Nightmare at 21,000 Feet

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As you hike up the glacial field, you spot something in the ice.

It's dark brown and black.

Definitely some kind of man-made object.

Perhaps a piece of climbing equipment from a past expedition.

You take out your ice axe and start chipping it free.

Soon, you can make out what exactly it is.

An old 35mm camera.

The lens is cracked, but the camera body is intact.

The film insign might still be salvageable.

Something else in the ice catches your eye.

Something vividly red.

You gasp as the realization hits you.

It's a human arm sawed off at the shoulder.

The body it was once attached to is nowhere to be found.

As you recover from the shock, questions begin to flood your mind.

What exactly happened here?

Who did this arm belong to?

And might the film inside this camera hold the answers?

It's Friday, January 12th, 1973.

John Cooper feels the change in pressure as his plane begins to descend to Argentina.

He flexes his toes inside his new hiking boots.

He had been wearing them around the office all week to break them in.

A 35-year-old NASA engineer, he's ready for anything.

He had helped guide the first two men to the moon.

Less than a month ago, he was at mission control to guide Apollo 17 to a safe landing.

But no, he'll be attempting a different sort of expedition.

to mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas.

In some ways, it would be just as ambitious an undertaking.

According to the man organizing the trip, the route they're taking is a challenging one, winding up the southwest side of the mountain across a field of ice.

They would only be the fifth group to reach the peak by this trail, which was named the Polish Glacier Route, in honor of the first group to make the climb in 1934.

John Cooper looks over at a woman sitting nearby.

She's another member of their expedition, a teacher from Denver, the last person added to the 10-person Icon crew.

She's looking out the airplane window, not paying him any mind.

Janet Johnson is 36 years old, with a tanned face, short hair, and glasses.

Though he's known her for less than a day, he finds himself uncomfortable in her presence.

She's curt, prickly, even.

Every attempt to make conversation has been met with indifference.

Cooper still tries to be friendly, though.

After all, they're going to be attempting to climb over 20,000 feet together.

They might as well get along.

The two of them step off their plane and head for the hotel.

There, they meet the other men who will be joining them.

For some reason, their arrival seems to have drawn some attention from the local press.

A reporter is waiting for them and interviews every one of the Americans, even as they're trying to relax by the pool.

While one of the other men is speaking to the reporter, something catches Cooper's eye.

He looks up to see Johnson standing.

She strips out of her clothes, leaving only her blouse, bra, and underwear.

Then she jumps into the pool, not caring one bit about how many people are there.

Cooper shakes his head, utterly puzzled.

She's acting like a party animal.

But once in the water, she's just as much of a loner as before, keeping to herself.

He turns to the expedition leader.

He wants to know what this woman's deal is.

She's been almost as distant and cold as the mountain they're going to be climbing.

The other man offers only a shrug.

He just says that she comes highly recommended.

She's climbed Kilimanjaro, Mount Fuji, and each of the tallest mountains in the U.S.

She won't drag them down.

he insists.

Cooper asks if she has a husband or kids.

Again, the expedition leader shrugs.

He didn't ask.

And obviously, Janet didn't volunteer any personal details that were relevant to the hike.

Cooper takes this in.

His wife is home with their four-year-old.

Try as he might, he just can't imagine that there's someone back home for this woman.

Perhaps a lifelong love for mountain climbing is why she acts so remote.

Janet sure is weird, he writes in his diary.

A camera snaps not not far away from Cooper.

Standing beside it, Rafael Moran watches the Americans with interest.

A reporter for Los Andes, a local newspaper, he's intrigued by this party.

Expeditions to the Andes aren't always newsworthy, but very few of them have a NASA scientist and a woman with them.

And this group is trying to take the harder Polish glacier route?

One way or another, there's a story here.

He can already tell something is off about this band of Americans.

Most hiking groups he's seen come through the area all spend time together, familial and close-knit.

This group seems disparate, like they already don't trust each other, especially the astronaut and the teacher, neither of whom have hiked with this group before.

