Autopsy reveals… MUMMIFIED BODY OF GERMAN SAILOR FOUND IN HIS BOAT DIED OF A HEART ATTACK
An autopsy has revealed that the German sailor whose mummified body was found on his drifting yacht off the southern Philippines, died of a heart attack just a week before his body was discovered,.
Veteran seaman Manfred Fritz Bajorat was found dead on his 40-foot long vessel by two fishermen last Friday, with his mummified body pictured hunched over a table in the yacht’s main cabin.
It was not known at the time how he died, but police confirmed today that an autopsy had revealed he suffered a heart attack about seven days prior to his body being discovered.
‘The cause of death is acute myocardial infarction based on the autopsy by (the) regional crime laboratory,’ national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor said.
‘The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days,’ he added, citing a statement by police in the southern Philippines.
Police had earlier confirmed Mr Bajorat’s identity based on documents found aboard the yacht but said they had no idea where he was heading or had sailed from.
He left his native Germany two decades ago and spent the last 20 years of his life sailing around the world having lost his long-time wife Claudia several years earlier
Police in the town of Barobo, on the east coast of Mindanao island, where his body was taken, said the German embassy was currently in the process of arranging for a relative to fly to the Philippines.
‘It appears he has a daughter based in Germany and the embassy is to fly her here to identify the dead body,’ Chief Inspector Dominador Plaza, the Barobo police chief, said.
Police earlier launched an inquiry to determine whether Mr Bajorat had been the victim of a crime, but the autopsy result now indicates otherwise.
The area where his white-hulled 44-foot yacht boat was found some 100 kilometres (60 miles) off Barobo. The vessel was discovered by fishermen who found it with a broken mast adrift on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean on Friday.
Germany’s Bild daily newspaper quoted an old friend as saying Mr Bajorat ‘emigrated 20 years ago, first to the Netherlands, then he wanted to travel around the world with his wife’.
‘I haven’t seen him since then,’ said the friend, who added that he had stayed in contact with Mr Bajorat via Facebook once or twice a year.
The sailor’s wife of some 30 years, Claudia, died from cancer aged 53 on May 2 2010, most likely on the Caribbean island of Martinique.
Paying tribute to his wife at the time, Mr Bajorat wrote online: ‘Thirty years we’ve been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. You’re gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred.’
He went on to sail the Atlantic, the Pacific, around the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Agean.