Grisly glacier find solves 75-year mystery

MARCELIN and Francine Dumoulin left home to milk their cows in 1942 and never returned to their seven kids.

On a clear day in August, the couple set off from their village, Chandolin, into the Swiss Alps to check up on their cattle on farmland in Grilden, planning to come back that evening.

When they never returned, they left their five sons and two daughters orphaned.

“We spent our lives searching for them, relentlessly,” youngest daughter Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, 79, told Swiss newspaper Le Matin in comments translated from French.

“We did not think we could ever give them the funeral they deserved.”

Now, 75 years after the mystery began, it has been revealed what happened.

Mr and Mrs Dumoulin’s perfectly preserved bodies have been discovered in a shrinking glacier in Switzerland, 2615m above sea level.

The bodies of the husband and wife, who were 40 and 37 respectively when they went missing, were found near each other by a worker near a ski lift above the Les Diablerets resort on Thursday.

They were found still wearing World War II-era clothing with a backpack, watch, book and other personal items.

“The discovered equipment suggests that these hikers were likely to have been victims of an accident several decades ago,” Swiss police said in a statement.