Speaker 1: Alexey could not believe what he was hearing. As he
Speaker 1: sat dumbfounded in the cold and sterile office in front
Speaker 1: of three stone faced party officials. He begged them to reconsider.
Speaker 1: It had been a week since the body of his
Speaker 1: twenty three year old son, Georgie had been discovered, and
Speaker 1: although Alexey had long since given up hope that his
Speaker 1: son might be found alive, he had not been prepared
Speaker 1: for the grief of finally knowing. Now having made the
Speaker 1: trip to Evedeal, he was at the very least hoping
Speaker 1: to take his son's body back home with him to Spurtlovsk.
Speaker 1: But the party officials had other ideas. A decision had
Speaker 1: been made that all of the bodies would be buried
Speaker 1: together in Evedal in a mass grave. The families were
Speaker 1: invited to attend, but there would be no public announcement
Speaker 1: and only a small obelisk to mark the spot. But
Speaker 1: Swerdlovsk is his home, implored Alexey. That is where he lived,
Speaker 1: where he made friends. And did we bury him in Evedal?
Speaker 1: How are we to visit him? But the decision was final,
Speaker 1: and besides, they said, all the other families had agreed
Speaker 1: to it. Two by two, the parents of eager Zena, Yuri,
Speaker 1: and Roostick were called in to face the hastily assembled
Speaker 1: committee and given the exact same distressing news, each being
Speaker 1: informed that the others had consented to it. The parents
Speaker 1: struggled to process what they were being told. Not only
Speaker 1: did it seem the authorities were trying to cover the
Speaker 1: whole instant up, but they were asking the parents to
Speaker 1: become complicit in it too. The Party was in effect
Speaker 1: asking for nothing less than their co operation in erasing
Speaker 1: the history of their children's lives. Like most people in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, the parents were well aware of the
Speaker 1: length the state would go to preserve their methods, but
Speaker 1: not to them, not this time, and it was of
Speaker 1: course a lie. Not one of the sets of parents
Speaker 1: had agreed to their plan. On realizing the deception, the
Speaker 1: parents fought back and eventually the party relented, but only
Speaker 1: on one condition. The students could be buried in spurred Lovsk,
Speaker 1: but the funerals were to be held together to minimize
Speaker 1: the attention. With the exception of Georgis, who was a
Speaker 1: Russian Orthodox, would be granted a separate funeral at an
Speaker 1: appropriate location. The funeral procession would also be strictly controlled,
Speaker 1: with the coffins being taken directly from the morgue to
Speaker 1: the cemetery. The parents had requested that the bodies be
Speaker 1: taken past the Ural Polytechnic Institute campus, but permission was refused. However,
Speaker 1: attempts to minimize the publicity of the event would ultimately
Speaker 1: prove futile in a rare moment of public defiance over
Speaker 1: state control. On Monday, the ninth of March nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: over a thousand mourners touched by the death of the
Speaker 1: young hikers took to the streets to join the procession. Together,
Speaker 1: they marched with the families as they made their way
Speaker 1: to Mikhailovskoy's Cemetery behind two trucks laden with the bodies
Speaker 1: of Yuri Rustick Zena and eager twelve year old Yuri
Speaker 1: Kon Savage lived with his parents in the east of
Speaker 1: the city center, just opposite the cemetery. He watched in
Speaker 1: silence from his apartment window as the mourners slowly drifted
Speaker 1: into view. Yuri didn't know then just how exactly the
Speaker 1: tragedy of what happened to the Diatlov team would shape
Speaker 1: his life, but on this morning. What preoccupied Yuri was
Speaker 1: not the bodies of the students laid out in their
Speaker 1: open caskets, or the sheer number of people attending their funeral,
Speaker 1: but rather a handful of suspicious looking men dotted about
Speaker 1: the crowd. Unlike the rest of the crowd, these men,
Speaker 1: dressed in civilian clothes, seemed to pay little attention to
Speaker 1: the bodies or the eventual service that took place. Instead,
Speaker 1: they seemed to be watching the people. Yuri could have
Speaker 1: sworn they were k GB, members of the secret Soviet police,
Speaker 1: sent to keep a close eye on the proceedings. After
Speaker 1: the bodies were finally laid to rest, with Georgy's being
Speaker 1: buried the following day, Ordinarily, the families might now finally
Speaker 1: be able to grieve, but there was some thing glaringly absent.
