A pro hockey player supposedly recruited by the CIA before mysteriously disappearing sounds like a Hollywood script.
But Duncan MacPherson's story is just that and, when he was eventually found, it went from mysterious to positively horrifying.
In August 1989, Duncan was planning to take up a job coaching the sport in Scotland with Dundee Tigers after struggling to break through into the US' National Hockey League.
Before his career move, he booked himself on a training course to learn to snowboard at the Stubai Glacier Resort in Austria.
READ MORE: Virgin Media price cut on movies and sport bundle as customers get £150 off bill
But he never returned home. Podcaster Mr Ballen said he had last been seen heading out on the late afternoon of the previous day to practise a little more on the icy slopes of the glacier.
It was a week later that someone from the Dundee Tigers called Duncan’s parents, Bob and Lynda, to ask where their new coach was.
Bob and Lynda took on the search themselves, criss-crossing Europe and putting up posters in multiple languages at ski resorts and other locations where he might be.
-
'Mafia sent hitman to my house for running world's most exclusive poker tournament'
One response to their appeals led police to Duncan's distinctive red car, which was still parked at the base of the glacier where he’d last been seen alive.
Police found Duncan’s passport and a letter to his girlfriend in which he told her how excited he was to be taking up his new job.
While they were at Stubai, Bob and Lynda happened to hand one of their missing-person posters to the snowboard instructor that had last seen their son alive.
His story reinforced the idea that Duncan had disappeared on the glacier, and the next day experts thoroughly searched the mountain – but with no success.
-
Cannibal tribe eats thieves as punishment – devouring everything apart from penises
Weeks turned into months, and eventually into years. But while the official investigation was eventually wound down, Duncan’s parents didn’t give up.
There were one or two incidents that gave them hope – on one occasion a man staggered out of a forest near Villach, Austria, with no memory of who he was or where he had been. But it wasn’t Duncan.
Another theory was the CIA job. Lynda remembered Duncan telling her that he’d been scouted by the CIA. When she told him that sounded exciting, Duncan replied that if he took the job they’d never see him again.
"You just don't get it, Mom, do you?" he said. "I'd have to disappear. I couldn't tell anybody what I was or where I was going. Not you. Not Dad. Not anybody. You'd never see or hear from me again."
-
Cartel hitman aged just 14 beheaded four victims as Mexico's lawlessness exposed
While Bob and Lynda returned to Stubai again and again over the next 14 years, the mystery was eventually solved by climate change. Over the years, the glacier had begin to melt.
In July 2003, a resort employee spotted a bright yellow object on one of the slopes. He skied over to clear up what he thought was a bit of rubbish only to realise, to his horror, it was a body.
The body was mutilated, with an arm cut off and a leg nearly cut off.
What's worse, Mr Ballen pointed out it was believed the injuries hadn't killed Duncan instantly.
"He would bleed to death without help, but in theory he could have been saved," he explained.
It's thought a snow tractor had accidentally ran over him in the fog, with its blades slashing the helpless snowboarder.
Mr Ballen continued: “The employee – even though this was a total accident totally panicked and decided that because it was so foggy no-one would know that they were the person that ran this guy over.”
“So instead of helping Duncan, they just tied him up and dragged him behind the Sno-Cat off the glacier and over to an area where this employee knew there was a very deep crevasse.
“They chucked Duncan – who might have been alive at this point – into the crevasse along with his arm and his severed leg and then the employee used the Sno-Cat tractor to rake over the crevasse”.
It wasn’t until 14 years later that another resort employee would see Duncan, still perfectly persevered, staring up at them from the ice.
Duncan’s snowboard, which was found with his body, bore the unmistakeable marks of the Sno-Cat’s blades.
The identity of the employee who was driving the vehicle that day has never been revealed.
To get more stories from Daily Star delivered straight to your inbox sign up to one of our free newsletters here .
Source: Read Full Article