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I'll be right back.

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Tonight, an infamous cold war, cold case.

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Nine hikers found mutilated on a remote mountain slope.

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Their injuries and the facts don't seem to add up.

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You can't help but wonder.

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Who would be capable of doing this?

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It looks like a murder scene from a super graphic horror movie.

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Now, we uncover the top theories surrounding a place that's been called Russia's Area 51.

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There's a number of people in Russia who believe that Yeti is the culprit in this case.

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This looks and feels a lot like a cover-up.

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Can new evidence finally bring us closer to the truth?

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The bodies all appear withered and some of them have third-degree burns on them,

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which is a sign of radiation poisoning.

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What really happened at Russia's notorious Dyatlov Pass?

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The Soviet Union.

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1959. As the cold war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. intensifies,

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so do conspiracy theories about covert experiments, secret weapons, and spies.

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And on February 26, high up in Siberia's Ural Mountains,

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something equally nefarious will be discovered.

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On that day, three cross-country skiers spot a solitary tent, partially collapsed by snow.

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What was unusual was the entrance was fastened closed, but the outside had been slashed open.

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They looked inside and they found nobody was there, but they did find some footprints leading down the hill.

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When they get to the end of that trail, they make a horrible discovery.

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They find corpses in the snow.

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Warning. The images you are about to see are disturbing.

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Close your eyes and try to picture the scene.

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Imagine you're going through the snow.

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You come across these bodies.

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It looks like a murder scene from a super graphic horror movie.

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It just keeps getting worse and worse.

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The first thing the investigators found were two members of the team lying underneath a cedar tree,

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and neither of them were wearing winter clothes. They were just in their underwear.

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One has burns on his head and foot. There's lots of cuts and bruises on his body.

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He has some dried blood on his face and also strange gray foam is found on his cheek.

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It looks like this could be foul play. The second body has similar cuts and bruises.

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He's missing the tip of his nose and his knuckles are bruised and swollen. It's a very strange scene.

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Several yards away, another body.

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This third body is found lying face up in the snow. He's hugging a branch.

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He also has cuts and bruises on his knuckles and dried blood on his face.

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And he's facing back towards the tent, suggesting he's trying to make a desperate attempt to return.

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So naturally the skiers rush to report this and a bigger search party is put together.

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And this bigger search party starts combing the area to try to find clues as to what happened to these three men.

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But before they can figure that out, several more bodies turn up.

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Next, they discover a young woman.

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She has a lot of bruises on her face and her hair is in disarray.

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She has this long red bruise on the side of her torso and on top of that her fists are clenched.

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So it looks like maybe there was some sort of scuffle, some sort of fight that might have went down.

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You also have to remember this is Siberia. You've got freezing temperatures, you've got blinding snow.

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So all this work that the search party is trying to do to locate all of this evidence make the work very, very slow and very, very difficult to perform.

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After a week, a fifth corpse is found further up the slope.

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It's another young male victim and this one has a fractured skull.

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Perhaps more evidence that there was some violent altercation.

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What's interesting about this victim is he had one sock on one foot and it felt boot on the other, suggesting something took him by surprise.

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Six weeks later as the snow starts to melt, the mystery deepens.

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Members of the Monsi, a local indigenous tribe, approach the police and lead them to a makeshift snow shelter.

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250 feet from where the first two bodies were found.

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These searchers, they start to dig below the surface and they find this snow den with these branches all lined up next to each other forming some type of floor.

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Additionally, they're also finding some torn pieces of clothing.

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There's a pair of sweatpants with the right leg just cut off completely.

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Likewise, there's also only the left half of a woman's sweater.

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So there's more and more evidence that's starting to build that something violent may have happened here.

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Investigators excavate around the snow shelter, revealing four more victims,

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bringing the death toll to nine.

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These four bodies are lying somewhat closely together in the bed of a rocky stream at the bottom of a ravine.

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It looks like a dumping ground.

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It looks like just someone or something may have dropped them there.

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Compared to the other victims, these bodies have even more ghastly injuries.

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One corpse is a male victim with a severely twisted neck.

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Another young female has a crushed rib cage and it's such a brutal injury that her ribs actually punctured her heart.

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And horrifically, her eyes and tongue are missing.

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Another young male has a massive fracture to the side of his skull that would have almost certainly knocked him unconscious.

