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.
“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.