John Leake

COLD A LONG TIME

An Alpine Mystery

For Duncan

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

—Wallace Stevens

Prologue

Saskatoon, Canada, October 2009

This couldn’t have happened to nicer people, I thought as I sat with Lynda and Bob MacPherson in their backyard in Saskatoon. Twenty years earlier, their son Duncan had disappeared in Europe, and the mystery still hung over their lives like a curse. The bitterness of their loss had been compounded by the dishonesty they’d encountered at every turn in their quest to learn what had happened to him.

“I used to take comfort in the idea that most people are honest,” Lynda said. “But after Duncan disappeared, I started to have my doubts. Even so, I’m still amazed by the sheer number of people who have lied to us over the years.”

To me, their story had a biblical quality. As I tried to think of the most apt way to describe them, the phrase “salt of the earth” insistently came to mind. All of the insults they’d endured reminded me of the Book of Job. The sheer length of their ordeal—a third of their lives—was terrible to contemplate.

It was a crisp, autumn day in Saskatoon, and I enjoyed soaking up the sun and looking at the MacPhersons’ impressive garden. Its centerpiece was a small pond, around which were planted an assortment of young spruce, junipers, and pines. Behind the water was a group of boulders that Bob had found about a mile from their home. The massive rocks had been polished by glaciers moving across Saskatchewan 11,000 years ago. Some of them were beautifully etched by pebbles pressed down onto them by the flowing ice—distinct traces of an action that had occurred when all humans were still hunter gatherers.

“Bob got really interested in the garden after Duncan disappeared and Derrick moved to Vancouver,” Lynda said. “He dug the pond and moved those boulders here all by himself.”

“How on earth did you do it?” I asked Bob.

“Oh, it wasn’t too hard,” he said in his Nova Scotia accent that sounded to me almost like true Scottish. “I pried them up with a crowbar and rolled them onto the trailer with pipes, a reinforced ramp, and a hoisting mechanism.” With his 6’4” frame, huge hands, and strong jaw, he physically dwarfed Lynda, but he had a much softer personality. While it would take me almost two years to get through her tough outer shell to see her vulnerable core, Bob was outwardly tender.

“It’s remarkable how well the succulents do,” Lynda said, pointing at a mound of plants near the pond. “Every fall Bob buries them with leaves, and when he uncovers them in the spring, you’d never know they’d just endured months of twenty below.”

“Why don’t they freeze?” I asked, again incredulous.

“Because in the fall they give up their water so they can survive the winter,” Bob explained. As I would learn in the days ahead, his knowledge of nature was boundless.

“Duncan also loved nature,” Lynda said. “After the Islanders didn’t renew his contract, he thought about going to university to study biology. I wish he had.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and lit one.

“I know it’s a terrible vice,” she said. “Duncan hated smoking and often begged me to quit. Right after we started looking for him, we heard he’d been spotted in a Greek jail. We got our hopes up until we learned that the inmate was a smoker.”

They’d already told me many episodes of their story, and it had become clear to me that it was so complex and full of strange twists that I’d never be able to understand it without hearing the entire thing in detail, from beginning to end.

“Let’s go back to the start, when you first realized that something must have happened to Duncan,” I said. Lynda stared at the glacier boulders and took a deep drag from her cigarette.

“I know exactly when that was,” she replied. “It was the night of August 11, 1989.”

Chapter 1: A Nightmare

Absence and death are the same—only that in death there is no suffering.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Duncan’s International Driving Permit photo, taken just before his departure to Germany.

That night she had a dream so dreadful that she woke up screaming. She’d never suffered from night terrors before, which made it all the more alarming for Bob as he was ripped out of sleep.

“Lynda, it’s okay,” he said after he’d gotten his bearings. “Everything’s okay.”

“Something terrible has happened to Duncan,” she cried.

Bob assured her that she was just having a bad dream, but she found it difficult to fall back asleep, and the next morning she still felt troubled.

What, in her nightmare, had she witnessed happening to her son? She couldn’t remember, but she knew it was something horrible. Duncan was in Europe at the time, visiting some old friends before he moved to Scotland to start a new job coaching a hockey team. On August 4, he’d called from his friend George Pesut’s place in Nuremberg, Germany. Having just arrived after the long trip from Saskatoon, he was jet-lagged, grumpy, and in no mood to discuss his plans.

“I’ll call you from Scotland on the fourteenth,” he’d said brusquely. Ten days was a long stretch for him to go without touching base. Hockey had often taken him away from home, and he’d rarely gone more than two days without calling to say hello and to check on his dog Jake. Lynda figured it was probably just the feeling of being unusually out of touch with him that had spawned her terrible dream.

When Duncan didn’t call on August 14, she tried to assure herself that he was simply busy starting his new job, but her anxiety steadily grew. By August 16 she found herself waiting by the phone, and when it rang late that evening, she picked it up on the first ring. It was Sean Simpson—one of Duncan’s old hockey buddies who lived in Europe.

“Have you heard from Duncan?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “He was going to call after he got settled into his new job in Scotland.” The line went silent.

“Sean, are you there?”

“Uh, yeah, Mrs. MacPherson. It’s strange, because I just spoke with his team manager, and it seems he never made it to Scotland.”

The anguish caused by a family member’s disappearance is difficult to describe. The only way to get a sense of it is to imagine how you would feel if your own spouse or child didn’t come home one day. Because you have no idea why, you imagine a dozen dreadful possibilities. Terror and bewilderment mingle and amplify each other. The unexplained absence of someone you love produces a void into which all normal life collapses. Though your panic will eventually subside, your all-consuming desire to know what happened will not. The mystery will preoccupy you until you find your missing family member or until you die.

So it was with Lynda and Bob. After they learned that their son had never made it to Scotland, they called his friend George Pesut in Nuremberg and established the following: On August 7, Duncan had borrowed George’s car for a short trip, and was supposed to have been back in Nuremberg on August 11 at the latest to catch his flight to Glasgow. He was last seen on August 8 as he departed his friend Roger Kortko’s house in Fuessen, Germany and headed south towards Austria and Italy. Since then, none of his other contacts in Europe had heard from him. He had literally vanished without a trace.

With each passing day, the likelihood seemed to increase that something terrible had indeed happened to him, just as Lynda had dreamed. She often stared at the phone, willing it to ring with him on the line, and its silence was maddening. How could a young man and the car he was driving disappear in such a highly developed region?

A car crash was the first kind of disaster that came to mind, but a wreck would be reported. During the 1980s, adult tourists in Italy were occasionally kidnapped by mafia bands, but no one had called to demand a ransom. Lynda feared he had picked up a dangerous hitchhiker, though only someone armed with a gun would have dared try to abduct Duncan—a 6’1” professional hockey player whose fighting spirit had earned him the nickname “MacFearsome.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which posted officers at Canadian embassies in Europe, said that young men often disappear for adventure or romance, and usually turn up sooner or later. Lynda knew this wasn’t the case with her son, who’d always been free to do whatever he wanted, and would certainly let his parents know he was okay. Moreover, there was simply no way he would shirk his obligations and run off in someone else’s car.

Even if he had decided to disappear, he couldn’t live without money, and he hadn’t cashed a traveler’s check since August 7. Tracing them had been possible because he’d given Lynda power of attorney for handling his affairs in Canada while he worked in Scotland. She recalled their brief exchange about it the night before he left. He was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a midnight snack of cereal and reading the hockey news when she gave him the document to sign.

“Looks like I’m signing my life away,” he said as he glanced at it, and then back at his newspaper. “Can you hand me a pen?”

“You can read it first,” she said.

“Nah, if I can’t trust my mother, who can I?”

The sentiment was mutual. She was confident she knew him and that he was responsible. Still, his disappearance made her wonder if there was something going on in his life that she didn’t know about—something that got him into trouble after he was last seen in Germany.

Until the spring of 1989, Duncan MacPherson hadn’t had time to get into trouble because he’d devoted most of his waking hours to hockey. In the early eighties, while playing for the Saskatoon Blades, he showed great talent as a defenseman. Especially impressive were his devastating open-ice hits, and in 1984 he was a first round draft pick of the New York Islanders.

In spite of his early promise, five years after his triumph he learned that NHL glory was not to be his. In the spring of 1989, the Islanders didn’t renew his contract, which also ended his position on the Springfield Indians, the Islanders’ minor league team with whom he’d played in preparation for the national league. He handled the disappointment with rare grace for a twenty-three year old. Injuries were partly to blame, but he knew that his busted up body wasn’t the only reason. NHL players became steadily faster in the 1980s, leaving him behind the curve. In a television interview at the time he made no excuses.

“Down in the minors you play the best you can, and if you’re not meant to be a superstar, well, there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said with soft-spoken stoicism.

Lynda worried about him, but soon saw that he wasn’t taking it too hard. Part of him was relieved to be out from under the thumb of coaches, with their silly insistence that he give “one hundred and ten percent” to the sport. He also looked forward to hiking the Appalachian Trail—something he’d wanted to do for years. Like his father Bob, he loved the outdoors and often read books about adventure in the wilderness. For the long trip from Saskatoon to Germany, he took a copy of Touching the Void—a harrowing account of a British mountaineer named Joe Simpson who managed to survive plunging off a mountain and into a glacier crevasse.

Duncan felt a spiritual kinship with Simpson and his legendary pluck. Among his home town fans, he had achieved immortality one night at the Arena when the Regina Pats—a loathed rival of the Saskatoon Blades—showed up with a daunting new “enforcer.” An enforcer (also known as a “goon”) is a player more adept at fighting than passing and scoring, whose unofficial role is to intimidate the opposition. The Pats new enforcer was huge, and his team clearly relished the prospect of cowing the Blades on their home ice. Just before the match, the goon gave an interview to a Saskatoon paper in which he threw down the gauntlet: “I don’t really care about the score; I’m just looking forward to sorting out MacPherson.”

“What do you think, Dunc?” his teammates nervously asked in the locker room before the match.

“I’ll take care of him,” he replied, and sure enough, as soon as the puck dropped, he drifted over to the enforcer and attacked him. When Lynda saw him square off and remove his gloves, she covered her eyes, certain he was going to get killed by the much bigger boy, but to the incredulity and delight of his fans, he won the fight. Though she didn’t like violence, she was charmed by his indomitable spirit in the rink and the way it contrasted with his gentle, easy-going style outside of it.

After Duncan’s Appalachian Trail adventure, he returned to Saskatoon and promptly came down with a case of Lyme disease. At the end of what would prove a long convalescence, he found himself uncertain of what to do next. Some of his friends encouraged him to go for a position in Europe. One evening, while Lynda cooked dinner, he told her he’d been approached by a man who claimed to be a recruiter for the CIA and who asked him if he’d be interested in working for the agency. The Cold War was still on in the summer of 1989, and hockey players in Europe could cross the Iron Curtain with ease. Duncan said he thought it sounded like an intriguing job, but was reluctant to take it because it could require changing his identity and separating from his family.

Shortly thereafter he received another unusual proposal, this one from a Vancouver businessman with a mysterious past. Ron Dixon was his name, though it was rumored to be an alias, and he’d just bought a hockey team called the Tigers in the town of Dundee, Scotland. On the phone he offered Duncan the job of head coach with a generous salary. Given Duncan’s young age and the fact he’d never even met Dixon, he was surprised by the offer, and told his mother he thought it was maybe too good to be true. Dixon talked fast about his big plans, but was evasive about specifics.

“I’m afraid the guy’s a bit of a bull-shitter,” Duncan said.

In spite of his misgivings, he accepted the job, which was to start in mid-August. With an open schedule during the first half of the month, he decided to visit some old hockey friends who’d landed positions in Europe. At some point on his driving tour he’d phoned his boss, but it wasn’t clear from where and on what day he’d made the call. Dixon remembered having received it around 4:00 P.M. in Vancouver.

“I’m ninety percent sure it was on August tenth,” he said, “though there’s a ten percent chance it was on August ninth, and a zero percent chance it was on August 8.” Accounting for the nine-hour time difference, this indicated that Duncan had most likely phoned around 1:00 A.M. Central European Time on August 11, the night before he was to return to Nuremberg.

According to the RCMP, on August 23, Interpol Ottawa sent a missing person bulletin to Interpol offices all over Europe, which would in turn distribute it to border control and police stations. If Duncan crossed any of Europe’s national frontiers, he would be spotted. If he were put into a coma or killed in an accident, he would eventually be found at a hospital or morgue. If he were thrown into jail, the authorities would identify him as a missing person.

A sports reporter persuaded Lynda to go to the press as well, as it would alert the public to look out for Duncan, and media prominence could galvanize the RCMP and External Affairs to intensify their efforts to find him. And so, on August 23, Lynda gave her first interview to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.

“It’s just so frustrating being here,” she said. “We feel helpless. We feel we should be there, trying to find him, trying to help him.”

Above all, it was the feeling of helplessness that Lynda couldn’t bear. Whenever confronted with a problem, even an intractable one, she’d always found comfort in doing something. Already as a teenager she’d discovered her desire to take action against misery or injustice. Incensed by the way Canada’s European settlers had treated the Indians, as soon as she reached adulthood, she got a job teaching Inuit children how to read and write on Baffin Island, 1,500 miles north of Montreal.

There, at the local curling club, she met the young pilot Robert MacPherson, who’d lived for years near the Arctic Circle, working for an oil company. He’d also felt a longing to go north, and was fascinated by the Inuit and their lives on the ice. In May of 1965, in a cottage near the shore of ice-bound Frobisher Bay, they conceived Duncan, and shortly thereafter Bob got a job at the Research Council in Saskatoon. That autumn they won a home in a raffle at the Saskatoon Fair, and thenceforth they enjoyed a long period of contentment as they brought up their two children—Duncan and his brother Derrick, who was born two years later.

Theirs was the kind of happiness that can only blossom when a husband and wife are equally grown-up, loving, and respectful. In spite of their modest income, they found it easy to live within their means and to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, such as their daily walks along the Saskatchewan River. For twenty-three years their world seemed familiar, safe, and predictable. Then Duncan disappeared and their terrible trial began.

It would prove to be infinitely longer, stranger, and more frustrating than they could have ever anticipated, and it would erode their faith not only in government institutions, but in human nature itself. Their doubt began with the RCMP and External Affairs, for in spite of these agencies’ assurances that they were doing everything possible to find Duncan, Lynda sensed that they weren’t.

And so, three weeks after their son was last seen, she and Bob decided to try to find him themselves. It was a formidable undertaking, as neither of them had ever been to Europe; nor could they speak a word of German or Italian. They knew the police were better equipped to locate him, but they still felt an irresistible urge to try. Besides, anything was better than sitting around and waiting.

Chapter 2: Searching

They flew to Germany on August 27, carrying in their luggage 2,000 missing person posters. After arriving in Frankfurt and renting a car, they proceeded to retrace Duncan’s movements between his arrival and disappearance. In Nuremberg they spoke with a police officer in charge of missing persons, who told them not to worry.

“Your son is big and strong—nothing can happen to him,” he said. “I’m sure he’s met a beautiful girl and is having a great time.”

“But he hasn’t cashed a traveler’s check since August 7,” Lynda said.

“The girl must be rich as well!”

From the police station they went to the Happy Holidays travel agency, where Duncan had last used a traveler’s check. One of the agents recognized him from his photograph. Checking her records, she confirmed that on August 7, he’d made a 100 Mark deposit for a plane ticket to Glasgow, departing on August 12. He’d planned to return to her office on August 11 to pick it up.

From Nuremberg they drove to Fuessen, where Duncan had stayed with his friend Roger Kortko on the night of August 7. To Roger he’d mentioned his desire to visit Italy—maybe to meet a friend in Bolzano, maybe to do some windsurfing on Lake Garda. He had no definite itinerary; all he knew for sure was that he had to be back in Nuremberg on August 11.

Lynda and Bob studied a map of the route between Fuessen and Lake Garda, and imagined Duncan doing the same a month earlier. Driving south from the German border would take them through the Austrian city of Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol, and then through the Brenner Pass to Bolzano, the capital of the Italian (formerly Austrian) province of South Tyrol.

It was almost midnight when they arrived in Innsbruck and checked into their hotel, so they couldn’t see the surrounding terrain. When Lynda woke up the next morning and opened the curtains, she was greeted by a stunning view of the city’s alpine backdrop.

“He’s here,” she said out loud. “He would love this place.”

A hypothesis formed in her mind: Duncan had gone for a drive in the mountains around Innsbruck, lost control of his car, and plunged into a wooded ravine that concealed the wreck. This was based entirely on intuition; she had no more objective grounds for believing it than the theory that he’d traveled to Bolzano or Lake Garda, as he’d told Roger he would. And so they decided to start their search in Italy, distributing posters along the way, and then double back if necessary.

A few miles south of Innsbruck, they stopped at the first of many police stations they would visit in the course of their search. The gendarmerie (law enforcement agency in rural districts) station was in the town of Schoenberg, at the entrance to the Stubai Valley. There they were shocked to learn to that, in spite of the Interpol bulletin, the Tyrolean police knew nothing about Duncan. They told the officers about their son’s disappearance and their fear that he might have had a car crash in the mountains around Innsbruck.

The officers were confident that nothing had happened to Duncan in Tyrol. Even in densely wooded areas, a wrecked car would be quickly found, as there were hikers everywhere. An abandoned car would have been noticed and soon reported, because in mountainous areas an abandoned car is considered a strong indicator that its driver has been in a hiking or climbing accident. Nevertheless, the officers said they would distribute a notice about Duncan and his car to all gendarmerie stations in Tyrol.

And so, as Lynda and Bob left the station, they felt confident the Tyrolean police were on top of the case.

Normally Bob would have been captivated by the beauty of the Brenner Pass, with its old castles perched on the flanking mountains, but his preoccupation with finding his son cast a pall on everything. What happened to him? Could he have met a girl so intoxicating that she caused him to forget his family and obligations? Bob didn’t think so. Duncan had had many attractive girlfriends in the past, and his current girlfriend, Tara, was a knockout. No, if he’d met another girl, he would have called and said so. Had he got into a fight with the wrong guy? He never flinched from fighting on the ice, invariably with painful results for his opponents, but Bob knew there were men in the world who were capable of far more than fist-fighting. It was a troubling thought.

At the Italian border, they spoke with control officers who also hadn’t received any information about Duncan. Their hearts sank with the realization that no one at the checkpoint had been keeping an eye out for him or his car. Why had the RCMP assured them that the Interpol bulletin would be distributed throughout Europe when it obviously hadn’t been? In Bolzano (whose police also hadn’t received the Interpol circular) Lynda called the RCMP and explained that none of the authorities in the places where her son had most likely traveled were aware of his case. The officer promised to file the report again with Interpol.

They pressed on to Lake Garda. The southern end of the deep glacial lake was fifteen kilometers wide, and they feared he may have windsurfed offshore and been in an accident or caught in a storm that drowned him and sank his body to the bottom. They spent a day driving around the lake, looking for his car, inquiring at windsurfing rentals.

On September 7 they drove to Switzerland, and at the frontier they learned that Swiss border control also knew nothing about Duncan. It was so frustrating, even nauseating, to realize that in spite of what their government agencies had been telling them and the press since August 23, no police or border control officers in Europe were even aware that Duncan was missing.

“I guess we’re just not going to get any help from the police,” Lynda said as they left the border and headed to Bern. It was a bitter thought, as they’d always gladly paid their taxes with the belief that the state reliably helped citizens in need. Again she called her contacts at External Affairs and the RCMP and asked them to distribute the missing person notice.

In the vicinity of Interlaken—a popular tourist destination—they spent days driving narrow mountain roads, looking for spots where Duncan might have lost control of his car and plunged into the woods. It was exhausting work—driving, stopping, peering into the woods, driving on… One night in Bern, Lynda phoned her parents in Canada to give them an update. Her father had just spoken with an expert on Lyme disease who explained that in rare cases it could cause personality changes and even amnesia. Had Duncan become disoriented as an aftereffect of the infection he’d contracted that spring?

For another week they peregrinated the Alps, stopping at police stations, tourist information offices, hockey clubs, rest stops, and border crossings, putting up posters, telling their story again and again. Because of the language barrier, what would have been easy to explain to a native English speaker was often insurmountably difficult to convey. Many officials didn’t understand their story; others finally comprehended it, but couldn’t understand why Canadian External Affairs wasn’t conducting the search.

“Your consulates have people who speak Italian and German,” said a policeman in the town of Lecco, Italy. “It would be much easier for them.”

“Too busy going to cocktail parties,” Lynda replied.

Driving such long distances reminded her of her early intuition that something had happened to Duncan around Innsbruck. Given that he’d only had August 9 and 10 to see something interesting, he wouldn’t have wanted to spend much time driving away from and then back to Nuremberg. If he’d quickly arrived at an attractive place, he would have stopped to check it out.

Greater Innsbruck, a spectacular area that had twice hosted the Winter Olympics, was Duncan’s sort of place, and the route to Italy went right through it. After departing Fuessen at noon, he would have approached the city around 2:00. He must have stopped to check it out, and after a bit of sightseeing, to eat dinner and spend the night.

Chapter 3: “Just get rid of those people.”

On September 14, the MacPhersons drove to Innsbruck police headquarters and met an officer named Heinz Dorn, who, infuriatingly, had still not received the missing person report. They told him it was imperative that the Tyrolean police learn about their son, as he’d almost certainly visited the state around the time of his disappearance. They believed he’d spent the night of August 8 in Innsbruck, and they wanted to search the city’s hotel registrations. They also wanted to broadcast a notice on the news.

Dorn wasn’t encouraging. He said “it would take an army to check all hotel registers in Innsbruck,” and that because Duncan was an adult, he had a right to privacy, so it was unlawful to broadcast a notice about him.

They had better luck at the Innsbruck Hockey Club. The head coach, Ossi Praxmarer, listened carefully to their story, and then persuaded his team’s sponsor, Goesser Beer, to buy air time on the Austrian National Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) for a notice on an evening news program called Tirol Heute (Tyrol Today). The segment was scheduled for September 20.

On September 19 they drove to the Canadian Consulate in Munich. Fearing that the “big, strong boy to whom nothing can happen” attitude prevailed among Bavarian police, they hoped the consulate could persuade them otherwise. The receptionist was a caring Englishwoman named Felicity Lamb who’d already heard about their search. Consul General George Blackstock wasn’t available, so Felicity asked the next in command, a trade officer named Nick, if he would meet them.

“I don’t care how you do it, just get rid of those people,” he said. Felicity was shocked by his reaction, and surprised to learn that the typical consular officer didn’t know how to help the MacPhersons. In spite of Nick telling her to “get rid” of them, she arranged an interview with two other consular officials, though it quickly became clear that they had no idea what to do. One of them said nothing; the other occasionally asked questions like, “Do you believe that Duncan had a map?”

The next morning the MacPhersons tried again to meet with Consul General Blackstock, but he was apparently unable to tell Felicity when he would have time. Lynda sensed he was hoping they would grow weary of waiting and go away. Lunchtime came and went, and just as they were indeed about to give up, he appeared. He was very friendly and solicitous, in jarring contrast with the fact that he’d just made them wait several hours. Inviting them into his office for coffee and cookies, he said he was so sorry about Duncan, and proceeded to engage them in an aimless conversation. It struck Lynda that there was something odd about his having so much time to chat. And then he really surprised her.

“I would like you to join me at my house for dinner this evening,” he said. She declined with the excuse that they’d already accepted an invitation from Felicity.

“But I insist,” he replied. “I’ve already told my housekeeper that I’m expecting guests for dinner.”

“We really don’t want to impose,” she said. “We haven’t had time to do our laundry, so we don’t have a fresh change of clothes for dinner.”

“That’s quite alright,” he said. “My housekeeper will do your laundry.” Clearly he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

And so they followed his chauffeured car, and as they entered the grounds of his lovely villa, they couldn’t help wondering what he did for Canadian interests in Munich that justified such a comfortable life at taxpayer expense. Just before dinner was served, his housekeeper announced a call for him. He withdrew into his study, and when he returned a few minutes later, he said, “Your son’s car has been found at the dead end of a blind alpine valley.”

From Lynda MacPherson’s Journal, September 21, 1989

He [Blackstock] told us that the car was found at the Stubai Glacier parking lot—about 40 km southwest of Innsbruck. We were, of course, somewhat emotional—relieved on the one hand that we’d finally got some information, but also apprehensive. The news of his car stirred up many thoughts of what we might find. In any case, we told Blackstock we were going to drive to the place that night. He didn’t think we should go until morning. We really didn’t care what he thought—we were going. We did eat dinner (the housekeeper had everything ready and we didn’t want to hurt her so we decided to eat & then leave). Blackstock said he’d have to go with us—we told him we didn’t need him to go with us; however, he insisted. I phoned Mom & Dad—they’d already heard the news on the radio—it seems they knew about it 4 hours earlier than us. In fact it seems as if they heard the news at about the same time that Blackstock invited us to his office for coffee! Did he already know the car had been found? But, because he had ignored us for 2 days while were in the Consulate, was he beginning then to cover his ass? We think so. I mean, after all, isn’t that what being a diplomat is—do nothing, but make sure you look good? I expect he sent a signal to External Affairs about how nicely he treated the MacPhersons…. We ate dinner hurriedly and were anxious to get going. Blackstock was beggaring around, gathering up his stuff—in a real panic because he couldn’t find his pajamas—had the housekeeper going crazy. Finally, at about 9:00, he was ready…. I am not sure I knew anymore what I was doing—I was in a daze. I just wanted to get going without any further delays. All that we had on our minds was getting there, praying that our nightmare was over and that somehow all of this wasn’t real, it was only a bad dream, there’d be some explanation for everything, and, as foolish as it was, I guess we hoped Duncan would be found & that he’d be alright. I guess we also thought of the other side of the coin—what if we do find him and he’s not alright?

Chapter 4: The Red Opel

They felt a cruel irony the next morning as they exited the Autobahn south of Innsbruck and passed the first police station they’d visited upon their arrival in Austria—a station located only thirty minutes from where Duncan’s car had apparently sat the entire time. Since then they’d spent three weeks crisscrossing the Alps, covering thousands of kilometers.

Just before the turnoff, they noticed a large sign for the Stubai Glacier—a ski resort they’d seen advertised in the Innsbruck Tourist Information office. Far from being a “blind alpine valley,” as Blackstock had described it, the Stubai Valley was a major recreation area on the southwest outskirt of the city. As they entered the valley, they understood why: Its mountainous landscape, decked with a patchwork of woods and meadows, was the most picturesque they’d ever seen—clearly a hiker’s paradise in the summer.

Because Duncan’s car was found outside the Innsbruck city limits, his case was being handled by the gendarmerie. Group Inspector Konrad Klotz was in charge of Duncan’s file; District Inspector Franz Brecher—a so-called “alpine gendarme” from his training as a mountaineer—was doing the legwork of the investigation. At the gendarmerie station in the town of Neustift—the main municipality in the valley—inspectors Klotz and Brecher recounted the investigation so far.

On the evening of September 20, an employee of the Stubai Glacier watched Tyrol Today and realized that he’d seen the missing car parked near the gondola station. He reported it to the Neustift gendarmerie, which sent officers to examine it. Its driver’s side window was slightly cracked open, enabling them to gain access. In the glove compartment they found Duncan’s passport, traveler’s checks, and watch. On the back seat they found his backpack, skates, and a bag of rotten fruit. After taking the passport, they locked the car for the night and called all of the alpine huts around the Stubai Valley to check their registers for Duncan. The next day, September 21, the officers showed his photograph around at all the hotels and huts in the area. No one recognized him, nor was his name on any register.

It appeared that Duncan had set off from the parking lot to go hiking, and then either gotten terribly lost or injured. Maybe he’d taken a bad fall; maybe he’d climbed to a high elevation and been surprised by a sudden storm that caused him to die of hypothermia. Such accidents were common in the Alps, which is why the locals were mindful of cars sitting in the same place for more than a couple of days.

How on earth, Lynda and Bob wanted to know, had Duncan’s car sat in the parking lot of an alpine recreation area for several weeks without being reported? The officers at the Schoenberg station had assured them that abandoned cars in the area were reported as a matter of course. Inspector Brecher replied that nobody had noticed Duncan’s car because it was parked in a huge lot. Later in the conversation he suggested that no one had given it much thought because many visitors left their cars in that lot while they went on long treks.

When the time came to examine Duncan belongings, Lynda and Bob were baffled to see them jumbled together in the back of a police car parked behind the station. Had his possessions been left in his car as he’d left them, they might have yielded a clue about what he’d intended to do. Lynda asked if the police had fingerprinted or photographed the car as they’d found it, and Klotz said no.

“Why not?” Bob asked.

“What for?” said Klotz.

“To find out what happened to our son,” Bob replied. “Maybe someone else has been in his car.” Klotz acknowledged this possibility and agreed to check the car for prints.

That Duncan had left his backpack and a bag of fruit in the car indicated he hadn’t intended to go on a long trek, though it was conceivable that he’d later changed his mind. Another possible clue was a sealed letter addressed to his girlfriend Tara.

“Please open it and read it,” Klotz said. It was dated August 7, the day Duncan had left Nuremberg. He didn’t mention in the letter how he planned to spend his time before departing for Scotland. He was scheduled to fly to Glasgow on August 12, and was thinking Tara should join him in Dundee around August 19. However, he wasn’t sure if Dixon had a clear plan for the team; the deal seemed uncertain. On a minor note, he’d bought a cool pair of Mephisto shoes in Nuremberg.

The shoes weren’t among his things, and the question arose if they were hiking or climbing boots. Lynda called George Pesut, Duncan’s friend in Nuremberg, and asked about them. He said they were a special kind of walking shoe, definitely suitable for a long hike on worn trails, but not for rock climbing.

An audio cassette found in the car bore a sticker from a music shop in Innsbruck, and as they would soon learn, its salesgirl recognized Duncan from his photo. He’d come in sometime before August 15 with another person—a man with dark hair, wearing a nylon club jacket.

From the town of Neustift the MacPhersons drove to the high, southwest end of the Stubai Valley. The road passed through an Arcadian countryside of meadows and grain fields yielding to forest where the slopes of the abutting mountains became too steep for cultivation. Its final stretch wound through dense woods as the valley narrowed, and then opened onto a large clearing covered with empty parking lots. Following a police car, they drove past the lots and then past two hotels near a gondola station.

Between the hotels and the station entrance, parked on the side of the road, they saw what they’d sought for three weeks, though they could scarcely believe their eyes. It was a surreal sight, like a naked man attending church or a pig sitting at a dinner table. Duncan’s red Opel sat all by itself—its rear license plate plainly visible to everyone going to the gondola station.

“There’s no way that no one noticed that car for all these weeks,” Bob said as he parked next to it. Struggling to retain his fury, he reminded the inspectors that he had reported the car missing at the Schoenberg gendarmerie station on September 1, and had clearly expressed his concern that something had happened to Duncan in this very area. Blackstock spoke with Klotz in German, and then explained that the Directorate of the Tyrolean Gendarmerie had apparently taken the notice off the computer system on September 6.

“Why?” asked Bob, dumbfounded. Again Blackstock spoke with Klotz and then turned back to Bob.

Duncan’s red Opel Corsa on September 22, 1989.

“Because it didn’t yield a result,” he said. Another discussion ensued, and while they were standing there, Lynda noticed that she could easily see through the car windows. Duncan’s backpack, sitting on the back seat before the police took it, would have been visible at even a quick glance into the car—an indication that its driver had set off for a mere day hike. Bob inspected the car. It was parked with its rear facing the road, and its front facing the road’s outer edge, which ran along a steep, descending embankment covered with recently-sprouted grass. A wedge-shaped bare spot directly in front of the car indicated that someone had run a seed spreading machine along the edge of the road when no other cars were parked there, and gone around the Opel, which had been in the way. Accounting for germination time, Bob calculated that the car had sat there for at least three weeks.

A helicopter approached, and Blackstock said the police wanted to show them the area into which Duncan had apparently gone hiking. Lynda stayed in the parking lot while Bob and Blackstock went for a tour in the chopper. It was, as the pilot pointed out, a large area of steep rock formations and glaciers. In contrast to the pastoral valley, the surrounding mountains were a harsh terrain, subject to weather that could turn horrid in minutes. Though the pilot didn’t say it explicitly, the message of the tour was clear: In such a wild place, even the fittest young man could easily die.

While Bob and Blackstock were in the helicopter, another officer spoke with a parking lot attendant, who said he was certain the car had not been there prior to September 1, and fairly sure it had been there since September 8. Lynda wondered why he was so sure of this, and why the two different points of certainty. She felt a mounting frustration with all the ambiguity.

At the end of the day, the MacPhersons had to face the terrible truth that finding Duncan’s car had not, as they had so hoped, quickly led to him. As night fell, Bob again looked at the Opel Corsa, sitting by itself in the parking lot. What could it mean that it had been ignored for so long? Something very strange is going on here, he thought.

Chapter 5: The Snowboard Instructor’s Story

They decided to check into one of the hotels near the gondola station, so they parked their car (with a missing person poster taped in the rear window) near the entrance of a place called the Apparthotel Mutterbergalm. As they approached the front desk, a young man walked up and said something to the receptionist in German. She turned to Lynda and Bob.

“He says he recognizes the person in the photograph in your car.” Instantly their frustration and despair were supplanted by hope, and they turned to look at the young man who claimed to have seen Duncan. He was lean and athletic, with fine cheekbones and light blue eyes. Switching from German to decent English, he told his story.

His name was Walter Hinterhoelzl, and he taught snowboarding at the Stubai Glacier. That day he happened to be at the ski resort to take his mother (an elegant-looking lady in her forties) skiing on her birthday. Just walking past the MacPhersons’ car, he’d noticed the photo and recognized the young man as a pupil he’d had in August—he would check his records for the exact date.

Lynda and Bob were surprised to hear that the ski resort had been open in August, as no one had mentioned this before. Walter explained that most of the slopes closed in June, though a couple of them, located on a north-facing glacier, stayed open all summer. In order to get to the glacier, one had to take a gondola up to a high mountain station, just below the peak.

On the day of his lesson, Duncan had appeared at Walter’s snowboarding school at the Eisgrat Station at around 10:00. He’d already rented a snowboard—a Duret 1700, as Walter recalled—as well as boots and gaiters from the station’s rental shop. Normally, when one took a lesson, the gear was included, but because Duncan had already rented it, Walter told him he might as well use it. However, because Walter’s instruction and gear package cost 50 schillings less than the sum of a lesson and separate gear rental, Walter went to the shop with Duncan and asked them to honor the discount—a request they denied. And so Walter reduced the lesson price. He emphasized that Duncan had excelled on the snowboard—that “he was very strong in the legs and could handle the board very well.”

Following the two-hour lesson, Walter had lunch with Duncan at the Eisgrat restaurant. Duncan mentioned he was a hockey player who’d recently accepted a job in Scotland. He had only a couple of days left for his tour, as he needed to be back in Nuremberg to catch a flight. He was thinking about doing some windsurfing on Lake Garda. Walter told him that Garda was too far, and that he should try Lake Achen near Innsbruck instead. Duncan also said he wanted to take a follow-up snowboarding lesson, so they agreed to meet the next morning at the Apparthotel if the weather was good.

After lunch, Duncan bought a violet-colored sweatshirt (brand name Capriccio) at the Eisgrat retail shop, as his sweater and turtleneck were damp from the morning lesson. These, along with his leather belt, he hung to dry on the radiator in Walter’s office before heading off to the slope to practice by himself for the afternoon. At around 2:30, Walter’s girlfriend Daniela saw him riding up the tow-lift.

At the end of the day, after Walter finished teaching other lessons, he returned to the snowboarding school and noticed that Duncan’s clothing was still there. Because Duncan had mentioned his desire to meet the following morning for further instruction, Walter assumed he intended to pick up his clothing then. He was surprised when Duncan didn’t show up the next day, but figured he’d decided to do something else and would be in touch about getting his stuff. A couple of weeks later, Walter took the clothing home to his apartment in Innsbruck and planned to give it back when he finally heard from Duncan.

Lynda and Bob were enormously grateful to Walter for being so forthcoming with so much information, and they therefore didn’t notice that his story contained a number of implausible details. As they recounted his story (with the aid of Lynda’s journal) to me during my October 2009 visit to Saskatoon, I was sitting at their breakfast table, looking at photographs.

“Walter told you he just happened to be at the glacier that day to take his mother skiing?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lynda replied.

“Are you positive he told you that?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Because of this,” I said, and pointed to the photograph of Duncan’s car, sitting in an otherwise empty row of plum parking spaces near the gondola station.

“If the mountain had been open for skiing on Friday, September 22, 1989, the parking lot would have been full.”

As events were happening in real time, it was only natural that the MacPhersons regarded Walter as sincere. Given that he approached them, they had no reason to suspect that his apparent frankness was a ruse.

After hearing Walter’s story, they called Inspector Brecher, who came to the hotel to hear the account first-hand. Because the two men spoke in German, the MacPhersons didn’t understand what they said, but Brecher concluded by telling them that the search would begin around the skiing area where Duncan had last been seen.

The next morning, Walter fetched the booking slip from his office; it was dated August 9. He then volunteered to call the Youth Hostel in Innsbruck to inquire about Duncan’s stay. The receptionist said that he’d been a guest on the night of August 8, but not the following nights. Walter didn’t mention to the MacPhersons that, during ski season, he kept a room at the Apparthotel Mutterbergalm, where he worked in the evenings, providing entertainment for the guests. Had they’d been aware of this, they probably would have asked him if Duncan had said anything about spending the night of August 9 at the hotel—the most logical place to stay, with his car parked near the entrance, and with his plan to take a follow-up snowboarding lesson the next morning.

A team of volunteer search and rescue workers assembled at the gondola station. They would start on the ski slope on which Duncan had last been seen. Some had repelling gear with which to lower themselves into crevasses on the glacier. According to Inspector Brecher, the slope itself was groomed and inspected every day to insure that it was safe, but it was possible that Duncan had snowboarded or hiked outside of the secured area.

After breakfast, they rode the gondola up 1,150 vertical meters to the Eisgrat (“Ice Spine”) mountain station. The final stretch of cable was suspended over a rocky bed that marked the glacier’s course until the twentieth century, when it had begun to recede rapidly. As Bob looked down at the tons of moraine, he marveled at the stupendous force the ice had exerted.

Arriving at the station, they exited the gondola terminal and were shocked by what they saw. Until that moment, they’d been under the impression that the “Stubai Glacier” was one glacier encompassing a large area and covered with multiple, interconnected ski runs. They’d understood that most of the runs were closed in August, but they had not realized that the slope that was open on August 9—the slope that now lay before them—was a mere bunny hill with a rope tow-lift.

As they would soon learn, the ski run was on a single glacier called the Schaufelferner, which was just one of five glaciers (none of which was actually called Stubai) that comprised the Stubai Glacier ski area. Looking up from the Schaufelferner’s base, the MacPhersons could clearly see its entire surface. About twenty searchers and two tracked vehicles were moving around on it, looking for Duncan’s body.

“Nothing could have happened to him here,” Bob said. “It’s tiny and the entire slope is groomed.” To be sure, there was a large, out-of-bounds area just east of the slope, but it was separated from the ski run by a walking path bordering the east boundary, and the path was lined with a row of stakes strung with a rope cordon. Even if Duncan had crashed through the path and into the out-of-bounds area, he would have ripped up these lines and stakes, leaving an obvious trace that he’d gone off-piste.

No one told them that about halfway to the top of the glacier, to the immediate left (facing uphill) of the tow-lift, was an area of crevasses that tended to open in August, and that a tourist had gone into one of them exactly one year before Duncan was last seen on the slope. Though Inspector Brecher had written a report on the accident, he mentioned nothing about it to the MacPhersons.

After surveying the ski slope, they walked behind the Eisgrat Station, which is built on a rock formation that rises above the glacier’s bottom end, or “snout.” Behind the building, a path descended to the valley. In theory, someone could have tripped and fallen on the path, but it was clearly visible from the gondola and regularly used by hikers. So, other than the small, controlled ski slope and the hiking path below it, there was nowhere to go.

It was conceivable that Duncan had decided to walk down and then taken a long, detour hike. He’d last been seen on the lift at 2:30 P.M. Assuming it was his last run, he could have been ready to hike down around 3:00. Sunset on August 9 was around 8:30, which would have left him with five solid hours of daylight. However, with no snow on the mountain below the glaciers, there was nothing to conceal his body in any area where he might have taken a fall.

They rode the gondola back down and returned to the hotel. Consul Ian Thomson had just arrived from the Canadian Embassy in Vienna. He was accompanied by District Gendarmerie Commander Franz Hofer, who was rigged out in what appeared to be a full dress uniform. Though aloof with Lynda and Bob, Hofer seemed very attentive to Thomson. The two men talked in German, with Thomson rarely pausing to translate for the MacPhersons. He did, however, invite them to join him and Hofer for an inspection of the ski slope. Back at the Eisgrat, they again looked up at the glacier. Thomson spoke with Hofer about it, but conveyed little of their conversation to the MacPhersons. What exactly did the gendarmerie commander tell the Canadian consul?

“I don’t know,” Bob explained to me twenty years later. “Lynda and I just stood there like two spare pricks in a whorehouse, with no idea what this pompous-looking guy was saying.”

That evening Inspector Brecher informed them that the search team had not found Duncan’s body. Before the men looked further, they wanted more specific information about his last known location. Brecher had also spoken with a Stubai Glacier employee who remembered that on or around August 9, he had seen a tall young man visiting a waterfall below the glacier. The run-off from the summer melt was strong, and over time the falls had created deep, eddying pools. It was conceivable that Duncan had fallen into a pool and drowned. According to Walter Hinterhoelzl, Duncan had mentioned his desire to walk down to the valley, but Walter had advised against it, as it would stress his knees, which were already weak from hockey injuries. Walter believed that he might have decided to hike up to the Eisgrat on August 10 and visited the falls on the way. A search team would, Brecher explained, inspect the falls in the morning.

Chapter 6: “I think you should get on with your lives.”

September 25 began with a trip to the Youth Hostel in Innsbruck, where they got a copy of Duncan’s registration for the night of August 8. Lynda then called Heinz Dorn at the Innsbruck Police and asked if his men had completed their search of hotel registrations. Dorn replied that Duncan had not spent the night at any licensed accommodation in Innsbruck during the month of August.

“Are you sure your officers checked all of them?” Lynda asked.

“Yes.”

“Including the Youth Hostel, a few blocks from your police station, where Duncan spent the night of August 8?” Dorn said he didn’t know what she was talking about. She explained, and then asked him to double-check to make sure that Duncan hadn’t also spent the night of August 9 or 10 in the city.

That evening the MacPhersons had a long talk by the fire with their hotel’s manager and receptionist. Bob had just bought a pictorial history of the Stubai Valley, and the book made him wonder about the history of the Stubai Glacier. The hotel manager, a woman named Angelika Ladner, and the receptionist, a girl named Gabi Frischmann, were both from the valley (they were cousins) and knew the story well.

The Stubai Glacier was built in the early seventies by a man named Heinrich Klier. Not only did he build the gondolas and lifts, he also extended Road 183 (the two-lane paved road running the length of the Stubai Valley) eight kilometers in order to provide car access to the ski area. Before he extended the road, no one had ventured into the narrow, southwest end of the valley except highland herdsmen and hikers. During the summer months the herdsmen had grazed their cattle on a highland meadow (Alm) which became the site of the two hotels, parking lots, and gondola station. Though most of the former pasture had been developed, it retained its old pastoral name—the Mutterbergalm.

Building the Stubai Glacier and its dedicated road had been an enormous, high-risk project, and most of the people in the valley had thought Doctor Klier (he held a doctorate in literature) crazy. No one—perhaps not even Klier himself—had imagined it would be such a success. For the year 1989, they were on track to have almost a million visitors.

The last stretch of 183 and the parking lots were the private property of the Stubai Glacier, whose personnel regulated traffic. On that note, Angelika said she’d spoken with the head of parking about Duncan’s car. He was, she explained, a very exact man, and he was certain the car had not been in the lot before September 1.

The next day, September 26, the MacPhersons drove to Innsbruck to hear the results of Inspector Klotz’s investigation. With Walter Hinterhoelzl as their interpreter, they had a long discussion, but Klotz’s overall message was simple: The gendarmerie had found no sign of Duncan after August 9. They were unable to trace his call to Ron Dixon in Vancouver, and therefore had no concrete reason to believe that Duncan had made the call after August 9. Klotz suggested they try to trace it in Canada.