He whispers a quick statement to his photographer: Take each of their photos today.

I don't think they're all coming back.

Tuesday, January 23rd.

Veteran mountain guide Miguel Alfonso surveys the camp they've made on the slope.

He's no stranger to Akon Cagua.

He's been to its summit five times on multiple routes, including this Polish glacier route.

Using a team of mules, they had brought enough equipment to base camp.

From there, they'd continue on foot, making camps along the way.

The hike up Akon Cagua requires a ton of heavy lifting, bringing camping supplies, food, clothing between the various camps.

This is not a camping trip where one can carry everything they need on their back.

They've made progress up the mountain, establishing the base camp at 14,000 feet, camp 1 at 15,500 feet, and camp 2 at 18,000 feet.

They spend that evening at campsite 1.

recovering from the grueling seven-hour trek to carry gear between camps one and two.

The air is thin, and for many of the Americans, exhaustion hits fast.

John Cooper had barely been able to make a couple trips before collapsing into his tent.

One of the other men, a police officer from Oregon, had managed to haul 80 pounds on his first go before doubling back to pick up their first supply of water.

Even Alfonso can tell that the men are not happy about Janet Johnson's contribution.

She's carrying less weight than any of them and often wandering off to take pictures instead of helping.

By now, they've been on the mountain for four days and already two of their party are sick.

The doctor and a student who was serving as a translator for their guide.

The expedition leader is also not feeling well.

He says he plans to stay at Camp One to allow himself time to recover.

The others can forge on ahead.

Alfonso will show them the way.

Alfonso agrees to this plan, but privately, he's growing concerned.

Some of the most experienced hikers in this group haven't made it a third of the way up the route.

Camp 2 is 2,500 feet up the mountain from them, and their planned camp 3 will be at 20,000 feet, just 2,000 feet short of the peak itself.

Even so, Alfonso is a capable guide, and he's confident that he can get them there.

But without a translator, there's only so much he can do to save the Americans from themselves.

In the morning, Alfonso wakes up the group and starts to gather the Americans who are still physically able and willing to go on.

As he suspected, Of the eight Americans, five are ready to set out for Campsite 2.

Prioritizing safety, Alfonso attaches belay lines to the the Americans in groups of three.

He's attached to Janet Johnson and Jim Petrosk, a psychiatrist and deputy leader of the team.

The lines, hopefully, will keep anyone from wandering off or taking any bad falls.

Alfonso and the five Americans leave Camp 1 and begin their seven-hour journey towards Camp 2.

Enormous, jagged pillars of ice block their paths, making even the simple act of walking difficult.

The altitude affects affects them all.

The thin air makes breathing difficult and increases their heart rates, even during minor exertion.

Alfonso notes that Cooper is stumbling quite often, his face red with exertion.

But even so, the astronaut is either stubborn enough or too determined to turn back.

By the time they make it to Camp 2, Alfonso doesn't know how much the Americans have left in them.

There's only so much he can learn from body language, given that they left their translator behind and that none of these five Americans speak much Spanish.

The next day, things take a turn for the worst.

Petrosk seems disoriented, clumsy.

His face is pale and he struggles in the morning to attach crampins to his boots.

Then, before they've traveled far, He causes a scare by untying himself from Alfonso and Johnson.

It seems that he has no idea what he's doing.

Alfonso exchanges a wary look with the other climbers.

This sort of disorientation can be an early sign of pulmonary edema, a potentially fatal swelling of the brain, and high altitudes.

Alfonso knows that someone needs to take Petrosk back to a lower altitude.

In the state he's in, Petrosk absolutely can't go alone.

None of the other Americans seem eager to miss their chance at making the summit.

So Alfonso decides that he'll accompany the delirious man himself.

The four other Americans are still perfectly capable of still going, he assures himself.

And if something else goes wrong, they have a flare gun to signal for help.

But even as he descends with Petrosk, Alfonso's worried.

This expedition has not gone as planned.

The original group is splintered and scattered across multiple camps.

