63: Dyatlov Pass Part 3

[MUSIC PLAYING] I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are the prosecutors. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today on the prosecutors, we continue our investigation into the At-Law pass mystery. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the prosecutors, Brett. And I'm joined, as always, with my luminous co-host, Alice. Luminous. That was really good. I'm liking all these star references. And-- Yeah, yeah. Well, today, assuming we don't get bogged down, we're going to get to some luminous events in the sky. So figured it was appropriate for what we were discussing. Exactly for shadowing. Don't promise the people what we can't deliver today. Well, that's true. That's true. It's really all about me not overdoing it, I think, is what prevents us from moving forward on this particular story. But I mean, not that I'm blaming myself or anything. No, I mean, there really is so much to talk about in this. I think we've been doing a good job of moving at a good clip. But there really is just so much to discuss. And there's even more today, Brett. Every time I think we've gotten past a crazy factor, a crazy factor in this case, I flip the page. It just gets weirder. And I think about this case a lot. And I think about the Avalanche Theory a lot. And we've talked about the Avalanche Theory. And I'm actually reading a new book that literally just came out about the Deat Love Pass mystery. You guys should all check it out. It's called 1079, which is actually the name of the mountain. We've used the Mancey name several times. On the Soviet maps, it was just 1079. Anyways, the book is called 1079, the overwhelming force of a Deat Love Pass by Igor Pavlov and Theodora Hajiyska. And I think this is probably the most thorough book ever written on the Deat Love Pass mystery. It was originally written in Russian. It was my understanding. So when you read it, there's going to be some sort of translation weirdness. Do not let that stop you. It's very thorough, very good. I'm learning things even as I read it. So who knows? Maybe we'll have a follow-up episode. And suddenly, I'll have the answer to what happened at the Deat Love Pass. I've actually skipped ahead to see what they think happened. I don't really understand what they're trying to say. So I'm trying to get to it by reading the whole book. Maybe that will flesh it out a little bit. But one thing, just I've learned reading this book that was different from a lot of the other books I've read. We said a couple episodes ago, I think, maybe last episode, that one of the strange things was they left a pair of skis at the labes to mark the spot. And we thought that was unusual because they did not have any extra skis. And even Yuri Uden did not think they had an extra pair of skis. Well, it turns out these guys did even more research on this. And they did have an extra pair of skis. So it's not as significant that they left that one behind. However, they did not have an extra pair of ski poles. So that cut up ski pole that was found at the tent is still important. But maybe the extra pair of skis is not quite as important. And that's the problem with this case. And we talked about this in the very beginning. The information is not necessarily reliable in this case. So you have to take everything with a grain of salt just because of the way the investigation was done. And the pressure that the investigators were facing from Moscow, is this something you have to remember the entire time we talk about this case. Leave it up to Brett to find all the latest. I was joking with you, Brett, when we started recording that it seems like the cases we talk about when we are in the midst of recording them, no matter what case it is, all these developments start coming out. I'd like to think somehow we're pushing the universe towards attention towards these cases that may not. But they've had lots of attention on them before. But it does seem like there's the snowball effect while we are recording certain episodes. This being one of those. I would like to think that's true. You know, the A.S.A. degree case. The case we talked about last time. We talked about the inmate who claimed he had information. And unfortunately, it turns out that he did not have information, which is what we sort of expected. But we were hoping something different would come from that. And literally the day before our first episode came out, that new story broke. So it's true, Alice. I'd like to think we're on the cutting edge here. Well, with that, let's jump right back in. Last time we were talking about some of the unusual aspects of this case. Well, we have not even touched the iceberg, because we've yet to talk about the cameras in this case. There were four cameras found in the tent. They were egos, rustams, ures, and zooloteros. And that's really not unexpected. They were documenting their trip. They were taking pictures even before. They reached the mountain. What was unexpected is the fact that one zoolotera of spotty was found a second camera was found hanging around his neck. No one, including Yuri Yudin, who had been on the expedition himself, knew about this camera or could explain its existence. And now, because the camera was submerged in water, the film was destroyed. So why this second camera, Yuri who was on the trip with them until remember he had to bow out because of sciatica flaring up, didn't know about this second camera. Why do you need a second camera? Especially when every ounce, every pound that you're adding to your pack can potentially slow you down on such a difficult hike. What was zoolotera filming? Why did he have it the night when everyone died? Now, remember, the team left the tent without anything. No boots, no coats, no extra clothing. Nothing they would need in order to survive. But zoolotera had the fourth thought to grab his extra apparently secret camera. What was so important that he would leave the tent without the clothing that he would need to survive, but he would bring this extra camera. So this camera, in my view, is really one of the most important things about this case. I think it says so much about what happened and what didn't happen. Recall, you know, thinking about the avalanche theory, the theory that's the most likely. If you read the latest ideas about this avalanche theory, it's that they're all asleep, they're all in the tent, they're all laying down, and then suddenly all this, the snow is on top of them. And that's causing injuries and it's causing them to rush out into the night and it's explaining why they have to leave the tent so quickly, why they left everything behind. And then you have zoolotera with this camera hanging around his neck, apparently the second camera that he had, a camera that nobody really knew about. Put that aside. I mean, say it's not a secret camera. Say Yuri's just confused and say the other camera wasn't really zoolotera and this is his only camera. That's fine. Let's do that, because that makes this less, you know, conspiratorial. The fact of the matter is, the zoolotera has his camera with him. And what that tells you is something was going on that night, that zoolotera wanted to capture on his camera. The zoolotera, you may recall, is also one of the best dressed of the hikers. And what this tells me is that whenever this happened, whatever it was, the zoolotera was probably already outside dressed incredibly warmly and incredibly well, and he had his camera. He's taken pictures of something. We're gonna talk about lights in the sky later. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was something else. We're gonna talk about other cameras that had some interesting aspects to them. But the fact that zoolotera has this camera, and I wish we knew what was on that film, the fact that he had it tells me that he was awake, he was outside, and he was looking at something. Something was happening that was so interesting that he had his camera, and he was getting ready to take pictures of it. To me, that opens up so many doors that would otherwise be closed. That tells me that this wasn't just they were all asleep in the middle of the night, and the avalanche happened or whatever. Maybe an avalanche did happen, but when it happens, all the tariff is all-- also outside, paying attention to something else it was going on. And it just seems to me that if you have an unusual thing like this, you have a Zalatira with a camera that whatever he is taking pictures of may be related to what immediately happened afterwards, because it must have happened while he was doing this, because he never ditched his camera. He had it with him, like we said, they don't have anything else to survive with, but he's got his camera. He didn't grab his camera as they were rushing out of the tent. He had it with him beforehand, and I think that says something. Zalatira gives us some other strange clues. So Zalatira in addition to that second camera, he was found with a pencil in one hand and a paper in the other. The paper, at least according to the person who found him, was blank. So what was Zalatira going to write and what stopped him as if he froze to death in that position. He was at the ready with the camera with a paper and pencil, but what he wanted to communicate never came to fruition. And it's impossible to know what he would have written. I mean, maybe he just wanted to write, you know, goodbye to his family. You know, maybe it was as simple as that. But the fact of the matter is the last thing Zalatira did. The last thing he did in life was he got this pencil out and he got this paper out and then apparently he died. And once again, a couple of things about this, I think you're interesting. He's he's in this ravine, right? So, you know, the traditional sort of avalanche theory, I keep going back to avalanche theory because that's the main theory is kind of crazy because you have to believe that multiple snow related incidents are happening to these people. Suddenly, they're kind of like Scott Peterson. We said Scott Peterson's either a murderer or he's the most unlucky man. Alive and they, these people either something other than an avalanche happened to them or they are the most unlucky hikers alive because they had essentially a never before seen avalanche that struck their tent. They then flee into the night and then apparently they are a few of them at least are sort of wandering around in the woods and the ground gives way and they fall into this ravine and then all this snow falls on top of them. Right? That's what you have to believe happened and then that snow, you know, crushes them and kills them. And that's what caused all these crazy injuries. Well, the problem with that is Zalaterov. Once again, who sort of gives the lie to all these theories would have had to under tons of snow after having his body crushed somehow, got his pencil out and gotten his paper out and he's going to write something. But then he just, he just dies, right? And to me, that doesn't make sense. I don't know what he was going to write. Maybe he just wanted to write, you know, a letter to his family. But the fact that he's found like that tells you something about those last few minutes of his life and sort of what situation he was in. It seems straight out of like an alien encounter movie, you know, you're frozen in place right when you are about to do something that can help the future solve whatever mysteries happening to you. But I mean, your guess is as good as mine. The only thought I have is maybe because it was a pencil, not a pen. It's possible that the elements by the time the hikers found them, that the paper had been washed clean again. I don't know if you've ever had that experience where, where pencil over time with either water or sun can fade away where it looks like there's nothing written. So I don't know, you know, the fact that it's a pencil, it might be that he never got to write it and maybe that he wrote something and the elements washed away or even more conspiratorially, maybe it was washed away once he was found. But you're right. At the end of the day, this is the last thing that he mustered his energy to do before he died was to write down something to me, meaning he knew this was the end. It was going to he knew they were all going to die. There was no one that was going to survive to be able to tell the story of what happened to them. And I think he was trying to write something down to leave a clue so that people had an idea of what happened to them. The other weird thing, we haven't really discussed this. And nobody ever really does. Nobody ever talks about Alexander Kolovaltov. He was found in this ravine with these other people. And we've mentioned how they all had these just incredible injuries, right? And all sorts of damage to their bodies. Well, Alexander didn't have that. So he didn't have a crush skull and he didn't have broken ribs. He died of hypothermia and I've never really understood how that happened to him. He is this weird outlier because you've got the other people are all found either near the fire or on their way back to the tent. And it's very obvious that they all died from hypothermia, the exposures, what got them. And that makes sense. And then you have these crazy injuries to to bow and Luda and Zalaterov. You know, they're like a bomb or like getting hit by a car. I mean, just just insane injuries that you're trying to figure out. How is that even possible? How can that have happened to them? But at least they're consistent, right? So you have a group of people who freeze to death and then you have a group of people who have all this damage to them. And then you got Alexander who just doesn't make sense because he's he's literally right next to these folks. And yet he froze to death. He didn't he did not suffer all these injuries. How did he end up in the ravine? And if the way this happened was they fell in a ravine and then all the snow fell on them. Why doesn't he have any of those injuries? And another, you know, I mean, I don't know. He was another one who was very well dressed, even though he did of hypothermia. You know, he had, he had like, you know, five shirts and four pairs of pants and four pairs of socks and all that stuff. But in any event, it's just unclear to me what's going on with Alexander. And I feel like people often just skip Alexander because he really is this weird outlier. But people who don't skip him, he leads to all sorts of conspiracy theories as well because the simplest answer really is that the six of them, Dada of hypothermia, the three of them, you know, fell in the ravine and the snow crushed them. And then somebody took Alexander's body and put him in the ravine. I mean, that's the that's the answer that makes the most sense. But that's crazy, right? Because once you once you open yourself up to believing that, then any sort, any number of other things could be true, all of which we're going to talk about once we get to theories. But just