Speaker 1: Despite the bodies having been discovered ten days previously, there
Speaker 1: was still no hint of an explanation from the authorities
Speaker 1: as to just how exactly the students had died. What
Speaker 1: could possibly have driven nine experienced and strong hikers from
Speaker 1: the shelter and warmth of their tent to meet their
Speaker 1: deaths amidst the driving snow and Subsei temperatures outside, and
Speaker 1: lest it be forgotten, there were still four people unaccounted for.
Speaker 1: The day after Georgy's funeral, friends and family gathered together
Speaker 1: at the Kryvanischenko home for Georgy's wake. It was, of course,
Speaker 1: a somber affair, but one also unsurprisingly dominated the mystery
Speaker 1: of his death. Despite the secrecy of the police investigation,
Speaker 1: due to the large number of volunteers involved, rumors had
Speaker 1: inevitably begun to circulate. Time and again. Attention seemed to
Speaker 1: turn to the mysterious lights and orbs witnessed in the
Speaker 1: surrounding area. But Georgi's father, Alexey, had grown weary of
Speaker 1: such talk, deeming it irrelevant since the lights had been
Speaker 1: seen two weeks after the students were thought to have died,
Speaker 1: and so it was with little patience that he received
Speaker 1: two more students that night, eager to share their story
Speaker 1: of strange lights spotted in the night sky. I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear it, said Alexey. But no, they said,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. We saw the lights on February the first,
Speaker 1: the same night that Datlov's team left their tent. The
Speaker 1: two students had been part of another team led by
Speaker 1: UPI teacher Annatolly Shumkov. The team had been climbing Kisstop Mountain,
Speaker 1: roughly twenty five miles to the south of where Daklov's
Speaker 1: team had camped on Kolatsiakl when they saw it. With
Speaker 1: the mercury dropping to as low as minus thirty degrees centigrade,
Speaker 1: the team were just about to begin their descent when
Speaker 1: there was a sudden flash of silver in the sky,
Speaker 1: followed by a white spark that was seen flying upwards
Speaker 1: from the O'tauton Valley. Moments later, an eerie sound of
Speaker 1: thunder rumbled across the mountain. As Shumkov later recounted, this
Speaker 1: thing flew silently and slowly from the south to the
Speaker 1: north over the ridge of the Urals. It was glowing
Speaker 1: quite brightly the way it illuminated the hovering clouds at
Speaker 1: the height of two point five to three kilometers, it
Speaker 1: was very strange. For Alex c and many others, it
Speaker 1: was hard to resist the increasingly popular theory that the
Speaker 1: students had unwittingly strayed into the path of some kind
Speaker 1: of secret weapons test. In nineteen forty five, unbeknownst to
Speaker 1: most of the planet, a new world was about to emerge.
Speaker 1: It began at five twenty nine am on July sixteenth,
Speaker 1: with the detonation of a bomb in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Hornada del Muerto Desert in New Mexico. The bomb
Speaker 1: was named Trinity, and its subsequent explosion marked the first
Speaker 1: successful deployment of the atomic bomb. Later that year, the
Speaker 1: atomic age would formally announce itself in a mushroom cloud
Speaker 1: of death and destruction when Little Boy and Fat Man
Speaker 1: were detonated over the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Speaker 1: The bombs would go some way to ushering an end
Speaker 1: to the largest scale global conflict the human race had
Speaker 1: ever known, but it would also mark the beginning of
Speaker 1: a seemingly endless arms race that to this day continues
Speaker 1: to haunt every militant aspect of major foreign diplomacy. The
Speaker 1: Stalin's government in the US SR, the destruction of Hiroshima
Speaker 1: and Nagasaki made it clear just how far they lagged
Speaker 1: behind the military might and ingenuity of the United States.