He hopes that the four Americans still standing won't take any unnecessary risks as they try for the summit.

By the time Alfonso and Petrosk reach Camp 1, they find it deserted.

The others must have already descended to base camp.

This means that the sick Americans have thrown in the towel by retreating back to base camp and have made the decision to not even attempt the summit.

Alfonso jerks his head downhill, signaling to Petrosk that they too must go to base camp.

Petrosk nods back sadly, understanding that this means that neither of them, Alfonso nor Petrosk, will reach the summit.

Casting one last glance upward towards the pink, Alfonso leads Petrosk onward, further down the mountain.

Whatever is happening up there near the summit, those four Americans are now completely on their own.

Hours later, Alfonso and Petrosk reach base camp, reuniting with the three sick Americans.

One of Alfonso's assistants has set up a pair of binoculars pointed up the mountain.

Alfonso takes a look for himself, and sure enough, through the binoculars, he can see the four Americans making their way up the mountainside.

Relief sweeps over him, and he sits down to rest alongside the others.

The mood in base camp is generally positive, and the sick Americans chatter lightheartedly about how jealous they are of their companions for making it so far.

They hunker down and wait for the others to return.

Some days later, Alfonso's assistant calls him over to the binoculars.

Something's wrong on the mountainside.

Alfonso takes a look.

Instead of four shapes on the mountain, He sees three.

Alfonso is troubled by this.

He wonders, did Cooper finally turn back?

The moon at base camp plummets as the Americans grow concerned.

On Monday, January 29th, Alfonso and one of the Americans agree that they have to go back up the mountain and help the others.

The four Americans at the summit should have come down by now.

And so, packing light, the duo heads up the mountain.

and all the way keep their eyes peeled for their companions.

It's not like the previous day's sustained march.

They're moving fast, urgent, muscles burning from exertion.

When they reach the Polish glacier, just beyond Camp Two, Alfonso squints.

There are shapes appearing from the blinding white of the ice.

It's the other Americans, but something's not right.

The group of four that turned into a group of three has now become a group of two.

They have lost both John Cooper and Janet Johnson on the mountain.

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January 30th, 1973.

Argentine police hold the hikers for questioning.

in the nearby town of Mendoza.

By this point, the two missing Americans are presumed dead, though neither body has been recovered just yet.

The investigator is Ramon Cortez, deputy chief of the local police.

Cortez enters the room where the mountaineers are being held.

Officially, this is a manslaughter investigation, though it's like no case Cortez has ever handled before.

The hiking group is in a sorry state.

Miguel Alfonso is now suffering from snowblindness in one eye, which is covered by a medical patch.

Once he's taken Alfonso's statement, Cortez turns to the two Americans, the last ones to see John Cooper and Janon Johnson alive.

Their names are Bill Zeller and Arnold McMillan.

Both men are from Oregon.

Zeller is a cop, Macmillan, a dairy farmer.

Macmillan has a black eye, and his gaze shows a faraway look.

He's still recovering from the intense hike.

Zeller has a strip of blackened flesh running along his forehead.

Hyperpigmentation caused by exposure.

Macmillan and Zeller pick up from where Alfonso left the group.

Friday, January 26th.

At this point, there are four of them.

Macmillan, Zeller, Johnson, and Cooper.

Cooper's miserable and Johnson aloof.

But all of them remain determined to reach the summit.

They leave behind most of their gear at Camp 3 and slowly make their way up the Polish glacier.

In spite of the ice, the sun beats down on them harshly.

They've fixed dark glasses over their eyes to shield against snowblindness.

It's a desperate push and it runs out of steam fast.

By that evening, they've given up hope of reaching the summit before nightfall.

Even less than 2,000 feet from their destination, They're growing weak, struggling to breathe in the thin air.

They make a hasty camp at 21,000 feet, digging into the glacier with their ice axes.

They lay down space blankets to try and rest for the night.

Johnson and Zeller, however, find the space to be too tight for comfort, and so they move outside, braving the cold instead of attempting to sleep like sardines.

