Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S2 E1 - Teodora Hadjiyska is Explorer, and mountaineer and Dyatlov Pass Expert (Part 1)
7 Plays8 days ago
To start off our second season, I have a massive double-header for you all. It was an absolute pleasure to speak to Teodora Hadjiyska (Teddy) one of the world's leading experts on the Dyatlov Pass incident
Was it Paranormal, cryptids, alien in nature, or something else, one thing we know, it is one of the biggest cold cases out there.
9 Hikers died under bizarre circumstances on February 1-2, 1959, in the northern Ural Mountains, Soviet Union (modern day Russia).
A tent slashed open from within, footprints leading away in the snow, and bodies found scattered, some barely clothed and shoeless.
Some victims had skull fractures, crushed chests, and missing eyes/tongues, while most died of hypothermia.
Get comfy, listen to the story, and you can then decide what really happened
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Teddy Hajiska
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to a very special episode. Well, actually, it's going to be two episodes. We'll get more into that later. Today, I am over the moon and excited to have Teddy Hajiska.
00:00:28
Lee Hatfield
I hope I said that right. Teddy is a traveler, explorer and mountaineer and one of the world's leading experts on the Dyatlov Pass. We'll get more into that later. Teddy, welcome.
00:00:41
Teddy
Thank you very much for having me for the invitation. I don't pass any invitation to talk about the Yatlov Pass. So yes, we're going to have a great episode tonight. Tonight for me, it's early for you.
00:00:55
Lee Hatfield
Well, it's midday here and 6pm there, is that correct?
00:00:59
Teddy
Yes. Yes.
00:01:00
Lee Hatfield
So it's not too bad. So I've got my family's in the UK, so I roughly know the time difference. so I'll just have to check. Because you're in Austria, correct?
00:01:10
Teddy
Yes, I'm in Austria and right now there are the holidays events and there are people running around the house drinking beer and with their lederhosen, weird dances and the bonfires. So it's really weird right now in the village.
00:01:28
Teddy
I live in the Alps, I live in the mountains. So although i'm I live in Vienna, but I spend my time in a place in Styria. So I'm in closer to the mountains.
00:01:40
Lee Hatfield
Oh, man, a bit.
00:01:40
Teddy
And the people are really authentic Austrians here.
00:01:45
Teddy
No immigrants, just Austrians. With their schnapps, they make their schnapps from pine cones and they can drink in minus temperatures, no problem.
00:01:45
Lee Hatfield
Oh, fantastic.
00:01:57
Teddy
And they're only in leather hoses to the knee. And that's it. And I mean, around the bonfire.
00:02:03
Lee Hatfield
I, wow.
00:02:05
Teddy
That's what they're doing all night long, every Saturday before Christmas.
00:02:07
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:02:09
Teddy
But anyways, we're going have our fun here around the bonfire in the Norte Nuraus.
00:02:09
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. I, I, oh yes. Yeah. I, I've worn lederhosen's once in my life and like never again.
00:02:21
Teddy
Why? what Never mind.
00:02:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:02:23
Teddy
That's another conversation. about traditions austrian traditions that's another topic
00:02:27
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:02:30
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. Okay, so before we get into the reason why we're here, if you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll get into the story.
Teddy's Near-Fatal Accident and Interest in Dyatlov Pass
00:02:39
Teddy
well i i was sucked into the topic uh unwillingly really it was a near-death experience uh accident that happened to me and uh i that I don't even have holes in my ears for you know earrings. I never wanted to go into a hospital. I never broke a finger or an arm like a kid. And then I was traveling and because I'm too lazy to climb with gear, ropes, harnesses, I never... Learn to do that.
00:03:09
Teddy
So I developed a love for volcanoes. So I was going on volcanoes and Indonesia is a great destination for this. I was in an active volcano, which actually didn't harm me. But on the way back, I was in the back of a truck, just a truck with construction materials inside. And I was with my backpack and everything with my friend.
00:03:31
Teddy
And they didn't want to take us, but there was no transportation because it's a very, very small island. No public transportation, no tourists, nothing. Just an active volcano. But there are many active volcanoes that Borneo and others that you can take big selfies and everything. No one wanted to go there. There are no trails. We went with machete to cut our way.
00:03:53
Teddy
And then on the way back, we climbed on the back of the truck after some convincing. And then when the truck started, they stopped and they checked something of the tires and everything.
00:04:07
Teddy
And they started again and then the brakes failed. So we were downhill from the volcano and we were speeding up, speeding up.
00:04:11
Lee Hatfield
Oh.
00:04:14
Teddy
We got out of control. So the driver, they're tough. when the brakes give up because they don't have runaways or anything, the ramps there, it's just a mountain, they usually jump. So he didn't. He smashed the truck into the face of the mountain. And this is why we we lived.
00:04:37
Teddy
I was the only damaged so badly. Well, actually my friend, we which married me after the accident, he got the iron rod right five millimeters above the eye socket.
00:04:50
Lee Hatfield
Out.
00:04:50
Teddy
So if it broke his bone here, so if it was in the eye socket, he would be just dead on the spot. And what I was holding to the frame, so all the bricks went into my chest, so broke my rib cage.
00:05:07
Teddy
my elbow, my scapula, I had bleed in the in the in the brain. I had broken elbow and I was unconscious.
00:05:20
Teddy
So when I woke up in the hospital, someone mentioned, so just to speed up because they were waiting for me to die. They actually didn't call a surgeon, but a priest who didn't even speak English, live alone my life.
00:05:29
Lee Hatfield
I'm sorry.
00:05:34
Teddy
mother tongue. And they were waiting for me to die because when you have flail chest and no lungs and your lungs are filled with blood, you have critical days so when they can open you, but they didn't have this chance. And then, so I lived until the fourth day and they started talking about evacuation because that i that was in Indonesia and they didn't have any means to help me there with any other surgeries or this surgery or any. anything so and this is when somebody said well haven't you been to the dyadlof pass and i didn't know what they meant i didn't know that name what they mean is that one of the hikers actually two of the hikers had same injuries like i did so they had uh
00:06:23
Teddy
of multiple fractures, broken ribs and flailed chest, which usually, and nothing from the outside. I didn't have nothing, no bruises, no lacerations, nothing. There were no bones sticking out of me. I had 35% of my bones broken, but I had no external signs of any trauma.
Researching Dyatlov Pass
00:06:44
Teddy
So this is what happens when bodies fall from a high altitude or they get them hit by a car or something. It's a high velocity impact, which makes your internal organs and the bone it makes you a soup inside, but you can be pretty pink and good looking from the outside. Well, things are going to come out of your orifices, but not outside the skin. So this is what happened to me. And since that incident created a void of my lifestyle. I was traveling a lot before that.
00:07:16
Teddy
And now I had to spend a lot of time actually learning to walk and surgeries on my elbow, because, uh, when you, uh, when you're in a car crash and they operate on you right away, they can do miracles. But if you have, uh,
00:07:31
Teddy
be waiting to die for more than a month. After that, all these pretty standard surgeries, the the small bones are gone. So it's very difficult to recreate your joint. So they used other bones from other parts of my body. And so i I changed my lifestyle. And I started checking what did I mean? What's that Yadlov? What's that name? What happened there? And then the first thing that popped up that this is like 13 years ago was the devil Devil's Path movie.
00:08:04
Teddy
And it's about zombies and teleportation and things, Nazis and caves and shelters and bomb shelters. and that No way something can can be, something real can be based for this movie.
00:08:20
Teddy
This is impossible.
00:08:21
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:08:22
Teddy
So I started reading, but actually there was nothing to read because right now you have my site where there is all the documents, all the archives that are translated, transcribed.
00:08:34
Teddy
Even translation nowadays with Google and everything, although it's horrible if you try to translate the cold case of Yatlov Pass with Google, because there are things like the names and the the Google automatic translation, not even Deepol, other translation tools, they're trying to contextually help the whatever is going on with the story. So you end up with strange sentences like the queen found the woodpecker smoking pancakes in the tent.
00:09:11
Teddy
and You're like, okay, that case is weird. but thats I mean, I didn't want the Americans, to blame the English speaking world to blame it on the translation, that they didn't have access to the document. First is the access to the documents because they were gone. I mean, it's not like they were there and they were gone, but just yeah how it all started that It happened 67 years ago and for 35 years no one had seen the case files. Then slowly people got access to the case files and they actually from the archives and they were allowed to go and take pictures of the actually they made copies of the first pages of the case files that they got the access to. And they started surfacing on the web. But you know before the web was small images and so on and no one
00:10:04
Teddy
even to this day, bothers still bothered to to make a dedicated site where it's just about this case. Everywhere where you see an article, they usually pop up at the anniversary of the case, which is 1st of February. You learned about the case from one article, which is impossible because it's not interesting. I mean, there sensational headlines like, missing eyes, missing tongue, and naked bodies, and blah, blah, blah, radioactive, KGB, UFO, and then stops.
00:10:40
Teddy
It's like, okay. And people are trying to learn more. Again, from but like I don't want to blame the podcast. actually encourage people to do podcasts because it's a lot easier to talk. like You're going to hear me talking when we're trying with Lee to set up a well for how long it's gonna last. Like one hour is not even the introduction to this case because you have to understand what's going on. What's going on is that it's not just that cover up if there was a cover up, but maybe it was covered up.
00:11:10
Teddy
It's just how the the scene was treated at the time, not because they there were covering something because the the Soviet Union, if they wanted you not to know about something, you won't know about it. Like, no questions asked. Like, all these photos, diaries, everything. Actually, the Diablov case is interesting because we have too much information. It's not that something is missing. I mean, they're saying that it's the whole case is missing, that we have what we have right now, it's actually up the
00:11:45
Teddy
absolutely made up doctor something that the the the photos are doctor that those are not shot that these people it's i mean you will read it all everything that exists under the sky as a theory or a conspiracy or anything. And that's what's so interesting about this case that whatever version or scenario you can come up with and you can try me, you can actually find some details of the case that actually can lead you to that thought.