Speaker 1: What followed was an intense and accelerated program of nuclear development,
Speaker 1: but also an intense culture of military secrecy in competition
Speaker 1: with the US, fueled by the mutual distrust of each
Speaker 1: other's ideologies. It was a program that, in its eagerness
Speaker 1: to establish itself, would result in a number of catastrophic
Speaker 1: new Clear disasters, such as the Kishtim disaster that Georgi,
Speaker 1: only two years previously, had helped to clean up. Could
Speaker 1: it be that the students had found themselves pitching their
Speaker 1: tent under a secret weapons testing zone. It was a
Speaker 1: theory making increasing sense to those who had little information
Speaker 1: to go on. However, for lead investigator lev Ivanov, who
Speaker 1: was in full possession of all available evidence, what puzzled
Speaker 1: him the most was that although the multiple sightings of
Speaker 1: strange lights may have been consistent with ballistic weapons, the
Speaker 1: injuries to the bodies weren't. It's possible, of course, that
Speaker 1: the sound of such weapons detonating nearby might have caused
Speaker 1: the team to flee the tent in a panic. But
Speaker 1: might the strange lights have been something else entirely, something
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more other worldly. Nikolai Aniumov was a
Speaker 1: local Manci tribesman who had been part of the team
Speaker 1: that first examined the hiker's tent. Like everyone else, he
Speaker 1: had been deeply troubled by the student's disappearance, but the
Speaker 1: real fear he harbored would remain unspoken. That was until
Speaker 1: the first mention of the orbs in the sky. For
Speaker 1: the Mansie. All around the region where the bodies were discovered,
Speaker 1: they talk of gateways to another world. Perhaps the students
Speaker 1: had upset the spirits and this was their revenge, he thought.
Speaker 1: It is said that somewhere deep in the Earls lies
Speaker 1: a sacred daific idol known as Zolotire Barber or the
Speaker 1: Golden Woman. Made entirely from gold. It is thought to
Speaker 1: have been hidden somewhere deep in the forest, perhaps in
Speaker 1: a cave, surrounded by other worldly treasures. In ancient times,
Speaker 1: soldiers dressed in scarlet robes would fiercely guard the path
Speaker 1: to the idol, and no one else had the right
Speaker 1: to see her or go anywhere near the cave. The
Speaker 1: origins of the idol are shrouded in mystery. Some believe
Speaker 1: it to have been brought to the region by ob
Speaker 1: Ugrian warriors as far back as the fifth century. The
Speaker 1: Obugrians were ancestors of the Mansie, who, alongside Alaric, the
Speaker 1: king of the Visigoths, conquered Rome in four hundred and ten.
Speaker 1: Some say that after their victory, the Obugrians forged the
Speaker 1: sacred idol, then carried it back to their lands to
Speaker 1: be worshiped as a goddess, though some others believe it
Speaker 1: may have originated from as far away as India or
Speaker 1: even Sumeria. There is further dispute as to just which
Speaker 1: god exactly was thought to be embodied by the idol,
Speaker 1: with some linking it to the Manci goddess Yours Naianki,
Speaker 1: known as the mother of celestial fire and everything living,
Speaker 1: with others believing it instead to be the goddess kaltesh Anki,
Speaker 1: or Mother Earth. Kaltesh Anki is the wife of Numi Turam,
Speaker 1: the ultimate supreme being, and is known to be responsible
Speaker 1: for the length of human lives. Once kaltesh Anki asked
Speaker 1: Numi Turam to strengthen the earth with an iron belt,
Speaker 1: and he answered the request by creating the Ural Mountains.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o four, the explorer Konstantin Nossiloff wrote of
Speaker 1: meeting an old man on his travels named Sava. The
Speaker 1: man claimed to have been blinded after mistakenly coming across
Speaker 1: the golden idol, whom he maintained appeared to him as
Speaker 1: an ordinary naked woman sitting down holding a golden plate
Speaker 1: in her hands. Some say the Golden Woman isn't golden
Speaker 1: at all, but is in fact luminous, as if made
Speaker 1: purely from light. Had the hikers stumbled into this sacred
Speaker 1: land and be mercilessly punished as a result, it might
Speaker 1: account for the strange lights, perhaps, but not why such
Speaker 1: an experienced team would be drawn out from the safety
Speaker 1: of their camp into the freezing wild of the exposed mountain.
Speaker 1: But for this Nikolai had another theory. It is said
Speaker 1: that kaltesh Anki, worried about how she might defend herself
Speaker 1: from enemies, asked Numiterurum to find a way to protect her.
Speaker 1: In return, he created the Menkfee, a race of monstrous
Speaker 1: creatures sometimes described as werewolves, but other times just as giants.