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It looks more and more like the injuries are from brutal beatings from some heavy, blunt object.

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Investigators soon identify the dead as members of an expedition sponsored by the Ural Polytechnic University.

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They were reported missing after failing to complete their trip.

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Once you know who these victims are, it's even more tragic.

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These students were among the best and the brightest from the Ural Polytechnic University.

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They were very experienced, mountaineers and well respected members of the sports club of the Ural Polytechnic Institute.

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The group's leader is 23-year-old engineering student Igor Dyatlov.

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The tragedy bears his name.

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The Dyatlov Pass is named in memory of Igor Dyatlov.

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He designed this expedition to be as challenging as possible so they could all get certified as Grade 3 outdoorsmen.

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This was the highest category in the Soviet Union at the time.

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In January, the group leaves their home of Yekaterinburg and travels to the village of Vizhai.

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From Vizhai, they go off-grid and head off into the wilderness.

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They have a compass and all the gear they think they need, but they don't have any radio communication equipment with them.

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The trip was supposed to cover 200 miles over 16 days, but they only make it halfway.

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What frustrates friends and family of these hikers the most is that they say that they are way too smart and way too experienced to have ended up accidentally freezing to death in the outdoors.

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The lead investigator in the case, Lev Ivanov, says he knows the cause of death.

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There are signs of a struggle at the scene and no one can ignore the bruises and cuts to the face and the body and the missing pieces of flesh.

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But who could be capable of such a violent crime here?

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The potential suspect list is incredibly short.

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The mountain where the tent was abandoned is called Haight 1079, is a mostly uninhabited area and it borders the Siberian wilderness.

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Almost nobody lives there. Almost.

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Except for the fact that this region is home to many of Stalin's infamous gulags.

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Stalin built lots of gulags.

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You don't know what a gulag is. It's this insane labor camp where political prisoners were sent. They were forced to do hours upon hours of manual labor.

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This is where you have some of the most hardened criminals in the Soviet Union residing.

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So investigators are thinking, maybe one of these prisoners got out and encountered those nine hikers.

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Especially when they learned that the Yvdel gulag is only a few miles from the site of the attack.

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Police check with the Yvdel gulag to see if there are any prisoners or missing, but no, they're all accounted for.

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They also doubt any escaped prisoners might have done this because no provisions or belongings were stolen from the tent.

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So the escapee theory doesn't go anywhere.

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So investigators start to ask, okay, it seems like it's a very personal crime.

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So they start to wonder, could this have been connected with anyone that was affiliated with that group?

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And one name pops up.

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The name? Yuri Yudin, a 10th hiker with the group and the sole survivor.

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Is it possible that members of the Dyatlov expedition were killed by one of their own?

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It's a mystery that's gripped the world.

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Nine Russian hikers, dead in a remote mountain pass.

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Police are certain it's murder.

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And among their top suspects is fellow hiker Yuri Yudin.

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So Yuri Yudin is a fourth year engineering student who is part of that same group of hikers.

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In fact, he's the 10th member of that group.

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But apparently Yudin left early and instead of ending up dead, he's now the sole survivor.

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Therefore, we can assume one of two things.

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Either Yudin is incredibly lucky or he's the killer.

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When Communist Party officials question Yudin, he tells them he backed out of the trek long before the murders.

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Yudin claims to investigators that his back started to hurt when he was making his way up the mountains, which caused him to quit the expedition.

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He says that he left the group on January 28th at 11.45 a.m. at a location known as the second northern.

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And when he leaves, the rest of his group are all still very much alive, very much breathing.

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But as investigators are questioning Yudin, they start to notice he becomes a bit more panicked, a bit more nervous.

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They're certainly skeptical.

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Still unsure of Yudin's story, investigators ask him to help analyze the crime scene.

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And this has to be traumatic for him.

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Think about it.

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He was supposed to be on that expedition with them, but because of his bad back, he ends up going back and now he's the only one alive of all of his friends.

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So when he gets to that crime scene, he acts with genuine shock and surprise.

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Uri notes there's something the police couldn't have, that some of the clothes found on the bodies of those in the ravine belong to some of the other students.

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It's another bizarre detail in a case full of them.

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The clothing is sent to a laboratory for analysis.

