Original subtitles

Tonight, an infamous Cold War cold came.

Nine hikers found mutilated on a remote mountain slope.

Their injuries and the facts don't seem to add up.

You can't help but wonder who would be capable of doing that.

It looks like a murder scene from a super graphic horror movie.

Now we uncover the top theories surrounding a place that's been called

area 51 There's a number of people in Russia who believe that yeti is the

culprit in this case This looks and feels a lot like a cover -up

Can new evidence finally bring us closer to the truth?

The bodies all appear withered, and some of them have third -degree burns on

them, which is a sign of radiation poisoning.

What really happened at Russia's notorious Dyatlov Bath?

The Soviet Union, 1959.

As the Cold War between the U .S. and USSR intensifies, so do conspiracy

theories about covert experiments, secret weapons, and spies.

And on February 26, high up in Siberia's Ural Mountains, something equally

nefarious will be discovered.

On that day, three cross -country skiers spot a solitary tent.

Partially collapsed by snow.

What was unusual was the entrance was fastened closed, but the outside had

slashed open.

They looked inside and they found nobody was there.

But they did find some footprints leading down the hill.

When they get to the end of that trail, they make a horrible discovery.

They find corpses in the snow.

Warning. The images you are about to see are disturbing.

Close your eyes and try to picture this scene.

Imagine you're going through the snow.

You come across these bodies.

It looks like a murder scene from a super graphic horror movie.

It just keeps getting worse and worse.

The first thing the investigators found were two members of the team lying

underneath a cedar tree.

And neither of them were wearing winter clothes. They were just in their

underwear.

One has burns on his head and foot. There's lots of cuts and bruises on his

body. He has some dried blood on his face and also strange grey foam

is found on his cheek.

It looks like this could be foul play.

The second body has similar cuts and bruises.

He's missing the tip of his nose and his knuckles are bruised and swollen.

It's a very strange scene.

Several yards away, another body.

This third body is found lying face up in the snow. He's hugging a branch.

He also has cuts and bruises on his knuckles and dried blood on his face.

And he's facing back towards the tent, suggesting he's trying to make a

desperate attempt to return.

So naturally, the skiers rush to report this and a bigger search party is put

together.

And this bigger search party starts combing the area to try to find clues as

what happened to these three men.

But before they can figure that out, several more bodies turn up.

Next, they discover a young woman.

She has a lot of bruises on her face and her hair is in disarray.

She has this...

Long red bruise on the side of her torso. And on top of that, her fists are

clenched. So it looks like maybe there was some sort of scuffle, some sort of

fight that might have went down.

You also have to remember, this is Siberia. You've got freezing

You've got blinding snow.

So all this work that the search party is trying to do to locate all of this

evidence make the work very, very slow and very, very difficult to perform.

After a week.

A fifth corpse is found further up the slope.

It's another young male victim, and this one has a fractured skull.

Perhaps more evidence that there was some violent altercation.

What's interesting about this victim is he had one sock on one foot and a felt

boot on the other, suggesting something took him by surprise.

Six weeks later, as the snow starts to melt, the mystery deepens.

Members of the Mansi, a local indigenous tribe, approach the police and lead

them to a makeshift snow shelter, 250 feet from where the first two bodies

found.

These searchers, they start to dig below the surface, and they find this snow

dent with these branches all lined up next to each other, forming some type of

floor. Additionally, they're also finding some torn pieces of clothing.

There's a pair of sweatpants.

with the right leg just cut off completely. Likewise, there's also only

half of a woman's sweater.

So there's more and more evidence that's starting to build that something

violent may have happened here.

Investigators excavate around the snow shelter, revealing four more victims,

bringing the death toll to nine.

These four bodies are lying somewhat...

closely together in the bed of a rocky stream at the bottom of a ravine. It

looks like a dumping ground.

It looks like just someone or something may have dropped them there.

Compared to the other victims, these bodies have even more ghastly injuries.

One corpse is a male victim with a severely twisted neck.

Another young female has a crushed rib cage, and it's such a brutal injury that

her ribs actually punctured her heart. And horrifically, her eyes and tongue

missing.

Another young male has a massive fracture to the side of his skull that

have almost certainly knocked him unconscious.

It looks more and more like the injuries are from brutal beatings from some

heavy, blunt object.

Investigators soon identify the dead.

as members of an expedition sponsored by the Ural Polytechnic University.

They were reported missing after failing to complete their trip.

Once you know who these victims are, it's even more tragic.

These students were among the best and the brightest from the Ural Polytechnic

University.

They were very experienced mountaineers and well -respected members of the

sports club of the Ural Polytechnic Institute.

The group's leader is 23 -year -old engineering student Igor Dyatlov.

The tragedy bears his name.

The Dyatlov Pass is named in memory of Igor Dyatlov.

He designed this expedition to be as challenging as possible, so they could

get certified as Grade 3 outboardmen. This was the highest category in the

Soviet Union at the time.

In January, the group leaves their home of Yekaterinburg.

and travels to the village of Vijay.

From Vijay, they go off -grid and head off into the wilderness.

They have a compass and all the gear they think they need, but they don't

any radio communication equipment with them.

The trip was supposed to cover 200 miles over 16 days, but they only make it

halfway.

What frustrates friends and family of these hikers the most is that they say

that... They are way too smart and way too experienced to have ended up

accidentally freezing to death in the outdoors.

The lead investigator in the case, Lev Ivanov, says he knows the cause of

There are signs of a struggle at the scene, and no one can ignore the bruises

and cuts to the face and the body and the missing pieces of flesh.

But who could be capable of such a violent crime here?

The potential suspect list is incredibly short.

The mountain where the tent was abandoned, it's called Height 1079, is a

uninhabited area and it borders the Siberian wilderness.

Almost nobody lives there.

Almost.

Except for the fact that this region is home to many of Stalin's...

infamous gulags.

Stalin built lots of gulags.

You don't know what a gulag is. It's this insane labor camp where political

prisoners were sent. They were forced to do hours upon hours of manual labor.

This is where you have some of the most hardened criminals in the Soviet Union

residing. So investigators are thinking, maybe,

One of these prisoners got out and encountered those nine hikers.

Especially when they learned that the Ivdel Gulag is only a few miles from the

site of the attack.

Police check with the Ivdel Gulag to see if there are any prisoners that are

missing, but no, they're all accounted for.

They also doubt any escaped prisoners might have done this, because no

provisions or belongings were stolen from the tent.

So the escapee theory doesn't go anywhere.

So investigators start to ask, okay, it seems like it's a very personal crime.

So they start to wonder, could this have been connected with anyone that was

affiliated with that group?

And one name hops up.

The name, Yuri Yudin, a tenth hiker with the group and the sole survivor.

Is it possible that members of the Dyatlov expedition...

were killed by one of their own?

It's a mystery that's gripped the world.

Nine Russian hikers, dead in a remote mountain pass.

Police are certain it's murder.

And among their top suspects is fellow hiker Yuri Yudin.

So Yuri Yudin is a fourth -year engineering student who was part of that

group of hikers. In fact, he's the tenth member of that group.

But apparently, Yudin left early, and instead of ending up dead,

he's now the sole survivor.

Therefore, we can assume one of two things.

Either Yudin is incredibly lucky, or he's the killer.

When Communist Party officials question Uden, he tells them he backed out of the

trek long before the murders.

Uden claims to investigators that his back started to hurt when he was making

his way up the mountains, which caused him to quit the expedition.

He says that he left the group on January 28th at 11 .45 a .m. at a

known as the Second Northern. And when he leaves, the rest of his group are all

still very much alive, very much breathing.

But as investigators are questioning Uden, they start to notice he becomes a

more panicked, a bit more nervous. They're certainly skeptical.

Still unsure of Uden's story, investigators ask him to help analyze

scene. And this has to be traumatic for him. Think about it. He was supposed to

be on that expedition with them, but because of his bad back, he ends up

back, and now he's the only one alive of all of his friends.

So when he gets to that crime scene, he acts with genuine shock and surprise.

Yuri notes there's something the police couldn't have, that some of the clothes

found on the bodies of those in the ravine belonged to some of the other

students.

It's another bizarre detail in a case full of them.

The clothing is sent to a laboratory for analysis.

While they await results... investigators try to verify Yudin's

Yudin's story of a bad back checks out. Yudin was in his native village of

Emelyashevka with his family on February 1st and February 2nd, the same date

that investigators calculate as the time of death.

If Yudin's not the killer, who else could be?

The only other known group of people in the area are the Mansi.

The Mansi have helped with the investigation.

They're the ones that pointed the investigators to the four bodies in the

ravine.

Despite that, Lev Ivanov starts looking into the group.

So Ivanov thinks that the Mansi are upset that a group of outsiders set up

on Height 1079, also known as Kola Shackle, which roughly translates to

Dead Mountain.

The explorers are violating sacred Monsi territory.

And even more sacrilegious, there are two women in the group.

And for the Monsi, women are forbidden to even step foot on sacred land, let

alone look at it. Maybe that's why the eyes are removed from a couple of

corpses.

Ivanov interrogates multiple tribe members.

While they deny involvement, they offer a new detail.

Several people tell the same crazy sounding story that the manse saw lights

the sky or burning fireballs in the sky on the very night that the hikers died.

Police recovered a camera from the campsite and the last photo on this

had an image they didn't understand.

It looks like flares or streaks in the night sky. It's hard to tell but could

this corroborate the lights in the sky that were supposedly seen that night?

There are no timestamps on the photo, and if this is the last thing the hikers

photographed, you can't help but wonder if this has something to do with the

incident.

Without a confession or any evidence that points to the Mansi, Ivanov has no

proof.

So that's where things remain for a while, at a standstill.

No new evidence and no new suspects, nothing to explain what happened to the

nine hikers.

Until several weeks later.

when laboratory results come back.

And just when you thought it was done, here's a new chance to find some new

leads and to keep investigators moving forward.

The analysis of the ripped clothing that was found in the ravine comes back and

it reveals an incredible new clue.

The analysis shows there's some unusually high levels of radioactivity

of the items.

But how could clothes from alleged murder victims be radioactive?

The answer could turn the course of the investigation in an entirely new

direction.

But that's not what happens. Instead of following this new lead and getting to

the bottom of the mystery, authorities go ahead and do the exact opposite.

On May 28, 1959, three months into this investigation and after finding this new

evidence, Lev Ivanov abruptly closes the case.

unsolved. The Soviet government steals off the entire area known as the Dyatlov

Pass and prohibits anyone from going there.

Ivanov's report marks a change.

He now states that all nine deaths were caused by an unknown elemental force

which they were unable to overcome.

But while Lev Ivanov seems to want this to be the final word, it won't be.

When nine hikers die under mysterious circumstances during the Dyatlov

expedition, the public is eager to find out why.

But lead investigator Lev Ivanov abruptly closes the case after three

Just as he receives shocking evidence, the victim's clothing shows

radioactivity. This is a crazy detail that definitely deserves some digging.

So as soon as a case like this is shut down, people immediately think that it's

a cover -up.

The question is, why?

The USSR wants to be the dominant superpower.

So they're doing a lot of covert things at this time. They're doing research

experiments. They're doing military experiments. They have spy operations

on.

Government cover -ups are happening every day.

The Soviet population understands that there are secret tests, but also they

accept the rule of the government that this is secrecy they cannot know about.

I mean, it's not hard for people to put two and two together. You've got the

Dyatlov death and now the appearance of unusually high levels of radiation on

some of the clothes.

People are starting to think that this is linked to the military.

that the cadavers have an unnaturally orange appearance.

The bodies all appear withered, and some of them have third -degree burns on

them, which is a sign of radiation poisoning.

The family of group leader Igor Dyatlov say they are certain the military was

somehow involved.

But exactly what are they covering up?

Don't forget, the Monsi said that they saw fireballs in the sky that night.

So one idea is that it's a case of a weapons test that goes wrong. The rocket

fails to go into orbit and lands really close to where the Dyatlov hikers are

camped out for the night, and it sends shockwaves, which frightens them and has

them running out of the tent.

There are different hypotheses.

Some think that it was the Soviet government through its military that

them because they witnessed something that they were not supposed to.

To have a witness.

And there's one other little detail that seems to prop up this cover -up theory.

It's presumed that one of the hikers was actually a KGB spy, and his name was

Semyon Zolotaryov.

Zolotaryov is the only person on the expedition who is not a student.

In fact, he's 38 years old, and mysteriously added to the group by

officials at the last minute.

A lot of things about Zolotarev are a bit unusual.

For one, he's single, which is kind of weird in Russia at this time.

Additionally, he's got all these very cryptic tattoos on his body.

And at the start of the journey, this older gentleman tells the students to

him by a fake name, Sasha.

We do know that Simon Zolotarev is not who he pretends to be.

There's too much in his biography.

that is not consistent even when he talks about his service in world war ii

mixes up dates when he served in one unit or another and in my opinion having

studied this case he was a top -notch kgb operator so the theory is that the

kgb is spying on the russian military to see what is going on in these mountains

and unfortunately these hikers

Just got caught in the middle of an interagency conflict.

So Zolotaryov, he found out to be a spy agent on behalf of the KGB.

So the group, although innocent, are killed because of him.

When Zolotaryov's body is recovered, the film in his camera has been destroyed

by water damage.

His motivation and his potential KGB ties remain a mystery.

Whether the KGB was connected to the case or not, we don't know. But the idea

the military being involved in the whole mess is very much popular and one

of the top hypotheses in this Dudlow Pass incident.

Even the university, the Ural Polytechnic Institute, which sponsored

thinks this is what happened.

And in 1990, another familiar voice joins the chorus claiming a cover -up.

Communist Party officials were incredibly worried that these reports

out to foreign nations.

And on top of that, Ivanov believes that it's these secret tests that ultimately

leads to the death of these hikers.

Seoul survivor Yuri Yudin also believes the government was involved and revealed

a key piece of evidence before his death in 2013.

Yudin says that when he was... helping the investigators with the inventory of

the items left by the hikers. Things didn't add up. He found things that did

belong to anyone, like a military cloth, a pair of glasses, also an extra pair

of keys.

And his good feeling was that this was staged.

Even Boris Yeltsin thinks authorities are hiding something.

When he's made president of Russia after the fall of the USSR in 1991, he

promises to investigate the Dyatlov Pass incident.

He was very much interested in the case as well because he was himself a

graduate of the same institution, Euro Polytechnic, and because people appealed

to him.

He uses all of his political power to try to find information, things that

happened in 1959 that can shed light on this event.

Now, the closest missile launch site to the Dyatlov Pass is actually located in

Kazakhstan, and it's called the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Yeltsin's investigators dig into the records of Baikonur to see if there were

any missile launches in 1959 during that window of the hikers' death.

He assured people that there were no rockets during the day when the hikers

perished.

It's tough to know if he actually did look into this, but if what he's saying

true... There were no missile tests that happened in the area during that time.

Whatever Yeltsin's involvement with the case was, it didn't bring us any closer

to finding the truth.

Yeltsin's findings seem to end the cover -up theory, but they don't stop the

public from asking questions.

And a shocking new one is about to emerge.

Berlin Wall in 1989, the Dyatlov Pass case files are finally made public,

amateur investigators a fresh chance to solve the mystery.

Digging deep into the evidence, they find an intriguing photo taken by one of

the hikers, and it leads to a shocking new theory and a surprising suspect.

There is a number of people in Russia who believe that Yeti, or Снежный

in Russian, is the culprit in this case.

In one of the photographs found at the site, there is a very unusual creature

that was depicted in the photograph, and it's very interesting.

This was the last frame of the photographs Nikolai Thibault took at the

And I don't think he had enough time to think what he photographed, but it's

there, historical evidence.

What you see in the picture is a humanoid -like being.

It's big, it's about 10 feet, it's hulking, much like the Yetis or snowmen.

And it looks like it's looking at the group, observing them.

There were so many stories.

coming from different parts of the Soviet Union. And this photograph could

definitely serve as a proof that the Yeti is out there.

The Yetis are huge beings, about 10 feet in size. People are afraid of them

because they could crush with their arms and legs a human being and do it very

quickly.

Even the Dyatlov students themselves make reference to a Yeti prior to their

trip.

Before they hike into the mountains, the students, the hikers, publish a

satirical newspaper, and they write a headline that reads, Science. In recent

years, there has been a heated debate about the existence of the Yeti.

Latest evidence indicates that the Yeti lives in the northern Urals, near Mount

Otorten.

It's quite possible that while they wanted to...

express themselves and show no fear by placing jokes in that newspaper they

that something was out there and it could be it could be yeti

supporters of the yeti theory also point to photos

of the bodies that show what appears to be abject terror with

clenched fists ready for a fight of course seeing a horrible

Like a Yeti.

By their attempt, that would have frightened them.

But that's not the only creature that could get such a reaction.

We have to account for many predators that live in the area that could have

attacked the hikers.

And among them are bears, wild dogs, wolverines, even

the Siberian tiger.

But the most likely culprit in the animal attack theory is a brown bear.

The autopsy report listed fractured skulls, broken chest, scratches and

and even missing flesh.

A brown bear would be capable of doing this.

But the problem with the brown bear theory is that they were in hibernation

around this time.

That's all the more reason if a bear wakes up early and is hungry, it would

out. Nine campers that just happened to be in that area.

After decades of public speculation about animal attacks, homicide, cover

and much more, in 2019, public fascination with the Dyatlov case

authorities to finally reopen the file.

A young prosecutor, Andrei Kuryakov, takes the lead.

Andrei Kuryakov sits down with a list of 75 theories.

Thanks to the growing public interest, this case has just gone bigger and

bigger.

Not sure if the Yeti has made the list, but Kuryakov certainly has his work cut

out for him, but it seems he's up for the task.

As Kuryakov starts researching, he notices a detail that leads to a new

It turns out that the weather on the 1st of February in 1959 is pretty extreme

for that mountain.

With winds up to 65 miles an hour and temperatures down to 30 degrees.

And this has Kuryakov thinking, could it be an avalanche?

Andrei Kuryakov organizes a 2020 expedition to the Dyatlov Pass to test

theory.

And he's about to find one key piece of evidence.

that the original investigation got wrong.

Sixty years after the Dyatlov tragedy, prosecutor Andrei Kuryakov returns to

crime scene with new technology, hoping to prove the killer was an avalanche.

They use photogrammetry to really pinpoint the location of the tent.

And then they take photos of the current landscape and compare them with the old

ones, and they notice a huge discrepancy of what they originally investigated.

The location where the tent was pitched in 1959 is actually several hundred feet

away from where they originally thought it was pitched.

The location of the tent is the number one factor in determining if an

took place, and it looks like the original investigation might have made a

mistake.

The risk of an avalanche depends on the degree of incline. On average, it takes

a 30 -degree incline to trigger one.

Using the old incorrect data, investigators prior to 2019 thought that

above the tent was about 15 degrees. So they've ruled out the avalanche theory

this entire time.

The newly calculated location has a much steeper slope of around 28 degrees.

It's still not 30 degrees, and avalanche still may not be possible.

But with the right weather conditions, it's much more likely.

When they analyze the weather conditions, they find that there's a

phenomena here called katabatic winds.

Katabatic winds travel at hurricane speeds.

In effect, they act as a huge snowplow.

These winds can take tons and tons of snow.

And it's very likely that these winds could have deposited huge amounts of

above the hiker's tent.

And that's when they become even more confident in their avalanche theory.

They think that this mountain is a death trap just waiting to spring.

Once the weather expedition is complete, Andrei Kuryakov presents his findings

to the public.

Kirikov theorises that at some time after the tent was set up around 7pm, a

windstorm kicks off into high gear.

Sometime between 1 .30 and 5 .30am, a small avalanche is triggered above the

tent where they had cut into the slope.

That new snow up above is too heavy and it crashes down onto the tent.

After that initial snow dump... The hikers, fearing more to come, cut their

way out of the tent and run to a rocky ridge 150 feet away.

At the time, standard avalanche protocol, the idea of being able to find

place behind a high rocky ridge that would redirect the snow away from them.

But here, Kuryakov's theory takes an interesting twist.

He doesn't actually think a bigger avalanche ever hit.

He thinks that they hurried out of the tent, but it never came.

And the problem is that the hikers got disorientated, and they couldn't find

their way back to the tent.

So the investigator tests his theory. He blindfolds a man and a woman, makes

them walk 90 feet away from the tent, and then challenges them to find their

back, and they can't.

And what about their strange lack of clothing?

Cherykov thinks that some of them were partially undressed when they fled the

tent. But he thinks the others may have suffered from a phenomena called

paradoxical undressing.

This is where people in their final stages of hypothermia feel as if they're

burning hot, which leads them to take their clothes off.

According to Kuryakov, sometime between 4 .30 and 7 .30 a .m., the hikers freeze

to death.

The two young men found in their underwear under the cedar tree died

The other members of the group cut the clothes off of their dead friends in a

last -ditch effort to survive.

At some point, the group splits up, and three of them, Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, and

Solobodan, head back towards the tent.

Sadly, they freeze to death before making it back.

But what about the final four?

And this is where the theory gets really weird. You can never believe this group

had such bad luck.

The last four dig down a snow shelter. It's basically a snow chamber where they

can hide from the elements and share body heat.

But the one spot they decide to dig in is above a stream through a hollowed

icy tunnel.

They dig down and the tunnel collapses.

They fall into the icy stream and are buried under 15 feet of snow.

As he concludes the press conference, Kuryakov declares that the Dyatlov Pass

mystery is finally solved.

The Russians are outraged at Kuryakov and loudly reject his theory.

The families of the dead are especially critical of him.

Let's be clear, the public hates the avalanche theory.

It doesn't account for so many key facts and details of the case.

People were making fun of it.

and disregarded it because they know this is another set of cover -up.

The Dyatlov Pass incident has spawned many theories over the years.

But in a case full of strange details and unusual twists, none have fully

aligned with the facts.

You can say maybe it's a bear attack, but...

The bears are hibernating.

You say it's an avalanche.

But what about their clothes, testing positive for radiation?

What about the Mansi tribe's testimony of fireballs in the sky?

What about Semyon Zolotaryov, the possible KGB agent that was planted

hikers?

There are just so many details to account for, and there isn't just one

that makes total sense.

But... What if there is?

So theory after theory after theory comes out. And after a while, people

stop looking at all the evidence one piece at a time. And they just say to

themselves, what if it's not just one thing? What if all of these theories are

partially right?

So in other words, it's an avalanche and it's a murder and it's a cover up.

And it's an animal attack, all in one.

If you start with the fireballs reported by MUN during that time, it could be

part of a nuclear experiment. We don't understand, maybe a new type of nuclear

weapon, that the KGB, of course, did not want to leak out to its enemies in the

West, and they covered it up.

Apart from the other students, the poor students did not know they were heading

into the special testing area.

This could explain the radioactivity that was found in their clothing.

The nuclear test may also explain the avalanche.

Those nuclear weapons emit shockwaves. Those shockwaves are the catalyst for

avalanche to collapse on the tent, and it could have caused those blunt force

injuries on their own.

So in the span of an instant, the explosion startles the hikers. It starts

avalanche. It showers them in radiation.

The shockwaves hit them with the force of a speeding truck, which causes

injuries, and it causes them to rush and escape down the side of a mountain.

From there, the cover -up.

If any of the hikers would have survived, the military would have taken

them because they didn't want eyewitnesses to something that is a top

And even if they were dead, the lead investigator, Lev Ivanov, was forced to

close short the investigation so nothing is leaked out.

And finally, the animal attack theory, of course, accounts for injuries that

hikers have sustained because the animals had access to the bodies for a

of time, and they did what animals do. They ate into the hikers' cadavers.

What if it's a combination of all of these things that could have happened to

these nine hikers?

That's what the Soviet authorities are trying to cover up.

No matter how the hikers died, if there was a cover -up, their blood is on

the hands of the Soviet government.

The Dyatlov Pass incident is the greatest mystery and

unsolved case in Russia, but the government doesn't make any more effort

to solve it.

So this is all up to us now, amateur researchers and investigators from all

over the world to uncover what really happened.

In 2020, the Dyatlov Group Memorial Foundation published a letter in support

the all -in -one theory for the families of the students killed on the mountain

that night.

That small vindication will have to suffice for now.

Because when it comes to the truth of this mystery, the secrets are buried

incredibly deep.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.