00:12:19
Teddy
Like, can you come up with another case that you can have, you can blame, let's say UFO aliens,
00:12:31
Teddy
uh, gravity tunnel, uh, Wolverines, mushrooms, religious killing, special forces, uh, love fight, love triangle, uh, someone going nuts because whatever, because there was a stranger there that joined the group at the last moment, uh, sabotage, uh, you can have their,
00:12:59
Teddy
Even if we're going to talk about theories, because every article, movie, book, or anything, actually after pouring so much factual data in your brain, they need to ease you with some conclusion, with some possible theory.
00:13:17
Teddy
That's why every piece of work about the Dyatlov case needs a conclusion. And that's why I bow in front Josh Gates because they didn't give you one because there wasn't one that even to this day can prove or connect all the dots.
00:13:23
Lee Hatfield
Yep.
00:13:34
Teddy
and it's not it's just we're using this uh expression connect the dots well i have uh uh uh i described the documents and all the factual information i'm not even talking about the speculations they are like you mix the pieces of more than one box of puzzles. Like if you have several puzzles and you mix the pieces, you're like lifting one piece of the puzzle and say, okay, so where do I fit that? Because it doesn't fit in this theory.
00:14:08
Teddy
It's just every time we when you start following a theory, then you you just cannot fit all the facts in this theory. And people tend to leave them alone because they cannot explain it with this theory.
00:14:20
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:22
Teddy
And initially it drove me crazy because people are starting, well, what about this? What about that? Well, and you know, the tons of facts that doesn't fit this, but who I am to tell people how the train of thought should follow in order to come to some realization because obviously all we the experts in the case we cannot come up with one version that we agree on.
00:14:51
Teddy
i go So I started reading about the Dyatlov case and all of the sources were in Russian. I know Russian. So that's what I kind of, it was like all my life I was trained to fit this miss to be this missing link that I'm doing websites for living. I have a server. i I have tons of time on my hands.
00:15:16
Teddy
I was sucked into this case because of my close experience with the trauma. And then I know Russian. I just know it because I'm born in Bulgaria and we used to be the very close to the Soviet Union. So in school, I learned Russian. So I knew Russian. I'm not Russian. The first time when I went to Russia with was with Josh Gates.
00:15:42
Teddy
i and and It was a miracle. And that's the the the second thing why I keep talking. working on this case because that's work. I mean, nobody's paying me, but it's a hard work.
00:15:52
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:15:56
Teddy
It's that it's taking me places. And the miracle started with Josh Gates and the invitation from Discovery because I wanted to visit the place. There's no way. Ten years i was working on the case and I couldn't see it.
00:16:10
Teddy
You see these photos, but you don't have the feeling. like Every time questions like, Okay, they want, so for our audience audience, I want to say that the pass is a ridge.
00:16:22
Teddy
So there is a forest from the south and there is forest from the north. From the south, we have all of the evidences from diary entries and photos that they were alive and happy and everything was okay.
00:16:38
Teddy
And then suddenly they find the tent on top of the pass, the Dyatlov Pass, and the bodies on the north side. So actually the bodies are not anywhere around the tent. And the beginning, like the, the, the start for starters, the mystery starts from the fact that why did they leave their
Theories and Challenges in Dyatlov Pass Investigation
00:17:00
Teddy
tent? Why did they cut it from the inside? Why did they leave? Whose footsteps are this? Because everybody's saying, okay, they, we know that they left all their shoes and jackets and headwear and gloves and scarf, everything. They, they leave it in the tent.
00:17:18
Teddy
They cut out their tent and then very slowly, not even one after another, like you move in snow in winter, right? One makes the steps and the the rest follow. This is the easiest way to actually move in winter, in snow, in the mountain. No, they were they were actually moving abreast, like on a parade.
00:17:40
Teddy
And they were not running. They were not dragging, limping, panicking, anything. So here goes the avalanche. One of the first reasons that comes to mind if you're on a slope in winter is something what can make you cut your tent from the inside.
00:18:01
Teddy
So you you don't have these seconds even to go out to exit from the entrance, but cut out your tent. That means you're not planning to use that tent at all because they they just cut out two big, like a door size openings.
00:18:18
Teddy
And they render it absolutely new, like they were not turning back to that tent, but they left everything inside.
00:18:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:18:28
Teddy
So I'm going to go in loops. So I will go back to 59. What they did is they sent students to find their colleagues to find the hikers.
00:18:43
Teddy
They didn't know. Well, no one wanted to think that they're, uh, perished because it was a long trek and a lot of things happen and the weather can change they can get lost a lot of things can happen so they were going as a race commission so when they found the tent they nobody preserved it no one was thinking crime scene no one was even trained for a crime scene And I befriended whoever is left alive from the rescuers that found the bodies.
00:19:19
Teddy
And i you can still ask them, what did they do? but No one was thinking about dead bodies. They were just trying to find them.
00:19:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:19:28
Teddy
That's why even at the beginning, they made some additional cuts. Then they saw the the the cows inside. It wasn't like here were the shoes, here was the supplies, here were the backpacks and they slept like No, it was all in a pile inside and all it was ice in an ice pile of things. so And it was dark. So they just they they looked, they saw that there was nobody there. They saw the footprints, the weird footprints going down. And they went back because it was already getting dark. so uh the rescuers were camping on the on the south they didn't have any reason why should they go over the pass yet they found the tent they they saw the steps and they went back and they took some things from the tent so talking about evidence it's lost i mean that's chain is lost because they took
00:20:27
Teddy
uh they ate the food they drank the alcohol they took the skis because not all of them had skis and they took some diaries they took some cameras they took some papers and they went back they reported they they found the tent and in the morning so they had radio sessions every morning there wasn't a constant radio connection uh someone had to wait for them to actually make a radio a call at certain time in the morning and it was once a day and so in the morning they reported that there was uh they found the tent and it was so
00:21:13
Teddy
the order came not to go because they wanted to send dogs and anything will the throw their sense because the they wanted only the scent of the hikers, right?
00:21:25
Teddy
So they they tell them, don't then don't go, we're going to send dogs, but they already went.
00:21:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:21:32
Teddy
I mean, early in the morning, some of the, they didn't so they didn't sleep. Some of the students went down following the, footprints and they found the bodies.
00:21:46
Teddy
We don't have any forensic photos of neither the tent, the way it was found, nor the things inside the tent, nor the bodies.
00:21:58
Teddy
Everything was done either with the two cameras that the students were carrying with them or, and that's a little freaky,
00:22:10
Teddy
the camera They used the cameras of the dead students that they found inside the tent. So I'm saying that nothing was preserved. Nothing was treated. Film roles disappeared.
00:22:24
Teddy
I mean, no one was thinking about crime scene. And then when they sent the prosecutors and the investigators, they behaved.
00:22:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:22:36
Teddy
Absolutely out of line. The first one did some more cuts in the tent. And then when they sent from Ekaterinburg the lead investigator from for the case Ivanov,
00:22:51
Teddy
He was what they call a city investigator. He didn't know anything about the mountain. He didn't have even the proper shoes and the and the coat and anything. he well He knew how to describe the position of a body when it's found on the cross section of this street and this street and something like that. He was out of his element. He didn't know what's going on there and he was terribly cold. So he never documented protocol. He never wrote anything down. He never made any pictures, anything. At the beginning, he was kind of a into the case, talking to the students, asking them, well, how do you do this? And what's that? He didn't know even the items inside the tent, what they're used for.
00:23:39
Teddy
and then because the bodies were found in two uh instances uh two months apart so during the the the findings of the first bodies which did not show any strange trauma they just they found the bodies dead from hypothermia and exhaustion the other way around exhaustion and hypothermia they just died because they stopped moving the weird thing was that they were not fully clothed as they should when you go outside the tent i mean to the point that two of the bodies were naked from the waist down just what with underwear so yeah
00:24:21
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So can I just interrupt? I just interrupt one second? Can we just go back a little bit? And like these nine individuals were from the UL University.
00:24:33
Lee Hatfield
Is that correct? UL Polytechnical Institute. Yeah.
00:24:37
Teddy
yeah Of course, I didn't even start talking about the internet.
00:24:40
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:24:45
Teddy
I just wanted to tell you at the beginning how did the case files come to surface for the public domain.
00:24:48
Lee Hatfield
okay
00:24:51
Lee Hatfield
OK. Yeah.
00:24:53
Teddy
So what I'm saying is that they did something in 59 and forgot about it, right?
00:24:53
Lee Hatfield
okay
00:24:59
Teddy
And then in 35, people still thought that's very weird, that they didn't know how they died. They were talking, but they were talking about things like they were brown, their faces was all were orange.
00:25:14
Teddy
The second group was was doesn't even even with open caskets. But just to put our audience into the the beginning of the of the case, and then I'll go back why it's so hard
00:25:27
Lee Hatfield
okay
00:25:29
Teddy
to have all the documents gathered because they're not hidden.
00:25:32
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:25:32
Teddy
No one is covering them up.
00:25:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:25:35
Teddy
The thing is that some of these documents like the diaries and everything, they're written with pencils on your knee in minus 40 degrees Celsius and there are puncture marks and everything.
00:25:47
Teddy
So it's not just a translation. First, you have to scan them. And then the community that knows Russian has to agree what is actually written there because it's handwriting.
00:25:58
Teddy
it's It's difficult to even decipher this in Russian and then we translate.
00:26:00
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:26:05
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:10
Teddy
All the people that had access to that, they were just at the time when someone got their hands on something, they always publish only limited scraps or limited pages and they write on top or underlined what they're interested in only to fit or prove their theory but there was no one uh depository of all the information where regardless of any theory or any scenario you can find everything so this is where i stand 13 years ago i couldn't figure out and now i will help you with what no one helped me because
00:26:40
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:26:47
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:26:48
Teddy
what i I got sucked into this case because I have a obsessive compulsive disorder. like I need to put things in order, like clean them up, put them in order.
