'Police thought it was a murder': 'The Crown' burglary once sparked murder inquiry

Netflix hit drama The Crown team almost landed in trouble when a dummy corpse was mistaken as genuine, which sparked a murder investigation nearly.

As per Variety, the hit show set had a burglary of antique props worth $200,000; however, the thieves left a dummy corpse.

Set decorator Alison Harvey told Variety that those props connected to Episode 6 of season 5, which depicts the relations between the British royals and Soviet Russia.

“It’s a shame because it was some of the loveliest antiques that we could actually get our hands on because we were trying to recreate the Russian Imperial family and the wealth of ancient Russia,” Harvey said. “So there was quite a lot lost, which was very sad. We just made accommodation in the set for what was missing, and it was sort of fine, but it was a sad moment.”

“I think the most amusing bit was the police were treating it as a murder enquiry because one of the dummies, the prosthetics, was floating face down in the river next to where the theft had been, so they immediately thought ‘We’ve got a murder,’ but actually it was just a rubber body,” she added. “That took a bit of time to work out.”

Production designer Martin Childs explained, “Finding the antiques was not their priority because they [thought they] had a murder to investigate.”

Meanwhile, the police found no stolen items; the crew confirmed: “None have been recovered, no.”