Liam Le Guillou: An Unknown Compelling Force PT 2

crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. Hey, y'all, before we get to our guests, I wanted to let you know that Paul Hols and I have started a Patreon It's called Hey It's Kate and Paul, and you can go to patreon dot com slash Kate and Paul for all sorts of extra stuff. So I'm starting a book club. Woooo.

It's called the Plot Thickens. We have movie reviews, movies like Silence of the Lambs or Zodiac or Seven with Paul's takes on more current cases. And we've got a lot of fun stuff and we like to interact with all of our members. So go to patreon dot com slash Kate and Paul and we can't wait to see you. We're back talking to filmmaker Liam Legueue about his documentary An Unknown Compelling Force the Diet Love Past incident. We learn more about the victims, and we hear about many

conspiracy theories. What about the remaining four that we're missing?

these bodies. Now effectively these bodies are found in a ravine,

and they were kind of together in the ravine. It looked like two of them had their arms around each other, as if they were kind of huddling for warmth, and so it's unusual that they found in very deep Snow, what happens here is when they autopsy report is done on these bodies, we find that two of them, Ludmilia, one of the girls, and Sasha, the older gentlemen that joined the group, they both have massive rib fractures to their upper ribs, so their ribs were crushed so much

so that at least in one case, the ribs had punctured the heart. Now, from my understanding from the autopsy reports and from what the review that we made of it was these injuries were caused at time of death, So these weren't as a result of snow being poured on the month later. So this happened to them here in this location or roughly here. I mean, they could have been somewhere in this area and then dragged to the ravine potentially, but they were caused around this area. Now, also,

this is a horror. It's kind of a horrific fact that gets mentioned a lot that Ludmilia's eyes were missing, and people talk about this in all sorts of horrible ways, like ritual killing. The likelihood is the ravine had started to fall underneath and there was some flowing water. The likelihood is a lot of this soft tissue was washed away by the water, so it's unlikely that necessary that the eyes were damaged in some sort of an attack.

But her tongue was also missing. Now that isn't a soft tissue that would naturally weather away in that way. There isn't enough information to say whether or not an animal had got it. But I remember they were buried underneath snows, so I don't know what animal was getting there. Her tongue was missing. It's not clear to us how and why that was missing. It wasn't documented well enough

to tell what happened there. Although the forensic expert from Russia who I spoke to, it's her feeling from how she interpreted the documents that it was cut out, and so we're leaning into her take on this. That is highly disputed, but it is her take that it was cut out.

clothes that were torn. I think one of the girls that was missing her boots, and she'd taken a kind of an over shirt from one of the guys and wrapped it around her feet in place of a kind

of shoe. The clothing is interesting and maybe we'll dive into one of the conspiracies quickly here, because there's one element of the clothing, which is the search parties and the lead investigator at the time, was hearing stories about rockets in the area and lights in the sky, and so he ordered a radiation test to be done on the hiker's clothes. And it turns out two of the people in the found in this ravine had tested positive for radiation on their clothes. So this now makes this

story while they're and weirder than ever. This for me was a real difficult one to get away from it. It really does imply, okay, is there some sort of

military Soviet Russian involvement here. But once I really dug into this, I found that actually one of the hikers, Yuri Krivenshenka, he actually worked at a nuclear power facility and it's called in a place called Kushtam And actually there was a meltdown and this power plant actually melted down and it was at the time the world's largest nuclear power plant meltdown, known as the kushed and disaster. And this has been kept out of the public until

the fall of the Soviet Union. No one knew about it. The Americans knew about it through spy network and surveillance, but it wasn't spoken about. Now kriven Schenker he actually worked at this power plant involved in the cleanup operation. He actually wrote a letter requesting to be transferred because he didn't have confidence in the group that was involved in doing the cleanup. He effectively said, you guys don't

know what you're doing and it's dangerous. So he requested to make a transfer before he'd gone on this this hiking journey, because he was working there. So all of a sudden, now we have a full explanation of why radiation may have been on It was found on the girl's clothes, but she had taken it. Turns out it was his sweater, so he had probably brought this sweater along with him, it had radiation on him, and it just by chance the clothes got swapped around. So I

think the radiation is a big red herring. I don't think that we can I think there's a valid answer as to why radiation that occurred.

