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?