00:26:59
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:59
Teddy
And now I can understand how many people died, how many went, how many came back, who was found where, with what trauma, wearing whose clothes. And I got just mad because the information is there.
00:27:13
Teddy
But when you go to the Russian forums, Every basic question you have, like even why is the first name of this person sometimes alexander and another time simeon they're like thousands of posts that at the beginning they're always good with as much information as you can get but then they they have update the information so they come with some other realization on this subject but in the meantime everybody's arguing about everything it's like
00:27:46
Teddy
horrible to try to learn about this case from forums. So that's why I said, okay, and I didn't have any ambition to to to be the platform, the the place where you learn about this case.
00:27:51
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:27:59
Teddy
Just from my own sanity, I started just putting things in order. Okay, case files here, photos here, recollections here.
00:28:09
Teddy
The theories, I wasn't interested in the theories, but then everybody's asking and it has the right to see some interpretation of of all this and people are interested in this. So I put it there and even people started sending me their theories. So I also the published theories. But... What is very interesting to me and where is the worth of the slew thing of all this is just gathering information. And when you go to forums, images are missing, links are not working. There is no one place people. There is another thing I should start from here.
00:28:47
Teddy
I still don't know if you know if you're crazy to be interested in Yatlov Pass or the other way around. You become crazy after you start reading about this case. Because some people that were into the case and were like the the main contributors of information, photos, everything, suddenly they say, I don't want my name to be connected with this case. Please don't don't get... Don't call me, don't write to me.
00:29:13
Teddy
I'm not into the case anymore for 10 years. And then they're back. I mean, very important people with very important information. Those are the first one that went and scanned and photo made photo of the case files. So and some of the people that made photos of the case files, they stole some of the pages like souvenirs. And then the workers into the archive, they saw that online,
00:29:40
Teddy
They're scans photos of pages that are no longer into their folder. So they actually printed scans from the internet and put it back into the folder. so we're So we're talking about this kind of mess. So if you read and you're going to read that they reopened the case, that's not true. In 2019, the prosecutor,
00:30:03
Teddy
well Remind me to get back. That's not the most important important thing.
00:30:07
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:30:07
Teddy
So let's, what happened? So who are these people? Who are we talking about? Here is the, what what we know. Some of them, they finished the Ural Polytechnic Institute, two of them. The rest were still students in the Ural Polytechnic Institute. They all knew each other.
00:30:32
Teddy
At the beginning, they usually went in groups of 10. This is like the option of the optimal number of people in a group because they they joined two tents for four people and they could fit 10, two tents of four people to
00:30:54
Teddy
to make it for a large group. the equipment was very old.
00:30:57
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. you
00:30:59
Teddy
and The tents were heavy and in a lot of, they were worn already. So they were coming apart and they were stitched in the in the middle. And this particular track was no different from any other for the region and for the for the winter. So there were 10 people going on a winter ski expedition of the highest difficulty category that was three at the time. Right now they they have more like, not more, but broken in different ways. So now it's like five, but then it was the the most difficult part. So it was difficult not because there
00:31:41
Teddy
destination like which was the peak of torten it's not that it's technically difficult but it was 300 kilometers to carry everything that you will need to camp and eat they were not going to hunt they didn't take a rifle with them uh
00:32:02
Teddy
So everything that they were going to eat, they had to take with them all of the axes for the firewood, all the buckets. So and the skis were very heavy at the time. So there two girls.
00:32:18
Teddy
And I mean, they were right now, you would say women, but there, I mean, from the autopsy, we know that they were virgins, that it's not that it matters. But what I'm saying is that they were between 21 and
00:32:33
Teddy
Four. Nine of them. So far, there are ten people that have been together. They're friends. They're very enthusiastic. They're very cute, charismatic, intelligent, beautiful. They sing. They're beautiful people inside out. That takes place, because this is also important, takes place after Stalin.
00:33:00
Teddy
Khrushchev is in power. So there is a toll, which means that Russians start, I mean, the Soviet Union started allowing movies and books and the it's you don't get killed right away if you're interested in something, you know, outside the regime.
Trek Preparations and Mysterious Hiker
00:33:19
Teddy
So there is hope. There is hope at that time. And they're very happy. They're very, their life is just beautiful. and it doesn't matter how much money you have the how how rich are your parents uh they're all friends now the first kind of a strange thing comes from the fact that the 10th uh the tent the hiker could not go because he was he didn't take some exams they sent they didn't allow him because everything you do you have to be a member of a sports club and you have be have to be allowed from your studies or work because they're all
00:34:00
Teddy
going to to the university or they're working. And even the two that used to be students in the UP, the Ural Polytechnic Institute, they got, it was very kind of uncertain if they're going to be allowed leave from work to go on the expedition. And they were very happy that they, because there were others that wanted to go, but they couldn't, they didn't allow them like Dyatlov. So what happens at the time, someone decides to make a route, a trek. So he makes the plans and he submits, submits the plans to the routing commission and the routing commission is checking the, the experience, which is like a, what category of a hiker you are for this specific sports like skiing,
00:34:51
Teddy
And then they look at the route. Do you know what you're doing? They look at your supplies. They look at the everything.
00:35:02
Teddy
Everything has to be approved, which is a good thing because people don't do stupid things. And also they give you a letter which says, okay, this group of hikers is going to whatever and we are ordering you to help them.
00:35:18
Teddy
So with this letter, they can go to any hut or house or something like that and they help you with whatever they can. Like they shelter you, they give you food, they also have some money, they buy food and everything So one of them couldn't go and on his place came a very, a stranger, a strange person who is, who could be their father, who is 38 year old.
00:35:18
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:35:45
Teddy
And he's survivor from the war. So he didn't die. That's a, so also, so I mean, you're already, you won the lottery, right? And he was much older and they were kind of a skeptical and they all knew each other. They were they knew what they're going to do. And suddenly there is this much older person that comes with joins them. And that was a strange addition to the to the group. Now, why did Igor Dyatlov allow this person to join them? It's also controversial because some people say he couldn't object, he couldn't say no. Why couldn't he say no? Some people say, well, that could create a problem with leadership.
00:36:33
Teddy
because they they're supposed to follow Igor Dyatlov. He was a well-known, good leader of for groups because there is one classification of what kind of category of hikes you have done and then how many times you have led the uh category of this uh this category hype so you uh by rule you have to be a member at least i i don't remember two or three times of this difficulty of uh difficulty of height to lead one so for igor gatlouk that was the first time that he's gonna lead a
00:37:09
Teddy
this type of track and then simon's lottery of joins the group and in the dark is so interesting that you can read the diary so there is one you would say why are they carrying so many papers like notebooks each of them had personal diary and there was one group diary So in the group diary, there are things that are very important for the area because this is the time when they are conquering pigs for the first time.
00:37:44
Teddy
They don't have maps, they don't have guides. So they're using each other's nodes for the next group that's going to go there. And their attempt was supposed to be the first one in winter because many people say first attempt to a Torten. No, because even when they started looking for them, a helicopter flew to a Torten and they found the node that was left from a different group, which went there in summer.
00:38:13
Teddy
so there was or So they found that note and they knew that there is no note from Dyatlov. But then again, you know, when there is one thing that I learned to do after 10 years of, you know, digging up.
00:38:31
Teddy
all the questions are very good. You can come up with all the questions that come to mind and they're very, I mean, they're reasonable questions. The first question that comes to mind in that particular of the situation is where do you look for the note? Because for the, for There are no like, corines or some anything marking the peaks that are going to be conquered for the first time. leave They don't have pictures, the photos or drawings or anything. So where do you look for a node, especially in winter when there is like five meters of snow?
00:39:10
Teddy
Where is the node, right?
00:39:10
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, nailed to a tree.
00:39:13
Teddy
but No trees, nothing. it's like Where is that note? So even to this day, they said, well, where did they found there this note? How can you be sure that there is no note left by Dyatlov somewhere else?
00:39:29
Teddy
But let's go back to the beginning. So 10 people show up on the platform on the train station, and one of them is very, older than them.
00:39:40
Teddy
i mean, it's 38. He doesn't look old, but he has mustaches, like, you know, it looks different. is He's not a student and he has had he has life experience more than they even knew because, okay, I'm going to skip just making a fast
00:39:59
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:40:00
Teddy
note to the future of the story. That person was exhumed in 2018. And we see that all the trauma and everything is matching. And because this it was like a loophole in the bureaucracy of what's allowed and what not in Russia. he wasn't His name wasn't into the registry of the cemetery. And so the relatives have one periodical, big periodical, Komsomolskaya Pravda. They paid for the exhumation, and but they used the relative's so statue to file the paperwork that they want to check the grave, because if he's not buried there, according to the papers of the cemetery, so where is their relative?
00:40:44
Teddy
they're young, they don't have kids, right? This person was dug up. He wasn't, he didn't have any marriages, but at the time, because the men were not, they they lost a lot of men in the war.
00:41:00
Teddy
So a lot of babies were born out of law, out of, yeah. what Yeah.
00:41:06
Lee Hatfield
Wedlock, yeah, marriage.
00:41:09
Teddy
And the, So that periodical, they actually found out that he had a baby, that older person that joined the the group had a baby and they had, they argue with the with the mother of the baby.
00:41:27
Teddy
And he went to prove something to the world on that track and she was mad at him. So she left the baby crawling on the doorstep of his mother. His mother took the baby and gave it for adoption. And to this day, the stepdaughter from a different parent is bat-mouthing Zolotryov that he's an evil man because he stole the baby and she doesn't know what where is the baby. But on every TV show, she's appealing for the people to help her find her brother.
