Duncan MacPherson

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CanadaCanada  Duncan MacPherson Ice hockey player
MacPherson's 1989 driver's license photo

MacPherson's 1989 driver's license photo
Date of birth 3rd February 1966
place of birth Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , Canada
date of death August 9, 1989
Place of death Neustift im Stubaital , Austria
Nickname MacFearsome
size 185 cm
Weight 88 kg
position defender
Shot hand Left
Draft
NHL Entry Draft 1984 , 1st lap, 20th position
New York Islanders
Career stations
1982-1986 Saskatoon Blades
1986-1989 Springfield Indians
1988-1989 Indianapolis Ice

Duncan Alvin MacPherson (born February 3, 1966 in Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , † probably on August 9, 1989 in Neustift im Stubaital , Austria ) was a Canadian ice hockey player who played for the Springfield Indians in the American Hockey League (AHL ) and the Indianapolis Ice played in the International Hockey League (IHL) on the position of defender .

MacPherson disappeared in 1989 during a skiing holiday on the Stubai Glacier in Tyrol under unexplained circumstances. His mutilated, lifeless body was discovered by accident in July 2003, 14 years later, by a piste worker in the ski area due to the snowmelt. MacPherson probably broke through a snow bridge into a deep crevasse with his snowboard and was completely buried by subsequent slope preparation. How he ultimately died could not be determined with ultimate certainty. The behavior of the competent Austrian authorities shortly after the disappearance up to the investigation into the discovery of the body has been criticized by relatives of the Canadian as well as in the media.

The American writer John Leake wrote a book about the case in which he, like MacPherson's parents, accused the authorities of sloppiness and cover-up.

Career as an ice hockey player

MacPherson was the Canadian Saskatoon in the province of Saskatchewan born to Lynda and Bob MacPherson. He started ice hockey at an early age and was inducted into the local junior team, the Saskatoon Blades , in the summer of 1982 , where he played as left- back in the Western Hockey League (WHL). For a while he played with the future crowd favorite of the Toronto Maple Leafs Wendel Clark . In the 1984 NHL Entry Draft , the talented defensive man was selected in 20th position by the New York Islanders , for which he was never to play. He stayed with the Blades and was the fan favorite in his four years , while he was respectfully referred to by his opponents as "MacFearsome" for his robust and tough style of play . In 189 missions MacPherson was able to score 21 goals and assist in 98 more hits .

From the 1986/87 season he played for the Springfield Indians in the American Hockey League (AHL), a farm team of the New York Islanders, for which he was only used sporadically in his first year due to a knee injury. This changed in the next season 1987/88 , in which the vast majority of games played and collected five goals and 14 assists. In the following season 1988/89 he slipped more and more from the rotation and was already in action for the Indianapolis Ice in the International Hockey League (IHL). After this disappointing season, MacPherson was paid out of his contract with the Islanders and finally dismissed, ultimately also due to his vulnerability to injury.

Missing person case

Chronology of the European trip

MacPherson was offered to work as player-coach for the Scottish club Dundee Tigers . MacPherson considered the offer, but initially did not accept it. MacPherson was due to arrive in Dundee on August 12, 1989 to see the team's country and venues .

On August 2nd, he began the journey from Saskatoon via Edmonton to Europe. He first wanted to visit one-time former companions who now played for European clubs. Coming via London , he arrived in Nuremberg on August 3rd , where he met his old friend and former mentor George Pesut , who like him had grown up in Saskatoon and was now under contract with EHC 80 Nuremberg . When Pesut left for a tournament in Prague with the team , he gave MacPherson his red Opel Corsa , with which he set off for Füssen on August 7th . When EV Fussen his former Saskatoon teammate played Roger Kortko . The next day he announced himself with friends in the Italian Bolzano and originally wanted to return the borrowed car to Nuremberg on August 10 and continue on from there to Scotland.

But MacPherson decided at short notice to go skiing in Austria and not go to South Tyrol , but did not inform anyone of this intention. He rented a room in a hostel near the Stubai Glacier . During this time he contacted the new owner of the Dundee Tigers, the Canadian Ron Dixon, to notify him of the acceptance of the contract offer. He mentioned that he was planning to take the train from Nuremberg to Frankfurt am Main in order to take the flight to Scotland from there. Roger Kortko was the last acquaintance to see him and Dixon was the last to speak to him. He did not arrive in Dundee on August 12th as agreed. After George Pesut returned to Nuremberg on August 15th, he was amazed that his car had not been returned as agreed and that MacPherson's belongings were still in his apartment. The next day a Tigers player-coach contacted his parents and, after consulting with Pesut, he again filed a missing person report with the Nuremberg police a day later.

