New Clues Cometh in the Murder of an Iceman

Copper Age man Oetzi was probably in physical fight days before his demise
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 27, 2017 7:57 AM CDT
Updated Apr 1, 2017 1:40 PM CDT
New Clues in the 'Coldest Case of All': the Iceman Murder
Frank Ruehli of the University of Zurich stands next to Oetzi's frozen corpse in Zurich, Switzerland, in a photo released June 6, 2007.   (AP Photo/Frank Ruehli, HO)

It's one of the world's oldest murder mysteries—or what the director of an Italian archaeological museum calls "the coldest case of all"—but per the New York Times, there may be new clues to help figure out the details of Oetzi the Iceman's demise. We already know a bit about his blood and what he wore to stay warm 5,300 years ago, as well as what appeared to have killed the Copper Age man, whose mummy was discovered in the Alps, on the Italian-Austrian border, in 1991: a flint arrowhead lodged in his back. Now, thanks to the efforts of a German police investigator and researchers, more pieces of the puzzle are coming together like a Chalcolithic CSI. Munich's Detective Inspector Alexander Horn has been able to put together a "remarkably detailed picture" of what happened to Oetzi on his last day on Earth, sometime around 3300BC.

The fact that Oetzi's body was incredibly intact when it was found—thanks to how he was mummified, as well as how he was frozen for centuries within a glacier—has helped Horn more easily tear into the mystery. "He's in better condition than recent homicide victims I've worked on," Horn says. He believes Oetzi was in a fight just days before his death and had just consumed a big meal before his killer shot the arrow at him from about 100 feet away. And Horn believes it was a personal vendetta that took Oetzi out, not a robbery. "I want to follow him, find him, and kill him" is the thought process Horn thinks went through the murderer's head. "All the emotions we have in homicide, these things have not died out in all these years." Horn even uncovered a physical attribute Oetzi shares with Madonna and Elton John; read the full story here. (Scientists have figured out what Oetzi sounded like.)

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