Jim Morrison’s long-lost graveside bust turns up during French police search

Carved out of white marble and covered in graffiti, the hefty bust disappeared in 1988. Now, 37 years later, the doe-eyed sculpture that once adorned the grave of the American singer jim morrison has been found, in what Paris prosecutors described as a “chance discovery”.

Police in France said they had been carrying out a search related to a fraud case when they happened to stumble upon the bust of the frontman of the Doors. The announcement, made on social media on Monday, was accompanied by a photo showing the graying sculpture still covered in graffiti and missing a chunk of its nose, reportedly sliced off by souvenir hunters before its disappearance.

Conceived as a tribute to Morrison, the sculpture was carved after his death by the Croatian artist Mladen Mikulin. It was placed at his grave at Paris’s Père-Lachaise cemetery in 1981, 10 years after the singer died in the French capital at the age of 27.

While the exact circumstances of Morrison’s death remain shrouded in mystery, most early accounts say the singer died of cardiac arrest in his bathtub.

From its perch on top of Morrison’s headstone, the statue welcomed the throngs of visitors who came to snap photos, lay flowers and – before the hiring of a guard to watch the site – smoke pot and party with one of Père-Lachaise’s most famous residents.

Seven years after the bust was placed at the site, it disappeared. Rumours swirled over what might have happened: some spoke of two fans who had managed to cart off the bust, reportedly weighing 128kg, on a moped in the middle of the night; others repeated the seemingly baseless claim that authorities had hidden the sculpture in order to protect it.

In 1994, after years had gone by without any sign of the sculpture, two Americans were arrested for attempting to erect their own bronze version of the bust at Morrison’s grave site.

Todd Mitchell, who said he had travelled from Utah and spent thousands of dollars of his own retirement fund to resurrect the bust, said the security guard was initially confused when he came across him and his nephew scrambling to bolt the bust to Morrison’s headstone in the dark. “He just looked dumbfounded … Most people are destroying stuff in that cemetery,” Mitchell told the Salt Lake Tribune in 1994.

On Monday, as fans of Morrison celebrated what police described on social media as an “unusual discovery”, there was little news on whether the bust would be returned to the singer’s tomb. Benoît Gallot, the curator of the Père-Lachaise cemetery, told Le Figaro: “The police haven’t contacted us, so I don’t know whether the bust will be returned to us.”

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