00:42:00
Teddy
well So we know that there was a baby in his life. and so that makes him a completely different person from the students so they they hop on the train and they sing and they in the beginning they write in their personal diary this is what i wanted to get in the personal diaries we read about their feelings uh there too that broke up very, very close before that track. Zinan Dorushenko used to be a pair, an item, and then he broke up with her and she's so beautiful because people were telling him that she's one year older.
00:42:41
Teddy
So she's old for him. So and she was suffering. She was heartbroken. And she's writing in her diary. How how can I go on a track with him? Actually, this is in a letter to a friend of hers, a girlfriend. He's here. So she at the beginning, she's doing things of the sort, like she's freezing her hands because, you know, everything is in the backpack. He's giving her his mittens and she's no I don't want anything to do with you and the rest of the group is like no no no no you too you behave that's not think of but but in the mountain you don't bring this shit up so uh so these two that she's still heartbroken he's he doesn't he's a womanizer whatever she's even talking about that oh we we talk about around the fire uh and he's uh he likes girls whatever he's uh
00:43:33
Teddy
already moved on and then we know that igor dyadlov was carrying a photo of zina kumogorova in his breast pocket so everybody's uh in the movies and everything they say that he was in love with her but we have their correspondence we have their letters and it doesn't show nothing like she's asking think where is the track what should i bring there it's all very friendly but not no
00:43:49
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:44:00
Teddy
romantic anything and on that track that uh the older the older one with the baby uh i can tell from the photos that he's uh talking he's actually interested in xena but he's he has so many women in his life like he he liked women so and and i'm saying all this to get to the diary of the second girl which uh is she's In her personal diary, she says, i'm I feel evil like hell, like a devil, like hell. So she's going through, and to me it sounds like her moment of the month, because she says, I hope in three days all passes all by, because I really can't stand myself. I'm so evil right now.
00:44:51
Teddy
And at some point she stops writing anything. So at the beginning he she writes about this Zolutaryov, the older guy. He writes, who is this guy that's going to come with us? but How can we say no? it's She's almost writing like, okay, he was imposed to us. they Like he could be infiltrating the group to fall on them if they don't go, you know, run.
00:45:14
Teddy
from the country or something like that. But then she writes, oh my gosh, he knows so many songs. He's like, and you see from the photos that he really integrated into the group. He's swapping hats.
00:45:29
Teddy
His hat is on somebody else's head. They were so friendly. so So I don't see anything suspicious. Although you're going to read a lot about this guy that he was sent by, that he was a KGB spy. But there were so many working for the KGB. That was like half of the population. That was so ordinary. We think that there were at least three KGB people in the group.
00:45:56
Teddy
So what? I mean, Why? What would they do? You're going to read that they were kamikaze with new weapons that they killed. I mean, they started some rockets that hit some meteorological balloons that were filled with poisonous gases and they all died. But the traumas are telling a completely different story. And that person, the older one, he's with the worst traumas of all.
00:46:24
Teddy
And he shit his pants. So. That's also interesting fact, by the way, because I think that they were redressed. So what I'm saying is that if he killed all of them, how did he kill himself in such a bad way? And when they exhume him, in Russia, they make a circus about the DNA.
00:46:44
Teddy
Because on the on the day of the exhumation, there was a superimposition expert who took a picture of this old guy, older guy, 38-year-old. by the way, he died on his birthday.
00:46:55
Teddy
Another thing interesting. They took a picture. So he had his skull from the grave and he found 12 points, which proves because you need 10. I mean, he found three or four more than he needed. Like he needed 10, he found 14 and that that's the guy that is in the grave. And they took samples for DNA analysis. And in real time on the TV, they the first channel, Russian federal channel said, no, that's not him.
00:47:29
Teddy
Which is like, and everybody was like, what? So there was someone one else in the grave? or someone else went with them that was not him because they didn't know him, right? But then Komsomolska Pravda immediately sent samples to another laboratory, the National Russian whatever, and they said, no, no, no, they didn't announce the results properly. They should have said, That is not indicative of if that's him or not because blah, blah, blah, I don't have the verbiage. It's on the side. It's like it's not that it's not him.
00:48:04
Teddy
it's They cannot tell. From that analysis, they cannot tell. So they have to do the analysi the DNA analysis in a different way. So the National Laboratory of whatever in Russia, they come pretty fast with the conclusion that it's him, but they cannot exclude his brother.
00:48:24
Teddy
It could be him or his brother. His brother is nowhere. Like, he's not in the pictures. No one knows about him. And the reason for that is that, and that Kumsumovskyapravda found all this information about his brother, is that he worked for the Germans in a Russian-occupied village. At the time, when the Germans, so whatever, did for a certain time, when they occupy territory they make you work for them and because he worked for them after that they shot him I mean the Soviet Union they
00:49:05
Teddy
there was a court decision and they shot him as a spy. And Komsomolskaya Pravda found the death certificate of his brother. And when he's asked, and everybody's speculating that he wasn't mentioning his brother, not talking about his brother, and there were no photos left of his brother, because he wanted to distance himself for the Komsomol, for the party, for the... and So he's not suffering the consequences of his brother being a spy.
00:49:33
Teddy
Yes, but that only inflamed more speculations that actually that was his brother and they swapped bodies and that's why we don't have any pictures of his brother. So, but I mean, every single detail is like a void and new information comes up constantly. So, you the only thing I have time for is just put it on its place. Okay, this is the analysis. This is when it was exhumed. Those are the photos of the exhumation. this is Make up your mind. Is that him or not? Tattoos. He has strange tattoos and his job was to teach kids physical education. So he was not allowed to have tattoos showing up. Anyway, so that's that guy.
00:50:16
Teddy
That's one sleeve of theories that he's involved, that he was something about him. So they go and they start their track. So here comes the second suspicious element of the group.
00:50:29
Teddy
One of the 10 get his sciatica inflamed and goes back. Okay. How come? And that's, that's, they call him the survivor.
00:50:41
Teddy
So what happens that's, he has this disease. mean, this, uh, thing. For many years, he knows about it. The question is why did Dyatlov allow him to come? Well, he was, how to say, he wanted to come, it wasn't a problem every time.
00:51:00
Teddy
What actually worsened it is that they were traveling one of the days on a truck, like me, on the back of the truck, and there was wind and just it got inflamed from the draft, and he couldn't walk after that.
00:51:16
Teddy
couldn't walk after that And he he decided to follow the group to the last point where their track was supported by some kind of transportation to carry his backpack. Because so you go with the train, they then you get a bus, then you get on the back of a truck, you just find someone that goes in the direction you need and you hop on the back of the truck. It's not planned. You just... on the spot you find some workers, loggers, someone, geologists that go in your direction. And then they found on the last logging the village district 41, they found someone, well, they actually ordered a guy, uncle, loves whatever, Slava, I think was his first name, Vlickczuz,
00:52:07
Teddy
to get on his horse-driven slate and get some samples from abandoned a second northern place village, some geology samples to get and help the hikers with their backpacks to that place.
00:52:23
Teddy
And because there were abandoned cores for mining things, which were of interest for the geology department back in Ekaterinburg, Yuri Yudin, the one with the sciatica, decided to go there and if it doesn't get any better and it won't, he will go back with Uncle Slava with his backpack and everything. So we have we have one going back.
00:52:46
Teddy
the It was nothing suspicious. He can't tell to this day. He can't tell anything that helps us understand what happened. And actually, when he went back, he went to his village. There's there is no phones, nothing. And when actually they found the bodies and they saw, they understood, I mean, the rescuers understood that he he went back. They sent a helicopter, they took him.
00:53:15
Teddy
And for the first time, he was the last one to learn that the group, his friends are dead. he got the shock of his life and to this day he stutters i mean he's dead now but he's like he never married he's he's a very sincere guy he always helped he went to the diatlov pass every year he helped in any any way he but he stutters and there are a lot of movies in the movies they portray him like someone that had the premonition the knowledge the something to to go back, that it was all made up, the that the reason. That he pleaded with Dyatlov to go back for some reason and he said, no, you go back, we continue. But you see photos, how they hug, how they part and so on. So, okay, so and Yuri Yudin, they take him with the helicopter to the morgue and then he sees the bodies, he's totally, he's, you know, he cries, he's in shock and then they take him to the airfield where all of the backpacks and all the stuff from the past is brought, and he's the one that tells who what belongs to whom.
00:54:21
Teddy
How is he supposed to know what belongs to whom? And he's all the small items are actually put in somebody's backpacks. They were not there. So he sometimes he judges but but from the fact where they take it from,
00:54:37
Teddy
to to whom it belongs. And he doesn't know what Semyon Zolotaryov, the older guy, brought with him. He was on the front on the front lines. he He may have other ways to wrap his feet with socks or knives or something. I mean, he doesn't know what he brought to them. But when Yuri Yudin changes his mind, like when he says, oh, I left my... my jacket to this guy and then they found him on somebody else. He said, no, i maybe i left him to this guy. When they asked him how many cameras were in the in the group, he also, he's not sure. Sometimes he says four because at the beginning he thought that it's not good to say, I don't know or I don't remember, I'm not sure.
00:55:21
Teddy
and They ask, that's not even questions that they ask him right away in 59. Those are questions do you answer 40 years after the fact.
00:55:32
Teddy
When you're trying to forget something and then suddenly the whole world is looking at you and everybody is accusing you of murdering your friends.
00:55:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:55:42
Teddy
And when you you you he always answered. it's It's never that he hid or called for attorney because no one is... to and I mean, it's a lost cause to go to the i mean to court.
00:55:55
Teddy
That's impossible. Because you can't prove anything. You can't prove that those photos are from that track. You can't prove that there is everything is lost. The the tent after the 35 years, the tent was kept in some basement of the whatever the the building of the I don't know, the investigative entity.
00:56:19
Teddy
And then it got flooded, it got molded. Even when it wasn't molded, they used it to put it on the ground when they have meetings outside, like, oh, it's such a nice so sunny day.
