The bell from the Costa Concordia, the ship that wrecked off of the coast of Italy, has been stolen by underwater thieves. What is so impressive about this heist is the fact that the thieves were able to evade the 24-hour watch of the Italian coast guard and a laser system that measures millimetric shifts in the shipwreck. The ship capsized off the island of Giglio, just off the coast of Tuscany, on January 13. The accident killed at least 25 people who were onboard. There are still seven people unaccounted for following the shipwreck.
Captain Francesco Schettino has been accused of causing the capsizing of the ship by prosecutors working on the case. The ship had over 4,200 crew members and passengers onboard. With the theft of the bell, prosecutors have now opened a second investigation to figure out who stole the bell. The ship is submerged in 26 feet of water and sources said that the bell was actually stolen over two weeks ago from one of the decks on the ship. The investigators on the case believe that there were two or more people involved in the theft because the bell is very heavy. The bell has the ship’s name etched on it and the year 2006, which is when the ship was christened into service.
“I can only guess that someone took it as a sort of morbid memento,” Giglio’s mayor, Sergio Ortelli, said. “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.”
In January, the meter-tall plaster statue of the Madonna was recovered by divers. The statue was in the chapel on the ship and it was gifted to the parish priest of Giglio, not far from where the ship capsized.