MacPherson localization

In mid-August 1989 it was foreseeable that MacPherson had disappeared and the German police launched an extensive search operation, which was unsuccessful. Friends and family who had traveled to Nuremberg from Canada also took part in this. The possibility of a crime or an undetected car accident was considered, because Pesut's red vehicle never reappeared either. The Canadian Interpol sent information about MacPherson to various neighboring countries in Germany. Since their parents, Bob and Lynda, said they did not receive sufficient support in their search, they set out on their own to look for the missing person in the surrounding countries of Italy , Austria and Switzerland . They arrived in Innsbruck on August 31 , where nothing was known about Duncan MacPherson and no search measures were initiated for the time being. It was not until September 18 that the police began to search hotels and hostels for his whereabouts.

On September 20, 1989, at the insistence of the parents , the ORF broadcast a missing person report in Tyrol today . An employee of the ski area on the Stubai Glacier recognized the vehicle with which MacPherson was traveling and contacted the authorities. On September 22nd, the vehicle was identified as that of George Pesut. Another employee of the ski area stated that it was only parked there after September 1st. A statement that later turned out to be incorrect because it remained unchanged in the same place for six weeks, but was not viewed as suspicious by anyone during this period.

Search actions and first inconsistencies

It was now obvious that MacPherson could no longer be found alive and the search was concentrated on the area around the Stubai Glacier. The police and mountain rescue started a search on September 23, but it was unsuccessful. The parents of the disappeared were told by the ski resort authorities that August 1989 was too warm for skiing and the local gendarmerie put forward the theory that he had most likely had an accident while hiking in the area and was not discovered. However, the fact that slopes were well prepared in August was only discovered through a chance encounter with snowboard instructor Walter Hinterhölzl, who saw the wanted poster on MacPherson's parents' vehicle. In the end, he could remember giving him a lesson.

Hinterhölzl stated that on August 9th, MacPherson borrowed a snowboard and matching shoes and registered with him for snowboarding lessons. This lasted two hours and ended at around 12:45 p.m. Then the two ate together and MacPherson hung his wet sweater, a turtleneck and his belt in Hinterhölzl's room to dry. He also set up another lesson with the trainer the next day. MacPherson returned to the slopes in the afternoon - on that day only one was open for skiing - to train independently and Hinterhölzl didn't see him the whole day. He was last seen by witnesses snowboarding at 2:30 p.m. The lift system stopped working at 4 p.m., and after entering his office, MacPherson's objects caught Hinterhölzl's attention. However, this did not cause him concern either this day or in the next few days, as he believed that MacPherson had simply forgotten his things. Despite the evidence that MacPherson had an accident on the ski slope that same day, the gender officer continued to believe that the theory of a hiking accident was most likely and did not order a search on the slopes.

It could not be determined with ultimate certainty whether MacPherson had returned his equipment. On the one hand, Hinterhölzl simply couldn't remember it, and the person in charge of the shop where he had rented the snowboard and shoes had already disposed of no memory of the Canadian and the rental report for August. His statements that he did not miss a snowboard confirmed the assumption of the Austrian authorities that MacPherson only disappeared after his stay on the glacier. Four months later, the family received a report from the Canadian embassy stating that the equipment had been returned. His driver's license, which was probably deposited as a deposit, and his street shoes were never found.

On September 25, 1989, the police informed the MacPhersons that Duncan had not appeared as a guest in any hostel or hotel in Tyrol. Hinterhölzl, however, was certain which youth hostel he had stayed in, and four days later an employee of the youth hostel presented his registration to the parents, which was confirmed with his signature.

In October, Canadian search parties in the glacier region also took part in the search for the missing person, which, like new investigations in July 1990, brought no results. In February 1993 a young man was found in Germany who apparently suffered from amnesia and matched MacPherson's description. A short time later it turned out that this person was not the one we were looking for.

