WEBVTT - S02 Episode 4: When the Snow Melts pt.3 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:14.440 Alexey could not believe what he was hearing. As he 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.960 sat dumbfounded in the cold and sterile office in front 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.400 of three stone faced party officials. He begged them to reconsider. 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:26.239 It had been a week since the body of his 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:30.040 twenty three year old son, Georgie had been discovered, and 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:33.680 although Alexey had long since given up hope that his 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.879 son might be found alive, he had not been prepared 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:42.280 for the grief of finally knowing. Now having made the 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.280 trip to Evedeal, he was at the very least hoping 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.559 to take his son's body back home with him to Spurtlovsk. 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:54.040 But the party officials had other ideas. A decision had 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.320 been made that all of the bodies would be buried 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:00.880 together in Evedal in a mass grave. The families were 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.160 invited to attend, but there would be no public announcement 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:08.679 and only a small obelisk to mark the spot. But 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:13.000 Swerdlovsk is his home, implored Alexey. That is where he lived, 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.760 where he made friends. And did we bury him in Evedal? 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:21.000 How are we to visit him? But the decision was final, 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.560 and besides, they said, all the other families had agreed 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:31.640 to it. Two by two, the parents of eager Zena, Yuri, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:35.080 and Roostick were called in to face the hastily assembled 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:39.559 committee and given the exact same distressing news, each being 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:44.039 informed that the others had consented to it. The parents 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.720 struggled to process what they were being told. Not only 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:49.920 did it seem the authorities were trying to cover the 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.240 whole instant up, but they were asking the parents to 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.760 become complicit in it too. The Party was in effect 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.440 asking for nothing less than their co operation in erasing 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:12.120 the history of their children's lives. Like most people in 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.519 the Soviet Union, the parents were well aware of the 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:19.160 length the state would go to preserve their methods, but 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.600 not to them, not this time, and it was of 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.120 course a lie. Not one of the sets of parents 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:32.120 had agreed to their plan. On realizing the deception, the 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.960 parents fought back and eventually the party relented, but only 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:41.160 on one condition. The students could be buried in spurred Lovsk, 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.800 but the funerals were to be held together to minimize 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.480 the attention. With the exception of Georgis, who was a 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.440 Russian Orthodox, would be granted a separate funeral at an 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:57.640 appropriate location. The funeral procession would also be strictly controlled, 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.200 with the coffins being taken directly from the morgue to 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:05.520 the cemetery. The parents had requested that the bodies be 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:12.320 taken past the Ural Polytechnic Institute campus, but permission was refused. However, 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.400 attempts to minimize the publicity of the event would ultimately 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.919 prove futile in a rare moment of public defiance over 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:26.040 state control. On Monday, the ninth of March nineteen fifty nine, 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:28.880 over a thousand mourners touched by the death of the 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:33.600 young hikers took to the streets to join the procession. Together, 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.360 they marched with the families as they made their way 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:41.120 to Mikhailovskoy's Cemetery behind two trucks laden with the bodies 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:47.560 of Yuri Rustick Zena and eager twelve year old Yuri 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.320 Kon Savage lived with his parents in the east of 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:54.760 the city center, just opposite the cemetery. He watched in 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:58.480 silence from his apartment window as the mourners slowly drifted 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:03.320 into view. Yuri didn't know then just how exactly the 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.400 tragedy of what happened to the Diatlov team would shape 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.920 his life, but on this morning. What preoccupied Yuri was 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:13.560 not the bodies of the students laid out in their 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.880 open caskets, or the sheer number of people attending their funeral, 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.640 but rather a handful of suspicious looking men dotted about 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:27.039 the crowd. Unlike the rest of the crowd, these men, 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.800 dressed in civilian clothes, seemed to pay little attention to 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:35.240 the bodies or the eventual service that took place. Instead, 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:39.640 they seemed to be watching the people. Yuri could have 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.479 sworn they were k GB, members of the secret Soviet police, 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:49.359 sent to keep a close eye on the proceedings. After 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.600 the bodies were finally laid to rest, with Georgy's being 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:57.159 buried the following day, Ordinarily, the families might now finally 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:01.560 be able to grieve, but there was some thing glaringly absent. 