As for Duncan’s car, Klotz concluded it must have sat in the gondola station parking lot since August 9. The gendarmerie had not noticed it because it didn’t patrol the lot, which was the private property of the Stubai Glacier. Everyone else who saw it must have assumed that its driver had gone for a long “hut tour,” as many visitors did in August.

It was conceivable that Duncan had gone on a hut tour after his snowboarding lesson. All over the Stubai Alps, huts were built during the late 19th century by the German Alpine Association. Though the word “hut” conjures images of a crude structure, some of them are substantial buildings with comfortable room and board for hikers. With decent shoes and a few layers of clothing, one could set off from the Eisgrat Station and hike from hut to hut. It was a safe and easy way to enjoy the mountains, provided one stayed on the marked paths. Venturing off the trails could be very dangerous.

In short, the gendarmerie believed that Duncan had suffered an alpine accident on the afternoon or evening of August 9. As none of the searches thus far had found his body, it was possible it would never be found. With snow falling at upper elevations, Commander Hofer had decided to call off the official search. However, everyone in the valley was aware of Duncan’s disappearance, which meant that mountaineers, highland herdsmen, and hunters would continue to keep an eye out for him or his body.

With no body and no proof, how could Lynda and Bob accept that Duncan had died in a mountain accident on August 9? Ron Dixon insisted he was “ninety percent sure” he had spoken with Duncan on August 10. The parking lot attendant at the Stubai Glacier—“a very exact man”—was certain the car had appeared in the lot after September 1.

Lynda phoned Ian Thomson at the Canadian Embassy and requested that Duncan’s call be traced on Dixon’s side in Vancouver. She also told him the Austrians were ending the search, and she wanted to know the Canadian government’s response to this decision. Thomson called back the next day and said that the Canadians were struggling to trace Duncan’s call to Dixon, but would keep trying. He then gave Lynda some advice.

“I think you and your family should get on with your lives,” he said. “Life is for the living.”

It was an odd thing for anyone to say to a mother who’d just been told that she would have to accept her son’s death, even without a body or any proof that he was dead. Stranger still was that a diplomat would say it. Lynda knew that External Affairs was tired of her questions and requests, but if she and Bob had not made hundreds of calls and driven thousands of miles all over the Alps, it was safe to say they would have no leads whatsoever. What was the point of keeping fat-assed consuls all over Europe, with their bloated staffs, chauffeured cars, and fancy villas, if they were unable or unwilling to do the work to find one of their missing citizens?

Unbeknownst to the MacPhersons at the time, on the same day that Thomson called them at their hotel, Interpol Vienna sent a cable to Interpol Ottawa with the following message:

MacPherson is believed to have had an accident while snowboarding on 9/8/89. He may have been killed by a fall into a crevasse. The above information has been communicated to the missing person’s parents and to the Canadian Embassy in Vienna.

In fact, this information was not communicated to the missing person’s parents. Inspector Klotz did not tell them that the police believed Duncan to have had an accident while snowboarding on 9/8/89. On the contrary, Klotz used the vague expression “mountain accident,” thereby insinuating that Duncan may have died while hiking after his snowboarding session. Inspector Brecher and Walter Hinterhoelzl both suggested that Duncan had tried to hike up to the Eisgrat on the morning of August 10 and perhaps drowned in a waterfall.

Ian Thomson also failed to disclose this specific information to the MacPhersons, even though the Canadian Embassy did receive the above cable from Interpol. Had Lynda and Bob understood that the police believed Duncan to have had a fatal crevasse fall while snowboarding, they would have recognized that this was indeed the most likely explanation for their son’s disappearance, and acted accordingly.

Without a trace of Duncan’s call to Ron Dixon, the MacPhersons tried to think of some other way to determine whether he’d come off the mountain on August 9. Lynda and Bob racked their brains all day on September 27, and then had a light bulb moment: They would find out if Duncan had returned his snowboarding equipment to the rental shop. Of course! If his gear was returned, that would indicate that he’d come off the slope and either hiked or taken the gondola down to the valley. If his gear wasn’t returned, that would indicate he’d gone out of bounds while snowboarding and fallen into a crevasse.

Surely someone at the rental shop would remember Duncan—the 6’1” Canadian boy who’d rented the equipment and then come back with Walter to renegotiate the price. The girl at the travel agency in Nuremberg and the girl at the music shop in Innsbruck remembered him. If he didn’t return his equipment, someone at the shop would recall thinking, “Uh oh, looks like the big Canadian didn’t bring back his gear.” Why had Inspector Brecher never mentioned this key investigative point?

Lynda called Joe Moffatt at External Affairs in Ottawa and explained to him the critical importance of determining whether the equipment had been returned. He acknowledged her concern and said he’d look into it. However, from recent experience, Lynda had concluded that she couldn’t rely on him to carry out the task, so she decided to look into it herself as well. As luck would have it, Felicity Lamb was coming for a visit that weekend, and she could speak German.

The Sport Shop 3000 was located in the Eisgrat Station. As Lynda and Felicity entered, they saw a girl behind the counter. Felicity introduced herself and Lynda, and explained that they were trying to figure out if Duncan had returned his snowboard and boots. The girl said she didn’t recognize him from his photograph. Felicity then asked to see the shop’s rental log, at which point the girl became noticeably tense and looked to her left at someone standing behind a ski rack. A young man in his twenties, apparently the manager, stepped out and explained that they had recently started keeping a new log.

“Could you find your old one?” Felicity asked.

“I will try,” he replied (indicating he had not already tried to find it for the police). He went into a back office, returned a few minutes later, and said, “I’m sorry, we have thrown away our log for August.” Not wishing to put him on the defensive, Felicity kept her surprise to herself.

“Is there any way to figure out if the equipment was returned?” she asked. The young man said he did not remember Duncan, but was certain that no snowboard was missing, which meant that if he had indeed rented his board from the shop, he must have returned it.

Unbeknownst to Lynda (again, she’d only learn about it twenty years later) External Affairs did make some effort to discover whether Duncan had returned his snowboard. On September 28, Ottawa sent a cable to Consul Thomson at the Vienna Embassy with four directives, including the following:

4. [First word redacted by censor] REPORTS INDICATE MACPHERSON WENT SNOWBOARDING ON STUBAI GLACIER AFTERNOON OF 09 AUG. WAS SNOWBOARD RECOVERED? IF NOT, THIS MIGHT PROVIDE ADDED PEG FOR RESUMPTION OF SEARCH.

On September 30 (the same day Lynda and Felicity visited the rental shop), Thomson replied:

RE PARA 4 REFTEL WALTER HINTERHOLZ SKIBOARD INSTRUCTOR IS 100/100 PERCENT CERTAIN THAT SKIBOARD WAS RETURNED. WOULD SUGGEST THAT RCMP/INTERPOL/AUSTRIAN POLICE AUTHORITIES IS BEST CHANNEL FOR SECOND GUESSING AUSTRIAN POLICE INVESTIGATION.

Again, Thomson did not disclose this vitally-important information to the MacPhersons, even though he repeatedly spoke to them on the phone after September 30. In Walter’s initial story to Lynda and Bob on September 22, he said nothing about Duncan having returned his snowboard, nor did he mention it again in his subsequent, recorded statements to Inspector Brecher and to the Innsbruck Court. Had Thomson told Lynda that Walter had become certain of the snowboard’s return, she would have confronted Walter before she left the Stubai Valley on October 14 and asked him what had prompted his revelation.

Though the MacPhersons continued to remain in the dark about the snowboard, External Affairs Ottawa concluded from Thomson’s cable that there was “no peg” on which to hang a request for the Austrian authorities to resume their search for Duncan. That his snowboard had been returned indicated that he had come off the glacier and gone somewhere else.

After their visit to the rental shop, Felicity told Lynda what the manager had said. His claim that he’d thrown out his log from August seemed very strange, but why would he want to conceal his transaction with Duncan? Lynda marveled at how hard it was to get definite answers from everyone. The shop manager, like Ron Dixon and the parking lot attendant, offered a tantalizing clue, but established nothing as fact. That no equipment was missing suggested that Duncan had returned his, but didn’t prove it.

Chapter 7: The Good Witch of Gmunden

Duncan’s disappearance was widely reported in the Canadian and European media. The tabloid press exaggerated his celebrity as a professional hockey player, which attracted attention from dozens of people who claimed to have seen him, either in person or in “visions.” In the months ahead, many psychics would contact the MacPhersons. With the police unable or unwilling to provide concrete leads, the clairvoyants rushed in to fill the cognitive void with their extrasensory perceptions.

In a letter addressed to the MacPhersons at their hotel, one psychic said she was having telepathic conversations with Duncan. Because the letter was in German, Lynda asked the hotel manager, Angelika Ladner, to read it. The psychic explained that she was a “good witch” from Gmunden (a town east of Salzburg, far from the Stubai Valley). After reading about Duncan in a newspaper, she’d contacted him clairvoyantly. He spoke to her in English, and though she didn’t understand it very well, she had recorded his words and wanted to convey them to Lynda and Bob. If they wished to talk to her, they should put a notice in the Kronen Zeitung (Austria’s largest circulation tabloid) and she would call them.

The letter was peculiar enough in German, and it sounded even weirder when Angelika translated it into English, but the MacPhersons figured there was no harm in letting her talk to the “witch” on their behalf. Angelika put a notice in the paper, and soon the witch called and said that, according to Duncan, he had slipped and fallen into a cave in the side of a mountain. Though he was nourishing himself by sucking on tree roots, he was injured and couldn’t get out without help. The cave was located behind the waterfall between Neustift and the Mutterbergalm. As he put it in English, “Between kilometer markers twelve and fourteen I are.”

There was in fact a waterfall at the location “Duncan” had described to the witch, and so Angelika and Gabi drove to its viewing area to check it out. They knew there were no kilometer markers, but they were curious to see if there were any other objects inscribed with numbers. With heavy snowfall expected, a crew had delineated the sides of the road with wooden stakes, and the one standing in line with the waterfall was marked with the number thirteen. Angelika and Gabi turned to each other in astonished recognition. Maybe Duncan really was communicating with the witch!

Angelika raced home and called her father. He believed it was unlikely, but they still had to check it out, just in case, and so he assembled a group of climbers with repelling gear. That night they scaled the face next to the waterfall to look for the cave of the psychic’s vision. It was a dangerous operation because of the dim light and slippery ice on the rocks around the falls, and though the men searched for hours for a cavern containing Duncan, they found none.

That night the psychic called Angelika and said she’d just heard from Duncan. He was so glad that the men were looking for him behind the waterfall—they had come so close to saving him! A helicopter flew overhead as they had approached him. In fact a helicopter had flown over during the operation, but Angelika didn’t take the bait. The psychic was calling from someplace in the Stubai Valley and taking a malevolent pleasure in leading people around by their noses.

Bill Mitchell, a Saskatoon businessman, had also followed the story in the papers. When he read about the Austrians calling off the search, he contacted Lynda at the hotel and offered to help. She told him about her uncertainty and her growing sense that the local police weren’t conducting a thorough investigation. Mitchell offered an option: He would either pay a Canadian search team to continue looking in the mountains, or a private investigator to do what the police were supposed to be doing. With winter coming, Lynda and Bob wanted to make a final push to find Duncan before the first heavy snowfall. If his body was indeed somewhere on the mountain, they dreaded the thought of leaving it there for the winter. And so Mitchell covered the cost ($25,000) of sending a Canadian Search and Rescue team to Stubai.

The men arrived on October 8, and as they understood their mission, they were to pick up where the Tyrolean searchers had left off.

“Our External Affairs briefed them,” Lynda recounted, “and they went out of their way to avoid second-guessing the local police. They said they had some new computer program that somehow tells you the probable location of the missing person.”

“One of those fellows seemed more interested in looking at Gabi [the young hotel receptionist] than for Duncan,” Bob said with a wicked smile.

“I guess they did the best they could in an awkward situation,” Lynda added. “As a matter of policy, they had to rely on information provided by the police, and not by the family, because often it’s a family member who is responsible for a person’s disappearance. Years later we realized that Inspector Brecher misled them about Duncan’s last known location.”

“How did you learn that?” I asked.

“From an interview that one of the guys gave to the fifth estate [an investigative reporting show] in 2006,” Lynda said, and then found the transcript in a file.

As I read reporter Hana Gartner’s interview with Mike Doyle of the Search and Rescue Society of British Columbia, it occurred to me that the cleverest writer of black comedies couldn’t have come up with such ludicrous material.

Mike Doyle: In 1986 we had put together a program called SHIFTPOA, which did probability theory. We took a computer with us and…we crunched numbers. First of all, we had to figure out what had been done and then we segmented the areas and crunched some numbers. And came up with some areas that we thought could be looked at again. And initially that’s where the dogs and the handlers went.

Hana Gartner: AND WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU PUT INTO THIS PROGRAM? DID YOU HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE VICTIM?

Mike Doyle: Yes, specifically the point last seen. I mean where was he last seen? Well nobody knew where he was last seen. The car was found in the parking lot at the hotel so that was the last known position in LKP [Last Known Position].

Hana Gartner: BUT YOU ALSO SAID YOU FOUND OUT THAT A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE GO MISSING ON THAT GLACIER EVERY YEAR. DID YOU ALSO PUMP INTO YOUR COMPUTER THE LAST KNOWN SITES OF THOSE DISAPPEARANCES?

Mike Doyle: No we didn’t learn that until the last day.

Hana Gartner: WHAT?

Mike Doyle: We didn’t learn that until the last day.

Hana Gartner: HOW COME?

Mike Doyle: It was something that was just given to us as an aside. …I don’t know whether they thought it was important. They didn’t want it out as far as the tourists are concerned because it would look bad. And so we weren’t made aware of that at the time.

“So you see,” Lynda said after I’d finished reading the transcript, “Brecher told Doyle that Duncan’s last known location was the parking lot, so Doyle and his team set off with a wilderness dog named Daisy and sniffed around in areas far away from the glacier—a total waste of time and money.”

A couple of days after the Canadian searchers began their misguided hunt, Lynda and Bob drove into Neustift to do some errands. The Stubai Valley was especially glorious that day. Its meadows were dusted with the first snow; its larches had turned a brilliant yellow, contrasting with the dark green spruces, covering the hillsides with a lovely patchwork. As they headed back to the Mutterbergalm, it began to snow. They understood that if it continued, it would force the Canadians to end their search.

“I don’t want to be here to see them pack up,” Bob said. “It’s just too depressing.” And so they decided that if the snowfall didn’t abate soon, they would go ahead and return to Saskatoon.

The Canadians searchers didn’t find Duncan, and as it continued to snow, they announced they were ending the search and would return home on October 15. Lynda and Bob decided to depart the day before. After they loaded their car, Lynda took a final look at the snow-covered mountains. It was, she thought, a cold place to spend the winter. Well Duncan, she said, we’ve done everything we can to find you, but we haven’t given up. We’ll be back when the snow melts.

As they headed out of the valley, steadily increasing their distance from the Mutterbergalm, Lynda had the terrible feeling that she was leaving her child behind. Bob drove in silence, feeling, she knew, exactly the same. For two months they’d tried so hard to find him, or at least his body, and now they were going back to Saskatoon empty-handed. It was almost unbearable.

Chapter 8: The Hut Manager’s Story

When Lynda was eighteen she fell in love with a boy named Bill who worked for Saskatchewan Power. A year into their relationship, she felt she would be happy spending the rest of her life with him. One summer Friday they made plans to drive up to Candle Lake for the weekend, as soon as he got off work. That afternoon, with a happy feeling of anticipation, she baked a walnut chiffon cake for the outing, but just as she was pulling it out of the oven, she felt suddenly terrible and dropped it to the floor. Just after 5:00, her brother, who also worked for SaskPower, walked into the house with an expression of dread on his face.

“What?” she said.

“Bill was killed this afternoon by a high power line.” Later she learned that he’d been electrocuted at 3:00—just as she’d suddenly felt so unwell. For a long time she grieved and felt disoriented. Her father and brother couldn’t stand to see her crying.

“Don’t cry, Lynda,” they always said, distressed by her tears, but at a loss for what to tell her. And so she learned to cry only when she was by herself. After about two years, her pain began to diminish, ultimately becoming an occasional sadness instead of a constant hurt (though for the rest of her life she would never again bake a walnut chiffon cake).

She knew well, then, the succession of feelings that such a loss sets in motion. First, there was the shock verging on disbelief, then the anger and depression, and then finally a gradual acceptance and recovery. Terrible as Bill’s death had been, it didn’t compare to Duncan’s disappearance, because as long as Lynda didn’t have her son’s body or at least proof of his death, the train of grief couldn’t leave the station. Instead she was stranded in an emotional no-man’s land of confusion, fear, and restlessness.

Sometimes she wondered if there was any way that it was all just a bad dream—that Duncan would one day show up with a wild story of where he’d been. It was heartbreaking to see his dog Jake, every day sitting by the front window, watching. He rarely got excited about men approaching on foot, as he seemed to recognize that they weren’t Duncan, but each time he saw a boy in the neighborhood going by on a bicycle, he barked and wagged his tail enthusiastically, apparently thinking it was his master, riding home from hockey practice.

For months after their return to Saskatoon, they received no update and no record of the investigation from the police. It appeared that no information, possible leads or witnesses—nothing that could be useful for a subsequent search—were documented, which meant that if they wanted to follow up, they would have to rely on their own notes. The Austrian and Canadian authorities were apparently of the attitude that they “should get on with their lives,” as Consul Thomson had advised them.

Needless to say, they weren’t ready to do that, as there was still far too much ambiguity surrounding their son’s disappearance. While Lynda was in Stubai, she discovered that as long as she was working to find him, she could keep the helpless, empty feeling at bay. Back in Saskatoon, waiting to hear from the police, she felt it creeping in, like the cold into a poorly insulated room.

She knew that he was probably dead, but there was no way she could give up looking so long as there was even a slight chance he was still alive. What if he was confined somewhere by an abductor? To cease looking for him seemed like abandoning him, which was unspeakable. She imagined him stuck in a bad place and desperate for his parents to find him. Don’t give up mom, she imagined him saying, and she knew that if it had been the way around, he would have never have given up trying to find her.

When they finally did get an update, it wasn’t from the police, but from Angelika Ladner. She’d heard from the manager of the Bremer Hut, who’d seen a missing person poster in Innsbruck on October 10 and noticed that the young man in the photo resembled a foreigner who’d appeared at the hut around midnight on September 25. His arrival had been alarming because he’d come from the Nuernberger Hut that night—a very dangerous trek in the dark without a flashlight. He didn’t even have a backpack, just a sports bag slung over his shoulder. Unkempt, he acted strangely, as if disoriented.

The next morning he ate a big breakfast and then set off towards the Laponesalm Hut, whose manager (the son of the Bremer Hut manager) also saw him. There he made a call to Augsburg, Germany from the pay phone, spoke to someone in English, and produced a large wad of schillings to pay for it. He then set off again, but because it was foggy, he quickly vanished from sight. From the Laponesalm he could have taken a path down to the Gschnitz Valley or an unmarked smugglers’ trail into Italy.

Lynda was astonished to hear the story, and wondered why the hut manager hadn’t reported it earlier. A disoriented, English-speaking foreigner appeared at the same time the largest manhunt in the history of the Stubai Alps was underway for a missing Canadian. The gendarmerie had called the huts on September 21, and by September 25, everyone in the valley knew about the search for Duncan. That the hut managers were unaware of him until October 10 seemed incredible. Are these people trying to drive me insane? Lynda wondered.

That the young man had seemed disoriented reminded her of the theory that Duncan was suffering from the aftereffects of Lyme disease. He’d never been forgetful, so it wasn’t like him to have left his leather jacket at Roger Kortko’s house and his clothing in Walter Hinterhoelzl’s office. Could he have been the foreigner who’d wandered off from the Laponesalm and vanished into the fog?

The hut manager’s story indicated that the young man had been improperly equipped, inexperienced, and confused, which put him at high risk for a mountain accident. The implication was that he’d either died in the Stubai Alps or wandered into Italy. Lynda didn’t know what to do with the story other than report it to External Affairs and request that it be forwarded to the police, though she doubted they would investigate it. Judging by their silence, they had already closed Duncan’s case.

Chapter 9: “The snowboard and boots have been returned.”

Finally, in February 1990, they received two documents from the Canadian Embassy in Vienna. The first was a copy of a letter written by District Gendarmerie Commander Hofer to Consul Thomson, dated October 18, 1989. Why had External Affairs taken four months to translate and forward it?

Though Hofer stated that “all circumstances of the case indicate that McPherson (sic) became the victim of an alpine accident on 09 August 1989 on the Stubai Glacier,” he did not record the circumstances—not even Duncan’s last known location. The “Stubai Glacier,” is, after all, the trade name of a large ski area encompassing five different glaciers. Hofer didn’t mention that only one of them (the Schaufelferner) was open on August 9, and that Duncan was last seen on its slope at 2:30 P.M.

In spite of his vague conclusion, Hofer told Thomson that the police had nevertheless accomplished the following:

As a result of various search measures, the private car (license number N-EH 204 (D) which was last used by McPherson was located on 20 September 1989.

Investigations conducted by the local gendarmerie office in charge gave rise to the assumption that the missing person visited the Stubai Glacier on 09 August 1989.

Innsbruck Federal Police Directorate had established that McPherson had spent a night in an Innsbruck Youth Hostel.

Based on new information, a search notice was broadcast by the ORF (Austrian Television) in their show “Tirol Heute” (Tyrol Today) on 20 September 1989.

In reality, Lynda and Bob had searched for his car. They established the fact (not the assumption) that Duncan had visited the Stubai Glacier on August 9, 1989, and that he’d spent a night in an Innsbruck Youth Hostel. They and the Innsbruck Hockey Club organized the missing person broadcast on Tyrol Heute; the police tried to obstruct it by invoking privacy laws. Altogether, Commander Hofer’s letter was highly misleading, for by asserting that his officers had diligently investigated Duncan’s disappearance, he gave the Canadian government the impression that nothing was left to be done.

Accompanying Hofer’s letter was a document titled “Final Report of the Security Directorate for Tyrol for the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Though mostly just a list of searches, noting the number of men, dogs, and equipment used, it did contain one passage that seemed to leap off the page:

It should furthermore be mentioned that the snowboard and boots, which Duncan MacPherson rented on 09 August 1989, have been returned. Exactly who and when the items were returned cannot be determined.

Lynda was stunned. When had they determined this, how had they determined this, and why had no one in External Affairs told her directly, given her request that it be clarified? It was by far the most important piece of information they obtained since finding Duncan’s car. That his equipment had been returned meant that he had certainly come off the slope. This indicated that he’d gone back down to the valley on the afternoon of August 9.

What happened to him after that?

The American journalist John Dornberg found the amnesia theory compelling. He’d met the MacPhersons through his friend Felicity Lamb, and then kept abreast of their search. When he learned about the foreigner wandering from hut to hut, it reminded him of stories he’d heard about amnesiacs showing up in towns where they were strangers, a mystery to themselves and to everyone else. Dornberg theorized that after Duncan called Ron Dixon on August 10, he went for a hike, fell, and hit his head. The resulting concussion caused him forget who he was, so he wandered the Stubai Alps, spending nights in huts, perhaps descending to a village to stay in a boarding house.

Lynda didn’t know what to make of Dornberg’s hypothesis. She thought it unlikely that Duncan could go for long in the Stubai Alps without being recognized as the missing Canadian. Then again, the hut manager said he hadn’t known about Duncan until he saw the missing person notice in Innsbruck on October 10.

No one in this nightmare makes sense, Lynda thought. It had started with Ron Dixon, who never called to tell her that Duncan hadn’t showed up for the meeting in Scotland. After Sean Simpson broke the news to her, she called the team manager, who confirmed that Duncan hadn’t arrived. As for Dixon, he’d apparently had little to say about it, and had simply flown back to Vancouver. And yet, in a subsequent press interview, he stated that Duncan was obviously a responsible young man who’d bought his ticket to Glasgow well in advance and called four times from Germany to confirm their meeting. If Dixon believed that, why hadn’t it occurred to him that his coach’s failure to show up was cause for concern? It was as if he hadn’t really needed his coach, and therefore didn’t care. But if that were the case, why had he offered Duncan the job in the first place?

Lynda inquired about Dixon and learned that no one seemed to know much about him, though many had heard rumors. People said that “Ron Dixon” wasn’t his real name, but an alias; that he’d served time in prison for manslaughter; that he was a master of double-dealing in his real estate projects. Most disturbing was Lynda’s perception that people were afraid of him. All of her sources insisted on remaining anonymous, as if frightened of retaliation. Could Dixon have had something to do with Duncan’s disappearance?

Yet another perplexing thing was the statement in the Security Directorate report that, “Exactly who and when the items [snowboard and boots] were returned cannot be determined.” This implied that the police had reason to believe that someone other than Duncan had returned the items. Why?

Duncan had been with another man when he’d purchased the cassette from the Innsbruck music shop. Who was the other man? This reminded Lynda that he’d been approached by a CIA recruiter, but had turned down the proposal because it required changing his identity and separating from his family. Had he in fact taken the offer? If so, it meant that he’d lied to his parents and left them to worry themselves to death. She didn’t think he would have done such a thing, but she still tried to figure out the likelihood that the man who’d approached him had indeed been a CIA recruiter, and not an imposter.

European hockey coaches and players (like Duncan’s friend George Pesut) frequently travelled back and forth across the Iron Curtain, which made them potentially attractive recruits as intelligence couriers or even collectors. Likewise, many agents travelled to Austria—a neutral country situated between Eastern and Western Europe—to transfer information, and over the years, several had been kidnapped or murdered. On July 13, 1989, three representatives of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan were assassinated in Vienna, apparently by Iranian agents.

Yet even if the CIA had persuaded Duncan to take a deep cover position, surely it would have allowed him to tell his family. The risk of his parents spilling the beans was far preferable to their publishing his name and photograph in newspapers across Europe in a desperate attempt to find him.

Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, a Canadian tourist in Moscow spotted a young man who she thought to be Duncan based on photos she’d seen in the papers. He was sitting in a popular bar with a Russian-looking woman. Though the tourist was too shy to approach him, she snapped a photo and sent it to Lynda and Bob. The man in the image resembled Duncan, but wasn’t him.

Lynda contemplated the possibility that he’d been recruited as a courier while retaining his identity as a coach in Scotland, and that his first assignment had been to go to Austria to receive information and then to deliver it to someone in the UK. Had the information been especially valuable, it was conceivable that he was murdered for it. Or was it? The scenario seemed to belong more to the movies than reality, but Lynda couldn’t help wondering.

A strange-acting foreigner vanishing in the fog, an unknown individual returning the rental gear, the car reappearing in the parking lot after September 1—it was all so mysterious.

Chapter 10: The Note under the Door

“With no solid lead, and with all of the ambiguity, you felt you had to pursue every lead, no matter how improbable it seemed,” I suggested to Lynda one morning at breakfast on about the fourth day of my visit to Saskatoon. Derrick MacPherson had just arrived from Vancouver for a weekend visit. Like his father, he tended to listen and observe more than he spoke, and I could tell he was watching me closely to see how I interacted with his parents.

“That’s right,” Lynda said. “You have to understand how weird everything was. I mean, how did Duncan’s disappearance after a little excursion to a ski resort become such a ridiculously complicated and confusing fiasco? It was like some crazy B-movie that’s not intended to be even remotely plausible.”

“Like an episode of The Twilight Zone,” I said.

“Exactly!” she replied. “The following summer was almost as weird. I guess the ski resort and the police were pretty unhappy about our return,” she chuckled. “They probably thought they’d seen the last of us when we left in October of eighty nine.”

As we discussed their adventures in the summer of 1990, I started thinking about how hard it must have been for them to understand what was going on around them in the tightly-knit community of the Stubai Valley, so vastly different from their home on the Saskatchewan prairie.

“We figured that at least someone in the valley knew something about Duncan, and that we’d eventually find him if we just kept looking. In the end, we met some really nice people, but no one was able to tell us much. Given what we know now, I wonder if people did know something but were afraid to tell us.”

“I’m surprised that no one tried to help you indirectly, like sliding an anonymous note under your hotel room door,” I remarked.

Not long after I said this, we began studying Lynda’s journal from the summer of 1990, which she’d dug out of her basement in preparation for my arrival. Her second entry noted a meeting with Inspector Brecher, during which she asked him about the assertion in the Security Directorate report that the snowboard and boots had been returned.

June 28, Thursday

He explained the snowboard again—Duncan paid 500 schilling (50 dollars) for snowboard lesson & use of snowboard. Brecher made it sound as if Duncan returned this snowboard & that possibly he had another one in the afternoon. Must get clarification on this—need to have someone speak in German to Brecher & to be certain of what Brecher is saying.

A few entries later, on Monday, July 2, Lynda wrote:

Angelika, Gaby, & I also went to see Brecher to get clarification on the snowboarding procedures. He says he believes the snowboard was returned, but he does not know by whom. No records are kept. He does not know if there were 2 snowboards involved or if Walter just let Duncan keep the snowboard he took the lesson on. He says one must ask Walter.

“He’s telling you here he believes that Walter knows whether the snowboard was returned, and he’s insinuating that Duncan used a second board in the afternoon—perhaps one that belonged to Walter.”

“But why is he telling me to ask Walter?” Lynda asked. “Wasn’t that his job?”

“Officially, yes, but he feels he needs to keep his distance from this case, so he’s trying to nudge you in the right direction without explicitly telling you.”

“That was your note under the door, mom,” Derrick remarked.

As Lynda wrote in her journal, she met Walter a few days after her second meeting with Brecher. Walter reiterated that Duncan had rented a board and boots from the Sport Shop 3000 for the entire day. After their morning lesson and lunch together, Walter last saw him walking with the board towards the lift to practice. Walter still reckoned that Duncan might have had an accident while hiking on August 10. Perhaps he’d visited the waterfalls below the glacier and fallen into the pool at their base, where his body could have been buried in sediment.

Though Lynda didn’t find Walter’s waterfall theory compelling, she trusted that he was frank and sincere, so she didn’t ask him expressly about Brecher’s statement that Duncan may have used a different board in the afternoon.

On July 1, an Italian couple named Gino and Anna Falchero arrived in Stubai to resume their search for their son. Thirty-three year old Fabrizio Falchero had been a competitive downhill skier in his youth, and in his twenties he became an instructor. Like Duncan, he also loved cycling. At twenty-eight he’d suffered a head injury in a motorcycle accident from which it had taken him a long time to recover. His mother had worried when he drove up to the Stubai Valley in early October of 1989, as it was the first time since his accident that he’d travelled on his own.

“Please call every day to let me know you are okay,” she asked him, and he promised he would. On October 10 he parked his camper close to where Duncan had parked on August 9, and was never seen again. The two young athletes had led similar lives, and both of them had gone missing after arriving at the Stubai Glacier. Had they met the same fate?

Gabi Frischmann, the receptionist at the Apparthotel, introduced Mr. and Mrs. Falchero to the MacPhersons, who were shocked to learn that Fabrizio had vanished at the same time they were conducting their initial search for Duncan. He must have passed within a hundred meters of them. When they heard that he enjoyed cycling, they remembered seeing a young man riding his bike on the road between Neustift and the Mutterbergalm—a memorable sight because it had just started snowing.

A video found in his camper showed footage of the mountains around the Mutterbergalm during a snowstorm, apparently taken just before Fabrizio disappeared.

“Watching that video was such a strange experience,” Bob recounted. “I remembered the storm perfectly as the one that had forced us to call off our search.”

The next day everyone rode the gondola up to the Eisgrat and gazed at the glacier.

“Nothing could have happened to Fabrizio here!” Gino exclaimed. “He was a mountaineer and professional skier. Maybe on Mont Blanc, but not on this little thing.” Lynda remembered Bob saying more or less same thing when he first saw the glacier.

“I turned to Anna to see if she had any opinion,” Lynda recalled. “She had this look of agony on her face, as though she was about to cry, but she didn’t say a word.”

“Fabrizio must have gone somewhere else after he visited this place,” Gino concluded with a wave of his hand. Nevertheless, several Italian volunteers, some with dowsing rods, searched the Schaufelferner. Lynda was amazed to see some of them fixing raw meat on the y-shaped twigs, apparently to make them more sensitive.

The MacPhersons and Falcheros shared the cost of another search for their sons in the mountains around the Stubai Valley. One morning Bob tried to join a search party that assembled near the gondola station. Standing there in the cool morning air, wearing his hiking boots, he greeted the mountaineers and tried to indicate that he wished to join them. Some returned his “hello,” but otherwise didn’t take much notice of him. They then set off from the parking lot at a brisk pace, without gesturing at him to join. It was as though he, the father of the missing person, weren’t even present.

“That was sort of a low moment,” Bob said. “I knew I couldn’t really talk with those guys, but it still sort of stung me the way they acted like I wasn’t even there. I trailed along behind them, looking at the terrain they covered, and not once did I see any kind of hazard that could kill a man and conceal his body.”

Lynda saw Gino every morning in the breakfast room, and she liked to listen to his theories.

“He was always making wild hand gestures, and he had the funniest habit of tearing bread rolls in half and pulling out the spongy centers. We’d get to the end of breakfast and his plate would be covered with little bread balls. One morning he told me he figured that Fabrizio had met a beautiful and rich Austrian girl and was living with her at her villa in Kitzbuehel. I have no idea if he was kidding because he said it with a straight face.”

Coincidentally, an Innsbruck cop had proposed a similar explanation for Duncan’s disappearance, though in his version, Duncan had met an enchanting Italian girl. A psychic in Vienna who’d followed the case in the papers called Angelika Ladner at the hotel and said she’d had a vision of Duncan in the sauna with an Italian woman whose jealous husband murdered him and then dumped his body in the mountains.

A group of Italians had, in fact, stayed at the hotel on August 9, 1989, so in spite of being fed up with psychics, Lynda asked Angelika to find their contact information. Angelika never produced it, perhaps afraid of violating her former guests’ privacy. It was really a task for the police, but Lynda had given up on them.

The Falcheros stayed in the Stubai Valley for ten days and then returned home, though Lynda remained in contact with them. For a while they figured their son might have forgotten who he was from his head injury in the motorcycle accident. One day, while watching an Austrian skiing competition on television, Gino thought he saw Fabrizio among the spectators, and he tried pursuing the lead without success. Ultimately he concluded that his son had been the victim of foul play near the Stubai Glacier—that he’d encountered an assailant on a hiking path or in the parking lot after dark.

Chapter 11: Revelation

Alpine Association cards, 1990.

The MacPhersons spent the entire summer of 1990 in the Stubai Valley. Most days Bob walked the trails with Derrick and Duncan’s dog Jake, searching the woods, rock formations and moraine fields for traces of his son’s corpse or clothing. Despite the grim purpose of these long hikes, Bob found them therapeutic. He understood why the mountains were associated with purity and peace. Sometimes, for brief moments, he even forgot about the disaster that had brought him there.

He found the local people sort of exotic, and he admired their mountaineering skills. While Lynda regarded their clannishness and strong Catholicism with suspicion, Bob understood that living in a valley where everyone knew each other came with different social pressures from those he’d known in Canada.

Only once did he feel something like enmity for the local people. Out for a hike one day, he passed a missing person poster that he’d tacked to a tree a few weeks earlier, and saw that someone had driven a walking pole spike into the image of Duncan’s face.

“Right through his eye,” Bob said. “I figured it was probably just a bored teenager, but it was still sort of chilling. I wondered if it said something about the way people in the valley felt—like they just wanted us to go home and forget about Duncan.”

“On the other hand,” Lynda said, “some of the locals made us feel very welcome. For a month we camped above the Mutterbergalm, and sometimes when we returned from our daily searches, we found a basket of food and beer from an anonymous donor. Later I learned it had been the sister of a town councilman in Neustift.”

“A few times we returned to our camp to find it trampled by cows,” Bob said. “At first I didn’t understand why, and then I realized they were attracted to the salt in our sweaty clothes that we hung out to dry. Derrick and I drove them away with pebbles and a larch branch, and the next morning, while I was having breakfast at the Hofer family hotel on the Mutterbergalm, I noticed Old Man Hofer glaring at me from under the brim of his fancy Tyrolean hat. He seemed angry for some reason, so I asked Angelika if I’d offended him. ‘He’s protective of his cows,’ she said. I couldn’t believe it! I had no idea that those were his cows until Angelika told me that all of the grazing land up there belonged to him. Why didn’t he just say something to me about it?”

“Because he couldn’t speak English,” I replied.

“Of course, you are right,” Bob said. “We tried to learn German, but it was just too damned hard.”

“I guess Mr. Hofer was watching us at our camp site,” Lynda said. “He was a strange man. I’ve never seen anyone get so dressed up for breakfast. Every day it was like he was going to a parade.”

“He must have been a member of the Tyrolean militia,” I said.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Back in the old days, Tyrol was a semi-independent province, and its free farmers formed militia units to defend themselves from foreigners like the French and Bavarians. Their hero was a guy named Andreas Hofer who beat Napoleon’s army at Bergisel—that place just south of Innsbruck with a big ski jump. Nowadays the militia is a fraternal organization that gives guys like your Herr Hofer at the hotel an excuse for dressing up in traditional garb and being as Tyrolean as possible.”

In July of 1990, Lynda and Bob visited the owner of the Bremer Hut, who reiterated the account he’d told Angelika the previous autumn. It was possible, he said, that the young foreigner had taken the smugglers’ trail into Italy. And so, with their friend Martin Baer, the MacPhersons went on a long hike south of Stubai, just across the Italian border. Martin was a bookish type who’d seldom left Innsbruck prior to meeting the MacPhersons. Bob thought he looked like a Talmudic scholar.

Bob searching for Duncan’s remains, summer 1990

He said he’d been studying his trail guide and wouldn’t get lost. Four hours into their hike, Bob began to have doubts. At one point their path crossed a glacier.

“Martin, are you sure this is a secure path?” Bob asked.

“I think so, but just in case there are crevasses, I brought this,” he said, and produced a ball of twine from his backpack.

“What are we supposed to do with that?” Bob asked.

“Rope together,” he replied.

“I’m not kidding,” Lynda said, laughing hysterically. “He really handed me a piece of string and told me to tie it around my wrist.”

“Martin got real interested in the mountains after we started bringing him out to Stubai to translate for us. Over the years he sent me a bunch of interesting articles about mountain accidents, and once he had his own scare. He was up walking around on a glacier with a girl from Innsbruck when he broke through a snow bridge. Lucky for him it was a small crevasse and he was able to arrest his fall by throwing out his arms on either side of the crack, but it scared him so bad that he vomited.”

The MacPhersons had heard of crevasses before Duncan disappeared, but while searching for him in the Alps, they learned much more about them. Crevasses are cracks in glaciers that can be several meters wide and up to forty-five meters deep. For most of the year many are covered with a layer of snow that conceals them and prevents people from falling into them. However, during the summer, the warm temperature causes these snow bridges to melt down to a state at which they will no longer support a man’s weight, even though they may continue to conceal the crevasses. In an instant, a weakened snow bridge may give way, dropping the alpinist into a terrifying void.

The authorities in Innsbruck rarely spoke about crevasses, as they seemed to prefer the more general expression “alpine accident.” Lynda understood that if Duncan had snowboarded off-piste or hiked off the marked trails, he could have fallen into a crevasse, but she was confident he would not have taken such a risk.

“But in the summer of 1990,” Lynda recounted, “I began to sense that Duncan might have fallen into a crevasse on the ski slope. It was an intuition, I guess, sort of like my early intuition that something had happened to him around Innsbruck. The police insisted that the ski slope was safe, because the Stubai Glacier was required to keep its crevasses under control. But then again, the cops had also said that no car could sit in the mountains for more than a few days without being reported.”

One day, in late July, she felt an urge to take another look at the Schaufelferner. Bob’s brothers Jim and Truman were visiting, and she invited them to join her. They rode the gondola to the Eisgrat and then walked up the glacier on the designated path. A couple walked a few meters ahead of them, and about halfway to the top, the woman suddenly plunged into the snow as though she were being swallowed by the glacier. Luckily for her, her companion grabbed her wrist and stopped her from dropping all the way in.

To Lynda, the spectacle had a surreal quality, like a dream that gave visual expression to what she’d been thinking. She froze on the path, watching the man pull the woman to safety. She then approached the hole, peered down into it, and saw nothing but darkness. The thought of falling into the cold, black chasm made her shudder. Reflexively she pulled out her camera and photographed the crevasse.

A slope worker, who happened to be standing nearby on the path, saw the incident and spoke into a handheld radio. Minutes later a Snowcat drove up, scooped a pile of snow with its blade, and pushed it into the hole.

“Don’t you check to make sure no one is trapped in it before you fill it?” Lynda asked the worker standing on the path.

“Only if someone has been reported missing,” he replied. Again she snapped a few shots of the scene.

The next day Bob went to the gendarmerie post in Neustift, and as he entered, he saw three officers standing behind the counter.

“You shouldn’t have taken those photos on the glacier,” one of them said as he approached the counter.

“Excuse me?” Bob said, shocked.

“You had no right to take those photos,” the cop said, his voice raised in anger. Bob’s mind reeled trying to comprehend what he’d just heard. How did the officer even know that Lynda had taken the photos, and why on earth was he so angry about it?

“I don’t understand,” Bob said. “My wife saw a woman fall into a crevasse on the walking path, which is supposed to be secure. I came here to—.”

“You had no right to take the photos,” the policeman repeated. The other officers said nothing, just glared at him.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Bob recounted, “So I just turned and walked out. I guess one of the slope workers called to warn them that they might be hearing from us.”

A few days later they drove to Innsbruck to speak with Robert Wallner, a public prosecutor in charge of investigating mountain accidents in Tyrol. Lynda told him about the incident she’d witnessed on the glacier and asked him to reopen the investigation of Duncan’s disappearance, focusing on the ski slope and men who worked on it. She also told him she was concerned that the police hadn’t taken any witness statements. A year later, it seemed unlikely that anyone would have a clear memory of the conditions and events on the day Duncan was last seen.

Wallner agreed to order the police to follow up, but to Lynda’s dismay, he assigned Franz Brecher, the same inspector who’d done such a poor job to begin with. Among the statements that Brecher then took was one from Helmut Tanzer, head of slope maintenance, who asserted that his men kept a watchful eye on the crevasses and made sure to keep them safely filled with snow. Moreover, in the highly improbable event that a skier fell into one, he would certainly be found, because the slope workers inspected all depressions before filling them.

To the MacPhersons, Tanzer’s statement was merely a proclamation of official safety procedures—more of a PR announcement than a response to a police inquiry. For his part, Inspector Brecher didn’t ask Tanzer or his workers a single probing question about the conditions and events on August 9, 1989.

Not long after the MacPhersons went to Dr. Wallner’s office, they saw him at a supermarket in Neustift. Lynda greeted him and asked what had brought him to Stubai. He replied that he was visiting his family. Later Lynda learned that he had grown up in Neustift, and it made her wonder how energetically he would pursue an investigation that could adversely affect his home town’s biggest company. The more the MacPhersons learned about the valley, the more they realized that it lived from the Stubai Glacier. With the tremendous success of the ski resort, those who’d once been poor farmers became the owners of hotels, retail shops, restaurants, and gas stations. The Stubai Glacier was the goose that laid the golden egg, and no one would dare hurt it.

By the time the MacPhersons returned to Saskatoon in September of 1990, Lynda was fairly convinced that Duncan had indeed fallen into a crevasse on the ski slope and been buried—possibly alive—when a careless groomer filled it with snow. As for the statement in the Security Directorate report that his snowboard and boots had been returned, she figured it was probably a lie.

She often had nightmares in which Duncan was trapped at the bottom of a deep, dark hole, wedged in the ice, terrified, crying for help. Along comes the Snowcat. Duncan hears the muffled throb of its diesel engine and thinks that someone is coming to rescue him, but the driver doesn’t get out of the machine to inspect the crevasse. Instead, he lowers the blade, scoops a pile of snow, and pushes it into the hole. Duncan looks up and sees the light above extinguished by a black mass falling towards him. Does the impact kill him instantly or does he suffocate?

Lynda hoped there was some other explanation for her son’s disappearance, but her intellect told her that a crevasse fall and burial was the most plausible. The trouble was the lack of proof. With no witnesses and no body, her mind couldn’t rest. Continually haunted, she figured she would never find peace until Duncan’s disappearance was properly investigated.

And so, in 1992 she and Bob went to Vienna to ask the Interior Ministry to reopen the investigation. Though unable to get an appointment with the minister, they were able to meet with the head of the federal gendarmerie. They told him they believed that the gendarmerie in Tyrol had not done a proper investigation, and they asked him to look into it. He said he would, and a year later they received the results of his inquiry: It was impossible for someone to fall into a crevasse on the Stubai Glacier’s ski slope, and equally impossible for someone to be buried in a crevasse by a grooming machine. So much for an independent investigation, Lynda thought.