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While they await results, investigators try to verify Yudin's alibi.

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Yudin's story of a bad back checks out.

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Yudin was in his native village of Emelya Shevka with his family on February 1st and February 2nd.

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The same dates that investigators calculate as the time of death.

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If Yudin's not the killer, who else could be?

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The only other known group of people in the area are the Mansi.

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The Mansi have helped with the investigation.

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They're the ones that pointed the investigators to the four bodies in the ravine.

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Despite that, Lev Ivanov starts looking into the group.

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So Ivanov thinks that the Mansi are upset that a group of outsiders set up camp on height 1079, also known as Kola Shackle, which roughly translates to Dead Mountain.

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The explorers are violating sacred Mansi territory.

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And even more sacrilegious, there are two women in the group.

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And for the Mansi, women are forbidden to even step foot on sacred land, let alone look at it.

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Maybe that's why the eyes are removed from a couple of corpses.

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Even off interrogates multiple tribe members.

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While they deny involvement, they offer a new detail.

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Several people tell the same crazy sounding story that the Mansi saw lights in the sky or burning fireballs in the sky on the very night that the hikers died.

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Police recovered a camera from the campsite and the last photo on this camera had an image they didn't understand.

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It looks like flares or streaks in the night sky.

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It's hard to tell, but could this corroborate the lights in the sky that were supposedly seen that night?

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There are no timestamps on the photo.

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And if this is the last thing the hikers photographed, you can't help but wonder if this has something to do with the incident.

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Without a confession or any evidence that points to the Mansi, Ivanov has no proof.

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So that's where things remain for a while at a standstill.

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No new evidence and no new suspects, nothing to explain what happened to the nine hikers.

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Until several weeks later, when laboratory results come back.

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And just when you thought it was done, here's a new chance to find some new leads and to keep investigators moving forward.

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The analysis of the ripped clothing that was found in the ravine comes back and it reveals an incredible new clue.

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The analysis shows there's some unusually high levels of radioactivity on some of the items.

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But how could clothes from alleged murder victims be radioactive?

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The answer could turn the course of the investigation in an entirely new direction.

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But that's not what happens. Instead of following this new lead and getting to the bottom of the mystery, authorities go ahead and do the exact opposite.

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On May 28, 1959, three months into this investigation and after finding this new evidence, Lev Ivanov abruptly closes the case, unsolved.

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The Soviet government seals off the entire area known as the Dyatlov Pass and prohibits anyone from going there.

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Ivanov's report marks a change.

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He now states that all nine deaths were caused by an unknown elemental force which they were unable to overcome.

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But while Lev Ivanov seems to want this to be the final word, it won't be.

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When nine hikers die under mysterious circumstances during the Dyatlov expedition, the public is eager to find out why.

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But lead investigator Lev Ivanov abruptly closes the case after three months.

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Just as he receives shocking evidence, the victim's clothing shows radioactivity.

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This is a crazy detail that definitely deserves some digging. So as soon as a case like this is shut down, people immediately think that it's a cover-up.

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The question is, why?

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The USSR wants to be the dominant superpower. So they're doing a lot of covert things at this time.

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They're doing research experiments. They're doing military experiments. They have spy operations going on.

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Government cover-ups are happening every day.

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Soviet population understands that there are secret tests, but also they accept the rule of the government that this is secrecy they cannot know about.

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I mean, it's not hard for people to put two and two together. You've got the Dyatlov deaths and now the appearance of unusually high levels of radiation on some of the clothes.

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People are starting to think that this is linked to the military.

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At the victim's funerals, friends and family remark that the cadavers have an unnaturally orange appearance.

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The bodies all appear withered and some of them have third-degree burns on them, which is a sign of radiation poisoning.

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The family of group leader Igor Dyatlov say they are certain the military was somehow involved. But exactly what are they covering up?

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Don't forget, the Monsi said that they saw fireballs in the sky that night.

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So one idea is that it's a case of a weapons test that goes wrong.

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The rocket fails to go into orbit and lands really close to where the Dyatlov hikers are camped out for the night and it sends shockwaves which frightens them and has them running out of the tent.

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There are different hypotheses. Something that it was the Soviet government through its military that killed them because they witnessed something that they were not supposed to have witnessed.

