Man left his girlfriend to freeze to death

[Trevordidit]

Man left his girlfriend to freeze when she was struggling on a mountain hike.

He's been found guilty of manslaughter.

So many aspects of his account don't make sense - AIBU to wonder if he did it on purpose?

News article

A judge just sentenced a man to 9 months (not years) for the premeditated fatal stabbing of a teenage girl in the Netherlands.
Forgive me if I don't trust judges when it comes to justice for women.

I agree with PPs that all he cared about was reaching the summit and he was going to achieve that come what may. He didn’t set out to murder his GF, but he didn’t care enough for her to save her life when she got into trouble. He saw her as preventing him from reaching the summit.

I also agree that it’s likely that she fell. Especially since she was ill, exhausted and wearing the wrong footwear.

That's the really odd bit-

Although in fairness to this judge, I acknowledge it's very hard to determine the facts in this particular case, as the only other person is dead. It's a tough call.

What I don't understand though, is people compelled to defend the guy's motivations, when hes clearly at best sociopathically selfish, especially given his similar treatment of a previous girlfriend.

As I said in another comment, what doesn't make sense is the judge calling Plamberger an 'excellent mountaineer' when he did pretty much everything wrong.

He claims he didn't even know she'd packed a bivouac sack!! And didn't pack one himself! From what I've read, that's unthinkable as a mountaineer. He either wasn't an excellent mountaineer, or from the very beginning of the trip he just had zero regard for her life.

You're assuming that your DH would do what you told him. Maybe it wasn't the same for the couple in question?

I told my husband about this incident, and he said, 'I wonder if he's one of those guys who gets off on frightening women, and enjoying the power he has over them in a situation where they rely on him, and this time it went further than he intended it to.'

I find it really sad that she tried to call the mountain rescue herself but was one digit out..she knew she was struggling. He wasn’t helping her.

They’d clearly had an argument. As she was wanting to be rescued and he wasn’t making the necessary calls.

Well, he'd have to go without me in that case! I'd just refuse to go.

And in this case, considering she wasn't familiar with the route, had never done something so challenging before, and was at least a little nervous about it (I've heard mentioned she said so in texts), I doubt she would've attempted to go on her own!

Even if your theory is right - which I don’t think it is. And she was insisting on him taking her up the mountain in inappropriate gear (he’s the more experienced one here remember). At that point where she is injured and ill and trying to call for help herself- at that point don’t you think he should have helped her? He should have stopped and sheltered and called for help. They both had working phones. There were helicopters checking on them.

I went up a mountain which was a scramble ( not climbing but one where you need hands at points as well as feet) with a friend - quite a driven person- he refused to guide another friend who wasn't wearing the right footwear. So that guy never climbed the mountain.
It was daytime and there were lots of other climbers around.

That is odd and I wonder what might have been lost in translation or quoted out of context, or both.

I wasn't proposing a theory. I was just trying to point out that none of us know exactly what happened on the mountain or in the court.

Some posters seem so bent on defending him because of their conviction it wasn’t premeditated. Men can have relationships with women, then snap and strangle one who pisses them off. It doesn’t mean they set out to kill but they are still responsible for her death!

As far as the mum goes, the parents admitted in court that they were not familiar with the mountain, didn’t know what Kerstin knew about climbing protocols and were told by the judge they were wrong about their daughter’s experience in relation to his. So the mother’s presentation of her daughter as a fearless risk taker may be true but that doesn’t change that Kerstin was crawling, unable to walk, when her climbing partner left her to freeze with no calls to emergency services and their calls to him unanswered.

In terms of being desperate to summit and not letting anything stop him, it was something he’d already done around 15 times before (and if SM posts are to be believed, posted pictures pre trial with a woman he’d gone up the same mountain with after Kerstin’s death).

Maybe the judge meant he was the one who was an experienced mountaineer (and therefore should have known better). Rather than describing him an excellent mountaineer. I don’t think the judge would have been complimenting him in this trial. The guy did everything wrong. Maybe the judge’s point is the opposite- that he can’t blame inexperience and he should have known better.

If they were both inexperienced climbers then some of it would have been excusable - not having the right gear, no food, making bad decisions. Whereas this guy knew better. I’m hoping that was the judge’s point!

I do think that there may have element in this case of the judge realising that it was going to change Austrian and possibly worldwide application of the law to the responsibilities of climbers to other members of their climbing group. Apparently climbing associations all over the world were watching with concern.

Suspending the sentence does seem very light, but then we do love jailing people in this country compared to the rest of Europe.

No, he did say he was an "excellent mountaineer". I speak fluent German.

I don't think he was complimenting him, but stressing his experience. Basically he should have known better and that's what the judge was saying.

Ah yes so when he said excellent mountaineer he did mean that he should have known better!

I've read through multiple articles, and I don't think anything was lost in translation or quoted out of context. He did make all those errors/poor decisions, and yet the judge did also say he was an excellent mountaineer who (paraphrasing from memory) didn't take into account Kerstin's different skill level.

It's very odd, as I think being an excellent mountaineer, and behaving the way he did, are mutually exclusive.

Oh, cross-post!

Thank you for the clarification!

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/20/theres-an-epidemic-of-men-pushing-women-and-it-needs-to-stop

These are letters in response to an article which is linked to in the first letter. I wrote a letter in response to the article but didn't send it.