Speaker 1: It is said that these menk Fee or menk also
Speaker 1: known as Compoland, continue to guard the Golden Woman to
Speaker 1: this day. Nancy author Olga Koshmanova has spent over thirty
Speaker 1: years collecting evidence of the Kompoland. She believes that many
Speaker 1: of the Manci culture's rules were formed due to their
Speaker 1: contact with these terrifying creatures such as it being forbidden
Speaker 1: to break wood when it wasn't needed, or the need
Speaker 1: to be silent when in the forest, and its being
Speaker 1: especially forbidden to sing loud songs or spoil the forest,
Speaker 1: and when in the woods at night, one must always
Speaker 1: keep the fire burning. Writing in a book titled A
Speaker 1: Look from Behind, a reference to the strange sensation a
Speaker 1: person feels when they un knowingly step into the territory
Speaker 1: of the compoland, Olga writes of that fateful night of
Speaker 1: February the first, nineteen fifty nine. However, she is not
Speaker 1: writing about the deattle of team, but a night when
Speaker 1: she claims to have come into contact with a compos
Speaker 1: Koshmanova also writes that once travelers have entered the forbidden territory,
Speaker 1: they begin to hear things strange, terrifying noises like whistling
Speaker 1: or the thumping of feet. The sound reverberates so as
Speaker 1: to cause a visceral reaction that induces terror and nausea.
Speaker 1: Had the team been scared from the tent perhaps by
Speaker 1: such a sound, could it have been a compolan that
Speaker 1: smashed rustic skull and battered Zena to the ground. It
Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't be the first time a compolan had been
Speaker 1: held responsible for murder. Koshmanova cites at least two incidences
Speaker 1: where the forest Giant had been held accountable, once in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six in the village of Shamia, a child
Speaker 1: had been ripped to shreds with his head put on
Speaker 1: a stake, and another time where a woman had been
Speaker 1: found with her jaw ripped completely off. But with the
Speaker 1: whereabouts of four of the students still unknown, and without
Speaker 1: all the bodies to examine, it would be impossible to
Speaker 1: formulate a comprehensive theory of just what had taken place.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for the search teams, the weather was about to
Speaker 1: take a severe turn for the worst. Many of the searches,
Speaker 1: saddened by the discovery of the first five bodies, had
Speaker 1: become exhausted and demoralized. Maslennikov, who had been leading the
Speaker 1: search team on the ground, requested that the search be suspended,
Speaker 1: but the commission refused to call it off, deciding instead
Speaker 1: that a new team was needed. Maslennikov would at first
Speaker 1: be replaced by Abraham Kickhoin and then later by Colonel
Speaker 1: Georgy Ortiakov. The search for the missing bodies would continue
Speaker 1: to little avail, but something remarkable was about to come
Speaker 1: to light, some thing that had been hidden in plain sight.
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Speaker 1: podcast Today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast. It was temple of the original investigator who
Speaker 1: noticed it first something about the rips at the back
Speaker 1: of the team's tent that hadn't seemed consistent with wear
Speaker 1: and tear or weather damage, but it wasn't until weeks
Speaker 1: later that his concerns would be taken into consideration thanks
Speaker 1: to the eagle eye of a seamstress. After Boris Slobsoff
Speaker 1: had discovered the tent, it had been gathered up and taken,
Speaker 1: along with the items at the camp, to the Evedell
Speaker 1: Department of Internal Affairs for further examination. Vladimir Koyativ, a
Speaker 1: young investigator on the case, was having his uniform mended
Speaker 1: when the seamstress took one look at the tent and
Speaker 1: concluded also that the ribs were not rips at all,
Speaker 1: but rather cuts made deliberately by something very sharp. It
Speaker 1: was clear to her that someone or something had cut
Speaker 1: open the tent on the night that the students died.
Speaker 1: The tent was immediately taken to Sperdlovsk Forensic Lab for
Speaker 1: closer inspection by senior forensic expert Henrietta Cherkena. If the
Speaker 1: cuts had indeed been made, it would add fuel to
Speaker 1: the burgeoning theory that the team had most likely been
Speaker 1: attacked by someone or something in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: and chased from the tent, left to die in the snow.
Speaker 1: It didn't take cherkena very long to reach her conclusion.
