On April 30, 2018, Daniel P. from the Altötting district set off on a hiking tour.
The 33-year-old never returned.
Almost three years later, his fate was clarified - through chance finds near the Ettal Abbey.
Ettal / Munich
- The police call it "Inspector Chance": In November last year, hikers made a gruesome discovery not far from the Ettaler Mühle inn in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district: a human bone lay in a creek bed.
They alerted the police, who commissioned the Munich Institute for Forensic Medicine with a review.
The result brought clarity about the whereabouts of 33-year-old Daniel P. from Winhöring in the Altötting district.
By comparing genetic traces, the bone could be clearly assigned to the missing person.
Daniel P. that much was now certain, was dead. But what had happened?
P. has been missing since April 30, 2018, when he left his parents' apartment in the morning.
The slim young man, suntanned, dark brown hair, had set off on a hiking tour in a blue Skoda Fabia with Altöttinger license plates.
Since the 33-year-old was autistic from birth, he had no social contacts and was traveling alone.
Although no thoughts of suicide were known, due to his illness he lacked any sense of dangerous situations.
The police discovered his car, which was now covered with a thick layer of pollen, four days later in the Schattenwang parking lot in the Graswang Valley.
A great search began.
100 police and mountain rescue teams from several locations combed the mountains in the south of the Graswang valley.
“We have practically all of the common climbs between Notkarspitze and Kreuzspitze in our sights,” a police spokesman reported at the time.
Without success.
P. stayed gone.
The search was canceled after a week.
An ice climber makes a gruesome find
There has only been certainty about the tour that Daniel P. made for a few days.
In January, a young police officer who was ice climbing on the Notkarspitze noticed items of clothing frozen in the ice a little off his route.
Police spokesman Alexander Huber explains that they were only recovered from another mission a few days ago in a thaw: A police mountain guide and a mountain watchman from Oberammergau roped down to the site and found the remains.
"The corpse was now covered by two meters of avalanche snow and first had to be shoveled free by hand," reports Huber.
The police assume that Daniel P. got lost on the descent from the Notkarspitze and died in the catchment area of the Großkargraben on the slope of the Notkarspitze.
Streams in the trench ultimately flushed bones into the streambed, where a fragment was found in November.
Meanwhile, the remains have been handed over to the family for a dignified burial.
This clarified a missing person case, which the police officers involved had emotionally affected due to the circumstances, as police spokesman Huber says.
But there are other cases that have to be clarified.
The police headquarters of Upper Bavaria South alone has seven missing people who may have disappeared after a mountain accident.
The first case goes back to the year 2000, the last case for the time being is only a few days old: 59-year-old Helmut S. from Ohlstadt wanted to go hiking near his village on February 4th - since then there has been no trace of him.
The police searched the Murnauer Moos as well as the Heimgarten.
So far without success.
