The Murder of Ötzi the Iceman

The most fascinating true crime case I have ever heard of is also perhaps one of the oldest. By a large margin, in fact. But it did not start out as an unsolved murder.

On September 19, 1991, two German tourists hiking along the east ridge of the Fineilspitze in the Alps astride the Austrian-Italian border came across a body in the snow and ice. Believing the person to be a recently dead mountineer, they reported it when the returned from their hike.

The next day an attempt was made to retrieve the body, which was found to have been frozen in ice below the torso. Even using a pneumatic drill and ice-axes was not enough to free the corpse, and when bad weather hit the effort was abandoned. Ultimately, the body would finally be salvaged on September 23, and with the objects found nearby it was taken to the office of the medical examiner in Innsbruck. By the next day, the medical examiner and an archaeologist from a nearby university were able to place a rough date for how long the poor man had been dead.

At least 5000 years he had been lying on that mountain.

Studying the body after it was discovered revealed that he had been a 5 foot 4 inches tall man in his mid-40s, and likely weighed about 110 pounds when he died. Given the name Ötzi, and called the Iceman for his age and how he was found, his body was a wealth of information regarding his life, including his diet, the tools he used and how he lived, and even the fact that he had an extensive range of 61 tattoos over his body. For the ten years after his body was found, it was simply assumed that he died from exposure. A more in-depth examination of Ötzi shows the truth.

He was murdered.

In 2001, following X-rays and a CT scan, it was learned that Ötzi had an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder at the time of his death. We know this to be a recent injury and not an old wound that healed with the arrowhead inside because his clothing at that location had a hole approximately the shape that the arrowhead would have made. Looking closer brought additional signs of a struggle to light. There were bruises and cuts on the hands, wrists, and chest, and even cerebral trauma indicating a blow to his head. Of these wounds, it was likely the loss of blood from the arrowhead to the shoulder that killed him. Even then, the indication is that he had turned on his belly in an attempt to remove the arrow before succumbing to his wounds.

Ötzi did not go quietly, however. More recent DNA analyses claim to have found traces of blood from four people on his gear. Blood from one person on his knife, blood from two people on a single arrowhead, and a fourth source of blood on his coat. Overall interpretations of these findings speculate that Ötzi was able to kill two people with the same arrow, having retrieved it after both uses, then perhaps injured or killed a third with his knife. Interestingly, the position of the blood on his coat indicates he carried someone, perhaps a comrade or family member.

Why was Ötzi fighting in the mountains the day he died? Was he chased by enemies up the slopes, fending off several before finally dying? Was he a hunter of the enemies of his people, tracking them through the snow only to be ambushed in turn? Was he out hunting with a friend only to see their lives end amongst the peaks? Even with the impressive advances in technology we have seen in the past several decades, and the new techniques and equipment that continue to be produced all the time, the sad fact of the matter is that this cold case will likely forever remain unsolved. Too much is unknown about Ötzi's life, about the people that may have killed him, and about the scene of the crime itself, which has shifted over the millenia since his murder occurred.