Speaker 1: The cuts had indeed been made by a sharp object,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't been made from outside the tent. They
Speaker 1: had come from the inside. The revelation did little to
Speaker 1: help uncover the mystery of what led the team to
Speaker 1: their deaths, but what was clear was that whatever had
Speaker 1: caused such a panic that an experienced team would rip
Speaker 1: open their own tent just to be able to escape
Speaker 1: into minus twenty degree temperatures must have been utterly terrifying.
Speaker 1: It was further evidence that the students were forced from
Speaker 1: their tent, whether by a perceived fear or by something
Speaker 1: with agency. And then a further discovery comes to light
Speaker 1: when investigators examined the team's belongings. There came across the
Speaker 1: three expedition cameras of Eager, Rustick, and Gyurgi. When the
Speaker 1: photos were developed, there seemed nothing untoward at first. The photos,
Speaker 1: eighty eight in all, taken over the nine day period,
Speaker 1: reveal a touching account of the team's journey, culminating in
Speaker 1: some final shots that are believed to show the team
Speaker 1: setting up camp on their final fateful day. And then
Speaker 1: there was the final exposure on Georgy's camera. As the
Speaker 1: photographic paper swished around in the developing tray, a strange
Speaker 1: image was beginning to emerge. The whole frame seemed to
Speaker 1: be in darkness, as if taken at night, but in
Speaker 1: the top left hand corner, a trail of light seems
Speaker 1: to be descending from the sky. The discovery of the
Speaker 1: photograph has Ivanof turning once again to the reports of
Speaker 1: mysterious lights. But then suddenly everything changed. One morning in
Speaker 1: mid March, Ivanof announced to his team that he would
Speaker 1: be leaving for Moscow, without giving any further information. Ivanof
Speaker 1: packed up his things and left. When he returned a
Speaker 1: few days later, it was as if he had been
Speaker 1: replaced by a completely different person. Gone was any talk
Speaker 1: of the orbs or strange lights in the sky. In April,
Speaker 1: Valdislav Karelin was called back in for questioning, at which
Speaker 1: point he was advised by Ivanov to hold his tongue
Speaker 1: on any theories relating to the mysterious lights. It has
Speaker 1: been over two months since the last body was discovered.
Speaker 1: When on May the third Nancy tribesman Stepan Kurikov, is
Speaker 1: searching an area not far from where Yuri and Gyorgy's
Speaker 1: bodies were found, when he once again spots something irregular.
Speaker 1: Some branches of a tree seemed to have been removed
Speaker 1: with a knife. Newly appointed search leader, Colonel Georgy Ortiakov,
Speaker 1: orders a team of men to search the area immediately.
Speaker 1: As they probe with their avalanche poles, one of the
Speaker 1: team hits something. When he removes the pole, there is
Speaker 1: a piece of clothing attached to it. It must have
Speaker 1: come from at least six feet below the surface. Urgently,
Speaker 1: the men begin to dig, one after the other. The
Speaker 1: shovels come down on to the snow above what is
Speaker 1: later revealed to be a creek bed. Eventually they will
Speaker 1: carve out a block of over eight feet in depth,
Speaker 1: covering an area of a hundred square feet, But by
Speaker 1: the end of the first day, the team find only
Speaker 1: more clothing, including bizarrely, one solitary trouser leg. The following day,
Speaker 1: May the fourth, the search team have made it down
Speaker 1: to the slushy ice and water of the creek when
Speaker 1: they discover more shredded clothing, including another trouser leg and
Speaker 1: half a brown woolen sweater, and then they find something
Speaker 1: at a harder It is another body lying face down
Speaker 1: in the water. A short time later and three other
Speaker 1: bodies have been discovered. Two of them are found huddled
Speaker 1: together in an embrace, no doubt a last desperate attempt
Speaker 1: of survival. The decomposition of the bodies is so much
Speaker 1: that only leuda can be identified at this stage. With
Speaker 1: the bodies wrapped in tarpaulin to preserve any further decay,
Speaker 1: lev Ivanov is on the scene the following morning. It
Speaker 1: is clear from the state of the corpses that time
Speaker 1: is fast running out for any hope of a meaningful autopsy,
Speaker 1: but Ivanov is stunned when the chopper arrives to take
Speaker 1: them away, only for the pilot to refuse the use
Speaker 1: of his helicopter. It would seem that, despite the Investigative
Speaker 1: Commission's best efforts to quash some of the more fanciful
Speaker 1: rumors surrounding the case, an idea, once born, is not
Speaker 1: so easy to destroy, and what pilot Captain Gaitsenko is
Speaker 1: most concerned about is radioactive contamination. The pilot eventually agrees
Speaker 1: to take the bodies, but only when Ivanoff has them
Speaker 1: placed in four zinc lined coffins that take days to arrive.