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.560 Despite the bodies having been discovered ten days previously, there 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.880 was still no hint of an explanation from the authorities 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:16.240 as to just how exactly the students had died. What 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.120 could possibly have driven nine experienced and strong hikers from 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.800 the shelter and warmth of their tent to meet their 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:28.960 deaths amidst the driving snow and Subsei temperatures outside, and 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.919 lest it be forgotten, there were still four people unaccounted for. 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:50.080 The day after Georgy's funeral, friends and family gathered together 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:55.120 at the Kryvanischenko home for Georgy's wake. It was, of course, 0:05:55.160 --> 0:06:00.640 a somber affair, but one also unsurprisingly dominated the mystery 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:05.600 of his death. Despite the secrecy of the police investigation, 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.960 due to the large number of volunteers involved, rumors had 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:15.760 inevitably begun to circulate. Time and again. Attention seemed to 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.919 turn to the mysterious lights and orbs witnessed in the 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:24.479 surrounding area. But Georgi's father, Alexey, had grown weary of 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:28.200 such talk, deeming it irrelevant since the lights had been 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.359 seen two weeks after the students were thought to have died, 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.799 and so it was with little patience that he received 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:39.279 two more students that night, eager to share their story 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:44.120 of strange lights spotted in the night sky. I don't 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.880 want to hear it, said Alexey. But no, they said, 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:53.040 you don't understand. We saw the lights on February the first, 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:59.159 the same night that Datlov's team left their tent. The 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.280 two students had been part of another team led by 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:08.760 UPI teacher Annatolly Shumkov. The team had been climbing Kisstop Mountain, 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.160 roughly twenty five miles to the south of where Daklov's 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:17.200 team had camped on Kolatsiakl when they saw it. With 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.600 the mercury dropping to as low as minus thirty degrees centigrade, 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.080 the team were just about to begin their descent when 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.240 there was a sudden flash of silver in the sky, 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.480 followed by a white spark that was seen flying upwards 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:35.320 from the O'tauton Valley. Moments later, an eerie sound of 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:41.200 thunder rumbled across the mountain. As Shumkov later recounted, this 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.520 thing flew silently and slowly from the south to the 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:49.000 north over the ridge of the Urals. It was glowing 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:53.400 quite brightly the way it illuminated the hovering clouds at 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.360 the height of two point five to three kilometers, it 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:01.600 was very strange. For Alex c and many others, it 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.960 was hard to resist the increasingly popular theory that the 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:08.520 students had unwittingly strayed into the path of some kind 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:24.720 of secret weapons test. In nineteen forty five, unbeknownst to 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.200 most of the planet, a new world was about to emerge. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.319 It began at five twenty nine am on July sixteenth, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.360 with the detonation of a bomb in the middle of 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:42.280 the Hornada del Muerto Desert in New Mexico. The bomb 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:46.880 was named Trinity, and its subsequent explosion marked the first 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:52.560 successful deployment of the atomic bomb. Later that year, the 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:56.440 atomic age would formally announce itself in a mushroom cloud 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.680 of death and destruction when Little Boy and Fat Man 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:04.880 were detonated over the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.080 The bombs would go some way to ushering an end 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.199 to the largest scale global conflict the human race had 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.640 ever known, but it would also mark the beginning of 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:19.640 a seemingly endless arms race that to this day continues 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:25.600 to haunt every militant aspect of major foreign diplomacy. The 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:29.720 Stalin's government in the US SR, the destruction of Hiroshima 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:33.280 and Nagasaki made it clear just how far they lagged 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:37.200 behind the military might and ingenuity of the United States. 