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And there's one other little detail that seems to prop up this cover-up theory. It's presumed that one of the hikers was actually a KGB spy and his name was Semyon Zolotaryov.

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Zolotaryov is the only person on the expedition who is not a student. In fact, he's 38 years old and mysteriously added to the group by communist officials at the last minute.

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A lot of things about Zolotaryov are a bit unusual. For one, he's single, which is kind of weird in Russia at this time.

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Additionally, he's got all these very cryptic tattoos on his body. And at the start of the journey, this older gentleman tells the students to call him by a fake name, Sasha.

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We do know that Zemonsolotaryov is not who he pretends to be. There's too much in his biography that is not consistent.

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Even when he talks about his service in World War II, he mixes up dates when he served in one unit or another. And in my opinion, having studied this case, he was a top-notch KGB operative.

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So the theory is that the KGB is spying on the Russian military to see what is going on in these mountains. And unfortunately, these hikers just got caught in the middle of an interagency conflict.

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So Zolotaryov is found out to be a spy agent on behalf of the KGB. So the group, although innocent, are killed because of him.

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When Zolotaryov's body is recovered, the film in his camera has been destroyed by water damage. His motivation and his potential KGB ties remain a mystery.

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Whether the KGB was connected to the case or not, we don't know. But the idea of the military being involved in the whole mess is very much popular. And one of the top hypotheses in this Dutloff-Bass incident.

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Even the university, the Euro Polytechnic Institute, which sponsored the hike, thinks this is what happened.

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And in 1990, another familiar voice joins the chorus claiming a cover-up.

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They've even published an article with a strange title, The Mystery of the Fireballs. And he hinted that he was under pressure to close the case and not to continue to look into the cause of the death.

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Communist party officials were incredibly worried that these reports would leak out to foreign nations. And on top of that, Ivanov believes that it's these secret tests that ultimately leads to the deaths of these hikers.

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Sol survivor Yuri Yudin also believes the government was involved and reveals a key piece of evidence before his death in 2013.

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Yudin says that when he was helping the investigators with the inventory of the items left by the hikers, things didn't add up. He found things that did not belong to anyone like a military cloth, a pair of glasses, also an extra pair of skis. And his good feeling was that this was staged.

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Even Boris Yeltsin thinks authorities are hiding something. When he's made president of Russia after the fall of the USSR in 1991, he promises to investigate the Dyatlov Pass incident.

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He was very much interested in the case as well because he was himself a graduate of the same institution, Euro Polytechnic, and because people appealed to him.

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He uses all of his political power to try to find information, things that happened in 1959 that can shed light on this event.

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Now the closest missile launch site to the Dyatlov Pass is actually located in Kazakhstan and it's called the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

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Yeltsin's investigators dig into the records of Baikonur to see if there were any missile launches in 1959 during that window of the hiker's death.

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He assured people that there were no rockets during the day when the hikers perished.

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It's tough to know if he actually did look into this, but if what he's saying is true, there were no missile tests that happened in the area during that time.

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Whatever Yeltsin's involvement with the case was, it didn't bring us any closer to finding the truth.

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Yeltsin's findings seem to end the cover-up theory, but they don't stop the public from asking questions and a shocking new one is about to emerge.

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It's a very interesting and intriguing photo taken by one of the hikers and it leads to a shocking new theory and a surprising suspect.

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There's a number of people in Russia who believe that Yatya or Snezhnichalovik in Russian is the culprit in this case.

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In one of the photographs found at the site, there is a very unusual creature that was depicted in the photograph and it's very interesting.

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This was the last frame of the photographs Nikolai Tibo took at the site and I don't think he had enough time to think what he photographed, but it's there historical evidence.

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What you see in the picture is a humanoid like being, it's big, it's about 10 feet, it's hulking, much like the Yatys or Snowmen and it looks like it's looking at the group observing them.

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There were so many stories coming from different parts of the Soviet Union and this photograph could definitely serve as a proof that the Yatys are out there.

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The Yatys are huge beings, about 10 feet in size, people are afraid of them because they could crush with their arms and legs a human being and do it very quickly.

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Even the Dyatlov students themselves make reference to a Yeti prior to their trip.

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Before they hike into the mountains, the students, the hikers published a satirical newspaper and they write a headline that reads,

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Science, in recent years there has been a heated debate about the existence of the Yeti.