Thinking that Canadian External Affairs might know something, she applied for a copy of their file on Duncan. External Affairs replied that the file was confidential because her son was an adult with the right to privacy. Lynda wrote back that she had power of attorney, and enclosed a copy of the document. She then received several memos and cables, but also a notice stating that External Affairs could not release the entire file because doing so could be “injurious to foreign relations.”

Lynda and Bob were intrigued. What about Duncan’s case could possibly injure Canadian relations with Austria? Once again they were reminded of the CIA business. Far from discouraging her, the access denial only inflamed her curiosity, so she sued External Affairs to release the documents.

Just before the hearing, she received a notice stating that External Affairs had decided, after all, to disclose the extra-sensitive documents. These consisted of correspondence between External Affairs and the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the question of whether Duncan had visited Czechoslovakia. The Czechs claimed they had no record of him ever traveling into their country.

Why on earth did External Affairs consider this simple query and reply so sensitive? Lynda wondered. One of her friends asked if she’d considered the possibility that the Czechs had in fact imprisoned Duncan for espionage, but Lynda was convinced that her son had told her the truth about turning down the CIA offer.

Chapter 12: The Ice Man

1991 was a year of glacier corpses. In March, a high level southerly air current carried dust from the Sahara desert up to the Tyrolean Alps and deposited it on the glaciers. With its brownish-yellow color, the dust absorbed sunlight instead of reflecting it, causing record snowmelt that summer. In August, the bodies emerged one after the other. On August 7, Odo Strolz and Otto Linher melted out of the Alpeinerferner. They’d met their deaths in a ten meter crevasse fall on May 2, 1953. On August 24, Dr. Kurt Jeschke emerged on the Bergglasferner. He’d plunged 30 meters on March 5, 1981. On August 29, Josef and Henna Schneider surfaced on the Sulztalferner. The Viennese husband and wife had been reported missing on August 8, 1934. That they’d died together in a crevasse was now confirmed fifty-seven years later.

All of the victims had died on glaciers that had not been developed into controlled ski slopes. Either they had underestimated the crevasse risk or their equipment had failed. Each body was examined by doctors at the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine, who later published a paper on the glaciological and forensic aspects of their deaths.

On Thursday, September 19, 1991, Erika and Helmut Simon, a couple from Nuremberg, climbed the Fineilspitze, a mountain lying thirty kilometers southwest of the Eisgrat as the crow flies. On their way down from the summit, they took a route just below a ridge called the Hauslabjoch, which had long been used as a pass over the main ridge of the Alps. Traversing a glacier called the Niederjochferner, they approached a narrow gully and saw a brown figure sticking out of the ice. Upon closer inspection they saw it was a human. Only his head, shoulders, and upper back were exposed; the rest of him was still encased in ice.

The Simons photographed the corpse with their last frame of film, and then descended to the Similaun Hut to report their discovery. The hut manager called the gendarmerie in the town of Soelden, whose inspector first thought the corpse to be a music professor from Verona named Carlo Capsoni who’d vanished in the area in 1941 (the inspector later learned that Capsoni’s body had been recovered in the fifties). Innsbruck prosecutor Robert Wallner was notified, and he opened an investigation into the possibility of foul play, offender unknown.

Oetzi the Ice Man, Sept. 19, 1991

Because bad weather made landing a helicopter at the site unsafe, the air rescue service and Professor Rainer Henn from the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine were unable to recover the body for a few days. In the meantime, several hikers visited the site, and they noticed strange fragments of birch bark, wood, and fur that had apparently comprised the dead alpinist’s equipment. Most remarkable was a tool with a long wooden handle on which a metal blade was fixed with leather thongs. It appeared to be some kind of ice axe, but certainly not a modern one. Upon hearing a description of the tool, the famous climber Reinhold Messner, who later visited the site, said he reckoned it had to be at least five hundred years old. Shortly thereafter the local press printed rumors that the dead man had been a mercenary in the employ of Frederick Empty Purse, a fifteenth century Tyrolean count.

On Monday, September 23, the body was freed from the ice and flown to the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine. Several officials were present to witness the examination, including Inspector Konrad Klotz, prosecutor Robert Wallner, and examining magistrate Guenther Boehler. The forensic doctor Hans Unterdorfer began with an external inspection, from which he concluded that the body was at least several hundred years old and bore no signs of fatal or even severe injuries. Most of the damage was superficial, probably from scavenging animals. The left thigh and pelvic region were damaged, apparently from a dog-like scavenger (in fact from a pneumatic chisel during recovery, as was later determined). Dr. Unterdorfer found nothing suspicious about the condition of the body, so Magistrate Boehler did not order an autopsy.

The next day, a University of Innsbruck archeologist named Konrad Spindler examined the artifacts found with the body and concluded they were at least four thousand years old. Subsequent radiocarbon dating determined that the man had died around 3300 B.C. His pure copper axe dated him from the Copper Age—a transitional period between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

Glaciologists in Innsbruck and all over the world were skeptical that the man was 5,300 years old because bodies buried in glaciers flow down the mountain in the ice and eventually get kicked out at the bottom. Even in the longest, most slow-moving glacier, the entire ride couldn’t take more than a thousand years. The oldest glacier corpse ever found in Europe was 400 years old.

However, upon closer inspection of the discovery site, glaciologists concluded that the narrow gully formed a rock chamber that had protected the corpse from the flowing ice and caused it to remain stationary and well-preserved for the entire span of European history. At the time Augustus Caesar’s army invaded Tyrol in 15 BC, the man had already been entombed for over 3,000 years.

The MacPhersons heard about the discovery from their friend Martin Baer in Innsbruck, who’d sent them reports about each of the glacier corpses found in August 1991. When they learned the body was that of an ancient, 5’5” man, they knew it couldn’t be Duncan, but they still followed the unfolding story with keen interest. Archeologists referred to him as the “Hauslabjoch Man,” after the precise location where he was found. From his more general location in the Oetztal Alps, the Austrian public soon started calling him by the diminutive nickname “Oetzi.”

Like many who followed Oetzi’s story, the MacPhersons wondered what he’d been doing in such a high, inhospitable place, and how exactly he’d died. Bob read in a magazine that doctors at the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine hadn’t seen any injuries consistent with foul play, which meant that the man had most likely died of hypothermia. Apparently traveling from the Oetz Valley to the Venosta Valley or vice versa, he must have been caught in a storm as he crossed the main ridge of the Alps at the Hauslabjoch and then succumbed to the cold.

Later Bob would learn that this initial theory of Oetzi’s demise was incorrect: Oetzi wasn’t alone up there on that day 5,300 years ago, nor did he die of hypothermia.

Chapter 13: The Amnesiac

In 1992, the German television station Sat. 1 began airing a program called Bitte melde dich! (Please get in touch!). Parents of run-away children, fathers separated from their adult kids through divorce, husbands abandoned by their wives or vice versa—all could tell their stories on Bitte melde dich! and broadcast a plea to their lost relatives to get in touch. The show was not only popular, but also successful in bringing families back together. In its first 80 episodes, no fewer than 220 missing persons called in to its studio.

In 1993, George Pesut (Duncan’s friend in Nuremberg) persuaded Lynda to tell their story on the show. He and the American journalist John Dornberg figured there was still a chance that Duncan was alive in Europe, but had suffered a personality change or amnesia.

The show—filmed at the Stubai Glacier on August 23, 1993—included interviews with Walter Hinterhoelzl, Inspector Franz Brecher, and the parking lot attendant. As the MacPhersons couldn’t understand German, they didn’t know what the men said, though they assumed it was nothing new.

One thing, however, jumped out at them. Though they recognized the parking lot attendant as “the very exact man” who was certain that Duncan’s car had not sat in the lot prior to September 1, they were astonished to see that his name was Seppi Steuxner. According to the gendarmerie, the lot attendant—the man who had responded to the missing person notice on Tyrol Today—was named Georg Hofer. Who, then, was he?

The most moving part of the segment was the MacPhersons’ plea to Duncan to get in touch. Sitting in the Eisgrat restaurant with the Schaufelferner visible through the picture window behind them, they said they loved him and desperately wanted to reach him.

“I will do everything possible to find you, for the rest of my life,” Bob concluded.

The segment was aired on November 25, 1993, and soon dozens of people called in claiming to have seen the missing hockey player. None of the tips checked out. Months later, in the early morning of February 8, 2004, Lynda and Bob were awakened by the phone.

“Mrs. MacPherson?” a heavily-accented male voice said.

“Yes.”

“My name is Majer. I’m calling from Germany; I got your number from the Nuremberg Hockey Club. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m calling about your son. I saw the show a few months ago about him, and I believe he is an amnesiac living near Klagenfurt, Austria.”

Lynda’s mind raced, trying to evaluate if this could possibly be true. Mr. Majer said he had a girlfriend in Klagenfurt who knew the amnesiac well. Based on a photograph she’d seen of Duncan in the press, she was convinced that he was her amnesiac friend. He was a really nice guy, and everything about his life was fine, except for the fact that he didn’t know who he was.

“I’m traveling to Klagenfurt next weekend,” Majer said. “I suggest that you send some photographs of Duncan and your family, and I will show them to this man. Maybe he will recognize them.”

Lynda immediately got out some old photo albums and selected images of Duncan, as well of her, Bob, Derrick, and Duncan’s dog Jake. After sending them by overnight air to Majer’s address in Germany, she called her contact at Foreign (formerly External) Affairs and requested that the embassy in Vienna check out the tip.

She could barely sleep that night and the next. As in August 1989, she could do little but sit by the phone and wait for someone from Foreign Affairs to call. Two days later, the Canadian radio program Morningside broadcast a report about amnesia, with specialists from McGill University talking about the strange phenomenon. Lynda listened to the program while she waited for the phone to ring, and again contemplated the possibility that Duncan was suffering amnesia as a result of the Lyme disease he’d contracted in the spring of 1989.

A few hours later, Foreign Affairs called and said that the Canadian Embassy in Vienna considered the tip credible. There was, in fact, a young amnesiac about Duncan’s age who lived in Klagenfurt, a three-hour drive from the Stubai Valley. On September 4, 1989, he had wandered out of the woods and into the neighboring town of Villach. He’d spoken only North American English, had no identification, was undernourished, and extremely distraught. He didn’t know who he was or where he was from, though he vaguely recalled having lived in New York.

The police in Villach had initially jailed him for vagrancy, and then transferred him to the local psychiatric ward, where he was given neurological treatments to no avail. After a time in hospital, he was released and given a job near Klagenfurt, where he’d led a decent life for four years in spite of being troubled by not knowing who he was. He called himself Mark Schoeffmann because he liked the name Mark, and had met a nice guy in the hospital with the family name Schoeffmann. He was an excellent skater and had two front teeth implants and a scar on his upper lip.

Upon hearing this, Lynda concluded that it couldn’t have all been a coincidence. Mark Schoeffmann had to be Duncan. His memory of having lived in New York must have originated from Duncan’s time at the Islanders training camp. Trying to contain her excitement, she asked the Foreign Affairs officer if he had a photograph of Schoeffmann. He did, and promised to fax it to her shortly. She called Bob at work, as well as several of Duncan’s friends, and told them to come over to see the fax. Everyone gathered round the machine as the image emerged from the printer, and Lynda held it up for all to see.

Mark Schoeffmann

“What on earth?” Bob said. The image showed a Slavic-looking young man with impossibly high cheekbones, widely-set blue eyes and a delicate, sensual mouth. Lynda squinted at the fax and moved it under a bright light. Maybe the original photograph had been distorted by the machine? Derrick and Duncan’s friends proposed other possibilities: Maybe his cheekbones would protrude like that if he’d lost a ton of weight; maybe his face had been altered by Lyme disease; maybe he’d gotten plastic surgery for some reason, perhaps to go under cover for the CIA, sort of like the fictional amnesiac Jason Bourne.

The next day, embassy officials travelled to Klagenfurt to visit Schoeffmann. After a long talk and a trip to the local ice rink to test his skating ability, they concluded that in spite of the differences, there were enough similarities to warrant further investigation. In their opinion, it was too close to call; the family needed to make its own determination. Coincidentally, one of Duncan’s old hockey pals, a guy named Emmanuel Viverios, played for the Villach hockey team, so Lynda asked him to visit Schoeffmann. A couple of days later he called and told her that the amnesiac bore no resemblance to Duncan.

She wondered about Schoeffmann’s dental work. Did he really have matching implants? It reminded her of the night Duncan’s teeth got knocked out by a checked opponent’s skate—the gruesome sight of so much blood on the ice, his teammates searching for the teeth, and his distress when he learned they couldn’t be replanted. She contacted Foreign Affairs and requested that his dental records be compared to Schoeffmann’s.

She’d already sent the records in 1989 to Interpol Vienna; however, what should have been a simple task ended up taking ten days because the Tyroleans didn’t have the records on file. Interpol Vienna had apparently never forwarded them to Innsbruck. Finally, on February 25, a consular officer called and told Lynda that, according to the Austrian police, Duncan’s teeth did not match Schoeffmann’s.

For two weeks she had sat by the phone and lain awake at night, waiting for news about the amnesiac—all for nothing. Or maybe not, she thought. Maybe she could help the young man to recover his past. She told the embassy she could use her North American media contacts to broadcast Schoeffmann’s story. If he had indeed lived in New York, maybe someone would recognize him in the newspapers or on television. Schoeffmann declined, saying he just wanted to be left alone.

Chapter 14: The Psychic

A few months after the Schoeffmann incident, Lynda received a proposal from an independent television producer named Christiane Schull, who’d already produced a documentary about Duncan for a show called Missing Treasures. Schull explained that a program about paranormal phenomena called Mysterious Forces from Beyond wanted to film an episode in which a Toronto-based psychic named Carole Wilson would attempt to locate Duncan with her extrasensory perception. Although Lynda was very weary of psychics, she had great respect and affection for Christiane, so she agreed to the proposal.

As Christiane explained, Carole Wilson had a reputation for giving the police decisive leads with her visions. In at least two cases, she had apparently led investigators to the perpetrators of abduction and murder. In one case of a murdered child in Toronto, the victim’s family had recommended her to the lead investigator—a seasoned homicide detective named Gord Wilson. Initially skeptical, he’d become a believer in her psychic ability when she helped him to solve the case. Indeed, he must have been impressed by her, as he’d later asked her to marry him.

In July, Carole and Gord Wilson arrived at the MacPhersons’ home, along with the Mysterious Forces from Beyond camera crew. Once the lights, camera, and microphone were ready, she sat down on the couch, put on a blindfold, and took Duncan’s Movado watch in her hands.

“Now, I have to assure you that I know nothing about this case,” she began. Lynda was sorry to hear this assurance, which sounded melodramatic and disingenuous. It seemed painfully obvious that Wilson was thinking too much about her television audience to have a genuine vision of Duncan. Soon enough, however, she went into what appeared to be a genuine trance, and started speaking in an unusual, disjointed way. She seemed to be free associating, talking about images and scenes that floated into her consciousness out of nowhere. On and on she went, and Lynda’s attention began to flag. She perked up, though, when the psychic started talking about being in the mountains.

“I’m breathless,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been cycling, or climbing—climbing mountains. I’m very cold; it’s very dark…. There’s a blow to the left side of my head; I see stars. It’s a heavy hammer or a pistol shot.”

Lynda was, of course, disturbed by this, in spite of her skepticism. Had Carole Wilson somehow just experienced Duncan being murdered with a blow to the left side of his head?

A few days later, Lynda and Bob listened to a recording of the séance, as they figured there was a chance they would notice something they hadn’t caught when they’d heard it live. Among other things, Wilson spoke about her visions of three men who were possibly responsible for Duncan’s disappearance. Her descriptions of these suspects clearly matched Walter Hinterhoelzl, Ron Dixon, and Mark Schoeffmann.

“I suppose that if one of them turns out to be responsible for whatever happened to Duncan, we’ll be impressed that Wilson got it right,” Lynda remarked sardonically, still doubting the psychic’s claim that she’d had no prior knowledge of the case, even though it had received extensive media coverage in Canada.

Bob agreed that Wilson appeared to be covering multiple bases. And though her vision of Duncan suffering a blow to the left side of his head was highly disturbing, it didn’t provide a useful lead. What were they supposed to do with this information?

In spite of her skepticism, Lynda was reminded of her nightmare on August 11, 1989, which, as it turned out, coincided with the approximate time Duncan had vanished. Since then she’d often tried in vain to remember what, in her dream, she’d seen. She’d even sought the help of a psychologist, but to no avail. Had it been a vision of what had really happened to him—an apparition that Carole Wilson had also seen? No, Lynda thought. Surely I was just having a bad dream, and surely this psychic is no more believable than all the others we’ve encountered.

Three years later, in the summer of 1997, Duncan’s brother Derrick married an Irish girl in the town of Newry, Northern Ireland. In the run-up to the wedding, Lynda and Bob made a trip to Innsbruck to see Martin Baer and some other friends. During their visit they drove to Klagenfurt to talk with the police about the strange case of Mark Schoeffmann. There they met a helpful officer named Franz Janscha who had the file.

“I don’t understand your embassy,” Janscha said. “We knew about your son in 1989, so when Schoeffmann appeared that September, we investigated the possibility that he was Duncan, and we ruled it out with certainty.” As for Schoeffmann’s true identity, Janscha confessed he had no idea.

In other words, the amnesiac had been a wild goose chase. Lynda wondered if the embassy had made such a production out of his story in order to appear helpful. On the other hand, she could sympathize with the notion that every lead, no matter how implausible-sounding, had to be investigated.

She wanted to believe that Duncan was still alive, and she would have gladly pursued any lead, but in her heart she knew that he was entombed in the ice of the Schaufelferner. Decades would pass, she feared, before he finally emerged at the bottom, and no one who’d known him would still be alive to commemorate his life and to give him a proper funeral. He would be just another “glacier corpse.”

Before returning to Saskatoon in September of 1997, they went up to the Schaufelferner for a final look.

I wish the whole goddamned thing would melt, she thought.

Chapter 15: The Corpse

Bisch a Tiroler, bisch a Mensch.

If you are a Tyroler, you are a real human being.

-Tyrol’s best-known adage.

The summer of 2003 was the hottest on record in Tyrol, with soaring temperatures even among the glaciated peaks of the Stubai Alps. By late June, much of the previous winter’s snow was gone, and with less snow to reflect the sun, the glaciers experienced heavy melting. At the Stubai Glacier, even the slope on the north-facing Schaufelferner had to be closed, which deprived the resort of its summer skiing revenue. For one of the first times since the concept of global warming had entered public consciousness, a direct, monetary cost of it could be measured.

On July 18, a corpse appeared on the Schaufelferner’s slope. Like a butterfly emerging from a pupa, it began with a piece of yellow fabric poking up through the surface. Further melting revealed the fabric to be part of a tattered rain jacket that clothed a body.

Martin Baer called the MacPhersons on July 19.

“They’ve found Duncan,” he said. “I just saw on the news that they pulled his body out of a crevasse on the Stubai Glacier.”

“Where exactly?” Lynda asked.

“The news is saying 120 meters east of the Eisjoch tow-lift—that he must have gone off-piste on his snowboard.”

Bob had a clear image of the spot, far outside of the east boundary of the slope. Immediately he suspected it was a lie to protect the ski resort from bad publicity and a liability claim.

The Canadian media didn’t catch wind of the story, so on Sunday evening, Lynda called a reporter named Rob Vanstone, who’d long taken an interest in Duncan, and gave him the scoop. She told him they were about to fly to Austria to retrieve the body, and were hoping to learn more about his death.

“We do want an autopsy done,” she said, “because the big question for me is: Did he get buried alive?”

The night before their departure, a Foreign Affairs officer in Ottawa called and told Lynda that embassy officials were standing by to assist them in Innsbruck. Believing that Foreign Affairs was still more interested in maintaining smooth relations with the Austrians than in helping her, Lynda declined the offer.

Just as they were leaving for the airport, Bob answered a call from Carole Wilson, the psychic from Toronto.

“Be sure to look at Duncan’s left leg,” she said.

On the flight to Munich, they had no idea what awaited them, though they felt confident they were finally about to discover what had happened to Duncan. However, as they would learn much later, the authorities in Innsbruck were again handling the case in a very confusing way. His body was initially to remain in cold storage at a funeral home in the village of Trins, southwest of the city, until they arrived to pick it up. But then, on Monday, July 21, the Canadian Embassy informed the officer in charge of Duncan’s case—Inspector Willibald Krappinger—that the deceased was a well-known person, that his parents would be escorted by officers of the Canadian Embassy, and that they expected an autopsy.

In fact, the MacPhersons would not be escorted by embassy officials, as Lynda had declined the offer from Foreign Affairs. And so, “out of courtesy,” Canadian Vice-consul William Douglas called Inspector Krappinger on July 22 to inform him of the change of plans. The MacPhersons would be arriving in Innsbruck without a consular escort.

Innsbruck was infernally hot when they arrived on the morning of July 24. In all the summers they’d visited, they’d never experienced anything like the heat that held Tyrol in its grip. No wonder the Schaufelferner was melting.

At gendarmerie headquarters, they met Inspector Krappinger. Also a pilot who’d investigated aviation disasters, his office was adorned with photos of crash sites. As Bob too was a pilot, he couldn’t contain his curiosity about the pictures.

Krappinger spoke voluminously about plane crashes, but had little to say about Duncan. He seemed unable or unwilling to answer even basic questions. When Bob asked him where the body had been found on the glacier, he pulled out a grainy photocopy of an aerial photograph of the Schaufelferner and circled a large area—apparently an attempt to avoid pinpointing the body’s location. Bob nevertheless saw the blurry outline of a Snowcat, parked in the middle of the slope, and figured it marked the spot. The men must have used the vehicle to transport themselves and their equipment to the site.

“May I see the original photo?” Bob asked.

“No, it’s only for the police,” Krappinger replied.

So that’s the way this is going to be, Lynda thought. More secrecy.

“Where is Duncan’s body now?” she asked. Krappinger replied that it was at the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Just before they left, Bob demanded copies of the police photos. Krappinger refused, but then apparently changed his mind and called someone. Another officer then entered with a stack of photos and handed them to Bob.

Outside the station, he and Lynda looked at the images and realized that, though they were indeed of the discovery site, they had been taken after Duncan’s body was recovered. Nevertheless they showed the site’s location—in the middle of the ski slope.

They went to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, where they assumed a scientific examination of Duncan’s body would tell them how he had died. As they entered its dimly lit foyer and walked down the hallway, they couldn’t find a living soul.

“Hello, anybody here,” Lynda said. Finally a young man popped his head into the hallway from one of rooms and asked if he could help.

“We’re looking for a doctor of forensic medicine,” Lynda replied.

“Come with me,” he said, and led them to the office of Dr. Walter Rabl, who was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. Tall and lean with a handsome, boyish face, he reminded Lynda of Duncan, and she immediately liked him. He had a warm and relaxed way about him (unlike the policeman they’d just met), and his English was excellent.

He invited them into his office and made them cappuccinos from a little machine. After they were seated and sipping their coffees, he said he was very sorry, and then proceeded to ask about Duncan. He seemed genuinely curious about the young man whose corpse was lying in his dissection room, though he mentioned nothing about a forensic examination.

“When are you going to perform an autopsy?” Lynda finally asked.

“The public prosecutor hasn’t ordered me to do an autopsy,” he replied, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “The district government office has asked me to confirm the identity of the body, but nothing more.” Lynda and Bob were stunned. A corpse emerged on a ski slope, and the authorities didn’t want to know the cause of death? It seemed incomprehensible. Rabl explained that the public prosecutor was apparently satisfied that the circumstances alone indicated that Duncan had died after accidentally falling into a crevasse, and that there were no indications of foul play.

“Well, how do you think Duncan died after he fell into a crevasse?” Lynda asked.

“Most likely from non-asphyctic suffocation,” Rabl replied. He then explained that, like avalanche victims, Duncan had probably been able to breathe some air trapped in the snow, but hadn’t gotten enough oxygen. This wasn’t a bad way to die. Indeed, avalanche victims rescued at the last minute claimed to have had warm and happy feelings.

Rabl’s suggestion was consistent with Lynda’s longstanding suspicion that Duncan had been buried alive in the crevasse by a careless slope groomer, but she still wanted scientific confirmation. Rabl replied that an autopsy may not reveal the cause of death because the body had been in the ice for so long. In any event, it was up to the prosecutor to judge whether the procedure was warranted.

“May I see him?” Lynda asked after she regained her composure.

“Of course,” Rabl said. “But I would like to prepare you by showing you some photographs.” On his desk he placed two small prints of Duncan lying on a gurney. Lynda and Bob instantly recognized his face, which they thought looked surprisingly well for having been in a glacier for fourteen years. His upper body—still clothed in the violet Capriccio sweatshirt that Walter Hinterhoelzl had remembered him buying after lunch—also looked good. Though his left leg appeared to have been damaged, they didn’t look at it closely or give it much thought, as they assumed it had occurred as a result of being in the ice for so long.

“Most of his body looks so well preserved,” Lynda said. “I figured he would be crushed by the ice.”

“After he died, the snow around him turned into ice and acted like a coffin, which protected him,” Rabl replied.

“Why is his skin so dark?” she asked, referring to his face.

“That is oxidation from contact with the air,” Rabl said.

“Okay,” she said. “I think I’m ready.”

Fourteen years had elapsed since she’d said goodbye to him on the morning of August 2, 1989. He’d had a nervous look on his face as he’d embraced her, afraid she’d start crying.

“I’ll call you when I get to George’s place,” he’d said. “And I’ll see you at Christmas.” Since then the world had changed. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the First Gulf War, the ten-year term of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the spread of cell phones and the internet, the September 11 terrorist attacks on America—all had taken place while Duncan was in the ice. His brother had married, fathered a child, and divorced. His mother had grown old beyond her years. Photographs of her in the nineties show a marked acceleration of aging.

Lynda and Bob waited in Rabl’s office while he prepared the body for viewing. He soon returned and led them to a space outside of the dissection room where a gurney stood next to a window. Lynda went first, slowly approaching until she saw Duncan’s head resting on a pillow. A sheet was drawn up to his upper chest, and she could see the contour of his body underneath it. To her, his face looked surprisingly good.

“After Lynda stood there for a minute, I knew it was my turn,” Bob recounted. “You know, years earlier I’d heard a story about some poor Austrian soldiers in the Alps during the First World War who’d taken shelter in a cave and then gotten trapped in it by an avalanche. When the snow melted in the spring, there they were, dozens of dead, their fingers worn down to the bone from trying to claw their way out of the hardened snow. I always told myself that if they ever found Duncan, I would look at his hands to see if he’d tried to dig his way out of a crevasse filled with snow. But when I approached the gurney and saw him, I—I couldn’t,” he said, his voice faltering. “I couldn’t believe how ruined and reduced he was, and the odor coming off of him was terrible. And I just felt so sorry for him.”

“We stood there for a while, holding hands, looking down at him,” Lynda said. “It was so strange to see him dead. At the same time, that horrible restless feeling I’d had for all those years seemed to sort of go away. His death was certain, and it was the first time in fourteen years I’d been certain about anything.”

Lynda said she wanted to spend a final moment alone with him, and as Bob turned to walk away, he saw Dr. Rabl standing behind them with tears in his eyes.

“You people are very brave,” he said.

Lynda stood next to Duncan and gathered her thoughts. As with most mothers and their kids, she cared more about him than anything, including herself. Death had taken him, but it still seemed like she was getting some sort of chance to say goodbye. She wanted to hold his hand, so she lifted the sheet at the spot where she estimated it to be on the gurney, but it wasn’t there. She started to lift the sheet further to look for it, but then got the feeling that she was disturbing her dead son’s peace and privacy, so she put it back down.

“I’m sorry you died so young,” she said to him, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “But I know you had a good life and that you died doing something you loved, and that gives me some peace. Goodbye, Duncan,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead.

Chapter 16: An Alternative to Autopsy

The next day (Friday, July 25) they went to the prosecutor’s office and requested a meeting with Dr. Freyschlag, with whom they’d discussed Duncan’s case before. Freyschlag apparently wasn’t available, so they were directed to speak with Dr. Rudolf Koll. He was icy, offered no condolences, and didn’t even shake Bob’s proffered hand.

“The puffed up little troll sat perched on the edge of his desk, glaring down at us,” Lynda recounted. “For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he was so furious. I told him we’d searched for our son for fourteen years and had struggled the entire time for information. Now his body had finally turned up, and we still knew almost nothing. ‘The case is time-barred and there will be no autopsy and no further investigation,’ he exclaimed. And you know, he said it in such an authoritative way, he gave us the impression that an autopsy was lawful in Austria only if a public prosecutor ordered it.”

Returning to Dr. Rabl’s office, they told him they’d had no luck with Koll.

“Again, I told Rabl I didn’t understand why the prosecutor wasn’t interested in discovering the cause of Duncan’s death,” Lynda said. “And again, Rabl said that an autopsy may not reveal the cause of death, given that the body had been in the ice for so long. We told him we wanted to think about flying it home to Canada for autopsy, and that we’d let him know the following Monday of our decision. My parents and Derrick wanted us to fly the body home, but I doubted it made sense. The transport cost was high, and I also kept thinking about what Dr. Rabl had said about how an autopsy may not reveal the cause of death anyway, so I didn’t think there was much sense in having him cut open. He’d already suffered so much indignity.”

On Monday, they again went to Rabl’s office and told him how they were leaning.

“But I still want to know how Duncan died,” Lynda said. “Is there any way we can find out?”

As an alternative to autopsy, Rabl offered to take a CT scan of the corpse. A CT scanner, he explained, could show all kinds of traumas. An amazing diagnostic machine, the same kind had been used to investigate Oetzi’s body.

“He said it might not tell us how Duncan had died, but it would certainly tell us how Duncan had not died,” Lynda recounted. Bob remembered reading about the CT scans of Oetzi’s body, which showed an arrow head lodged in his left shoulder. Someone had shot him in the back, causing a fatal wound that wasn’t noticed during the initial examination in Innsbruck. Not hypothermia, but a murderer had killed the Ice Man. However, as Bob recalled, it was researchers in Bolzano, and not in Innsbruck, who’d taken the scans and noticed the arrowhead.

To the MacPhersons, a CT scan sounded like a great alternative to autopsy, and Rabl concluded by saying he would schedule it as soon as possible. Towards the end of the meeting, Bob asked if he could have the snowboard found with Duncan’s body, and Rabl fetched it from a storage room.

“We tried very hard in 1989 to figure out if Duncan had returned the board to the rental shop,” Lynda explained. “But the manager never gave us a straight answer. First he said no board was missing, and then later he or someone else told the police that the board had been returned. Now we know that it wasn’t.”

Bob noticed that the board had been severely damaged by what appeared to be contact with machinery. It was broken in two places, and the forward, left section of the deck had been ripped off by something with a cutting edge.

“It’s really torn up,” he said. “I wonder what happened to it.” Rabl said he would inquire, made a phone call, and spoke for a long time in German. After he hung up, he said he’d just talked with the Stubai Glacier’s slope maintenance department. The men explained that, because they’d found the board encased in hard, blue ice, they had to use the grooming machine to dig it out.

Bob knew that extracting objects from ice is difficult. Solid ice is as hard as concrete, and when hit by an ice axe, it merely chips. In his experience, a chain saw was the best tool for cutting it. That the workers had used a grooming machine made no sense to him.

Chapter 17: The Elephant in the Room

Bob often thought about the photocopy of the aerial photograph that Inspector Krappinger had shown them, and it occurred to him that he might be able to get a proper copy from Chief Gunter Geir at the gendarmerie station in Neustift. Geir had become chief a few years after Duncan disappeared, and had always been friendly. He granted Bob’s request without hesitation, giving him several photos taken from the air and on the glacier.

The Schaufelferner on July 18, 2003: The Snowcat in the middle of the left side of the slope is parked where Duncan’s body was found.

Sitting in their rental car in the station parking lot, Lynda and Bob looked at the images, and saw their son’s corpse melting out in the middle of the ski slope. It was a shocking sight, but at least now they had incontrovertible evidence that he hadn’t snowboarded out of bounds.

That afternoon, as they were on their way to an appointment in Innsbruck, they went into a store to buy a pair of shorts for Lynda. The shopkeeper was a friendly woman who recognized them from the evening news.

“You are the parents of that poor boy who died on the Stubai Glacier,” she said.

“Yes, we are,” Lynda replied.

“I’m so sorry. I wish boys wouldn’t take such risks, skiing off-piste.”

“Our son didn’t ski off-piste,” Lynda replied. “He died on the piste.” Bob then showed the woman a photograph of the discovery scene.

“My God!” she exclaimed. “This isn’t what I heard on the news.”

“The news lied,” Lynda said. The next day she called the reporter Alexander Huss, who’d covered the story in the Tiroler Tageszeitung, a leading newspaper in Innsbruck.

“We have photos showing that our son’s body wasn’t found off-piste, but in the middle of the slope,” Lynda said. Huss said he’d simply gone by the press release.

“The press release was false, so please print a correction.”

“I understand how you feel, Mrs. MacPherson,” Huss said, “but it’s the end of the story.”

“Maybe for Austria, but it’s not the end of the story,” she replied. She wondered if the Stubai Glacier, with its aggressive marketing program, bought ad space in the Tiroler Tageszeitung. Later she wrote to the Austrian Press Association to inquire about their source for the statement that “the then 23-year-old plunged into the free [out-of-bounds] ski area with his snowboard.” The APA never replied. How odd that a ski resort could wield so much influence in Innsbruck. The capital of Tyrol was a small city compared to Vienna, but it wasn’t that small. Was it just money, or did it also have something to do with the Stubai Glacier’s charismatic founder, Heinrich Klier?

They’d heard that Klier was a larger than life figure—a famous mountain climber and writer before he became a developer. On a few occasions they’d heard people in Neustift call him the “Godfather of the Valley,” though they weren’t sure if this was meant in earnest or tongue-in-cheek. Did Klier, like Don Corleone, “carry politicians around in his pockets like so much loose change”?

His office was located downtown, and one day they showed up without an appointment, and without announcing themselves at the entrance intercom. Instead they waited on the street for someone to exit through the locked door so they could slip in.

“We’re the MacPhersons from Canada,” Lynda said as they entered the large reception. “We would like to speak with Doctor Klier.” The startled receptionist fetched her boss, and as the seventy-seven-year-old man entered the room, Bob was surprised by how small he was—small but very fit. He invited them into his conference room adorned with spectacular aerial photographs of the Stubai Glacier.

“I’m sorry about your loss,” he said. “I know your grief; I too have lost a son.”

“In a mountain accident?” Bob asked. Tears came to Dr. Klier’s eyes.

“I cannot talk about it,” he said. “I shouldn’t be working here anymore, as I am getting old. But my son is dead, and my other children have their own interests.” Lynda looked through the glass partition between the conference room and reception, and saw a middle-aged man glancing nervously in at them. Later she would learn that he was the Stubai Glacier’s senior manager, Franz Wegscheider.

Wegscheider needn’t have worried about Klier saying something compromising, for within minutes the old man took control of the conversation. That Duncan’s corpse had emerged on the Stubai Glacier’s slope was an elephant in the room, and yet somehow Klier managed to ignore it. Instead he spoke of mountains and glaciers, famous climbers and accidents. Occasionally Lynda tried to interject, but each time he quickly went back to addressing Bob in a way that revealed his attitude towards women—helpless creatures, incapable of understanding anything.

After a few glares from Lynda, Bob finally managed to get to the point: Their son had died in a crevasse on Klier’s ski slope, even though the police had always insisted that such an accident was impossible. Furthermore, if his rental shop had simply admitted that Duncan hadn’t returned his equipment, it would have been clear that he’d died while snowboarding, and they wouldn’t have spent years and much of their retirement savings looking for him.

Klier replied that he’d long known Seppi Repetschnig, the shop manager, and was certain of his integrity. Something was amiss, and he would study Walter Hinterhoelzl’s statement to the police to get to the bottom of it. He also wanted a photograph of Duncan for a memorial. He then excused himself to attend a city council meeting.

Chapter 18: Bones on the Ice

On July 31, Lynda and Bob drove to the Stubai Glacier to visit the site where their son’s body had been found. All of the employees they encountered, starting with the girl at the gondola ticket counter, greeted them with a look of somber recognition. Like so many times before, they walked out of the Eisgrat Station to see the Schaufelferner rising up before them, but on this day much of its lower half was largely denuded of snow, which exposed patches of dirty black ice. Two slope maintenance workers were waiting for them. Though the MacPhersons didn’t know it at the time, one of them had been the supervisor of slope operations on the day Duncan disappeared.

The men gestured towards a Snowcat. Its grooming tiller, attached to the back, was in the raised (disengaged) position, and Bob studied it for a moment. Designed to pulverize compacted snow, the mechanism consisted of a large shaft on which were mounted steel tines. The shaft and tines were painted red.

Lynda on the walking path, 1997

They climbed into the vehicle and headed up the slope. It was a fearsomely powerful machine whose massive tracks propelled them effortlessly up the icy incline. About halfway to the top, they stopped and got out.

“Here is where we found the body,” one of the men said, pointing at a recently-disturbed area of ice. Bob already knew from photos that Duncan had been found on the ski slope, but he was still astonished by the location—dead center, about 25 meters east of the tow-lift. Through all that searching, he’d been right under their noses. Bob remembered taking a photograph of Lynda six years earlier on the walking path, just a few meters from where Duncan had been laying in the ice.

He studied the area that had been his son’s grave, and noticed a few fragments of clothing and a piece of black plastic. He picked up the plastic and saw that it was a section of the snowboard deck on which the serial number was stamped. It appeared that someone had detached it from the board and tossed it into the remnant of the shallow crevasse from which Duncan’s body had been extracted, but because the ice continued to melt in the days that followed, the piece of plastic had reemerged on the surface. Bob showed it to one of the slope workers, and then put it into his pocket. The worker produced a cell phone, called someone, and spoke in German.

Bob continued to study the site, and saw, among the chunks of disturbed ice, some whitish-grey fragments. He bent down and picked up what appeared to be wrist bones and pieces of a hand. They had marks on them, as though something had struck them.

“What’s that?” Lynda asked as he wrapped them in his handkerchief.

“Looks like bones,” he said. She was speechless. Why hadn’t the police collected all of Duncan’s body? It wasn’t so much rage she felt as disbelief. And even though it was a hot day, she felt that there was something terribly cold about the place.

“I want to get away from here,” she told her husband.

From the glacier, they drove to Dr. Rabl’s office to give him the bones.

“I want to apologize to you, and especially to Duncan, for the way the authorities have handled this,” he said with tears in his eyes.

“They look kind of smashed up,” Bob said. “Do you think it happened when the body was extracted?” Rabl studied them.

“No,” he said. “See how the fractures are dark. Fresh fractures would be lighter. I will put them with the rest of the body. We are going to CT scan it this evening, and I will have the results for you tomorrow.”

The next day (August 1) they returned to Rabl’s office to hear the results. To save them from having to find a parking space in the congested neighborhood, the doctor came down and let them into the staff lot. He then explained that, according to his colleague in radiology, the scan showed no fractures to the skull, thorax, or pelvis, indicating that Duncan had not died from any kind of severe injury. He had not yet received copies of the images and report, but as soon as he did, he would send them to the MacPhersons’ home in Saskatoon.

“While we’re here,” Lynda said, “can we get copies of your ID report and those photos you showed us to prepare us for viewing the body?”

“The ID report is for Knapp, and I’m not really supposed to give it to you,” he said. “But I personally don’t see any reason why you can’t have it.” He made her a copy, and also gave her the two photos.

From Dr. Rabl’s description of the CT scan, Lynda and Bob concluded that Duncan must have indeed died from being buried in a crevasse by a careless groomer. As the examination had, according to Dr. Rabl, revealed nothing that warranted further investigation, they figured they might as well give the green light for cremation. Rabl said the body would go to the crematorium that day, and that the ashes would be ready to pick up the following Monday.

Just before they left the office, Bob remembered the snowboard serial number he’d found on the glacier the day before, and he told Rabl about it. The doctor volunteered to trace the board for them, and accompanied them to the parking lot, where Bob got the objects out of the car and laid them on the pavement for Rabl to photograph them.

It was a sunny day, and in the direct light, Bob noticed for the first time that whatever instrument had sliced off the board’s plastic deck had left a residue of red paint on the underlying plywood. He’d just seen that color the day before—it was the color of the rotating mechanism on a grooming machine that pulverizes hard-packed snow.

“It looks like the board got hit by a grooming tiller,” he said to Rabl. This was puzzling because, as Bob had just learned from their trip to the Stubai Glacier, the resort had been closed for skiing all summer due to lack of snow. Though the maintenance workers were still using Snowcats for transport, they weren’t grooming. Rabl said he would follow-up with the workers about how exactly they’d extracted the board.

As they were taking their leave, Lynda gave Rabl a fine bottle of Canadian whiskey.

“Something to remember us by,” she said.

“We are so thankful that the last person to handle Duncan was a man of such integrity,” Bob added.

The day before they returned to Saskatoon, they went to the crematorium near the Innsbruck Olympic Stadium to pick up Duncan’s remains. As a gift, the undertaker placed the sealed plastic container of ashes in a bronze-colored steel urn that looked rather like a bucket for chilling champagne. A small metal plaque on the urn was inscribed:

Krematorium Innsbruck No. 003863

Duncan MACPHERSON

Geb [Born]: 03.02.1966

Gest:[Died] 18.07.2003

Krem.:[Cremated] 04.08.2003

Lynda was touched by the undertaker’s gesture, though she wondered why he’d inscribed the date Duncan’s corpse was discovered as the date of his death, and why the date of his cremation was inscribed August 4, in spite of the invoice stating that he was cremated on August 1. The undertaker told them that they wouldn’t be allowed to carry the ashes with them on the plane, but would have to check them in.

“But there was no way I was going to put his ashes in the cargo hold,” Bob recounted. “Nope, Duncan flew home with us in my backpack.”

Chapter 19: “Do not stand at my grave and weep”

When Duncan was sixteen, he left home for the first time to play for a minor league farm team in the town of North Battleford. He lived with an elderly couple, and in the evenings he often played cards with them before bed. One night, just after he went down to his basement bedroom, he heard the lady yelling for help. He ran upstairs to find that her husband had just collapsed, apparently from a heart attack. She was beside herself. Duncan quickly called an ambulance and tried CPR on the man, but couldn’t revive him.

That summer, while watching On Golden Pond with Lynda, he was especially moved by the final scene in which Katharine Hepburn’s character panics when her husband, played by Henry Fonda, has an angina episode, as it reminded him of the real scene he’d recently witnessed. He asked Lynda if she’d ever seen anyone die.

“No,” she replied.

“You should count yourself lucky,” he said. A few years later, he came across a poem about death and showed it to her:

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there, I do not sleep

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

“I think this is how I’ll feel when you and dad die,” he said.

Upon the MacPhersons’ return to Saskatoon, they sent a card to Duncan’s friends, announcing his death. On the front was an image of a young man standing on a mountaintop at sunset; on the back was the poem expressing how he’d thought he would feel upon his parents’ death.

A few nights later they hosted a barbeque in his memory, attended by many of his friends and former teammates. They were all grown-up, most of them married with children. Tara was there with her one-year-old. They’d loved Duncan for the usual reasons. He was warm, funny, and generous, even to strangers. Typical was a letter Lynda received after he disappeared from a girl in Springfield, Massachusetts. One day, as she was visiting her mother (a car insurance agent) at her office, Duncan dropped in to ask about changing his policy while his Karmann Ghia was in storage. Someone mentioned that it was her birthday, and upon hearing this, Duncan handed her the car keys and said, “Happy Birthday.”

Lynda knew it was an old car and that he didn’t really want to mess with putting it in storage, but he still could have sold it for a grand or two, and the girl seemed pleased with it. The most charming thing about the story was not his generosity so much as his spontaneity—his cheerful, devil may care approach.

Another letter was from a girl who’d known Duncan in high school and who would always remember him for his friendship. While none of the other handsome boys talked to her because she was overweight, Duncan always made a point of showing how much he cared about her, and it had done wonders for her self-esteem.

Nothing to prove and kind to everyone, Lynda thought as she’d read the letter. Then there was a letter from Kim Cory, one of Duncan’s closest friends, a sensitive and heartbreakingly beautiful girl.