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:42.959 What followed was an intense and accelerated program of nuclear development, 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.800 but also an intense culture of military secrecy in competition 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.640 with the US, fueled by the mutual distrust of each 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:56.040 other's ideologies. It was a program that, in its eagerness 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.640 to establish itself, would result in a number of catastrophic 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:04.480 new Clear disasters, such as the Kishtim disaster that Georgi, 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:09.160 only two years previously, had helped to clean up. Could 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.560 it be that the students had found themselves pitching their 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:17.120 tent under a secret weapons testing zone. It was a 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.360 theory making increasing sense to those who had little information 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:25.240 to go on. However, for lead investigator lev Ivanov, who 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.760 was in full possession of all available evidence, what puzzled 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.880 him the most was that although the multiple sightings of 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:36.000 strange lights may have been consistent with ballistic weapons, the 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.840 injuries to the bodies weren't. It's possible, of course, that 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.720 the sound of such weapons detonating nearby might have caused 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.480 the team to flee the tent in a panic. But 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:52.280 might the strange lights have been something else entirely, something 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:58.200 perhaps a little more other worldly. Nikolai Aniumov was a 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:01.240 local Manci tribesman who had been part of the team 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:05.920 that first examined the hiker's tent. Like everyone else, he 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.600 had been deeply troubled by the student's disappearance, but the 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:14.480 real fear he harbored would remain unspoken. That was until 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.439 the first mention of the orbs in the sky. For 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:22.000 the Mansie. All around the region where the bodies were discovered, 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.520 they talk of gateways to another world. Perhaps the students 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:30.240 had upset the spirits and this was their revenge, he thought. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.440 It is said that somewhere deep in the Earls lies 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:47.760 a sacred daific idol known as Zolotire Barber or the 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:52.400 Golden Woman. Made entirely from gold. It is thought to 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.719 have been hidden somewhere deep in the forest, perhaps in 0:11:55.760 --> 0:12:00.520 a cave, surrounded by other worldly treasures. In ancient times, 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:04.640 soldiers dressed in scarlet robes would fiercely guard the path 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.319 to the idol, and no one else had the right 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:12.600 to see her or go anywhere near the cave. The 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:16.760 origins of the idol are shrouded in mystery. Some believe 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:18.920 it to have been brought to the region by ob 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:23.160 Ugrian warriors as far back as the fifth century. The 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:27.600 Obugrians were ancestors of the Mansie, who, alongside Alaric, the 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.440 king of the Visigoths, conquered Rome in four hundred and ten. 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:37.040 Some say that after their victory, the Obugrians forged the 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.280 sacred idol, then carried it back to their lands to 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:44.720 be worshiped as a goddess, though some others believe it 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:48.000 may have originated from as far away as India or 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:52.960 even Sumeria. There is further dispute as to just which 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:56.280 god exactly was thought to be embodied by the idol, 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:01.360 with some linking it to the Manci goddess Yours Naianki, 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.680 known as the mother of celestial fire and everything living, 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:10.400 with others believing it instead to be the goddess kaltesh Anki, 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:17.200 or Mother Earth. Kaltesh Anki is the wife of Numi Turam, 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.800 the ultimate supreme being, and is known to be responsible 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:26.080 for the length of human lives. Once kaltesh Anki asked 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.080 Numi Turam to strengthen the earth with an iron belt, 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.880 and he answered the request by creating the Ural Mountains. 