tree where they were trying to start the fire. It looked like they tried to start fire, and maybe two areas at one point there was definitely broken branches on the trees where they were trying to snap branches down to make this fire. I'm not sure how much to believe that the tops of the trees had burnmark. So there isn't evidence for it, And I have to say I did speak to another gentleman who was a member of the search party team, and he both knew the

Diatlovt team very well. He was friends with them. He talked of a story of when he actually danced with Xena at a school dance and now he was you know, she was by many accounts as she was very admired by a lot of the guys, and he was like, I got to have a dancer there at a really

big moment so he knew the hike as well. He told me he was actually on a hike at the same time in a different part of the euro Mountains, so not close enough to be involved or near them, but pretty much on the night or around the nights of the events that took place with the Diatlovt team, he and his team saw basically massive lights firing through the sky, and he now them to be ballistic missile tests. There was a ballistic missile site some hundreds of klometers

away from there. He now knows that's what he was seeing and he believes that has something to do with it. But he was involved in the search team and he was telling his friends that, oh, we saw these rockets, we saw something in the sky. I think it must be that. I think it must be that. I think there's a little bit of sort of whispers going on about these burned tops of the trees. I certainly haven't seen physical documented of evidence of that.

what do people think why people landed where they did? Well?

because an avalanche could have explained crushing chest injuries. Why they would have panicked, cut the tent, got out, ran away. An avalanche could explain this. Now, everyone said initially that there was no sign of an avalanche, so it couldn't have happened now recently. And it's kind of a bugbear of mine is that just after my film came out, another team went out there to do a test, and

it was a Swedish team. They want to test this theory that maybe a small avalanche known as a slab avalanche could have slid down and just landed onto the tent. Now it's in part the way they may have cut out the base to lay the tent may have actually been cause for a slab avalanche to then fall on the tent. To put in some sort of visual context, a slab avalanche is closer to you know, when you see a house got loads of snow on it and someone knocks the roof and a big the whole roof

of snowfalls down. That's closer to what a slab avalanche is. It falls a few meters, slides onto the bit where they would cut out, and lands on that section. So it's nothing like these big mountainous avalanches that roll down the hill. This is like a slab a few meters slide dumps onto the area. So it's feasible. These team went out and they proved that a slab avalanche could have happened on this very shallow gradient where the tent

was parked, and they proved that. Okay, it turns out slab avalanches can happen very easily on small gradients, so that they then ran away with that, Well, we've now figured it out. It obviously must have been an avalanche, the slab avalanche. That's why the hikers the rescue teams didn't recognize it as an avalanche, because it was just

a small section that landed on the tent. The problem with that for me is that it's lots of problems, But the biggest problem is if that happened, the hikers would have known what it was and they wouldn't necessarily have then ran away from because it's not that huge, mountainous avalanche. It's just one slab sliding down, and so they would have recognized what that was quite quickly and realized, okay, we can make the best of this. But at leastly

scrab our boots and jackets. So it doesn't explain why they ran and left their stuff. It also doesn't explain why, really there was hardly any snow found on the tent. It was a dusting of windblown snow, not a huge slab. It wasn't buried, and even the front tent pole was still standing, so if the slab came down, it would have only covered half of the tenth at best. So again it doesn't explain why these experienced hikers would have

then ran away. And more importantly, and I come back to Rustam who was found halfway on the hill with an injury that he couldn't have walked from. And also the two hikers with the chest injuries. If a slab had fallen on them at this tent and crushed their chests, they didn't walk for an hour down the hill. So the slab avalanche to me is you know, you go to Google, it'll say the alapaster sold. No, I'm sorry

it isn't. They proved that this can happen in theory, but it doesn't explain the injuries.

actually a really unusual event. A lot of the search party teams, who were now discussing seeing lights in the sky and rocket launches and stuff like this, were now starting to point the blame back at the Soviet military. And that's still very much The Russians I spoke to still believe very much it was the Soviet military test gone wrong, and I can talk about that a bit more in a moment. But the pressure then was on

the lead investigator at the time. He spoke about this some years afterwards, he said, I was told closed this case down. We found all the hikers, now, doesn't matter what's happened to them, just closed the case down. Now Now people say that's evidence that the Russian military must have been involved. Opposite. I think the conversation was now talking about and remember we're in the middle of the