Speaker 1: It isn't until May the eighth that the bodies are
Speaker 1: finally lifted from the mountain and flown to Eve del
Speaker 1: Morg for the autopsy. When the bodies had finally thawed out,
Speaker 1: pathologist Boris Vozroscheny was once again summoned to perform the
Speaker 1: somber task of first identifying each victim and then the
Speaker 1: cause of their death. Despite the many rumors surrounding the case,
Speaker 1: even taking into account the suspicious fracture of Rustick's skull,
Speaker 1: Vozroschdyny was very much of the opinion that the students,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, had succumbed through simple hypothermia. But what
Speaker 1: he uncovers next will change everything. Vozroschdyny harves over the
Speaker 1: first body, one of the two found in an embrace.
Speaker 1: He will later be identified as twenty four year old
Speaker 1: Alexander Kolovatov. He notes the now familiar lack of adequate footwear,
Speaker 1: but otherwise the amount of clothing appears normal. There is
Speaker 1: a bandage on the ankle, presumably from an injury received
Speaker 1: prior to the trip. There is a small open wound
Speaker 1: behind the ear, which Vosroshdyny deems insignificant, being most likely
Speaker 1: merely a result of exposure to the elements. He returns
Speaker 1: by now the usual verdict death by hypothermia. Expecting more
Speaker 1: of the same, he turns its attention to the second body.
Speaker 1: It is clear from the tattoos alone that this is
Speaker 1: the body of thirty seven year old Sasha Solitarioff. At first,
Speaker 1: vos Rosdyny finds much of the same. Again, there are
Speaker 1: no shoes, and the general decay and superficial injuries are
Speaker 1: consistent with a struggle for survival. But when vos Rosdyni
Speaker 1: moves his attention to the chest region, he finds something
Speaker 1: completely unexpected. Five of Sasha's ribs on his right side
Speaker 1: have been fractured, causing severe internal bleeding. It would take
Speaker 1: some four to fracture five ribs, and clearly, from the
Speaker 1: nature of the bleeding, it had occurred when Sasha was
Speaker 1: still alive. The pathologist concludes that it was clearly caused
Speaker 1: by some kind of large force. Turning his attention now
Speaker 1: to twenty three year old Collier Thibou Brignoles, vos Rode
Speaker 1: is shocked to find injuries similar to those sustained by Sasha,
Speaker 1: only this time it is to his head. Vashrochdeni concludes
Speaker 1: that Collier had died after sustaining a catastrophic fracture to
Speaker 1: the right side of his skull, followed by bleeding again
Speaker 1: the result of a large force, and the worst was
Speaker 1: yet to come. Lyuda's body had been found on her knees,
Speaker 1: leant against a small drop in the ravine, with her
Speaker 1: face pressed to the rocks and her clothes soaked through
Speaker 1: with water from the stream. Wrapped around her left foot
Speaker 1: was the other half of the brown sweater, a last
Speaker 1: ditch effort to stave off frostbite. Now lying in the
Speaker 1: morgue Vasrosdeny can clearly see the tell tale signs of
Speaker 1: a severe trauma to her chest that had resulted in
Speaker 1: nine fractured ribs and massive hemorrhaging in the right ventricle
Speaker 1: her heart. And when he examined inside the mouth, voss
Speaker 1: Roshdeny drew back in alarm. Her tongue was completely missing.
Speaker 1: And then there are a number of curious findings from
Speaker 1: the site of where the bodies are discovered. They seemed
Speaker 1: to have been located in a makeshift den, complete with
Speaker 1: a blanket of branches laid out on the floor to
Speaker 1: provide some protection from the cold. Had they, in fact,
Speaker 1: drawing on Sasha's military survival skills, managed to stabilize the
Speaker 1: situation before succumbing to injuries sustained sometime later, And what
Speaker 1: were they to make of the camera found around Sasha's neck?