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:39.160 In nineteen o four, the explorer Konstantin Nossiloff wrote of 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:43.400 meeting an old man on his travels named Sava. The 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.160 man claimed to have been blinded after mistakenly coming across 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.800 the golden idol, whom he maintained appeared to him as 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:54.520 an ordinary naked woman sitting down holding a golden plate 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:59.520 in her hands. Some say the Golden Woman isn't golden 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:03.160 at all, but is in fact luminous, as if made 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:09.000 purely from light. Had the hikers stumbled into this sacred 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:14.319 land and be mercilessly punished as a result, it might 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.640 account for the strange lights, perhaps, but not why such 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.720 an experienced team would be drawn out from the safety 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:24.160 of their camp into the freezing wild of the exposed mountain. 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:30.960 But for this Nikolai had another theory. It is said 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:35.000 that kaltesh Anki, worried about how she might defend herself 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:39.440 from enemies, asked Numiterurum to find a way to protect her. 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:45.520 In return, he created the Menkfee, a race of monstrous 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:51.040 creatures sometimes described as werewolves, but other times just as giants. 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.640 It is said that these menk Fee or menk also 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.440 known as Compoland, continue to guard the Golden Woman to 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:05.520 this day. Nancy author Olga Koshmanova has spent over thirty 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:10.080 years collecting evidence of the Kompoland. She believes that many 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.080 of the Manci culture's rules were formed due to their 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:17.320 contact with these terrifying creatures such as it being forbidden 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:20.640 to break wood when it wasn't needed, or the need 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.600 to be silent when in the forest, and its being 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:27.360 especially forbidden to sing loud songs or spoil the forest, 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.120 and when in the woods at night, one must always 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:37.320 keep the fire burning. Writing in a book titled A 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:40.800 Look from Behind, a reference to the strange sensation a 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:44.360 person feels when they un knowingly step into the territory 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.800 of the compoland, Olga writes of that fateful night of 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:53.280 February the first, nineteen fifty nine. However, she is not 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.240 writing about the deattle of team, but a night when 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.960 she claims to have come into contact with a compos 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.840 Koshmanova also writes that once travelers have entered the forbidden territory, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.520 they begin to hear things strange, terrifying noises like whistling 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.840 or the thumping of feet. The sound reverberates so as 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.920 to cause a visceral reaction that induces terror and nausea. 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:24.400 Had the team been scared from the tent perhaps by 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:28.080 such a sound, could it have been a compolan that 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:33.480 smashed rustic skull and battered Zena to the ground. It 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.400 certainly wouldn't be the first time a compolan had been 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:42.200 held responsible for murder. Koshmanova cites at least two incidences 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.560 where the forest Giant had been held accountable, once in 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:50.200 nineteen forty six in the village of Shamia, a child 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:53.120 had been ripped to shreds with his head put on 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:56.520 a stake, and another time where a woman had been 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:02.000 found with her jaw ripped completely off. But with the 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.720 whereabouts of four of the students still unknown, and without 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.040 all the bodies to examine, it would be impossible to 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.520 formulate a comprehensive theory of just what had taken place. 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.720 Unfortunately for the search teams, the weather was about to 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:22.320 take a severe turn for the worst. Many of the searches, 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:25.640 saddened by the discovery of the first five bodies, had 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:30.960 become exhausted and demoralized. Maslennikov, who had been leading the 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.480 search team on the ground, requested that the search be suspended, 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:38.960 but the commission refused to call it off, deciding instead 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:43.400 that a new team was needed. Maslennikov would at first 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:47.800 be replaced by Abraham Kickhoin and then later by Colonel 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:53.960 Georgy Ortiakov. The search for the missing bodies would continue 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:58.320 to little avail, but something remarkable was about to come 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:02.280 to light, some thing that had been hidden in plain sight. 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.359 Are you always taking care of your family? Do you 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:16.520 often take care of others and not yourself. 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Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers. 