There are no words powerful enough to say how much Duncan touched my life or how much I loved him. It’s so hard to say “so long” to someone you’ve loved. It’s so hard to say how sorry I am for your family.

I guess what I can say is that I was truly blessed to have met and befriended such an amazing man and person. Duncan will always be in my mind and heart. Duncan has touched me forever. As Carl Jung once wrote, “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed.” Love, Kim

The atmosphere of the barbeque was in keeping with Duncan’s cheerful nature. Everyone seemed to have a great time, telling funny stories about their old friend whose life was long gone but still a vivid memory. The only sad moment was at sunset, when—to Lynda and Bob’s surprise—a twelve-year-old boy walked out of a nearby stand of birches playing “Amazing Grace” on a bagpipe.

Duncan and Kim, high school graduation, June 1984.

The occasion also conjured many of Bob’s fond memories. “You know, even when Duncan was little he enjoyed all of the stuff I do,” Bob recounted. “Up at our cabin we spent so many hours together watching birds and game. And he was a great pilot, too. I used to bring him along on flights for the Research Council, and sometimes when no passengers were on board, I’d let him take the yoke in the right seat. Already at the age of six he could fly on instruments like a pro. The little sucker just sat there and watched the dials and never got confused for a second. He was always such a joy to be with.”

Chapter 20: Something Sinister

Most of the time Bob let his wife do the talking. In conversations with Tyrolean men, they often gave him quizzical looks, wondering when he would chime in. Because he tended to be quiet, his understanding of mechanics wasn’t apparent to anyone who didn’t work with him.

At the Saskatoon Research Council, the doctors of engineering often asked him for practical solutions to mechanical problems. If you wanted to know which kinds of tools and materials were the most suitable for a task, Bob was your man. One of the things that fascinated him about the Inuit was their practical understanding of how to live on the ice. Their dog sleds were marvels of engineering, even though they knew nothing of theoretical mechanics.

Duncan and Derrick had often made fun of him for being such a handyman, and whenever Lynda boasted about his brilliance, they tried to bring him back down to earth in her eyes by pointing out that even he got flustered sometimes.

“Sure, dad can fix anything,” Duncan once remarked. “His secret is cursing with a wrench in his hand.”

In 2001, Bob built a new cabin on the shore of Lake Nemeiben, 400 kilometers north of Saskatoon. The structure consisted of 16 inch diameter spruce logs, 26 feet long, with a ridge-pole 26 feet high. When other men on the lake saw Bob preparing to build it by himself, they told Lynda that he was crazy and was going to get hurt and would need at least five men to help him put the logs into place. And yet, with a hoisting mechanism that he invented and built, he proved his naysayers wrong.

From trips to Stubai he’d become keenly interested in glaciers and the way they have shaped the earth. Centuries after he is gone, geologists may wonder how glacial boulders in the backyard of his house in Saskatoon got there, as there are no others like them in the area.

“Right after we returned from Innsbruck, I got this email from Rabl,” Bob recounted, and showed me a printed copy. The workers had, Rabl explained, recovered the body with picks “as carefully as possible.” However:

They had to use the Ratrak [grooming machine] for digging out the rest (clothing, snowboard…). The snowboard was [next] to the body of Duncan (as we saw in the photos) but it was stuck nearly vertical, deep in the blue ice. First they pulled on the snowboard and thereby broke it into pieces. They confirmed that the Ratrak ran over the snowboard too and therefore the damage with the red paint can be assigned to the recovery actions.

“Well, I found this very strange,” Bob explained. “No one with any experience working on ice would try to recover that board by pulling on it. And what did they pull on it with? It doesn’t have any points on it for attaching a winch cable or recovery strap, and there’s no equipment on those grooming machines that is suitable for excavation work. The blade on the front is for pushing snow, not digging into ice. And why in hell, after pulling on the board, breaking it to pieces, and digging it out, did they then run over it with one of those grooming tillers running? It could have gotten kicked out at high speed and struck someone. It just made no goddamned sense. I guess that’s when I started to realize that they were lying.”

I asked Bob if it was possible that the men had simply gotten tired of chipping the board out with picks, and decided out of sheer frustration to take a crack at it with the grooming machine.

“Look, even if some fellow from Somalia who’d never seen ice before had just arrived for his first day at work, he’d quickly realize that he wouldn’t get anywhere trying to pull or dig that board out of the ice with a grooming machine. The only way to recover an object from ice is to chip it out with a pick, melt it out with warm water, or cut it out with a chain saw. There is simply no other way.”

Something else started bothering Bob after they returned to Saskatoon. Before they’d viewed Duncan’s body, Dr. Rabl had prepared them by showing them two photos of the corpse. At the time they had not studied the entire images, but had focused primarily on Duncan’s face. When they’d then viewed his corpse, most of it had been covered with a sheet, but because they’d seen his shoulders and head, it hadn’t occurred to them to remove the sheet. Just before their departure from Innsbruck, Lynda had asked for copies of the photos, along with everything else Rabl had. Now, back in Saskatoon, Bob found himself studying them.

They were small prints, with low resolution, but one of them revealed that Duncan’s arms and left leg had multiple fractures. His lower left leg was completely destroyed, which reminded Bob that the psychic, Carole Wilson, had advised him “to check the left leg.” What had so badly damaged Duncan’s limbs?

Bob pointed this out to Lynda.

“But surely Dr. Rabl would have told us if there was something suspicious about his limbs,” she said.

On September 15, the MacPhersons received translations of Dr. Rabl’s identification report, as well as a brief police report that was part of Rabl’s file. Lynda read the ID report first and saw something that made her want to scream.

Dr. Knapp [head of the public security department of the Innsbruck District Government] telephoned me on 22.07.2003 and commissioned me to draw up a written forensic medical report for the identification of the glacier corpse…. Initially, Dr. Knapp ordered the removal of the upper and lower jaws for detailed comparison with the dental records, so that the remains could be taken away by the undertaker that same day. …. The head will have to be thawed first. From a forensic viewpoint, removal of the jaws would be unwise at present.

“Why did Knapp tell Rabl to remove Duncan’s jaws?” Lynda wanted to know. “He knew we were on our way to Innsbruck to pick him up. How did he think we’d feel about seeing our son with his face ripped off? The more I thought about it, the more enraged I became, and I just kept asking myself why he wanted to remove my boy’s face. At that moment I became convinced that something sinister was going on behind the scenes.”

She resumed reading Rabl’s ID report and soon came to another disturbing passage:

The body itself is packed in several bags. The main items, comprising the neck, trunk and what appears to be at least part of the legs are in a body bag. Then packed separately are additional parts of the upper and lower limbs, and in a separate plastic bag, the skull with the remaining hair.

This indicated that Duncan’s head and limbs had, for some reason, detached from his body. They’d already noticed the damaged limbs in the photos, but his head had been attached when they’d viewed it, and it appeared to be attached in the pictures as well. Why had Duncan’s head and limbs separated from his body?

Dr. Rabl’s report did not expressly mention injuries, with one notable exception: “On the left side of the head there is an injury to the galea which extends as far as the bone.” Lynda’s mind flashed back to Carole Wilson’s séance in 1994 in which the psychic spoke of a blow to the left side of his head. Had Duncan been killed or knocked unconscious from this blow? Though Rabl noted the injury, he made no comment about what could have caused it, and what effect it might have had.

After Lynda finished studying the ID report, she read the police report that was part of Rabl’s file on Duncan’s case. Written by an “Inspector Ortner,” it stated the falsehood that the body had been found 150 meters east of the tow-lift—i.e., off-piste. Lynda found it incredible that a police officer would lie about a simple matter of fact so clearly contradicted by the helicopter pilot’s photos. Ortner even had the gall to note in his report:

Jungmann [the pilot], who had taken photos with a digital camera, showed Ortner the pictures and the exact place where the body had been found.

Anyone who read Ortner’s report without seeing Jungmann’s photos would assume that the images revealed “the exact place where the body was found” to be 150 meters east of the tow-lift.

On November 4 the MacPhersons received a copy of Inspector Krappinger’s final report. Like Commander Hofer’s letter from October 1989, it contained a litany of errors, starting with the date on which Duncan had gone missing. Lynda and Bob were astonished to read that they had last spoken with their son on August 10, 1989, when he called from Fuessen to tell them he was planning to visit Tyrol before flying to Scotland. Krappinger had pulled this entirely out of thin air. Equally bizarre was his hypothetical reconstruction of what had happened:

One can only speculate as to the actual cause of the accident. Duncan Alvin MacPHERSON, as a beginner, may have fallen out of the ascending “Eisjoch II” [tow] lift at the level of support 7, in the vicinity of the crevasses situated there. As it is impossible to come down from there along the track of the lift, and it would probably have seemed too difficult to climb up, he could have taken the short cut across the fenced-off crevasse area to the piste, and in doing so fallen into one of the crevasses. It is worth recalling that a Japanese lost his life the year before, in roughly the same spot, because he fell out of that lift and took the shortcut to the piste across the fenced-off crevasse area. Unlike in the case of Duncan Alvin MacPHERSON, it proved possible to rescue the Japanese that day, though he was more dead than alive from hypothermia.

Lynda could scarcely believe her eyes. No one had ever said a word to them about a Japanese tourist falling into a crevasse on the same slope the year before. Had someone told them this in September 1989, they would have understood that the same thing had probably happened to Duncan. The Canadian Search and Rescue Team that flew over in October of 1989 at a cost of $25,000 would have understood it too.

And why did Krappinger write that “one can only speculate as to the actual cause of the accident”? On the contrary, Lynda thought, one could investigate it. A team of Innsbruck pathologists, archeologists, and glaciologists labored to reconstruct how Oetzi had died 3,300 years before Christ. Why was it so hard to look into how Duncan had died a mere fourteen years ago?

Krappinger presented no evidence for his assertion that a mesh fence was in place around the crevassing area on August 9, 1989. Lynda was certain that Duncan would not have climbed over a fence to go through the area, because he knew about crevasses. In July of 1989, he, Tara, and some friends had visited the Athabasca glacier in Canada. Some of their group had wanted to walk on the ice without a guide, but Duncan had cautioned against it because of crevasses. The last book he’d read before he died was Touching the Void, about a near-death experience in a crevasse. Lynda found it in his luggage at George Pesut’s house in Nuremberg.

Krappinger’s reference to a mesh fence reminded her of the 1990 statement by Helmut Tanzer, the head of slope maintenance. By his account, crevasses near the seventh lift support (just uphill of where Duncan was found) were filled on August 13, 1989, and that “in addition, a mesh fence was installed.” If a mesh fence was already in place around the danger area on August 9, why was it necessary to fill its crevasses and install a mesh fence around it on August 13?

Chapter 21: The CT Scan

In the autumn of 2003, Lynda and Bob felt the same frustration and confusion they’d felt in the autumn of 1989. No one from the Stubai Glacier or the police shed any light on Duncan’s case. Everything they said prompted more questions than it answered. As the MacPhersons’ perplexity grew, they increasingly wondered about the CT scans that Dr. Rabl had offered to take of Duncan’s body.

If only Rabl would send them. In an August 5 email, he said he expected to get them in September, upon his return from vacation, and would send them then. On September 8, he wrote, “In the next days I will contact my radiologist colleague for the radiographs we made of Duncan’s body.” On October 8, in response to Lynda’s query, he assured her that he’d contacted his radiologist colleague, who’d promised to send the images. “As soon as I get the prints I will send it to you,” he concluded. On November 18, again in response to Lynda’s query, Rabl replied that he still hadn’t received them.

“I tried to contact my colleague at the department of radiology for the radiographs of Duncan, but I was not successful,” he wrote. “I’ll try it again the next days –I will not forget you!!”

Lynda feared he had encountered resistance to sending the images, so she emailed him that she hoped her request had not gotten him into trouble. A few days later, on November 21, he wrote that his radiologist colleague had finally brought him “the print-outs of the CT-scans,” and that he had “made photos [JPEGs] of them,” which he attached to the email.

“Even if I would get troubles,” he added, “I would stay in contact with you and help you as much as I can.”

She was confident he wanted to help. He’d always been such a warm and compassionate man, unlike the other Austrian officials they’d met. She would never forget his tears when they brought him the bones they’d found on the glacier, and she would be forever grateful to him for refusing to carry out Knapp’s order to mutilate Duncan’s face. And though she knew that her countless questions must have been a nuisance, he frequently assured her that she and Bob were never a bother because they were his “Canadian friends.”

Attached to the email were four radiographs of Duncan’s head, pelvis, and upper body. The images did not include Duncan’s legs, but one of them showed his arms, both of which were fractured below the elbows. Looking at the image of Duncan’s head and neck, Bob saw a large gap in the cervical spine, indicating a complete decapitation. Though Duncan’s head had apparently been attached to his body when they’d view it, in fact it had been merely aligned with it on the gurney.

That none of the radiographs showed Duncan’s legs seemed strange, given that his left leg appeared to be badly damaged in the photograph Rabl had taken. Also puzzling was the absence of a radiology report. Rabl had initially said he would send the images as soon as the radiologist found time to examine them and to render an opinion. Now it appeared that, after procrastinating for four months, the radiologist had then chosen not to write a report at all.

Two days later, Derrick MacPherson emailed Dr. Rabl, asking him to reiterate his opinion of the cause of Duncan’s death. He also wanted to know if Rabl had taken any photographs of the body.

“As I wrote to your parents,” Rabl replied:

I would estimate that Duncan died from non-asphyctic suffocation—that means that he had no fear of death but some kind of warm feelings, hallucinations and even some kind of happiness (such feelings are reported by persons who got hypoxia under avalanches and in crevasses and have been rescued!!).

Attached to the email were copies of the same two digital photos that Rabl had given to Lynda and Bob in Innsbruck.

On the same day Rabl replied to Derrick, he sent an email to Lynda, assuring her that the CT scans showed “no bony injuries on the skull, spine, thorax, and pelvis.” As for the “injuries” to the extremities, they “were caused by the moving glacier.”

From the proposition that Duncan had been buried alive in a crevasse, Lynda contemplated filing a lawsuit against the Stubai Glacier, and she asked Rabl if he would sue if the incident had happened to one of his children. By then she had come to think of him as the only man in Innsbruck who had the knowledge and the heart to help, so his advice, which he gave in an email on December 5, 2003, carried a lot of weight.

The case of Duncan theoretical might have been some sort of involuntary manslaughter, a crime that becomes time-barred after 3 years. That means that eventually guilty persons cannot be charged. In civil law some sort of (financial) damage has to be assessed. It is questionable which sort of damage can be determined. My friend [a lawyer] estimates that your chances of success in such a proceeding would be very small. The main reason for this is the fact, that the causal relationship between a possible misconduct of the glacier company and the death of Duncan cannot be determined with safety, because the definite cause of death remains unclear.

Lynda, you asked me what I would do if it was one of our children. As a person who has to deal with courts, lawyers and judges every day, I’m sorry to say, that I lost the illusion, that judicature is the same as justice. Therefore it is my honest opinion that on your place I would really do nothing to initiate legal action, because it would not change anything substantial, but cost a lot of money, time and energy that could be used much better for other things (e.g. the family).

After the holidays, the MacPhersons forwarded the radiographs to Dr. Brent Burbridge, head of radiology at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, and on January 8, 2004, he emailed Lynda:

The images are what we call digital radiographs. They actually look like standard x-rays but they are taken with a CT machine. They are very compressed and have a very low resolution. They are displayed as what are called screen capture images and I cannot modify the images to help me see a lot of detail….

I am sorry to ask this question, but is it possible Duncan was run over by the ski hill grooming machine?

Lynda replied that the circumstances indicated that Duncan had fallen into a crevasse, and that a forensic doctor in Austria believed the damage to Duncan’s arms had been caused by moving ice. Burbridge then wrote back:

I am not an expert about what happens to someone when they fall into a glacial crevice and are in this crevice for 14 years. Crevices open and close. Glaciers move and objects inside the glacier move. Presumably this movement and opening and closing of crevices creates very significant forces upon an object.

I see the following findings on the images:

1) Both forearms (radius and ulna) are broken (fractured). Presumably this is due to Duncan trying to break his fall when he fell into the crevice. I believe these fractures are most likely due to his original fall and not something that took place while he was in the crevice.

2) The right elbow is dislocated. This could be an injury at the time of the fall or may have occurred during his movement within the glacier. I do not know when this injury occurred.

After Lynda received Burbridge’s reply, she emailed Dr. Rabl, asking for hard copies of the images or digital copies in high resolution. She also requested a copy of a written report from his colleague in radiology. Rabl replied the same day:

I will send the original x-rays to you, so that you can provide it to your radiologist. I think you should discuss the x-rays with the specialist of your University, because I’m not an expert for x-rays. I didn’t work for the last two weeks, but I could not really relax during Christmas and New Year—it was another kind of stress.

Reading the last sentence, Lynda hoped he wasn’t having some kind of family or financial trouble.

A few weeks later, a stack of radiographs arrived in the mail. One of them—an overview of Duncan’s body from his head to his knees—showed a left femur fracture. Lying between his upper legs, just below his crotch, was what appeared to be his left knee, completely separated from the leg. It wasn’t possible to see the condition of his lower legs and feet because they weren’t included in the images.

Upon receiving the radiographs, Lynda emailed Rabl, asking him if, by any chance, he had taken additional photographs of Duncan’s body. On February 4, he emailed her several images he had taken “for [his] own use.”

The MacPhersons took all of the radiographs and photographs to Dr. Dan Straathof, a forensic pathologist in British Columbia. They chose him not only because of his outstanding reputation, but also because he had conducted a forensic examination of the “Canadian Ice Man”—a mummified corpse found melting out of the Grand Plateau glacier in northwest British Columbia in 1999. Radiocarbon dating indicated the mummy was somewhere between 300 to 550 years old. He’d died around the age of twenty, most likely after falling into a crevasse.

Though most of his body was found, it had been dismembered by the glacier, so not only had Dr. Straathof examined injuries caused by all manner of violence, he had seen what flowing ice can do to a body. He studied the radiographs of Duncan’s body and said that the fractures on his arms and left leg indicated contact with machinery. They did not resemble the damage he’d seen on the Canadian Ice Man’s corpse, nor did they appear to have been caused by a fall. However, based on the images alone, he could not say whether the fractures had occurred at the time of death or at the time the body was extracted from the ice fourteen years later.

On February 12, 2004, Lynda emailed Dr. Rabl, expressing her and Bob’s growing concern that Duncan had been struck by a Snowcat. She said she was sorry to bother him, but still greatly hoped he would be able to clarify the issue, given that he’d seen Duncan’s body directly. Dr. Rabl replied the next day with the following email:

Hi Lynda, hi Bob,

Again I have to remind you that you really are my Canadian friends (as you wrote) and that friends cannot bother me. I read your letter with increasing interest and understand your remaining questions. Let me make some remarks…

In my opinion the main damages of the body of Duncan were not produced during the recovery of the corpse in 2003, because the fractured surfaces of the bones were dark brown and grey colored—fresh fractures would have been much lighter.

The possibility that Duncan was hit by a snow-grooming machine in 1989 or such machine run over him has to be discussed as accurately as possible. I saw persons who were injured by a run over of such snow-grooming machines. None of them had an amputation of a limb or a decapitation. They all had severe and lethal injuries of inner organs and multiple bone fractures—especially ribs, pelvis and limbs. If one supposes that Duncan was run over by such a machine in 1989 then someone would had to drive the machine back and push the body into a crevasse in a second step. If he was just hit and pushed into a crevasse in a single machine-movement, then the machine normally could not run over him. The fact that there were no serial fractures of the ribs and no pelvic fractures argues against a run-over mechanism by a snow-grooming machine.

On the other hand in crevasses the limbs of a person are more supposed to shearing injuries (better: damages) by the glacier movement—in the past I saw torsos (corpses without limbs) that were found in glaciers. On the other hand there are found single limb bones in glaciers too (the last case was a fibula found on the end of a glacier on the Nanga Parbat—supposed to be a part of the body of the brother of Reinhold Messner—a famous alpinist from southern tyrol).

I hope that my remarks can help you. Again and again and again I have to remember you, that you never will be a nuisance or bother for me. That’s what friends are for!! (singing with Steve Wonder). Best regards, sincerely yours Walter

Lynda didn’t know what to make of Dr. Rabl’s reply. It was too bad, she thought, that he hadn’t mentioned the need to discuss with her “as accurately as possible” the nature of Duncan’s limb injuries, and what could have caused them, before he sent the body to the crematorium. She also kicked herself for deciding to cremate the body in Innsbruck instead of flying it home to Canada for an autopsy.

Chapter 22: Banana Republic

She wanted more information about how the authorities had handled Duncan’s case, so she applied to Canadian Foreign Affairs for a copy of its file, and in June of 2004, she received 707 pages of memos and cables, as well as the “Request for Notification of Next of Kin” from the Tyrolean Security Directorate to the Canadian Embassy. This document contained a narrative of how the Innsbruck authorities had handled Duncan’s case on July 18, 2003.

As Lynda read the narrative, it struck her that the most corrupt banana republic would have treated the discovery of his corpse in a more lawful manner. First of all, Inspector Koch in Neustift lied to the public prosecutor about the body’s location, stating it was found off-piste. The examining magistrate in charge of Duncan’s missing person case was not informed of the discovery. The public prosecutor released the body for burial without even knowing the cause of death. After the body was released, Inspector Koch contacted the district medical officer, who then examined the frozen and clothed corpse in the funeral chapel of the Neustift church, which presumably lacked lighting and equipment for the procedure.

What in hell is going on here? Suddenly Lynda thought of something that had never occurred to her before. Going back to Air Officer Jungmann’s report, she noted the following passage:

Jungmann went with one of the lift employees to the discovery site and found the glacier corpse in an unaltered state. Photos were taken of the discovery site and corpse. …As the Dragonfly [Jungmann’s chopper] had to be called away for search and transport duties, the lift employees were given the task of freeing the corpse.

She and Bob again studied the aerial photos of the discovery site, and realized, for the first time, the significance of the fact that the only men at the site were two slope workers. With the air rescue officers in the chopper overhead, there were no policemen at the scene. Viewing the photos on a CD, Bob checked the file properties and saw that the pictures on the ground had been taken between 4:57 and 5:06, and the aerial shots at 5:07. In other words, Jungmann was present for only ten minutes, and by the time he returned at 6:20, the body was already packed in a bag.

“Jesus Christ,” Bob said. “No cops, no coroner—just a couple of maintenance guys to pick him up off the slope like road kill and throw him into a bag.”

Why hadn’t they realized this before? Lynda wondered. Her mind flashed back to sitting in Dr. Rabl’s office while he called to inquire how the snowboard had been recovered. He didn’t phone the police; he phoned the Stubai Glacier. Having taken for granted that at least one police officer had supervised the recovery of the body, she hadn’t noticed the myriad indications that none had.

Next Lynda wrote to Dr. Knapp at the Innsbruck District Government office, requesting a copy of his file on Duncan. In a letter dated August 2, 2004, he enclosed a one-page document titled Anzeige des Todes. She had it translated, and saw that it was a “Report on Death.” At the top was an instruction to “pay attention to reverse side,” but this, she noticed, was blank. Her suspicion piqued, she again wrote to Knapp, requesting the other pages of the report.

She then studied the Canadian Embassy’s communications with Knapp. On July 23, 2003, he called the Embassy and explained that the body had been transferred to the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine “for dental and pathology.” Two days later, Vice-consul William Douglas noted:

Spoke with Dr. Knapp in Innsbruck at 0945 hours. Knapp stated that the parents visited the Gerichts Medizin (sic) [forensic medicine] yesterday (July 24) and returned today July 25. They have not decided as yet whether they will have the remains cremated or whether they wish to have an autopsy.

Judging by this memo, Knapp had not mentioned to Douglas that the body could not (for some reason) be autopsied in Innsbruck, but would have to be flown back to Canada. By omitting this detail, he implied that the MacPhersons had been offered the option of an autopsy in Innsbruck. In fact, Dr. Rabl had told them he couldn’t do an autopsy without an order from the public prosecutor.

In a follow-up letter to Douglas dated March 26, 2004, Knapp assured him that “the exact cause of death was established by the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine.” This flew in the face of Dr. Rabl’s December 5, 2003 email in which he advised Lynda against filing a law suit because “the definite cause of death remains unclear.”

Another notable Canadian Embassy memo recorded a phone conversation between Knapp and Vice-consul Douglas on July 23, 2003.

They are handling this case on a special/priority basis. Indeed, because Mrs. MacPherson had expressed surprise at the funeral home costs, local authorities paid this cost out of local budget.

This was news to Lynda, as she had paid the undertaker’s bill of 1,742.90 Euros on August 4, 2003. She wrote Knapp to this effect. Had his office paid it a second time? On September 15, 2004, he wrote back that his office had indeed paid for transferring Duncan’s body from the funeral home to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for the identification procedure. “Besides,” he continued:

I want to mention that paying some costs out of our local budget was a voluntary service, our government is not obliged to pay these costs. Anyway we did never promise to pay the funeral home costs.

Enclosed with this letter were three additional pages from the “Report of Death.” Lynda had them translated and saw that the bottom of the final page pertained to the cause of death. To the question, “Was an autopsy performed?” Dr. Somavilla (or someone else) had checked the box for “yes,” and then checked the margin to confirm. Lynda was amazed that a public official would dare to lie about something so important on such a serious legal document.

Chapter 23: Stonewalling

On September 27, 2004, Dr. Knapp told the Canadian Embassy that he was no longer prepared to answer Lynda’s queries. Ten days later, the director of Consular Affairs, Dave Dyet, informed the MacPhersons that his officers would assist no further in communicating with the Austrians.

Lynda knew they wanted her to give up, but she’d be damned if she did. Her discovery that her son’s body bore marks of terrible violence added a new dimension to the mystery that had plagued her since 1989. She wanted to know—had to know—how he had died, and why no one had helped him or at least found his body. Duncan wouldn’t have given up, and nor would she. The duplicity of Innsbruck officials only spurred her on, for it confirmed what she’d long suspected: They were covering something up.

Her relentless effort took a toll on her and Bob. They were both tired and beginning to feel their age (Lynda turned 61 in 2004; Bob turned 66). Sometimes she feared that her husband couldn’t go on much longer pursuing the matter—that he longed simply to go up to his cabin on Lake Nemeiben and take consolation in his happy memories of watching moose and marten with Duncan. On their daily walks along the Saskatchewan River, he tried to take his mind off the subject, to talk about something else, but Lynda often couldn’t stop thinking about it. Sometimes she walked in silence, staring at the ground in front of her.

“Why don’t you look up and enjoy the things around us?” Bob said to her one day. His tone was uncharacteristically irritable and it troubled her. She knew that many marriages don’t survive the loss of a child because one or both partners cease being able to bear the other’s sullen, preoccupied manner. The fun and laughter go away, while the tension and irritability grow. I can’t let this consume our lives, she told herself. I must learn to work on it for only part of the time, and to be there for Bob and Derrick the rest, or else this is going to destroy us.

The MacPhersons again contemplated filing a law suit against the Stubai Glacier, but none of the lawyers with whom they spoke were encouraging. They said it would be tough to prove fourteen years later that Duncan hadn’t gone off-piste. Moreover, Tyrolean judges would be strongly inclined to rule in favor of the influential local defendant. Dr. Rabl also discouraged them from seeking a legal remedy. In an October 6, 2004 email, he wrote:

There is no doubt that some persons made severe mistakes in the context of the disappearance of Duncan, but it would be hardly possible for you to prove that these mistakes led to Duncan’s death—expressed in a different form: can anyone exclude the possibility of Duncan’s death if all the persons would have reacted in a correct way?? Asked as an official expert—I can’t.

And so, instead of filing a civil suit, Lynda and Bob wrote a letter to Heinrich Klier, requesting compensation for the costs (including thousands of dollars of gondola tickets) they had incurred in searching for their son while contending with misleading information from his employees and the local police. They told him they weren’t interested in a law suit to ascribe blame; they just wanted to get back their retirement savings, and they appealed to his sense of honor and fairness. A few months later they received a letter from UNIQA Insurance stating that “extensive investigations” had proven that their insured party, Wintersport Tyrol AG (Heinrich Klier’s company) was not at fault for the tragic death of their son.

The part about “extensive investigations” was infuriating. Blown off by Klier, Lynda decided to appeal to authorities in Vienna to reopen the investigation. She also set about trying to generate public awareness of Duncan’s story. She began by contacting Howard Goldenthal, producer of the fifth estate, an award-winning, investigative journalism program in Canada.

A couple of years earlier, Goldenthal had called to ask about her experiences with Ron Dixon, who died in a car crash in Mexico in 2000. The fifth estate wanted to do a documentary about the enigmatic real estate mogul and sports franchise owner. Lynda had never been able to learn much about him, though her son Derrick had made a discovery. By sheer coincidence at a hockey game in Vancouver in October 2000, he found himself sitting next to a man who knew about Duncan’s disappearance, and who also claimed to be Ron Dixon’s former parole officer.

“Dixon’s a really bad guy,” the man said. “If your brother had taken the job in Scotland, he definitely would have come to some kind of grief.”

The fifth estate never produced the Dixon story, but Goldenthal was highly sympathetic and curious to learn more about Duncan’s story. After his team did extensive research, he gave the green light to shoot the film in Saskatoon, Stubai, and Vienna. The result was a gripping documentary about the MacPhersons’ search for their son and their ongoing search for the truth.

To learn more about Duncan’s injuries as they were apparent in the radiographs and photographs of his body, the show consulted the renowned forensic anthropologist, Myriam Nafte. Like Dr. Straathof, she concluded that the fractures were caused by contact with heavy machinery, and not by a crevasse fall and ice movement.

For their participation in the documentary, Lynda and Bob returned to Stubai to give an interview at the glacier. Afterwards they visited several officials in the hope that at least one of them would be more frank and forthcoming. As it turned out, all were angry and defensive.

“What’s your problem?” Neustift police Chief Guenter Geir said angrily when he saw them walking into the station. Likewise, district medical officer Kurt Somavilla was furious when they showed up at his office.

“Your son was in the ice for fourteen years; he’s dead; what’s your problem?” he said.

“Why did you write on the death report that an autopsy was performed?” Lynda asked.

“I sent the body to Rabl in Innsbruck!” he yelled. “Everything was done in Innsbruck. I’m going to call Rabl!” he said, and stormed out of the room.

“You do that,” Lynda said, thinking he was just blustering.

By the time they visited Prosecutor Richard Freyschlag, Bob had had enough abuse and was ready to fire back if Freyschlag expressed impatience, which he did.

“Why is it so hard for you people to understand what we are going through?” Bob said. “Imagine if your child was last seen getting on a school bus, and fourteen years later his body turns up, mangled and covered with bus tire tracks. How would you feel if the police did nothing and the prosecutor closed the investigation?”

Dr. Freyschlag was unable to answer the question, but the rings of sweat radiating from his underarms down to his belt were telling of how it made him feel. He did, however, make one notable statement, though its full significance was not, at the time, apparent to Lynda and Bob.

“If Dr. Rabl had seen any cause for concern, he could have called us.”

From the prosecutor’s office, they went to the Stubai Glacier’s corporate office in Innsbruck and again snuck into the building. Dr. Klier told them he was on the way to an appointment and had little time to talk.

“I have made my peace with Duncan and with my God,” he said with perfect equanimity. Lynda said nothing, but simply turned her back on him and walked out, to his and Bob’s surprise.

The fifth estate documentary, titled The Iceman, was aired on November 8, 2006 to a million viewers. From all over Canada, hundreds sent emails to the show’s website, expressing dismay at how the Austrian authorities had handled Duncan’s case. One viewer, a woman in British Columbia named Judy Wigmore, remembered that she’d taken her kids skiing at the Stubai Glacier in the summer of 1989. She rushed to where she kept her travel journals and found the entry for the outing. The date was August 9.

One of her kids remembered speaking with “a young guy from Canada,” though he couldn’t remember his face well enough to be sure it matched Duncan’s in photos. The boy had been surprised to meet a fellow Canadian there.

The MacPhersons met Judy Wigmore in Vancouver to discuss her recollections of August 9, 1989. She told them that because the weather that day was “pretty awful,” with whiteout and slushy snow, they came off the slope around 1:00 P.M. She had no memory of a mesh fence or crevasse warning signs. Had she seen any, she would have pulled her kids off the slope.

She’d also taken photos of her kids on the glacier. Lynda and Bob studied them, hoping to see Duncan on the last day of his life. Some shots caught other skiers in the frame. A few were close enough to be discernible; others were mere silhouettes in the fog. None appeared to be a tall man wearing a yellow rain jacket.

Wigmore children on Schaufelferner, Aug. 9, 1989

The background of some pictures showed the area that had, according to maintenance workers, been fenced off on August 9. No fence was visible.

Around the time The Iceman was aired, Lynda submitted petitions to the Austrian ministries of Justice and the Interior in which she documented the extensive malfeasance of Innsbruck authorities. She concluded by asking the ministries to reopen the investigation. Both rejected her petition.

In October 2006 she visited the Austrian “People’s Attorney” in Vienna—a tribune for correcting cases of maladministration of justice. Upon seeing the photo of Duncan’s body on the ski slope, one of its lawyers gasped and said, “I’m going to set aside my other files for a week to look at this!” Lynda got her hopes up, only to be dashed again. The People’s Attorney saw no merit in her case.

On September 27, 2007 she filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights under Article 2 (Right to Life) of the European Convention of Human Rights, which states that all member nations of the Council of Europe have a “duty to investigate suspicious deaths.” A year and a half later, in April 2009, the court dismissed her complaint.

Chapter 24: “He wants you to speak for him.”

It is more tolerable to be refused than deceived.

-Publilius Syrus

Lynda contacted me in July of 2009 and asked if I’d be interested in writing a book about the unsolved case of her son Duncan. I’d already heard a bit about it from a friend who happened to be a friend of Derrick MacPherson. Derrick told his mother about me, and emailed me a link to an article about the story that had appeared in Esquire.

At the time I received it, I was contemplating moving back to the United States. Almost two years had passed since I’d published my book about the Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger, and I was running out of reasons for staying in the country that had been my home for a decade but in which I didn’t want to stay for the rest of my life. I’d also sworn I would never write another twisted Austrian crime story that would require endless research.

Nevertheless, I was touched that Lynda considered me a worthy candidate for telling a story that meant everything to her, and I carefully read the Esquire article. Written by Chris Jones, it was a lyrical piece with undertones of Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young,” but it didn’t go into the suspicious circumstances of Duncan’s disappearance and death. Lynda called me shortly after I read it, and in my initial conversation with her, I didn’t know what to make of her conviction that Duncan’s death—however exactly it had come about—had been covered up by the Stubai Glacier with complicity from local law enforcement. For Lynda and Bob, all those years of not knowing what had happened to their child had created a special kind of hell.

I’d heard about this kind of anguish. My great grandmother suffered for years after her son (my granduncle) Bobby vanished without a trace in Italy during the Second World War. She knew he was dead—probably struck by a German tank shell—but not having any witness confirmation or even a shred of his body created a mysterious vacancy in her heart, a pain with no end. Her story made me wonder if we have a primordial need for certainty that our dead are in fact dead. We cannot consecrate a death, after all, unless we have a body to bury or burn, or at least a witness to attest to it. Funeral rites and monuments are a hallmark of every culture, a way of giving form and meaning to the end of a person’s life. As I would soon learn in reading the literature about glaciers, alpine folklore contains a few references to herdsmen and dairy maids who fell into crevasses. Their spirits were thought to be doomed to dwell in an icy purgatory until their bodies were finally released from the glacier and given a proper burial.

Ultimately the glacier had given up Duncan’s body, which made me wonder if Lynda and Bob simply couldn’t come to terms with their child dying young. One thing that gave me confidence in Lynda’s judgment was her obvious intelligence and her grasp of something I had learned while researching the Jack Unterweger story: A few suspicious-looking things may be a fluke, but a clear and consistent pattern of suspicious conduct and circumstances cannot arise from chance occurrence.

Lynda said she’d appealed to every institution to conduct a proper investigation of her son’s death, but hadn’t gotten anywhere, and the Austrian media had ignored the story. Only one reporter—a young and talented Viennese named Florian Skrabal—had written about it for Datum magazine, but its influence was limited by its small circulation.

The fifth estate documentary had created widespread public awareness of the MacPhersons’ plight, but it had not brought closure to the case, nor had it prompted a fresh investigation in Austria. Howard Goldenthal, the show’s producer, had encouraged Lynda to find an author to write a book about the story, as a book could cover more than a forty-five-minute documentary. However, as Lynda explained, she was having a hard time finding an English-language writer who could speak German and who understood the Austrian mentality.

I doubted that anyone really understood the Austrian mentality, including the Austrians themselves. Much ink has been spilled about the impenetrability of the Austrian soul, and I agreed with the cliché that it was no coincidence that psychoanalysis had been founded by an Austrian. That said, one thing seemed fairly clear to me: Expertly documenting suspicious circumstances wasn’t enough to shake things up in the land of Unterdrückungskünstler (“repression artists”) as a Viennese friend liked to call his countrymen. If Duncan had in fact been the victim of a crime, we would have to figure out precisely what crime had been committed, and to assemble enough evidence to prove it. Given that he had died twenty years earlier, this struck me as a very tall order.

Still, I was drawn to the mystery. How strange that in our age of advanced forensic science, a young man’s mysterious and unnatural death at a popular ski resort had not been investigated. I was also inspired by Lynda’s persistence. She’d been working on the case for two decades and showed no inclination of giving up. I’d never heard of anyone with so much stamina, and I was flattered that such a strong person would ask me for help.

I wanted to learn more about the story before I committed to writing it, and began by watching a recording of a television interview that Duncan had given just before his departure to Germany. It was strange to watch and listen to this big, strong, handsome boy of twenty-three, talking about wanting “to go somewhere else” and do something different with his life. He had a gentle way of speaking, without a hint of bitterness that the Islanders hadn’t renewed his contract. How eerie to think that he would be dead in a month.

What happened to you? I found myself asking.

I studied discovery scene photos that Lynda sent me, and again the experience was inexpressibly strange. Just moments before I had seen Duncan as a healthy young man, talking to a reporter in 1989, and now, here before me, were images of his corpse melting out of the ice in 2003. Seeing them must have been unfathomably distressing for his parents.

As the horror receded a little, I began to notice things. Though I didn’t, at the time, know much about glaciers, I’d heard of guys falling into crevasses and emerging decades later at the bottom. It struck me as odd that Duncan had melted out so high on the glacier, only halfway to the bottom. Also strange was the way he was lying horizontally in the remnant of a narrow crevasse, as though in a grave, his left ski boot standing upright, next to his waist. Didn’t most victims of crevasse falls end up wedged vertically in the ice?

Lynda then sent me photos of his snowboarding gear. I’d already seen the hard ski boot next to his body, so I was greatly surprised to see that the board was equipped with strap bindings (designed to be cinched onto soft boots) instead of plate bindings (wire bails designed to lock hard boots onto the board). With such mismatched gear, Duncan had no doubt struggled to set the board’s edges. What kind of rental shop would outfit a customer with such dysfunctional equipment?

I watched the fifth estate documentary, and found the snowboarding instructor, Walter Hinterhoelzl, and the forensic doctor, Walter Rabl, especially interesting. Among the Austrians interviewed for the show, they were by far the most attractive and articulate, and as I learned from Google searches, both had risen to the top in their professions. Hinterhoelzl ultimately became head trainer of the Austrian women’s national snowboarding team, coaching at the Winter Olympics in 2002 and in 2006. In 2004, Dr. Rabl was elected President of the Austrian Association of Forensic Doctors, a position he still holds and in which he has performed a number of high profile examinations.

In watching Hinterhoelzl’s interview, I got the impression he was trying to distract the interviewer, perhaps to deflect her from a certain line of questioning. His description of Duncan as “a Canadian hotdog” seemed calculated.

“Seeing him working on the snow—he was not scared of falling; he had no fear of the speed,” Hinterhoelzl said. Was he just being flattering, or did he have some other motive for saying that Duncan had been fast on fearless on the slope? It was hard for me to imagine how anyone could have “worked on the snow” very well using the equipment found with his body.

And then Hinterhoelzl said something even odder. As the interviewer unpacked the snowboard found with Duncan’s body, she asked him: “So this is the snowboard that you helped him to pick out?”

“Yes, this is a Duret board,” he replied. So, Walter had, in fact, helped Duncan to pick out the board. And the guys at the rental shop never asked him why his pupil hadn’t returned it, along with the boots and gaiters? This did not add up.

Then there was the jarring contrast between Dr. Rabl and the forensic anthropologist, Myriam Nafte. While Nafte vehemently expressed her opinion that Duncan’s injuries were caused by machinery, Rabl said he hadn’t examined the body because the public prosecutor hadn’t ordered it, though he did mention that the glacier “breaks up the body.” This was a very peculiar situation, because Nafte had formed her opinion largely from photographs of Duncan’s corpse that Rabl had taken.

What sucked me into the mystery for good was a photograph of Duncan’s Opel Corsa, parked all by itself near the gondola station on September 22, 1989, having sat in the same conspicuous place for forty-two days. There was something profoundly macabre about Stubai Glacier personnel ignoring such a glaring signal that the car’s driver was dead.

Everything about Duncan’s story was perplexing in the extreme. It was as if, the moment he parked his car at the gondola station and purchased a ticket, he entered a twilight zone in which nothing followed normal patterns and procedures.

I called Lynda and told her I wanted to write the story.

“I hope you won’t take this the wrong way and think I’m weird,” she said, “because I don’t really think that the dead speak to us. But I believe you decided to do this because you sense that Duncan wants you to. He wants you to speak for him.”

I didn’t think Lynda was weird. Though ghosts only exist in our minds, they do haunt us. Duncan’s haunted his mother day and night, and he was starting to haunt me.

Chapter 25: So Strange and Dark

Florian Skrabal, the journalist who’d written about the story for Datum magazine, had much of Lynda’s documentation. I met him at a café in Vienna for the hand off, and was alarmed by the volume of binders stacked on the chairs around him.

“Lynda has been researching it for twenty years,” he said. “I get the impression she’s done little else.” It was one of the most intriguing stories he’d ever heard of, he told me, but in spite of his best efforts, he hadn’t managed to penetrate the secrecy of it.

“The Stubai Valley is a weird place,” he explained. “At first the people are much friendlier than the Viennese. Tourism is everything for them, so I suppose that being hospitable is their second nature. But ask them about Duncan MacPherson and they’ll instantly become cold. It should have been easy to figure out what happened to him, but it’s like no one other than his parents wanted to know.”

As Florian explained, there were two contending hypotheses. The Stubai Glacier and the police claimed that Duncan had simply gone off-piste and fallen into a crevasse, just as an Asian tourist had the year before. Bob MacPherson and the forensic anthropologist Myriam Nafte believed he had been struck by a Snowcat.

“But if he was struck by a Snowcat, how did he end up in a crevasse?” Florian asked. “And why, when he was found, wasn’t he wearing his ski boots? To me, this suggests that he fell into a crevasse and took off his boots to try to climb out, but it’s just so tough to say. Everything about it is so strange—so dark.”

Back at my apartment I began to sift through the documents. Most of the Austrian files and all of the Foreign Affairs cables had been classified. Lynda had fought hard for them with a massive letter-writing campaign and by going through a tedious application process. Many of the documents would have remained inaccessible had she not had power of attorney for Duncan. That she’d had power of attorney had taken Canadian Foreign Affairs by surprise. At the time they wrote their cables, they apparently assumed the MacPhersons would never see them. Those written in 2003, following the emergence of Duncan’s body, were expressive of an agency that was genuinely trying to help the MacPhersons without being too confrontational with the Austrians. Consular officers at the Canadian Embassy in Vienna didn’t understand what they were dealing with, but in their defense, what they were dealing with was highly irregular.

More disturbing were the Canadian External Affairs cables from 1989, particularly those to and from Consul Ian Thomson. His relationship with the MacPhersons was obviously tense, and I got the impression that Lynda had rubbed him the wrong way. As a diplomat, he was probably unaccustomed to her direct, even blunt style of communicating. His situation reports to Ottawa expressed his concern that she was a loose cannon—demanding, lacking deference to local authorities, and capable of making trouble for Austro-Canadian diplomatic relations.

His point was more a matter of style than substance, and it disregarded fact that the MacPhersons had been obliged to conduct the entire investigation of their son’s disappearance on their own. Who could really blame Lynda for being distressed, tired, and frustrated with the lack of clear answers to her simple questions?

