Quite often, among the researchers of the secret of the Dyatlov group, there are disputes that the criminal case presented to the public is a fake. Conspiracy theorists believe that somewhere in the archives of the FSB there is a real criminal case, which contains all the answers to numerous questions about what actually happened to the tourists.
Investigator of the Ivdel Prosecutor's Office Lev Nikitich Ivanov.
According to supporters of conspiracy theories, the reason for concealing the true circumstances of the case was something that could not be known to people uninitiated in the affairs of state security.
The search team at the tent of the Dyatlov tourist group.
The group was considered alive until February 26, 1959, until the discovery of the first participants in the campaign. Accordingly, the date for the initiation of the case was set on the day the gruesome find was discovered. However, the cover of the procedural document states that the case was initiated on February 6, 1959 - long before the first bodies were found.
Copy of the cover of the criminal case.
For a long time, researchers argued about the truth of this date: someone argued that the difference was due to the low quality of the copy, someone believed that this was a common mistake of the clerk. As for the fact that this case did not have a number, then all the explanations came down to the banal "human factor", which clearly did not satisfy the inquisitive mind of woodpeckers. And here it is difficult to disagree with the researchers! During the time that the case was in the work of the investigator, the mistake would have been noticed and corrected. The lack of a number, confusion in dates, a note from their archive Korotaev (about this artifact - more details on the link!), As well as the fact that some key documents of the investigation have disappeared from the "public copy" of the case (histology protocols, answers to inquiries about the course of the investigation to Moscow, as well as the Resolution on the initiation of a criminal case, signed by V. Korotayev. I.) - became a serious reason to doubt the objectivity of the submitted copy.
Investigator Korotaev V. I.
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The logic of the supporters of the existence of the second case is quite simple and understandable. If the documents were withdrawn from the “public copy”, it means that somewhere they had to settle.
However, strange things were added to this story by the fact that during a detailed analysis of the materials of official correspondence between prosecutors attached to the second volume of the criminal case, one can find documents in which prosecutors indicate a certain case number in the Dyatlov group! Although, as we have already found out, there was no number on the folder!
In a telegram from Assistant Prosecutor General of the USSR Terebilov to the Prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk Region, the number of the criminal case appears - 3 / 2518-59.
The same number is found in a telegram from the Deputy Head of the Investigative Department of the Prosecutor's Office Kamochkin to the Sverdlovsk colleague Klimov dated 1959-11-05 in a request for information on the case. Is this really the same number of the "original" criminal case !?
Alas, no. This number has nothing to do with the numbering of the "original" case, if one exists at all.
Based on the context of the telegrams, it becomes clear that a supervisory check was carried out in the Dyatlov case. The essence of which was to study the case materials for the principles of compliance with the requirements of legality. In view of the social significance of the case, the inspection took place in Moscow and that is why the materials of the criminal case were requested from the USSR Procurator General. It was possible to come to this conclusion after reviewing the index ciphers used in the registration of court materials. In particular, "3" - referred to the materials of judicial control over the legality of the actions of the bodies of preliminary investigation and inquiry. "2518" is an ordinal number, and "59" is a year.
Head of the Department for Supervision of Compliance with Federal Legislation of the Prosecutor's Office of the Sverdlovsk Region Andrey Kuryakov.
Andrey Kuryanov demonstrates archival criminal cases to journalists during a press conference.
At a press conference organized by employees of the Sverdlovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office, dedicated to the topic of resuming the verification of the criminal case materials, questions were raised about the strange date, as well as the absence of a number on the cover. The head of the department for supervision over the observance of federal legislation of the Prosecutor's Office of the Sverdlovsk Region, Andrei Kuryakov, explained that the date "06" February 1959 appeared on the materials on the Dyatlovites due to the requirement to organize archival storage of documents in force at that time. According to the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs acting on that, when transferring to the archive, the criminal case was numbered according to the earliest and latest material. In the case of the investigation in the Dyatlov group, the earliest material is the protocol of the interrogation of a witness dated 1959-06-02.
The interrogation was conducted by the head of the Vizhai police department, Chudinov. According to the materials of the protocol, he interrogated the head of the communications unit of the Vizhay forestry detachment Vasily Popov. Despite the fact that during the interrogation Popov said that he saw tourists heading to Mount Otorten, this interrogation was originally carried out as part of another criminal case. Which one exactly is still unknown.
As for the absence of a date, the prosecutor explained that in the period from 1958 to 1959, none of the criminal cases terminated for lack of corpus delicti - there are no numbers, respectively, this suggests that at that time there was a certain practice by which it was allowed lack of numbering for this category of materials.