Finding the body and an unexplained cause of death

In the years that followed, her parents traveled to the Stubai Valley again and again to look for MacPherson. However, they never discovered a new lead. In July 2003, the heat wave in Europe, known as the summer of the century, also caused considerable snowmelt on the Stubai Glacier. On July 18, 2003, this revealed a red glove, which was quickly discovered by a piste worker. The body was uncovered by snow groomers without the assistance of a coroner and was later identified as Duncan MacPherson. He reappeared on the runway which was the only one open on the day of his disappearance and on which he was last seen. The location was located on the Schaufelferner , 35 meters east of the drag lift - 120 meters were incorrectly noted in a first report - Eisjoch II on the Schaufel Schuss piste . MacPherson had numerous fractures and injuries, and limbs were completely severed.

A snowboard and shoes were found with the body. It could have been those that, according to the manager, had been returned. After finding the corpse, he stated that the snowboard did not come from his shop. In addition, two other pairs of gloves were found at MacPherson that could not be assigned to anyone. If the equipment and items that had not been collected had been noticed on the same day, MacPherson's death could have been prevented, as a search operation would have taken place on site and would have been seen in crevasses. The following slope preparation killed MacPherson or at least buried him in the snow. According to an employee, snow bridges collapsed frequently in the summer months and had to be filled in with snow. This was only looked into when there was a missing person report.

Duncan MacPherson's body was flown into the valley and inspected by the local doctor. After an inspection, the cause of death was "multiple trauma". The death certificate stated that an autopsy was carried out, but in reality none took place. On September 14, the final police report concluded that MacPherson fell from the chairlift and fell into a crevasse while walking through a cordoned off area, whereupon he died. That would have made MacPherson himself responsible for his death. It could not be determined whether crevasses were actually fenced off during this time. Despite a request from the parents, an autopsy was not carried out. Before the body was cremated, coroner Dr. Walter Rabl is still preparing CT scans in Innsbruck . On the basis of these recordings, a Canadian pathologist suspected that the serious injuries could have been caused by snow grooming equipment and not by falling into the crevasse and the movements of the glacier. MacPherson's limbs had been completely severed and he suffered various broken bones and joint shattered joints. According to Dr. Walter Rabl could also attribute these injuries to the movements of the glacier.

There are various theories about how MacPherson died, but none could be confirmed due to the lack of an autopsy. On the one hand, his death could have happened, as described by the police. MacPherson could also have fallen into the crevasse and seriously injured, rolled over by the snowcat and buried, or even rammed and filled in by the snowcat on the slope in the flurry of fog, which would have been a negligent killing . This theory was put forward by John Leake , who described the mysterious circumstances of MacPherson's death in his book Ice Cold Death: Accident or Crime? collected. It is not clear whether his death could have been prevented with a search operation initiated on the same day.

Accidents on the Stubai Glacier

A year before MacPherson's death, a similar accident occurred on the Stubai Glacier. On August 4, 1988, Yin Chung Chiu, a student from Hong Kong, fell into a crevasse. He was rescued in critical condition and died of his injuries five days later after being recovered. MacPherson's parents and the Canadian search team did not find out until 2003. An Italian skier had been missing in this ski area since October 1989, and his body was also found in a crevasse in the hot summer of 2003.

According to a statement by a piste worker, 15 to 20 people fall through the snow bridge on the Stubai Glacier every year, but they can be rescued in good time. Such incidents were never reported, according to the worker. MacPherson's parents were also able to observe such an incident in June 1990, when a pedestrian broke in directly on the ski slope, but was arrested by her companion.

A German skier broke into a crevasse on the ski slope in 2002, but called help with his mobile phone and was rescued in time.

Criticism of the work of Austrian authorities

The procedure by the employees on the Stubai Glacier on the same day was viewed critically in the media and by relatives. The shop did not notice that a snowboard was missing, which is why no measures were taken. MacPherson's shoes and driver's license were also never recovered. In 2009, the Austrian member of the National Council Peter Pilz (then Die Grünen ) sent a written request to the Federal Minister for Transport, Innovation and Technology Doris Bures regarding the death of MacPherson . The questions from this, however, remained unanswered, as he did not have jurisdiction over “accidents that occur on ski slopes”.