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:07.119 Download the app or visitteldoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:13.520 podcast Today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:24.400 Unexplained podcast. It was temple of the original investigator who 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:28.200 noticed it first something about the rips at the back 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:31.560 of the team's tent that hadn't seemed consistent with wear 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.119 and tear or weather damage, but it wasn't until weeks 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:39.520 later that his concerns would be taken into consideration thanks 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:44.760 to the eagle eye of a seamstress. After Boris Slobsoff 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.240 had discovered the tent, it had been gathered up and taken, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.760 along with the items at the camp, to the Evedell 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:57.240 Department of Internal Affairs for further examination. Vladimir Koyativ, a 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:01.000 young investigator on the case, was having his uniform mended 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.119 when the seamstress took one look at the tent and 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.560 concluded also that the ribs were not rips at all, 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:13.200 but rather cuts made deliberately by something very sharp. It 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:17.359 was clear to her that someone or something had cut 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.080 open the tent on the night that the students died. 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.639 The tent was immediately taken to Sperdlovsk Forensic Lab for 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:31.800 closer inspection by senior forensic expert Henrietta Cherkena. If the 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.760 cuts had indeed been made, it would add fuel to 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:37.640 the burgeoning theory that the team had most likely been 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:41.240 attacked by someone or something in the middle of the night, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.159 and chased from the tent, left to die in the snow. 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.480 It didn't take cherkena very long to reach her conclusion. 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:55.000 The cuts had indeed been made by a sharp object, 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.160 but they hadn't been made from outside the tent. They 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.960 had come from the inside. The revelation did little to 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.399 help uncover the mystery of what led the team to 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.240 their deaths, but what was clear was that whatever had 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:13.960 caused such a panic that an experienced team would rip 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:16.600 open their own tent just to be able to escape 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:22.000 into minus twenty degree temperatures must have been utterly terrifying. 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.919 It was further evidence that the students were forced from 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.720 their tent, whether by a perceived fear or by something 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:36.600 with agency. And then a further discovery comes to light 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:42.520 when investigators examined the team's belongings. There came across the 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:47.439 three expedition cameras of Eager, Rustick, and Gyurgi. When the 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:53.520 photos were developed, there seemed nothing untoward at first. The photos, 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.640 eighty eight in all, taken over the nine day period, 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.800 reveal a touching account of the team's journey, culminating in 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.320 some final shots that are believed to show the team 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:08.240 setting up camp on their final fateful day. And then 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:14.080 there was the final exposure on Georgy's camera. As the 0:22:14.119 --> 0:22:18.760 photographic paper swished around in the developing tray, a strange 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:23.320 image was beginning to emerge. The whole frame seemed to 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.800 be in darkness, as if taken at night, but in 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.080 the top left hand corner, a trail of light seems 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:34.720 to be descending from the sky. The discovery of the 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:38.399 photograph has Ivanof turning once again to the reports of 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:45.320 mysterious lights. But then suddenly everything changed. One morning in 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.160 mid March, Ivanof announced to his team that he would 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:54.720 be leaving for Moscow, without giving any further information. Ivanof 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:58.439 packed up his things and left. When he returned a 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:00.800 few days later, it was as if he had been 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:05.680 replaced by a completely different person. Gone was any talk 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:10.520 of the orbs or strange lights in the sky. In April, 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:14.880 Valdislav Karelin was called back in for questioning, at which 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:17.879 point he was advised by Ivanov to hold his tongue 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:32.080 on any theories relating to the mysterious lights. It has 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:35.200 been over two months since the last body was discovered. 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:39.879 When on May the third Nancy tribesman Stepan Kurikov, is 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.720 searching an area not far from where Yuri and Gyorgy's 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:46.879 bodies were found, when he once again spots something irregular. 0:23:48.080 --> 0:23:50.640 Some branches of a tree seemed to have been removed 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:56.440 with a knife. Newly appointed search leader, Colonel Georgy Ortiakov, 0:23:57.080 --> 0:23:59.840 orders a team of men to search the area immediately. 