After the collapse of the USSR, the most insane hypotheses about the death of the Dyatlov group were leaked to the press, from UFO attacks to the intervention of evil spirits. We remember what a renewed interest in the tragedy was.
The criminal case on the death of Igor Dyatlov's group was terminated on May 28, 1959.
“Taking into account the absence of external bodily injuries and signs of struggle on all corpses, the presence of all the values of the group, and also taking into account the conclusion of the forensic medical examination about the causes of death of tourists, it should be considered that the cause of the death of tourists was a natural force, which the tourists were not able to overcome. condition”, - it was stated in the resolution. It also noted that there were no other people, except for the Dyatlov group, during the death of the group, and the organizers of the campaign would be punished for what happened, because of whose negligence the students were in a dangerous situation.
25 years after the termination of the case on the death of the Dyatlov group, he could have been destroyed in the usual manner according to the storage period of documents. But the prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk region Vladislav Tuikov gave instructions to keep it as "socially significant".
A new wave of interest in the death of Dyatlov's group arose in the 1990s after the publication of a short article in the newspaper Uralsky Rabochy "Everything is falling into place." Its author, a certain pensioner A. Gubin, suggested that in a hurry to get out of the tent, the group was forced by the fall of the stage of the launch vehicle. By hitting its cooled fragments, he explained the abundance of holes in the fabric of the tent. As proof, he cited the text of a telephone message from another group of tourists, allegedly received on March 31, 1959 by the secretary of the city party committee - they reported about the "ring of fire" and asked to explain this phenomenon. Gubin believed that Dyatlov's group could face a similar phenomenon.
The note was a response to Stanislav Bogomolov's article "UFOs: Anatomy of a Mystery". A few months later, a new article by Bogomolov appeared in the same newspaper with an equally intriguing title - "The Mystery of Fireballs". In it, he spoke about the versions that appeared among the people after the death of the group - about the murder of the Mansi, about death from radiation during the testing of new nuclear weapons.
Fuel was added to the fire by quotes from the expert's opinion, which were first presented to the public.
“Clothing is contaminated with either radioactive dust that has fallen from the atmosphere, or this clothing has been contaminated when working with radioactive substances, or through contact. This contamination exceeds, as I have already indicated, the norm for persons working with radioactive substances. It can be assumed that the contamination of individual areas of clothing was many times greater, - such testimony was given in 1959 by the chief radiologist of the city.
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However, Bogomolov did not believe that the students were killed by nuclear weapons. He also cited reports of meteorologists and local residents about the mysterious "fireballs" that they saw both on the night of the death of the guys and several times after that.
The highlight of the text was an interview with prosecutor Lev Ivanov, who was in charge of the case - he assured that Dyatlov's group was destroyed by a UFO.
“I have my own explanation for what happened. You can put in the headline "The prosecutor-criminalist believes that the tourists were killed by a UFO!"
Then I assumed it, but now I'm sure. I don’t presume to assert what kind of balls - whether some kind of weapon, aliens or something else, but I’m sure that it is directly related to the death of the guys,”he said.
The author himself, however, was inclined to believe that the group was simply faced with a phenomenon unknown to science. In his opinion, something blinded the children, because of which they could neither return to the tent, nor make a fire.
“Whatever the reason for the death of the guys, one thing is certain - they accepted a rare battle with an unknown force and showed immense courage. They have become a legend,”he summed up.
Ivanov, apparently, was not satisfied with Bogomolov's text. In autumn, an article by the prosecutor himself was published in the Kustanai newspaper Leninsky Put.
Describing the course of the investigation, he emphasized that Dubinina, Zolotarev, Thibault-Brignolle and Kolevatov, found in May, did not have significant external injuries, but the injuries of internal organs were incompatible with life.