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Latest evidence indicates that the Yeti lives in the northern Urals near Mount Otartiny.

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It's quite possible that while they wanted to express themselves and show no fear by placing jokes in that newspaper, they knew that something was out there and it could be Yeti.

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Supporters of the Yeti theory also point to photos of the bodies that show what appears to be abject terror with clenched fists ready for a fight.

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Of course, seeing a horrible creature like a Yeti by their tent, that would frighten them.

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But that's not the only creature that could get such a reaction.

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We have to account for many predators that live in the area that could have attacked the hikers and among them are bears, wild dogs, wolverines, even the Siberian tiger.

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But the most likely culprit in the animal attack theory is a brown bear.

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The autopsy report listed fractured skulls, broken chest, scratches and cuts and even missing flesh. A brown bear would be capable of doing this.

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But the problem with the brown bear theory is that they were in hibernation around this time.

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That's all the more reason if a bear wakes up early and is hungry, it would seek out nine campers that just happen to be in that area.

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After decades of public speculation about animal attacks, homicide, cover-ups and much more, in 2019, public fascination with the Dyatlov case prompts Russian authorities to finally reopen the file.

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A young prosecutor, Andrei Kuryakov, takes the lead.

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Andrei Kuryakov sits down with a list of 75 theories. Thanks to the growing public interest, this case has just gone bigger and bigger.

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Not sure if the Yeti has made the list, but Kuryakov certainly has his work cut out for him, but it seems he's up for the task.

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As Kuryakov starts researching, he notices a detail that leads to a new theory.

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It turns out that the weather on the 1st of February in 1959 is pretty extreme for that mountain.

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It winds up to 65 miles an hour and temperatures down to 30 degrees. And this has Kuryakov thinking, could it be an avalanche?

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Andrei Kuryakov organizes a 2020 expedition to the Dyatlov Pass to test his theory.

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And he's about to find one key piece of evidence that the original investigation got wrong.

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60 years after the Dyatlov tragedy, prosecutor Andrei Kuryakov returns to the crime scene with new technology, hoping to prove the killer was an avalanche.

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So they use photogrammetry to really pinpoint the location of the tent.

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And then they take photos of the current landscape and compare them with the old ones, and they notice a huge discrepancy of what they originally investigated.

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The location where the tent was pitched in 1959 is actually several hundred feet away from where they originally thought it was pitched.

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The location of the tent is the number one factor in determining if an avalanche took place, and it looks like the original investigation might have made a mistake.

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The risk of an avalanche depends on the degree of incline. On average, it takes a 30 degree incline to trigger one.

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Using the old incorrect data, investigators prior to 2019 thought that the slope above the tent was about 15 degrees, so they've ruled out the avalanche theory this entire time.

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The newly calculated location has a much steeper slope of around 28 degrees.

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It's still not 30 degrees, and avalanche still may not be possible.

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But with the right weather conditions, it's much more likely.

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When they analyze the weather conditions, they find that there's a special phenomenon here called catabatic winds.

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Catabatic winds travel at hurricane speeds. In effect, they act as a huge snow plow.

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These winds can take tons and tons of snow, and it's very likely that these winds could have deposited huge amounts of snow above the hiker's tent.

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And that's when they become even more confident in their avalanche theory. They think that this mountain is a death trap, just waiting to spring.

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Once the weather expedition is complete, Andrei Kuryakov presents his findings to the public.

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Kuryakov theorizes that at some time after the tent was set up around 7pm, a windstorm kicks off into high gear.

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Sometime between 1.30 and 5.30 am, a small avalanche is triggered above the tent where they had cut into the slope.

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That new snow up above is too heavy and it crashes down onto the tent. After that initial snow dump, the hikers fearing Morris to come cut their own way out of the tent and run to a rocky ridge 150 feet away.

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This is at the time standard avalanche protocol. The idea of being able to find a way out of the tent is to find a way out of the tent.

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This is at the time standard avalanche protocol. The idea of being able to find a safe place behind a high rocky ridge that would redirect the snow away from them.

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But here Kuryakov's theory takes an interesting twist.

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He doesn't actually think a bigger avalanche ever hit. He thinks that they hurried out of the tent but it never came.

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And the problem is that the hikers got disorientated and they couldn't find their way back to the tent.