Cold War. The conversation is now talking about the location and position of where missiles are being fired in tests. They just didn't want that talked about. It may have had nothing to do with the Diatloff case. They just didn't want these conversations to grow and grow and grow, So they told the investigator close the case down now. And so the investigator closed the case with this now famous line, which is the title of my film. He said that the events that unfolded were from an unknown

compelling force. And the official verdict as to what killed the hikers for all nine of them, officially it was hypothermia.

for this. They the hikers would keep another diary journal, and in this journal they make like a fun newspaper, like a fake newspaper report, and they would do it to make say things like today it's found out that and one of their com one of their headline stories was today it has found out that the Russian Yeti lives and he's been seen. And I think they're joking around, because earlier on around this time, there was some photos taken of one of their one of the members of

the team. I think it was probably Ross dem Is, goofing around in snow and there's an outer focused picture that looks like this humanoid figure. It's clearly a guy just goofing around in the snow, and it's a bit blurry, and I think they must have been joking. Oh, he looks like a Yeti. So at the end of the night, they're having some banter in the tent, they're all having a laugh and they write up in this no, oh, and today we found out the Russian the yetti exists.

The people I spoke to who speak Russian read it. They could read the tone in this. This was a joke. They're having fun, they're goofing around. But unfortunately, you know, this gets interpreted the wrong way. That one picture people still want to believe isn't a human It clearly is. And so now some people say the Russian YETI did it, And clearly that comes from a document that they were writing for fun. So that was just a joke. So

I think we can move on from the YETI. Also, there's no injuries shaped like any sort of animal claw prints around them, so again which applies to bears, there's no sign of a bear attack. There's no claw marks any of the bodies. The clothes weren't torn in a way consistent with of an animal attack, so we can get rid of those ones. So now we come down to so did this rocket explode and did did this rocket the lights in the sky that people have been seeing,

did this fall on them? Did this, you know, injure them in some way. There was no evidence of any debris, any explosion, anything in the vicinity of the hikers, So there was no casings of a missile or anything. So nothing struck them. There was no you know, some people wanted to say the crushed chests could have been from this the impact force, but they would have found some evidence. And I remember a huge part of the search team are both military, but a huge part of them are

actually fellow student members. So these students weren't sticking to the script, and they were coming home and telling people what they saw and what they were thinking. So if someone had found a piece of ro then it would have gone out. There were no secrets. There was a huge group of people all talking about everything they saw. So yeah, there's no sign of rocket hit them. There's talk of an aerial weapon that caused a sonic or a kind of an explosion that caused the shock wave

but left no debris. I mean, we're in the realms of sci fi at this point. This doesn't exist and also doesn't explain they walked from their tent. They walked to another area. So okay, so we've kind of got through some of the big ones at that point. So I think the only evidence we have is to strongly look at the autopsy report and the types of injuries that were found on the hikers, because this explained something.

So I really looked into this, and that's why I wanted to speak to, you know, the retired coroner from California spoke to a retired FBI agent, a gentleman called Mick Fennerty who's famous for being involved with a number of interesting cases, including a big part of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case. He was very involved and instrumental in

that case. I got to speak to him, and you know, they got to look at the case reports, and certainly the coroner, chap Ken Holmes, really reviewed the autopsy report and he states and clearly states in my film, he says he cannot see a version of any of this predominantly based on the types of injuries and the spacing of where they were all found that other people were not involved in this. So basically feels that other people

were involved in this. So if we look at the first four that were found had injuries consistent with punching, defensive wounds on the forearms from parrying blows, strikes to the face, the lips and the eyes that had been struck. That was very consistent with physical violence of fight. The two gentlemen that were found by the cedar tree the

burns around their body. I don't go into this in the in the film because I don't have solid evidence for this, but there is a Russian the most senior Russian coroner, a forensic scientist who's been on Russian TV and talked about this a lot. He openly has said he believes those injuries to have been torture burns. He believes they were they were inflicted by other people. I was unable to get that interview, so I'm only taking that off of what I've seen on my research. So

