Mata Hari's body went unclaimed after her 1917 execution, and the embalmed head kept in a Paris anatomy museum was found missing in 2000

Margaretha Zelle, known as Mata Hari, was convicted of treason by a French military court and shot by firing squad on 15 October 1917. No relative claimed her body, so it was handed over for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept at the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. In 2000 archivists found that the head and other body parts had disappeared with no record of when or how. The museum's collections were donated to the University of Montpellier in 2011. Popular accounts say staff last recorded the head in the 1950s or 1970s, and none cites an inventory^†. Where the remains are in 2026 is unknown. The body's burial place is not documented in the sources found^†. The case shows how an unclaimed convicted body became state property, and how the state later lost track of it.