00:56:32
Teddy
Let's take our meeting outside. And they were sitting on it. It wasn't preserved like it wasn't a crime. It wasn't an evidence.
00:56:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:56:39
Teddy
And then at some point just threw it away. And now 67 years after that, where is the tent? We want to see the tent. We have we want DNA from the tent. Well, there is no tent. No one was asking for the tent for 40 years.
00:56:51
Teddy
It's not like the tent disappeared the the day after. It's just there there was no interest in this case for a long, long, long time. And after that, we're trying now to cover to recover everything we can and make sense of it.
00:57:07
Teddy
But I mean, we have a lot, but it doesn't make sense anything. So they go, okay, Yuri Yudin goes back, they continue the nine of them. And then we only know what happens from their photos and from their diaries. And every day they write what they did, everything, everything is fine. The last entry,
00:57:29
Teddy
of Diabluv is that the wind is so strong. So the last entry is exactly from the pass that we call now Diabluv. So the last entry is the wind is like from the jets of take off airplane.
00:57:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:57:44
Teddy
So it's very, very strong winds. And their backpacks are very heavy. And it's, I mean, the sun goes down before four. So they couldn't make it over the pass.
00:57:58
Teddy
although it's not that big of a deal but they were they they got up late they didn't make it on time and so they go back so they try to climb up the pass and they said no we're not doing it today and they went back because they decided to leave half of their provisions, supplies and some of the equipment and the mandolin and things like that, they left it in a cache site, which throughout the case is called Lovbaz. So they dug up a hole and put what they won't need for the next two days until they go to the peak and back, they put it in the ground.
00:58:43
Teddy
So that will make their load lighter for the next day. And that's the last entry. So the last entry, Igor Dyatlov says it's too hard today. The wind is very, very strong. We're so tired that we won't even make a fire for dinner. So tomorrow i don't even want to think about making a labas that I'm quoting. And it's so strange that we're so cozy and warm, so far away from any human being.
00:59:17
Teddy
That is the last entry. Now, we can We cannot agree where was that cache site. That is one thing that is also very controversial because the what they found in 59, I mean, i can talk for days about that. They didn't find it at the beginning. Then for some reason in the orders came, look for the labas of the group. Then they find it like 20 meters from the path of the rescuers to the path, to the tent. at the time And then the way they find these things, it's basically in a very shallow hole in the snow, marked only with a ski and a gator.
01:00:00
Teddy
And nothing was some eaten by the rodents. And that's supposed to be like you a month from the time when they left it. And the plan for what were the supplies that the group had is missing.
01:00:16
Teddy
I mean, they had it. but it's missing from the documentation. So we don't even know what they carry. We only know what was found in 59 in that cash site.
01:00:30
Teddy
And by the, what the kilograms were found, I mean, the the load of the cash supplies, what it's, they have like,
01:00:43
Teddy
10 or 15 kilos missing. But that's again some calculations that are very, I mean, not, but what it's strange, it's not what was found in the cash site.
01:00:55
Teddy
Although it was up at the bottom, there was a cardboard. Where that that came from? I don't know. But then they told me when you carry a lot of the, a lot of cans, they were putting them in cardboard boxes. And because the cans themselves were greasy, that was how they carry them in cardboard boxes. So maybe that's what they use. So I found my explanation for the car box. But the place of that cache site, it wasn't, you don't have GPS, you don't have coordinates. It's in the middle of a taiga.
01:01:32
Teddy
Actually, i have to say taiga and tundra are two different things. Taiga is where there's still forest and the tundra could be the other way around. But anyway, you can check it out. So basically, there are forests up to some level and then everything is nothing. There are no trees.
01:01:53
Teddy
So. b I think Taiga is when there's still some trees. so
01:02:00
Lee Hatfield
Right.
01:02:00
Teddy
They left that in the Taiga and there is no nothing, a mark, there is no path, no trail, no maps. i mean they could market on their maps because there was they were drawing topos the whole time when they were moving. They were drawing topos like, OK, here is a creek. Here is a something. They don't have measurement gear to say how high is this or latitude, longitude, nothing like that. But they were drawing things basically.
01:02:32
Teddy
So on the topos, they should have marked where that Labaz is. But we know that the topos did not make it back to the office of the investigator and were left with the searchers and they're gone.
01:02:50
Teddy
So we we don't they didn't find the Labaz by the topos, the topographic sketches of the group. They found it just because suddenly after five days of searching, They saw it, it's right there.
01:03:05
Teddy
And there were even, if you see the photos of the the first photos of the La Basque, you see some tracks, how someone actually tried to make the snow even. That's impossible after a month.
01:03:20
Teddy
It's everywhere you turn your head is sort of strange things. So they left, the they did the La Basque someplace and they went,
01:03:25
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:03:30
Teddy
Now we're speculating because we don't have the entries of the diaries anymore. And they went up. So let's say Otorten is on 20 kilometers away. That's their final destination. They still need one more night before they are sent to Otorten and come back.
01:03:52
Teddy
The question is, did they try? i mean, were they planning to do that on the reach? The problem with the reach where it's easy to to go because the snow is hard. The problem with reach is wind. It's very windy. It's like in normal days it's windy. By the way, one one thing that it's not shown in Josh Gates' episodes is that after we left, the same night, without any storm or anything, or the camp, which was the last scream of the...
01:04:25
Teddy
technology with the modern tents and everything was destroyed by the wind. It just flew away. I have pictures how... So those are normal winds on the ridge.
01:04:38
Teddy
And I talked to some cross-country skiers that were going to Tartan, not because of the Dyatlov group, they just that's a normal route for the for the Russians. And asked them, well, when you go there, Where do you go? To the ridge, through the forest? How do you go? And they say, well, through the forest, it's very the snow is very deep, so you sink all the time. So the optimal way is to go a little bit above the tree line, but not on the ridge.
01:05:10
Teddy
Because on the ridge, another thing is that because of the strong winds, there are a lot of protruding stones that are called sharks, I mean,
01:05:22
Teddy
in English are called sharks, in Russian are called rumniki.
01:05:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:05:27
Teddy
so So, somewhere in the middle. So we didn't know where was Dyatlov intending to attempt to go. Maybe he was improvising.
01:05:38
Teddy
All we for now are trying to prove is where did he spend the last night when everybody died.
Discovery of Tent and Theories
01:05:45
Teddy
And the classic official and I don't know, everybody presumes is that they spent the night on the slope where the tent was found because the tent was there, right?
01:05:58
Teddy
So it's normal to presume that this is where they, where everything started to happen.
01:06:02
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
01:06:04
Teddy
But in every version, when we talk about theories, everything starts from what made the group cut up their tent and go without shoes down the slope and die in the forest.
01:06:17
Teddy
But no one is following them in the forest and explain, okay, well, there was some monster. There was something in the sky. There were people with guns.
01:06:28
Teddy
There was something, I don't know. They went crazy. they there were the The stove exploded, something, something. But they made it down. That's like two hours away from the tent.
01:06:39
Teddy
So they continue with their decision that we're going down. We're not turning back. And then, everybody so if you have paradoxical undressing, paradoxical undressing doesn't reverse, you don't get any better.
01:06:55
Teddy
you When you undress paradoxically, then you die. And then, how how come they paradoxically undressed in the tent and they went for two hours down the slope and then they made the fire, they dug up a snow cave, they made a flooring, what we call the den, they exchanged clothes. I mean, with paradoxical undressing, you think you're swimming in the Bahamas and that's it. I mean, you don't make anything as a group, let alone. So,
01:07:32
Teddy
But everybody presumes that it all started from where the tent was found. Now, there are a lot of discussions, so when was the tent found? Because even in the testimonies, some of the locals, not the Mansi, I call the Mansi, the indigenous people that live there, I call them Mansi. They're local people that live in the nearby villages that are foresters, they're loggers, they're just hunters, they're other people too. The predominant the the movement in the area are by the Mansi, but the Mansi don't say anything. I mean, they they just know everything, but they didn't give any valuable information to solve the case. The Forester, which was helping the group, and his friend, the firefighter, i mean, the the head of the
01:08:29
Teddy
firefighting station, fire station. They were the two that were guiding the rescuers. And when they went close to the tent, one of them said, okay, i'm I feel sick.
01:08:43
Teddy
The other one said, I'm tired. And they just left them to find the tent. Then in the testimonies, they said they found the tent a couple of days before that, but they didn't touch it. So I mean, that's even, I know it's like even who found the tent and when?
01:08:57
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:08:59
Teddy
One thing about the fire and the stove I wanted to say because people are going to ask, well, the tent is also, all of the tents are very damaged by the flickers of fire that come from the stove because that these at the time, the hikers were designing these cylinders, metal cylinders, putting locks into them, hanging them, suspending them inside the tent.
01:09:23
Teddy
So they need additional rope to carry the weight of this full with logs so stove, improvised stove. But that stove is only to warm them up inside.
01:09:36
Teddy
And actually the people that are under this stove were burning, their jackets are burned, Dyatlov group has this, there are two photos of someone smiling with a burned up jacket.
01:09:36
Lee Hatfield
yeah.
01:09:49
Teddy
That's not the owner of the jacket because the owner of the jacket was cursing. That's his friend who just for the photo is posing with his, no one wanted to sleep under the the stove because it was too hot and it was burning.
01:10:04
Teddy
flying, flickers, so everything, it's fire inside the tent. So a lot of the there are theories about this. But when Yatlov said we're not going to make, we're we're not even going to cook dinner tonight, he he meant that dinner and food is cooked outside hikers to this day, they dig a hole in the snow, they put logs inside, and they suspend the the pot or whatever cooking stuff is.
01:10:37
Teddy
So basically, it's in the snow to protect it from the wind.
01:10:39
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
01:10:41
Teddy
And they did they always did that at some distance from the tent, where cooking their dinner i mean their food is cooked outside the tent.
01:10:51
Teddy
So so We have that we they did not make a fire outside, but that's still on the south side of the path. They didn't make a fire that night.
