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.