“Such injuries, as I described, usually occur when a strong directed force acts on a person, for example, a car at high speed. But such damage cannot be obtained from falling from a height of one's own growth. In the vicinity of Mount Otorten and the surrounding area, there were boulders and stones of various configurations covered with snow, but they were not in the path of tourists (remember the tracks of footprints), and naturally, no one threw these stones at tourists. There were no external bruises. Consequently, there was a directed force that selectively acted on individuals, excluding others,”he stressed.
Ivanov also drew attention to the burnt trees at the edge of the forest.
“These tracks did not have a concentric shape or other system. There was no epicenter either. This once again confirmed the directionality of a kind of heat ray or a strong, but completely unknown, in any case, to us energy, acting selectively - the snow was not melted, the trees were not damaged. The impression was that when the tourists walked more than five hundred meters down the mountain on their own feet, some of them were dealt with in a directed manner,”he wrote.
After Ivanov reported on the findings to the management, he was allegedly ordered to keep all the information secret, and to tell his relatives that the guys died of hypothermia.
“Based on the evidence collected, the role of UFOs in this tragedy was quite obvious …” Ivanov insisted. - And once again about the fireballs. They were and are. It is only necessary not to hush up their appearance, but to deeply understand their nature. I know all the details of this incident and I can say that only those who were in these balls know more about these circumstances,”he concluded.
In the same summer in the newspaper "Change!" the version about the death of the group in the unsuccessful launch of the rocket surfaced again. In subsequent years, the interest of journalists in the case subsided somewhat. In 1992, the nephew of the search engine Ivan Pashin turned to the newspaper "Nefteyugansk Worker" with his uncle's story about the red-orange skin of corpses. But in 1999, four articles and a book were published at once. The popularity of the death of the Dyatlov group began to gain momentum again.
The most "fruitful" year was 2004 - seven articles about the Dyatlov Pass were published at once.
Ufologist Vadim Chernobrov, founder of the Cosmopoisk association, famous for researching crop circles, searching for Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat and searching for snowmen in the south of Kuzbass, was involved in three of them.
In a voluminous article "Ural stalkers: escape from the mountain of the dead", published in "Komsomolskaya Pravda", Chernobrov hurried to catch up with the mystics from the first lines, telling the legend about nine Mansi who allegedly died once on the mountain where the group was going, and citing the words of his wife one of the search engines, who, being familiar with the guys, tried to dissuade them from going to this mountain.
He remembered about the "rocket", "radioactive" versions and UFOs. He frightened him with the death of the photographer who was shooting the bodies, the Chekist who studied the case and one of the search engines, as well as several other groups of tourists in the area of the pass.
However, Chernobrov did not draw any conclusions, leaving the readers to fantasize on their own about the reasons for the death of the guys. The most valuable part of the article was the layout of the mountains, tents and bodies, drawn by Chernobrov and still often appearing in articles about the Dyatlov Pass.
At present, the case itself is kept in the archives of the Sverdlovsk region, and it is possible to get acquainted with it in the “limited access” mode only with the permission of the local prosecutor's office. The case materials were published in 2017 by the public fund "In memory of the Dyatlov group", copies of them can now be found on many sites.
Another surge in publications about the tragedy occurred in 2019, when the Prosecutor General's Office announced a new investigation into the death of Dyatlov's group. Representatives of the prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region gathered in the spring to go to the pass to find out the reasons for the death of the children. The impetus for the resumption of the investigation was the appeals of the relatives of the victims, the interest of the media and society. The investigation will involve specialists in the field of geodesy, metrology, as well as employees of the Ministry of Emergencies.
At the moment, the prosecutor's office adheres to the version that the cause of the tragedy is the mistake of the tourists themselves, who decided to put up a tent on the slope of the mountain, and not in the border of the forest. Clearing a place for a tent, they cut the slope, which caused a snow board (mini-avalanche). The version is confirmed by the nature of the injuries (compressed fractures of the ribs) in the absence of external injuries, as well as the history of tourist traffic: there were more than once similar emergencies with other groups of tourists who died or were injured when a snow board descended.