That night, wind blows the snow down on them from the peak.

A wave of it crashes down onto John Cooper, burying his legs in snow.

Johnson gets to work digging him out.

By the time she gets him free, though, he's absolutely fed up.

This was the final straw.

He's heading down right now.

Macmillan, Ziller, and Johnson let Cooper go before turning back toward the peak.

Determined, they continue hiking up the glacier.

eventually reaching the very top of the enormous shelf of ice.

It's a relief to finally get there, past the treacherous frozen slopes that had required careful footing ever since they left Camp II.

From here, they take pictures and soak in the beautiful scenery.

They can see the wide sweep of the Andes mountain range as the sun sets, sending gold sparkles off the icy peaks.

All that's left after the Polish glacier is a ridge that leads directly to the peak.

But by this point, they're facing another problem entirely: Snow, waist deep and thickly packed.

Macmillan and Zeller forge forward, even as the sky darkens into dusk.

Zeller leads the way, breaking up the snow and clearing the way for the others.

When Zeller becomes exhausted, Macmillan picks up where he left off, breaking the trail for another 25 steps.

They're so intent on their progress that they can focus on little else.

Looking Looking up, Macmillan can see the summit.

It's still far away, but it's clear against the night sky.

A dark, jagged shape.

Macmillan turns back to offer encouragement, only to realize that something is very wrong.

Where's Johnson?

Zeller and Macmillan cast their lights in every direction.

They hope that she's only fallen a few paces behind, but all they see is snow.

Abandoning their trailbreaking efforts, the two men call out into the darkness.

Surely, Janet can't have gone too far.

She would have left a trail after all.

Something.

The men turn back and retrace their trail in the downhill direction.

Macmillan finds her ice axe in the snow and renews his efforts, shouting at the top of his lungs.

Finally, they hear a reply.

A weak voice floats to them through the wind.

My name's Janet Johnson, it says.

They scramble through the deep snow towards it.

About 100 feet off the trail, Johnson lies prone in the snow.

All fight seems to have gone from the hard-headed schoolteacher, who speaks faintly when they approach.

She pleads with them not to make her suffer.

They should just leave her here to die.

Zeller and Macmillan reassess their priorities.

There's no making it to the summit now.

Not with Johnson in this state.

They have to get back to camp.

Ziller takes Johnson by the arm and hoists her to her feet.

They start heading back down the mountain, making for the small cave they'd carved out of the glacier the day before.

Macmillan realizes that he's outpaced the other two.

And so, rather than forge blindly ahead in the dark, he bundles up and waits for the sun to rise.

Mercifully, the other two haven't wandered far, and he's able to reunite with them and find the ice cave by 7 a.m.

In the cave, there's a small cache of supplies that Cooper has left for them, including a flare gun.

Macmillan picks up the gun and shoots it into the air.

The loud crack of the gun echoes off the surrounding banks.

And then again, all is quiet.

Macmillan directs his attention to Johnson.

She isn't looking good.

Her hands are swollen, skin black from exposure and frostbite.

She can hardly stand up by herself.

And so, the two men decide that Macmillan should go on and get help following Cooper's trail.

Leaving Zeller and Johnson in the ice cave, Macmillan starts to make his way down the side of the Polish glacier.

Though the sun is up once again, the route is still treacherous.

Macmillan needs to use both of his crampons and ice axe to make a cautious descent.

Step by careful step, he descends, occasionally sticking his axe into the side of the glacier to give him an extra foothold.

As he's descending, he swings his axe into the ice, puts his weight onto it before the axe comes free.

The tool slips from his grip and falls.

His arms pinwheel trying to regain his balance, but it's too late.

He falls, sliding on sheer ice headfirst.

1,000 feet later, he comes to a halt on the side of the mountain, heart pounding in fear, a black eye forming on his face.

And then he hears the sound of voices.

It's the rescue party.

Looking up, he can see them, a series of figures near their third campsite, Argentinian soldiers.

The closest one to him has fallen in the snow and doesn't seem to be moving.

But he's too overjoyed to think about it now.

And so he surges forward, rushing down towards campsite 3.

When he reaches the campsite, though, it's deserted.

There is no rescue party, no Argentine soldiers.

All of it was nothing but a hallucination.

Rescue isn't coming anytime soon.

Like Arnold Macmillan ahead of him, Bill Zeller struggling to distinguish reality from hallucination.

As he helps Janet out of the ice cave and down the mountain, he sees construction tracks that aren't there.

He hears voices of a rescue party just like Macmillan.

His coordination is getting increasingly worse.

Bill Zeller and Janet Johnson fall down the mountain themselves, though not as far as Macmillan.

Their snow goggles shatter on the way down.

cutting their faces but otherwise doing little damage.

What's more concerning is that the fall has severed the tether, keeping them together.

Even still, Zeller can see hope.

There's tents not that far down, maybe less than a thousand feet from their position.

Straining, he gets to his feet and goes over to Johnson, who's fallen not far behind him.

However, he stops before he can reach her.

There's a bright patch of blue in between them.

a winter jacket.

He crouches down to examine it and realizes that it's not just a jacket, it's a body.

John Cooper never made it to Camp 3.

Zeller, a policeman who's used to looking at bodies, examines the corpse.

Cooper is frozen, almost sullen.

However, there are no apparent external injuries.

He must have died from exhaustion and hypothermia.

Grimly, Zeller rises and goes over to Janet.

He asks if she's okay, and she nods, beginning to rise to a sitting position.

Zeller says that he'll go ahead and make camp.

She nods shakily, agreeing that she'll catch up once she's ready.

And so, Zeller goes to camp three, where he collapses in one of the tents from exhaustion.

Sometime later, he wakes up, but there's no sign of Johnson anywhere.

Deputy Chief Cortez listens intently, taking notes as the two Americans talk.

These were the last ones to see John Cooper and Janet Johnson alive, and their stories are rife with inconsistencies.

This is unsurprising.

Both men were suffering from altitude sickness, fatigued and hallucinating.

But the differences in their stories are telling.

Macmillan claimed that he went ahead of Zeller and Johnson as early as Saturday.

while Zeller spoke of the group as if they were all together until they split up on Sunday morning.

Zeller and Macmillan also disagree on how carefully they looked after Johnson, as Macmillan described the rescue as Zeller helping Johnson by hand, while Zeller firmly claimed that he roped himself to Johnson securely.

While the police question the Americans, calls have gone out to their families.

It's impossible to keep this story quiet, and the press have a field day.

Speculation of foul play, even murder, runs rampant, all aided by the fact that neither body has reappeared to confirm or disprove any theories.

Cortez lets the men go in early February.

The Americans return to their hotel to be questioned by the American consul.

Cortez, meanwhile, turns to the statements he has.

There isn't sufficient evidence to prove any allegations of manslaughter.

But the inconsistencies of the story linger with the investigator for some time.

After all, human beings behave very differently on the mountains than in civilization.

And when deprived of society and pushed to their physical limits, men can become little more than beasts.

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The expedition's guide, Miguel Alfonso, would return to the Andes the following season, December of 1973.

He feels a duty to help recover the bodies of Cooper and Johnson, should that even be possible.

The group had hired him to get them up and down the mountain.

And though Alfonso doesn't feel responsible for their deaths, he is plagued by the feeling that his task is unfinished.

Alfonso's leading a four-man team, which is joined at the last minute by a National Geographic reporter who heard about the expedition.

They drag two plastic toboggins behind them, which they intend to use to transport the bodies back down the mountains.

It takes them a week to reach the foot of the Polish glacier.

The remains of torn tents and sleeping bags of Camp Tomb greet them eerily.

They find Cooper's body, still frozen.

It takes some effort to tie him to the first toboggan.

He's too tall, and they're trying to damage the body as little as possible for the autopsy.

