The Macabre Journey of Eva Perón's Corpse: Stolen, Stabbed, Hidden in Milan, and Kept on a Dining Room Table

Dec 28, 2022
9 min read

Collage of Eva Perón’s corpse with doctors, a singer at a mic, and headline text about her macabre journey and theft.

Eva Perón, affectionately known as Evita, remains one of Argentina's most iconic and controversial figures. As the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her untimely death in 1952, she captivated the nation with her passionate advocacy for labor rights and women's suffrage. However, the story of Eva Perón extends far beyond her life and political legacy. The bizarre and grisly saga of her corpse is a tale filled with intrigue, political maneuvering, and macabre twists that rival any gothic fiction.

Woman in sparkling ball gown stands smiling in an elegant room with tapestry, armchairs, and patterned rug. Classic and glamorous mood. — Perón wearing a dress designed by Christian Dior

After Perón's death in July 1952, there was a massive display of public sorrow, leading to crowds dangerously pushing towards her body during its transfer to the Ministry of Labour building. Over 20,000 individuals received medical treatment for injuries caused by the crush, and eight lost their lives. However, this was just the start of the strange, aggressive, and sensational events involving the body of this controversial figure.

Traveling across Europe, she praised the qualities of Perón, who in return bestowed upon her the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation." While many hailed her as a progressive advocate for women and the underprivileged, others viewed her as a calculated celebrity façade for a harsh fascist government. Eva received medical care for cervical cancer, which involved a radical hysterectomy and chemotherapy. She was the first Argentine to undergo chemotherapy. She died at 8:25 pm on July 26, 1952, at the age of 33, with her passing announced on radio broadcasts across Argentina.

The Embalming

As soon as her death was imminent, Juan Perón summoned Dr. Pedro Ara, a Spanish pathologist celebrated in Buenos Aires for his work embalming the composer Manuel de Falla. Ara called himself a practitioner of the "art of death" rather than an embalmer, and was known to carry a preserved human head in his luggage to demonstrate his skills. He got started on Eva's body within an hour of her death.

The embalming was done in two stages: once for public viewing, and once for permanent preservation. For the second stage, Ara replaced Eva's blood with glycerine to preserve her organs, which were left intact rather than removed as in standard practice. He sealed her skin with a plastic-like film, used glass beads in her veins for structural support, and infused her tissues periodically with chemicals to halt putrefaction. The entire process took a year and cost the government $100,000. The intended effect was "artistically rendered sleep." There is no record of Eva requesting any of this.

When the process was complete, a visitor who saw the body reported: "It was the size of a twelve-year-old girl. Its skin was wax-like and artificial, its mouth had been rouged, and when you tapped it, it rang hollow, like a store-window mannequin. The embalmer, Ara, hovered over it as if it was something he loved." Ara himself later said the body could withstand fire and bombing and would last indefinitely.

Ara had also made three lifelike replicas of the body, fashioned from wax, vinyl, and fibreglass, with permanent ink used for the veins. They were so identical that even those who handled them couldn't be certain which was the original. Ara's plan was to keep the real body and hand the military a replica when they came for it. He offered Eva's grieving mother, Doña Juana, a copy to bury. Her response was brief: "Go to hell."

The Statue of Liberty Monument

Juan Perón envisioned showcasing his beloved wife's body as part of his ambitious plans to enhance the revered image of this saintly figure and foster ongoing adoration, all while securing his own leadership. His vision included erecting a monumental structure surpassing the Statue of Liberty, with a prominent portrayal of a descamisado (meaning "shirtless" and a term for working-class individuals and fervent supporters of the Peróns). Eva's remains were intended to be preserved in a glass coffin at the monument's foundation, akin to Lenin's entombment in Moscow.

A man in a lab coat examines a woman lying on a table, both appear serious. The setting is dark, creating a somber mood. — Pedro Ara inspects Eva Perón's embalmed corpse

Colonel Moori Koenig and the Descent into Madness

In 1955, a military coup ousted Perón, who fled to Spain. The new government had a problem. The body of Evita was still sitting in the CGT headquarters, and her devoted followers were already treating the location as a shrine. The incoming president, Pedro Aramburu, was a devout Catholic who couldn't order cremation after the Church refused, and couldn't arrange a public burial without creating a permanent pilgrimage site. So he decided on a secret disposal. The man tasked with it was Colonel Carlos Eugenio de Moori Koenig, head of military intelligence.

Colonel Carlos Eugenio de Moori Koenig was assigned the grim responsibility of carrying out this task. After reviewing the embalmer's report, he pondered the most suitable approach. The Colonel noted that Evita's skin appeared as youthful as that of a 20-year-old, and despite being preserved with formaldehyde, paraffin, and zinc chloride, it emitted a fragrance reminiscent of almonds and lavender. Her otherworldly beauty prompted her husband to even attempt to kiss her lips, almost as if trying to awaken her like Sleeping Beauty. The Colonel located Ara and insisted on the release of the body. "Whoever has the woman has the country in the palm of their hand," he declared.

The Colonel buried the three replicas in identical coffins at different locations around Buenos Aires, to confuse anyone who came looking. He made a small incision in the real body so he could always tell it apart from the copies. He kept the genuine Eva in a service truck parked next to the Intelligence building, under armed guard. Her followers found it almost immediately and began leaving flowers and candles. The body was moved around: military storerooms, battalion cellars, mess kitchens, the city waterworks, and eventually behind the screen at the Rialto cinema, a peculiar return to the cinema for the former actress.

Three men in suits smile beside a woman lying in a hospital bed. A framed art piece hangs on the wall, setting a formal mood.

