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

Men are so cruel to women. Life is better without them imo, most of them are awful.

Sorry if I've missed it but I can't understand why they don't have certainty on what was said during the (first?) emergency call, are they not recorded like ours? I thought they usually played them in court.

Hypothermia makes you do stupid things.

We could stop people climbing mountains.

It reminds me of my sibling in his 20s who would "test" his girlfriends by leaving them in a difficult situation to see how they react... He was an absolute twat (he's grown up since fortunately).

I suspect something like this: he got annoyed at the situation, she was probably slowing him down, and he thought she should do better.

He was charged and tried with negligent manslaughter and afaik the specific law he was charged under doesn't exist in common law. The maximum possible sentence is three years in prison and evidently the judge (himself an experienced mountaineer) felt that the sentence handed down was the right one. I don't think this is a case of "this is all a woman's life is worth". It would have been extremely difficult to prove that he intentionally left her to die as part of a murder plot. Essentially he was charged with not rendering sufficient aid to a person in trouble. That is never going to be come with a long prison sentence.

Personally I believe he's to blame but I do wonder whether, had this been two men, he'd have been charged at all.

I think it’s the testimony from the ex that raises a lot of questions for me. It does show a pattern of disregard for the safety of the women he’s meant to care for.

It doesn’t mean she was hanging vertically when he left her. That’s very unlikely. People classically get very agitated before dying from hypothermia. They often do bizarre things such as stripping off clothes.

"Plus, she was hanging vertically when services found her. Yet he says he left her on the ground."

She may have behaved erratically due to hypothermia.

@XelaMi thought that too. Who on earth goes mountain climbing at night? It’s stupid.

There are varying degrees of experience though.
I am experienced at sailing (certainly compared to most) but there are professional sailors with "light years" (to quote the judge) more experience than me.

Not now in the era of mobile phones. Even if you're out of phone signal range you can generally still call emergency services.

"Who on earth goes mountain climbing at night? It’s stupid."

Lots of people climb at night.

I suspect he had taken her phone as there was the strange text message to her parents saying they were safely back when they were still on the ascent. A little before that it looked like she tried to contact mountain rescue so I wonder if he took it from her after that and then wanted to ensure no one else would raise the alarm? Obviously no way of proving it!

The bit I really can't understand is the emergency call around 12:35am. Using @FuckingDone 's timeline:

00:35: Plamberger says he rang emergency services - unclear whether he says all fine or that there was an issue. Puts phone on silent.

I saw this reported and just don't understand; why would you call the emergency services if not to raise an issue, you don't just call to say everything is fine, surely? And why isn't there a record of the call? However, even if he did raise the alarm at that point, to then put his phone on silent shows he had no interest in engaging with them.

I think you and DS were a bit daft to put yourselves in that position with inexperienced people

Just like if I take an inexperienced person out sailing I make different decisions about the weather conditions I will sail in and the routes I would take.

I think that another climber had reported the pair earlier to the Alpine police as he wasn't sure whether they were in difficulties or not. The Alpine police observed the pair on the webcam and thought they were moving very slowly. They tracked the phone numbers (I don't know how this is done) and the Alpine police called the man but he didn't reply. At some point the helicopter was sent up to check on them but they gave no indication they needed help and turned away from the helicopter each time it switched its search beams on.
The man called the phone number back at 00:35. The content of that call is not clear as he claims he said they were in a bad situation and the Alpine policeman claims he did not say that and said they were fine so he, the policeman, said they should keep moving.

I don't think the man made an emergency call himself until 3.30 am when he was safely in the hut on the other side of the mountain.

There's a lot that isn't clear here and even after reading a lot of articles in the Austrian press there seem to be a lot of unanswered questions.

how do they know he put his phone on silent?

In Austria, there has been much talk that he was suffering from Bergschmerz - 'mountain sickness' - leading to confusion and bad decisons
There are bits that don't seem to be reported in the UK news, like he had taken off his outer layer (paradoxical undressing), that the wind was so fierce he couldn't hear his phone ring, and why did he (insanely) attempted to summit in the dark
But he was the more experienced climber, so anything that goes wrong like this is assumed to be his responsibility

Initially I thought maybe this was harsh. She’s an adult and he was not her ‘guide’ in any formal way. I assumed he would have had to leave her to get help which is OK to do. People do choose to do bloody stupid stuff like walk up mountains in the dark with inadequate equipment and sometimes the die.

However now knowing he could have called emergency services from right where he was and had no need to leave her, he left her with no protection at all although he had blankets etc on him, he switched off his phone (presumably proved it wasn’t out of battery or something) and the clincher that he had done this before I now think this was an abusive man who was responsible for her death and has got off lightly.

“Her social media feed suggests she was a keen mountaineer and her mother has told German media that she loved mountain hiking at night.” in the BBC article 🤔

So did he take the tent and covers with him? Or she was too unwell by then to use them when left alone ?
It’s such a terrible thing to do, to leave your partner all alone in the dark to freeze to death. It certainly seems deliberate as otherwise he would have been frantically trying to get her rescued, when every minute counts.

Oh I see, thanks for that explanation, I just couldn't understand it but that makes sense.

So very sad.

This makes much more sense that someone else made the earlier emergency call and I do remember seeing that their headlights were seen moving on the webcam. Maybe neither of them realised that ha was plain to others that she was already in a lot of trouble.

This is such a horrific story.

From what I read, it didn't seem she was experienced at all, and he being a trained guide, didn't tell her not to wear snow boarding boots. Red flag number 1.

And then it just gets worse and leads to her death.

She is now yet another femicide statistic.

Her poor family.

Looks like the right decision would have been to make a shelter, call the emergency services and wait with her and share body heat. Plenty of people have survived worse situations than this by doing that particularly if they were carrying an emergency shelter and blankets.

Her parents said she had climbed many more difficult mountains.
Whatever you think about their defence of the boyfriend, and whether he was the more experienced one, I doubt they’d have said that if all she’d done was a bit of hiking.