01:11:07
Teddy
We do not know if they Suspended the stove because they're still in the forest and we have a photo that doesn't belong to any film. So we don't know the sequence of this photo, but but it is presumed to be the morning of their last day alive. When we see something that might be they're cleaning the stove.
01:11:32
Teddy
But it could be a bucket. You can't really tell. So we don't know if they use the stock. But anyway, that i mean they survived that morning. Another thing that we should know is their last document. It's dated February 1st. Their last document is a satirical pamphlet.
01:11:53
Teddy
it's That's like or code also called a combat leaflet. It was normal to make jokes and because it was fun for them. and They were writing some jokes. so There was a sports section and a world record for assembling the stove. There was a sled that was working fine during the on the train and and truck and bus, but when we used it in the snow, it was of no use. then But the first sentence of this leaflet says, we're going to improve the birth rate among hikers for the 21st Congress of the party. So you see the tone of this document, right? And there it says, we're now in the land where Yeti lives.
01:12:39
Teddy
And there is a whole movie that there was a document where they said that they they saw the Yeti, that the Yeti attacked them, that the Yeti, Yeti, Yeti. It is part of the pamphlet. And there is one photo that's out of focus, but at least you see that you see the truck going towards the silhouette. But because it's out of focus, they call it Yeti. They made a photo of the Yeti. That was like two days ago. They might have mentioned that. But that's the last document. So would think they didn't even bother to write the note that they're going to leave on Otorten because they need to write the note. Nobody's going to sit and write a note with their bare fingers at the top when there's usually a storm, right? Especially Otorten. Otorten is very famous for the bad weather. Even when we go...
01:13:34
Teddy
the sky The sky can be absolutely clear and everything is sunny and happy and the authority attracts a lot of clouds and weather.
01:13:44
Teddy
So, I mean, that's the last document and no one has seen it. We only have the typewritten copy of that document.
01:13:56
Lee Hatfield
Amen.
01:13:56
Teddy
It's found inside the tent, but the two diaries that made it into the case files and that last document, we only see a human typewriter copied it and then the the original disappeared.
01:14:12
Teddy
Also, the diaries that I was saying that each of them carried, we do have those that were returned to the relatives. They're so tiny. When I saw them go small there, it makes sense.
01:14:28
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:14:29
Teddy
So whatever was not included in the case file, it still exists. But yeah, whatever was there, we don't know what is typo, what is a typo made by the author of the document, what was after that when they were transcribing it with a typewriter. But okay, so they,
01:14:50
Teddy
Something happened, right? So they didn't show up when they were supposed to. And at certain point, the relatives started worrying. The sister of one of them started, she made she wrote a telegram to Khrushchev. That telegram was published, and they died on the fifth day of the Congress. So Khrushchev made an of how we care about the children of our people. So he launched unprecedented search and rescue operation following that telegram.
01:15:31
Teddy
And I mean, the moment they found all of the bodies, all the interest and the Congress was over, the the interest was lost, like nothing else was done about finding out what exactly killed them. but They launched this, so many people. The weird thing is that some, the the search and rescue team was from the UP sports club.
01:15:56
Teddy
They had the resources. Everybody wanted to go there, either because they cared or because they were giving some of the credit for the exams. Like you could so take it later or get points or something like that.
01:16:12
Teddy
But,
01:16:33
Teddy
geology expedition that was living there and working there. Nobody's actually thinking about that they were working there because in summer it's swamp and they they do all of the core extraction and explosives during winter because it's much it's easier to walk on the ground. It's very hard in summer.
01:16:53
Teddy
Ask me, I'm going every summer. You advance with wadding rubber shoes and mosquitoes and it's a whole Horrible situation and geology work is very hard to to undergo and in other seasons. So they usually work a lot in winter.
01:17:13
Teddy
And then why do we have sappers from the railway units? like they were They were building a very important railway connecting parts of the the Soviet Union They had no any reason to go search for these students. Then we have the convoy of the Gulag.
01:17:39
Teddy
They actually sent some of the guards from the Gulag to search for the students, and this is why some of the Gulag prisoners escaped, but they will run away. You can't escape. You're in Siberia. You can't run.
01:17:56
Teddy
I mean, they they will find you. But they just run away because there were not enough people to guard them. So what are they doing there? I mean, who called them? There were 120 people looking for nine hikers, which is Weird.
01:18:12
Teddy
I mean, it's okay. yeah The party sends some people to show how they do the search and rescue for their own kids.
01:18:23
Teddy
But then for five months, other people continue handling all the communication between the people on location and the headqua the search headquarters.
01:18:35
Teddy
And everything has to be accounted for. We don't know all of the names that were there. We don't, just the students and everybody that took part in the search, they said there were some people with this black leather of uniforms and guns and they were giving orders and they were not talking to us. and so they come and go, some people that no one knows who they were and what they saw. and But they No one restricted the people that handled the bodies.
01:19:08
Teddy
nope No one told them, you don't go there, you don't do that, you forget about this, or we're going to... No one gave them any anything like that. So my personal feeling is, umm and I'm not imposing this to on anybody, it's just the more you know, it's like they were clueless what is going on.
01:19:30
Teddy
That's what I think happens. with all these people, they're like, how come the party is not in the know of what happened here?
01:19:41
Teddy
Because, okay, so let's, I didn't take you to the the time when they found the bodies with the bad traumas, the, really, i mean, no survivable traumas traumas. So two months pass by. There are constant presence of students and searchers on the bus. They probe with avalanche sticks, avalanche probes throughout three three months.
01:20:09
Teddy
They probe everywhere. They probe everywhere. Guess where the last bodies were found? On that small square where the sappers were looking.
01:20:20
Teddy
two months ago. They were just on the top where the bodies were later found. They were like protecting that place. So nothing was found there.
01:20:30
Teddy
And so after, and I'm friends with, I'm friends with the searcher who found the last bodies, the last four bodies, Vladimir Askinazi. We're very, very good friends. We, we,
01:20:46
Teddy
Right every day I went to Sevastopol to meet personally with him. And then I just came now from Russia where he came from Sevastopol to Moscow so we can hug on TV.
01:21:00
Teddy
yeah Anyways, so no, I mean, what I'm saying is not, no, oh, no. If I hear from him from the mouth of the person who found them and how he handled them and what they knew back then because he's saying he's with his mind and what's great about Askenazi is that he doesn't have a theory because everybody else from the contemporaries they're either about the technogen which means man-made disaster like testing rockets or there were something that caused
01:21:42
Teddy
the hikers to die or they were killed because they saw something that was they were not supposed to. I mean, the Russians are about technology secrets, weapon secrets, secret testings. They talk about that.
01:21:58
Teddy
but doesn't explain why some have so bad traumas, the rest died just from hypothermia, exhaustion, the naked, everything.
01:22:06
Lee Hatfield
Exactly.
01:22:06
Teddy
I mean, and if you, they even go to the to to the extent that they say that the bodies, I mean, the people were put into helicopters and then dropped.
01:22:17
Teddy
of drop from the sky and not just to explain the traumas because that would be, I mean, you could make an effort to explain some traumas with dropping, but they're explaining why the branches were broken. Oh, because the bodies that were flying from the sky broke the branches. Yeah, but the branches above five meters are not broken. So how did the body make that curve into the, no, it's, I mean, it it's a lot of crazy talk, but if you,
01:22:48
Teddy
look at the facts they're not they don't make much more sense and uh what they did asking nazi they sent him so he goes on the on location they already moved the searchers on the other uh side of the past because every day they were losing two hours going south to north and back so they're camping there and that's also very important because Everything we find, we need to be able to distinguish if it was left from the searchers or left from the hikers. And I became an expert into that this into this too. Very strange that in that area, everything is preserved.
01:23:27
Teddy
I didn't know, but the the fallen trees are preserved, the thin cans are preserved. I even find modern cans that are much more rusted and already for four years, the cans look much worse than the cans from 67 years ago. That's a good and bad news because the good news is that current can cans, tin cans are environmental, but the bad news is that they look much more authentic than the real ones from the 69 that I'm looking for.
01:23:57
Teddy
so and So he says this. They didn't believe that they're going to find anything because so much has...
01:24:08
Teddy
pass and they have poked everywhere, and but they told him, no, you're going to stay here until you find them. Well, that's not true because we know that there was the next group that was already ready to replace them, but this is what he says. oh And he didn't believe that they will. But that day, the Mansi started talking something between them and then one went to the, or took off to the leader of the search party and told them something and they saw that the mansy are noticing some cut branches actually cut tops of fir trees and they see some pine needles that kind of a form like a trail so the mansy pointed to that and they followed and then they decided to dig
01:25:03
Teddy
and they dug and they found the flooring, the den, like two meters down, they found the flooring. So someone was seated there, cut branches, covered with some clothes and like four seats, and but no bodies.
01:25:20
Teddy
And then they continued and then they moved along the trail of pine needles they dug no they didn't even duck uh so uh after they found the den asking a says or you could send us for a lunch break to have some food but i couldn't eat as kenasa says that i couldn't eat i did something fast i just put in my mouth and i went back before even the lunch break was over so he went by himself And he continued and he he went with the probe.
01:25:51
Teddy
And this is when he pulled it and he saw tissue. And that was the head of Ljuda Dubinia. So he found her. And then they dug up around her.
01:26:06
Teddy
and they saw that there was another head next to her. And this is why I'm telling you all this. they got scared that they're going to mess up with something. I mean, in addition to the trauma of finding bodies and no one was trained for that, they were afraid because they didn't know how many people are behind her in the in the river, in the creek, so they pulled only her body. But even this, they didn't know how to do it because she was so already decomposed and things started falling off, so they just dug up a hole,
01:26:43
Teddy
They took her body out and they put her face down so they don't look at her face. So they put her in that hole. They dug a little bit more of the snow. They saw that everybody else is there. That's not accounted for. i mean, three more bodies are right there and they let them. So they put a tent on top of the remaining in the river bodies.
