WEBVTT - Were the Dyatlov Pass Hikers Murdered? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:11.520 Lauren Vogelbaum here. Today's episode contains some violent imagery, so 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:13.240 if you're not up for that, go ahead and skip 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:18.200 this one. Forget the unknowns surrounding Amelia Earhart's fate or 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.079 who really shot JFK. One of the most enduring unsolved 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:24.880 mysteries of the twentieth century is what happened to nine 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.000 hikers found dead at the now named diet Love Pass 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:30.800 in the Ural Mountains of Russia in nineteen fifty nine, 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.720 And although it happened decades ago, government officials in Russia 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.239 are once again working on a preliminary investigation that can 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.120 ultimately reopen the case in an effort to resolve its 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.440 unanswered questions and give some peace to the families who 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:48.760 never really understood how their loved ones died. The odd 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:51.440 series of events started in the winter of nineteen fifty nine, 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:54.640 when savvy outdoorsman and twenty three year old college student 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:57.800 Igor diet Love assembled a group of ten people to 0:00:57.840 --> 0:00:59.960 go on a skiing and hiking journey through a north 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:02.560 stretch of the Ural Mountains in what was then the 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.280 Soviet Union. The adventure wasn't just a group of crazy 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.160 college kids on a lark. They didn't pack booze or cigarettes. 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.800 It wasn't a vacation. It was a mission. All of them, 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.080 eight men and two women, were experienced outdoorsy types with 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:20.040 Grade two hiker certifications including ski experience, and the one 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:22.679 hundred and ninety mile that's three hundred and six kilometer 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.200 journey would qualify them for Grade three status, the highest 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:30.400 possible certification in the country at the time. On January 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.880 they set out into the cold and snow. Almost immediately, 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:36.640 one man felt physically unwell and turned back for home. 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:38.959 He couldn't have known at the time that his ailments 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.640 would save him from certain death. The nine others continued onward. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.680 On January thirty one, the group reached a critical way point, 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.240 a valley that marked the approach to what would eventually 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:52.960 come to be called Diet Love Pass. There they stashed 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:55.840 extra gear and food that they need for their return trip. 0:01:57.120 --> 0:01:59.960 The following morning, they began their ascent, hoping to push 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:02.640 over the pass and then make camp, but a fierce 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.120 snow storm pushed them off their intended route and onto 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.240 the slopes of a mountain which, in the language of 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.520 the indigenous people who lived there means dead mountain. The 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:13.560 altered route meant that the team had to choose a 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.840 new campsite rather than retreating to a more protected area. 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:19.919 They opted, for whatever reason, to camp on the mountains 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.680 exposed slopes. Perhaps they simply didn't want to lose the 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.200 ground they had gained. Maybe they were too cold and 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.560 weary to fall back. In any case, they pitched their 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.280 large shared tent, where they would soon be subjected to 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:35.640 temperatures that nose dived to around negative forty degrees in 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.080 both fahrenheit and celsius. Researchers know this much thanks to 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.040 journals and film recovered from the camp, but much of 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.079 what transpired during the next two days is hard to understand. 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:48.680 The group failed to arrive at a rendezvous point at 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.680 a predetermined time, so search and rescue teams, including army units, 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.320 set out to find them. Three weeks later, on February 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.600 ninety nine, the searchers finally located the rue and camp 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:05.160 amid a string of truly weird circumstances. How weird, let 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.359 us count the ways. The tent was half covered with snow, 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.720 torn open from the inside, was no one around the 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.960 group's belongings, including vital necessities like shoes, had been left behind. 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.480 A line of footprints indicated that the nine people had 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:22.639 walked away at normal speed, but some just wore one 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:26.120 shoe or were totally barefoot. About a third of a 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.280 mile that's about half a kilometer away, there was evidence 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:32.560 of a campfire along with the shoelace and mostly naked 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:37.000 remains of two group members. Within several hundred feet between 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:40.080 the campfire and the tent, they located three more bodies, 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:42.200 frozen in poses that made it seem as though they 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:46.120 were attempting to return to the camp. It wasn't until 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.200 May fourth of that year that the weather warmed enough 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.320 for investigators to track down the other dead, whose remains 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:53.800 were found a few dozen feet from the chaotic campfire. 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:58.040 Their bodies lodged in a creek bed. Autopsies show that 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.920 the first six hikers found died of hypothermia, but the 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.920 three found in the ravine suffered a variety of injuries, 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.840 including skull and chest fractures. One woman's eyes and tongue 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.480 were missing. Yet there was no sign of struggle, which 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:16.080 seemed to rule out foul play. Pictures recovered from cameras 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.640 at the scene seemed to portray a group that started 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.880 in high spirits but ended with dour and anxious faces, 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.280 perhaps because they thought they were lost, or maybe there 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:29.760 was some other danger afoot. One photo shows tree markings 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.440 made by local Muncie people. Another shows an unidentified figure 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.840 that some people believe could be an intruder or more outlandishly, 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:41.080 a yetti. Officials first suspected that the Munsey might have 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.200 been offended by the trespassers on their sacred land, causing 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.039 them to lash out in violence against the hikers, but 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.200 in the end, investigators concluded that no one else was 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.520 on the mountain when the hikers died. By the end 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.839 of May, the investigation was officially ended. The causes of 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:01.320 death were listed as compelling natural force. Some documents were 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.560 then classified, and the area was closed to public access 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:09.120 for years following the instant. Given the circumstances, you can 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:12.159 see how surviving family members might be unsatisfied with the 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:16.280 government's vague conclusion. In the vacuum of an actual explanation, 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.920 many wild theories took root. One postulates that there was 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.880 an avalanche, extreme high winds, or a wild animal attack. 