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:04.359 As they probe with their avalanche poles, one of the 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:08.520 team hits something. When he removes the pole, there is 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:11.639 a piece of clothing attached to it. It must have 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:16.600 come from at least six feet below the surface. Urgently, 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:20.280 the men begin to dig, one after the other. The 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:23.240 shovels come down on to the snow above what is 0:24:23.320 --> 0:24:27.560 later revealed to be a creek bed. Eventually they will 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:30.159 carve out a block of over eight feet in depth, 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:34.400 covering an area of a hundred square feet, But by 0:24:34.400 --> 0:24:37.120 the end of the first day, the team find only 0:24:37.200 --> 0:24:44.359 more clothing, including bizarrely, one solitary trouser leg. The following day, 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:47.280 May the fourth, the search team have made it down 0:24:47.320 --> 0:24:50.080 to the slushy ice and water of the creek when 0:24:50.119 --> 0:24:54.119 they discover more shredded clothing, including another trouser leg and 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:59.479 half a brown woolen sweater, and then they find something 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:04.320 at a harder It is another body lying face down 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:09.120 in the water. A short time later and three other 0:25:09.160 --> 0:25:13.520 bodies have been discovered. Two of them are found huddled 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:17.600 together in an embrace, no doubt a last desperate attempt 0:25:17.600 --> 0:25:23.080 of survival. The decomposition of the bodies is so much 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:28.840 that only leuda can be identified at this stage. With 0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:32.080 the bodies wrapped in tarpaulin to preserve any further decay, 0:25:32.800 --> 0:25:36.840 lev Ivanov is on the scene the following morning. It 0:25:37.000 --> 0:25:39.400 is clear from the state of the corpses that time 0:25:39.480 --> 0:25:43.480 is fast running out for any hope of a meaningful autopsy, 0:25:43.560 --> 0:25:46.560 but Ivanov is stunned when the chopper arrives to take 0:25:46.560 --> 0:25:49.520 them away, only for the pilot to refuse the use 0:25:49.560 --> 0:25:55.160 of his helicopter. It would seem that, despite the Investigative 0:25:55.160 --> 0:25:58.320 Commission's best efforts to quash some of the more fanciful 0:25:58.400 --> 0:26:02.879 rumors surrounding the case, an idea, once born, is not 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:08.040 so easy to destroy, and what pilot Captain Gaitsenko is 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:15.160 most concerned about is radioactive contamination. The pilot eventually agrees 0:26:15.200 --> 0:26:17.920 to take the bodies, but only when Ivanoff has them 0:26:17.960 --> 0:26:22.600 placed in four zinc lined coffins that take days to arrive. 0:26:24.760 --> 0:26:27.400 It isn't until May the eighth that the bodies are 0:26:27.400 --> 0:26:30.480 finally lifted from the mountain and flown to Eve del 0:26:30.560 --> 0:26:41.960 Morg for the autopsy. When the bodies had finally thawed out, 0:26:42.560 --> 0:26:46.800 pathologist Boris Vozroscheny was once again summoned to perform the 0:26:46.840 --> 0:26:51.480 somber task of first identifying each victim and then the 0:26:51.600 --> 0:26:56.520 cause of their death. Despite the many rumors surrounding the case, 0:26:57.280 --> 0:27:01.040 even taking into account the suspicious fracture of Rustick's skull, 0:27:01.600 --> 0:27:05.040 Vozroschdyny was very much of the opinion that the students, 0:27:05.160 --> 0:27:10.720 for whatever reason, had succumbed through simple hypothermia. But what 0:27:10.880 --> 0:27:17.399 he uncovers next will change everything. Vozroschdyny harves over the 0:27:17.440 --> 0:27:21.040 first body, one of the two found in an embrace. 0:27:22.400 --> 0:27:25.160 He will later be identified as twenty four year old 0:27:25.240 --> 0:27:30.800 Alexander Kolovatov. He notes the now familiar lack of adequate footwear, 0:27:31.160 --> 0:27:35.280 but otherwise the amount of clothing appears normal. There is 0:27:35.280 --> 0:27:38.360 a bandage on the ankle, presumably from an injury received 0:27:38.440 --> 0:27:41.639 prior to the trip. There is a small open wound 0:27:41.720 --> 0:27:46.879 behind the ear, which Vosroshdyny deems insignificant, being most likely 0:27:47.080 --> 0:27:51.160 merely a result of exposure to the elements. He returns 0:27:51.200 --> 0:27:57.760 by now the usual verdict death by hypothermia. Expecting more 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:01.719 of the same, he turns its attention to the second body. 0:28:02.040 --> 0:28:04.399 It is clear from the tattoos alone that this is 0:28:04.440 --> 0:28:10.119 the body of thirty seven year old Sasha Solitarioff. At first, 0:28:10.400 --> 0:28:14.320 vos Rosdyny finds much of the same. Again, there are 0:28:14.320 --> 0:28:18.560 no shoes, and the general decay and superficial injuries are 0:28:18.600 --> 0:28:23.320 consistent with a struggle for survival. But when vos Rosdyni 0:28:23.560 --> 0:28:26.840 moves his attention to the chest region, he finds something 0:28:27.040 --> 0:28:31.959 completely unexpected. Five of Sasha's ribs on his right side 0:28:32.359 --> 0:28:37.040 have been fractured, causing severe internal bleeding. It would take 0:28:37.119 --> 0:28:40.760 some four to fracture five ribs, and clearly, from the 0:28:40.840 --> 0:28:44.160 nature of the bleeding, it had occurred when Sasha was 0:28:44.200 --> 0:28:49.920 still alive. The pathologist concludes that it was clearly caused 0:28:49.960 --> 0:28:55.280 by some kind of large force. Turning his attention now 0:28:55.720 --> 0:29:00.120 to twenty three year old Collier Thibou Brignoles, vos Rode 0:29:00.280 --> 0:29:04.920 is shocked to find injuries similar to those sustained by Sasha, 0:29:05.000 --> 0:29:10.080 only this time it is to his head. Vashrochdeni concludes 0:29:10.240 --> 0:29:14.320 that Collier had died after sustaining a catastrophic fracture to 0:29:14.360 --> 0:29:18.120 the right side of his skull, followed by bleeding again 0:29:18.360 --> 0:29:22.720 the result of a large force, and the worst was 0:29:22.800 --> 0:29:27.600 yet to come. Lyuda's body had been found on her knees, 0:29:28.080 --> 0:29:31.080 leant against a small drop in the ravine, with her 0:29:31.080 --> 0:29:34.480 face pressed to the rocks and her clothes soaked through 0:29:34.640 --> 0:29:38.760 with water from the stream. Wrapped around her left foot 0:29:39.000 --> 0:29:41.720 was the other half of the brown sweater, a last 0:29:41.800 --> 0:29:47.600