‘World’s greatest mystery’ to be solved: Russian police re-open probe into deaths of nine hikers 60 years ago when one victim had her eyes and tongue removed and bodies were found stripped in freezing cold
- Nine Russian students on a winter hike died between February 1 and 2 in 1959
- Their mysterious deaths in the Northern Urals has fascinated people for decades
- Some of them were found in just their underwear, others with strange injuries
- Investigation into 'Dyatlov Pass Incident' now reopened by Russian authorities
When Russian authorities attributed the brutal deaths of nine hikers to the 'spontaneous power of nature' it sparked 60 years of conspiracy theories.
The university students set out to explore 'Dead Mountain' in Siberia in 1959 and when they failed to return a search party was sent after them - they were horrified by what they found.
Their tent had been mysteriously slashed from the inside, their camp was deserted and they had left their clothes and belongings behind.
Days later the first two bodies were discovered. They were stripped to their underwear next to a small fire.
Three more were found nearby, apparently they perished making an attempt to get back to their camp.
The last four were not found until the snow melted two months later in a ravine. Some of their injuries were horrifying. One had her eyes and tongue cut out, two had major chest fractures and another extensive skull damage. Their injuries were similar to those caused by a major car crash. They had no external injuries but it was if something had crushed them.
It has also been reported that radiation has been found on their clothes and the bodies were a strange tan colour. People claimed orange orbs were seen around the mountain at the time and the bodies were prematurely aged.
It sparked an avalanche of conspiracy theories from hypothermia induced madness to an attack by an indigenous tribe and was labelled the 'world's greatest mystery'.
Now, however the Russian government has vowed to get to the bottom of the enduring mystery known as the 'Dyatlov Pass incident'.
Alexander Kurennoi, a spokesperson for Russia’s prosecutor, said: 'All of the deaths are somehow connected with natural phenomena.
'Relatives, the media and the public still ask prosecutors to determine the truth and don't hide their suspicions that something was hidden from them.'
Russian investigators are once more looking into the deaths of a group of nine university student hikers who died under unclear circumstances in the Northern Urals between February 1 and 2, 1959. Pictured is their collapsed tent found by a rescue mission on February 20
Smiling before disaster: (Left to right) Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle, Luda Dubinina, SemyonZolotarev and Zina Kolmogorova were all found frozen to death in the Ural Mountains
What is known of that fateful night is that nine students at Ural Polytechnic, seven men and two women, had made camp for the night at the foot of Kholat Syakhl, the Dead Mountain.
The group, led by 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov, had made dozens of similar winter-time hikes before, though none quite so ambitious as this one.
When they failed to return on February 20, a rescue party was sent out to find them - and made a gruesome and baffling discovery.
At first, they came across a collapsed tent, still filled with all the clothing and survival gear needed to make the rest of the journey.
The empty tent baffled investigators, as it still contained items of clothing and pairs of shoes - implying that some of the students had ventured out into the wilderness barefoot and without coats.
Files seen during a press conference on the investigation of the Dyatlov Pass Incident case that has recently been reopened
The head of Sverdlovsk Region's directorate for the supervision over the execution of federal laws, Andrei Kuryakov, is seen at a press conference on the investigation this week
Indeed, despite temperatures well below -20C, two members of the group were found dead in just their underwear.
Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko were found lying in the snow on flat land near a river, a mile from the tent, next to the remains of a long burnt-out fire.
Around 350 yards away lay the corpse of Dyatlov, the engineering student who had put the expedition together and was its leader. His name would later be given to the area where the tragedy took place, as well as the incident itself.
Nearby, a search dog sniffed out the remains of Zina Kolmogorova, 22, under four inches of snow, and then that of Rustem Slobodin.
The bodies were in a line 200 yards apart, as if they had been trying to crawl behind each other back up to the shelter of the tent, but never made it.
Striking camp: The skiers setting up camp on February 2, 1959 in a snap taken from a roll of film found by investigators, which is the last known photo of them alive
Another two months went by before the rest of the group were found, under 15ft of snow in a den they had desperately hollowed out for themselves before succumbing to the cold.
Some of this group had broken bones and terrible internal injuries but, strangely, no external wounds, not even scratches on the skin.
Post-mortem examinations of all nine bodies threw their own anomalies, as some bodies were fully clothed, others almost naked. One, belonging to Lyudmilla Dubinina was missing her tongue and eyes.
An investigation by a Soviet government inspector was also fruitless, and was quietly dropped after concluding nobody was to blame.
Lev Ivanov, the inspector, concluded only that all nine deaths had been caused by what he described as ‘an unknown elemental force which they were unable to overcome’.
However, over the years hobby sleuths and internet detectives have offered up their own theories, ranging from UFOs to being driven mad by the howling wind of the Dyatlov Pass.