something, something to remember as we are going through this crazy case. So we've talked about cameras and we've talked about that pencil and paper. Let's talk about the diaries of the people. The expectation would be that they all had diaries, but we did not find diaries for everybody. We know that Zina, Luda and Rustam had diaries. There's no question about that. There's also an unsigned diary that we don't know who was writing that diary. There's lots of speculation about that. We've never been able to nail that down. And there's a group diary. Yet there are entries in the unknown diary about to bow, changing his clothes and writing in his diary. Where is that diary? If to bow had a diary, we've never found it. Or at least it was never reported. Alexander and Krovana Shinko were also said to have diaries, but we've never found those either. I mean, what does that mean? I don't know. Was it possible they were just lost? Possibly, but. It's hard to have something lost like that. You know, when it's so hard to get there and. You know, we have a whole cup of cocoa left preserved. We have crackers unbroken. There's not wildlife just carrying things away. Edibles are still there. And so, you know, to have missing journals, multiple missing diaries, seems unlikely, which lends you to believe that, huh, did someone remove them? Or did they hide them? But it seems difficult to say that they hid them because they would have known something was going to happen to them. But like we've talked about them cutting through the tent. It seemed like whatever happened, it was an orderly rush, whatever it was. The thing about these diaries is they're really important. I mean, one of the first thing the authorities did was read the diaries, because they wanted to know, is there any indication in the diaries about what's going on here, about what happened that night? There, we know there are no diary entries for that day. The only thing we have that day is they actually put together sort of a satirical newspaper. It was like one page press thing with which have funny things, and it, including something about yetis, which we'll get to later. But this was something they were looking for. And they, they would have found this. This isn't something that like 30 years later people were like, "Man, I really wish they'd look for diaries." That could have been useful. They recognized that immediately. So this is not something they would have missed and it just makes you wonder like what's going on here It's possible maybe to bow you know is the author of the unknown diary though I've read a lot of things that indicate that's probably not true But in any event even if he is we're still missing seemingly two other Diaries and that makes you wonder now look no matter what happened in this case Even if even if it's perfectly innocuous the fact of the matter is The Soviet authorities were involved at the highest level the KGB was involved. It's possible Those diaries might have said something seemingly maybe not even that you know Whatever but the KGB said eh we don't want that getting out take that diary You never saw that I mean that that absolutely could have happened and it doesn't mean anything crazy happened here But it is interesting nonetheless And that's also what's so hard about this case But we talked about it last time which is that we have a very unreliable Dariator and so much time has passed It's unlikely anyone is left who would have any memory of whether the investigation were Altered in any way that may not even have been had alternate emotives But for whatever reason the the government may have wanted a certain view to get out or Certain views not to get out that may not even really matter for purposes of These nine lives, but may have other implications about the work they were doing for national security So the other thing we have here and we're gonna spend some time on this is Is the fire in the sky so? You can't talk about deatloff pass without talking about aliens and we're gonna talk about aliens more than we normally talk about aliens but What is undeniable? Is that in the days around the disappearance of the deatloff group before they disappeared on the day that they disappeared Weeks after they disappeared people reported seeing strange things in the sky They saw lights in the sky they saw lights moving across the sky that would grow in size and they would seemingly Part of them would go dim and then another part would become bright These things are reported in newspapers and they're reported by other people in In the area and even other hikers who were who were around and hiking You know, this is includes the director of the the ifdale police department We talked about ifdale. That's one of the towns where they had gone through and where the search was set up He talked about seeing these lights other hiking groups including hiking groups from the DPR we talked about the one group that actually went with them the Blinov group that went with the deatloff group and They really kind of traveled together for a while and then they split off and They kind of went a different way from the way that the deatloff group was going You know, they've got a diary too and they're keeping records of their trip And they are recording in their diary seeing orange fireballs in the sky and They happened to be in the direction where the deatloff group would have been these were recorded during their hike These were recorded before they knew what happened to the deatloff group There was an article in a local newspaper that talked about a moon-sized Glow and an explosion of light in the sky and like I said these were happening through the end of January through February and into March when the bodies were found in the ravine so they find the first few bodies and They think you know this is this is hypothermia Maybe they don't think too much of it the story really changes for the people who were looking into this and Particularly the lead prosecutor Ivanov When he finds these bodies in the ravine and he sees all this damage and it's unusual damage and it's damaged It's like the shockwave of a bomb He decides you know what I am going to test these people for Radiation so he orders a radiological test on the clothing of the last four hikers that were found so this is Kolev Atav Alexander Zalaterov Tibo and Luda hey Brett why why did he order the tests for just the last four why not all nine of them? so Here's the thing about this guy he he was very Close to the vest on this investigation for a really long time by 1990 By 1990 he's giving he's giving interviews only it was 1990 maybe a little bit later than that He's giving interviews in the paper talking about UFOs and how you know He gives us just this great interview you can find it on deatlovpass.com It's very long and he goes through how he was involved in this investigation of These hikers should go missing now one thing you have to remember People in UPI knew about the deatlov group obviously they knew these people they were at the funeral People in the greater Soviet Union they didn't know about the deatlov group people in the greater world Certainly didn't know about the deatlov group and it wasn't until the fall of the Soviet Union The people started finding out about this to give you an idea of how close hold the information was about what was happening there The families of Luda to bow and Zoloterov did not know about their injuries until 30 years after They died so they didn't learn about those until the Soviet