A climber who abandoned his girlfriend to die at the top of a freezing mountain has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Thomas Plamberger, 39, stood trial on Thursday after his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, 33, died just 150ft below the summit of the 12,460ft Grossglockner in January last year as temperatures plunged to minus 20C.
He was accused of leaving Gurtner ‘exhausted, hypothermic and disoriented’ while he went to get help, during his trial, which opened today in Innsbruck.
Following the guilty verdict, Plamberger has been sentenced to five months’ imprisonment, suspended for 3 years, and handed a fine of £8,400.
Plamberger said at the beginning of his roughly two-hour interrogation before Judge Norbert Hofer: ‘I am incredibly sorry’. He said he had ‘loved’ his girlfriend and that they had ‘always planned their tours together.’
The defendant repeatedly emphasised that he had ‘no alpine training whatsoever’ and could therefore have not played the role of a mountain guide to Gurtner.
He said: ‘I trained myself, for example with videos.’ He claimed his girlfriend was almost as knowledgeable and skilled at mountain climbing as he was.
‘I may have done more tours, but she knew exactly what she was getting into,’ he explained in the packed courtroom, attended by around 50 media representatives.
Plamberger claimed his girlfriend shouted at him to ‘Go, now go!’ after he spent an hour and a half with her in freezing conditions when the couple experienced a rope jam.
He said he ‘really couldn’t say’ how the rapid physical deterioration had occurred and described it as an ‘exceptional situation’ for both of them.
The seasoned climber told the hearing he had only attempted the descent of the mountain after the couple had discussed it, saying that his girlfriend encouraging him to leave saved his life.
But Judge Hofer found the circumstances of how Gurtner’s body was found inconsistent with Plamberger’s explanations.
The judge showed a photograph of Gurtner hanging freely from the rock face – indicating that she had fallen, he said.
Plamberger said he had left her at a different location approximately ten metres away, and restrained.
He claimed he secured her to the rock face with a rope to prevent her from falling.
But the court heard she was found dangling from the rope and had been hanging on the rock face for two hours before she died.
The Innsbruck prosecutor’s office said he left Gurtner at 2am and a rescue operation began 90 minutes later when he called emergency services.
Rescue teams were unable to reach Gurtner until the following day due to hurricane-force winds, and she was found just below a cross that marks the summit.
The head of the mountain rescuer team who found her body told the judge‘ it was certainly not a pretty sight for us’, adding ‘it looks as if she had climbed down’
Given the extremely harsh conditions, the defendant should have turned back earlier, prosecutors said.
Even when he had left his partner to get help, he did not bring her to a wind-protected place and did not use bivouac sack or aluminium rescue blanket.
The mountain rescue station’s group instructor said Plamberger’s ‘account of the situation didn’t quite add up’.
He said the 39-year-old ‘couldn’t explain why he hadn’t used the bivouac sack’ and that he could have used one if she was left in the spot he claimed.
It also emerged that the seasoned climber allegedly left an ex-girlfriend on the mountain range following a ‘heated argument with her on the Grossglockner in winter’.
Prosecutors said he left his ex-girlfriend alone on the mountain in pitch darkness after she complained about the difficulty of the climb.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
