SOLVING THE COLDEST OF COLD CASES
It’sdifficult enough to investigate a cold case murder.
But this is the coldest case of them all.
On September 19, 1991, a pair of mountain climbers made a grisly discovery in the Ötztal Alps on the AustrianItalian border.
It looked like the body of a recently-deceased mountaineer.
However the body, despite looking relatively fresh, was actually much older.
It was eventually extracted from the ice by police officers using a pneumatic drill, and taken to Innsbruck.
Officers observed the man’s clothes and the items he carried – and immediately contacted an archaeologist.
Radio carbon dating revealed the man had in fact been preserved in the ice for a remarkable 5,300 years – before Julius Caesar was alive, before the Pyramids were built and before humans had even learned to write.
The iceman was dubbed Otzi, and scientists began to investigate his origins using modern techniques.
His lonely fate on a mountain in Northern Italy revealed so much.
Otzi wore a cloak made of woven grass, and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth and shoes, all made of leather of different skins.
He also wore a bearskin cap, and his snow shoes were waterproof. His equipment included a half-made bow, arrows and a reasonably sophisticated axe with a copper head.
Suitably for a man travelling across frozen mountains, Otzi carried material for starting a fire – including flint and a fungus used for sparking flames.
He also had 57 tattoos on his body – which were simple compared to the elaborate ink patterns we see today. It took more than a decade for Otzi’s tragic fate to be revealed.
An arrow head was lodged in his shoulder. The depth indicated he had been hit from a distance – suggesting he had been shot by a rival hunter. He also had a cracked skull.
This made poor Otzi the world’s oldest murder victim – shot by an arrow and then bashed on the head.
It was theorised that he had been killed and placed on the mountain as a sacrifice.
But blood stains on and around Otzi’s body were later identified – and these pointed to something else. There were different DNA identified on blood on his knife, two from the same arrowhead, and a fourth from his coat.
Otzi had shot two different people, and used his dagger to stab another.
The best guess is that he was caught up in a murderous tribal clash and escaped into the mountains. And blood on his coat may have been from Otzi carrying a wounded comrade.
Otzi has been seen as a victim – but it seems he may have been a hero, too.