A man whose girlfriend froze to death on Austria’s highest mountain has been found guilty of gross negligent manslaughter.
Austrian climber Thomas Plamberger, 37, was handed a five-month suspended sentence and fined €9,600 ($11,321) after abandoning his girlfriend, Kerstin Gurtner, 33, during their climb to the 12,460-foot summit of the Großglockner peak in January 2025.
Plamberger, who had denied criminal wrongdoing, left his girlfriend after she collapsed from exhaustion 160 feet from the mountaintop, where she later died from hypothermia.
According to prosecutors, Plamberger was the de facto guide and made a series of mistakes, allegedly putting his phone on silent after contacting rescue services, refusing to turn back despite the weather, bringing insufficient equipment, and poorly planning.
“I am infinitely sorry for what happened,” Plamberger said during the trial, adding that he loved Gurtner, The New York Times reported.
The climber testified that the couple had decided he would descend the mountain to get help, saying he “secured her to the rock with a rope and then climbed down.”
Gurtner died from extreme cold in the hours her boyfriend was gone and was found dead by rescuers the following morning.
“I don’t see you as a murderer, I don’t see you as cold-hearted,” Judge Norbert Hofer, himself an experienced climber, told Plamberger during the trial, noting that Gurtner was far less experienced at climbing than Plamberger and that he should have decided to turn back.
Judge Hofer decided that Plamberger did not leave his girlfriend behind “wilfully,” and the court told the BBC in a statement that his previous clean record and the loss of a person close to him were “mitigating factors” in the sentencing, as Plamberger faced three years in prison for the conviction but received a less harsh sentence.
“If you had acted differently, I strongly assume that your partner would have survived,” Judge Hofer told Plamberger, who apologized for his fatal mistake.
During the trial, Plamberger’s ex-girlfriend, Andrea Bergener, described that she had also been left alone by him on the same mountain in 2023.
“I felt dizzy, I screamed, and I was completely alone. From then on, we didn’t go on any more hikes together,” Bergener said during the trial, according to The New York Times.
The case has been widely debated on social media, with Gurtner’s mother, Gertraud, telling the German newspaper Die Zel that the “witch hunt” against her deceased daughter’s boyfriend was “unfair.”
“The two of them always made their decisions together,” Gurtner’s mother said, adding that “Many people who blame Kerstin’s boyfriend have never been in such a situation.”
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