I didn't put that in the film. But so all of a sudden, we've got this idea of Okay, we're other people doing this to them. Did other people jump on? And I asked Ken the coroner here, was it possible that those rib for actions could have been done if someone had jumped on, like jumping and hamping on their chests. He said, it's not impossible. He said, it's not impossible. That he goes, it would have to be a hefty person, they'd really want to do that. But it's kind of

it's a difficult one. I'm not one hundred percent saying that is exactly what's happened, but it's not impossible. And then if we listened to the Russian forensic expert, she strongly believes that the girl Ludiumlia's tongue was cut out. Again, that stuff for debate, but you know, that's another piece of information so were other people involved in attacking them? And if so, where's the evidence for other people being there? And I think this is one of the strongest argument.

But you know, I said earlier, we saw the footprints of the eight or nine hikers walking down the hill. Where was the footprints of the other hikers or the attackers, if there were any, Well, if they were on snow skis, which would they would have been, they wouldn't have left any traces. The own search parties skis were gone the very next day. They had trouble finding their own tracks

at times because overnight all your ski lines would blow over. Now, there is no evidence of any of the hikers' footprints outside of the tent or by the cedar tree. So if there was any violence that happened at or near the ten or more likely near the cedar tree, there's no evidence of who was there. There could have been the nine people we know of, there could have been another ten we don't know, or another one or another two.

So there's no evidence of that. We have no idea who could have been there, But it is very possible that one or two attackers could have forced the hikers from the tent at gunpoint and ordered them to march down the hill without leaving any trace that they were there. We would have seen the hikers prince small area. That would explain why the hikers both left all of their boots and clothing but also managed to walk down the hill in a kind of an orderly fashion. Those two

things are kind of panic and not panic. That would explain that if they were ordered to march down the hill together and then did an attack, I mean, then it's kind of conjecture. You know, why would they doing this and for what reason? We don't know. I have no evidence for that. Could it be they wanted to just scare these kids for a reason. So so again, now at this point, I've got to step back, why

would someone want to do this? Now? Again, fully I don't go into this too much in the film, so I don't want to, you know, make make this stuff up.

We don't know, We don't have evidence for this, but there was talk that the mountain that they're on, mountain called Colin Shackle translate as the Dead Mountain in their in the local Mancy dialect local language, and they there is some evidence that partially this hill, but particularly the mountain they were aiming for Mount or Tartan is a very respected and revered place for the locals, and in

many of these cases they don't want outsiders. They don't want Russians going there, but particularly they have some strong rules not to let women in these in these very respected and revered locations, it's a very big element. Now I will tell you a story that, again it isn't in the film, but did happen. This is a very documented case and it's written in a number of factual areas that some Russian some Russians were moving into an area of Khanti people, so I've mentioned Manti and Khanti people.

They were moving into an area of Kanti people, in particularly a lake that's very revered by the local people. This happened about twenty years prior to the Diatlot incident. They said, whatever you do, you can't let the women out on the lake. It's forbidden. It's important to our culture. The Russians ignored this, and they let women go out on the lake to fish with the guys, and they were just fishing on the lake and doing whatever they

wanted to do. The county was so upset by this they attacked the Russians and actually strangled a number of these Russians by dragging them with a rope around their neck by reindeer. So this conflict of Russians stepping on these traditional, very religious sacred places for the local indigenous people, there is somewhat of a precedent for that. So that's

a documented case. I don't mention the film, but because I'm cautious here, I don't want to say that, you know, it's a story of mancy or Canty people against the Russians. I don't want to say that, right. But is it possible in any culture that one or two or three individuals can harbor ill meaning? And is it possible that some people can carry this not the whole group of people, but just a small number of them could feel angered by what this group were doing. That is possible, and

it's something to be looked at. And so as I go through the case files, this is something that you kind of have to take a little bit of time with. But when you go through the case files, the conflicting evidence of the local Manti people who were involved in searching, they change their story and conflict and their stories change every time they're interviewed, So it's very confusing. That's not to say they did it. Let's be honest. They're fearful of the Russians, so would they lie to make things