Speaker 1: For a start, according to Uryyudin, the students only had
Speaker 1: three cameras between them, all of which had already been recovered.
Speaker 1: But perhaps more pertinently, what could possibly have provoked Sasha,
Speaker 1: in the panic of leaving the tent to remember to
Speaker 1: take his camera, Or had he, in fact, as some believe,
Speaker 1: already been standing outside the tent trying to capture something
Speaker 1: before the chaos. Whatever it was, we will never know,
Speaker 1: since the film was too damaged to be processed. Two
Speaker 1: weeks later, the families of Liuda, Sasha, Alexander, and Collier
Speaker 1: gathered together on May twenty second at the Sperdlovsk Military
Speaker 1: Hospital to watch their children being finally laid to rest.
Speaker 1: There would be no repeat of the public procession given
Speaker 1: to the other students, and only the family were granted
Speaker 1: permission to attend for lead investigator left even off the
Speaker 1: recent autopsies had only succeeded in generating yet more questions
Speaker 1: when he and all the families of the deceased needed answers.
Speaker 1: Despite pressure from above to bring the case to a
Speaker 1: swift and uncontroversial resolution, the revelation of Leuda, Kollia and
Speaker 1: Sasha's injuries could not be ignored. To that end. With
Speaker 1: his superiors breathing down his neck, he would try one
Speaker 1: last thing. Just prior to the funerals. Ivanov had organs
Speaker 1: and items of clothing sent off to be examined for
Speaker 1: any sign of radiation, but it would be too late
Speaker 1: before he could receive the results. Ivanov was ordered to
Speaker 1: shut the case down immediately, and so it was on
Speaker 1: Thursday May the twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine, that the
Speaker 1: case of the mysterious death in the Ural Mountains of
Speaker 1: nine hikers, led by student Igordiatlov, was brought to an
Speaker 1: abrupt and inconclusive end. For Ivanov, it was a bitter
Speaker 1: and frustrating conclusion to a case that would haunt him
Speaker 1: and everyone else involved in it for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives. For the families, of the victims. It was
Speaker 1: a cruel and brutal end, which was, of course no
Speaker 1: kind of end at all. To this day, families of
Speaker 1: the victims continue to seek the truth about what exactly
Speaker 1: had taken place. Eurykan Savage, who as a twelve year
Speaker 1: old boy had watched the funeral procession from his parents'
Speaker 1: apartment window, will later go on to establish the Diatlov Foundation,
Speaker 1: dedicating his life to helping the families unravel the mystery
Speaker 1: and to hopefully one day uncover the truth. The day
Speaker 1: after the case is closed and exhausted, even Off arrives
Speaker 1: at his office to find the results of the toxicology
Speaker 1: test waiting for him on his desk. The report concludes
Speaker 1: that not only as some form of radioactive substance contaminated
Speaker 1: the clothes, but the level of contamination far exceeds anything
Speaker 1: they could ever have thought possible. The report will remain
Speaker 1: classified for the next thirty years, along with a raft
Speaker 1: of other materials collected by Ivanov, including one report he
Speaker 1: had been expressly urged to suppress. It was compiled after
Speaker 1: Ivanov's final trip to colat Seakle Mountain. The investigator had
Speaker 1: just finished inspecting the site where The last four bodies
Speaker 1: were discovered when he found himself staring at a line
Speaker 1: of pine trees on the edge of the forest. Something
Speaker 1: about them seemed off, and then he saw it, a
Speaker 1: series of burn marks with no concentric form and no center,
Speaker 1: such as one might expect from a ballistic explosion. For
Speaker 1: a moment, he wonders if they could have been made
Speaker 1: as a result of the fire hastily built by Georgie
Speaker 1: and Yurie. But then he realizes whatever had made the
Speaker 1: burnmarks had not come from the ground, It had come
Speaker 1: from the sky. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and
Speaker 1: would like to show your appreciation, you can now help
Speaker 1: support us by going to Unexplained podcast dot com forward
Speaker 1: slash support. All donations, no matter how large or small,
Speaker 1: are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by
Speaker 1: me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show
Speaker 1: on iTunes, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can reach us online at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now,
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