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?
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.”