After Duncan’s body emerged in 2003, the Innsbruck authorities became aware of the non-existent communication between the MacPhersons and their Foreign Affairs. What Lynda and Bob were told in Innsbruck was often the opposite of what Canadian Embassy officials were told. Bernhard Knapp at the District Government Office apparently didn’t stop to think that Lynda might someday acquire embassy records through an Access to Information request. As I sorted through the cables, memos, and letters, I was reminded of Florian’s wry observation: “In Canada and in the States, you have your freedom of information. Here in Austria, we have our freedom of secrecy.”

Secrecy. I pondered it as I studied the Austrian police files and saw that Lynda was right: the Stubai Glacier did not want what happened to Duncan to be discovered, and the local police had made no effort to do so. Critical facts that would have taken an inspector just a few minutes to obtain and record were simply omitted. None of the witnesses had been examined with a probing interview. Whatever stories they told, no matter how unnatural-sounding and full of holes, were noted without question. I’d never seen such a systematic lack of curiosity.

But why had the police chosen not to investigate Duncan’s disappearance and death? It was, after all, a high profile case that had attracted a lot of attention from the media and Foreign Affairs. By the time Duncan’s body emerged in 2003, the Innsbruck prosecutor’s office had been dealing with the MacPhersons for years, and knew how badly they wanted clarification. A proper inspection of the discovery scene and corpse would have taken little time or expense, so why did the prosecutor immediately close the case? He appeared to have invoked the statute of limitations not only to bar prosecution, but also to prevent discovering what had happened.

The Austrian Justice Ministry also refused to acknowledge the suspicious circumstances of Duncan’s case. Astonishing was the assertion of Werner Pürstl, Justice Ministry Section Head for Penal Law, in his interview with the fifth estate:

The body was of course examined externally; there were no indications of a violent act against the deceased and there was a very obvious explanation for the events.

Who was Pürstl’s source of information? According to Dr. Rabl, the Justice Ministry never contacted him to discuss the case. Moreover, photographs of Duncan’s corpse, taken by Dr. Rabl, clearly show that his limbs had been subjected to a violent act. What exactly had produced it?

Addressing this in his fifth estate interview, Dr. Rabl said:

I saw such damages on glacier corpses. Yes. During the movement in the ice, the glacier breaks the body. But the injuries itself, I could not examine exactly. We saw the clothed body, but we did not unclothe it.

…We never, ever did an autopsy; we just had to do the identification.

In other words, Rabl assumed the injuries had been caused by ice movement, but he had not been able to examine them closely in order to confirm his assumption. Why not? What had hindered him from examining “exactly” the injuries?

Around the time I began researching the story, a leader of the Austrian Green Party named Peter Pilz submitted an inquiry before Parliament to the Justice Minister about Duncan’s case. A few months later, Justice Minister Claudia Bandion-Ortner replied with the same evasions the MacPhersons had been hearing since 2003. To Pilz’s question about Duncan’s fractured limbs, she replied:

At the time the public prosecutor had to decide whether to order an autopsy, he’d received no indications that the corpse or the equipment of Duncan MacPherson bore signs they had come into contact with heavy machinery. Multiple fractures are not unusual on corpses that have been extracted from glaciers, as they have been subjected to the forces of flowing ice.

This was another example of the infuriating circular reasoning of every Austrian authority the MacPhersons had encountered. The prosecutor had received no indications of contact with machinery because the police hadn’t told him about them. Either they hadn’t examined the corpse and snowboard, or they’d chosen not to report what they’d seen—precisely the malfeasance that had prompted Lynda and Bob to seek Pilz’s help.

Bandion-Ortner also didn’t take into account that Duncan’s body had sat in the Institute of Forensic Medicine for an entire week after it was recovered from the glacier. Even if the police assumed that Duncan’s injuries had been caused by ice movement, this didn’t prevent a forensic doctor from examining the injuries, which again raises the question: Why did Rabl say that he couldn’t?

Without a proper investigation, the job of discovering what had happened to Duncan was left entirely to his parents. Lynda hoped I would be able to help her make sense of it because I had lived in Austria, could speak German, and had already written a book about a complex true story. But as I would soon discover, my background had not really prepared me for the task ahead, for I had gained my experience studying a case that public officials had wanted to solve. In Duncan’s case, it was the exact opposite.

“So you’re taking on the Tyrolean ski mafia,” my girlfriend Johanna said after I’d told her a bit about the story.

“I guess so,” I said, not realizing that she wasn’t kidding or even exaggerating.

Chapter 26: The Need to Know

“I regret to tell you gentlemen that we are now completely out of beer,” announced the stewardess on the plane’s intercom.

“What! No way! Aviation disaster!” a cacophony of thick Canadian accents erupted from the seats behind me. An hour north of Denver on a flight to Saskatoon, they had already drained the ship’s store. The scene reminded me of my earliest image of the Canadians, formed by the McKenzie Brothers. Looking out the window on the approach to Saskatoon, I saw a seemingly endless prairie in every direction, and wondered why people had settled in such an isolated place, so far north, with such a cold climate.

“How cold does it get here in the winter?” I asked Lynda and Bob as we walked to their car in the airport parking lot.

“Usually around twenty below,” Lynda replied. “The record’s fifty below.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No. Why? You think that’s cold?”

“Ah, yeah.”

For seven days, from 7:00 A.M. until late at night, breaking only for meals and brief strolls along the Saskatchewan River, we sat at the kitchen table and went over every aspect of the story, with Duncan gazing at us from a large, framed copy of his International Driving Permit photo, propped on a nearby cupboard. The image had been taken just before his departure to Germany in August of 1989, so it was a snapshot of the way he looked the last time his parents saw him.

Quickly I sensed he’d gotten his fighting spirit from his mother and his gentle nature outside of the rink from his father. Though Lynda was always polite and had a good sense of humor, she was by far the toughest woman I had ever met. In her mid-sixties, she was very fit and had an austere, almost Spartan style. She ate little and slept only a few hours per night, but her capacity for concentration and work was boundless. Though hers was the kind of toughness we often associate with women in competitive jobs or politics, Lynda thought of herself primarily as a devoted mother and wife.

“My friends sometimes tell me that I think like a man,” she said one day, “but to me, it’s just a matter of effort. I try to understand things instead of leaving them to men to figure out, though I do often rely on Bob to explain the technical stuff.”

Lynda was, as I learned during my visit, a thoroughgoing rationalist.

“I was often amazed at how many psychics were drawn to Duncan’s story,” she said. “Every year it seemed like we were contacted by someone who’d had a vision of him, but I never paid much attention to them. I wanted the facts.”

Though she believed that most of the psychics she’d encountered had been frauds, she conceded that Carole Wilson had been right about the blow to the left side of Duncan’s head and the conspicuous trauma to his left leg.

“What do you think? Lynda asked. “Did she really have a vision of his death?”

I figured that Wilson’s extrasensory perception was a form of intuition based on what she’d heard about Duncan’s case. Canadian press reports had mentioned the possibility of foul play, and as the majority of assailants are right-handed, a blow with a weapon or blunt instrument would have landed on the left side of Duncan’s head. Far more remarkable was Wilson’s advice in 2003 to look at his left leg, for as I would eventually learn, his left leg was the key to unlocking the mystery of what had happened to him.

The mystery of Duncan’s death still dominated the lives of his parents. Only by learning the truth would they be able to cast off its burden. Their story reminded me of a 1988 Dutch film titled Spoorlos (Traceless) about a young man willing to do anything to discover what happened to his girlfriend, who vanished while driving through France. He does not hate the man who abducted her, nor is he particularly interested in seeing him brought to justice. What motivates the bereaved boyfriend through years of searching is his burning need to know.

The MacPhersons are scrupulously honest, which has made it all the harder for them to comprehend their disaster. While discussing the array of malfeasance in Duncan’s case, Lynda asked questions such as, “How can you explain why a police officer would lie?” or “How could a government official falsify a legal document?”

“Because they’re corrupt,” I replied, which in her mind explained nothing. She wanted to know how people could be dishonest about something that so strongly affected the lives of others. This led to many late-night, Moosehead beer-fueled debates about one of the most puzzling aspects of human nature: While everyone feels anger and disgust upon discovering they have been lied to about something important, many seem to feel little or no compunction about lying themselves, even though the injustice is identical (only viewed from a different perspective).

“But not all lies are motivated by greed, ambition, and lust,” I pointed out to Lynda. “Sometimes a man lies, or plays along with a lie, because he feels he has no choice. He will receive no reward for telling the truth, but instead be punished and lose everything. Should we really expect him to do so?”

Lynda believed we should, but it seemed to me that she expected too much of ordinary humanity. Though history contains many philosophers and saints who told the truth knowing that it would result in their destruction, the majority of people would go along with a lie in order to save their own skins.

Lynda disagreed with me about this—the only occasion, it seemed to me, when her power to view things objectively deserted her. It was clear that she suppressed her feelings for her dead son in order to maintain a clear, unbiased mind. She didn’t like to talk about him as he’d been in life, and on numerous occasions I was amazed at her ability to look at photos of his mangled corpse without betraying the slightest emotion.

“I’ve been looking at them for seven years, so I’m pretty used to them,” she explained. Most of the time she maintained her sang-froid, but whenever we got onto the subject of people remaining silent in order to avoid trouble, she became angry and seemed to take it personally.

Because the MacPhersons are Canadians, they were treated as second-class citizens in Tyrol—a clannish land with a strong regional identity. This was nothing against Canadians per se; what happened to the MacPhersons could have just as easily happened to an Italian, German, or even Austrian family from a different state. In fact, as I was to discover in the months ahead, the same thing did happen to a German family during the years 2005-2009.

In December 2005, a twenty-five-year-old German named Raven Vollrath drove to Tyrol to look for work over the holidays, and soon found a job at the Rohnenlifte ski area near the town of Zoeblen. On December 22, he called his parents to tell them about his fun day of snowboarding, and then never called again. They didn’t know where exactly he was staying, and they couldn’t reach him on his cell phone for several days. With no help from the German or Austrian police, they drove to the ski resort to look for him. In the parking lot of a chair-lift station, they found his Opel Corsa. At an apartment adjoining the lift station, they found his friend and traveling companion, who claimed he’d not seen Raven since the early morning of Christmas Eve, when he’d driven off with a girl named Helena. And yet, Raven’s unlocked car contained all of his IDs and ATM card, as well as all of his clothing. His parents knew there was no way he’d abandon everything, run off with a girl, and never check in. Something had happened to him.

To his parents’ dismay, the local police conducted no investigation. Six months later, Raven’s decomposed body, clothed only in underwear, a t-shirt, and socks, was found lying on a mattress in a dry creek bed, 2.5 kilometers from the chair-lift station. The police concluded that in the early morning of December 24, 2005, Raven left the warm apartment wearing only underwear, a t-shirt, and socks (even though it was minus 11 degrees Celsius that night) and carrying a mattress. He then dragged the mattress 2.5 kilometers down the street to a small bridge crossing the creek, clambered down a steep embankment to the frozen water’s edge, went to sleep, and froze to death.

It was a ridiculous hypothesis, especially given that the district medical officer who’d attended the discovery scene considered it highly probable that Raven had not died at the site at which his body was found. Naturally his parents didn’t believe the police hypothesis, but in spite of their desperate plea for a proper investigation, the Innsbruck public prosecutor closed the case after the forensic doctor, Walter Rabl, found no clear sign of foul play on Raven’s decomposed body.

And so Mr. and Mrs. Vollrath persevered with their own investigation, seeking witnesses, and enlisting the help of an investigative journalist in Vienna named Zoran Dobric, who produced an award-winning documentary about their search. Watching it, I was amazed at how strongly they resembled Lynda and Bob—not in appearance, but in the story they told about their ongoing attempt to find out what had happened to their son. Much of what they said in the documentary was identical to what Lynda and Bob said on the fifth estate.

Particularly moving was the scene of Raven’s parents standing in the creek bed where his body had been found, his mother expressing incomprehension and rage at the Innsbruck authorities.

The police aren’t helping us anymore. The case is closed. I want the case reopened and further investigated. Every mother and every father wants to know how their child died. It is the worst thing that can happen in life—the greatest pain.

At least the Vollraths could speak German. For Lynda and Bob, the language barrier had made it impossible for them to understand what was going on around them. The locals could have openly discussed revealing information, even in the presence of the MacPhersons, without betraying anything.

The Canadian government could have helped Lynda and Bob, but in hindsight, it was clear that External Affairs dropped the ball in 1989. At first glance it may have appeared to be a case of an adventurous young guy who’d wandered off into the mountains, but on closer inspection, anyone could have seen that at least two circumstances of Duncan’s disappearance were undeniably suspicious. The first was the car that had sat in the same conspicuous spot for forty-two days without being reported; the second was the nebulous response to the question of whether Duncan had returned his snowboarding equipment.

Like all diplomats, Consul Thomson was trained to get along with the authorities in the country to which he was posted instead of confronting them, hence his chumminess with district gendarmerie Commander Franz Hofer, who doubtless showed him great deference. That Thomson was sent to the Stubai Glacier instead of an RCMP liaison officer indicates that External Affairs was too worried about ruffling the feathers of Austrian officials, and not concerned enough with discovering what had happened to Duncan.

“Post does not have resources to keep an eye on Mrs. MacPherson’s activities,” as Thomson wrote in a cable to Ottawa on October 2, 1989.

“I wonder why External Affairs felt they needed to keep an eye on me,” Lynda said. “All I was doing was looking for my child. What was so troubling about that?”

It was interesting to compare the MacPhersons to the Falcheros. A year after Duncan’s body was found, Fabrizio Falchero’s melted out of a glacier just to the west. His parents suspected he’d fallen into a crevasse while walking on a designated path, but because they weren’t given reliable information about where his body was found and the velocity of the glacier, they couldn’t prove it. To Lynda, it seemed the Falcheros had quickly accepted that the Stubai Glacier and the police would never tell the truth, so that fighting for it would be in vain.

“I respect that Gino and Anna have their own way of dealing with their loss,” Lynda said, “but I don’t think the ski operator should be allowed to get away with lax safety, because it’s likely to result in yet another death. If the Stubai Glacier had been confronted about Chiu’s fatal accident in 1988, Duncan and Fabrizio might still be alive.”

Lynda believed that every good citizen should fight injustice and corruption, but she had paid a heavy price for her convictions. As hard as she had worked to expose the malfeasance of Austrian authorities in their handling of Duncan’s case, it had so far gotten her nowhere. This reminded me of Machiavelli’s observation that “The way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation.”

I asked Lynda what had sustained her for all those years of toil.

“My desire to know the truth,” she replied.

“Even though the truth can’t bring Duncan back.”

“I still wanted to know, especially after it became clear that people were lying to us. Once I realized that I was being deceived, it made me want to learn the truth all the more.”

Though I didn’t tell her, she reminded me a little of Captain Ahab, who believed that the “truth hath no confines,” and who chiefly hated “the inscrutable thing” he perceived to be behind Moby Dick.

“Another thing that kept me going was my belief that it was the right thing to do for Duncan. A lot of people probably think we wanted to discover the truth so that we could sue the ski resort. We did consider suing, but only because we’d spent so much money trying to find Duncan, and we’re not rich. Our desire to know what happened is motivated by something much deeper than money. Duncan lost his young life on that ski slope, and it’s not right for people to try to sweep the facts of it under the rug. To treat his death as an embarrassment is unfair and disrespectful to him.”

A large fig tree stood in the corner of the MacPhersons’ living room, out of proportion with everything else. I was struck by the oddness of a Mediterranean tree that appeared on the verge of taking over a living room in Canada.

“That’s a hell of a fig,” I said to Lynda one evening.

“Duncan gave it to us just before his departure,” she said. “He bought it as a wedding present for his friend Randy Smith, but then he figured it was too nice for Randy, who was always moving around and would probably kill it, so he gave it to us. We’ve since told Randy that if his marriage lasts twenty-five years, he can have it then.”

How ironic that Duncan had given his parents a fig tree—an ancient symbol of fertility—just before he died. I asked if they had any other objects that were strongly connected with him at the time of his death, whereupon Bob showed me the sweater and leather belt he’d left hanging to dry in Walter Hinterhoelzl’s office.

“I made him pack the sweater,” Lynda said. “He said he wouldn’t need it before Christmas, but I insisted that he take it.” I held the sweater in my lap and imagined him wearing it during his snowboarding lesson. And then Lynda handed me a bronze urn.

“This is the man himself,” she said.

Every evening around midnight, Bob gave me a ride back to my hotel. I wondered, with just the two of us in the car, what he really thought of me—a strange American with a peculiar resume, showing up in Saskatoon and dredging up every painful detail of the disaster that had befallen him two decades earlier. While I am often overbearing and mercurial, he was always calm, steady, and patient. We’d disagreed, even hotly debated certain aspects of the case, and later I felt ashamed of my presumption. He’d been living with it for twenty years, after all, while I’d only studied it for a couple of months. Who was I to come into his home and start telling him what had really happened?

A quiet person, his character was difficult to fathom. While Lynda and I talked at the breakfast table, I occasionally glanced over to the kitchen and saw him making coffee and sandwiches for us, his tall frame bent over the counter—considerate and unassertive. I’d heard he was the favorite adult of kids in the neighborhood, and when we occasionally ran into some while out for walks, they were delighted to see him. It seemed especially cruel that a man so fond of children had lost two of his three. His first son, from a previous marriage to an Inuit woman (who’d died of a brain aneurism) committed suicide in 1993.

He was a very handsome man, though I was shocked by how much he’d aged since the fifth estate documentary had been filmed just three years earlier. One of nineteen children, all from the same mother, he’d grown up in the Scotch Catholic community of Cape Breton. One day he showed me a photograph of his mother, standing with Duncan, who towered above her with his arm around her shoulder. Both were grinning, as though someone had just said something funny.

“That was taken less than a year before mom died of cancer and Duncan disappeared,” Bob said. “Seems like they were both there one minute and gone the next.”

He didn’t share Lynda’s passion for examining every detail of the case, but he had grasped its key points before she had. While she often got lost in the minutiae, he had a knack for staying focused on the essential questions.

“I know that going over all of this again is reopening old wounds,” I said to him one night, just before getting out of the car. “I can only hope it’s for a good cause.”

“I think it’s a good thing that you’re writing a book about Duncan,” he replied.

“I wish I could be certain of finding a good publisher,” I said. “Unfortunately, publishing is a tough business, and I’m not a famous author, so I can’t promise anything.”

“We know that, John, and Lynda has great confidence in you, so don’t worry.”

They were kind words, but they had the opposite effect of what Bob intended. Riding up the elevator to my room, I felt acutely conscious of my limitations. Though I was determined to write a book about Duncan’s case, I knew that getting it published was another matter.

Should I really be here, giving these good and tormented people reason to hope that I can tell the world their story?

Chapter 27: A Maddening Puzzle

By the end of my visit to Saskatoon, Lynda and Bob had familiarized me with most of the facts they had discovered so far. They told me that Duncan’s injuries and the damage to his snowboard indicated he’d been struck by a Snowcat. Regarding his injuries, they referred me to the opinions of doctors Straathof and Nafte, who’d studied radiographs and photographs of his body. These scientists believed that a machine, and not glacier movement, had mangled his limbs.

But were they right? Or rather, would other scientists agree with their opinions or contest them if the matter were debated in court? For his part, Dr. Rabl told Lynda in an email that he was skeptical of the Snowcat hypothesis, and considered glacier movement the cause of Duncan’s destroyed limbs. Rabl had not only seen the body firsthand, his institute had much experience with glacier corpses, while Dr. Straathof had only seen one, and Dr. Nafte none.

As for the damage to the snowboard, the slope maintenance workers didn’t deny it had been caused by a Snowcat, but they claimed it had happened when they’d extracted the board from the ice. Bob fetched the snowboarding equipment from the basement, and to get a feeling for the setup, I put on the boots and placed them in the bindings. It was eerie to think that the last feet in them had been Duncan’s, just before he died.

“Look how deep the rust is at the places where the board’s metal edges were cut,” Bob said. “Those cuts happened many years before the board was recovered.”

The theory that Duncan had been struck by a Snowcat raised two questions: First, how could he have been run over by the huge tractor without sustaining injuries to his skull, ribcage and pelvis? Second, how had he and his board been run over on the slope and then ended up in a crevasse? As Dr. Rabl pointed out, if he had been run over, then a second action would have been required to push his body into the crevasse.

If we were going to make a persuasive case, we had to answer these two questions, otherwise the Snowcat hypothesis would never clearly vanquish the alternative hypothesis that Duncan’s limbs had been damaged by an off-piste crevasse fall and subsequent ice movement. The Stubai Glacier, the police, and the Austrian Justice Ministry could always stick with the idea that doctors Straathof and Nafte had simply misinterpreted the cause of the injuries. As the current director of the Stubai Glacier had written to Lynda about Myriam Nafte’s assertions in the fifth estate documentary: “Your forensic expert has no experience with glacier corpses.”

Bob hypothesized that the disaster had begun with a partial crevasse fall. First Duncan fell onto his back while snowboarding and partially broke through a snow bridge without going all the way into the crevasse. To stop himself from dropping all the way in, he kept his legs elevated and spread-eagled his arms, which exposed them to the vehicle on the surface. Then along came the machine, which, in a combined action, chopped up his limbs and snowboard and pushed him down into the hole. The operator may have been aware of the collision and panicked like a hit and run driver, or he may have deduced it later when he learned that someone was missing on the slope. Either way, he’d found it easier to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything and to fill the crevasse with snow as though it had been just like any other.

I had a hard time imagining how this could have happened. Duncan was broad-shouldered and weighed two hundred pounds. If he had fallen through a snow bridge and into a crevasse wider than his shoulders so that his entire torso went into it, he couldn’t have stopped a complete fall by spread-eagling his arms. With nothing to hold on either side of the crack, he would have been pulled into it by his own weight.

For her part, Dr. Nafte theorized that Duncan had initially fallen into a crevasse while snowboarding, taken off his board and boots, and then climbed out right as a Snowcat was approaching. At the moment he emerged on the surface, he was mowed down by the machine and pushed back into the hole. The trouble with this hypothesis, it seemed to me, was that it didn’t explain the damage to the snowboard, nor did it explain Duncan’s lack of cranial, rib, and pelvic fractures.

There was also the baffling position and condition of the snowboarding equipment. In the discovery scene photos, the left ski boot is visible next to Duncan’s body, filled with old snow, and its insulating liner is missing. This indicated that Duncan wasn’t wearing the boot at the time the crevasse was filled. Likewise, the liner must have come out of the boot before the boot was filled with snow, though the liner must have been deposited near the body, as it was among the items recovered. It is shredded and its upper part has identically-spaced cut marks.

Bob proposed that Duncan’s boots were ripped out of the bindings and off of his feet when his board and left leg were struck by the blade on the front of a Snowcat. However, given that both legs are bound to the board right next to each other, it was hard for me to imagine how only one of them could have been struck by the huge blade. Pulling him completely out of his boots would have required a complicated action of immobilizing his body while his board and boots were pulled away (or vice versa). Hard ski boots, which Bob had never worn, are designed to remain tightly clamped on to transfer great force from the legs to the skis. Unless their buckles are open, they won’t come off, but will pull their wearer with them. Also, in the discovery scene photos, Duncan is still wearing his right sock. If the ski boot had been ripped off, it would have likely pulled the sock off (or at least down) with it.

Even if the Snowcat could have pinned his body and at the same time knocked his board and boots off, it would not have ripped his feet out of the boots and the boots out of the bindings. The assembly would have given way at its weakest link (the binding straps). If Duncan had loosened the boot buckles before he was struck, the boots would have come off of his feet but remained in the bindings.

The top left side of the snowboard was damaged, as was his left foot, which was consistent with the liner of the left boot being shredded. And yet, oddly enough, there is no corresponding damage to the left ski boot. The violent force that damaged Duncan’s foot and the boot liner did not come into contact with the boot itself.

Likewise, the base plate of the left (forward) binding was struck hard, but there is no corresponding damage to the left (forward) ski boot. This indicates that the boot was not in the binding at the time the binding was damaged. In other words, Duncan was not wearing his boots and nor were his boots in the bindings at the moment his left leg and the snowboard were destroyed. Moreover, even though his left leg and snowboard were not connected to each other at the time they were both struck, they somehow came to rest, along with the left ski boot and liner, in a neat package at the bottom of a crevasse. How could this have possibly happened?

For a while I considered the hypothesis that Duncan had fallen into a crevasse, then managed to free himself from his snowboard and boots, and then attempted to climb out. An impossible feat, he had eventually frozen to death or been buried alive by a careless groomer. To explain the damage to his body and snowboard, I theorized that the men who’d recovered his body had become impatient to finish the grim task and decided to use heavy tools or equipment, thereby damaging the corpse. Ultimately I concluded that the evidence (see Appendix 1) doesn’t support this hypothesis, but thinking about it cost me many sleepless nights.

What exactly had happened to Duncan? The question was a riddle wrapped in a mystery, and it was driving me nuts.

Chapter 28: Pretending

The strange condition of his body and equipment was just one of many riddles that comprised the overall mystery of his death. The first perplexing question was why he wasn’t found at the end of the day on August 9, 1989, after he failed to return his equipment and pick up his clothing. If he snowboarded off-piste and fell into a crevasse, the rescue service could have saved him or at least recovered his body. However, according to Stubai Glacier personnel and the police, Duncan wasn’t reported missing to the rescue service. Why wasn’t he?

Walter Hinterhoelzl, the snowboarding instructor, implied that he’d seen no reason to sound the alarm because he’d assumed that Duncan had simply forgotten about his clothing in the ski school office. Josef “Seppi” Repetschnig, manager of Sport Shop 3000, implied that he’d seen no cause for alarm because he had no memory or record of Duncan renting gear, much less failing to return it. In other words, both men simply hadn’t thought about Duncan until his parents showed up six weeks later looking for him.

Their stories might have been plausible if Walter’s snowboarding school and Seppi’s rental shop were located at the base of the mountain, where a customer might go straight from the slope to an après ski party, get drunk, and forget to return his gear. However, the Eisgrat Station is located almost 1,200 vertical meters from the base. In order to get down to the valley in August, one must either ride the gondola from the Eisgrat (which closes at 4:15 P.M.) or hike five hours down a steep path. Moreover, the entrance to the gondola terminal is only a few meters from the rental shop and ski school. The notion that Duncan rode down on the gondola without first returning his gear and picking up his clothing made no sense, especially given that he was wearing hard ski boots.

When his body emerged in 2003, he was found with a Duret snowboard and nylon gaiters inscribed with “Rental 3000.” At that point, it became clear that he must have also left his shoes and his Saskatchewan driver’s license (as a deposit for the gear) in either the rental shop or in Walter’s office. These abandoned items—yet another alarming sign that something had happened to their owner—were never returned to the MacPhersons, which meant that someone had disposed of them. Finally, contrary to standard procedure, Duncan’s missing snowboard was never reported to the police.

An injured customer left to spend the night on the mountain at an altitude of 3,000 meters would likely die of hypothermia, if not from his trauma. Thus, as everyone who worked at the Eisgrat Station knew, it was critical that any customer who failed to return his gear and retrieve his possessions be reported to the rescue service.

After Duncan’s car was found in the Stubai Glacier parking lot, the entire investigation of his disappearance hinged on figuring out whether he’d returned his equipment. The equipment was the telltale sign of what had happened to him. If he’d failed to return it, it meant that he’d gone into a crevasse while snowboarding on the Schaufelferner. If he had returned it, it meant that he’d come off the slope and gone to meet his end somewhere else. Until this was clarified, there was no sense in searching for him far and wide with dozens of men, dogs, and helicopters.

Inspector Franz Brecher did a remarkable job of not clarifying whether the gear was returned. He did take statements from Seppi and Walter, but only a year later, after Lynda complained to Prosecutor Wallner about the lack of recorded testimony. The more I studied Brecher’s conduct, the more I was drawn to the conclusion that he had not wanted to determine whether the gear had been returned. Instead, he joined Walter and Seppi in a verbal dance around the truth of the matter. The closest he came to revealing the truth was when he told Lynda in the summer of 1990 that Duncan may have used two different snowboards on the day he disappeared, and that she should ask Walter about it. He was referring to the probable fact that Duncan had rented his gear from the Sport Shop 3000 in the morning, and then used one of Walter’s boards in the afternoon.

After months of studying the snowboard issue, I concluded (see evidence in Appendix 2) that, by August 10, 1989 at the latest, both Walter and Seppi knew that Duncan hadn’t come off the slope, and both men concealed their knowledge from the MacPhersons. On the evening of September 22, it must have been disturbing for Walter to see the parents of his missing pupil checking into the hotel where he worked in the evenings during ski season. They were obviously determined to find someone who’d had contact with their son, and Walter knew that numerous persons—including a group of Italians who’d stayed at the hotel—had seen him with Duncan on the glacier. It had been his duty to make sure his pupil understood the slope boundary markers, was outfitted with proper equipment, and had sufficient control to remain within the boundaries. When Walter approached the MacPhersons, he established himself as forthcoming and helpful. Feeling grateful to him, they didn’t think to ask him challenging questions, even after Inspector Brecher suggested they ask him about a second board.

Though Seppi was less active in deceiving the MacPhersons, he played along with the lie. If he and Walter had told the truth, they would have spared Lynda and Bob years of miserable perplexity and most of their retirement savings. Why had they pretended not to have noticed the signs that Duncan hadn’t made it off the slope? They doubtless knew he was dead, but what was it about his death that made them feel they had to remain silent about it?

Chapter 29: Withholding

Shortly after Duncan’s car was found near the Stubai Glacier gondola station, Inspector Brecher became aware that, in all likelihood, the missing Canadian was in a crevasse on or near the ski slope. Brecher was the original source of the September 27, 1989 Interpol cable stating that “MacPherson is believed to have had an accident while snowboarding on 9/8/89.”

The day after Interpol Vienna sent this cable, External Affairs Ottawa asked Consul Thomson to clarify whether Duncan had returned his snowboard, and it was then that Walter claimed he was certain the snowboard had been returned. Inspector Brecher knew that Walter’s claim was scarcely credible and intended for the consumption of Canadian External Affairs. A year later, when Walter gave a recorded statement to Brecher, he mentioned nothing about the board having been returned, and Brecher didn’t ask him about it.

For his part, Consul Thomson accepted Walter’s claim without asking him how (by what means) he was certain of the snowboard’s return. And to reiterate: While Thomson notified Ottawa of Walter’s newfound certainty, he didn’t tell the MacPhersons about it, even though he repeatedly spoke to them at their hotel after September 30.

When the MacPhersons were finally presented with the assertion that the snowboard and boots had been returned, it was in a report from the Tyrolean Security Directorate to the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, forwarded to them four months later. If they had known that Walter was the source of the assertion, they would have been in a position to question its veracity. As it was presented to them—in an official document with no reference to a source—they had no means of evaluating it.

In an effort to understand why Brecher and Thomson had left the MacPhersons in the dark, I sought and eventually found a man in the Stubai Valley who’d been in a position to know about the initial search in September 1989. However, he told me it was absolutely necessary that he remain anonymous. By his tone and facial expression, I could tell that he was very afraid of the consequences were I to mention his name or identifying characteristics. After I promised to protect his identity, he told me the following:

When the MacPhersons arrived in September 1989, I learned that the boy had last been seen on the ski slope, that he’d left his clothing in the ski school office, and that his car had sat in the gondola station parking lot for six weeks. At that point I knew he’d fallen into a crevasse while snowboarding. I knew it, the gendarmerie knew it, and everyone who worked on the glacier knew it. We knew it because there was nowhere else he could have gone. The problem was, his body wasn’t found, even though the searchers looked into the crevasses that were open in September.

“Why didn’t someone just tell the parents that their son had fallen into a crevasse while snowboarding, and that the crevasse had probably been filled in August?” I asked my anonymous source.

“One couldn’t tell them without proof,” he replied. “No one saw him fall into the crevasse, and his body wasn’t found.”

In other words, if someone had told Lynda that her son had gone into a crevasse while snowboarding, she would have demanded an explanation for why no one had saved him or at least found his body, and she might have also insisted on excavating the glacier’s crevasses to try to recover him. This would have required shutting down the slope in October, with ski season about to open, and generating a lot of bad publicity, with no guarantee he would be found. She would encounter resistance, but as Consul Thomson noted in a cable to Ottawa about her demanding ways, she had contacts in the press and in the House of Commons, and could muster support.

For the Stubai Glacier, it was far better if Lynda and Bob were led to believe that Duncan had returned his equipment and then gone for a hike. Surely, after successive searches failed to find him, they would give up and somehow come to terms with their uncertainty. At the same time, External Affairs officers could wrap up the troublesome business in Tyrol and return to their normal routine at the embassy in Vienna.

I wasn’t so surprised that the local police had withheld information from the MacPhersons. This was rural Tyrol, after all, where the village cop’s primary allegiance was often to the local great man. Much harder for me to understand was why Consul Thomson had withheld information from the Canadian citizens he was supposed to be representing. I made a considerable effort to find him and to obtain official permission from Foreign Affairs to ask him about his participation in the story, but he politely refused to speak with me.

I watched a video of the 1993 German television show (Bitte melde dich!) about Duncan. There before me was Walter Hinterhoelzl, standing on the glacier near where his pupil lay buried in the ice, saying that Duncan had been so “especially cautious” that whenever he’d come near slope boundaries, “he took off his board, walked back to the middle of the slope, and then started over.” The implication was clear: Nothing could have befallen him while snowboarding because he was far too careful (the opposite of a fearless “Canadian Hotdog,” as Walter would later describe him after his body emerged).

Inspector Brecher also implied that Duncan had made it off the slope and then later had an accident while hiking:

Sooner or later a hunter, an alpinist, a foreign visitor could go behind a boulder, and then he could be found somewhere. From our experience I believe that sooner or later he can be found.

Again the message was clear: Nothing happened to Duncan while snowboarding at the Stubai Glacier (a ski resort with a large German customer base and German investors).

Brecher didn’t mention the crevasse danger on the Schaufelferner, even though he was intimately familiar with it. On August 4, 1988, a student from Hong Kong named Chung Yin Chiu disappeared on the same glacier. Though the head of the rescue service, Helmut Tanzer, ultimately found Chiu in a deep crevasse, by the time the boy was extracted, his body temperature was perilously low, and he died in the Innsbruck Clinic on August 9, 1988. Exactly one year (almost to the hour) later, Duncan was last seen precisely where Chiu’s disaster had occurred.

Though no police officers were present during Chiu’s extraction, Inspector Brecher interviewed Helmut Tanzer and photographed the site the following day. Tanzer said that Chiu must have come off the tow-lift and skied through the crevassing zone, even though it was marked with warning signs and a cordon. Brecher’s photos reveal that, though one end of the crevasse was within two meters of the tow-lift path, it was not—as required by law—secured by a barrier. The cordon was entirely insufficient for stopping a skier from accidentally sliding off the path and into the sixty-foot plunge.

In August 1990, Brecher again interviewed Helmut Tanzer, this time about Duncan. Tanzer stuck to the script that nothing could have happened to him on the slope because it was so carefully controlled. He claimed his crew had marked the crevassing area on August 8, but he said nothing about the risk that Duncan had nevertheless gone into it, just as Chiu had, and Brecher didn’t ask him about this parallel.

After Duncan’s body was found, the silence about Chiu’s accident was broken. Michael Tanzer, head of operations in 2003, asserted that Duncan must have come off the tow-lift and gone through the danger area, just like the “Japanese” the year before. Given that no one in 1989 had spoken about the previous accident, when it could have guided the search for Duncan, it was remarkable that Tanzer chose to speak about it in 2003. I sensed that he’d drawn attention to Chiu’s disaster in order to make his proffered theory of Duncan’s crevasse fall more persuasive.

In spite of Brecher’s awareness that Duncan had almost certainly gone into a crevasse while snowboarding, he chose not to pursue this obvious lead. Initially he withheld information from the MacPhersons and didn’t investigate the matter of the snowboarding equipment. When the Bitte melde dich! episode was filmed four years later, he made misleading statements about Duncan’s disappearance on German national television. When I called him in 2009 to discuss the case, he refused to talk to me.

Chapter 30: “Quaint at the bottom, savage at the top”

I timed my first visit to Stubai to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Duncan’s death. Entering the valley, I was stunned by the vista that spread out before me, which is nicely described in the book Stubai: Beautiful Valley, by Heinrich Klier, the founder of the Stubai Glacier:

Quaint at the bottom, savage at the top… the solitude of sheer ice and rock massifs in the backdrop, a narrow strip of lush green, cultivated and densely populated, in the middle: that is how the Stubai Valley presents itself to the beholder.

I arrived at the Mutterbergalm around 10:00 and parked where Duncan had parked exactly two decades earlier. Riding the gondola up to the Eisgrat, I looked out the window at the glacier-sculpted mountain below, and imagined him doing the same. What thoughts did he have, I wondered, as he’d approached the place where he would die a few hours later? I’d also toured Central Europe for the first time in the summer of 1989. A few weeks before Duncan visited Roger Kortko’s place in Fuessen, I visited the nearby Neuschwanstein castle, and then passed through Innsbruck. I could still vividly recall the excitement of being young in Europe. Death was the furthest thing from my mind.

Arriving at the Eisgrat Station, I walked out of the cable car terminal and took my first look at the glacier that had been Duncan’s grave for fourteen years. Though Lynda had prepared me, I was still surprised by how small it was. How bizarre that he’d vanished on a bunny hill! I had with me photographs taken by Judy Wigmore on August 9, 1989. They showed thick banks of fog rolling onto the slope. Riding up the tow-lift for his last run, Duncan must have vanished into the mist, out of sight from the base.

I walked up the secure path, which had been moved to the opposite side of the slope from its location in 1989. As I trudged along, the old, icy snow crunching under my feet, I thought about the woman who Lynda had seen falling into a crevasse on the path in the summer of 1990. Alone on the glacier, with no one to see me go in, I frequently glanced at its mottled grey and white surface, looking for spots that might give way.

About halfway to the top, I looked across the ice field to the area in which Duncan had died, and contemplated the same questions his mother had pondered for so long. How bad was your death? Were you afraid? Were you in pain? It was an overcast day, and the grey sky seemed to mimic the grey glacier. Beyond the ice was a craggy and barren rock formation. I understood then why Lynda had often called it a cold place. How ironic that it was an amusement area. How many carefree tourists had unwittingly skied over a dead man buried without a funeral?

Thoughts of death imbued all of my perceptions, and just like Lynda, I found myself wanting to get away from the place, but not without first thinking something solemn about the young man who’d come to occupy all of my waking hours and even my dreams. I conjured his face and voice from my memory of the television interview he’d given just before he died, and addressed my image of him. Your mother thinks you want me to speak for you. I’ll do my best.

Back at the Eisgrat I fell into a conversation with an affable guy who worked for the Stubai Glacier’s rescue service. Pretending to be an English teacher from Vienna, I asked him why the slope was no longer open for summer skiing.

“Because it’s too warm and there’s not enough snow,” he replied. “I guess it’s the global warming.” We rode the gondola down together at 4:15 P.M., and as we were traveling over the Schaufelferner’s former bed, he gave me a geologic history lesson.

“During the last ice age, these north facing glaciers used to go all the way to where Munich is now,” he explained. “You see how quickly they have receded in the last century. The Schaufelferner used to end at the Dresdner Hut down there,” he said, pointing at the building that appeared to be at least a mile downhill from the glacier’s present terminus.

“They used to have an icebox dug into the glacier just outside the kitchen door.”

“Who had the brilliant idea to build a ski resort here?” I asked.

“That was Herr Doktor Klier,” he said reverentially. And then, like a pious Catholic relating the life of a saint, he recounted Dr. Klier’s extraordinary deeds.

“The ski area was his vision, but because no one in the valley believed in it, he had to do it all on his own. He studied in Munich, where he met some rich Germans who he persuaded to invest in his idea. He built the gondolas and he extended the road up the valley. Now the Stubai Glacier is the most profitable ski area in Austria. Most of the others are in the red, but not us.”

“Sounds like an impressive guy. Have you ever met him?”

“Oh sure, he often visits the glacier and he takes an interest in all of his employees. Every year he sends our children Christmas presents. He grew up in the mountains and he was a great alpinist in his youth, so in a way, he’s just like us.”

Chapter 31: The Godfather of the Valley

Throughout the Stubai Valley, I encountered people who were quick to credit “Herr Doktor Klier” for their prosperity. It was common knowledge that he had single-handedly developed the local economy with his glacier ski resort. As is often noted in laudatory press reports about him, his achievements as a developer were the result of the same drive he’d earlier channeled into mountain climbing. In his younger days he summited 34 Viertausender (4,000 meter peaks) and had many close shaves with death, starting with a crevasse fall when he was fourteen on the Sulzenauferner—a glacier not far from the Schaufelferner. If a herdsman hadn’t seen him go in, he would have died.

A native of South Tyrol, which was ceded to Italy after the First World War, Klier was once a leading member of a militant group that protested Italy’s policy (initiated by Mussolini) of imposing Italian culture and language on its Austrian inhabitants. Affectionately known as the Bumser for their practice of blowing up (with a boom) South Tyrol’s infrastructure, some members fled to Austria to evade arrest in Italy. After Klier detonated a statue of Mussolini in the town of Waidbruck, he was tried in absentia by a Milan court in 1964 and sentenced to twenty-one years in prison. This kept him away from Italy until 1998, when he was pardoned by Italian President Scalfaro. For a while the Italians were determined to extradite him, so he lived in exile in Germany (which, unlike Austria, had no extradition treaty with Italy). As a former Bumser, he has special status among the older, patriotic inhabitants of Tyrol.

In the fifties and sixties Klier was a prolific author. His first novel, Feuer am Farran Firn (Fire on Farran Firn) won a literary prize in Vienna, and his second, Verlorener Sommer (Lost Summer) was translated into French and sold 100,000 copies. Bergwind und Träume (Mountain Wind and Dreams), published in 1955, tells the story of a Hollywood starlet’s adventures with a mountain climber (a relationship vaguely reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl’s with Andreas Heckmair). The novel’s setting is a Tyrolean village with the fictional name Ladaun that is transformed by winter tourism.

On a freezing January morning the first tourists stepped onto the platform and waded through a Sunday gathering with friendly faces. To the astonishment of the villagers, the guests rolled about the hills around Ladaun. And before they knew it, their village had become a first-class center for winter sport. A few hotels and a cinema were built; during the winter the young boys earned decent money as skiing instructors, and in summer they were reliable mountain guides….

The change was painful, but even the old men had to admit that now their roofs were new and their grandsons could go to school instead of earning little money as day laborers. And it was amusing to watch the once fiercest opponents of the railway using it with great ease and delight.

Ten years after he wrote the above passage, Klier embarked on his career as a ski area developer. He began by building lifts on various mountains in Tyrol, and then he raised the capital to develop the Stubai Glacier. Bringing this project to fruition was a vast undertaking, and he pursued it with characteristic energy. First he had to convince the herdsmen who owned the land around the glaciers to grant him permission to build his gondolas and stations. Then he had to get permits from the obstructionist Austrian bureaucracy. Last but not least, he had to extend the Stubai Valley’s main road eight kilometers, through twenty-four avalanche zones, to provide car access.

Over the years, Klier raised and invested about 170 million Euros in the Stubai Glacier—a great entrepreneurial achievement in any country and a miracle in Austria. Unlike many developers in Austria who create jobs, he never received government subsidies, which was a point of pride for him. Within a few years of its opening, the Stubai Glacier became a smash success and the first ski area mentioned in Wolfgang Ambros’s 1976 megahit Schifoan (Skiing)—a pop anthem to the national pastime.

Before the Stubai Glacier, the number of overnight guest bookings in the municipality of Neustift during the high winter season was around 25,000 per year. By 2003, the number had soared to 700,000. The tremendous growth of tourism transformed the economy of the Stubai Valley and poured millions of tax revenue into state coffers. In recognition of his contribution to the prosperity of Tyrol, the state awarded him the Tiroler Verdienstkreuz (Distinguished Service Cross) in 1995. In 2006 he was made an honorary citizen of Neustift, and the ceremony was attended by the Governor of Tyrol, the President of the Austrian National Assembly, and other high ranking officials. In Neustift’s long history, it has bestowed this honor on only one other man: Otto von Habsburg, the son of the last Emperor of Austria.