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.160 Another tells of a possible lover's quarrel combined with a 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.799 psychedelic drug obtained from locals, causing a wild sequence of events. 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:34.520 Others think deep infrasound vibrations conjured by winds roaring over 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.400 the mountain pass incited panic in the group, since some 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.200 of the hiker's clothes were found to be radioactive. Perhaps 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:45.720 they stumbled unwittingly onto a military weapons experiment, And of 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:49.080 course there's a theory that aliens were involved. Locals later 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.159 told officials that had spotted unidentified flying objects over the 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:54.480 area the night of the deaths, though it was later 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.880 revealed that the military was testing parachute mines in the 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:01.000 region when the group was killed. Now more than sixty 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.600 years later, the cases escalated from regional authorities to a 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.200 federal branch of the country's Investigative Committee, which obtained all 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:11.640 relevant documents regarding the deaths as part of the research process. 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.040 To begin the fresh inquiry, officials whittled down their list 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.200 of possible causes to just three of the most likely hypotheses, 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.640 all of which centered on natural causes a hurricane, avalanche, 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.000 or snow slab. The idea was that did revisit the 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.640 area with those three possibilities in mind in hopes of 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.680 untangling the course of events, but investigators were dealt a 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.080 tough hand right from the start. None of the three 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.440 possibilities seems to explain why the hikers slashed through their 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.360 tent and fled without any clothes, or why there was 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.480 no real evidence that an avalanche had taken place. In fact, 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.279 in more than one hundred subsequent expeditions to the area, 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:53.560 no one has ever reported avalanches in that area, or 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.599 why the hiker's footprints were visible and not covered by snow, 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:01.960 further deflating the avalanche theory. Plus, although the tent collapsed laterally, 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:04.599 there was no evidence of horizontal force that would have 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:09.520 indicated sliding snow and ice. All of the strange circumstances 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:13.320 so puzzled Theodora Hadgitzka that she launched Diet Love Pass 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:16.480 dot com as a comprehensive archive of many documents and 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.080 images related to the case. Born in Bulgaria, she's one 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.160 of the few people who's taken the time to translate 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:24.920 the many Russian files into English and has created a 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.840 comprehensive database of all the photos, evidence, and theories, making 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.080 her an expert on the tragedy. In an email interview, 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:36.360 Hajitska said the information that's publicly available, either by ineptitude 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.840 or more ominously, by design, does not fully explain what 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.160 happened to the hikers. She's also far from convinced that 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.960 the government is trying to truly solve the case, rather 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.760 than using half measures to pacify families still yearning for answers. 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.280 After years of picking through the information, she has her 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.280 suspicions about what transpired on that frozen mountain. Her take 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:02.120 the hikers were murdered. Jetska thinks that something alarmed the 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.880 group and they clambered out of the tent. Then her 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.800 theory goes, armed people confronted them and there was a 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:11.880 brief scuffle. She said the hikers were marched down to 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.960 the tree line to die from exposure. They didn't know that. 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:18.400 They thought the perpetrators were after their belongings, so they complied. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:21.760 She thinks that's certain that their victims would quickly perish 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.400 in the life draining cold. The murderers wandered back to 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.880 the tent. Her theory goes that the half naked group 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:32.200 frantically and perhaps miraculously managed to start a campfire. Which 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.520 alerted their foes, who rushed back down the hill to 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:37.680 finish them off. By then, the three who were wearing 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.360 more substantial clothing, had moved away from the fire in 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.560 a bid to create a shallow snow down in which 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.680 to survive the night. But soon they two were found 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.680 killed and then dragged to the creek. A. Jitsica said, 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.480 it still lacks the who and why, but this scenario 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:56.079 explains the mysterious behavior of the hikers. It's a murder, 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:58.600 so it doesn't have to make sense. Little can be 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.280 safely deduced from the fact, but at least there's no 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.760 doubt that somebody helped them die. She feels certain that 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.679 the group was under attack in three separate instances, at 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:10.920 the tent, then the tree line, and then at the 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:15.240 snow den. She said the whole ordeal must have taken hours, 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:18.160 even if something scared them at the tent fireball avalanche. 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:20.600 YETI that something had to follow them to the cedar 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.880 after they had time to make the fire. That's because 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.720 building a fire does take time, which means that the 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:28.800 hikers were under the impression that they would make it 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.240 through the night. They also had time and energy to 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.480 make the den she believes this hypothesis shows a pattern 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.880 of assailants following the group and escalating the attack amid 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:42.760 unbearably cold and perhaps blizzard like conditions where confusion and 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:47.000 panic affected all parties. To date, Russian authorities have not 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.760 released a statement regarding what's still considered a preliminary investigation, 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:53.800 but they have assured the public that modern forensics and 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:58.520 analysis will be used during this phase. Perhaps, with new insights, 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.680 they'll finally rest real answers from the grips of an icy, 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:05.640 cold tragedy that seems frozen in time. Or maybe, just 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.440 maybe those who really know what happened on the slopes 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.959 of Dead Mountain will do everything they can to further 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.160 bury the truth in an avalanche of half truths and lies. 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.080 Today's episode was certain by Nathan Chandler and produced by 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:24.960 Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.000 How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.120 other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.440 and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:35.280 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:36.120 your favorite shows.