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So the investigator tests his theory. He blindfolds a man and a woman, makes them walk 90 feet away from the tent and then challenges them to find their way back and they can't.

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And what about their strange lack of clothing?

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Kuryakov thinks that some of them were partially undressed when they fled the tent. But he thinks the others may have suffered from a phenomena called paradoxical undressing.

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This is where people in their final stages of hypothermia feel as if they're burning hot, which leads them to take their clothes off.

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According to Kuryakov, sometime between 4.30 and 7.30 am, the hikers freeze to death.

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The two young men found in their underwear under the cedar tree died first.

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The other members of the group cut the clothes off of their dead friends in a last ditch to survive.

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At some point the group splits up and three of them, Dyatlov, Komagorova and Slopadan head back towards the tent.

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Sadly they freeze to death before making it back.

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But what about the final four?

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And this is where the theory gets really weird. You can never believe this group had such bad luck.

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The last four dig down a snow shelter, basically a snow chamber where they can hide from the elements and share body heat.

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But the one spot they decide to dig in is above a stream through a hollowed out icy tunnel. They dig down and the tunnel collapses.

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They fall into the icy stream and are buried under 15 feet of snow.

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As he concludes the press conference, Kuryakov declares that the Dyatlov past mystery is finally solved.

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The Russians are outraged at Kuryakov and loudly reject his theory. The families of the dead are especially critical of him.

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Let's be clear the public case, the Avalanche theory. It doesn't account for so many key facts and details of the case.

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People were making fun of it and disregarded it because they know this is another set of cover-ups.

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The Dyatlov past incident has spawned many theories over the years. But in a case full of strange details and unusual twists, none have fully aligned with the facts.

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You can say maybe it's a bear attack but the bears are hibernating. You say it's an Avalanche. But what about their clothes testing positive for radiation?

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What about the Monsi tribe's testimony of fireballs in the sky? What about Samyon Zolotaria, the possible KGB agent that was planted among the hikers?

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There are just so many details to account for and there isn't just one theory that makes total sense.

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But what if there is?

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So theory after theory after theory comes out and after a while people just stop looking at all the evidence one piece at a time and they just say to themselves, what if it's not just one thing? What if all of these theories are partially right?

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So in other words, it's an Avalanche and it's a murder and it's a cover-up and it's an animal attack all in one.

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If you start with the fireballs reported by Monsi during the time, it could be part of a nuclear experiment. We don't understand.

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Maybe a new type of nuclear weapons that the KGB of course did not want to leak out to its enemies in the west and they covered it up.

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Apart from Samyon Zolotaria of the other students, the poor students did not know they were heading into this special testing area.

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This could explain the radioactivity that was found in their clothing.

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The nuclear test may also explain the Avalanche.

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Those nuclear weapons emit shock waves. Those shock waves are the catalyst for the Avalanche to collapse on the tent and it could have caused those blunt force injuries on their own.

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So in the span of an instant, the explosion startles the hikers. It starts the Avalanche. It showers them in radiation.

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The shock waves hit them with the force of a speeding truck which causes injuries and it causes them to rush and escape down the side of a mountain.

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From there, the cover up.

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If any of the hikers would have survived, the military would have taken care of them because they didn't want eyewitnesses to something that is a stop secret.

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And even if they were dead, the lead investigator, Lev Ivanov, was forced to close short the investigation so nothing is leaked out.

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And finally the animal attack theory of course accounts for injuries that hikers had sustained because the animals had access to the bodies for a period of time and they did what animals do.

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They ate into the hikers' cadavers.

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What if it's a combination of all of these things that could have happened to these nine hikers? That's what the Soviet authorities are trying to cover up.

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No matter how the hikers died, if there was a cover up, their blood is on the hands of the Soviet government.

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The Seattle of Pass incident is the greatest mystery and unsolved case in Russia.

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But the government doesn't make any more efforts to solve it.

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So it is all up to us now, amateur researchers and investigators from all over the world to uncover what really happened.

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In 2020, the Dyatlov Group Memorial Foundation published a letter in support of the All in One theory for the families of the students killed on the mountain that night.

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That small vindication will have to suffice for now.

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Because when it comes to the truth of this mystery, the secrets are buried incredibly deep.

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I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.