The Stubai Glacier was Heinrich Klier’s fiefdom—his “Kingdom of Snow” as it styles itself in marketing literature. Unlike the old counts of Tyrol, he’d inherited nothing; he built it all himself. Every day in his Innsbruck office he could look at the splendid aerial photographs of his kingdom and see what he’d achieved. As he boasted in his official biography, he’d reached all of his goals “in spite of avalanches, floods, climbing falls, and the torture instruments of bureaucracy.” By 2003, the only thing that could have put his crowning accomplishment at risk was some seriously bad publicity.

Chapter 32: In the Holy Land of Tyrol

The first time I visited the Stubai Valley in August of 2009, I was often struck by how much the inhabitants had retained their distinctly local qualities. The charming waitress who served me coffee every morning at my hotel had the same last name as about a fifth of the people buried in the parish church graveyard, and she struggled to speak standard German with me instead of her Tyrolean dialect, which I could scarcely understand. Everyone I met was very friendly, but they obviously viewed me as a total outsider, and I got the feeling that their regular contact with foreign tourists had caused them to embrace their Tyrolean identity all the more.

I met a man who’d grown up on a small farm in the southwest end of the valley, raising cattle. The paternal side of his family had lived in the same farmhouse since the 15th century, and the pastoral life he’d known as a boy wasn’t so different from the life his ancestors had known five hundred years earlier. His father had struck a deal with Heinrich Klier to build the road to the Stubai Glacier through his family property.

“I personally don’t think it was such a great deal for us,” the man said. “Over the years many of our cows got hit by tourists driving too fast. I remember how angry I was when I found injured animals that had to be put down. Other farmers also questioned whether the ski resort was such a good thing, but after it became so successful, there was no turning back, and even the officials in Neustift who’d initially opposed it had to admit that it did a lot for the economy.”

The first night of my visit, my girlfriend Johanna and I went to a restaurant near our hotel called the Gasthaus Geieralm. Walking into the cozy dining room with a wood-burning stove, I asked the waitress for a table for two, at which point everyone in the restaurant turned to look at me, with my heavy foreign accent. Shortly after we sat down, a man seated at a nearby table said, “You’re the man with the Porsche staying at the Hotel Gasteigerhof, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied, astonished. “How do you know that?”

“I saw you pull into the hotel as I was walking down the road.”

“It’s your car,” Johanna said to me in English. “It’s a lot flashier than an Opel Corsa.”

After a couple of beers, I asked the observant man about the history, animals, and plants of the valley, and soon everyone in the restaurant, including the waitress, joined our conversation. The evening wore on, and we switched from beer and wine to schnapps.

“You should try our home-distilled Laerchenschnaps,” our waitress told me. She was referring to schnapps infused with the aromatic oil of larch buds, but at that moment I thought she said Leichenschnaps—i.e., “corpse schnapps.”

“Corpse schnapps?” I said with an alarmed expression, at which point everyone in the room burst out laughing.

“Yes, exactly,” she replied. “Corpse schnapps—the specialty of the house.”

“To Stubai and its corpse schnapps,” I said, and toasted everyone.

That Sunday I attended an outdoor mass to consecrate a new hiking trail in honor of a highly revered Neustift parish priest named Franz Senn, who was also a founding member of the Austrian and German Alpine Associations. 2009 was the 125th anniversary of his death, and the mass was one of many commemorations that year. As I hiked up to a clearing in the woods above Neustift where the mass was held, I was impressed by the many elderly people, some apparently in their eighties, ascending the steep trail. A priest performed a traditional service, and then the deputy director of the Austrian Alpine Association (Stubai Section) gave a speech.

After lamenting that the Section Director, Dr. Kurt Somavilla (the district medical officer who’d allegedly examined Duncan’s corpse in the funeral chapel of the parish church) couldn’t be there to give the speech, he talked about the outstanding life of Franz Senn. Father Senn had introduced tourism to the valley, and tourism had been their salvation. Just to the south, in Italy, the young people were obliged to leave their valleys to seek work in the cities, but not in Stubai.

2009 was also the bicentenary of Tyrol’s “Liberation War” from Franco-Bavarian occupation, and a number of celebrations took place throughout the state. One balmy summer evening, Johanna and I went to an outdoor party in Neustift, with live music performed by a singer dressed up like the freedom fighter Andreas Hofer. When he broke into the rousing “Andreas Hofer Lied” (Tyrol’s national hymn) we all stood to join him. I particularly liked the second verse, which alludes to Hofer’s guerilla tactic of setting loose rock slides onto the enemy.

Ihm schien der Tod gering.

Der Tod, den er so manchesmal,

Vom Iselberg geschickt ins Tal,

Im heil’gen Land Tirol,

Im heil’gen Land Tirol.

To him death seemed small.

Death, that he sometimes,

From Mount Isel hurled into the valley,

In the holy land of Tyrol,

In the holy land of Tyrol.

In my many years in Austria, I’d never heard such expressions of patriotism, which are unthinkable in Vienna. The people seemed convinced of their land’s special identity and virtue. It was the same kind of feeling I’d often seen while growing up in Texas, which, like Tyrol, had once been an independent state. While Andreas Hofer kicked Marshal Lefebvre’s ass at Bergisel, Jim Bowie gave General Santa Anna hell at the Alamo. I could well imagine the difficulties an Austrian couple would face if their son disappeared under mysterious circumstances from the commercial premises of a powerful man in rural Texas. Their trips to the local police and courthouse would be exercises in frustration.

I know a plaintiff’s attorney in Houston who has a special name for rural communities built around a single industry—“Company Towns.”

“There are still many places in this country where the guys who run the local mill, factory, or refinery run the entire show,” he said. “Even if the company is obviously liable for a terrible injury or death, the injured party or next of kin can forget about compensation, because no one in the entire town would ever acknowledge that the company made a mistake. No local witnesses will come forward, no local cops will diligently investigate, and no local jury will find fault. Their need to remain on good terms with their community will inhibit them.”

Lynda found this aspect of human nature highly regrettable. She passionately believed that every citizen has a duty to be fair to every citizen of every country, and not only to those close to him. To her, the rule of law was universal.

“The folks who live in rural valleys like Stubai don’t think that way,” said Paul Mensdorff, my neighbor in Vienna. Coincidentally, he had stumbled across Florian Skrabal’s article about Duncan in Datum magazine before I mentioned it, and he was keenly interested in the story. We often met to discuss it over a bottle of wine. One of the most cultivated guys I’ve ever met, his own little girl had recently died of cancer, so he knew all too well how it felt to lose a child—“an impenetrable mystery,” as he put it.

“As you describe her, Lynda MacPherson believes personal integrity to be the highest good, and to abandon it would be to abandon herself,” Paul observed. “But to a simple man in that valley, the highest good is protecting his community. He may personally dislike people in his village, and he may secretly resent its powerful members, but he will always be terrified of ostracism, because he can’t imagine living anywhere else. He understands why the MacPhersons are outraged, and he feels sorry for them, but if he knows something about what happened to their son, he will never tell them. When Canadians like them and an American like you show up and start asking questions, he will perceive you not as a truth-seeker, but as an assailant.”

Chapter 33: “Is this a dangerous area?”

I watched raw video footage (only partially broadcast) of an Innsbruck reporter interviewing a Stubai Glacier slope maintenance worker on the Schaufelferner. The date of the interview is Saturday, July 19, 2003—the day after Duncan’s body was recovered—and the man being interviewed is named Guenther Mueller. Standing next to the patch of disturbed ice that had entombed Duncan, Mueller says that he and three other men chipped the corpse out with their picks. He does not mention that he had been in charge of slope operations on the day Duncan died. I know it from my copy of the August 9, 1989 operations log, which Lynda obtained from the Innsbruck Court in 1990.

Mueller is obviously distressed. He has a dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, and a faltering voice. He frequently grimaces and is at a loss for words. At the time of this interview, neither he nor any of his co-workers have yet been asked to explain to the police why a young man died and was buried on their ski slope. The only probing question the reporter asks is, “Is this a dangerous area?” to which Mueller replies, “No.”

Although the official press release, issued the day before, stated that MacPherson had plunged out-of-bounds, the discovery site is clearly situated in the middle of the slope. Why is Mueller so distressed? Is it the basic horror of a young man’s death, or does he also feel responsible? If he does feel responsible, is it guilt that is racking him, or does he also fear that his goose is about to be cooked?

I found it notable that, while two of Mueller’s co-workers made statements to the police on July 23, he himself didn’t make one until August 7. Why the long delay between the corpse’s emergence and Mueller’s police interview about it? Inspector Krappinger’s interview with Mueller is remarkable for its total lack of tough questions. Mueller says that Duncan must have come off the tow-lift and attempted to go through the crevassing area—an area that, Mueller asserts, was normally fenced off from spring until late fall, when enough snow accumulated to fill the crevasses. Why, Inspector Krappinger should have asked, wasn’t there a proper search for Duncan in the fenced-off area on the afternoon of August 9, 1989, when he didn’t bring back his equipment and retrieve his belongings? By Mueller’s logic, Duncan’s body sat in an open crevasse in the fenced-off area from August 9 until the late fall of 1989, when enough snow fell to fill the crevasse with snow.

At the time Duncan’s body was found, a new chair-lift was being built on the slope. As new lift supports were being erected not far from the discovery site, it’s likely that at least one construction worker saw the corpse. Mueller said in his interview that the discovery had been made by Peter Birsak (also present during the interview) as he was walking on the glacier, picking up trash.

The operations log for August 9, 1989 indicates that the man on rescue duty had the initials “P.B.” If Inspector Krappinger had conducted a proper investigation, he would have determined if these initials referred to Peter Birsak. A glove was found mixed together with Duncan’s clothing at the funeral home. Recognizing that it didn’t belong to the deceased, Krappinger contacted slope maintenance and asked if it belonged to any of the workers. As the inspector noted in his ID Report, the glove belonged to Peter Birsak, who’d “accidentally lost it at the discovery site.” Birsak didn’t show his matching glove to Krappinger, presumably having already thrown it away. He identified the glove as the one he’d lost by looking at a photo of it. Krappinger didn’t have the glove analyzed, but took Birsak’s word for it.

The glove is not visible in any of the discovery scene photos, taken from various angles to show each side of the body and the area around it. Did Birsak lose it at the very end of the recovery, as he was packing the remains into sacks? It’s hard to imagine why he would have taken off his glove while doing this. He would have been aware of handling the clothing and corpse with a bare hand, and looked for his glove. And even if he changed into latex gloves, wouldn’t he have noticed his work glove dropping directly onto Duncan’s body or clothing?

I called Birsak to ask about his discovery and recovery of the corpse. Upon hearing that I was working on a book about the case, he became hostile.

“How did you get my number?” he asked.

“From the directory,” I replied.

“I cannot talk to you! Call the Stubai Glacier press office if you want information.”

I told him that I just wanted to learn the truth about what happened to Duncan MacPherson, and that if there was a harmless explanation for the damage to his body and snowboard, it was better to speak frankly about it. By refusing to talk, he gave me the impression he had something to hide.

“I have nothing to hide!” he yelled. “If there is damage to MacPherson’s body and snowboard, then MacPherson is to blame for it. That is all I have to say.”

The exchange perfectly illustrated why the Stubai Glacier and the local police had lost all credibility with the MacPhersons. By refusing to illuminate anything, they made everything suspect.

Chapter 34: Turning a Blind Eye

When the fifth estate documentary was filmed in 2006, a spokesman for the Innsbruck police admitted to the MacPhersons that several mistakes had been made in Duncan’s case, though he insisted they should not be construed as an effort to cover up a crime. But what is the difference between covering up a crime and failing to detect it by neglecting to investigate every single lead? From beginning to end, a striking pattern of omission is evident in the way the authorities handled Duncan’s case, and it is the omissions that tell the tale.

With the exception of Inspector Jungmann, the helicopter pilot who landed on the glacier and photographed the discovery site, not one public official involved in Duncan’s case did a proper job. According to Jungmann’s report, he was notified of the corpse on the Schaufelferner at the same time he was dispatched on a search and rescue mission on the nearby Sulzenauferner. Because this mission (which turned out to be a “false alarm”) took priority, he was called away from the recovery site, but not before correctly noting its location as 25 meters east of the tow-lift.

Had the corpse been found on a remote mountain, Jungmann’s report could have accounted for why no Air Rescue Officer supervised its recovery; however, it couldn’t explain why not a single law officer rode the gondola up to the site. Inspector Ortner waited in the lower gondola station parking lot while the corpse was extracted, put into plastic sacks, and then into a body bag. When Ortner later opened the bag to look for items that could identify the victim, he found, among other objects, what he described as “2 cross-country ski gloves (blue) and one glove (red).” Obviously the dead man hadn’t gone snowboarding with two pairs of gloves, which raised the question: To whom did the second pair belong? This critical question wasn’t investigated, at least not officially.

The police didn’t analyze the damage to the snowboard, nor did they ask Walter Hinterhoelzl why he’d lied about the board being returned in 1989—a strong indication that Duncan’s death on the ski slope had been concealed. Inspector Koch waited until 8:40 P.M. to call the Innsbruck Court, when the examining magistrate for Duncan’s case was certain to have gone home. He then lied to public prosecutor Schirhakl about the location of the body, indicating it was found off-piste.

After Schirhakl released the body for burial without even knowing the cause of death, Inspector Koch called the district medical officer, Kurt Somavilla. Based on his viewing of the clothed and frozen corpse in the funeral chapel of the Neustift parish church, Dr. Somavilla stated the cause of death as “poly-trauma from a crevasse fall,” and then falsely indicated on the Report of Death that an autopsy had been performed.

After Inspector Krappinger was informed by Canadian Vice-consul Douglas that the MacPhersons expected an autopsy and would be escorted by consular officials, he notified prosecutor Schirhakl that the body had not been found 120 meters east of the tow-lift (as Inspector Koch had stated) but on the ski slope itself. Based on this circumstance, he said, “one must assume” that the victim had fallen into a crevasse on the slope and been buried when a groomer filled it with snow. In other words, the slope workers on duty that day had not only failed to control the crevasse, they had also failed to inspect it before filling it—two acts of gross negligence that had resulted in a young man getting killed (probably buried alive) and then concealed from his family.

Schirhakl’s response to this new information, which he noted in a memo, was to invoke the statute of limitations on negligent homicide and close the case. His reasoning was deeply flawed and outrageously unfair to the MacPhersons. First of all, without an investigation, he had no way of knowing that Duncan hadn’t been pushed into the crevasse, or murdered and then buried in the crevasse, which was easy to reach with a Snowcat and isolated from witnesses after 4:15 P.M. Though the circumstances suggested that murder was unlikely, stranger things have happened.

Schirhakl implied that investigating was pointless because prosecution was time-barred, but this disregarded the fact that acts of negligence could only be discovered with the emergence of Duncan’s body. Between the years 1989 and 1994—the five-year limitations period for negligent homicide—the MacPhersons made a huge effort to discover what had happened to their son, while the Stubai Glacier and gendarmerie insisted it was impossible for him to have fallen into a crevasse on the slope. Altogether, the circumstances suggested that Duncan’s death had been fraudulently concealed, so Schirhakl’s decision to close the investigation effectively rewarded the culprits for their deception.

For his part, Bernhard Knapp at the Innsbruck District Government falsely informed the Canadian Embassy on July 23, 2003 that Duncan’s body had been transferred to the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine for dental identification and pathology. According to Dr. Rabl, Knapp did not order a forensic pathological exam—only an identification exam. Ostensibly to identify the body, Knapp ordered Rabl to remove the jaws so that the remains could be returned to the funeral home immediately instead of waiting a day for the head to thaw. Why was he in such a hurry? Given that there was no legitimate forensic medical reason for removing Duncan’s jaws, it is indisputable that Knapp ordered the desecration of human remains—a highly punishable offense in Austria. Why did he do this?

On July 31, 2003, Knapp called Canadian Vice-consul Douglas and informed him that a CT scan of Duncan’s body would be performed that afternoon—a procedure “usually done to determine the presence of any fractures.” Knapp concluded by telling Douglas that “when he received any additional information, he would contact the Embassy and provide the same.” When Douglas didn’t hear back from Knapp about the exam, he assumed it didn’t reveal any fractures. Months later, in a March 26, 2004 follow-up letter to Douglas, Knapp stated that “the exact cause of death was established by the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine.”

Knapp is now Club Director of the dominant Austrian People’s Party faction in the Tyrolean state legislature. Though his secretary confirmed that he receives email at the address posted on the Club’s home page, he did not reply to my request for an interview or to my written questions.

For his part, Inspector Krappinger wrote in his concluding report that Duncan “called his parents from Fuessen, Germany on August 10” and then went missing “in the area of the Stubai Glacier on August 11.” An utter fabrication, it raises the suspicion that Krappinger was attempting to create a separation in time between Duncan’s well-established contact with Stubai Glacier personnel on August 9, and his death. With this official fiction, the resort personnel could claim that they were unaware of Duncan’s presence on the slope on the day he died.

What are we to make of the unprofessional and dishonest conduct of so many Innsbruck officials? Lynda suspected a large conspiracy to cover up the cause and manner of Duncan’s death, orchestrated by Heinrich Klier, the “Godfather of the Stubai Valley.” When we talk about conspiracies, we often imagine multiple persons who are equally aware of an unlawful scheme, and who, at a given time, agree to play an assigned role in it. However, this kind of active conspiracy is probably far less common than a more mundane form of corruption whereby members of a community or organization grow accustomed to turning a blind eye to unethical or even criminal conduct. To an individual within the organization, this practice may seem normal because everyone around him appears to accept it. Even if he disapproves, he senses he would accomplish nothing by protesting it and would likely endanger his own position.

From the conduct of the Neustift gendarmerie (which angrily reprimanded Bob MacPherson for taking photos of the crevasse on the walking path in July of 1990) and the Innsbruck prosecutor’s office (which invoked the statute of limitations as a rationale for immediately closing the investigation of Duncan’s death), it is clear that these officials were generally more interested in protecting the Stubai Glacier than enforcing the law requiring that crevasses on or near ski slopes be secured. As Prosecutor Schirhakl’s memo indicates, the police assumed that Duncan had fallen into a crevasse and been buried by a careless slope groomer. Given their knowledge of other crevasse falls on the same slope, it was a reasonable assumption—even though it wasn’t correct.

How did Duncan really die?

Chapter 35: Lynda’s Friend in Innsbruck

Upon her return to Saskatoon from Innsbruck, Lynda gave an interview to the reporter Rob Vanstone. Going by Dr. Rabl’s assurance, she said that, according to the CT scan, “it was unlikely that a severe injury—such as a fractured skull, broken neck or broken back—was the cause of death.” Because of this assurance, she and Bob decided to have Duncan’s body cremated the day after the CT exam was performed.

From this interview, which was published in the Regina Leader-Post on August 7, 2003, an RCMP detective in Saskatoon inferred that Duncan’s corpse was injury-free, which meant (to the detective) that there was no need to look further into the cause and manner of his death. The Mountie might have inquired further if he’d understood that Lynda hadn’t actually seen the CT scan.

One day, shortly after his return to Saskatoon, Bob found himself studying the photos that Dr. Rabl had shown them to prepare them for viewing Duncan’s body. Just before they left Innsbruck, Lynda had remembered these images and asked for copies. While looking at them back home, Bob realized that Duncan’s limbs were badly injured.

Thus began their long wait for Dr. Rabl to send the CT results. In response to Lynda’s multiple requests for the images and report, he replied that he was having trouble getting them from his colleague in radiology—a facility that was (unbeknownst to Lynda) located three hundred meters from Rabl’s institute. Finally, months later, he began sending her—in a piecemeal fashion—low resolution radiographs, without an accompanying report.

Lynda believed he’d done all he could to help, given that he hadn’t received an order from the Innsbruck authorities to perform an autopsy. Indeed, she thought he’d risked getting into trouble by helping as much as he had. Initially I understood her perception, but the more I studied the way Dr. Rabl had handled the case, the more I sensed that there was something very strange about his conduct.

The discovery of a glacier corpse is fairly rare, and most of those found in Tyrol since 1952 were examined by forensic doctors at the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine. Five of the six glacier corpses that emerged in 1991 were autopsied by Rabl’s colleagues, who also gave Oetzi’s body a thorough external examination. The body of Chiu—the Chinese student who died on August 9, 1988 after going into a crevasse on the Schaufelferner—was autopsied, even though he died in hospital. And as Dr. Rabl revealed in an email to Lynda, he examined the remains of Fabrizio Falchero, which emerged the year after Duncan melted out.

Given the willingness of Innsbruck authorities to examine the bodies of these other persons who’d died on Tyrolean glaciers, their reluctance to examine Duncan’s was remarkable. The public prosecutor refused to order an autopsy ostensibly because Duncan’s death was “worst case” a result of negligence, which was, by the prosecutor’s reasoning, time-barred from prosecution.

What about Dr. Rabl? Given his expressions of sympathy for the Macphersons, and given how strongly Lynda had stated her desire to learn the cause of Duncan’s death, I wondered why he hadn’t simply told her on July 25, 2003 (after she’d had no luck with Prosecutor Koll) that she was free to order a private exam of her son’s body. Though Lynda and Bob didn’t know it at the time, private post mortem exams are perfectly legal in Austria and, under normal circumstances, a welcome source of income for its institutes of forensic medicine. Even if Rabl feared that merely informing Lynda of her rights could be construed as taking her side, he still could have recommended that she ask a lawyer about her rights.

I also wondered why he hadn’t said a word about Duncan’s injured limbs until November 23, 2003. On this date, he responded to questions from Derrick MacPherson about how Duncan had died. Immediately after answering them, he emailed Lynda to assure her that the CT scan showed “no bony injuries on the skull, spine, thorax, and pelvis.” As for the injuries to the extremities, they “were caused by the moving glacier.”

If Rabl believed this, why hadn’t he frankly spoken about it in their first meeting? It would have been easy for him to have said, “Duncan’s body is in good condition, but three of his limbs were fractured post mortem by the glacier.” I thought it notable that he’d finally spoken up about the limb injuries on November 23—the same day he responded to Derrick’s query. Was he concerned that Derrick was starting to question his parents’ understanding of how Duncan had died?

Left hand and forearm

Seeking an additional opinion about Duncan’s injuries, I took the radiographs and photographs to a distinguished orthopedic surgeon in Vienna named Reinhard Weinstabl who has repaired numerous injuries from skiing, snowboarding, and other sports, including Steffi Graf’s knee well enough for her to play another two seasons. After studying the overview radiograph of Duncan’s body, he asked if I had any images of the lower legs, and I showed him the photographs.

“His lower left leg has several, segmental fractures,” he said. “Also unusual is the left hand. It has been severed below the wrist, but also a few centimeters above the wrist and the bones in between the cuts are missing.” He grabbed my wrist to illustrate.

“This entire section here is gone,” he said. “I find this very strange. Where was this body found?” I replied with a basic narrative and explained that the cause of death stated on the death certificate was poly-trauma from a crevasse fall.

“I’m no forensic doctor, but I don’t think that a crevasse fall would cause these injuries. It looks to me that his limbs were struck and cut by something. It also bothers me that his hands and his head have been cut off. Maybe I’ve watched too many crime movies, but it occurs to me that if someone wanted to confuse the authorities about the identity of a corpse, he might cut off the hands and the head.”

“So you think that this body does not belong with this head and hands?” I asked. He flashed a winning smile that reminded me of his reputation as a charmer.

“I have no idea,” he replied. “I’m just saying that this looks very strange to me. What did the forensic doctor who took these photos say?”

Alone among Innsbruck officials, Dr. Rabl acted in a friendly and compassionate way with the MacPhersons instead of treating them like a nuisance. Because no official examination of Duncan’s body was performed, their burning desire to know the cause and manner of his death remained unfulfilled, and in their quest for answers, they most often turned to Rabl.

As a forensic doctor he found himself in the highly unusual position of ongoing consultant for the parents of a victim of unnatural death, corresponding with them for years, never missing an opportunity to assure them that they were his friends—that he often thought about them, admired their character, was proud of his association with them, and that they were always welcome to send him questions. Lynda was profoundly grateful to him. Indeed, in reading her correspondence, I noticed that she’d been more willing to share her personal feelings with him than she was now with me. Some of her emails were long and full of questions that weren’t easy for any doctor to answer for a layman, and writing her back was made even more time-consuming because he had to respond in English instead of in his native German.

One can hardly fault Rabl for being friendly and generous with his time, but he would have been far more helpful if he’d simply told the MacPhersons that they were free to order a private forensic exam of their son’s body before it was cremated, provided they were able and willing to pay for it.

When I visited him at his institute in the autumn of 2009, I was still sifting through the records, trying to make sense of it all. Like Lynda, I immediately liked him, with his big, open, preternaturally boyish face, warm smile, and fine sense of humor. I was impressed by his tall and athletic stature, which amplified his air of authority, though at the same time he was relaxed and casual, without a hint of arrogance or pedantry. He was one of those guys in whom you immediately feel confident without thinking about it, which I suppose is the meaning of charisma.

He invited me into his office, made me an excellent cappuccino from his little machine, and asked me how Lynda and Bob were doing.

“They’re okay, I guess, but Lynda is still preoccupied with figuring out what happened to Duncan. I have never seen anyone so devoted to anything.”

“Yes, I too have sensed that she can’t let it go,” he said.

“Well, what do you think happened to him?”

“Falling into a crevasse is not uncommon in the mountains,” he replied. “And when you fall into one, it is usually impossible to get out without help. I therefore don’t see how Duncan could have climbed out and been struck by a grooming machine.” Rabl was referring to Myriam Nafte’s hypothetical reconstruction of the accident, which she presented on the fifth estate documentary.

“There was another crevasse fall on the same glacier the year before Duncan’s accident,” he continued. “I have the police report, and I think you will find it interesting,” he said, and handed me the document. He then told me that his institute had recently received a skeleton that had melted out of a glacier, and he wanted to show it to me. We went down to the basement, where he hauled a box of bones out of storage and handed me a femur. I was surprised by its heft.

“We believe we know who this gentleman was, but his bones have created a paternity mystery,” he said with a grin. “His DNA matches that of one of his children, but not of the other.”

“A cuckolded alpinist,” I said.

“Exactly,” he replied, his eyes twinkling.

I thanked Rabl for his time and drove back to my hotel in the Stubai Valley. Only after I’d showered and dressed for dinner did I realize that he had managed to get through our entire meeting without addressing what had caused Duncan’s injuries. He had so thoroughly disarmed me, and so skillfully steered our conversation, that it hadn’t occurred to me to try to pin him down. Seeing the fascinating bones had then caused me to lose my train of thought.

Rabl didn’t actually say that Duncan’s accident was like Chiu’s, but by giving me Inspector Brecher’s report on Chiu’s accident, he implied it. Could a crevasse fall and ice movement really explain Duncan’s injuries? Dr. Straathof and Dr. Nafte didn’t think so. According to Dr. Nafte, his left leg resembled a leg she’d seen that had been struck by a large boat propeller. She felt that only heavy machinery, such as a snow grooming machine, could have inflicted Duncan’s traumas. Her opinion starkly contrasted with Rabl’s comments in his February 13, 2004 email to Lynda.

I saw persons who were injured by a run-over of such snow-grooming machines. None of them had an amputation of a limb or a decapitation. They all had severe and lethal injuries of inner organs and multiple bone fractures—especially ribs, pelvis, and limbs. If one supposes that Duncan was run over by such a machine in 1989 then someone would have had to drive the machine back and push the body into a crevasse in a second step. If he was just hit and pushed into a crevasse in a single-machine movement, then the machine normally could not run over him. The fact that there were no serial fractures of the ribs and no pelvic fractures argues against a run-over mechanism by a snow-grooming machine.

That Duncan’s body had emerged from the glacier with chopped up limbs but an unscathed torso was strange indeed, but did that necessarily mean that he hadn’t interacted with a grooming machine? What about Rabl’s suggestion that his limbs were sheared by flowing ice?

As some of Rabl’s colleagues in Innsbruck noted in a 1992 study of glacier corpses, when a body goes into a crevasse in the upper part of a glacier, where snow and ice accumulate, it will be transported down, into deeper layers of ice, where it will be subjected to tensile stresses that may dismember it. As with all dismemberment from natural forces, it tends to occur at the joints, which are held together by ligaments that weaken with decomposition. Duncan’s head, for example, separated from his body between two cervical vertebrae; a small amount of force could have broken the ligaments holding the bones together. His head was found with his body, indicating it may have come off as the slope workers moved his body without supporting his head. Likewise, his right foot detached at the ankle joint during the body’s recovery.

In a glacier’s lower region (the ablation zone), where its annual snow and ice melt exceeds accumulation, a body will be transported upwards and subjected to compressive stresses that will likely crush it. When a body is dismembered by a glacier, its pieces may ultimately emerge at different times and locations. Fabrizio Falchero’s upper body and lower body came apart between two vertebrae of the lumbar spine and were not found together. As Rabl mentioned in an email to Lynda, his bones “were separated but not fractured.”

Duncan’s corpse was found in the vestige of a transverse crevasse located precisely at the Schaufelferner’s equilibrium line (2,975 meters above sea level)—the level at which the glacier’s annual accumulation and melt were in a state of balance. His body was neither pulled apart nor crushed. His cranium, spine, ribcage, shoulders, pelvis, and hips were completely intact. And even though his left leg was amputated above the knee, his hip joint bore no signs of having been subjected to force. The injuries on his forearms, hands, and lower left leg consisted of sharp, linear fractures to the bone shafts, as Dr. Straathof observed. Moreover, the pieces of his severed limbs were all found together, in the same remnant of a small crevasse whose structure had not—as the discovery scene photos show—deformed as it moved down the hill.

Lynda and Bob had begun their inquiry into the cause of Duncan’s limb fractures by forwarding the digital radiographs that Rabl sent on November 21, 2003 to Dr. Brent Burbridge, head of radiology at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon. Duncan’s arms were visible in one of the images, but his legs were completely cropped out. Upon viewing the fractured forearms, Burbridge wondered if Duncan had been “run over by the ski hill grooming machine.” I followed up with Burbridge by sending him a less cropped copy of the same image, which Rabl had sent to Lynda in January of 2004. In this image, one can see Duncan’s left femur, detached left knee, and the top of his left tibia.

“From what I can see of his fractured tibia, it looks like his leg went into a blender,” Burbridge said.

Because the radiographs of Duncan’s body do not include his lower left leg, they may be misleading when viewed alone. An unsuspecting trauma surgeon who looks at only the low-resolution radiograph of the femur and knee may see what he interprets as a “floating knee” fracture pattern, often caused by a high energy car crash. To get a complete picture of the leg injuries, the viewer must also study the photographs.

In the summer of 2010, I visited a friend in Monterey, California who is a partner in an orthopedic surgery clinic. Having also practiced trauma surgery for many years, Dr. Sohrab Gollogly has seen injuries caused by everything from gunshots to wild animals to industrial machinery.

“The radiograph of his left femur and detached knee shows a supracondylar femur fracture and an oblique proximal tibia fracture,” he observed. “If I looked at only this image, I might think that Duncan took a bad fall. Likewise, if I only looked at the radiograph of his arms, at first glance I might think that the fractures were caused by falling from a great height onto outstretched arms. However, the whole picture changes when I look at the photographs.

The left hand looks like it was cut in half by a table saw. Blunt force trauma doesn’t cause that kind of separation. The left leg shows multiple segmental fractures and extensive de-gloving of muscle, skin, and tendon. You can really see it here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the tibia from which the flesh has been cleanly cut and pulled away from the bone.

“The right forearm has been amputated below the elbow, and the elbow joint has been dislocated and rotated 180 degrees. Now that I look closely at his right hand, I see that his fingers have been cut off. Neither a fall nor ice flow would do that. If you look here, just below the severed elbow, you see where the tendons have been pulled out. We call that avulsion of tendon strands, and it is a characteristic injury from something like an auger that has grabbed the limb and pulled on it as well as cutting it. I once saw the same avulsion on a boy whose arm got pulled into a meat grinder. You can also see it here, where Duncan’s left foot has separated. These white bands are tendon strands that were pulled out. Ice flow couldn’t do that, especially given that the tendons would have been frozen and therefore simply broken.

Finally, his clothing shows signs of being cut with a sharp instrument. You can see here on this nylon gaiter,” he said, pointing to a clean cut along the zipper, “that it hasn’t been pulled apart, but cut. Also, though his sweatshirt is largely intact on his torso, the sleeves have been ripped off. All of these are strong indications that he came into contact with machinery.”

“Do you think that a forensic doctor trained at a decent medical school could recognize these signs of contact with machinery?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s pretty basic stuff.”

“Is there any way, in your opinion, glacier ice could do this damage?”

“I suppose one could argue that the leg amputation above the knee began with a femur fracture from a hard fall, which ultimately resulted in amputation from the soft tissue decaying and the leg getting twisted in the ice, but that can’t explain the other segmental fractures and de-gloving. Also, if the left leg was destroyed by ice movement, then why are the right leg and the pelvis in almost perfect condition? It defies logic that the same small section of glacier ice chopped his left leg into pieces while leaving the right leg entirely unscathed. Finally, his ribcage and skull show no signs of crushing, which I would expect to see if his body had been subjected to high stresses by the glacier ice.”

Next I sent the photographs to Lynne Herold. She began her career at the L.A. County Coroner, and currently works in the physical evidence section of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Her decades of experience looking at every kind of trauma have given her an exceptional ability to determine what happened to the victim of a violent death or to his corpse after death. She is also a genius at analyzing trace evidence. I got to know her while researching the Jack Unterweger story, as she was an expert witness for the prosecution. We were on the phone together when she opened the overview photograph of Duncan’s body lying on the dissection table.

“His left hand was severed by a very heavy blade or machine,” she said without hesitation. “No kind of blunt force will cause such a linear cut.”

“What about the right arm and left leg?” I asked.

“Let me study the photos and get back to you.” Later that evening she called.

“Yeah, the right arm and left leg also went into the chipper,” she said.

“Glacier ice couldn’t have done it?”

“No. It was definitely a machine.”

“Is there any way the limbs were chopped up when the slope workers extracted him from the ice?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, because the fractures are the same color as the rest of the bones,” she said. “If the cuts had happened at the time of extraction, the fractures would be lighter and have no debris on them.”

“Do you think that any decent forensic doctor could see that they were caused by machinery?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

The first time Dr. Rabl met Lynda and Bob, he said nothing about the massive trauma to Duncan’s limbs, nor did he tell them about their right to order a private exam. He did, however, show them two small prints of Duncan’s body. As they looked at these images for the first time, they focused primarily on his face, and did not study his limbs. Thus they did not, at the time, ask Rabl about the limb injuries. Viewing their dead son a few minutes later, they again focused on his face, and it didn’t occur to them to remove the sheet covering his body.

Later Rabl claimed he had never examined the corpse, only identified it. And yet he unpacked the amputated limbs and loosely assembled them with the body on a dissection table. He then took samples from the right thigh muscle and left femur. The entire time he was doing this, the chopped-up left leg and amputated hands and forearms were sitting before him, in plain view, on the dissection table. He then photographed the body from different angles, and though he claimed on the fifth estate that he couldn’t examine the injuries, he had nevertheless noticed that the fractured surfaces were dark brown and grey, indicating that the breaks had occurred before the body was extracted from the ice.

In spite of the massive injuries to Duncan’s limbs, the only injury Rabl noted in his identification report was a cut on the left side of the head. Though he mentioned that the limbs and head were packed in different sacks, he didn’t write a single word about the characteristics and causes of these separations.

Telling Lynda that an autopsy may not reveal the cause of Duncan’s death was highly misleading, and it planted in her mind the notion that it was probably senseless to fly the body to Canada for autopsy. As Rabl certainly understood, what the case called for was not an autopsy—i.e., opening Duncan’s cranium and thorax to view his mummified organs—but examining the limb injuries, shredded clothing, and any foreign objects found with the body. If the shredding of limbs and clothing had been caused by ice movement, he could have determined and documented this, thereby giving the MacPhersons peace of mind and forever clearing the Stubai Glacier of suspicion. Instead, through all the talk of autopsy, Rabl never mentioned that Duncan’s limbs bore obvious, external marks of violence.

The idea that he “couldn’t examine the injuries exactly,” which he presented in his interview on the fifth estate, was nonsense. Who hindered him from looking closely at the injuries? Did the Innsbruck public prosecutor forbid him from looking at the chopped up limbs on his dissection table?

Without precisely examining the injuries, Rabl had no scientific grounds for concluding that they’d been caused by glacier flow. He claimed he’d seen such damage before on glacier corpses, but I doubt he could produce documentation of a single other glacier corpse that was found completely undamaged except for sharp, closely-spaced segmental fractures on both hands and forearms and on one leg, the pieces of the amputated limbs found together with the torso and intact leg. To reiterate: Natural dismemberment from flowing ice tends to occur at the joints, which come apart as their connecting ligaments decompose. Conversely, amputations of the hands and forearms are very common in accidents with industrial and agricultural machinery, and as Rabl knew, Duncan’s corpse was not found on a glacier in the wilderness, but in the middle of a ski slope on which heavy machinery was regularly used.

Rabl told the fifth estate and the reporter Florian Skrabal that he hadn’t performed an autopsy because the public prosecutor hadn’t ordered it, but this was putting the cart before the horse. Given that Duncan’s injuries resembled well-documented injuries inflicted by machinery, it was Rabl’s job to tell the prosecutor that they needed to be examined. According to Innsbruck prosecutor Richard Freyschlag, Rabl never called to express concern.

When Lynda insisted she wanted to know how Duncan had died, he offered to take a CT scan, which, in his words, would at least show “how Duncan didn’t die.” But if Rabl wasn’t authorized to examine the body, why was he authorized to requisition an expensive CT scan of it? The scan required transporting the decomposing corpse from the Institute of Forensic Medicine to the University Clinic’s department of radiology—a facility for performing diagnostic studies on living patients. Rabl did not tell the MacPhersons that regardless of what the CT scan revealed it would have no bearing on Duncan’s (irrevocably closed) case. As they understood his offer, the scan was a genuine attempt to shed light on the cause and manner of their son’s death.

Because Lynda trusted Rabl, she assumed he would tell her before Duncan’s body was cremated if the scan revealed any abnormalities. He assured her that it showed “no severe injury to Duncan’s head, spine, or thorax.” Again he said nothing about the amputated limbs, even though, as every doctor knows, bleeding from three severed limbs will cause a man to die unless he receives emergency medical care.

After the CT exam (and the body’s cremation the following day) Rabl delayed sending the MacPhersons any images for four months, and he only did so after Lynda repeatedly asked for them. Those that he finally sent on November 21, 2003 were low resolution digital radiographs that did not include Duncan’s legs. One has been cropped to leave out the legs entirely. The original, hard copy of this image—which Rabl sent two months later in response to Lynda’s requests—shows the upper legs and knees.

Cropped JPEG sent on Nov. 21, 2003

Sent in Jan. of 2004

In a striking departure from customary medical practice, Rabl did not enclose a radiology report with the images. What was the point of requisitioning radiographs without asking the radiologist to examine them and to write a report? Nor did he send the CT (three-dimensional) images that he’d initially offered to make. Three years elapsed before he finally sent Lynda CDs containing a few CT studies. Rabl’s staggered method of sending images to Lynda created a huge amount of confusion that I was able to dispel only after constructing a precise chronology of which images he’d sent at which times. In the final analysis: Because Rabl had initially said he would order a CT, Lynda assumed that the digital radiographs that he sent on November 21, 2003 were CT scans. Though he did indeed order a CT exam on July 31, 2003, he did not send her copies of the resulting high resolution, three-dimensional imagery until the autumn of 2006. Even then, it was apparently because, in August of 2006, a fifth estate producer inquired about the “CT scan” that Lynda often spoke about.

The scan was performed by the radiologist Peter Waldenberger, but he either didn’t write a report (highly irregular) or his report was not exported from the database and burned onto the CDs. Waldenberger told me he didn’t remember if he’d written a report, but didn’t think that he had.

Two of the CT studies are of Duncan’s cranium; a third is of his thorax and pelvis. Digital radiographs were also taken with the machine; some shots of the thorax and pelvis were saved as screen capture images on August 8, 2003. Why did Waldenberger or Rabl save some of the images in a different format (in which they could have been altered) nine days after they were taken instead of promptly sending all of the imagery to the MacPhersons?

Conspicuously absent from the CT studies are any images of Duncan’s left leg and forearms—the parts of his body that had sustained the trauma. Why were the fractured forearms, hands, and left leg excluded from the field of view? The images on the CDs were exported from a patient database on August 27, 2006. Because Lynda and Bob were unfamiliar with the imaging software, they didn’t know how to access the file information. When I did so, I discovered something strange: The exam was filed under the alias “Wissenschaft Waldi” and the false date of birth June 13, 2000. Only someone who knew the patient number, false name, or false birthdate would be able to find Duncan’s file on the database.

Wissenschaft is the German word for science, which indicates that Rabl told Dr. Waldenberger that the exam was for scientific inquiry, and not for a forensic medical case. Waldenberger, who is now head of radiology at a large hospital in Linz, told me that Rabl “wanted to make the images solely for the parents,” as the condition of the body was “no longer relevant,” given that the case had been closed. This is not what the Canadian Embassy was told. On July 31, 2003, Bernhard Knapp at the District Government office informed Vice-consul Douglas that the CT scan was performed “to determine the presence of any fractures.”

Regardless of what Rabl told Waldenberger, the MacPhersons and the Canadian Embassy were told that a CT exam was conducted to discover what, if any, injuries Duncan had sustained, which could shed light on the cause and manner of his death. They did not understand that the exam was performed solely to make images of the uninjured parts of Duncan’s body, and that it would be filed as a science project (an insult to the MacPhersons and to science).

The low-resolution radiographs that Rabl sent on November 21, 2003 only inflamed the MacPhersons’ curiosity, so they asked for high-resolution copies, as well as copies of whatever photos he’d taken. These indicated that Duncan’s body had come into contact with machinery, but instead of suspecting Rabl of misleading her, Lynda told him by email of her growing concern that Duncan had been struck by Snowcat, and that she wanted to know his opinion about this possibility. She still considered him the best source of information, as he had seen Duncan’s body firsthand, and she continued to believe that he was her friend. His charm and proclamations of friendship had worked their enchantment so well that she still didn’t realize he was concealing things from her.

In his reply, he stopped short of denying that Duncan had interacted with a grooming machine. Instead, he claimed that, based on his experience, he didn’t see how Duncan could have been run over by a groomer without also sustaining serial rib fractures and pelvic fractures, and he furthermore didn’t see how Duncan could have been run over and pushed into a crevasse. In a very narrow sense, then, he was telling her the truth, but she didn’t realize that he was avoiding talking about the real issue. He did the same thing to me when he addressed Myriam Nafte’s hypothetical reconstruction of Duncan’s death rather than addressing the facts of his death.

Rabl’s response to Lynda’s query was a clever distraction, especially coming from a man in his position, but as he knew, the starting point of an investigation is the physical evidence, not the doctor’s prior experience with similar circumstances. For Rabl to glance at Duncan’s injuries and say, “I have never seen a Snowcat accident that didn’t result in serial rib fractures, so that must mean that Duncan didn’t have contact with a grooming machine or with any kind of machine,” is to make a joke of his profession and of deductive reasoning in general.

Not only did Rabl omit to mention Duncan’s amputated limbs before the body was cremated, he also discouraged Lynda from suing the Stubai Glacier “because the definite cause of death remains unclear.” If he believed that determining the cause of death was critical for determining whether the Stubai Glacier was responsible for the death, why didn’t he tell Lynda of her right to order a private forensic exam? Was he really acting as an impartial forensic doctor in this case, or was he serving some other interest?

Chapter 36: Devastation

“Was Rabl really being duplicitous with me the entire time?” Lynda asked me.

“I don’t know what other conclusion to draw,” I replied. This was so strange, almost unbelievable, and it left Lynda utterly confounded.

“Did he really pretend to be my friend and tell me so many lies?” she asked again, her voice quivering. “If that’s the case, it’s just so messed up and sad. How could he have drifted so far away from being an honest doctor?”

Over the following year, Lynda and I continued to analyze Dr. Rabl’s conduct, asking ourselves if there was a harmless explanation for all of his omissions. I also discussed it with other doctors, all of whom found it unusual if not downright bizarre.

But was it possible that we were missing or misinterpreting something? Ultimately we concluded that there was only one way to find out, so we sent Rabl a letter presenting all of the questions I had raised. His response (see Appendix 3) did nothing to defuse our suspicion, and it extinguished the last ray of hope in Lynda’s heart that it was all just a gigantic misunderstanding.

