In August 1989, Canadian hockey player Duncan MacPherson moved to Europe for a fresh start.
The 23-year-old planned to begin a coaching career in Dundee, Scotland, but first, he took a short road trip through Germany and Austria to visit his hockey friends.
After taking snowboarding lessons at the Stubai Glacier in Austria, Duncan mysteriously disappeared. His family searched for him for fourteen years until he was eventually found beneath the ice.
This discovery led Duncan’s family and friends to suspect that local authorities had conducted a sloppy investigation on purpose, possibly to cover up the truth.
Background
Duncan Alvin MacPherson was born on February 3rd, 1966, in Saskatoon, Canada, to parents Bob and Lynda. Like many teenagers from Saskatoon, Duncan enjoyed playing hockey, and it quickly became clear that he was exceptionally talented at this sport.
When he was around 12 years old, he decided he wanted to pursue his dream of becoming a professional hockey player. Even though he was very young, Duncan developed an impressive work ethic and trained hard to achieve his goals.
After starting his career in the Saskatoon Blades, Duncan was selected as a number one draft pick at the NHL Entry Draft in 1984. He became a member of the New York Islanders and joined their AHL affiliate, the Springfield Indians, as a defenseman.
Unfortunately, a series of injuries followed, and by late 1988, Duncan was released from his contract with the Islanders.
Despite this setback, Duncan wasn’t ready to give up just yet. The 23-year-old received an offer to become a player-coach for the Tayside Tigers, a semi-professional hockey team based in Dundee, Scotland, and he accepted it.
The move sounded exciting to him, especially because it would give Duncan a chance to be closer to some of his hockey buddies who were playing in Europe. And so, in August of 1989, Duncan left his home, excited about his new beginning on the Old Continent.
The disappearance
On August 2nd, 1989, Duncan flew from Edmonton, Canada, to London, England. He then traveled to continental Europe, heading toward Nuremberg, Germany, to visit his former teammate, George Pesut.
According to George, Duncan wanted to see the neighboring country of Austria, so George lent him his car.
Rodger Kortko, another teammate of Duncan’s, lived in Füssen, a town near the border with Austria. Duncan took the opportunity and dropped by to see his old friend. Once in Austria, Duncan explored Innsbruck and later went to a ski resort in the nearby Stubai Valley on August 9th, 1989.
As days passed, George began to worry because Duncan didn’t return to Nuremberg. The two had known each other since childhood, and it was completely out of character for Duncan not to keep in touch.
Meanwhile, Bob and Lynda MacPherson were waiting for Duncan to call them since he had promised to check in regularly. The last contact they had was on August 4th, when Duncan was still in Nuremberg.
On August 11th, Duncan’s new employer called his parents in Saskatoon, asking where Duncan was since he had never arrived in Scotland.
The MacPhersons contacted George Pesut and learned that Duncan had borrowed his car, but never returned it. Fearing that something bad had happened to their son, Bob and Lynda attempted to report him missing to the local authorities, but they brushed it off.
According to the police, Duncan was a young man in his twenties on a road trip through Europe. He probably met someone and lost track of time.
Despite the lack of concern from the Austrian police, newspapers in Saskatoon published daily articles about Duncan.
Realizing they would need to search for him themselves, Lynda and Bob boarded the first plane to Austria. The two didn’t even know where to start looking, but they knew their son was out there somewhere.
The search for Duncan
Once in Austria, the MacPhersons rented a car and began driving around the country. Their vehicle was covered in photos of their missing son, hoping that someone would recognize him.
Knowing Duncan was into skiing, they headed for Innsbruck, which is one of the most popular destinations for winter sports enthusiasts from all over the globe. The MacPhersons spoke with the local law enforcement, who checked the local hotels and hostels but found no evidence that Duncan was ever there.
Bob and Lynda decided to stop by several local hotels and hostels themselves and discovered something significant. Duncan did spend a single night at a hostel in Innsbruck, and the date confirmed he had been there six weeks prior, just around the time of his mysterious disappearance.
A local TV station aired Duncan’s photo and an image of a red Opel hatchback he had been driving when he vanished. Just hours later, the Innsbruck police received a call reporting that the same car was parked at a ski resort in Stubai Valley.
Officers talked to the parking lot attendant, who confirmed that the car had been there for more than a month. Inside, they found Duncan’s passport, his backpack, and a bag of rotting groceries left on the front seat.
After learning that the car had been located, Duncan’s parents drove to the ski resort themselves.
A snowboarding instructor saw the posters on their vehicle and immediately recognized Duncan. He informed the investigators that Duncan had been at the resort on August 9th, 1989, and had signed up for a snowboarding class.
While he was a very experienced skier, Duncan never had an opportunity to try out snowboarding. The instructor helped him pick out the equipment, which he then rented from the ski resort shop, and the two spent some time on the slopes, practicing together.
