Swiss police have identified two bodies on an Alpine glacier as those of a couple that has been missing since August 15, 1942, according to the Associated Press.
Forensic experts used DNA analysis to identify Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin, who were 40 and 37, respectively, when they disappeared almost 75 years ago.
Their daughter Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, who is now 79, told the Swiss newspaper Le Matin that her parents had gone to feed their cattle and never came back. She and her six siblings had spent their lives "looking for them, without stopping" and this recent discovery, she said, has given her "a deep sense of calm."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
"For the funeral, I won't wear black," Udry-Dumoulin told Le Matin. "I think that white would be more appropriate. It represents hope, which I never lost."
The bodies were found on the Tsanfleuron glacier at 8,580 feet above sea level. Regional police have noted that because of climate change, people's bodies that have been missing for decades are regularly found in dwindling glaciers, according to the AP.
In the photo below, which was released by Glacier 3000, a Swiss cable-car and ski-lift operator, you can see the couple's remains. "The bodies were lying near each other. It was a man and a woman wearing clothing dating from the period of World War 2," Bernhard Tschannen, director of Glacier 3000, told local news outlets, according to Reuters. "They were perfectly preserved in the glacier and their belongings were intact."