I suffered a shoulder injury when a man deliberately barged into me. There were two women who witnessed it and wanted to call the police. It really shocked me that someone would deliberately do that.

Eta I wonder how shocked and terrified Kerstin was when the man she loved behaved the way he did when she was clearly in trouble and obviously we will never know.

I don't see this ruling as anything like you are portraying at all.
Firstly, there is a huge difference between treating people like incompetant children and using your experience to advise them on safety aspects of the activity. After all, you say they are only doing it because you are leading them.
The test on what actions you should take in life threatening situations has, in UK law, always been based on your status. Commercial operation you have a duty to have the knowledge and be able to know how to prevent catostrophic events and how to deal with them if they happen. That is very clear in law.
Non commercial, like friends or strangers or in between, you have a duty to protect life that is reasonable to your ability. For most of us with no specialist skill, that is alerting emergency services. No other intervention is legally required and in fact shouldn't be encouraged if you don't know what you are doing. We might want to help more but we don't have to. But if you have certain skills relevant to the situation the test for reasonable intervention is higher. A doctor seeing someone bleeding to death has a higher expectation to act than a non dr.
The test here was how would a person with his knowledge and experience be expected to reasonably act. The reasonable takes into account the stress and self preservation aspects. That is why people are left to die on Everest and nobody is prosecuted. It is not reasonable to help them if there is a high chance you will die doing it.
But the Court said his actions were not reasonable based on the specific circumstances and his knowledge and experiences.
A society that understands the risks of Mountaineering more than most would have considered the implications of the prosecution and conviction and is well placed to know what was reasonable for him to do in those circumstances. Their view is he failed at a level that was criminal. That is not setting a precedent as you are envisiging.

As Germaine Greer wrote, 'Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.' But I think we're starting to finally cotton on as things like the incidents described in the link you shared happen more and more, and we can globally pool our experiences using the internet

I think it will change things but that could also be a good thing if people are made to think more about their liability towards others when doing things like this.
Austria is becoming overrun with Instagram-type tourists who have seen particular locations and want to go there, often appearing in completely inappropriate clothing. There are a lot of issues which I won't go into here which would be a very long post.
Basically there are more and more fatalities, 300 in Austria last year, because more and more people are attempting hikes and climbs without sufficient experience or physical condition. Most of the fatal accidents are caused by slips and falls or are heart attacks.
There are a few social media groups appearing where people post hikes they are going to do and invite others to join and they can sign up to join while ticking a box to say they are responsible for themselves because the person organizing is not a mountain guide and not acting in the capacity of mountain guide. But you can't waive your liability away like that if you organize a hike like that and some of the people are not fit enough/well-equipped enough to do it.
If this makes people think more about what they are doing, where they are going and who they are taking with them, it's a good thing.

Mountain rescue is constantly being called out to people who have tried to hike mountains in inappropriate clothing and inappropriate weather conditions. Do people not even look at the weather forecast???

If you're an experienced mountaineer and you take someone with you who has little to no experience (as in this case where Kerstin had not done a winter tour of this kind before), then you, as the experienced person have to take on a lot of the responsibility for ensuring that the person has the correct equipment, for assessing weather conditions, for making the decision about turning back if it turns out the person is struggling or clearly not up to completing the entire climb and descent safely even if at that moment in time they seem to be ok.
The less-experienced/physically less strong person also has to bear some responsibility for asking questions about the tour and thinking about whether they can manage the tour and also keeping the other person/people informed during the tour about whether they can manage or not, not trying to keep going when they are really struggling. However, I can also understand how it can be nigh on impossible to say "I can't go on any more" or "I won't make it to the summit so we have to turn back" to a personality like Thomas P. If this ruling sends out a strong message to people like him, good.

Of all the accidents and fatalities which have occurred in Austria in recent years, it's interesting that it's this one which has been taken to court and had this result. I think there are a lot of things which are unexplained, especially the state in which she was left which bore no relation to what he described. The alpine police knew something was very amiss here from the beginning and that's how it got this far.

Good post!
In Austria it is the law that you must attempt first aid at the scene of an accident. Before you can enter for your driving test you have to have completed a 12-hour first aid course. If you do not attempt first aid you can be prosecuted.
I do not know if it is compulsory in the case of a mountain accident but I would expect it is. In any case you would be expected tohelp the person and to attempt to contact mountain rescue immediately.

I think in the case of the poster you quoted who takes people skiing, if that was in Austria and someone had an accident because of the bindings being incorrectly set up the issue would arise if that poster then just skied off and left the injured person there. That's the equivalent of what Thomas P. did.
As soon as the skier had the accident, the leader of the group, (which that poster is because she has put herself in that position) should secure the area by putting up crossed skis to warn others, contact emergency services straight away and make the person comfortable/administer first-aid. If none of that was done and the person died then she could be prosecuted for manslaughter by gross negligence.
Also, the leader of a group like that has a responsibility to match the routes skied with the abilities of the people in the group and therefore should bear responsibility if the group skis in terrain which is too difficult for one or more members of the group and someone has an accident.

The issue with Thomas P. was not just that Kerstin was poorly equipped and not up to the tour and he shouldn't have taken her on it in the first place, but his actions when it all started to go wrong because he didn't take any steps to save her life until 3.30 am when it was all too late.