In the afternoon, Duncan continued practicing on his own despite the fog. Witnesses reported seeing him on the ski run at 2:30 PM. The ski resort was scheduled to close at 4:00 PM, and Duncan was expected to return his rented equipment by then.
When investigators questioned the rental shop owner, he stated that all snowboards and equipment were accounted for, indicating that Duncan had returned everything by the closing time.
This information was enough for the local law enforcement to call off the search, as it suggested Duncan could’ve left the area on his own. But where was he, and why hadn’t he taken the car?
Believing there was more to the story, the MacPhersons talked to the shop owner themselves, and he repeated that all of the equipment was accounted for. But when they asked to see the rental log from August 1989, the owner said it was thrown away.
Since investigators didn’t have any clue where he could’ve gone after August 9th, 1989, the official search for Duncan MacPherson was over. But his parents never gave up on him. During the 1990s, they traveled multiple times to the Stubai Valley, searching the glacier and the surrounding areas.
A shocking discovery
As the summer of 2003 rolled in, temperatures in the Stubai Valley rose significantly, leading to the melting of glacier ice. On July 18th, an employee of the resort was working on the ski slope when he noticed a red glove protruding from the ice.
Once he approached the area, he could see a body just below the surface of the ice. The Innsbruck police were called to the ski resort, and the body was retrieved from the ice.
When investigators examined the remains at the parking lot, they found a wallet inside the jacket belonging to the deceased. Duncan MacPherson was found after 14 years.
Duncan was still wearing the ski boots rented at the ski resort. The snowboard, described by the snowboarding instructor back in 1989, was found alongside his body, which indicated that the rental shop owner had lied about having no missing equipment.
The body was taken to the medical examiner’s office, but the autopsy wasn’t performed there. Instead, Duncan’s teeth were examined to confirm his identity. The pathologist conducted a CT scan of the body and took additional photos.
The MacPherson family decided to cremate Duncan because they couldn’t afford to fly his body back home. The Innsbruck police determined that Duncan’s death was an accident caused by his going off the ski run and falling into a crevasse.
The Stubai Valley glacier is known for the sudden appearance of crevasses, which the ski resort employees fill in daily using heavy machinery.
And so, the MacPhersons returned to Canada with the ashes of their son, as well as the snowboarding gear found with him. But soon, one tiny detail on the snowboard led them to suspect Duncan didn’t die because he was reckless.
What really happened to Duncan MacPherson?
The snowboard, which was found with Duncan’s body, was shredded into several large pieces. Duncan’s limbs were severed and also broken in several places, which suggested something more traumatic than falling off a snowboard or into a crevasse had happened to him.
The pathologist who examined Duncan in Austria concluded that his injuries were caused by the movement of the glacier over a span of 14 years. But Bob and Lynda had a different theory. After discovering specks of red paint on the snowboard, they began to suspect that he might have been struck by a snow grooming truck.
Duncan’s parents reached out to several forensic pathologists in Canada, asking them for help. All of them confirmed that their theory was very plausible. After examining the CT scan and other available photos, the Canadian pathologists noted Duncan’s bones had jagged edges, as if they had been processed through some type of machinery.
Additionally, Duncan’s femur was broken, and the pressure created by glacial movement is unlikely to cause such a fracture. There is a possibility that the injury occurred while he was snowboarding, which meant Duncan was unable to move and required immediate medical attention.
Furthermore, V-shaped patterns were observed on Duncan’s ID card and ski boots. The ski resort maintained the story that Duncan went off the ski run and got himself into trouble, but the location where his body was found proves he was right there on the slope the whole time.
The area where he was buried beneath the ice was visible from the restaurant at the bottom of the ski run. Duncan never left the ski run, so how did he end up in a crevasse? All available evidence suggests that Duncan was injured and waiting for someone to help him.
On the afternoon of August 9th, 1989, the weather was foggy, and there weren’t many skiers and snowboarders on the slope. The resort closed at 4:00 PM, and snow-grooming machines were driven up the glacier.
It is likely that a maintenance worker, unable to see the injured snowboarder in the fog, accidentally ran him over with the machine. The state of the snowboard and the injuries on Duncan’s body support this theory.
The aftermath
It is widely believed that the Innsbruck police mishandled the investigation into the disappearance of Duncan MacPherson from the very moment he was reported missing. Some even suggest that local law enforcement may have covered up his death to keep the tourists coming to the ski resort.
As previously mentioned, the glacier in the Stubai Valley is known for its crevasses, yet the ski resort claimed that visitors were perfectly safe as long as they stayed on the ski run.
The resort also failed to report the red Opel, which didn’t move from the parking lot for six weeks. And then there is the owner of the rental shop who falsely claimed that he had no missing snowboarding equipment.
Bob and Lynda MacPherson filed an appeal to reopen the investigation into Duncan’s death, but the Austrian government turned down their request. Despite being in their eighties, Duncan’s parents are still fighting for justice.
They use every opportunity to remind the public what happened to their son and are doing everything they can to expose the corruption within the law enforcement in Innsbruck, Austria.
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