July 6 & 13, 2026, Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is William Finnegan’s absorbing “No Return.” It’s an account of the trial of Thomas Plamberger, held in February of this year, at the Innsbruck Regional Court, in western Austria. Plamberger was charged with homicide by gross negligence in the death of his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, during an attempt to climb Grossglockner, Austria’s tallest mountain. 

I like reporting pieces about trials. This Plamberger case is a strange one. What makes it strange is the trial procedure. Finnegan calls it “oddly simple” and he’s right. Perhaps it’s too simple. There’s a judge, a prosecutor, a defendant, and a defense lawyer – the four basic elements of almost any civilized trial. But the judge in this case, Norbert Hofer, who is a specialist in “mountain, avalanche, climbing, cable-car, and ski accidents,” appears to have imposed on himself a curious limitation. He wants to run the trial in a single day. That is, he wants to hear all the evidence, render his verdict and, if necessary, impose sentence all in one single day. Why the rush?

The second weird aspect of this trial is the way the evidence is presented. Witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It seems the judge does most of the questioning. Sometimes his questions were not as probing as they should’ve been. At one point, Finnegan writes,

There were many disturbing parts of Kerstin’s story left unpursued. The autopsy had yielded an official cause of death: hypothermia. There were signs of a viral infection, and she had taken ibuprofen. But nothing was said about her injuries, even though Thomas had mentioned them. Mathias had described bloodstains. Whose? From what wound? Why had Thomas and Kerstin taken the Stüdlgrat? That was a central question, never asked. Where were their headlamps after midnight? Extreme cold drains batteries, but at least one headlamp was back on at 1:30 a.m. How did Kerstin end up where she was found? Did Thomas lead her there or find her there? Why on earth was she still wearing her backpack?

There were many disturbing parts of Kerstin’s story left unpursued – why? A young, inexperienced climber was left on a brutal mountain to die. Every effort should be made to determine what happened. A trial is a search for truth in a welter of conflicting testimony and competing narratives. That’s what makes them so fascinating. But in this case, inexplicably, the judge seemed to be in a hurry. Yes, in the end, he zeroed in on the most telling pieces of evidence – Plamberger’s failure to turn back when the weather turned nasty, his failure to make an emergency call, his leaving Gurtner tied to a near-vertical gray rock on a steep part of the mountain – and found Plamberger guilty. But his sentence – a five-month suspended sentence and a fine of nine thousand six hundred euros – was woefully inadequate. 

Finnegan, in his piece, does the job that Judge Hofer should’ve done. He methodically reviews all the evidence. His point about the bivouac bag strikes me as particularly damning: 

Why didn’t Thomas unpack the bivouac bag from her backpack, the thermal blanket? His explanation was that he’d forgotten in the stress of the moment: “I didn’t even think about the bivouac bag.” He added, “I don’t know why she didn’t say anything to me about it.” So the oversight was her fault. She was hypothermic, but she should have said something.

Based on Finnegan’s report, the evidence overwhelmingly points to Plamberger’s gross negligence. He should’ve been sentenced to time in prison. Instead, he received a love tap from a judge who was part of the Austrian climbing fraternity.