Perhaps a sarcophagus is revealed. A crowbar slips between the cover and the casket, and with a painful creak, the lid rises.

The air of centuries rushes out as light races in. The grave robbers look down upon the face of someone no longer of this world.

Tomb raiders risk the anger of the law, the dead persons loved ones, and the spirit world. What do they seek that is worth such dangers?

British colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, were ravenous when they dug up the dead during the Starving Time in the winter of 16091610. A severe drought, hostile neighbors, and poor management by colony leaders caused a food shortage. The colonists consumed everything they could find, from rats to toadstools.

Desperate to survive, some settlers turned to the graves of those already gone, which lay just outside the forts walls.

Medical students in New York City had plenty of food in 1788, but not enough bodies. To become a doctor, the students had to learn human anatomy, and the best way to do this was by dissecting corpses. Called resurrectionists, the students dug up the dead from the African Burial Ground and the potters field outside the city limits. The fresher the corpse, the better. Authorities turned a blind eye to this body snatching until a student went too far and stole a white womans corpse from a church graveyard.

Thats when the city exploded in riots.

Even the tombs of the famous are not safe. In 1876, a gang formed a plot to steal the corpse of President Lincoln and hold it for ransom. Tipped off by an informant, the Secret Service interrupted the thieves just as they were prying open the presidents coffin. After this near miss, Lincolns corpse was moved from hiding place to hiding place for the next 20 years to protect it from grave robbers.

Sometimes, grave robbers themselves do the work of archaeologists and uncover ancient treasures. In 1881, a goat belonging to a thief stumbled into a shaft in a cliff in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. When the man lowered himself into the shaft to save his goat, he discovered a cache of more than 50 royal mummies, including some of the most famous pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Tomb raiders often seek the treasure buried beside the body rather than the corpse itself. That was the case when riches were discovered in a pyramid built by the Moche culture outside the village of Sipn, Peru. In 1987, the unearthing of treasure sparked a gold rush that pit poor peasants against archaeologists.

Read on to learn more about these true tales of tomb raiders. Be prepared to encounter adventure, intrigue, suspense, and some ghostly, ghastly history.

As the sun slipped below the horizon on June 1, 1609, a fleet of ships rode the tide away from England. About 500 passengers watched their homeland disappear, among them a 14-year-old girl whose name has been lost to history.

The ships plowed through the vast Atlantic Ocean, their destination the fledging British colony in Jamestown, Virginia. Whatever hopes and dreams the young girl carried as she sailed toward a new life soon became nightmares.

For 400 years, her story was swallowed by the past, just like her name.

Then, in 2012, archaeologists unearthed the girls final resting place. They named her Jane Doe. Etched in Janes bones is the story of a gruesome grave robbery. This theft was not for greed or power, but for life itself.

Jamestown colony was doomed from the start. The king of Great Britain, James I, granted a charter to a group of investors, who formed the Virginia Company to build a settlement in North America. The company had three goals: to establish a permanent colony, locate a water route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and find gold.

On December 20, 1606, three ships set sail from England carrying 104 men and boys. The vessels carried enough provisions to cover a two-month ocean crossing and six months in America. Time enough, the Virginia Company believed, for settlers to plant and harvest crops and develop trade relations with the local people.

These calculations were wildly off the mark, and the Jamestown settlers would pay dearly for this mistake.