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

It comes as no surprise.

The prosecution office is also appealing the sentence. More to follow. https://www.reuters.com/world/austrian-climber-prosecutors-appeal-sentence-girlfriends-death-2026-02-24/

So does that mean that the prosecution office is seeking a more severe sentence?

I would suspect so.

Eta probably keeping with the charge but the punishment being too lenient.

I agree with the poster who said earlier that Kirstin most likely died earlier than thought - while he was still with her - and that's why she was found dangling off the cliff and not wrapped in her blanket or bivvy bag. No point in that if she was already dead. I also think that's why he waved away the helicopter and didn't answer the phone to rescuers/the police. He was sorting out what he was going to do to get himself out of this.

He succeeded, mostly, so hopefully he'll get a less lenient sentence on appeal (prosecution, not him) as he's basically got away with it as far as it currently stands.

So to clarify.

Defendant Thomas P appealing against guilty verdict.

Prosecution appealing against the punishment. Five months suspended sentence and fine.

The thing is he said in court she was alive when he left her. In his words in court she told him to go on and save himself.

In the immortal words, "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

This article was released yesterday and contains a lot more detail about the incident on the mountain and the trial. It's an interesting read.

How the Austria Guilty Verdict May Redefine Recreational Climbing

Correct. I've just read it in the Austrian press.
https://tirol.orf.at/stories/3343167/

Thomas P is appealing against "Nichtigkeit" (which is to do with errors in the process), the verdict and the sentence.

The prosecution is appealing the sentence.

Agreed. Wonder if they could get any time of death information from the sports watch.

People need to question why he would wave away a rescue helicopter and ignore all phone calls from the emergency services…surely the only reason is because she was already dead.

Well, surely he would still need her body and himself picking up from the mountain, so in that case the fact that he declined help is well suss.

None of it adds up really.

The main thing for me is ignoring all those offers of help. If you read the article the emergency services were even contacting him by WhatsApp to see if he wanted help. What would be the reason for refusing any help until 3am by which time it was clearly too late. He had gone to get help apparently- yet help was right there at the other end of the phone…

Having read this, it seems the judge was incredibly lenient both in his assessment of Thomas's character and his sentencing. He gave Thomas the benefit of the doubt multiple times. Personally, I think there's unconscious bias at play - he let Thomas off lightly because he's a) a fellow mountaineer and b) a fellow man.

I think the helicopter team saw both of them moving when they were waved off and they climbed for three to four more hours but only advanced a little until she collapsed and he called at 12:30am. I think there’s confusion about the call with him saying he asked for help but rescuers say he told them everything was fine? Believe he then turned off his phone and left her at 2am.

Personally, I think there's unconscious bias at play - he let Thomas off lightly because he's a) a fellow mountaineer and b) a fellow man.

That's comparable to trying to establish intent regarding murder.

The defendant and defence team are suggesting that it should have been a jury case, there was therefore various wrong conclusions and that the verdict was wrong.

The prosecution is appealing against the lenient sentence.

I find the confusion over the call at 12.30 bizarre . Either be asked for help or he didn’t. But the court says it’s unclear and that’s why they kept calling him back and messaging him.

But he must have known he needed help at 12.30.. as that’s when he was about to leave her. It’s so sad as obviously the helicopters managed to fly up there at 10.30 but by the time he finally called for help at 3am!! The conditions were too bad.

I agree the judge was too lenient and seemed to overlook a lot of things that simply don’t add up. She could have been saved many times.

Yes it's the timing and confusion of the messages I can't get my head around. The situation for her would at best have been very grave by the time he made that call, yet it was so equivocal that mountain rescue couldn't work out if he needed help or not? And to then go incommunicado for hours?

It doesn't sound as though there was much element of doubt over what was said and it's not clear why he didn't call or text them back

He called mountain police at around 12.30am, but crucially, rescuers did not trigger a search as they said he did not make it clear they needed help.
“All our attempts to contact him went unanswered,” an investigator told the court. “Therefore, we assumed the situation was normal.”
According to Kronen Zeitung, the investigator messaged the defendant at 12.49am asking “Do you need help now, or not???”, only to receive the response: “no”. The defendant said he did not respond to police as his phone had been in airplane mode to preserve battery.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/crime/austria-mountain-grossglockner-manslaughter-trial-b2924209.html

I find it weird that the judge unilaterally decided that he HAD attempted to contact the emergency services to tell them what was going on at 12.30 and was reasonably expecting them to come out and save him and Kerstin, when the actual evidence given by the emergency services was that this was not the case at all. They said it wasn't clear what he wanted. The judge made a decision that Thomas was trying to do the right thing that isn't actually supported by the evidence. Unconscious bias - not for the first or last time in a case where a woman is killed by her partner and it's ruled to have been unintentional. Rarely happens the other way, though.

So he lied. It's pretty clear a lot of what he said was a lie, including how he left Kerstin. (Probably dead, let's face it).

The absolute crucial detail in this prosecution is whether he was the lead in the climb, as in did he have much more experience in climbing the mountain than the person he went up with. During a winter tour. The deceased said she had none and expressed concerns about it never having done a winter tour.

He did have more experience having climbed the mountain 14/15 times, it's not clear if he did this in winter. In regard to the horrific experience of a previous partner, that was a summer tour.

Thanks very much for sharing this, going to read this now.

From what others have said, it looks like just after the 00:35 call he then replied to a message saying 'no' they didn't need help. Yet he claimed that in the 00:35 call he did ask for help. This makes no sense and I struggle to understand why / if this point wasn't pushed further in the trial? However, I'll read this article now and perhaps that will explain it.

OK, so having read the article it seems he didn't respond 'no' to the question as to whether he needed help, just didn't respond at all. I still don't see how that fits with his claim to have called for help at 00:35. If you had called for help, surely you would be regularly checking your phone for any updates, especially after you had left the person. You wouldn't just wander off thinking, 'oh well, I've done my bit, no further action required' and then several hours later follow it up. It just doesn't make sense.

Yes why wasn’t the 12.35 call focused on more and the fact that when they asked if he needed help at 12.50 he said ‘no’. At that point Kerstin would either have been in serious trouble or dead…the judge has just let that go…