The Alaska Triangle’s missing people mysteries
Since the 1970s, the large, remote patch of land known as the “Alaska Triangle” has been the place where a huge 20,000 people. Including tourists, locals and passengers on planes – have gone missing.
That’s a curiously high number given the sparse population in the region, which takes in Anchorage, Juneau and Utqiagvik, and one that has long fascinated scientists and conspiracy theorists alike.
In February this year, a Bering Air plane with 10 people on board vanished into thin air, en route from Unalakleet to Nome. Five years earlier, authorities were baffled when Alaskan woman Florence Okpealuk, 33, disappeared without a trace in the area, as did Nome local Joseph Balderas, 36, in 2016.
There have been plenty of plane passengers lost to the triangle too, starting with US politicians Thomas Hale Boggs and Nick Begich’s light aircraft going down in 1972. While supernatural forces have been suspected, the brutal weather and harsh wilderness are the most logical explanations.
The South Pole cold case
When Australian astrophysicist Rodney Marks died at the South Pole in May 2000 after 36 hours of extreme illness. It was initially believed to be from natural causes.
But mystery and controversy have continued to cloud the case, with many wondering how and why the scientist ingested the methanol – typically used as a cleaning agent – that fatally poisoned him.
Suicide was one theory ruled out by those who knew Rodney, who was 32 at the time of his death. He was in a relationship, socially active and financially sound at the time he died suddenly.
He had been working at the US-run Amundsen-Scott research station, which sits in darkness for half the year, where only 13 of the 49 employees cooperated with the police inquiry into the scientist’s death. For the most part, the New Zealand Police’s attempts to investigate were blocked by US authorities. But after years of his own research, journalist Stephen Davis believes foul play is the most likely explanation.
“Our investigation shows there are two people who are still around, who have what the police call means, motive and opportunity,” he says.
The Ski Wing murders
It started off as a regular overnight shift getting the slopes prepared for the following day, but bad timing on the night of 5 February 1978 cost Michael Forness, 29, and Stephen Bender, 30, their lives.
When the snow-grooming machine broke down, the Ski Wing resort employees headed to the chalet, where police believe they interrupted a major crime in action – armed burglars were trying to steal
a safe filled with $31,000 from the manager’s office. The robbers then put three bullets each in Michael and Stephen before fleeing.
A janitor, who had been due to start work at midnight but had overslept, found the bodies at 3am. New York police located the safe dumped in the Allegheny River a few weeks later, but despite many leads, the culprits were never tracked down.
New York State Police senior investigator Gulio Giardini says, “We believe it would’ve taken at least a couple of people to grab it. We think there might have been some prior knowledge.”
The Swiss chalet slaughter
Corinne Rey-Bellet was a world ski champion and her family name a respected one in the quiet ski town of Les Crosets – until one fateful night in 2006 when tragedy struck. Corinne had separated from her husband Gerold Stadler 10 days earlier and during a visit to her parents’ Swiss Alps chalet, he did the unthinkable – gunning down Corinne, her brother Alain and seriously injuring their mother Verena.
The strangest part was that there was no established motive for the killings. Only 33 at the time she was killed, Corinne was believed to be three months pregnant and already shared two-year-old son Kevin with her estranged husband.
After shooting Corinne in the heart, Gerold, 34, turned to her brother and shot him five times, then fired at the mother. Gerold then dumped his car 19km away in the woods near Huemoz, sparking a three-day manhunt. The search ended when Gerold’s body was found, the killer having turned the gun – which he’d kept after serving in the military – on himself.