Union was in the process of Collapsing they were just told they died of hypothermia Right all of this stuff that we've talked about was kept secret was kept close hold so Ivanov You know Bob late 90s He's giving this interview talking about directed energy weapons and and UFOs and he's talking about these lights in the sky And how he can't explain it and I think at the time when he learned about these injuries He could not explain them the things we've talked about the falling in the ravine and the snow falling on top of them and The avalanche no one no one who was there at the time Nobody in the search nobody in the investigation thought that's what happened They did not believe that they didn't think an avalanche was possible These were just not things they would have considered because none of that fit with their experience. These are all modern theories But then they find these bodies and they have these incredibly strange wounds. It's 1959 The Soviet Union and the Americans are in the Cold War. There's all these these new weapons being developed And I think Ivanov just had a thought Maybe this has something to do with some sort of weapons testing He knows about the lights in the sky if you read the descriptions of the lights You can go off on the UFO train if you want to what it honestly sounds like to me is Missiles, you know The description of a bright light that suddenly grows brighter and then there's another light moving away from that light Is that light deems that sounds like the separation of a two-stage rocket to me? You know if you've ever watched the launch of any of these these you know newest vehicles for SpaceX and Elon Musk people and all that stuff That's the way it goes, you know It has a two-stage the stage separates. It's bright for a second the one stage follows away the other stage fires and takes off That's what this sounds like to me and I think for Ivanov he was thinking the same thing so He learns about this and I think he just thought let's see if there's any radiation here and This probably was not in fact. I think based on what happens The authorities his his minders out of Moscow were probably very upset that he even did this But he orders the tests anyway and when he gets the report back literally the next day they close the investigation So So I could tell you the numbers, but the numbers don't make any sense to me and they won't make any sense to you so I will tell you in the the discussion that Ivanov has with the person who Who which who had these numbers and got these numbers back and they had the the inquest that day Here's what he asked him he said Could those numbers that level of contamination have been created by natural Circumstances and the doctor said no He was asked can we conclude that the clothes were contaminated by radioactive dust? The doctor said yes contaminated by radioactive dust which fell down from the atmosphere or these clothes were contaminated while working with radioactive substances via contact this particular contamination exceeds The normal level for people who work with radioactive substances Now this this is crazy Right so what he's saying is the level of contamination you would not even expect to see on someone who's working it like a nuclear power plant Or working with nuclear weapons and it's even more surprising because if one of the ways you figure out how radioactive something is Did you take the clothing and you you wash it and when you wash it you get a certain level of decrease in the amount of radioactivity because you're washing away part of the dust or what not The crazy thing about these clothes is they had been in running water Remember these bodies are found in this like this like like little creek that's running through this ravine. So these clothes have been continuously washed. And as this is what the experts said about it, quote, the contamination of some parts of the clothing were many times more than what they had recorded. So we're talking incredible levels of radioactivity on these clothes. - So Brett, like crazy alarm bells are going off in my head. I mean, okay, let's say that there were missile tests in this area. Why would missile tests be done in this area when we know that UPI had to file with the government, the path that they were going to take, well in advance of the hike. And so there was more than one group that we know of, who was hiking in this area, the exact path, the, you know, because we knew that they were going for a level, the highest level of difficulty was filed with the government. The government knew generally where they would be each day. Of course, you can be held up on more difficult days which they were, but you generally know where the hikers will be. And usually missile tests are going to be under the cloak of under secrecy. And here you have the missiles essentially going over the hikers. Essentially so close that, I mean, what I'm reading from this report is that what was in the sky rained down on them. And they probably didn't have a choice in that because if they were working with the missiles, they wouldn't even have this level of contamination is how I read this conversation with the doctor. - Well, I'll give you three things on this. And let me just say, I'm not necessarily saying, oh, we're going to get to theories at some point and try and figure out what have it here. I'm not necessarily saying that these were weapons test. It is certainly a theory people have. And it's the theory that people have considered really since this happened. But just a few little interesting tidbits now that you've asked that question. Number one, and I didn't know this actually until I started reading this latest book. So everybody should read this book. So you're right that Deat Love was supposed to file with UPI, the path of this trek. And he had filled that out. But apparently, he forgot to file it. He never filed it with UPI. So UPI did not actually have a copy of the route they were going to take. This became a problem during the search because that's the first thing they did. They asked them, give us the route they were supposed to be taking and UPI was like, we don't have it. So they had to actually somebody they had talked to about the path they were going to take had to recreate it from memory was how they were able to sort of track them. So it is not the case that the authorities would have had the path they were going to take or would necessarily have known they were going to be there if that was something that they were considering about whether or not to use this for missile test. - Well, what about the Yuri Blinovs group who was also from UPI? Did he file their path and how far were they from the Deat Love group? So he did file their path and they traveled together I think as far as ifdale, I don't remember exactly. They were actually pretty far away from each other. They were many, many miles in sort of opposite directions. So Deat Love goes off to the left and they go off to the right and then while they're doing their thing, they are seeing these lights in the sky that are over in the direction where the Deat Love group was. - But they were close enough to still be recording the two report in their diaries that they were seeing fire in the sky. - Yeah, and lots of people were seeing that. And I think one thing that I think is certainly, one thing I think is certainly true is wherever the Soviets were testing things, it wasn't like they were that worried about what people were seeing, you know, because it's