NEW legal questions about Fischer now surface

Bobby Fischer’s final bizarre act
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/01/2008
The Telegraph

The American chess prodigy’s eccentricities didn’t end with his death. As Neil Tweedie discovered in Reykjavik this week, the reclusive genius had arranged his own secret ‘guerrilla’ burial. Now its legality is being questioned

The grave was dug in secret as darkness descended over the white frozen landscape around the village of Hraungerdi, ready for Bobby Fischer’s last getaway. Not even the minister whose churchyard it was knew of the funeral planned for the following morning.

Only five people attended the brief service early on Monday, conducted in the half-light before the short Icelandic day had properly begun. Among them was Gardar Sverrisson, Fischer’s closest friend of the last few years and the man who had organised the digging of the grave without seeking the permission of Iceland’s Lutheran Church or of the state authorities.

Sverrisson had also secured the services of a Roman Catholic priest from Reykjavik, some 30 miles to the west. Fischer was not a Catholic but must have been content with the arrangement – Sverrisson would have followed the American’s instructions to the letter. The fifth mourner may or may not have been Fischer’s wife, a Japanese woman named Miyoko Watai.

So much about Bobby Fischer was a mystery. He liked it that way, keeping people guessing. No way would the fallen angel of world chess have allowed the media a feeding frenzy. Hence the unauthorised “guerrilla” funeral uncovered by the Telegraph this week; a strange secret end to a strange secret life.

Bobby Fischer was 64 when he died last week of kidney failure – one year on earth for each square on a chessboard. Arguably the greatest chess player ever, he ended his life as a recluse, obsessed about his privacy, trusting in virtually no one. Subject to bouts of paranoia, he was vehemently anti-Semitic and convinced the CIA was out to get him. But he was also capable of kindness, gentleness and humour, and commanded loyalty among those who knew him.

He was an exile, too, a fugitive sought by the US government (he had broken sanctions against playing chess in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia) but protected by the tiny country that had offered him a passport and a haven. His death made headlines around the world. There was much that Fischer kept to himself: his marriage, if marriage it was, and his daughter, a little girl living far away in the Philippines who may inherit all or part of his still considerable fortune.

The manner of his burial is now the subject of controversy in Iceland, an intimate society of just 300,000 people. Some of Fischer’s friends believe the burial is unlawful. If Miss Watai was not his wife, they argue, then she and Sverrisson had no right to carry out the burial without seeking the permission of his estate’s legal representatives. There is the additional matter of money: Fischer’s Swiss bank account is thought to have held about £1.5 million, and there may be more in gold deposits.

Here is the full story.