The police and those responsible on site always emphasized that the ski area was safe and that MacPherson must have had an accident after snowboarding. Comparable cases show that this was not always the case, especially in the late 1980s.

Doubtful statements by forensic doctors, especially those of Walter Rabl, who is now President of the Austrian Society for Forensic Medicine (ÖGGM) and is the deputy director of Forensic Medicine Innsbruck, were presented by the author Leake in his book. According to the parents' statements, Rabl did not inform them that a private autopsy could be requested, which never resulted in an autopsy.

On the basis of these inconsistencies, MacPherson's parents suspected that the true circumstances of death were deliberately concealed in order not to endanger the ski resort's reputation among tourists.

Literary and cinematic processing

The author American author John Leake researched this case for three years and wrote a book based on it, which was published in 2012 under the English title Cold a Long Time and the German title Eiskalter Tod: Unfall oder Verbrechen? appeared.

The Canadian broadcaster CBC Television treated the case on the television program The Fifth Estate , which was broadcast in November 2006 under the episode name Iceman .

Career statistics

Regular season Playoffs
season team league Sp T V Pt SM Sp T V Pt SM
1982/83 Saskatoon Blades WHL 5 2 4th 6th 16 2 0 0 0 0
1983/84 Saskatoon Blades WHL 45 0 14th 14th 74 - - - - -
1984/85 Saskatoon Blades WHL 69 9 26th 35 116 3 0 0 0 4th
1985/86 Saskatoon Blades WHL 70 10 54 64 147 13 3 8th 11 38
1986/87 Springfield Indians AHL 26th 1 0 1 86 - - - - -
1987/88 Springfield Indians AHL 74 5 14th 19th 213 - - - - -
1988/89 Springfield Indians AHL 24 1 5 6th 69 - - - - -
1988/89 Indianapolis Ice IHL 33 1 4th 5 23 - - - - -
WHL overall 189 21st 98 119 353 18th 3 8th 11 42
AHL total 124 7th 19th 26th 368 - - - - -

( Legend for player statistics: Sp or GP = games played; T or G = goals scored; V or A = assists scored ; Pkt or Pts = scorer points scored ; SM or PIM = penalty minutes received ; +/− = plus / minus balance; PP = overpaid goals scored ; SH = underpaid goals scored ; GW = winning goals scored; 1  play-downs / relegation )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Profile of Duncan MacPherson In: Hockey Draft Central (accessed December 28, 2019)
  2. ↑ About Duncan MacPherson In: Cold a Long Time (accessed December 28, 2019)
  3. ↑ The Man in the Ice In: Esquire, January 29, 2007 (accessed December 28, 2019)
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i The chronology of events In: Planet Ski from May 13, 2009 (accessed December 28, 2019)
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Inquiry from MP Pilz to the Federal Minister for Transport, Innovation and Technology regarding Duncan MacPherson In: Austrian Parliament of June 29, 2009 (accessed on December 28, 2019)
  6. ↑ a b Discovery Location In: Cold a Long Time (accessed December 29, 2019)
  7. ↑ a b Duncan MacPherson's Death: Forensics In: Cold a Long Time (accessed December 28, 2019)
  8. ↑ Written answer to the written question of MP Pilz In: Austrian Parliament of August 26, 2009 (accessed on December 29, 2019)
  9. ↑ Profile of a.Univ.Prof. Dr. Walter Rabl In: Institute for Forensic Medicine, Innsbruck Medical University (accessed December 29, 2019)
  10. ↑ Correspondence with Dr. Rabl In: Cold a Long Time (accessed December 29, 2019)
  11. ↑ a b “Eiskalter Tod”: Riddle about the dead from the glacier In: Der Standard from November 3, 2012 (accessed on December 29, 2019)
  12. ↑ Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery / Eiskalter Tod In: Cold a Long Time (accessed December 29, 2019)
  13. ↑ Eiskalter Tod In: Cold a Long Time (accessed December 29, 2019)
  14. ↑ Fifth Estate - Iceman In: TV Guide (accessed December 22, 2019)
personal data
SURNAME MacPherson, Duncan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MacPherson, Duncan Alvin (full name); MacFearson (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian ice hockey player, died under unknown circumstances on the Stubai Glacier
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd February 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Saskatoon , Saskatchewan , Canada
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1989
Place of death Neustift im Stubaital , Austria