The NAD Geo reporter eagerly writes notes about the state of the body as the others load it onto the sled.

Cooper is missing one of his crampons and his ice axe.

His face is battered, wearing an expression of frozen terror.

And as the body thaws out at the lower altitudes, more gruesome details begin to surface.

There's a wound in Cooper's chest, a cylindrical hole, still bloody.

Alfonso stares at it, considering, and thereafter, the reporter asks him, How would this wound have happened?

Alfonso has no idea.

He's not a forensic analyst, but he suggests that maybe Cooper fell on his own ice axe.

But even he doesn't find the suggestion convincing.

An ice axe wouldn't have made that shape of an injury, he's fairly certain.

With any luck, the autopsy will be able to tell them more.

They keep dragging the body downhill, all while keeping an eye out for Johnson.

No one sees her.

The reporter proposes that in the dark, she must have fallen into a gorge or off a sheer cliff.

And from the stories Zeller and Macmillan told, it does not seem like she would have lasted long.

Sunday, February 9th, 1975.

More than two years after the doomed Akonkagua hike.

A 17-year-old local boy is hiking with his father and one of his father's friends.

They had been going for the summit.

But thanks to poor weather, they were forced to turn away.

Descending the Polish glacier, the boy sees something red between pillars of ice.

It looks like a collapsed tent.

Yet when they get closer, they realize the truth.

It's Janet Johnson, lying on her back, her face blackened from exposure and badly battered.

On top of her, there's a large rock pinning her body.

The hikers take out their axes and attempt to dig her out.

They don't have any means of transporting the body down the mountain, but perhaps they they can leave it in a more obvious place for someone else to find.

On Johnson's hand, they find a ring, and so they take it with them and later mail it to her surviving family.

It's the least they can do.

In 1976, Deputy Chief Cortez leads a team of police officers to extricate the body.

This is his third attempt to bring Janet Johnson down the mountain.

The first two parties found their efforts frustrated by bad weather.

By this point, she's even more encased in the surface of the Polish glacier.

Her left arm is so deeply frozen that they have to slice it off in order to free the body.

And so, at last, they carry her down the mountain before finally, three years after her death, her autopsy can commence.

And it's this very autopsy that complicates everything.

Mendoza police call back the same doctor who autopsied John Cooper to do the same for Janet Johnson.

The doctor points out that there are curious similarities in both bodies.

They have injuries around their face.

And though they were found years apart, their final resting places were incredibly close together, as close as 20 feet.

Johnson's facial injuries are more severe than Cooper's, though.

The bone is exposed in certain places, flaps of skin hanging off her face.

The ice had prevented her body from decomposing, but it's difficult to tell how much of her condition was caused by laying face up for almost two years.

And then there's the hole in Cooper's abdomen, too round for an ice axe.

The doctor submits his autopsies to a judge who rules that both of them died of cranial contusions, not dissimilar from what the surviving hikers already assumed.

But the doctor's assistant is not convinced.

Privately, he believes that both hikers were murdered.

These sorts of severe blows to the face could not have been caused by a shallow fall.

And besides, why weren't there more bruises on the rest of their bodies?

It seemed like all of the injuries were confined to their face, with the one exception being Cooper's stab wound.

The other medical examiners agree, but ultimately they can only do so much.

Their role is to submit their opinion to the courts and police.

And by that point, it's out of their hands.

The police don't investigate further, and a report in their local newspaper offers a shrunk of a conclusion.

Perhaps the truth is destined to remain unknown.

On March 19, 1976, Janet Johnson's buried near the trailhead, next to the foot of Aconcagua, as per her last wishes.

Among those attending are Deputy Chief Cortez, the other investigators, and Miguel Alfonso, the guide who last saw her in 1973.

None of her family flies out to see her laid to rest.

For the funeral attendees, Johnson's ceremony is the culmination of an unspeakable and mysterious tragedy that might never be fully understood.

But what none of them can possibly know in that moment is that Janet Johnson's camera is still on Aconcagua, embedded in the Polish glacier.