sound better for them as a group of people. Absolutely, So I don't think that's evidence that they did something wrong. But it is also unusual that there's definitely conflicting evidence they're lying about who's in the area. The hikers themselves, in their own diaries said they were following a Mansi trail at that time, and they've very recently seen Manti ski trails at that time in a tree lined area

where the ski line would have remained. But the local Anti people when they were then interview said, oh, no, we never go near there. We never do any of this. We're never in this area. And then to conflict to that, a Manci hut that they used for storing supplies was found only one kilometer away from the incident site. So Indigenous people were in the area and they tried to say they weren't in the area. Now, is that just purely being defensive? Very well, could be, but it does

mean some Manti people were in the area. Now. There is one other really interesting in case file that are a police officer father report saying he spoke to a local person, a Mansi person, who said, there are five county people somewhere living remotely in this area, very near to this site. They're not known to the Mansi and they're not really part of the bigger Kunti community. They're

kind of outsiders and they're in the area. We've seen them, but they're nomadic and we don't know exactly where they are. When the investigators went back to that guy to ask him, can you give us more information about what you told us, he said, I never said that. No, I never said that. So so many conflicting reports as to who is in the area. But I come back to the evidence that we have, which is the injuries to the bodies, the

signs of violence. One piece of information I forgot to mention was again the Russian frantic expert, when she reviewed the autopsy reports, he said that there were marks around Eagle d'atlov's wrists and ankles that were consistent with tying ligature marks. That and she said there were scrapes around there, so at one point it looks like he may have been tied. So yeah, there's a lot of evidence for violence and not a lot of evidence for anything else.

that we have that in our culture. So I'm not talking about a group of people. I'm talking about individuals that may happen to have lived in this area, right, And so in terms of the hill that they were on, Shackle, it wasn't specifically a religious site, that's true, So that's where that area came from. It wasn't a particularly religious or sacred hill or mountain, but they were aiming from mount or top ten, which is a very religious and sacred place to the Mansi people and the county people.

So they were aiming. So the site they were on wasn't but they were going to one.

people who were in the ravine. Was Sasha in the ravine?

as bad. But yeah, again, they all of them across the board had well I say that, actually we couldn't tell about defensive and kind of like knuckle and facial injuries on those ones because they'd been in the ravine and so we don't know a lot of their facial tissue had gone basically, so we couldn't figure that out.

part of the problem. No, there's no evidence that he was a part of the problem. And if anything, he was found in the ravine with the worst injuries out of most of them. So yeah, there's no sign that he caused the problem between the group. There's theories and talk that maybe he and Igor Ego dall Love was the leader of the group at twenty three years old. There was some theories that maybe there was friction between who was making the right choices and deciding on the

right change of roots, stuff like that. There's a little bit in the diaries that hinted that might have been getting on each other's nerves a little bit maybe, But that doesn't explain how nine people all suffer wild injuries. They didn't divide up into two teams and beat each other to death. That doesn't make any sense.

some way. And so, yeah, there was a theory that maybe Ego the outlaw had taken a different route, or maybe it seems they set off late in the day that they were going up the hill. They don't know exactly why they left later than they should have in the day. And you know, there's some people to try and say, Okay, Ego makes made a mistake. He should have waited another day in this bad weather conditions, rather than starting halfway through the day and only getting halfway

up the hill. So, you know, we can look back at any decision like that and decide whether or not it was a good choice or a poor choice. But I don't think that's the result of and even if even if it was a mistake, even if it caused the conflict between he and Sasha, still doesn't explain the wild amount of injuries that then followed.

the Soviet Union. They grew up and lived through this government power that will force anything on you and do anything they want to you. And so there was a real sense of paranoia about what the Soviet Union was capable of and was willing to do. And so it made no sense to them to not be the Russian military that they were blamed for many horrendous things that

they felt it must be. But to my mind, it's a really complicated, weird story for the Russian military or government to want to do this, because if they did it, And I go back to one of the interviewees, a lady called Svetlana Os who wrote a wonderful book on this called Don't Go There, and she is Russian and she now lives in the US, and she says, look, hey, we have a saying in Russia, and it is if

there's no body, there's no evidence. And her feeling was, if the Russian government had wanted to do this, we never would have seen any of those hikers ever again.

