Police in Switzerland solved a mystery that started when a couple went missing in 1942.
Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, 79, became an orphan when she was just 4-years-old after her parents went missing. Udry-Dumoulin told the Le Matin newspaper that she and her six siblings “spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day.”
Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin had gone to milk their cows in the meadow above their home in Valais, Switzerland on August 15, 1942. The husband and wife never returned. For more than 2 months search teams poured over the deep crevasses of the Swiss Alps before giving up hope.
Their bodies were discovered last week on the melting Tsanfleuron glacier by an employee at a local ski resort Glacier 3000. “The bodies were lying near each other. It was a man and a woman wearing clothing dating from the period of World War Two,” said Bernhard Tschannen, the director of Glacier 3000. “They were perfectly preserved in the glacier and their belongings were intact,” he said according to Reuters.
Tschannen and the local authorities believe the Dumoulins fell into a crevasse where they remained for decades until the glacier receded enough to reveal their bodies.
“It was the first time my mother went with him on such an excursion, “Udry-Dumoulin said. “She was always pregnant and couldn’t climb in the difficult conditions of a glacier.”
“For the funeral, I won’t wear black. I think that white would be more appropriate. It represents hope, which I never lost.”