This book is addressed to the court of public opinion, so every reader may decide for himself what to make of Rabl’s conduct. For my part, I cannot escape the overwhelming perception that, so far from being the friend to Lynda that he constantly proclaimed himself to be, he was by far her greatest deceiver. To be sure, he didn’t foresee that his initial deception would oblige him to commit many additional acts of deception, thereby weaving an ever larger and more tangled web. Lynda’s relentless curiosity and persistence must have struck him as a curse.

In the end, what came back to haunt him were the two small photos of Duncan’s corpse that he’d initially shown to Lynda and Bob to prepare them for viewing the body. As they looked at the images, they didn’t ask about the limb injuries, nor did they request copies of the images at the end of their first meeting. Their request for copies at a subsequent meeting in Rabl’s office was apparently what derailed his CT trick.

I suspect that his initial plan was to show them only radiographs of the uninjured pelvis and thorax, which would indeed tell them “how Duncan didn’t die.” This is why he saved images of the thorax and pelvis in screen capture mode on August 8, 2003. However, he initially stopped short of sending these radiographs to the MacPhersons because he realized that they would probably compare them to the photographs (which they requested after he’d offered to take the CT scan) and wonder why the radiographs did not also show Duncan’s severed limbs.

And so Rabl decided to delay sending any and all images indefinitely with the hope that Lynda would eventually grow weary of asking for them and give up. Her persistence may have surprised him, as she’d already approved of cremation without first seeing the CT scan. She’d initially taken his word for it that the scan showed nothing to be concerned about, so why did she later insist on receiving a copy of it? He apparently didn’t anticipate that his failure to send it as promised would pique her curiosity.

At this point, the reader is probably wondering why Duncan’s body was transferred to Rabl’s institute in the first place, given that no forensic exam was officially performed. Rabl told the MacPhersons that it was strictly for identification; however, for the purpose of a dental identification, it wasn’t necessary to take Duncan’s entire body out of cold storage from the funeral home in Trins and to transport it to Innsbruck. His head, which was already packed in a separate sack, would have sufficed.

While Rabl maintained that he never examined or even unclothed the body, Bernhard Knapp at the District Government office told the Canadian Embassy that the body was transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for “dental identification and pathology.” It is possible that a proper exam was indeed originally planned in order to please the embassy. This would explain why, when Lynda confronted Dr. Somavilla about his claim on the death report that an autopsy was performed, he became so angry and insisted that he’d sent the body to Innsbruck. Did Knapp assure Somavilla that an autopsy was performed? One thing is certain: On March 26, 2004, Knapp assured Canadian Vice-consul Douglas that “the exact cause of death was determined by the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine.”

The effort to avoid performing a forensic exam apparently arose after Duncan’s body arrived at Rabl’s institute on July 22, 2003. At that point, Rabl must have noticed that the limb injuries resembled well-documented injuries caused by machinery. This added a much larger and more troubling dimension to the case, and it would have prompted the Canadians to demand a full investigation (which the Innsbruck authorities weren’t interested in doing). But then, like a deus ex machina, Vice-consul Douglas called Inspector Krappinger on the same morning and informed him “out of courtesy” that Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson would be arriving in Innsbruck without an embassy escort.

And so, while Knapp continued giving the Canadian Embassy the impression that Duncan’s body was being identified and examined to determine the cause of death, Rabl told the MacPhersons that he was only ordered to identify it. He then acted like a consoling undertaker, shed a crocodile tear, and didn’t mention the external signs of violence.

It was a bold deception, but it could have been revised or abandoned at any time, depending on how things unfolded. It’s strange to think that just one conversation between Lynda and Vice-consul Douglas would have exposed it. Someone in Foreign Affairs must have told Knapp that the MacPhersons had broken off contact with their Embassy, which made it all the more tempting to withhold information from them. If Lynda and Douglas had spoken with each other and realized that they weren’t being told the same story, Rabl could have said that he’d simply misunderstood his mandate.

To Douglas’s credit, he tried to get in touch with Lynda to discuss what was going on in Innsbruck, but her negative experience with Consul Thomson in 1989 had left her with the conviction that Foreign Affairs was only interested in pleasing the Austrians. Though perfectly understandable, her decision to avoid contact with Douglas was a tragic mistake, and it would cost her and Bob dearly.

Why is it so intolerable to be deceived? What exactly is so monstrous about someone pretending to be a friend in order to trick us? Victims of such deception experience a complex emotional reaction when they discover they have been manipulated. Often they report feeling foolish, humiliated, confounded, and deeply disturbed. It’s a notable fact that, while most of us are capable of forgiving even major transgressions, it is virtually impossible to forgive someone who has feigned friendship in order to deceive us. Once unmasked, the deceiver will always seem alien, no matter what he says.

At the same time, it’s hard to explain just why we regard the deceiver with such violent revulsion. In his defense, he may say he didn’t want to hurt his victim; he wanted to get something while leaving his victim in a state of ignorant comfort. He might also say that he didn’t want to feign friendship, but had to in order to inoculate his victim against suspicion. Our instinct to loath the deceiver is probably rooted in our essentially social nature, from which springs the distressing thought: If I can’t trust a “friend,” then I can’t trust anyone, which means that I am alone.

I suspect that Rabl rationalized deceiving Lynda with the thought that “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” and that it was better for her to believe that her son had died a relatively pleasant death from non-asphyctic suffocation. He didn’t understand that Lynda despises such comforting illusions.

After she concluded that Rabl had played a key role in covering up the cause and manner of her son’s death, she wondered why she’d been so taken in by him. The answer is simple: She trusted him. While the suspicious mind is hyperactive, the trusting mind sleeps. Rabl treated Lynda with warmth and kindness, and acted as the sole helping hand in a horrible situation in which everyone else was giving her the cold shoulder. His tears when Bob gave him the bone fragments left behind on the glacier had touched her, as did his refusal to carry out Knapp’s order to remove Duncan’s jaws. Altogether, he gave her the impression that he was caring and trustworthy, and it therefore didn’t occur to her to doubt and fact-check what he told her.

We perceive the world largely in accordance with our assumptions. Being a sincere person, Lynda assumed that Rabl was sincere when he acted friendly and helpful. On top of it all, he was a doctor, scientist, and expert witness for the court, whose most fundamental duty was to remain impartial. Because of his position, she assumed that he would simply tell her if there was something abnormal about Duncan’s body that had not been scientifically clarified. After all, wasn’t that his job?

Chapter 37: The Cable

With the benefit of hindsight, Lynda and Bob wondered why their suspicion about Duncan’s injuries wasn’t piqued the first time they saw the photos in Rabl’s office, just before viewing the body. The answer is that their minds weren’t primed to notice suspicious, mechanical injuries because they’d gone into the meeting with the assumption that Duncan had fallen into a crevasse on the slope and been buried alive.

Even at a purely empirical level, we often fail to see things unless we expect them to be there. In April 2001, Dr. Paul Gostner, head of radiology at the Bolzano General Hospital, studied CT scans of Oetzi and didn’t notice anything unusual. A few months later, he took a chest x-ray of the ancient mummy and noticed the outline of an arrowhead beneath his left shoulder. Gostner then went back to the CT image and there it was. He hadn’t seen it at first because he hadn’t expected it to be there.

One day in September 2010, I took yet another look at the photos of Duncan’s body. While studying a shot of his mangled left leg, I suddenly saw something for the first time, even though I’d already spent hours looking at the image. Zooming in on it, I saw that among the jumbled mass of bones, oxidized skin, and torn up clothing was what appeared to be a cable with a swaged end attached to a handle or bracket. What was it, and why hadn’t anyone noticed it before? It was a strange experience, because once I’d seen it, I couldn’t look at the photograph again without seeing it. What had long gone unnoticed became conspicuous.

Was it part of Duncan’s clothing or equipment? Through painstaking work, I established that the cord was not his sweatpants’ draw string, not his gaiter draw string, not a snowboard leash, and not part of the snowboard binding. Nor could it have been a bootlace, as his ski boots had buckles and not laces. The chord appeared to be tensioned. In one place it was drawn into the fractured bone, and then flattened out as it looped around the leg. That it was snug against the skin and bone indicated it had been applied after the leg was unclothed and injured. What was a piece of cable doing wrapped around Duncan’s wrecked leg?

Cable wrapped around left leg.

Photo taken five minutes later, after the body was moved to a gurney: The cable is missing.

Close-up of cable.

The cable is visible only in a photo of the leg as it was lying on the dissection table. In the images of the leg after it had been transferred to the gurney five minutes later, the cable is missing, which means that it was removed by Dr. Rabl or his assistant. I also found it notable that he didn’t remove any other articles from Duncan’s body—only the cable.

“Rabl must have seen it and even held it,” I told Lynda. “Trouble is, if we ask him about it, he could easily play dumb.”

Chapter 38: Putting the Pieces Together

By September 2010, we had a growing body of facts, but we still didn’t have a coherent theory of what exactly had happened to Duncan. Bob and Dr. Nafte had formulated hypothetical reconstructions of his death, but neither of these seemed plausible to me. We needed help from people who had more experience with glaciers, snowboarding, and snowboarding accidents.

I contacted Professor David Evans, co-author of the authoritative Glaciers and Glaciation, and told him I was researching the case of a young man who had apparently fallen into a crevasse on a glacier ski slope and then emerged fourteen years later. Would Professor Evans examine photographs of the discovery scene, and tell me if he noticed anything remarkable? He agreed, and the next day he emailed me:

After looking at those photos, I would say that this is a very strange case indeed. He was found on the upper part of the glacier. I thought he had come out at the snout, which would make more sense if he’d been buried deep in a crevasse. He must have died near the surface but sufficiently deep to avoid being detected. Otherwise there is no way he would have melted out this far up the glacier. I also find it difficult to believe that on a glacier so small no one saw what happened or found him immediately after the alarm was raised.

Next I contacted Andy Tyson, co-author of Glacier Mountaineering, and asked him to analyze aerial photos of the glacier taken on the day Duncan’s body was found.

“You can see a lot of crevasses on this glacier,” he explained. “But none of them are very big. I think you’d have to be unlucky to fall deep into one of them, but you could have a bad crash if you interacted with one while snowboarding.” I asked him to elaborate.

“A small crevasse is kind of like an inverted speed bump,” he explained. “Your whole body is not likely to go into it, especially if you are moving fast, but your snowboard might dip into it and catch the downhill wall, with very ugly results.”

Next, I wanted to get an additional opinion about the snowboarding equipment, so I asked the MacPhersons to send it to Dennis Nazari, owner of the Salty Peaks snowboard shop and curator of the Utah Snowboard Museum in Salt Lake City. Dennis was dumbfounded by the equipment combination.

The snowboard was a so-called “alpine” board—a stiff board designed for high-speed carving. Given that Duncan was a beginner, he would have had more control over a softer “all mountain” board. Then there were the mismatched boots and bindings that I had already noticed. As Dennis pointed out, the bindings were also mounted much too close together for a rider of Duncan’s tall stature, which greatly reduced his turning leverage. Last but not least, the plastic lips on the front of the hard ski boots projected over two inches beyond the board’s right edge, and would have dug into the slope every time he tried to make a right turn.

Turning and stopping on such a set-up would be difficult for an experienced rider, and Duncan was a beginner. Altogether it significantly increased the risk of a violent crash or hurtling out of bounds on a slope surrounded by lethal crevasses. Given that Walter Hinterhoezl had, by his own admission, helped Duncan to select this appalling equipment combination, I found it ironic that he had later become head trainer of the Austrian national women’s snowboarding team and is currently head of the Austrian Federation of Snowboarding Schools and Instructors.

Rear boot in binding, with 2.5 inches of toe drag.

I called a plaintiff’s attorney in Denver, Colorado and asked him if he knew any experts on skiing and snowboarding accidents.

“There’s a guy named Dick Penniman in Truckee, California who’s really good at reconstructing accidents,” the lawyer said. “I’d give him a call.”

I called Penniman and within minutes, I knew I’d found the right guy. He’d spent most of his sixty years around ski slopes, either skiing or working as a patrol director for various mountain resorts, and his resume, which he sent me after our initial conversation, listed dozens of certifications in skiing safety, hazard control, emergency medical care, slope design and maintenance. He’d also held several college teaching posts in mountain resort operations and safety. As a professional accident investigator, he had studied hundreds of skiing and snowboarding accidents, and depending on his findings, often testified as an expert witness in complaints of ski resort negligence, usually for the plaintiffs. In my research about grooming machine accidents, I’d just come across a report about an incident at a Michigan resort in which a boy skied into the side of a grooming machine and got his left leg (wearing a ski boot) caught in its grooming tiller. I wanted to learn more about the accident, and as luck would have it, Penniman was an expert witness in the case.

Seeking his unbiased opinion of the damage to the snowboard and to Duncan’s limbs, the only thing I initially told him was that a young man had disappeared at a glacier ski resort, and that his body and equipment had melted out many years later. I didn’t even mention Duncan’s name.

Penniman agreed to start by analyzing the snowboard and boots without any preconceived notions, and he called me a few days later.

“The board went through a grooming tiller,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Positive. I’ll show you in person all the indications, but for now, I can tell you I have no doubt whatsoever.”

“What about the ski boots?”

“They didn’t go through the tiller, but the left boot liner did.”

“How do you explain that?”

“I can’t just yet,” he said, chuckling. “I need more information.” At that point I sent him the photos of Duncan’s corpse.

“Take a close look at his left leg, and tell me what you think,” I said.

The “tiller” Penniman referred to resembles a garden rototiller for breaking up compacted soil. It consists of a rotating shaft (called a cutter bar) equipped with rows of three inch steel tines, spaced three inches apart. The shaft, mounted in a steel casing and driven by a hydrostatic pump, turns up to 1800 rpm as it tills the bumps and grooves that form on the slope from the action of skis. Running over the hard-packed snow, the tiller breaks it up and drives the chunks into a chamber at the top of the casing, where it pulverizes them into a smooth-grained material.

Dick called me back a couple of hours later.

“His left leg also went into the tiller,” he said. “Not only are the bones broken in pieces, but the flesh around the bones has also been chopped up. A crevasse fall could break bones, but it couldn’t grind meat. Also, the mass of broken bones and ground flesh are still together, indicating that the leg wasn’t pulled apart by ice flow. To me there’s no doubt about it.”

“But the tiller trails behind the tracked vehicle,” I said. “How could his leg go into the tiller without the tractor first crushing his body?”

“Well, first of all, the tiller is wider than the tractor, which means that the tractor could have driven past him without touching his torso, but still clipped his leg with the tiller and pulled it in. Also, the tractor could have been turning, which causes the tiller to swing out and away from the tractor.”

“Okay, but why in hell did his board and his left leg go into the tiller, but not his left ski boot? And why did his board, boot, and body all end up together in a crevasse, given that the tiller disaster must have happened on the surface?”

“I’m not sure yet, but I think we’re dealing with something dark.”

After we hung up, he went outside to work in his garden, but found himself unable to concentrate on anything but the riddle of what had happened to Duncan. He’d seen and heard of many bizarre incidents in the mountains, but this was definitely the most perplexing.

Duncan’s body was untouched by the tractor, but his leg got pulled into the tiller, not wearing the ski boot, only the liner, he thought as he paced back and forth in his backyard. Why wasn’t he wearing his ski boot, and why didn’t he—a professional hockey player—dodge a slow-moving groomer? Had he, for some reason, been unable to move? The epiphany hit him like a bolt.

Not one, but two separate events had resulted in Duncan’s violent death.

On September 20, 2010, I rendezvoused with Lynda and Bob in the little town of Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, not far from Dick Penniman’s house. The date was the 21st anniversary of Duncan’s car being found. During their initial search, they’d figured that if they could just find his car, they would quickly learn what had happened to him. Twenty-one years later, they still weren’t sure and still wanted to know as badly as ever.

We met at a restaurant on the shore, and I thought they looked remarkably fresh for having just driven 1,500 miles from Saskatoon. We watched the sun set over the lake, and marveled at the beauty of the vista, which Mark Twain described as “the fairest the whole world affords.” Bob remarked that it was a glacial lake, like Lake Garda. As the sun dipped below the western peaks, the air temperature plunged, so we grabbed our beers and moved to a table inside. As soon as we sat down, the talk turned to Duncan.

“So you think Dick Penniman can help us figure it out?” Lynda asked.

“I think if anyone can, he can,” I replied.

The next morning we drove to Dick’s house in Truckee, about twenty miles from the lake. We all immediately liked him and felt confident we’d come to the right place. He was deeply intrigued by Duncan’s case, he said, and had a personal reason for wanting to help Lynda and Bob.

“My brother was in the navy and disappeared at sea under mysterious circumstances. His body was never found, and my family could do nothing but accept the story we were told by the military, so I know what it’s like to live with that terrible feeling of uncertainty.” Because of his interest in the story and his sympathy for Lynda and Bob, he waived his fee. In lieu of payment for his services, he asked us to make a contribution to the SnowSports Safety Foundation—a non-profit organization for which he is the chief research officer.

Seated at a picnic table in his garden, basking in glorious Indian summer weather, we listened to his account of why he’d started working as expert witness in cases of ski resort negligence.

“Many ski operators—though not all—want to have their cake and eat it too,” he explained. “They aggressively market to city-dwellers who have little or no knowledge of the winter mountain environment. They sell lift tickets, clothes, equipment, food, and lodging to masses of inexperienced people, but they don’t want to do what it takes to make sure their visitors understand what to look out for and avoid on the slopes. When a skier does get horribly injured or killed, the resort operator almost always tries to argue that the victim should have known better. To the general public, they present their resorts as amusement parks; in the courtroom, they argue that the “mountain” environment is full of uncontrollable risks. In fact, most severe accidents are preventable with simple signs and safety measures. Trouble is, there are few, if any, laws or written standards enforcing such efforts, and sometimes resort personnel just can’t be bothered. When severe accidents do happen, I’ve found that they often try to cover up their negligence.”

Over the next three days, Dick, Bob, and I did a systematic analysis of everything we had. By the end of our stay, we had assembled overwhelming evidence (presented in Appendix 1) that Duncan’s left leg and arms went into a grooming tiller, as did his snowboard. The disaster occurred on the ski slope, and the resulting wreckage was either scattered on the slope or tangled and jammed in the machine. How, then, did his body, amputated lower arms, amputated left leg, broken snowboard, clothing, and ski boots all end up together in a crevasse?

Chapter 39: Duncan’s Death

Bob and I had both failed to grasp it because our minds hadn’t been open to the possibility that anyone was capable of doing such a thing. He had imagined a hit and run scenario in which Duncan was mortally injured by the Snowcat and at the same time pushed into a crevasse. Though skeptical of Bob’s hypothesis, I had been at a loss to explain the strange condition and position of Duncan’s body and equipment. But after systematically analyzing the facts with Dick Penniman, we realized that only one conclusion could be drawn: Someone had intentionally concealed Duncan’s body in the crevasse.

It’s safe to say that only the Snowcat driver and perhaps some of his co-workers know exactly how the disaster happened. Though there can be no doubt that Duncan’s limbs went into the grooming tiller, and that someone then buried his body in a crevasse, how exactly it came to this is impossible to reconstruct with certainty. The best one can do is build a hypothesis based on the facts we have assembled.

Dick Penniman concluded that the disaster had most likely begun with a bad crash caused by a crevasse opening on the slope during Duncan’s afternoon snowboarding session. Drizzling rain on August 9, 1989 accelerated the melting and compacting of snow bridges, greatly spiking the risk of their collapse. Sometime after 2:30 P.M., flying over an open crack, Duncan’s board dipped into it, slamming into its downhill wall, and breaking his left femur. Another possibility—heightened by Duncan’s dysfunctional equipment and extreme toe drag—was that one of his boots came out of its binding, exposing the other leg to the board’s twisting force, which tore one or more knee ligaments.

Because of the poor weather and snow conditions, the other visitors called it a day around lunchtime, leaving Duncan—who was eager to practice after his lesson—alone on the slope at the time of his crash. With one or both feet still locked in the bindings, his injured leg was twisted in a painful way, so he freed his boots from the bindings and tossed the board onto the slope next to his legs. To get more comfortable, he took off the heavy, tight-fitting ski boots, but with his left leg injury constricting normal circulation, his left foot ached with cold, so he pulled the liner out of his left ski boot and put it on his foot. Unable to snowboard or walk down the slope, he could do nothing but wait for someone to find him. He probably assumed a semi-fetal position on his right side, with his left leg stretched out straight, and then used his hands to support his injured left leg.

Sometime in the late afternoon, the grooming machine driver commenced his daily run. As a basic precaution, he probably asked the chairlift operator if anyone had gone up for a while, and because no one had, he assumed that the slope was clear. This made him complacent, even though visibility was highly reduced by fog. As the bottom of Duncan’s board and his boots were white, they blended in with the snow. If the driver was wearing yellow-tinted glasses, as many Snowcat drivers do, Duncan’s yellow rain jacket didn’t stand out. Seated on the left side of the cab, concentrating on the grooming line to the left, the driver didn’t see the man lying on the slope to the right. Duncan was unable to see the approaching vehicle because he was facing upslope. If he heard it, he assumed it was coming to rescue him.

Because the tiller stuck out beyond the side of the tracked vehicle, the outer edge ran over Duncan’s extended left leg and snowboard. Alternatively, the driver may have seen the person on the slope as the tractor drew alongside, and reacted by swerving hard to the left, thereby causing the tiller to swing open and towards Duncan. The driver heard a loud bang from the board running through the tiller and stopped to see what happened. Climbing out of the vehicle, he saw a young man tangled up in the tiller. If Duncan was still alive, the spectacle of a living man whose limbs had just been mangled by the machine was horrifying in the extreme. Even if he was already unconscious or dead as a result of hypovolemic shock from a broken femur, this was not readily apparent to the driver, who could only assume he had just killed the young man.

Dick Penniman has seen reports about the behavior of two grooming machine drivers involved in accidents. The first happened at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Alberta, Canada, when the doctor of the Austrian national ski team—a man from Innsbruck named Joerg Oberhammer—collided with another skier and was thrown down in front of a groomer, which crushed his skull. The second was the accident in Michigan in 2008, when the boy’s leg went into the grooming tiller. In both cases, upon seeing what their machines had done, the drivers went into a state of mental shock in which they were virtually incoherent.

The same thing probably happened to the driver who saw Duncan tangled in the tiller. Losing his head, he did not call emergency medical services. Either he ran down the hill and told one of his co-workers or supervisor what had happened, or he went into a state of paralysis and did nothing. Within a few minutes, Duncan died of arterial bleeding from his severed leg and arms.

For reasons known only to the driver and perhaps his co-workers or supervisor, the decision was made not to report the accident. Perhaps he feared prosecution for one or more acts of negligence, such as commencing grooming operations in the fog without first sweeping the slope with ski patrol, and without first checking to make sure that all rental gear had been returned. Perhaps he drank a couple of beers at lunch, which would have automatically made him criminally liable and lengthened his sentence for negligent homicide.

His fear of incurring the wrath of senior management was probably even greater than his fear of the police. The prospect of losing his job and being ostracized in the valley, where the Stubai Glacier was the most important concern, was terrifying to contemplate. He also dreaded hurting Herr Doktor Klier, who had always been so good to him.

Then there was the grim task of dislodging Duncan’s left leg from the grooming tiller. Numerous signs indicate that the leg went into the machine all the way to the lower thigh, and got stuck between the rotating shaft and casing. Getting it out must have been a hell of a job that required doing further violence to the leg.

Once the man (or men) freed Duncan from the tiller, they probably looked into his wallet and saw his Massachusetts Driver’s License. As everyone in Austria knows, American citizens love lawsuits as much as the American media loves to bash Austria for its involvement in the Third Reich. Just two years earlier, President Kurt Waldheim had been pilloried by the Americans, even though during the war he’d been no more than a conscripted regular army lieutenant. To the Snowcat driver, it must have seemed like the end of the world.

At some point, the driver or one of his co-workers started thinking about the glacier’s crevasses. If one hadn’t already opened on the slope, it was easy enough to remove a snow bridge covering one of the many situated in the glacier’s active crevassing zone—the area in which the Asian tourist had come to grief the year before—using the Snowcat’s blade. This presented a very tempting means with which to conceal Duncan’s body. Everyone could simply pretend they hadn’t noticed anything, and if the police got onto the dead boy’s trail, they would assume that he’d fallen into a deep crevasse (just like the Asian tourist the year before) and couldn’t be found.

After discussing the above hypothesis with Dick and Bob for three days, I told it to Lynda on the last night of our visit. As I finished the narrative, she stared at me and said nothing for what seemed like a long time. For twenty-one years she had sought the truth, and now she was presented with the full enormity of it. Within the space of an hour on the afternoon of August 9, 1989, the sensitive, funny, brave, honest, and magnanimous young man who Lynda loved more than anything had become a carcass that was concealed in order to keep a Snowcat driver out of trouble and to avoid bad publicity for the Stubai Glacier.

Finally she spoke.

“Was he still alive when his limbs went into that machine?”

I should have seen this coming. I badly wanted to tell her “no,” but I had no evidence to back it up. Helplessly I turned to Dick Penniman.

“I don’t know. Dick, what do you think?”

“Well, he was only wearing a cotton sweatshirt beneath his rain jacket, and we had a saying in ski patrol: cotton kills. It wicks away warmth instead of holding it in, especially if it’s damp. With the air temperature just above freezing and the drizzling rain, and possibly shock from a broken leg, he would have gone down quickly.

“How quickly?” Lynda asked.

“Within an hour,” Dick replied.

“Many times we saw them start grooming at three,” she said.

“I see,” he replied. “At any rate, if he wasn’t already dead from shock and hypothermia, it’s likely he’d lost consciousness before the tiller struck him.”

Lynda knew that this was pure conjecture. We weren’t even sure that Duncan’s initial, incapacitating injury had been a life-threating femur break, and not torn knee ligaments. His femur could have been broken when his leg went into the tiller.

I tried to think of something—some sort of comfort—but was at a loss for words. The wounds on Duncan’s hands and forearms suggested that he’d reacted to the tiller by reflexively extending his arms forward to defend himself. On the other hand, if he’d fallen unconscious with his hands in a position of supporting his leg injury, they could have also gotten pulled into the tiller as it grabbed the sleeves of his rain jacket.

Running through Lynda’s mind, I knew, was the terrible image of Duncan’s limbs being pulled into the machine while he was still alive and conscious. She could hear his screams and see his face contorted in agony. I looked at Bob, sitting on the couch next to her, and saw that he didn’t know what to say either. Finally I thought of something that suggested Duncan was already dead. I wasn’t altogether convinced myself, but I still felt compelled to protect Lynda from the awful truth, even though she’d sought it for so long.

“The fact that he didn’t pull himself out of the way suggests that he was already dead or passed out,” I said. “He wasn’t connected to the board, so even with an injured leg, he could have moved quickly if he was still conscious.”

“Yeah,” Bob said faintly. Lynda said nothing.

The next morning at breakfast I tried to change the subject by asking Lynda to tell us more about Duncan before the disaster had so darkened their lives. Again she just stared at me, and then started to speak, and then began to cry.

“I cannot talk about that now, John. After hearing about all of this ugliness and pain, I can’t just switch to talking about Duncan as he was in life.” For the rest of the morning she was cold, and when I walked her and Bob out to their car, I could tell she didn’t want to embrace me.

“We’ll be in touch,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat. Bob tried his best to be friendly, and I could tell he was looking for some positive words to sum up the progress we’d made in figuring out what happened to Duncan.

“I think it was a very constructive meeting, and I—

“Bob, I think it’s time to get on the road,” Lynda interrupted.

“Okay,” he replied. “Well, Bye, John.”

“Good Bye, Bob.”

Chapter 40: Conclusions

Did Walter Hinterhoelzl, Daniela Widi, Seppi Repetschnig, and Franz Brecher know about the Snowcat accident, or did they think they were pretending to be unaware that Duncan had fallen into a crevasse while snowboarding? The notion that he must have had a crevasse fall was, in fact, a red herring, as the Snowcat driver (or his supervisor) had understood when he made the decision to hide Duncan’s body. Knowing that crevasse falls at the Stubai Glacier were not properly investigated, he used the crevasse to conceal the fatal grooming machine accident.

Duncan disappeared on the one-year anniversary of Chiu’s death from a crevasse fall, so the previous fatal accident must have come to mind when he failed to return his equipment and pick up his clothing. The people who worked on the glacier probably received no more than the simple directive, “you didn’t see anything.”

It appears that everyone could have gone on pretending not to notice Duncan’s abandoned car indefinitely. Even after the Tyrol Today notice was broadcast, no employee of the Stubai Glacier reported it. Georg Hofer, the man who finally called in, was a contract worker who’d noticed the car while repairing the parking lot.

It’s ironic that the MacPhersons chose a photograph of Duncan in his New York Islanders uniform for the missing person poster. They thought that Duncan’s prominence as a professional athlete would pique people’s interest in finding him, but it probably compounded the motivation for keeping him concealed. The prospect of sports reporters from New York camped out at the Mutterbergalm, telling the world about the ghastly death of a pro hockey player, was a PR nightmare.

For the purpose of concealing Duncan’s death, the more time that passed the better. Memories could fade, records could be thrown out, crevasses could close as they moved down the hill, and the autumn snow could cover everything up. And so long as the Innsbruck authorities avoided investigating Duncan’s disappearance, the statute of limitations period on negligent homicide could run out.

By the time Lynda and Bob went through most of their retirement savings and were worn down from the obfuscation they’d encountered at every turn, it probably seemed to the man (or men) who’d buried Duncan that they were in the clear. They and perhaps even their kids would be long gone by the time his body appeared at the Schaufelferner’s snout. However, with the big melt of 2003, the body, buried just deep enough to evade detection for fourteen years, emerged in the middle of the slope.

The Stubai Glacier told the police and press that an employee named Peter Birsak had stumbled across the body while picking up litter on the glacier, and then accidentally dropped one of his work gloves at the discovery site. But was the work glove found with Duncan’s body really lost at the discovery site on July 18, 2003, or had it been intentionally concealed in the crevasse on August 9, 1989 because it had blood on it? Blood is soluble in cold water, so fourteen years of summer snowmelt running through the crevasse would have washed much of it away. Still, the glove should have been analyzed for blood traces. The same is true of “the blue cross country ski gloves” that were found with Duncan’s body (in addition to a single red glove).

Duncan’s case illustrates how a crime may go undetected for years, even though a surprising number of persons are, to some degree, aware of it. Not everyone knows the particulars of the crime, but they are cognizant of suspicious circumstances, and simply choose not to look into it. Out of self-interest, they calculate that it is better not to know what is actually going on.

As I was about halfway into writing this book, a financial fraud investigator named Harry Markopolos published the book No One Would Listen about his efforts to warn regulators about Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme years before it was finally exposed. As Markopolos saw it, SEC investigators could have easily discovered Madoff’s fraud. Only “willful blindness” to the powerful man’s crimes could account for their failure. Madoff agreed: In an interview with the New York Times, he also spoke about the “willful blindness” of bank and hedge fund managers to his scheme.

“They had to know,” he said. “But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’”

In Duncan’s case, it’s likely that only a few Innsbruck officials knew exactly what was going on. Others knew enough to recognize that someone with influence wanted the problem to go away, which meant that there was no sense in diligently investigating it. All were complicit in perpetrating a massive fraud against the MacPhersons.

The prosecutor’s decision to invoke the statute of limitations was the rankest kind of expediency, but even if criminal prosecution of Stubai Glacier personnel for negligent homicide was legitimately time-barred, it didn’t justify concealing the cause and manner of Duncan’s death from his parents and from the Canadian Embassy.

Lynda’s greatest wish now is that her son’s death be recognized by Austrian authorities as a matter of solemnity, not as a nuisance to be swept under the rug. At the very least, he should be issued a proper death certificate noting the correct date of death (not the date his corpse was found). His life ended on August 9, 1989, and he deserves the dignity of having this officially recorded. Lynda would also like for the official report of his death to be corrected to show that no autopsy was performed, and that the truth of this be conveyed by official correspondence to Canadian Foreign Affairs.

To me, it’s a plain matter of fact that the MacPhersons have been treated abominably by Innsbruck officials who were more interested in protecting local interests than enforcing the law. Because the cause and manner of their son’s death was concealed from them, they have been obliged to spend vast amounts of time and money to discover the truth. They have been systematically defrauded, and they deserve to be financially compensated for the terrible damage they have suffered.

Chapter 41: A Bigger Problem

If anyone could have shed light on the case after Duncan’s body was found, it was Dr. Rabl. He had the corpse in his dissection room for a week, and had he simply provided the MacPhersons with an honest forensic medical report, the entire complexion of their lives since 2003 would have been different. Had he given them clarity, they would have found the peace of mind that comes with understanding. Instead they have suffered yet another eight years of confusion and frustration.

On November 8, 2010, Lynda sent Rabl an email in which she asked him if he could identify the cable visible in the photo he’d taken of Duncan’s body. She attached a copy of the image with red arrows indicating the object, and she pointed out that it was not visible in his subsequent photo, taken from the same angle five minutes later.

Rabl did not respond to her email, so three weeks later, she sent her query to him again. He then replied with the following email:

Hello Lynda,

I’m sorry that I did not get your email earlier—in the last few weeks we had some problems with the email-accounts of our institute. I hope that you are well. Concerning the picture I am not able to identify the object which you mentioned. I only could make a guess. Maybe it is a part of Duncan’s clothing (rest of an elastic tie) or a cord that belongs to the binding of the snowboard?? I couldn’t find it on any other picture too. I’m sorry that I can (sic) help you!

Cheers, greetings to Bob,

Walter

Rabl couldn’t find it in any other picture because he or someone assisting him had removed it. The cable is not part of Duncan’s clothing or equipment, and it is tensioned onto his bare skin and fractured bone, which indicates that it was brought into contact with his leg after his leg was destroyed. Why? A likely explanation is that someone tried to use the cable as an instrument for freeing the limb from the grooming tiller (see Appendix 1 for a full presentation of this hypothesis).

I would like to emphasize that theorizing about the cable would be completely unnecessary if Dr. Rabl had properly identified it. It is not enough for him to imply that he simply hadn’t noticed the cable wrapped around Duncan’s destroyed leg. The first task of the forensic doctor is to examine a body for the presence of foreign objects or marks left by foreign objects. It is Dr. Rabl’s job to notice such things.

In recent years, Rabl has served as the forensic doctor in three cases of foreign citizens who suffered unnatural deaths in Austria, none of which were officially solved in Austria. The first was the German boy Raven Vollrath, whose decomposed body was found in a stream bed near the Tyrolean ski resort of Zoeblen in June of 2006. Because Dr. Rabl found no clear signs of foul play on the boy’s body, the Innsbruck public prosecutor Rudolf Koll closed the case. However, after Raven’s parents discovered that their son had, in fact, been murdered, his body was exhumed in Germany, where a forensic doctor found marks on his ribs and sternum that were consistent with knife stabs.

Moreover, although Raven’s undershirt was found with his body and is visible in police photos, it was subsequently burned by someone at the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine. Given that Raven was stabbed repeatedly in the chest, his undershirt may have been marked with blood stains and knife blade holes. Why was his shirt destroyed?

The second case was that of a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old German waitress named Susi Greiner, who disappeared in Tyrol in August of 2006. Two weeks later, her body was found on a mountainside (the Karwendel), completely naked and barefoot, 1,000 vertical meters above the lot where her car was parked. Her clothing, hiking boots, and backpack containing her laptop and cell phone were later found at different locations in the valley. All data—all records of communication before her death—had been deleted from her laptop and phone. Moreover, she was last seen alive with an unidentified man in the passenger seat of her car.

In spite of these suspicious circumstances, Dr. Rabl found no signs of foul play on her body and concluded that she had died of hypothermia. According to an ORF report, “the only injury on her body was a laceration on her head that may have resulted from falling and sliding several meters.” From Dr. Rabl’s findings, the police theorized that Susi must have hiked naked and barefoot (in an area popular with tourists) to the high elevation and died of exposure.

Susi’s mother asked Rabl about the condition of her daughter’s feet, and he replied that they bore no conspicuous marks, only a bit of grass between her toes. How, Susi’s mother wanted to know, had her daughter hiked barefoot for several hours over rocky terrain without cutting and abrading the soles of her feet? Mrs. Greiner might have also asked Rabl how he had determined that the laceration on Susi’s head was the result of an accidental fall, and not from an assailant’s blow with a blunt instrument.

The third case was that of a Slovakian caretaker named Denisa Soltisova, who died under mysterious circumstances in the Upper Austrian town of Voecklabruck in January of 2008. Ten days after she was last seen alive, her completely naked body was found in a nearby river. Five hours later, with no autopsy, the public prosecutor ruled her death a suicide, closed the case, and released her body for burial in Slovakia.

Unsatisfied with the Austrian investigation (or lack thereof) the Slovakian authorities commissioned the forensic doctors Josef Krajcovic and Lubomir Straka to examine Denisa’s body. They found bruises on her arms and inner thighs consistent with sexual assault. Her blood also contained significant amounts of medications used to treat diabetes and gout, even though she suffered from neither illness. At the time of her death, she was the caretaker of an elderly urologist, and it was a reasonable assumption that he kept stashes of these medications in his home office. Though the doctor’s old age and infirmity ruled him out as a suspect for sexual assault, it was not unreasonable to suspect that a regular visitor to his home had gained access to his medications and put them in Denisa’s drink without her knowledge.

After Austro-Slovakian author Martin Leidenfrost published a book about the case, it was reopened in Austria and the forensic doctor Johann Haberl was assigned to evaluate the findings of the Slovakian doctors. Presumably from his analysis of the autopsy photos, Haberl disagreed that the defects on Denisa’s arms and inner thighs were clearly injuries resulting from violence inflicted while she was still alive. Though Dr. Haberl conceded that this was a possibility, he argued that one could not be certain due to the body’s advanced state of decomposition.

On the other hand, the renowned Viennese pharmacologist Michael Freissmuth found it unlikely that Denisa had ingested the medications in order to commit suicide. More likely, he concluded, a culprit had dissolved the substances into her coffee or wine, causing a sharp reduction of her blood sugar that significantly impaired her awareness and motor skills, and thus her ability to resist.

At this point, three forensic scientists had found grounds for urgently suspecting murder, while a fourth had found that murder couldn’t be ruled out. Apparently unsatisfied with these opinions, the public prosecutor in the Upper Austrian city of Wels commissioned Dr. Rabl to serve as the final scientific arbiter. After Rabl concluded that “no signs of foul play could be established with the requisite degree of certainty,” the prosecutor closed the case.

All of the above cases were closed, in spite of suspicious circumstances, largely because Dr. Rabl found no signs of foul play on the victims’ bodies. This shows the tremendous weight that the Austrian criminal justice system assigns to forensic medical findings, as distinct from other investigative methods. To be sure, forensic medicine is an extremely advanced science that can reveal an astonishing amount of information about a corpse. The current (November 2011) issue of National Geographic features an article about a recent autopsy of Oetzi’s body. From this and earlier exams, we know that the man who died 5,300 years ago was about forty-five years old, had brown hair and brown eyes, and probably spent his childhood near the present village of Feldthurns, north of Bolzano. He was probably lactose intolerant, at high risk of hardening of the arteries, and like Duncan, had suffered from Lyme disease.

About two hours before he died he ate a meal of alpine ibex meat. His hands, wrists and chest had a number of cuts and bruises, indicating he got into a fight shortly before his death. He was shot in the back with an arrow, and it appears that he initially fell onto his back, but was then rolled over by an assailant attempting to retrieve the arrow. Cerebral trauma indicates he suffered a blow to his head, but it’s not clear if this was caused from falling or from being struck by an assailant.

We know so much about Oetzi because forensic scientists, with their array of analytic tools and methods, wanted to discover it. As National Geographic pointed out, “The Iceman might be the most exposed and invaded person who ever walked the planet.” When people are motivated to acquire knowledge of something, their ingenuity is boundless.

Given that Dr. Rabl was unable or unwilling to establish scientifically the cause of Duncan’s amputated limbs and shredded clothing, and also unable or unwilling to notice the knife marks on Raven Vollrath’s ribs, it seems to me that he should not be regarded as the ultimate forensic authority in Austria and given the last word in a controversial case such as Denisa Soltisova’s.

In 2007, Rabl gave an interview to the Viennese daily Die Presse in which he warned about the danger a society faces when not enough autopsies are performed—a growing problem in Vienna, due to a recent legal reform.

“It’s only a matter of time before unrecognized homicides happen,” he said. Rabl was right, though he might have also mentioned the equally grave danger a society faces when the competence of its forensic doctors cannot be trusted. When the controversial Governor of Carinthia, Joerg Haider, was killed in a car accident in 2008, the world was told that his ability to drive safely had been impaired by the large amount of alcohol (1.8 per mil) in his blood. How do we know that he was impaired as a result of drinking a large quantity of alcohol, and not as a result of some other mind-altering substance that someone put into his drink without his awareness? All we can do is trust that the forensic doctors who performed the toxicology exams were competent and impartial. The first exam was conducted by the Graz forensic doctors Kathrin Yen und Peter Grabuschnig. In order to confirm their findings, the Klagenfurt public prosecutor commissioned Dr. Rabl to perform a second examination. Can we trust that he did it competently and impartially?

Chapter 42: Closure

A couple of weeks after our meeting in Truckee, Lynda called to apologize for being angry with me on our last day at Dick Penniman’s house.

“It’s hard for me to talk about Duncan’s life without getting very sad. I guess I’ve avoided doing it all these years because it would have sapped my strength to fight for the truth of how he died.”

While Lynda had suppressed her feelings for her son because they hurt too much, my own emotional connection with him had steadily grown. I often found myself watching the video of his last television interview, just before he departed for Europe. There was something notably graceful about him, and it wasn’t just his good looks. What exactly was it? The best I could figure is that, in our world in which image and status count for so much, he seemed so real. He was humble and brave and capable of putting disappointment into perspective, and I found these moral qualities far more admirable than any athletic achievement. I knew that if we’d crossed paths in Europe in the summer of 1989, I would have liked him immensely.

“When you’re ready, I’d love to hear more about Duncan as he was in life,” I told Lynda. “For now, just tell me what he would say about this crazy story.”

She laughed. “He would say it’s ridiculous that so much time and energy was wasted trying to cover up his death. All of the charades and lies—was it really necessary? So the driver of the grooming machine screwed up and accidentally killed him. All the driver had to do was confess, say he was sorry, and resolve to be safer. Maybe he would have had to spend some time in jail for negligent homicide, but surely that would have been preferable to the burden of carrying this secret with him for the rest of his life. I mean, if he’s even remotely normal, can he ever feel free and lighthearted again? In a way, I feel sorry for him. The same goes for everyone else. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to have come out with the truth and dealt with the reality of it?”

If Lynda had asked me this question before I began researching this story, I would have answered yes. But the more I have thought about human nature in high stress situations, the more it has made me question my earlier assumption. Could it be that most of us behave ethically most of the time because doing so doesn’t conflict with our instinct for self-preservation? The imperative to do unto others as we would have them do unto us has great appeal at the level of conscious intellect, but how much motivational force does it have for an individual in the grip of fear that his life will be ruined if he does the right thing ethically?

Imagine driving home after you’ve had several drinks and accidentally hitting a pedestrian. After pulling over and perceiving that he’s dead from his lack of breathing and pulse, you realize that no one saw the accident. Would you: (1) report the accident and go to prison for vehicular manslaughter, or (2) drive away and suffer no consequences? I suspect that a large percentage of people would go with the latter option. Of course, the above scenario doesn’t involve concealing the dead pedestrian.

“I have a recurring vision,” Lynda continued. “After Duncan dies, his spirit sees the Snowcat driver hiding his body in the crevasse. During this terrible moment, he knows the man isn’t going to report the accident, but leave us to worry ourselves to death. He could have forgiven the driver for accidentally killing him, but he hates the guy for hiding his death from us, because that is the real crime of this story.”

She’s right; the monstrous act is the concealment, and it therefore seems to me that hiding a body should be treated as a separate crime, far graver than negligent homicide, with no statute of limitations (currently the Austrian penal code deems it an aggravating circumstance).

Shortly before I published this book, I talked to a man from Calgary named Terry Fishman, who had, in his younger days, worked at a summer camp near Stubai called Club Igls. After watching the fifth estate documentary in 2006, he’d called Lynda and told her he reckoned a slope worker had intentionally buried Duncan after hitting him with a Snowcat. At the time, Lynda had considered this a crazy notion, but after I ultimately came to the same conclusion, she remembered her conversation with Terry and suggested I call him.