whole thing. If if the Russian government really did this and then wanted it to go away, they wouldn't bring in civilians to help find them and find any potentially evidence that pointed towards them. And also it was sloppy, you know, it's sloppy. People were found all over the place. It's it doesn't make a lot of sense that and for what reason? What could they have possibly have seen that in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. This other hiking group also saw these lights in the sky

and realized their oblistic missiles. They weren't attacked, they weren't told not to talk about it. Actually, I think they probably weren told not to talk too much about it, but they did. And so yeah, there's no there's no real reason for Russian military to be there or for them to have been involved in it. And that's my problem.

So I do believe people were involved in this. I do believe that it was a physical attack on them that leaves us with people that may have lived in the area, or the Russian military, And for my money, I can't see any evidence whatsoever that the Russian military would do it in this way.

I mean, there were military small battles with indigenous peoples as the Russians moved further and further north, and so they didn't want to inflame that anymore by saying they did it, You know, that would things were beginning to calm down. The indigenous peoples knew there's not too much they can do with it. There's kind of treaties to some degree of you kind of leave us alone, will leave you alone. So I don't think the Russians would have wanted to inflame that anymore.

from the beginning. And then within months there was a something of a scandal as far as I can tell, that people involved in making that report were linked to I don't want to say too much, but essentially that report was then thrown out. So they spent a couple of years making this report and within a year they threw it out. Well, so the official report still is as it was in nineteen fifty nine. The hikers died

as they died from hypothermia. All of the hikers died from hypothermia from an unknown compelling force.

about it, and I'm like, this is crazy. These aren't facts. People re telling the same stories over and over. These aren't facts. And you know the fact that people were trying to say the YETI did it was actually one of the drivers that drove me so crazy. That I wanted to go and find some real evidence of this.

And you know, I haven't solved the case. I don't know who did it, but I feel that I have disproved a lot of the things that I can speak well to why I don't believe Avalanche explains this, and I believe that other people were involved, and I still hold that belief today, and people are still out there trying to come up with their crazy theories. But I say, you know, unless you do an investigation, these aren't facts.

behind it. It's spreading this stuff as if these are not real people who didn't have families, And to me, it just shows if you're willing to speculate about this case, you're willing to speculate about a case where the mother has lost her daughter and she has to hear this stuff. So for me, I really think about that kind of case and think it's important to get information, not even necessarily to solve it, but to just gain more information,

but in the most ethical way, not by speculating. And I like that you stopped short of too much speculation because it's not based on evidence that you found. And that's what good journalism is, I think, in good filmmaking.

the mockumentary route of the Russian yetti attack these hikers, and I thought that was so disrespectful, Yeah, to the hikers' families, the people that knew them, the friends, and it really made me angry, and it made me think we need to just we need to know some facts. And I don't know, I was sat at home and thought, Okay, who's going to go out there and find these facts? And at that point in time, I had the opportunity, I had the cameras, and I just jumped on it.

with whatever you're putting out? I would guess you are. I would guess most other people wouldn't be right.

must be terrible. The reason why I chose to put them in is they are everywhere all over the internet. They're on every YouTube video, they're on They're widely available. You can find them everywhere, and they're important to my telling of the story, which is the only evidence we have is the injuries to the bodies. It's the only thing we really know, and so I use them to tell that story. But I was very uncomfortable when the film came out. I was really expecting some horrible backlash

from using those pitches in that way. Unfortunately it didn't happen, but I'm sure it can't be pleasant for anyone who work close to the hikers, And you know, I felt like it needed to be told that way, but it was still a difficult decision.

But when you have it happened to all nine people and there in different locations, there has to be this one explanation. So it's sort of a unique, a unique you know, experiment trying to figure out what happened. So you've done remarkable work, and I'm very proud of you for having all of this, because you know, this case has just confounded people for you know, seventy years or so. So I apology you for everything you've done on this.

episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold More. And if you know of a historical crime that could use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at info at tenfoldmorewicked dot com. We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words