01:27:07
Teddy
And they waited for the investigator to come and document everything. And the investigator showed up the next day and he said, okay. And nothing, no photos, nothing, nothing. They just, everybody was sitting like that around and the same and the students were ordered not to touch the bodies anymore. But they were, they climbed on top of the trees and they made the only photos we have of the retrieval of the bodies from May.
01:27:40
Teddy
the only They didn't tell them, get off, don't make photos, they didn't ban them from documenting this with their cameras, they just surrounded the bodies and they told the soldiers, because they're hip you know there more strong strong, the soldiers took one after another, all of the bodies. And they were quite decomposed. And this is where the missing eyes and tongue, which is the soft tissue and all of the coroners I have talked to, they don't find anything suspicious if the bodies were left on the
01:28:15
Teddy
on the elements under the snow. There are so many rodents. This is where the rodents live in the northern Uraus in the Taiga. They are under the snow. They can eat your whatever. That's normal for the bodies. And then there's another thing about the orange colors too. if Because They didn't see the, I mean, the the contemporaries didn't see the last bodies, the decomposed bodies, but the the first, the ones that were found in February and March, they were orange and brown. Well, if you, when they find,
01:28:51
Teddy
we When a body is found that died from hypothermia, frozen, they're usually normal color because they die, they get all frozen. But then the decomposition, once they're taught, the decomposition is much faster and the whole process that didn't take place when they died actually happens is in a much faster way.
01:29:17
Teddy
period of time. So by the time they were already in the open coffins in two, three days, they had to be transported to. I mean, they were told in the morgue, then they were transported.
01:29:28
Teddy
And on the funerals, they were orange and brown. And that I've read that it happens.
01:29:34
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
01:29:34
Teddy
That's normal. I mean, the body becomes darker when it's told after freezing. And so... so The bodies are taken again to the Morg in Ivdil. That's a whole, also, a whole universe of questions about the Morg in Ivdil. All of the bodies are taken Ivdil, but there are two Morgs.
01:30:03
Teddy
It's so weird. The bodies of the Dyatlov group are autopsied in the morgue that belongs to the zone, which is the Yves Del Lag. The Yves Del Lag is a labor camps of the regime at the time when, where people were sent for anything and everything.
Handling of Hikers' Bodies
01:30:26
Teddy
So there were a lot of intellectuals, a lot of criminals, a lot of everything. And they had to have their own hospital doctors and everything. Then that city where the Yves de Lac is, is a whole city of civilians. They have their own hospital. They have their own morgue. So now we have the other strange testimony that it's one of the many.
01:30:57
Teddy
We have a nurse that used to work in the in the morgue of the center of the civilian hospital. And she remembers bodies that were brought, six bodies were brought at the beginning of February when they were not missing yet.
01:31:14
Teddy
I mean, nobody knew that Yatov group was missing. So she remembers cleaning six bodies. There was... de Bettencourt- Surgeon on staff, not a coroner, but surgeon staff who examined the bodies didn't find any signs of foul play. Ana Bettencourt- they were just cleaned and left for it then authenticate I mean identification and funeral no one knew who they were, but it was i mean hikers that were brought from the mountain and he happens.
01:31:45
Teddy
And there were many other cases that students hikers died in winter in the mountains, usually they're brought to the morgue. Official investigation is always open, but it's usually just to conclude that there is no foul play, no crime. And then they're usually buried in the nearest place where the accident happened to the morgue, the nearest to the morgue.
01:32:09
Teddy
And so. She remembers six bodies and then they disappeared.
01:32:15
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
01:32:16
Teddy
She doesn't know anything about these six bodies anymore. Then very soon after, two weeks after, five more bodies are brought, but to the zone morgue, to leave the Yves Delac morgue, everybody knows about these bodies.
01:32:32
Teddy
No one has seen them. So that nurse, she's always speaking about 11 bodies. And this is a lot of speculation, movies and so on, that there were 11 bodies because this is what the the locals were were talking about. Because in short period of time, there were six and and five.
01:32:53
Teddy
But what I think... with all of the redressing and because some of the bodies are clean and others are not. What I think is that the first six bodies were the Dyatlov group and then somebody just brought them back because to be found officially again. And then when after two months, another four bodies were brought, Solter, this is the man the nurse, she didn't even link
01:33:26
Teddy
that they're from the same group. She's talking about the bodies that were found and brought to the morgue in March, late February and March. That's why she's talking about 11 bodies.
01:33:39
Teddy
And it's not just her, there are pilots who are seen. Even the pilot that brought the students and the bodies back, he says that he pointed out a tent on a different place and bodies around it days before the official discovery of the tent.
01:34:02
Teddy
I mean, okay, people forget, people make up things, but there is a lot of this going on with this case. It's like some things could be just trying to get attention, you know, as in any cold case, made up things. But if we look into the documents, there's still strange things that no one is trying to explain.
01:34:29
Teddy
One of the radiograms says, okay, the last four bodies were decomposed and the pilot, Potuzhenko, he refused to bring them on board unless they're in some kind of official packaging like coffins. I mean, some boxes because they might be radioactive. I
Radioactive Clothing and Espionage Speculations
01:34:49
Teddy
don't know what. i mean That's strange that the lead investigator ordered radioactive analysis of the of the last bodies and they were found that some clothes are radioactive. And the question I ask right away, were they all of the samples radioactive or just some? Nobody knows because we only get the report for those that were radioactive. But were those the only samples that were taken? We don't know. He got the report that they're radioactive and he closed the case the next day.
01:35:28
Teddy
So it looks like his mind was made up and that was that did not change anything. I mean, if we're going to talk about the radioactive traces in the Yat-Luk group, there was a Chernobyl type of catastrophe. in 57, one of the hikers even worked there, but I don't believe that he brought anything to the track that was contaminated, but it's normal to expect that in the population there were circulating some contaminated clothing, like because they they
01:36:02
Teddy
They didn't have much clothes. So, I mean, maybe without even knowing, some of the clothes were kept just because it was freezing without even testing. But I don't believe that if somebody knew that they were radioactive, they would wear them. Like they were 20 years old. I mean, and they were all nuclear physicists, one of them. i mean, come on.
01:36:28
Teddy
would Would you wear it? And... So this is another speculation. The biggest book in Russian about this case is that KHB and CIA a made appointment on top of the nowhere where even Dyatlov had problems fined the pass that was named after him. And they were double spies that were sent, I mean, some of the members of the Dyatlov group
01:37:01
Teddy
were supposed to hand beta-isotope contaminated samples to the special forces so they would think that they were much more ahead of their whatever nuclear weapon development.
01:37:19
Teddy
I mean, things like that were going on, but they could... That was the time when they were there was a world championship of skating in Ekaterinburg, if there were supposed to be some samples to exchange hands, why go at the edge of the world where everybody who is not a tourist or someone that the locals knew is going to be spotted of right away? i mean, people will know them, will see them. And how can you pinpoint a but a place for the to a meeting where
01:37:59
Teddy
you can't see anything. It's a whiteout, it's a blizzard. some Some of the hikers said, no, we're going to leave the tent right here because he knew that they're going come up and say, can we have a tea? And then we they handle them, the better is the top. That's just complete nonsense. But when you are pressed to come up with the version.
01:38:23
Teddy
That's even, I was talking about that when I went with Josh Gates. was like, okay, if I have to come up with with a theory, well, maybe there were people with weapons and someone went out of the tent and made that photo because there is a very damaged photo that looks like their heads and then something in the sky bright. And they went to make a photo in their socks without bothering to put shoes because they had to get out fast. And then people with weapons marched them down to die in a natural way so nobody can tell that they were attacked, robbed, something.
Injuries and Weather Conditions
01:39:06
Teddy
and then they cut And then they stayed in the tent and cut open from the inside to look for the people if they're still marching to die in the forest. And then where where they found the bodies, there were a very tall cedar tree and some branches were broken. Then again, when I went there, so many branches are broken on cedar trees of that tall.
01:39:31
Teddy
the Nowadays, modern researchers say, well, no, the Yakov group was climbing on these branches and they were looking towards the tent. If they're still there, they can go back in pitch black. I mean, what are they looking at? And then the branches were broken because they froze to death and fell and broke the branches. and So if you want to, i mean, first problem is to link the findings to the incident.
01:40:00
Teddy
Were these branches broken by the Diatov group? because And then how desperate you are to put some in this into a scenario. Because even the investigator at the time, Lefivanov, who closed the case with the resolution that it was overwhelming force that they couldn't survive. Okay, that's the conclusion.
01:40:24
Teddy
And everybody's so mad at him and everybody's so like raging. And then after 13 years into the case, you know I cannot come up with a better formulation for what happened there.
01:40:37
Teddy
I mean, you can fit if you don't know what happened, this is exactly what the evidence is saying. i mean If they had to continue and do more to investigate, sure. But if there is no crime, there is no foul play, and there's so many more problems in that, you know, times, what more?
01:41:01
Teddy
do you expect them to do they found all of the bodies they autopsy them they saw that they were crushed by something this is what the the coroner said they were the traumas could not be caused by another person hitting them with something or by the dead falling on their heads they were scaved in skulls crushed cage ribs with multiple rib fractures uh it's like something very big
01:41:30
Teddy
fell on top of you this is what happened to me but i was uh in a truck going 70 kilometers per hour that smashed into a mountain mountain face so yeah something like that happened but when they look around it doesn't matter that there were no photos made enough there was not a investigator that's so familiar with mountaining accidents the the fact the bottom line is that they died from something that is nowhere around them there is no boulder there is no altitude from where they they have fallen and also you have to account
01:42:10
Teddy
That's one thing that from the very beginning was nagging at me. Why are three of them so badly broken and they lived not more than 20 minutes after that? And they didn't live, they were in vegetative... I mean, they could... This is what the coroner says and everybody that I have given the autopsy reports to read, I mean, medical person, they said they they could have have signs of breathing, but no kind they were unconscious.