the Soviet Union, who are you gonna tell? Right? So I don't think it was something where the Soviets would only test whatever they were testing off in the middle of nowhere. Now, Ivanov did ask the commander of the Ural Military Zone who was actually a pretty high ranking official, actually, Zukov, who was, if you've ever seen the death of Stalin, is awesome. Was the head of the Ural Military Region for a while. He wasn't at the time. But it's a high ranking official who would be there. They actually asked them, were there any military tests going on or any rocket going on there at the time? They did not expect a response. They got one, it just said no. There weren't any, which means absolutely nothing. (laughs) It's actually probably more likely that there were because they got a response than if they had not gotten a response. But the sort of official position of the Soviet government at the time was we didn't have any tests going on over there. We weren't firing off any rockets in that direction. So whatever happened, it certainly wasn't one of ours that cost it. That was their position. Take that for what it's worth. Just to go back to your question, a couple more things. So number one, they didn't actually file it, which they were supposed to do. Number two, after this happened, basically everybody involved. All of the leaders of it, UPI, all of the sports people, the party representative for sport, they were all fired. Everybody was fired after this happened. And why did that happen? Was it just because eight people died? And so I needed to be fired. Was it because they didn't have that information that could have prevented them from doing something that resulted in the death of eight people? Hard to say, but they were all terminated. They're all gotten rid of after this happened. And the other thing, the sort of the last thing that I'll say about this, the last few frames of the photographs taken by the group have caused tons of speculation. We'll put them on the website, and you can take a look at them and decide what you think you see. But some people say these are just defects. They are when they were exposing the film to see what was in these photographs. This is just a technician messing up and that's what we have, what we have. But there are two photos. The first one appears to show, it looks like some sort of, as we've talked about, fire in the sky, something sort of falling. It looks like light falling towards the ground. Maybe it's that, maybe it's a film defect. We'll never know. Take a look at it, see what you think. The second photo seems to show an incredibly bright flash of light. What's interesting about this, once again, could be an error in producing this. What people have noted though, if you look at this photo, there are three dark spaces at the bottom. Not evenly spaced apart. There's one on the left side of the film, and then there's two close together on the right side of the film. And what some people have suggested that is, is someone taking a picture of a bright flash in the sky with three people standing in front of them and they're catching the top of their heads. I mean, that was certainly my very first thought, the first time I ever saw that photo, I thought, oh, those are the shadows of people's heads, which would indicate that the light or whatever they're seeing is very low and close to them to be able to catch the bright light and the tops of their heads together. Imagine other lights that you may be taking pictures of. I'm thinking about when I was in Iceland trying to take pictures of the northern lights. They were so high in the sky that I could not in order to get any one of the people who I was traveling with to be in the frame, it had to be a long shot. And you could tell how far away the lights were from the people. But here, they are so close that that, itself would counsel me against thinking its heads because when would you ever see lights that bright, that close, almost like they're looking into, you know, the headlight of a train. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like or a massive explosion happening right in front of them. (laughing) You're just gonna have to look at it and see what you think about it. Like I said, possible it's nothing, probably is nothing. But once again, just as we're going through this, remember Zolotera and his camera. We're gonna talk about another camera here in a second. Zolotera have had that camera for a reason. He was outside that tent with that camera for a reason. He wanted to take a picture of something. The question is, what was he taking a picture of? Back to my experience taking pictures of northern lights. My regular camera or my cell phone wasn't going to be able to expose long enough in order to catch the northern lights. You have to keep the lens open longer so that more light can travel through in order to capture the lights. So many of the northern lights that you are able to see in pictures, you actually can't see it to that degree of vividness with the naked eye, which may make sense of having a second camera that has that capability of having the shutter stay open to take in light, why you would have a second camera. I don't know if that's the type of camera that he had, but it was make sense why it would not be duplicative and maybe it would not be a secret camera, but one that no one sees because you only take it out in instances where you need it for that specific purpose, which is typically during, say, something like wanting to capture lights. Yeah, and that's a really good point. And another thing to remember is this is 1959. This is Russia. They don't have the best cameras in the world. This is probably the best you're going to get. If you're taking a picture at night of some light in the sky, this is probably what it would look like. Maybe this is just, like I said, this could just be a defect in the film or a defect in how the film is processed or resulted the cameras being in water. I mean, who knows, right? But if you were taking a picture of a really bright light at night, this is probably what you would get. All right. We may come back to that, but let's talk about some other, some other interesting aspects of this case, like we said, it just never seems to stop. The missing knives, a knife sheath was found near the tent. At the time, it was believed to belong to one of the hikers, but subsequently, all the knives were found in the tent in their sheaths. Even stranger, near the location of the fire, several trees had been cut with a knife, but no knives were ever found with the bodies. I mean, I'm at a loss. A knife was used, no knife was found with the bodies, and the knives were all accounted for. All the knives that were in the tent had their company's sheaths, which means there is a missing knife because with there, we have one knife sheath that is empty. We have indication that a knife was used down by the fire, which was not anywhere near the tent. And because they never made it back to the tent, it is unlikely that whoever used the knife to cut the trees next to the fire made it somehow back to the tent to put it back in its sheath and then left the tent again when the tent would have been the place to stay in order to survive. And we know there were three knives on this trip. They were called finish knives. They were very sharp. They were heavily regulated by the Soviet Union, and you were supposed to have a permit if you even had one of these knives. Only one of the hikers had a permit. I believe