“It’s simple,” he said. “The driver felt he had to conceal the body in order to protect his company from bad publicity. It didn’t matter that it was an accident; it shouldn’t have happened, and he knew that if it ever got out to the media, it would make the ski hill look bad, and everyone in his village lives from the ski hill.”

Two days after I spoke with Terry, the former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was indicted for multiple sexual offenses against children, including one incident in the coaches’ locker room shower. Virtually the entire country was shocked to hear allegations that numerous high-ranking officers at the university had learned about the incident but failed to report it to the police. Amid all of the speculation about how this could have happened, a forensic psychiatrist named Roy Lubit pointed out that “Organizations are very self-protective. The number-one rule is, ‘Don’t embarrass the organization.’”

This ugly side of esprit de corps, rooted in primitive, tribal instincts, may cause an otherwise decent man to ignore or even cover up heinous acts in order to protect his association. Setting aside moral scruples is understood as a necessary sacrifice for preserving the greater good of his club. In such a situation, the would-be whistle-blower may come under extreme pressure to remain silent.

Cognitive psychologists would say that Lynda MacPherson has suffered from an unfilled “need for closure.” She never liked ambiguity to begin with, and for twenty-two years her life has been dominated by it. I suspect, though, that her yearning for clarity is part of her greater yearning for meaning. Duncan meant everything to her, so she found it unspeakably jarring to be confronted with signs that his life meant so little to others. To this day, when she thinks about the incorrect date of death and his name initially misspelled on his death certificate, or the order for his jaws to be removed, or his bones left behind on the ski slope, she feels an implacable rage.

Insight into how the MacPhersons feel may be gleaned from comparing Duncan’s death with that of young men killed in war. To prevent the grief of parents from turning into rage, we have created a host of symbols, rituals, and myths to express the idea that it is heroic to die for one’s country. At a fallen soldier’s funeral, his body is presented to his parents in a polished, flag-draped coffin before which they listen to testimonials about his character, bravery, and the great cause for which he died. His officer gives thanks and his comrades salute him as he is laid to rest. The entire ceremony attaches dignity, honor, and respect to the dead young man.

In 1989, when Lynda and Bob MacPherson learned that their missing son was probably dead, they had no body and no convincing explanation for his disappearance, not even a record of the investigation. All they got was their consul, Ian Thomson, advising them on the phone “to get on with their lives” and a misleading letter from Commander Hofer, forwarded to them four months after he’d written it to Thomson.

Not even after Duncan’s body was found fourteen years later were they given an honest account of how he had died. No authority supervised the recovery of his corpse, and even though it lay for an entire week in one of the world’s most advanced institutes of forensic medicine, his parents weren’t told the cause of his death.

Against all of this obfuscation, we have fought back. After our meeting at Dick Penniman’s house in September 2010, I continued researching the story for another year. Much of what I found confirmed what Lynda and Bob had long suspected but couldn’t be sure about. Working together with them, comparing their thoughts and notes with mine, we assembled an ever clearer picture. Questions that had long plagued them were answered, at least with a high degree of probability. The closer we got to a comprehensive understanding of their ordeal, the less burdened they felt by it.

Lynda became more lighthearted and quicker to laugh at the ludicrous parts of the story. One day she told me she’d been going through Duncan’s old photos and letters, and was finding it interesting instead of painful. She also found herself dwelling less on the lousy public officials she’d encountered, and giving more thought to the good people who’d done their best to help. Even the disappointing characters seemed more comprehensible to her.

At a two-year reunion dinner in Saskatoon, we again fell into a conversation about why, in certain situations, people find it so hard to tell the truth. Lynda had become, it seemed to me, far less dogmatic than she’d been at our first meeting.

“I guess there are a lot of people out there whose lives are dominated by fear on the one hand and craving for something better on the other,” she said. “And when they find themselves in a story like this, they don’t know how to do the right thing.”

It was a profound statement, and it went to the heart of human affairs. Most of us go through life trying to avoid conflict, even if it requires tolerating bad behavior. We don’t want any trouble, and we don’t want to rock the boat. If we hear about an injustice happening to others, we often fear the potentially negative consequences if we get involved, and we therefore choose to stay out of it.

“You may think I’m boasting, John,” Lynda continued. “But I’m not afraid of anyone.”

“It’s true,” Bob said. “Once Duncan warned her about being too confrontational with people. ‘Don’t forget that you are a tiny woman,’ he told her.”

“And I told him that size doesn’t make the man,” Lynda said.

The conversation reminded me of a thought I’d been turning over in my mind for a few years—namely, that courage is the chief virtue from which all others spring. Doing the right thing often starts with having the guts to do the right thing.

If there is redemption in the MacPhersons’ story, it is from their own fortitude. They did everything possible to find their child, and through terrible frustration they stuck together and refused to let their marriage become an additional casualty. In the face of endless deception, they persevered in their quest for the truth, and ultimately exposed public officials for accommodating powerful interests instead of enforcing the law. Treated with a long train of shabby behavior, they never yielded to the temptation of hate or cynicism. Tricked and manipulated, they remained honest. Encountering all that is lamentable about human nature, they responded with all that is best about it.

Appendices and Illustrations

Appendix 1: Physical Evidence

General

Duncan’s wallet, two of the cards inside his wallet, the left side of his left heel, his snowboard bindings, his left boot liner, and his snowboard all display marks made by a cutting instrument of approximately the same size and shape as grooming tiller tines.

Amputated left foot: Note the deep gouge on the left side of the heel. Also note the white tendon strands that have been pulled out.

Duncan’s long distance calling card: Note how the punch mark is the same size and shape as a grooming tiller tine.

Overview of snowboard.

Three strikes, identically spaced, identical cutting angles.

Crescent-shaped cuts on the snowboard, decreasing in depth from left to right.

Crescent-shaped cuts on Duncan’s detached knee and top of tibia.

Destroyed left leg. Top arrow: De-gloving of tibia. Right arrow: Flesh stripped from bones, but not removed (missing) as a result of ice movement. Note also the undamaged condition of the right leg (clothed in blue sweatpants).

Close-up of the only radiograph submitted to the MacPhersons that shows any (a small section) of the left leg. The top horizontal arrow indicates the top of the knee. The bottom horizontal arrow indicates the bottom of the femur where it fractured. The top, vertical arrows indicate where Dr. Rabl removed a section of the femur for a DNA sample. The bottom, vertical arrows indicate the multiple fractures of the tibia and fibula—“like his leg went into a blender,” as Dr. Burbridge put it.

Detached left knee: Arrows indicate de-gloving of flesh around top of the knee, possibly from where it caught on the edge of the tiller casing.

Side view of left leg: Arrows indicate points where leg was cut all the way through.

Right arm: Bottom arrow indicates where the forearm was severed a few inches above the wrist. The severed lower limb is lying upside down on the gurney. Second from bottom arrow indicates tendons that were pulled out. Third from bottom arrow indicates where fingers were cut off. Top arrow indicates completely undamaged upper arm. The relatively weak shoulder joint is also intact, indicating that little or no force was applied to it in the ice. The tear pattern on the shirt sleeve is consistent with the lower sleeve getting caught in machinery and violently pulled.

Severed left hand. Note the sharp, linear nature of the cut. The arrow indicates where the forearm was also cleanly severed a few centimeters above the wrist.

Side view of the left hand and forearm: Arrow indicates fracture of the radius and ulna. The fractured surface is the same color as the bone shaft.

The undamaged binding buckle on the left has no rust, while the damaged buckle on the right has deep, pocked rust at the points where the paint was knocked away, indicating that the metal and paint were struck a long time before the board was extracted.

Section of the snowboard near the point at which it was broken in half and where its bottom, plastic laminate was ripped away: The coat of paint, which was sealed underneath the plastic sheet prior to the board’s destruction, is severely weathered, indicating that it was exposed to the ice long before the board was extracted.

Arrow indicates Duncan’s body. The small crevasse in which he was buried is estimated to have moved 20 to 60 meters down the hill during the 14-year period he was in the ice. It is one in a row of transverse crevasses that are moving uniformly down the hill near the glacier’s equilibrium line, where its flow is chiefly horizontal.

Duncan lying slightly on his left side in the vestige of a shallow crevasse. Note the horizontal attitude of his body. His destroyed left leg is still buried; his outstretched right leg is still completely clothed. The left arrow indicates his left ski boot, standing upright next to his left side. The right arrow is pointing downhill.

The Snowboard

The white plastic sheet on the bottom of the snowboard has four gouge marks running in a straight line. The three-inch gap between each gouge is the same as the spacing between tiller tines. The line of gouges runs across the bottom of the board at the same angle and approximately the same place as the board’s rear break. The front left side of the plastic deck has been sheared off by multiple cutting blows, all evenly spaced and at the same angle—the same angle as the two primary breaks to the board. The underlying plywood has been impregnated with red paint from a cutting instrument—the same color of red paint that was used to coat the cutter bars of Pistenbully grooming tillers built in the 1980s. The forward binding, made of very thick and strong plastic, has been sheared off by a cutting blow at the same angle. As Dick Penniman pointed out, only the action of passing through a grooming tiller could have created such a distinct pattern of damage to the board. It was not “pulled on, broken in half, dug out, and run over” as the slope maintenance workers told Dr. Rabl—it simply ran through a grooming tiller.

The Ski Boots

The boots are largely undamaged except for the liner of the left boot, which was separated from the boot. Most of the liner is shredded; the upper part is intact except for three gouge marks with the same spacing as the gouge marks on the bottom of the snowboard. The right side of the liner near the big toe has a punch mark the same width as tiller tine, and particles of red paint are lodged in the fabric. The insole of the liner is missing.

The Clothing

As is typical of accidents involving machinery, the sleeves of Duncan’s clothing (rain jacket and purple sweatshirt) have been ripped off and shredded. The sweatshirt on the torso is intact except for a single tear just below the left breast—another sign that the torso was not subjected to force. The left sweatpants leg and the left nylon gaiter have been cut in multiple places. The left side of the denim shorts that Duncan wore under his sweatpants has been shredded and ripped away, and his undershorts have been completely torn off of his body. His nylon wallet, which he was presumably wearing in the left pocket of his denim shorts, has a hole punched through it the same width as a tiller tine. Two plastic cards in his wallet are punched with the same holes. His Casio watch, which he wore on his left wrist, bears no signs of ice pressure and grinding—an indication that the segmental fractures below and just above the wrist were not caused by ice flow. A small dent on the watch’s housing is most likely from where it struck the tiller casing as it went through the machine around his wrist, which passed between two tines. In the discovery scene photos, the ripped and torn left sweatpants leg in bunched in a heap next to his left side, and his undershorts are draped across the top of the boot. The right leg of his shorts and his sweatpants are largely intact, indicating that the cutting and tearing force was applied only to the left leg.

Duncan’s Arms and Left Leg

As Doctors Burbridge, Walker, Straathof, Nafte, Weinstabl, Gollogly, and Herold agreed, the injuries on Duncan’s arms and left leg bear the distinct patterns of contact with machinery.

Position of Body and Equipment

In the discovery scene photographs, Duncan’s body is lying horizontally in the transverse crevasse as though he is lying in a grave. This is unusual for a crevasse fall, which often results in the body getting wedged vertically in the ice. The snowboard is pointing nose-down in the remnant of the shallow crevasse, wedged between his upper body and the downhill wall. The left ski boot is standing upright, between the tail of the snowboard and his left side. Had Duncan died from a crevasse fall, he would still be wearing his ski boots. If he didn’t die from the fall, and still had enough mobility in the crevasse to take off his boots to try to climb out, the narrower left ski boot would have likely gone deeper into the crevasse than his body.

Location of Body on the Glacier

As Professor Evans pointed out, that Duncan melted out so high on the glacier, at its equilibrium line, indicates that he did not fall into a deep crevasse, but was buried just deep enough to evade detection. Moreover, in response to the question of why Duncan’s body wasn’t found during the initial search in September 1989, Michael Tanzer stated:

“Naturally we searched in the crevassing/danger area back then. I can remember that it snowed at the time of the search action and that it was therefore impossible to find a body in a small v-shaped crevasse that was covered with snow.” According to the MacPhersons, who visited the glacier twice during the initial search on September 23, 1989, it was not snowing, and there was no fresh snow on the ground. In the discovery scene photos, Duncan is clearly lying in the vestige of a shallow, v-shaped, transverse crevasse whose structure is still intact—i.e., not folded and deformed.

Chronology of Injuries and Damage to Snowboard

As Doctors Rabl, Nafte, and Herold all independently stated, the color of Duncan’s limb fractures indicates that they occurred a significant period of time before his body was recovered from the ice on July 18, 2003. Moreover, according to Dr. Gollogly, it is unlikely that the tendons in Duncan’s arms and left ankle would have avulsed as they did if they had been frozen. Generally speaking, it is doubtful that any of the de-gloving injuries could have happened to frozen tissue. Duncan’s dislocated right elbow is rotated 180 degrees but is still held together by the ligaments. Had the connective tissue been frozen, the elbow joint would have likely snapped in two from the tremendous force that was imparted to it.

When considering the damage to Duncan’s clothing and snowboarding equipment, it is important to understand that the grooming tiller is—according to numerous dealers and servicemen—altogether unsuitable for excavating objects from ice. It is expressly designed for grooming snow, not for digging into ice. Parking the groomer over a section of solid ice and engaging the tiller would do little more than scrape the surface, and would likely damage the expensive machine.

The liner of the left ski boot was obviously shredded by a grooming tiller after it was pulled out of the ski boot, as there is no corresponding damage to the boot. In discovery scene photos, the boot is visible—unbuckled, open, and full of old snow—and the liner is missing. The liner could not have been pulled out of the boot after the boot was filled with snow in the crevasse. This indicates that the liner came out of the boot and went through the tiller before the liner and boot were buried in the crevasse.

Shredded left boot liner.

The most obvious indication that the snowboard went through the grooming tiller long before it was buried in the crevasse is the condition of the metal buckles on the board’s binding straps. The undamaged parts of the buckles are still coated with white paint and have little to no rust. However, some of the buckles have been struck by something hard and sharp, which severely damaged the metal and knocked away the white paint. Deep, pocked rust on the damaged areas indicates that the damage occurred years before the board was extracted from the crevasse. In a photograph of the binding shortly after it was recovered, one of the damaged and rusted buckles is still encased in a chunk of clear ice—further proof that the damage didn’t happen at the time of extraction.

The cuts to the snowboard’s metal edges have deep, pocked rust, indicating that they, too, occurred many years before the board was extracted. The places where the board’s plywood was cut and broken have the same weathered appearance as the intact wood, indicating that the damage happened long before 2003. Finally, the clear plastic sheet laminating the bottom of the snowboard has been ripped away in places, exposing the painted wood underneath. The paint is heavily weathered, indicating that it was exposed to ice and water years before the board was recovered.

The ski slope on the Schaufelferner was closed during the summer of 2003, not only for lack of snow, but also for the construction of a new chair-lift. By the time Duncan’s body emerged on the surface, the slope had not been groomed for several weeks. In aerial photos of the discovery site, taken as the workers were recovering Duncan’s body, vehicle tracks are visible all over the slope. This indicates that, although the workers were using the vehicles for transportation, they were not engaging the grooming tillers, which would have smoothed over the tracks.

In my October 2009 meeting with Reinhard Klier—Heinrich Klier’s youngest son and successor as head of the Stubai Glacier—he suggested that Duncan’s body may have been struck by a grooming machine the year before it was discovered. He theorized that, at the height of the summer melt in 2002, the body may have come close enough to the surface to be struck by the vehicle, unbeknownst to the driver.

Several points argue against this, starting with the fact that, after going into a crevasse, Duncan’s body was never within the top, three-inch layer of snow, but always in the underlying ice. Every summer, this underlying ice did not start to melt until the covering layer of snow was gone, as which point there was no reason to groom. Moreover, Duncan’s undamaged torso, right leg and left ski boot were positioned closer to the surface than his amputated left arm and destroyed left leg.

It also important to understand that Duncan’s limbs, clothing, and snowboard were not grazed by the tiller passing over them; they went into the machine. If the three inch tiller tines passed over Duncan’s left leg as it lay underneath a layer of snow less than three inches thick, they might have gouged the limb, but they would not have chopped and ground it to pieces. The Snowcat driver could not have unwittingly damaged the limbs because pieces of clothing and limbs would have been ripped away from the body and either tangled in the machine or scattered on the slope.

Finally, Duncan’s left leg almost certainly became lodged in the machine. In the 2008 case of a boy whose left leg went into a tiller at a Michigan resort, his leg became so firmly lodged in the machine that the steel casing had to be cut away in order to free the terribly injured limb. This brings me to my hypothetical explanation for the cable that is wrapped around Duncan’s left leg in the photograph that Dr. Rabl took on July 23, 2003.

The Cable (a hypothetical explanation)

As the grooming tiller passed over Duncan’s left leg, the tines acted as hooks, grabbing his sweatpants and nylon gaiter, and pulling the limb into the machine. The back edge of the casing appears to have sliced all the way through his thigh, just above the knee, while the lower leg was segmentally fractured.

The clothing became tangled, while the limb jammed between the rotating shaft and casing. In this position, the leg would have been difficult to free. One strategy was to disengage the shaft’s hydrostatic drive and rotate it by hand in order to work the limb and clothing out of the machine. However, with the shaft stuck in place, a mechanical advantage was needed in order to turn it.

And so someone looped a piece of cable behind the tiller tines that were jamming the leg into the casing, and then pulled on the cable with a block (perhaps attached to an electric winch). As the cable tensioned onto one of the tiller tines, it was flattened out. As the shaft began to rotate, the cable slipped off the tine and drew into the fractured leg. Because the cable was covered with blood, it was simply buried in the crevasse with the leg.

Appendix 2: The concealment of Duncan’s death in September of 1989

In 1989, the key indicator that Duncan had died on the ski slope was the fact that he hadn’t returned his snowboarding equipment. Thus, concealing this fact from the MacPhersons was the key to covering up Duncan’s death at the Stubai Glacier. As was noted in the main text, Inspector Brecher did not clarify whether the equipment had been returned. He did take statements from Walter Hinterhoelzl and Seppi Repetschnig, but only a year later, after Lynda complained to Prosecutor Wallner about the lack of recorded testimony. In his report to the Innsbruck Court (“Zum Auftrag des Landesgericht Innsbruck 34 Vr 2434/89 vom 08.08.1990”) Brecher claimed that what Seppi and Walter said in their recorded statements of August 1990 was consistent with their unrecorded statements in September 1989, which he summarized as follows:

On August 9, 1989, Duncan MacPherson clearly rented a snowboard of the brand Duret 1700 for a day from the Sport Shop 3000. This was established by the statement of Walter Hinterhoelzl, snowboard teacher. A record of the rental does not exist at the Sport Shop 3000, manager Josef Repetschnig. Because the record of the rental of the snowboard Duret 1700 was no longer available—as was established at the beginning of the search on September 23, 1989—one could not discover any indication of the board being returned. According to Josef REPETSCHNIG on September 23, 1989, no snowboard of the brand Duret 1700 was missing. On the basis of his shop records, he established that no other board was missing as well.

In Seppi’s recorded statement, he again claimed to have no record of Duncan’s transaction, though he “could say with certainty that no snowboard is missing or has ever been missing.” With this careful wording, he neither denied nor confirmed Walter’s story. By sticking with his basic assertion that no board was missing, he implied that if Duncan had indeed rented a board, he must have returned it.

In Walter’s recorded statement, he reiterated that Duncan had rented a “Duret 1700” snowboard from the Sport Shop 3000. His account of going to the shop to renegotiate the price was strange.

Ich ging mit ihm dann noch zum Sport Shop zurueck und sprach dort wegen des Leihpreises vor…

I then went back with him to the sport shop and there I spoke forth about the rental price…

Walter’s choice of the German verb vorsprechen, which means “to speak before a person or an audience,” was very unusual and stilted, and it indicates he went out of his way to avoid naming the person with whom he’d spoken. Why? If he had named the shop employee, Brecher could have interviewed that person and probably clarified whether Duncan had returned the gear. Equally remarkable was that Brecher didn’t ask Walter to name the shop employee. The inspector merely went through the motions of taking statements. In no way did he examine the witnesses to discover whether Duncan had returned his equipment, which was the entire point of the investigation.

Then there was Walter’s false claim of certainty that Duncan’s board had been returned. As a result, External Affairs concluded that Duncan must have come off the slope, which meant there was no sense in pressing the Austrians to continue searching for him on the Stubai Glacier.

Almost a decade and a half later, when Duncan’s body emerged with a Duret snowboard, the MacPhersons received a letter dated October 14, 2003 from Seppi Repetschnig with the following:

For 14 years it could not be explained why no data of your son’s hire equipment could be found in our files, despite the claim of the snowboard instructor, that Duncan had hired the snowboard from us. Fully completed register files are only re-issued provided all rented equipment has been returned.

In the event that hire equipment is not returned in time, it is common procedure for us to inform the piste guards immediately. This system enabled us on several occasions to rescue skiers from calamitous situations.

Only now, 14 years after the tragic accident of your son, were we able to identify the snowboard found next to him. It transpires that the make “Duret” has never been sold or let in any of our hire outlets, thus explaining why we were unable to trace any data of your son’s hire equipment in our files.

If Seppi’s shop never carried the Duret brand, why hadn’t he said so to Inspector Brecher on September 23, 1989, when Brecher asked him about the “Duret 1700” board? Seppi’s phrase “despite the claim of the snowboard instructor” implied that Walter had lied about the origin of the snowboard, but this raises the question: Why did Seppi play along with Walter’s lie on September 23, 1989?

After the snowboard emerged with Duncan’s body in 2003, Inspector Ortner wrote in his report that a physical evidence specialist at the Neustift gendarmerie station “definitely traced the snowboard found with the body to the dealer on the glacier from whom the missing Canadian had rented his equipment.” However, in his concluding report, Inspector Krappinger did not refer to the determination of the physical evidence specialist, but simply accepted the assertion of Seppi Repetschnig and two other rental shop employees that the board hadn’t come from them. Although Krappinger chose not to question Walter Hinterhoelzl in 2003, Walter told the fifth estate in 2006 that the board found with Duncan’s body had indeed come from the rental shop at the Eisgrat Station. In fact, he had helped Duncan to pick it out.

A likely explanation for the conflicting and dubious statements of Seppi and Walter is what Inspector Brecher told Lynda on June 28, 1990 and reiterated on July 2—namely, that although Duncan’s board had been returned, he may have used a second one that day.

“One should ask Walter,” Brecher concluded, insinuating that the second board had come from Walter, and not from the rental shop. This would explain why Duncan was found with hard ski boots and gaiters (inscribed with “Rental 3000”) from the rental shop, and a snowboard with soft bindings that didn’t match the boots—i.e., Walter had a different board for his pupil to try in the afternoon, but no soft boots in Duncan’s size.

In a letter dated February 26, 2007, Reinhard Klier told the MacPhersons that the snowboard found with Duncan’s body had come from Walter. Lynda considered this an outrageous defamation of the snowboard instructor, and she immediately informed Walter by email of what Klier had written about him. Walter never responded.

Even if Walter only helped Duncan to select his gear from the rental shop (as he told the fifth estate) he still would have noticed his pupil’s abandoned clothing and inquired about him at the rental shop (across the hall), especially after Duncan didn’t show for his lesson the next day. Likewise, when Duncan didn’t return his equipment, someone at the rental shop would have told Walter that his student hadn’t brought back the valuable items. On August 10 at the latest, Duncan’s missing gear and abandoned clothes, shoes, and Saskatchewan driver’s license would have been cause for grave concern. Though it was, at that point, too late to rescue Duncan, Walter still would have become fully aware that something had befallen him on the slope.

Seppi certainly played along with the deception. His denial in 2003 that the Duret board had come from his shop did not account for the boots and gaiters, which did. And even if his shop didn’t carry the Duret brand, it was his duty to say so on September 23, 1989.

Appendix 3: Correspondence with Dr. Rabl

Note: On October 17, 2011 Lynda sent the following letter to Dr. Rabl as an email attachment. In his reply on November 10, 2011, he returned her letter and provided his answers to her questions in the spaces below each question. To avoid confusion between the questions and answers, I have placed his answers in italics.

17 October 2011

To: Dr. Walter Rabl

Institut für Gerichtliche Medizin

Müllerstraße 44

6020 Innsbruck

From: Lynda MacPherson

1630 Prince of Wales Avenue

Saskatoon, SK

S7K 3E4 Canada

Dear Walter,

It’s been almost a year since we last corresponded. The years fly off the calendar, and yet no matter how much time passes, Bob and I cannot seem to put to rest the mystery of what happened to our son so long ago.

As you may recall, back in 2009 we asked an author named John Leake to examine Duncan’s story and possibly write a book about it. You met with him at your institute in the autumn of 2009. After studying the case for the last two years, John has raised a number of questions that we had not considered before. I must confess that some of them are rather disturbing.

You always treated us with warmth and kindness, so we really don’t like questioning your involvement in the case. On the other hand, we also don’t like to speculate, so we have decided simply to ask you the following questions. We would be very grateful if you would answer them at your convenience, either by e-mail or by regular mail. If you would like to discuss them on the phone, please let me know the best time to call and I will assume the long distance charge.

Sincerely, Lynda

Question 1: When we first met you at your institute on July 24, 2003, we told you we wanted an autopsy, because it was important for us to know how Duncan died. You told us that you had not been authorized to perform a forensic examination, only an identification of the body. When we repeatedly told you that we wanted to know the cause of Duncan’s death, why didn’t you tell us that we could simply order a private autopsy?

I cannot remember exactly what we discussed in our first meeting, but I’m sure if we had talked about it, I would have told you the possibility of a private autopsy (in our Institute for private autopsies we demand a mandate by a lawyer and the permission of the local health office is necessary).

Question 2: You took us to view Duncan’s body; he was covered with a sheet up to his chest; we did not uncover him. After we had viewed Duncan’s body, I commented that I was surprised how good he looked, given he’d been in a glacier for 14 years. You told me this was because, shortly after Duncan died, the snow around him melted, and the ice acted like a coffin, protecting his body. Why did you not mention the damage to his limbs?

The damage of his body was not unusual for a corpse that has been transported by the glacier for 14 years. We prepared the corpse for you, so that you would see a complete body (normally we refer the relatives to the funeral to see the body—this was an exception for you). I did not mention the damage to his limbs and cervical spine because of ethical reasons. Persons who see a dead body of a beloved relative should remind a quiet and peaceful situation.

Question 3: In September 2006, in your interview for the fifth estate documentary, you said that the damage to Duncan’s limbs was similar to damage you had seen on glacier corpses. However, you then stated: “But the injuries themselves, I could not examine exactly.” Why could you not examine the injuries exactly? What hindered you?

We did not unclothe the body and reconstruct the remaining bone fragments because the damage that could be seen without unclothing was similar to other glacier corpses.

Question 4: In the same interview, you said that you never unclothed the body. However, we know from your photographs that you handled and saw Duncan’s amputated limbs, which were not clothed. Though you mentioned a cut to the left side of Duncan’s head in your ID report, you did not mention the trauma to his limbs. Why not?

In my report I mentioned that parts of the body were in different bags and that the head was completely severed. The clothes were heavily damaged, so we could take samples for DNA-analysis without unclothing the whole body.

Question 5: If you assumed that the limb amputations and fractures were caused by the sheering force of ice flow, why didn’t you note this in your report?

The examination was ordered just to identify Duncan.

Question 6: Over the last few years, we have shown the photographs and radiographs of Duncan’s corpse to a number of forensic doctors, forensic anthropologists, radiologists, trauma surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, and an alpine accident investigator, and all of them agree that the injuries on Duncan’s limbs have the characteristic injury patterns of contact with machinery. Given your extensive training and experience in forensic medicine, it is hard for us to understand why you didn’t share this perception—at least enough to recognize that the injuries to Duncan’s limbs warranted investigation. According to the Innsbruck public prosecutor Richard Freyschlag, you never contacted his office to express concern about the injuries to Duncan’s limbs. Did you really see no cause for concern that these injuries were caused by machinery, and not by glacier ice movement?

Usually the police has the contact with the public prosecutor—so in Duncan`s case too. I am still convinced that the damage to Duncans body originated from the movement of the glacier.

Question 7: You told us that in your estimation, Duncan probably died from non-asphyctic suffocation. Did you rule out the possibility that he had died as a result of the massive trauma to his limbs? If so, how did you rule this out?

I cannot imagine a situation where (only) injuries to the limbs (both arms and legs) and the cervical spine (decapitation) occur without any fracture of ribs, skull or pelvis. The assumption of the cause of death was made according to my general experience.

Question 8: If you were not authorized to perform a forensic examination of Duncan’s body at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, how were you authorized to requisition a CT scan of the body from the Uni-Klinik’s Department of Radiology?

I was not officially authorized to order the CT scan. Because of your request I contacted my colleague Dr. Waldenberger and he made it possible to do the CT of Duncan.

Question 9: After the CT examination was performed on July 31, 2003, why did you not promptly send us the complete set of images and the radiologist’s report?

I did not get the report earlier. In November 2003 I wrote an e-mail and mentioned that I did not get the x-rays until then.

Question 10: When you finally did send us four digital radiographs on November 21, 2003, why did you not include an image of Duncan’s destroyed left leg?

Because Dr. Waldenberger just made CT-scans from the torso. I think this had technical reasons and the main question was whether serious injuries of the thorax, pelvis or spine occurred or not.

Question 11: According to Dr. Waldenberger, you requested the CT examination solely for us, as Duncan’s case was officially closed. This suggests that you knew in advance that the CT scan would not reveal anything suspicious or inconsistent with a simple crevasse fall. Yet you told us that the CT examination could help to determine how Duncan had died, or at least to confirm that he had not died from violent actions that are often associated with bone fractures. Likewise, Dr. Knapp at the Bezirkshauptmannschaft told our Vice-consul William Douglas that the CT scan was performed to determine the possible presence of fractures. This gave us and our consular representative the impression that the cause of Duncan’s death was being investigated. Can you explain the discrepancy between what you told Dr. Waldenberger and what you told us?

I requested the examinations just for you without any previous suggestion. Dr.Knapp had nothing to do with this CT.

Question 12: Given that Duncan’s limbs had, in fact, sustained multiple, segmental fractures, why weren’t these fractures scanned in the CT examination and analyzed in a report? If these fractures were scanned and analyzed, where are the images and report?

See Q10

Question 13: Why was Duncan’s radiological examination filed under the alias “Wissenschaft Waldi” and the false birthdate of July 13, 2003?

Every CT-examination is registered. For the system a patients name and birthdate is needed. For scientific reasons (“Wissenschaft”; “Waldi” is the abbreviation for Waldenberger) examinations can be made by the radiologists without an invoice by the hospital.

Question 14: According to Dr. Jaschke, in cases such as Duncan’s, “the Department of Radiology reports all findings to the Department of Forensic Medicine.” Where is Dr. Waldenberger’s report, and why didn’t you send us a copy of it?

I did not get an official report because this was not an official investigation. Dr. Waldenberger told me his scientific opinion and this is what I told you (and Derrick).

Question 15: In a letter to Vice-consul Douglas, dated March 26, 2004, Dr. Knapp stated that “the exact cause of death was established by the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine.” Do you know the source of Knapp’s information?

No, this is not true.

Question 16: In his interview with the fifth estate, Werner Pürstl, Justice Ministry Section Head for Penal Law, stated: “The body was of course examined externally; there were no indications of a violent act against the deceased and there was a very obvious explanation for the events.” Do you know the source of Pürstl’s information?

No. I never had contact with Pürstl.

Question 17: In your emails of December 5, 2003 and October 6, 2004, you discouraged us from filing a lawsuit against the Stubai Glacier because you claimed that “the definite cause of death remains unclear.” Given that knowing the cause of Duncan’s death was critical for building our case against the Stubai Glacier, and given that we repeatedly told you our desire to learn the cause of death, I come back to Question 1: Why didn’t you tell us that we had the right to order a private forensic examination of our son’s body?

See Q1

Sources

This book is the result of two and a half years of intense research, building on decades of inquiry by Lynda and Bob MacPherson, plus research conducted by seasoned investigative reporters for the fifth estate, and by the Austrian investigative journalist Florian Skrabal. Lynda MacPherson’s meticulous notes, which she took at every phase of her twenty-year quest, are an invaluable record, as are her email correspondence and the hundreds of pages of External Affairs and Interpol cables, memos, and letters that she obtained through her Access to Information requests.

Through tremendous effort and persistence, Lynda was also able to obtain copies of several Austrian police reports. Though none of them have the character of a serious investigative report, they nevertheless contain a lot of information. They also provide a clear record of what the authorities didn’t do, thus showing how the cover-up of Duncan’s death was achieved more by means of omission than active falsification.

The following are the primary sources.

Records

1. Death Certificate for Duncan Alvin MacPherson, filled out by Dr. Kurt Somavilla, July 21, 2003. Report of Death for Duncan Alvin MacPherson, filled out by Dr. Kurt Somavilla and signed by undertaker Josef Heidegger, July 30, 2003.

2. Request for Notification of Next of Kin from the Security Directorate of Tyrol to the Canadian Embassy in Vienna, July 18, 2003.

3. Austrian Press Association (APA) press release about the discovery of Duncan MacPherson’s body, July 19, 2003.

4. Report of Gendarmerie Commander Franz Hofer to Canadian Consul Ian Thomson, October 18, 1989.

5. Report of the Tyrolean Security Directorate to the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, undated, sent in October of 1989.

6. Report of Inspector Brecher for the Innsbruck Public Prosecutor pertaining to Chiu accident, August 10, 1988.

7. Report of Inspector Brecher for the Innsbruck Court pertaining Duncan’s disappearance, August 8, 1990.

8. Report of Inspector Klotz for the Innsbruck Court, January 14, 1990.

9. Report of Provincial Gendarmerie Chief Baumel for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, June 29, 1994.

10. Report of Inspector Krappinger for the Innsbruck Public Prosecutor, September 14, 2003.

11. Forensic Identification Report of Dr. Walter Rabl for Dr. Bernhard Knapp, director of the security department of the Innsbruck District Administrative Office, July 29, 2003.

12. Memo of Public Prosecutor Thomas Schirhakl in the matter of Duncan MacPherson, July 21, 2003.

13. I.D. Report of District Inspector Klingenschmid for Knapp, July 22, 2003.

14. Report of Inspector Jungmann, July 22, 2003.

15. Report of Inspector Ortner, July 23, 2003.

16. Statement of Michael Tanzer, head of Stubai Glacier slope operations, to Inspector Krappinger, dated July 23, 2003.

17. Statement of Guenther Mueller, deputy slope supervisor at the Stubai Glacier, to Inspector Krappinger, August 7, 2003.

18. Statement of Walter Mueller, slope supervisor at the Stubai Glacier, to Inspector Krappinger, July 23, 2003.

19. Statement of Walter Hinterhoelzl, snowboarding instructor at Stubai Glacier, to Innsbruck Examining Magistrate Wiesholzer, March 1, 1990

20. Statement of Walter Hinterhoelzl to Examining Magistrate Wiesholzer, September 13, 1990.

21. Statement of Walter Hinterhoelzl to Inspector Brecher, August 14, 1990.

22. Statement of Daniela Widi, girlfriend of Walter Hinterhoelzl, to Examining Magistrate Wiesholzer, September 13, 1990.

23. Statement of Josef “Seppi” Repetschnig to Inspector Brecher, August 13, 1990.

24. Statement of Helmut Tanzer, slope supervisor at the Stubai Glacier, to Inspector Brecher, pertaining to the August 4, 1988 fatal crevasse fall of Chung Yin Chiu, August 5, 1988.

25. Statement of Helmut Tanzer to Inspector Brecher pertaining to the August 9, 1989 disappearance of Duncan MacPherson, August 13, 1990.

26. Statement of Georg Hofer, construction worker, to Examining Magistrate Wiesholzer, August 24, 1990.

27. Slope Maintenance and Rescue Service Log for the Eisgrat Station at the Stubai Glacier from August 8-11, 1989.

28. Photos of discovery site, taken by Inspector Jungmann on July 18, 2003.

29. Photos of Duncan’s corpse, snowboarding equipment, and clothing taken by Inspector Klingenschmid on July 22, 2003.

30. Photos of Duncan’s corpse, taken by Dr. Rabl on July 23, 2003.

31. Photos of Chiu’s accident scene, taken by Inspector Brecher on August 5, 1988.

32. Photos of Schaufelferner, taken by Canadian tourist Judy Wigmore on August 9, 1989.

33. Radiographs of Duncan’s corpse, taken by Dr. Waldenberger on July 31, 2003.

34. Canadian External Affairs memos and cables from September 21 to October 14, 1989.

35. RCMP and Interpol cables from September 21 to October 14, 1989.

36. Canadian Foreign Affairs memos, cables, and correspondence from July 19, 2003 to March 26, 2004.

37. Lynda MacPherson’s email correspondence with Dr. Rabl from September 5, 2003 to November 10, 2011.

38. Parliamentary Inquiry submitted by Austrian MP Peter Pilz to Justice Minister Claudia Bandion-Ortner on June 29, 2009. Bandion-Ortner’s written reply, August 28, 2009.

Major Articles and Documentaries about Duncan MacPherson

1. “Bitte melde dich!” Sat. 1, broadcast on November 25, 1993.

2. “Brave Soul,” by Eric Adelson, ESPN, June 25, 2004.

3. “The Man in the Ice,” by Chris Jones, Esquire, December 31, 2004.

4. “The Iceman,” CBC the fifth estate, broadcast on November 8, 2006.

5. “Auf duennem Eis,” by Florian Skrabal, DATUM, September 1, 2009.

Glaciers and Glacier Corpses

1. Ambach, E. / Tributsch, W. / Buffers, P. / Rabl, W., “Unusual discovery of two cadavers in a glacier—Forensic and glacier-related aspects.” In: Contributions to the Legal Medicine 49, 1991, pp. 285-288.

2. Ambach, E. / Ambach, W. / Tributsch, W. / Henn, R. / Unterdorfer, H., “Corpses released from glacier ice: Glaciological and forensic aspects” J. Wilderness Med 3, 1992, pp. 372-376.

3. Ambach E./ Ambach W./ Tributsch W., “Casualties Immersed in Glacier Ice: Clear and Doubtful Cases from a Glaciological View”

4. Benn, Douglas and Evans, David, Glaciers and Glaciation, Hodder Education, 1997.

5. Clelland, Mike and Tyson, Andy, Glacier Mountaineering, Falcon Guides, 2009.

6. Cuffey, K.M. and Patterson, W.S.B., The Physics of Glaciers, Fourth Edition, Academic Press, 2010.

7. Deem, James, Bodies from the Ice, Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

8. Quigley, Christine, Modern Mummies, McFarland & Company, 1998.

9. Simpson, Joe, Touching the Void, Harper & Row, 1988.

10. Spindler, Konrad, The Man in the Ice, Three Rivers Press, 1995.

Austrian Law and Regulations of Medical Practice

1. Das österreichische Strafgesetzbuch

2. Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch

3. OGH Entscheidung, Rosi G*** wider Oe*** G*** Gesellschaft mbH & Co KG, Soelden, Geschaeftszahl 7Ob577/88, June 30, 1988.

4. Tiroler Krankenanstaltengesetz

5. Leitner, Barbara, “Todesursachenstatistik und Obduktionen,” Oesterreichische Aerztezeitung, May 10, 2009.

6. Handbuch Medizinrecht für die Praxis, Memmer, Aigner, Kletecka, MANZ’sche Verlag 2011.

Heinrich Klier and the Stubai Glacier

1. “Sieben Schutzenengel und die Berge,” Gloria Staud, Fiesta, 02/2006.

2. “HEIMAT BIST DU GROSSER SOEHNE,” Rainer Hammerle, SAISON, 2004/2005

3. Schönauer, Helmuth, Editor: “Heinrich Klier: Bergsteiger, Journalist, Dichter, Freiheitskämpfer und Unternehmer,” Tiroler Identitäten, Band 1, 2006.

4. Chronik Stubaier Gletscher, www.stubaier-gletscher.com/de/service/chronik/

5. Klier, Heinrich, Bergwind und Träume: Novelle der Sehnsucht, Bergverlag Rother, 1955.

6. Klier, Heinrich, Stubai: schoenes Tal, Loewenzahn, 2000.

Other unsolved cases of foreign citizens who died of unnatural causes in Austria

1. ORF2 Thema report on Raven Vollrath, Zoran Dobric producer.

2. ORF2 Thema report on Susi Greiner, Zoran Dobric producer.

ORF.at Tirol, “Fall Vollrath kein Einzelfall?” 22.2. 2008 http://tirv1.orf.at/stories/258620

3. “Spuren von Stichen entdeckt,” Jolf Schneider, Südthüringer Zeitung, 05.12.2008.

4. “Weiter auf der Suche nach Antworten,” ibid., 11.11.2011

5. Letter of District Medical Officer Siegfried Walch describing the scene where Raven Vollrath’s body was discovered, 11.01.2007.

6. “Tote im Fluss: Verfahren um Slowakin eingestellt,” Georgia Meinhart and Manfred Seeh, Die Presse, 30.06. 2011.

7. “Der nasse Tod im Widerspruch,” Markus Rohrhofer, Der Standard, 19.05.2009.

8. Leidenfrost, Martin, Die Tote im Fluss, Residenz Verlag, 2009.

9. “Zu wenig Obduktionen: „Wien optimal für perfekten Mord,“ Manfred Seeh, Die Presse, 20.12.2007.

Acknowledgments

Researching and writing this book would not have been possible without the boundless support and patience of my wife Johanna. Special thanks to Dick Penniman, Sohrab Gollogly, Lynne Herold, and David Evans for sharing their time and expertise with me. I am also indebted to Rob McQuilkin, Gabriel Reeve, and Joyce Pharriss for their judicious editing, and to Matt Jones for his cover graphics.

Throughout this book I quote experts on a number of subjects, and I am deeply grateful to all of them. I would also like to thank my mother, Kathy Leake, for her constant encouragement and help. My greatest acknowledgement goes to Lynda and Bob MacPherson, who never tired of answering my questions, and never got offended when I contested their views.

About the Author

Born in Dallas, Texas, John Leake went to Vienna, Austria on a graduate school scholarship and ended up living in the city for over a decade, working as a freelance writer and translator. His first book, Entering Hades, was a New York Times Sunday Book Review “Editors’ Choice,” a Men’s Vogue “Best Book of 2007,” and the inspiration of The Infernal Comedy, starring John Malkovich.

For more information about Leake and his first book, please visit his Facebook author’s page or enteringhades.com

Copyright

Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery Copyright © 2011 by John Leake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Content

John Leake
COLD A LONG TIME
An Alpine Mystery

The Snow Man

Prologue

Chapter 1: A Nightmare

Chapter 2: Searching

Chapter 3: “Just get rid of those people.”

Chapter 4: The Red Opel

Chapter 5: The Snowboard Instructor’s Story

Chapter 6: “I think you should get on with your lives.”

Chapter 7: The Good Witch of Gmunden

Chapter 8: The Hut Manager’s Story

Chapter 9: “The snowboard and boots have been returned.”

Chapter 10: The Note under the Door

Chapter 11: Revelation

Chapter 12: The Ice Man

Chapter 13: The Amnesiac

Chapter 14: The Psychic

Chapter 15: The Corpse

Chapter 16: An Alternative to Autopsy

Chapter 17: The Elephant in the Room

Chapter 18: Bones on the Ice

Chapter 19: “Do not stand at my grave and weep”

Chapter 20: Something Sinister

Chapter 21: The CT Scan

Chapter 22: Banana Republic

Chapter 23: Stonewalling

Chapter 24: “He wants you to speak for him.”

Chapter 25: So Strange and Dark

Chapter 26: The Need to Know

Chapter 27: A Maddening Puzzle

Chapter 28: Pretending

Chapter 29: Withholding

Chapter 30: “Quaint at the bottom, savage at the top”

Chapter 31: The Godfather of the Valley

Chapter 32: In the Holy Land of Tyrol

Chapter 33: “Is this a dangerous area?”

Chapter 34: Turning a Blind Eye

Chapter 35: Lynda’s Friend in Innsbruck

Chapter 36: Devastation

Chapter 37: The Cable

Chapter 38: Putting the Pieces Together

Chapter 39: Duncan’s Death

Chapter 40: Conclusions

Chapter 41: A Bigger Problem

Chapter 42: Closure

Appendices and Illustrations

Appendix 1: Physical Evidence

Appendix 2: The concealment of Duncan’s death in September of 1989

Appendix 3: Correspondence with Dr. Rabl

Sources

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright