BERN – The perfectly-preserved bodies of a married couple have been found on a shrinking glacier 75 years after going missing in the Swiss Alps.
The parents of seven children, Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin never returned from milking their cows in the Bernese mountain pasture above Chandolin in the Valais canton in August 1942.
“I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm,” Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, their youngest daughter, told Lasusanne daily Le Matin.
Valais cantonal police said the two bodies were discovered by a worker on Tsanfleuron glacier near a ski lift above the resort of Les Diablerets on July 14.
“The discovered equipment suggests that these hikers were likely to have been victims of an accident several decades ago,” a police statement read.
“The bodies were lying near each other. It was a man and a woman wearing clothing dating from the period of World War Two,” Bernhard Tschannen, director of ski lift operators Glacier 3000, said, as cited by the international media.
“They were perfectly preserved in the glacier and their belongings were intact,” he added. “We think they may have fallen into a crevasse where they stayed for decades. As the glacier receded, it gave up their bodies.”
DNA tests will now be conducted on the bodies to confirm their identities.