Alexander had a permit. Yuri Krovanovschenko had one of these knives. And I think maybe Diatlov had one as well. They did not have a permit. So they just they just had them. It's interesting because you find an empty sheath near the tent. You also find there's another empty sheath near the ravine that did not have a knife in it. Now one thing that's really interesting about this, everything you read all the early reports talk about the finding of this empty knife sheath near this the ravine where the bodies were found as well as a spoon. They always put them together. Knife sheath and a spoon, right? When Ivanov gave his sort of final dissertation on this, he claimed a knife was found in the ravine. There's no evidence of that. Now they're needed to be a knife there because that's the only way to explain a lot of the things we see. So it's probably not surprising that in the final report a knife suddenly appeared, but nobody else ever saw that knife. Maybe they all just missed it and Ivanov realized that the end, hey, there's a knife here. That's possible. That maybe that's the simplest answer to this question. But otherwise you have to wonder what's going on with all these these things that are cut. They're closed that are cut. We know that some of the clothes on the bodies were cut off the bodies. There were all these trees that were cut. We know they were cut. They weren't broken. They weren't torn. They were definitely cut. This goes along with some of the other weird things. We talked about the the military, the piece of cloth that people in the military would rip would wrap around their boots and how we found one of those in the area of the fire and the ravine. But we never found the other one and we have no idea where that came from. Another weird thing that was found is on the tent. You remember there's snow on the tent. Now the snow everybody agrees. The snow is from the wind. This is wind blown snow. You may wonder how you can tell that. Apparently if you had snow from say an avalanche, it has a certain consistency. It's thicker, it's heavier. It's difficult to get through if you're a mountain person, if you're a mountaineer and you're familiar with avalanches, you know that. So these people who all were familiar with avalanches knew when they got up there that the snow on top of the tent was wind blown snow. Sitting on top of the snow was a flashlight. The flashlight was in the off position when they picked the flashlight up and turned it on. It worked. But it was just sitting there on top of the snow, not covered in snow, not buried in snow, sitting on top of the snow. Where did that flashlight come from? Nobody has ever been able to explain that. Oh, the soap is off. It's just I'm telling you this case, the more you learn about you think. One of the first things we said in our first episode was that with any unsolved case, with any mystery, there will be a host of facts and there is never going to be a theory that covers all of the facts. And we saw this obviously in more a Murray. We see this in my tree's Richardson. We see it in all of our cases that and part of the reason is there could be innocent reasons for facts that we just don't understand because we're trying to make sense of the mystery. But usually it's only one or two facts, Brett, that we can't account for. In this case, it just seems like there are more facts that are unaccounted for than can be accounted for. And every time we talk about it, every episode, there's just more. And normally, you know, we go through this and I feel like we're able to knock out some stuff, right? We're able to say things like, you know, the rag in the tailpipe. Oh, the rag in the tailpipe and how that's like so mysterious. Why is there a rag in the tailpipe with more Murray? And it turns out there's a rag because her dad told her to put a rag in her tailpipe and to keep the smoke down, right? Very simple, straightforward explanation for that. And so something that seems unusual can be eliminated and we're able to move forward. With the antloved past, it's just like it just gets weirder and weirder and weirder the more you think about it and and the further you go, the more you discover and there's never a good answer for anything. I mean, like I said, I don't I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I like conspiracy theories. I think conspiracy theories are usually pretty pretty ridiculous and and completely unfounded. This is a case for conspiracy theorists because this is a case where there's so much that just cannot be explained. And it makes you think this is one of those cases that may fit that very narrow category that we've talked about before, where if it's so unusual and it's been unsolved for so long, it's possible that the truly is something strange, different and extraordinary going on in that case. And when I think about the antloved past, that's that's basically what I think is going on. You may have thought that was the last weird fact. It's not Yuri Kravana Shanko's cocked shutter and tripod. Now we've already talked about some cameras, but Kravana Shanko's camera was actually cocked and it was on the tripod. So it indicates that he was waiting for something. For those of you who may not know, cocking the shutter allows for a quick shot because it's at the ready, but you don't normally want to do this because by cocking the shutter, it waste film. It's really not something an experience and talented photographer like Kravana Shanko would do without a purpose. You do this because you are waiting for that split second moment that if you were to miss, if you were to be just a split second late, you'd miss it. So he is a very good photographer. He doesn't need to take these shortcuts that's wasteful for film in order to capture good shots. He has the talent and the experience to capture shots he wants. But his camera was cocked. Now his camera was also found attached to a tripod, indicating he was ready to take a photo of something. Here's how a deatloffpass.com describes it. Frame number 34 testifies to the fact that Kravana Shanko's camera was left with cocked shutter. It is possible that this is just a habit, although this is rather unusual for an experienced photographer because it would result in losing a few frames from each film. His camera was the only of the four cameras found in the tent left with the cocked shutter. Another explanation is that being in poor visibility conditions when the last photos were taken on the slope, Georgie, who's Kravana Shanko, wanted to be ready for immediate shot of something he was expecting to happen. We do not know what exactly Zolaterov, Kravana Shanko and Kolovatov were waiting, were preparing for. It is possible that Kravana Shanko, with his camera, had to be a decoy, enabling the Zolaterov, do his business quietly. By the way, most likely, Semyon did it, otherwise he would not have kept his second camera until his death. The film and his camera was totally ruined by moisture. Kravana Shanko, cocking the shutter, is a very important signal that he was preparing for some events on the slopes. Unlike the holders of other cameras, Deatlov and Slobodan. Among other oddities of the last days, Ascent and descent from the path on January 31st in a very short distance covered on February 1st. The COCT shutter suggests that some members of the group were preparing for some anticipated events in the afternoon of February 1st in this area. But the development for reasons unclear to us resulted in a tragic outcome. That's