01:42:37
Teddy
I was unconscious. I mean, and they brought me, they drained my lungs from the blood, and i was still like like this. But Ludo Dubinina, the hiker who has the same trauma like me, piece of her rip went into the heart.
01:42:53
Teddy
So, I mean, and even the Russians, I mean, the rest of the, I haven't heard so many not Russians talking about, oh, the Swiss, the avalanche, yeah, the... the advocates of the avalanche theory, they they say, because when you have a theory about some disaster going on the slope where the tent was, then you have to explain why they died. I mean, where they died. Did they die the tent? Well, why were then the bodies found that the in the ravine, right? So, in Russians and Swiss, they say, Well, they took their comrades and they dragged them down. Even when we said, but there were no marks, footprints of anybody being dragged. Even the Russians, my friends, they said, well, they put them on their back. And why? They were going on the north. So I have to clarify that.
01:43:52
Teddy
Where the footprints and the bodies were found, they haven't been there. They don't know what's there. There is no map. There is no previous going there that they didn't know what's there.
01:44:02
Teddy
So if you are in a survival mode and you can move, why not go back where you you have already been and where your cash side with all of the shoes and food are there?
01:44:17
Teddy
Why didn't you take your shoes at least? or even gloves, let's say. In this case, you can find an and explanation for everything.
01:44:24
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:44:26
Teddy
Well, the shoes were frozen. They couldn't put them on their feet. Now, there was one of the bodies who were found with a shoe sole, like the is inside of the shoe, under his sweater.
01:44:41
Teddy
That's very normal when you want to toe them or to keep them warm. And I have heard even explanation for that. and from a very respected researcher that I'm working with right now. The last article that I published was with me and him, co-authors, about the me weather day data. We paid for weather data from the January 30th 31st, February 1st and 2nd from the Meteorological Institute of Russia. it comes It turns out that they do have readings from these days and they sold it to us. And now I'm at the point where I have the information and I just need to find someone to do the microclimatic analysis because we think that it was much colder than the official prosecutors took just the numbers from the Burmantovo weather station, which 66 kilometers of the past. And it could be, I mean, a lot of meteorological phenomenon could be very localized. And there was a front moving right there at the time, right there.
01:45:54
Teddy
Sometimes you don't, even the weather report doesn't show it or show it at a later time or not the at the time when you expect it nowadays, the weather reports. And when the storm hits,
01:46:09
Teddy
Unexpectedly, every problem that you might have, like if your GPS stops working or you have a limping hiker in the group or anything else is emphasized and leads could lead to death.
01:46:22
Teddy
Like a friend of mine, a friend of mine died like that in the Alps. because their GPS didn't work and they walked around on the plateau until they got totally exhausted and they had to spend the night outside and they froze and they died.
01:46:40
Teddy
so And that was only because the storm hit before it was forecasted.
01:46:46
Teddy
It's right. So we need to know the weather. And people tell me, well, if the weather didn't kill them because it doesn't explain the traumas and everything else.
01:46:49
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:46:54
Teddy
Yeah. But if we're still talking that many years after the incident about that, then something very unexpected or combination of factors happen that we cannot explain.
01:47:06
Teddy
So we need all of the factors that led to that picture, to that thing, because So what they how they were found?
Analyzing Physical Trauma and Survival Decisions
01:47:19
Teddy
Two bodies were obviously dragged by their hands under the cedar tree and they don't have any pants on them. And those are the first bodies that were found. And everybody was thinking, okay, so, and there is a fire nearby, right next to them. So everybody said, well, they died and their friends took their pants because they were cold.
01:47:44
Teddy
Really? I mean, really? you You have a fire that you stopped feeding 30 minutes after you lit that fire, and then the first people that died, you take off their pants?
01:47:59
Teddy
But that's not... You need to... I mean, with my expression, and really, that doesn't cut it. So if you see the morgue photos on one of these... bodies, you see the impression of the elastic band of the trousers still on his T-shirt, which means that he was frozen with his pants on because this this this was the way that it was brought to the morgue, frozen, absolutely frozen. And that track of the elastic band was there imprinted into his shirt, which means that these trousers
01:48:40
Teddy
were taken at another time. i mean, they were on his body while he was freezing, and that's like to to be to become totally frozen, you need at least four or five hours.
01:48:54
Teddy
And they all died, judging by the contents of their stomachs, they all died in the span of two hours of each other. I mean, that's because we can be more precise.
01:49:02
Lee Hatfield
Bye. Yeah.
01:49:05
Teddy
So those are the two first bodies, no pants. the next tree that they found were crawling up the slope straight to the tent.
01:49:16
Teddy
So it's normal to presume that they wanted to go back to the tent to take some stuff from the tent. But if you look at the terrain, that's not that's the way you actually climb up the ridge. That's the important.
01:49:33
Teddy
convenient way, if not the only possible way to climb up the ridge. It's just the way you go up. And the they had everything with them to survive. Meaning, okay, they didn't have enough clothes, but they lit a fire, which means they have a match. Around the the the camp fire that was found just extinguished, they didn't feed it. was a lot of firewood, like not so cut with the axe, but a lot of branches were fallen, and there were even theories that they were blind, blinded by some kind of a poison. That's why they didn't see that there is firewood around them. So they they made a fire.
01:50:22
Teddy
They dug up a snow cave. They laid branches and everything. Why didn't they survive? why Why were they going, I mean, leave alone why they left the tent to start with, but why were they going up to the tent?
01:50:38
Teddy
And what happened to the last four in the in the river, only three of them were totally broken, but the fourth one didn't have any traumas on him.
01:50:51
Teddy
So this this was snagging at me at the very beginning. Why three of them are so badly injured and the rest are not? Like what kind of incident? Because if there is an avalanche, okay, some died, were broken in the avalanche, but then some survived and then they went to do what? I mean, how did they dug I mean, you have to, if you're really coming up with the scenario, You have to follow them up and explain how they died. To me, it's not that interesting of a question what made them cut open their tent and leave it and slowly go into the direction they have never been in the dark.
01:51:37
Teddy
But start with what caused these traumas, because that is much more factual. We know that the far that the traumas are real.
01:51:49
Teddy
If they were in that tent, if they cut that tent, or if the footprints were theirs, that's not proven. No one can, I mean, to this day, and i'm it's actually, I have a proof on the contrary. I paid an expert tracelologist, I showed him the photos of the footprints, he said, okay, that's not a forensic photo, but from what I can see, and especially from this trace, that's a sole of a shoe, and all the rest I would never say that those are naked feet, like with no shoes, shoeless. Those are shot to feet in shoes, in boots, not on skis, on boots.
01:52:30
Teddy
And second thing, all of the experiments and everything for traces to be preserved for one month in that place, they're unreal.
01:52:43
Teddy
especially with the wins that are documented. And now I'm trying to know actually, prove that there was much more to the weather than the prosecutors.
01:52:57
Teddy
They just said there was no storm. Well, there was no storm. There was no storm, but our camp with Josh Gates were blown away after they left. And the the shoe sole, I didn't finish the the shoe sole.
01:53:07
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
01:53:10
Teddy
So that person who I'm working on, the weather report, he says, well, his theory is that reindeer got scared by meteorological phenomenon. They start running down and they trampled over the tent.
01:53:24
Teddy
I'm like, okay. So his theory is called life avalanche. So it's avalanche and there is a life avalanche from reindeer that were going down, running from the weather.
Theories Wrap-up and Episode Conclusion
01:53:35
Teddy
And I said, so what happened after that?
01:53:38
Teddy
Because he claims that the skull injury and everything is from the hooves of the reindeer. And then he said, well, that guy with the shoe sole under his sweater, he he came up with that way to go shoeless down by going in one shoe.
01:53:57
Teddy
So the other shoe, he's limping on one leg, drying up his other shoe sole, and then he's changing them, putting them on the other leg and limping with, I mean,
01:54:11
Teddy
These are people I deeply respect and you have to learn to actually make an intelligent and calm conversation with everybody that comes up with something and just decide if you want to.
01:54:25
Teddy
yeah You can listen to their arguments out of respect, out of because they're just becoming your friends. There's a lot of arguing and a lot of bad temper going on in all of the discussions. But what's meant what matters is that the there is interest which is not so dying. It's like snowballing across borders. And there are more and more people, and even to me, it's very important that experts become interested to help us. They don't develop theories. If someone comes with a theory on the second read of the autopsy reports, I know I have lost them because they're very they're trying to solve the case and you cannot.
01:55:08
Teddy
I just need their expertise on a particular thing, on the footprints, on the autopsy, on the the dendrology, on things like that.
01:55:17
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. And I know that there's been absolutely so much information and you've still got more to give. So we'll call the end to episode one and then wicked could we'll do the second episode and we can carry on if that's okay.
01:55:37
Teddy
Absolutely. I have the feeling it has been 10 minutes. so Okay.
01:55:43
Lee Hatfield
That 10 minutes is new to me. OK, so thank you for episode one. And will we'll be right back to start episode two.
01:55:52
Teddy
Okay.
01:55:52
Lee Hatfield
I'll see you in a few minutes.
01:55:53
Teddy
You can keep me in some control over my the speech. you know You can ask me questions or just so anything. You can put some direction into this.
01:56:04
Lee Hatfield
Well, let's do that in episode two, because there is so much information.
01:56:07
Teddy
Okay.
01:56:10
Lee Hatfield
i didn't want to interrupt you. So part two will be me asking you some questions.
01:56:17
Teddy
Thank you.
01:56:18
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
01:56:18
Teddy
It's going to be easier for me.
01:56:18
Lee Hatfield
was it Okay. So don't go away for now, but we'll stop the recording and then we'll crack on with episode two.
01:56:26
Teddy
Okay.