Edith Piaf's body was driven secretly from Grasse to Paris so her death could be announced there, and her husband inherited her debts

Edith Piaf died at 1:10 pm on 10 October 1963 in Plascassier, near Grasse, at 47. She had asked to die in Paris. Her husband Théo Sarapo, her nurse Simone Margantin and an ambulance driver drove the body about 800 km to her flat on boulevard Lannes. The move was illegal. A fake drip was attached to fool anyone who stopped the convoy. A doctor in Paris signed a death certificate, and the AFP report said she died in her bed on boulevard Lannes. The Archbishop of Paris refused a funeral Mass because she was divorced, and the Vatican newspaper said she had lived in a "state of public sin." More than 100,000 people followed the procession to Père Lachaise. Piaf left debts, reported at about seven million francs^†, which passed to Sarapo. He returned to singing to pay them and died in a car crash in 1970 at 34. His sisters, Christie Laume and Catherine Glavas, inherited through him and control the Piaf catalogue in 2026. In 2023 they said the money went to taxes for years and that Sarapo received nothing. A memorial Mass was finally held in her baptismal parish in 2013.