Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer and alleged World War One spy for the Germans, was executed by French firing squad in the Vincennes forest outside Paris on October 15 1917. In common with other executed prisoners at the time, her head was severed from her body and taken to the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.
The Museum of Anatomy houses a collection of about 100 mummified heads, gathered from victims of firing squads and the guillotine, and is claimed by some to be the only remaining museum of its kind in the world (a claim which I personally seriously doubt).
In July 2000, France's Education Ministry threatened the museum with closure. It was then that a Parisian professor of medicine, Paul de Saint-Maur, drew attention to the fact that Mata Hari's head had gone missing from the collection. The museum's curator, Roger Saban, has since found the written record of the arrival of her remains in 1918, but has been unable to find the head.
There is speculation that the head was stolen by 'an admirer' during the museum's 1954 move to its present site in the Rue des Saint-Pres, Paris. The museum is now hidden away on the eighth floor of a University building. I dread to think where the head is.
Sources:
- Missing head information from The Times newspaper, July 13 2000
- General background fact check from the Infoplease Kids Encyclopedia at http://kids.infoplease.lycos.com/ce6/people/A0832182.html