And not only is the undeveloped film inside the camera still intact, eventually it'll be found.

The year is 2020.

New York Times journalist John Branch, who's covered many mountaineering stories over the years, including the Aconcagua incident, receives Janet's camera in the mail.

It's clearly labeled with her name.

just as it was in 1973.

The sudden and unexpected discovery of this camera revives a mystery that's lied dormant since the 1970s.

Branch reaches out to everyone he can, hoping that maybe, just maybe, there are answers here that just might have been preserved.

What he finds is frustrating.

Mere days after Johnson's funeral, a military coup had upended the Argentine government, throwing the country into chaos.

And any notes investigators had taken on the dead Americans were lost in the noise.

Where there was no evidence, theories could fester.

John Cooper's diary had been brought down with his body, revealing his unflattering opinion of Johnson.

His diary paints her as someone with no team spirit, who was single-mindedly determined to reach the peak of the mountain no matter what.

But this animosity does not seem to exist in the photos from Johnson's camera.

They're slightly discolored with age, the film having experienced some exposure over the years.

But aside from splotches of green and black, the images are perfectly legible.

They show the impossible crags and spikes of the Andes mountains and the hikers doggedly trudging through them.

The final photo of Johnson, taken by one of her companions, shows her smiling towards the camera through her snow goggles.

Despite the weathered film, Branch can tell that the hike had taken a toll on her, experienced hiker or not.

But more important than that, these photos show what she was looking at when the camera was in her hands.

Nearly all of these photos are focused on the scenic beauty of the world around them.

If her companions feature in them, they do so incidentally, as foreground objects for reference, rather than the subjects themselves.

Branch asks Johnson's sister about her and gets a modest if illuminating response.

Janet was someone who, if she could have, would have spent her entire life life on the peaks of mountains.

Her personal life was a closely guarded secret, even to those who knew her best.

As a child, she had a crush on another girl, and her parents had reacted poorly to it, sending her to a conversion camp in order to fix their broken daughter.

The forced conversion did not work and only pushed Johnson away from her family.

She had become so hardened, it seemed, that she felt the most at home in the most desolate places on planet Earth.

She had spent her whole life pursuing peace and quiet, away from the people who punished her for being different.

Her parents' cruelty created a woman who was so withdrawn that she wouldn't ask for help, even while dying on a mountainside.

But what really happened to John Cooper and Janet Johnson?

Over the years, plenty of theories have flourished around the incident.

Of particular interest was John Cooper's career as a NASA engineer, a man who had helped bring astronauts back alive from the surface of the moon, yet died alone down here on Earth.

Theories circulated about Love Triangles, murder on the side of the mountain that was covered up.

Bill Zeller, a police officer, would have known how to stage a sane so it looked like an accident.

Even so, What's missing from all of these theories is a motive.

It's clear that the hiking group did not get along.

Johnson and Cooper were both new to the group and neither trusted each other.

The effects of high altitude can be acute, causing hallucinations and delusions.

And so we have to ask, could they also clown someone's judgment enough that they'd be liable to kill?

Had Johnson's solitary nature incited hostility from her companions?

Did Cooper have a fight with either Zeller or Macmillan?

Ultimately, all of these theories require too much speculation to hold water.

What we don't know exceeds what we do.

Cooper's injury, the hole in his abdomen, is puzzling, yet explicable.

If it was a staged murder or violent altercation, the tracks are long since lost in the snow.

And everyone from the New York Times to the surviving members of the 1973 expedition hoped that Johnson's long-lost camera would reveal some hidden angle on the mystery.

Instead, though, all it did was remind us how alone they truly were up on that mountain.

That and how beautiful the world looks from 21,000 feet.

A view worth dying for.

Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

Executive produced by me, Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

This episode was written by Robert Tiemstra.

Copy editing by Luke Baratz.

Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media.

Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood.

Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Ocasio.

Production coordination by by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston Kiner and Robin Fane.

Theme song by Ross Bugden.

Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.

I love you all, and good night.

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