obviously very, very evocative, right? I mean, Deatlovfast.com, is the interesting website because it never really, it never really takes a position on what exactly happened there. But it gives you all these sort of interesting tidbits and this is one of them where it seems pretty clear they think something was happening and that Zoloterov and Kravana Shinko knew about it or were getting ready for it. Interesting things about Zoloterov and Kravana Shinko, Zoloterov, once again, he's the oldest member of the group. He had been in the military, a lot of interesting things about him and things that have been found out only the last few years. His brother was a Nazi collaborator and had been executed because of that. Ordinarily, that's the sort of thing that would be a problem for Zoloterov. If someone in your family was a collaborator, usually you didn't make it very long and bad things would happen to you too, but they didn't happen to Zoloterov. And that's led some people to think that maybe Zoloterov had some connections and high places and that maybe during the war, he had moved his way up and various organizations, possibly the KGB. Kravana Shinko, remember, works at one of the most high security places in the entire Soviet Union. The main place where they're researching, developing, creating atomic weapons. He's so trusted that he's involved in the cleanup of this mysterious accident that nobody in the West even knew of out for 30 years. And these are the two people who that night have their cameras ready to rock and roll for something that's gonna happen. Not the, not Deatloff. Deatloff's camera wasn't ready to go. Not slow-bidance. His camera wasn't ready to go, but these two guys, these two guys were ready. And Zoloterov, not only was he ready, but he had his second camera ready. Not his first one. He had a second camera. And then Kravana Shinko's got his camera cocked and he's got it on the tripod. So yeah, it makes you think something was happening. They knew it was happening and they were ready for it. - And remember, when they set up their tent, they do it so quickly that they set up the tent in a place that they shouldn't set it up and they set it up slow rather than downslope. And with how experienced they are, this was just not the place you would usually set a tent, right? I know they were running out of daylight, but it seems like they had to park there in order to get on with other businesses, apparently with these cameras. - And we know, you know, it's all things crazy. We also know that somebody was outside because another thing that was found near the tent was evidence that somebody had gone out there to use the bathroom. So really what I think most people think happened is you've got Zalaterov and Kravana Shinko outside waiting for something to happen. One of them, you know, takes time to do his business and then something happens and then the rest is history, but we don't know what happened. We don't know what the event was in between the cock shutter and everything else, but we know that something happened. We just don't know what. So we've addressed a lot of really weird things that have happened in this case. We probably could talk about unusual things for a very long time. We certainly haven't talked about everything. Next time in what should be our final episode, we'll talk about our theories in this case, but we have one more thing that we wanna discuss today before we let you go. And that's just to remind you and inform you of some of the people involved in this case and who they were and why they were involved in this. So remember, what we essentially have here is the death of eight hikers, eight students, a tragedy no doubt, but query whether and in usual circumstances, that would rise to the highest levels of government. Just think about our country. If something like this happened, but the president know about it, would he do anything other than maybe give us condolences? If for some reason, it became a national news story. We've talked about Lev Ivanov, many times before. He was the lead prosecutor on the ground during the investigation, so his name comes up a lot. He had a good friend named Vladislav Bianco, who actually, crazily, was supposed to go on the hike with the group, but at the last moment, he was called away by essentially the student organization of communism. He was sent off to do some work in the forest, which opened up a spot in the Diat Live Group that was filled by Zolaterov. Now, like I said, he was really good friends with Ivanov, who was the lead prosecutor and Ivanov actually trusted him so much that he had him develop the film that was found in these cameras rather than allowing someone else to do it. Ivanov did not trust that if he had that film developed by somebody else, maybe somebody in the government, that he necessarily would see what those photos showed, which once again, just remember this about Ivanov. You asked earlier, why would he order these radiological tests? Ivanov, there's the official Ivanov, there's what Ivanov put in the report, and then there's apparently what Ivanov was thinking to himself and keeping very close hold. And I think there's a reason that he wanted his good friend to develop this film rather than having someone else do it. Now, Bianco is still alive, and he actually recently gave an interview to a Russian newspaper, the Consomluskaya Provda, which has done a lot of work on the Diat Live Pass. I think it's more in the way of maybe what we would call a tabloid, but on this, in this in particular, it's done a lot of investigation. And he had some interesting things to say about Ivanov, and his thoughts as this investigation continued. So I'll quote from him, "When Ivanov returned from the scene of the tragedy, "he told me that if he were superstitious, "he would have believed in the devil. "What happened to the guys couldn't have happened "duty natural causes, the slope on which the tent is pitched "can not be called a slope. "It is almost invisible to the eye. "It is impossible to slide on skis on it "that pushing off with poles. "Only an overactive imagination can see an avalanche "to sending there. "Moreover, there are no signs of an avalanche on the tent. "All the mountains are in place. "The tent has not moved a single centimeter. "The avalanche version was completely ridiculous "and was not considered at all until May 4th, 1959, "when the bodies of Dumaninia, "to Bo and Zalaterov were found. "Their bodies inside literally, "as if crushed by a powerful, ural mesh press. "The ural mesh press, by the way, is like one of those presses "that pushes like hot steel and makes hot steel "and the plate steel and whatever, big press, huge. "The rest of the guys froze either in the forest "or on the way back to the tent. "I have an avalanche return from the location "with the last four bodies were found, a different man. "I couldn't recognize him. "From an energetic, agile, and sociable, "he turned into a depressed and indifferent person. "He seemed aged with decades. "When I asked him what is going on, he only said, "You know, Slava, it seems to me "that there were two applications of a natural force "unknown to us. "One, cyclical, which drove healthy guys out of the tent "and the second physical that injured and killed three people "who left the main group." He went on to say, "In 1964, my family and I moved to Minsk "where my wife began to teach English "to officers upgrading their qualifications "at the Minsk Higher Radio Engineering School "of the Ministry of Defense. "And once during a free conversation with the officer, "she mentioned this tragedy in the Northern Urals. "The officers told her that they had heard about test "in this area of acoustic, low-frequency, psychic weapons. "Maybe all this is nonsense or maybe not. "But it is interesting. "Also in those days, other military men "who guarded the convicts in the logging area "of the Northern Urals said that allegedly "after the winter of 1959 in many forest areas, "the bark peeled off of the trees. "If this is true, why did it peel off? "Maybe, in fact, under the influence of some acoustic test." - Goodness, you know, as prosecutors, you don't talk about your cases with people who are outside of your field. You only, you talk to your agents, you talk to other prosecutors in your office, but he does seem to know a lot about the case. And it sounds like his friend maybe didn't convey things and words to him, but he knew his friend so well that he was able to read him and see the effects that the case, prosecuting this case, had. on Ivan off. - And you can think, well, whatever, they're conspiracy theories in America, they're conspiracy theories in the Soviet Union. All that's crazy. Why would you think there were any weapons to us? There anything special about this? Well, if you then look at the people, as we said, who were involved in this, these high ranking people, like this investigation was initially headed up by local authorities, if Ivan off himself was a regional prosecutor. So he was brought in to replace the local guy, but it didn't stop with him. It was quickly elevated all the way to Moscow. The prosecutor general of the USSR became involved with his deputy, Leonid Yurikov, taking direct control of the investigation. Now, Yurikov reported to Roman Rydinko, who was the highest ranking legal official in the Soviet Union. If you wanna know what kind of person Rydinko was, he had not only been the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, he had also been the chief prosecutor of YouTube pilot Gary Peters, which was a huge international story and, and perhaps most strikingly, we keep coming back to death of Stalin, if you've seen death of Stalin. It was this man, Roman Rydinko, who had handed down the death sentence for the first head of the NKVD and KGB, LeVrin Tree, Berya, who was one of the most evil men who ever lived and one of the most powerful men in the USSR. And after Stalin died, it was this man who ordered his death. It is almost unimaginable that these people would be involved in an investigation of the death of eight hikers who, you know, froze the death through misadventure in the Ural Mountains. And yet, it's apparent that this investigation was monitored at the very highest level. He gave me a key shove, the highest ranking local prosecutor, who was actually Ivanov's direct boss, has stated that Moscow kept a close watch on the investigation. And once the radiation tests came back, the prosecutors, Ivanov and Okhsev, were ordered to close the case immediately and to state that it was an accident in 2013. Okhsev was interviewed about this, and he was asked, who was it who gave that order? And his answer was the central committee of the CPSU, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the ruling body of the Soviet Union, the head of which, at the time, would have been Nikita Krusev, the premier of the Soviet Union. - I mean, that's so telling to have a test come back, a test that has interesting results. It's not a boring result. A boring result would have been negative for radiation, but to have the test come back and immediately close down the next day with a directive as to the cause of death. - And not only did they do that, but they closed the mountain for four years. They would not allow anyone to go to this mountain for four years, and they actually only lifted that band to allow people from UPI to return to the mountain with a memorial that they set up that's there to this day. So that's a lot for you guys to digest. Next time when we come back, we're gonna go through theories. And as you can tell, those theories are going to run with a gamut. Usually we don't do a whole episode on theories, but I think we're gonna have more than enough to talk about next episode. And we will talk about everything. We will go through all the possibilities, sonic, weapons, and aliens, and radioactive yetis, KGB operations, even avalanches, even boring things like avalanches. And we'll talk about all that stuff. And we'll try and see if we can come to some conclusion that fits at least some of all the weird things we've talked about. Like Alice said, we are not going to find a solution that covers all this stuff. You're never gonna do that. And if you won't be satisfied until you find that, you'll just never be satisfied, because there's just too much weird stuff going on in this case, and it's just too hard to know what to believe. It went not to believe. And it's pretty clear that the Soviet Union made sure we would never have the full story in this case. I'm sure you guys have comments, questions, I have no doubt you have things you wanna clarify or mistakes we've made, you wanna correct. We've talked about a lot in this case, and people know this case really well. And so I really look forward to learning new things about it from you guys. So shoot us an email, prosecutor's [email protected], @proscuderspod for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Visit us on Reddit, or if you're watching this on YouTube. Hello, drop a comment. If you guys wanna check out our store, remember that all the proceeds benefit the Cold Case Research Institute. My daughter was wearing her Prosecutie onesie tonight. So buy something from there, and we'll make sure the money gets to the right place. I think that's all we've got. Alice, do you have anything else you wanna add? - So much, but then we'd be here forever. You'll just have to come back next time, so you can just go through the theories. - I am looking forward to the Patreon get vocal discussion of this case. All right, well, we will leave you for now, but we will be back soon with all our theories on what happened at the At Love Pass. But until then, I'm Brett. - And I'm Alice. - And we are the prosecutors. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So do we need to clarify with people that we were not laughing about a daughter getting raped? (laughing) - No, I'm kidding. - That was so ridiculous. - That was outrageous, that's what it was. I mean, come home, come home. Yeah, you can accuse somebody of something like that. - I know. - I'm kidding, that is quite the allocation. - And also, if we were doing that, why are you giving us two stars? What does that say about you? - You should really give us no stars. - Exactly. - You should report us. (laughing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Captain, does not agree with us about the owl? - Oh wait, are we doing Michael Peterson or Scott Peterson? - We're doing Scott, but I guess he also will talk about the owl. - Okay. (laughing) - The real point is about the owl. There's more concrete evidence that the owl did it. - Right, the point being all the theories proposed by both sides are, there's no evidence. - Really? - Exactly, except for the owl. The owl actually has evidence. So, you know, if you want to believe one of the other theories you can, but just know that you're believing if you can have the owl. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)