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.