The mountaineer who left his girlfriend to die in freezing temperatures while climbing a mountain in Austria has been convicted of negligent manslaughter.
Thomas Plamberger was found guilty Thursday of leaving his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, on the top of Austria’s highest peak, Grossglockner, in January 2025, the New York Post reported on Friday, noting she died of hypothermia.
He was given a five-month suspended sentence and an over $11,000 fine in the case.
An image shows the pair climbing together:
After descending the mountain, Plamberger claimed she asked him to leave to find help. Judge Norbert Hofer said the man did not willfully abandon her, and also noted she was not as experienced a climber as him as well as saying she was not adequately prepared.
“Plamberger failed to take his ‘leadership responsibility,’ the judge said, noting that Gutner would have survived ‘if the appropriate measures had been taken, such as turning back or placing an emergency call for help earlier,’” the outlet said.
Plamberger is also alleged to have abandoned a previous girlfriend on a mountain range but he has denied those allegations against him, GB News reported Friday. That woman survived and testified in court, according to People.
“The court was told that in January last year that Plamberger had ignored a rescue helicopter that circled overhead, and left Ms. Gurtner exposed to high winds and temperatures so low that the tea had frozen in the couple’s thermos,” the GB News article said, adding, “The pair got into severe difficulty after darkness fell during the final stage of their climb on January 18, where Ms. Gurtner slipped and fell, injuring her hand and hip — but the couple pressed on until she collapsed some 50 metres short of the summit.”
A time-lapsed video showed from a distance what appeared to be the couple scaling the mountain.
After Plamberger left to find help and a mountain rescue crew found Gurtner, she was dead. The results of a medical examination said at the time she had a viral infection.
Her mother said she was a strong-willed person who “knew exactly what she was getting into” before the climb.
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