If you didn’t think America’s British cousins weren’t a little bit off already, the strange case of Clyde Zaube probably isn’t going to change your mind.
Priests in London apparently thought Zaube had arranged the funeral for his brother, Lauris Zaube. The service was filled with people. There was a horse-drawn hearse and “two luxury vintage cars,” according to the priest who was to give the funeral at London Oratory Roman Catholic Church in the posh South Kensington neighborhood, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. A director was filming what went on. A full choir was present.
Except there was no body in the coffin, most of the mourners were paid actors and it’s not even clear “Clyde Zaube” is who he says he was — or that his “brother” is even dead.
Furthermore, Father Rupert McHardy said he believes the man who organized the sham funeral is actually a convicted pedophile. The man’s name is being withheld by the Mail, but the U.K. Telegraph identified him as Jacky Jhaj, a man who served four years in prison for attacks on 15-year-olds.
Jacky Jhaj has been jailed for sex offences against 15 year old girls. Nice sweatshirt pic.twitter.com/AlX9f7f8Nu
— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) November 30, 2016
Last November, Jhaj prompted similar outrage with a stunt in Leicester Square where he paraded down a red carpet with roughly 90 child extras, some as young as six, the Mail reported.
According to the priest, the funeral had been set for March 4, and it wasn’t until the day of the service that it began to “unravel.”
Father McHardy said that the request for the service “came in three or four weeks ago.”
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“We said, ‘is there a connection [to the church]?’ and they said yes, from someone proposing to be his brother, Clyde Zaube,” he continued. “He chose the readings.”
Then, things started getting surreal on the day of the funeral as the priest was taken aside by the choirmaster.
“The undertakers were going to collect the body and then at the last minute they were told, ‘there is no body, we have ashes,’” McHardy said.
Furthermore, when the 49-year-old priest showed up at the service in his robes, ready to give Lauris Zaube — or his ashes — a send-off, he found quite the odd scene in the church.
One group of people, the Mail reported, “who turned out to be actors, were respectful and polite, although one of them complained that they hadn’t been paid.”
“There was another group of people in puffer jackets and balaclavas, Clyde Zaube included,” McHardy said. ‘They had hoods and dark glasses. They were sinister-looking.
“I tried to speak to this Clyde Zaube and he wouldn’t speak to me,” the priest continued.
“It became clear he wasn’t who he claimed to be. It was all some sort of fake funeral. They pretended there was a body and mourners. One of the actors knew the name of the person who had contacted them to come.”
“He’s quite an unpleasant character,” the priest said. “I’m pretty sure he’s the one claiming to be Clyde Zaube.”
The priest said he canceled it when he realized it was a sham funeral.
“We told them to leave and they all left relatively happily,” he said. “If they had been a real family they would have been weeping and crying.”
“We were paid. The funeral directors were paid. We haven’t lost any money but it’s very, very weird,” he added. “I was quite shaken afterwards. I felt very disturbed by it.
“Normally you take people at their word. No expense was spared — top hats, a horse-drawn hearse, two expensive vintage cars, a full choir. I was worried there was going to be some sort of violence. I thought, I have got to stop it because it’s all fake. It was very spooky.”
What is known is that the actual Lauris Zaube is still missing after a New Year’s Eve party by an iced-over dam in a Latvian village. He does not, however, have a brother named Clyde.
“The State Police is informed about this event. But the missing person himself, Lauris Zaube, has not been found so far,” a spokeswoman from the Latvian state police said, according to the Evening Standard.
Pazudis Lauris Zaube, kurš pēdējo reizi redzēts Jaungada naktī https://t.co/w4EzCdZhAh pic.twitter.com/ti4iGLKnzK
— nra.lv (@nralv) January 1, 2024
The funeral directors said they were provided with a death certificate, although oddly enough this was from Russia, an unlikely place for his body to be found. The funeral directors said they suspected the “cremation certificate” was faked. Furthermore, one of the partners told the Telegraph that “Claude Zaube” asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
“I didn’t sign [the NDA] and told him I had been in the business for a long time. We had a bit of a stand-off about that,” partner John Harris said.
In addition, a political correspondent with GBNews, a right-of-center network in Merrie England, said she had a friend on the choir and had an inside peek at the bizarre tale in a thread on social media platform X:
Then, 5 minutes after it should have started, the choir master comes in and announces that the funeral has been cancelled…. Why? Because THERE IS NO BODY IN THE COFFIN
— Olivia Utley (@OliviaUtley) March 7, 2024
What’s the story?? Was someone attempting to fake their own death? Why such a grand funeral? Who were the undertakers? If any investigative/London reporters follow me, please, please find out 🙏
— Olivia Utley (@OliviaUtley) March 7, 2024
Was this some sort of scam by mobsters? A twisted man acting out some kind of twisted grab for attention? Both of the above? What is clear is that, whatever the case may be, criminal charges can and should be in the offing.
Clearly, a stable individual wasn’t behind this — even among those quirky, secularized Britons. This is sickness, plain and simple. Exploiting a church and the funeral rites of the Catholic Church this way has clearly crossed a line. He should pay.
