From the NY Times:
Four busts of Houdini atop the central pedestal of his family plot in the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens were smashed or stolen between 1975 and 1993. That was when the Society of American Magicians, of which Houdini was president at the time of his death in 1926, gave up trying to replace it.
After that, except for the annual observance of Houdini’s death, when a bust would be set there temporarily, the pedestal stood empty. The allegorical figure in the monument seemed to be grieving over its abandonment.
But look again. He’s back.
On Sept. 27, in a caper worthy of the intrigue-filled saga of the Houdini-Weiss family burial plot, self-styled commandos from the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pa., took it upon themselves to install a reproduction of the bust, in what they hope will be durable statuary cement.