Major Arancibia and the Pregnant Wife

Her next resting place was with Major Eduardo Arancibia, who became obsessed with Eva. Horrific reports suggest that he sexually defiled the body, and that when he was discovered by his pregnant wife Elena, he shot her in the throat, claiming he had mistaken her for a thief. Elena's sister Margot later testified before a military tribunal that the body had "terrible stains; God only knows what dirt." Elena survived the shooting. The case was covered up. The Major was quietly moved on.

The Colonel Breaks Down

Eva's corpse resumed its nomadic wandering, with the firm stipulation that it be kept away from the Intelligence building, but the Colonel, by now driven mad by his task and in the grip of a necrophiliac passion, took back possession of the body. In a rage, after berating Eva for not returning his love, he ordered his officers to urinate on her. He also chopped off one of her fingers, to prove it was the real corpse. The Colonel was imprisoned. Moori Koenig died in 1971, of alcoholism, never entirely free of the obsession that had consumed him.

Crowd holding candles at night, illuminating a plaza with a large portrait in the background. The scene is solemn and atmospheric. — Nearly 3 million people attended Evita's funeral in the streets of Buenos Aires.

Milan and the False Name

The government finally succeeded in smuggling the body out of the country, supposedly with covert help from the Vatican, and in 1971 she was discovered in Milan, buried standing up under the false name of Maria Maggi de Magistris. The body was exhumed and taken to Juan Perón's home in Madrid, Spain, where he kept it on the dining room table on a raised platform. His new wife Isabel diligently combed Eva's hair daily, and Juan even encouraged her to lie beside Eva, in the hope that she might absorb some of the charismatic goddess's power.

Isabel Perón styled her own public image to echo Eva's as closely as possible, bleaching her hair and copying Eva's wardrobe choices. When Juan Perón returned to Argentina in triumph in 1973 and was re-elected, Isabel became Vice President. When he died in office in 1974, she became Argentina's president, the first female head of state in the country's history. She lasted until 1976, when a military coup removed her. Eva's body had come back with them to Argentina in 1974, at the insistence of the left-wing Montoneros guerrilla group, who had kidnapped the corpse of the former general Aramburu and threatened not to return it unless Eva was repatriated.

Even then, the strange occurrences continued. The two civil guards who transported Eva's body from her grave in Madrid got into an argument about a gambling debt, shot at each other and crashed. The van caught on fire and both died, although the coffin was unscathed.

Then, in 1976, Eva's body was taken from the presidential residence in Olivos to her family's mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetery. Two soldiers were in the ambulance transporting it, carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. The ambulance driver suffered a heart attack, and during the sudden stop, the soldiers accidentally severed each other's jugular veins with their bayonets. They were found in a pool of blood.

The Final Resting Place

In 1976, Eva's body was taken from the presidential residence to the Duarte family mausoleum in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. The vault was constructed by a company that specialised in bank vaults. She was placed in a fortified crypt, five metres underground, in a marble tomb with a trapdoor in the floor leading to a room with two coffins, and then a second trapdoor leading to Eva's actual coffin. The whole structure was sealed behind a steel door, specifically designed to withstand any future attempt to steal the body. Eva's sister was given the only key.

As described by Tomás Eloy Martínez in his 1995 novel Santa Evita, which fictionalised the journey of her corpse: "No other corpse has meant so much to a nation than Eva Perón's to Argentina." Her body is still there. The concrete is arguably the most telling detail in the whole story: even in death, under a government that despised everything she stood for, nobody was entirely sure she couldn't still cause trouble.

A smiling woman sits on a decorative chair, wearing a dark outfit with a large bow and earrings. The setting is simple and elegant.

The Musical, the Film, and the Legend

Although Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice refrained from telling the story of this travelling corpse in their 1978 musical Evita, it was told with relish in Pablo Aguero's 2015 film Eva Doesn't Sleep, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as one of the officers obsessed with her body. The film captured what Martínez had described in his novel: the way Eva's corpse had become something more than a body, something that people felt compelled to possess, protect, or destroy.

In a 1996 interview, Martínez referred to Eva Perón as "the Cinderella of the tango and the Sleeping Beauty of Latin America," and compared her enduring mythology to that of Che Guevara: "Latin American myths are more resistant than they seem to be. Che as well as Evita symbolize certain naive, but effective, beliefs: the hope for a better world; a life sacrificed on the altar of the disinherited, the humiliated, the poor of the earth. They are myths which somehow reproduce the image of Christ."

Person lying in an ornate coffin, dressed in white. The background is dark, conveying a somber mood. Image credit: Getty Images. — The body was displayed a final time after Domingo's restoration work

Writer Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir captured something similar: "In all of Latin America, only one other woman has aroused an emotion, devotion, and faith comparable to those awakened by the Virgin of Guadalupe. In many homes, the image of Evita is on the wall next to the Virgin." Historian John McManners argued that Eva consciously incorporated aspects of the theology of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene into her public persona. Historian Hubert Herring described her as "perhaps the shrewdest woman yet to appear in public life in Latin America."

Bronze plaque of a woman with flowing dress sitting, holding leaves. Text reads "Eva Peron" with dates and Spanish inscription.

Although not a public holiday, the anniversary of Eva Perón's death on July 26 is marked by many Argentines each year. She has appeared on Argentine coins, a form of currency called "Evitas" was named in her honour, and Ciudad Evita, founded by the Eva Perón Foundation in 1947, sits just outside Buenos Aires. The city was built in the shape of her profile, visible only from the air.

Eva's isn't the only political corpse of the 20th century to have been stolen, desecrated, and turned into a symbol. Benito Mussolini's body was shot at, strung upside down from a petrol station, pelted with debris, and buried in an unmarked grave before being repeatedly exhumed. Unlike Eva's story, it didn't end with a reinforced vault and a steel door.