MISTAKE OR MURDER?
ONE AUSSIE MAN’S CHILLING DEATH REMAINS UNSOLVED
Conditions might be bleak and brutal, but for Australian man Rodney Marks, the icy landscape of Antarctica was his playground. Until things turned deadly.
It’s been 23 years since Rodney, a Geelong-born astrophysicist, became fatally ill while working on a remote station in the South Pole as part of a research project.
On May 11, 2000, Rodney started feeling sick as he walked back to base from a remote observatory. He was suffering from stomach pains, nausea and was feverish.
Despite repeated visits to the station’s doctor, the cause of his maladies remained unknown. Thirtysix hours later, just as doctors began seeking outside medical advice via satellite, Rodney dropped dead.
Aged just 32 at the time of his passing, Rodney had been at the peak of his career when he began ‘wintering’ in Antarctica in the late ’90s. The renowned scientist even met his fiancée, Sonja Wolter, at the station. She had stayed on to work in the South Pole and to be with him in May 2000.
Due to the remote location and freezing winter, Rodney’s body couldn’t be flown back to civilisation for six months. When an autopsy was finally conducted in Christchurch, New Zealand, all signs pointed to poisoning.
Significant levels of methanol were found in Rodney’s bloodstream during the post-mortem. However, there were no clues to how the solvent, which is also used as a cleaning agent, found its way into his body.
Methanol poisoning can occur when someone improperly distils their own alcohol, prompting speculation that Rodney might have been brewing booze in secret.
He was known to drink to excess while on the base, alongside many of his South Pole colleagues, and used alcohol to mask the symptoms of his Tourette syndrome.
One co-worker described Rodney as “a brilliant, witty and steady sort of bloke who drank to excess on occasion”, but it was eventually ruled out after no homemade alcohol was found.
One investigator also found it was unlikely Rodney died from suicide. An alleged code of silence appeared to have been shared by those who remained at the South Pole.
After a 2006 inquest was held into Rodney’s death, his father Paul remarked that police were faced with the “arduous task of dealing with people that quite obviously don’t want to deal with them”.
In September 2008, the written report resulting from the December 2006 inquest was released. The coroner could not find any evidence to support theories of a prank gone awry nor foul play nor suicide.
Stranger still, an investigation had been carried out by US organisations, however they refused to release the findings.
Detective Inspector Grant Wormald of the
New Zealand Police was in charge of the investigation and shared his findings in 2006.
“In my view it is most likely Marks ingested the methanol unknowingly,” Wormald said at the time.
Despite this, the National Science Foundation, which governs the station Rodney died at, issued a statement announcing he had died of natural causes.
Two decades on, the real cause of the Australian scientist’s death remains unknown.
Tragically, Rodney’s father says the Marks family have given up hope they will ever learn the truth.
“I don’t think we are going to try to find out any more in regards to how Rodney died,” Paul told the NZ Herald.
“I’d see that as a fruitless exercise.”
‘Significant levels of methanol were found in his bloodstream’