The low-resolution radiographs that Rabl sent on November 21, 2003 only inflamed the MacPhersons’ curiosity, so they asked for high-resolution copies, as well as copies of whatever photos he’d taken. These indicated that Duncan’s body had come into contact with machinery, but instead of suspecting Rabl of misleading her, Lynda told him by email of her growing concern that Duncan had been struck by Snowcat, and that she wanted to know his opinion about this possibility. She still considered him the best source of information, as he had seen Duncan’s body firsthand, and she continued to believe that he was her friend. His charm and proclamations of friendship had worked their enchantment so well that she still didn’t realize he was concealing things from her.
In his reply, he stopped short of denying that Duncan had interacted with a grooming machine. Instead, he claimed that, based on his experience, he didn’t see how Duncan could have been run over by a groomer without also sustaining serial rib fractures and pelvic fractures, and he furthermore didn’t see how Duncan could have been run over and pushed into a crevasse. In a very narrow sense, then, he was telling her the truth, but she didn’t realize that he was avoiding talking about the real issue. He did the same thing to me when he addressed Myriam Nafte’s hypothetical reconstruction of Duncan’s death rather than addressing the facts of his death.
Rabl’s response to Lynda’s query was a clever distraction, especially coming from a man in his position, but as he knew, the starting point of an investigation is the physical evidence, not the doctor’s prior experience with similar circumstances. For Rabl to glance at Duncan’s injuries and say, “I have never seen a Snowcat accident that didn’t result in serial rib fractures, so that must mean that Duncan didn’t have contact with a grooming machine or with any kind of machine,” is to make a joke of his profession and of deductive reasoning in general.
Not only did Rabl omit to mention Duncan’s amputated limbs before the body was cremated, he also discouraged Lynda from suing the Stubai Glacier “because the definite cause of death remains unclear.” If he believed that determining the cause of death was critical for determining whether the Stubai Glacier was responsible for the death, why didn’t he tell Lynda of her right to order a private forensic exam? Was he really acting as an impartial forensic doctor in this case, or was he serving some other interest?
Chapter 36: Devastation
“Was Rabl really being duplicitous with me the entire time?” Lynda asked me.
“I don’t know what other conclusion to draw,” I replied. This was so strange, almost unbelievable, and it left Lynda utterly confounded.
“Did he really pretend to be my friend and tell me so many lies?” she asked again, her voice quivering. “If that’s the case, it’s just so messed up and sad. How could he have drifted so far away from being an honest doctor?”
Over the following year, Lynda and I continued to analyze Dr. Rabl’s conduct, asking ourselves if there was a harmless explanation for all of his omissions. I also discussed it with other doctors, all of whom found it unusual if not downright bizarre.
But was it possible that we were missing or misinterpreting something? Ultimately we concluded that there was only one way to find out, so we sent Rabl a letter presenting all of the questions I had raised. His response (see Appendix 3) did nothing to defuse our suspicion, and it extinguished the last ray of hope in Lynda’s heart that it was all just a gigantic misunderstanding.
This book is addressed to the court of public opinion, so every reader may decide for himself what to make of Rabl’s conduct. For my part, I cannot escape the overwhelming perception that, so far from being the friend to Lynda that he constantly proclaimed himself to be, he was by far her greatest deceiver. To be sure, he didn’t foresee that his initial deception would oblige him to commit many additional acts of deception, thereby weaving an ever larger and more tangled web. Lynda’s relentless curiosity and persistence must have struck him as a curse.
In the end, what came back to haunt him were the two small photos of Duncan’s corpse that he’d initially shown to Lynda and Bob to prepare them for viewing the body. As they looked at the images, they didn’t ask about the limb injuries, nor did they request copies of the images at the end of their first meeting. Their request for copies at a subsequent meeting in Rabl’s office was apparently what derailed his CT trick.
I suspect that his initial plan was to show them only radiographs of the uninjured pelvis and thorax, which would indeed tell them “how Duncan didn’t die.” This is why he saved images of the thorax and pelvis in screen capture mode on August 8, 2003. However, he initially stopped short of sending these radiographs to the MacPhersons because he realized that they would probably compare them to the photographs (which they requested after he’d offered to take the CT scan) and wonder why the radiographs did not also show Duncan’s severed limbs.
And so Rabl decided to delay sending any and all images indefinitely with the hope that Lynda would eventually grow weary of asking for them and give up. Her persistence may have surprised him, as she’d already approved of cremation without first seeing the CT scan. She’d initially taken his word for it that the scan showed nothing to be concerned about, so why did she later insist on receiving a copy of it? He apparently didn’t anticipate that his failure to send it as promised would pique her curiosity.
At this point, the reader is probably wondering why Duncan’s body was transferred to Rabl’s institute in the first place, given that no forensic exam was officially performed. Rabl told the MacPhersons that it was strictly for identification; however, for the purpose of a dental identification, it wasn’t necessary to take Duncan’s entire body out of cold storage from the funeral home in Trins and to transport it to Innsbruck. His head, which was already packed in a separate sack, would have sufficed.
While Rabl maintained that he never examined or even unclothed the body, Bernhard Knapp at the District Government office told the Canadian Embassy that the body was transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for “dental identification and pathology.” It is possible that a proper exam was indeed originally planned in order to please the embassy. This would explain why, when Lynda confronted Dr. Somavilla about his claim on the death report that an autopsy was performed, he became so angry and insisted that he’d sent the body to Innsbruck. Did Knapp assure Somavilla that an autopsy was performed? One thing is certain: On March 26, 2004, Knapp assured Canadian Vice-consul Douglas that “the exact cause of death was determined by the Innsbruck Institute of Forensic Medicine.”
The effort to avoid performing a forensic exam apparently arose after Duncan’s body arrived at Rabl’s institute on July 22, 2003. At that point, Rabl must have noticed that the limb injuries resembled well-documented injuries caused by machinery. This added a much larger and more troubling dimension to the case, and it would have prompted the Canadians to demand a full investigation (which the Innsbruck authorities weren’t interested in doing). But then, like a deus ex machina, Vice-consul Douglas called Inspector Krappinger on the same morning and informed him “out of courtesy” that Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson would be arriving in Innsbruck without an embassy escort.
And so, while Knapp continued giving the Canadian Embassy the impression that Duncan’s body was being identified and examined to determine the cause of death, Rabl told the MacPhersons that he was only ordered to identify it. He then acted like a consoling undertaker, shed a crocodile tear, and didn’t mention the external signs of violence.