The death of Rodney Marks at the South Pole station
Antarctica, May 2000
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
Rodney Marks, a 32-year-old Australian astrophysicist, died on 12 May 2000 at the Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole, in the middle of the Antarctic winter. With the base cut off for months and no flights possible, his body could only be flown out in the spring. The autopsy, in New Zealand, found methanol poisoning.
No one was able to explain how the methanol was ingested: accident, suicide and foul play were all considered. The New Zealand inquest complained about the limited cooperation of the institutions involved, and the case remains unresolved. In 2018, another Antarctic base, Russia's Bellingshausen station, recorded a stabbing between colleagues, which ended without a death.
Sources
In the game
Polar Night
Polarlys research station, Svalbard, January, 6:10 am. Glaciologist Leif Nygaard was found dead inside the ice core cold room, at minus 25 degrees, with the door bolted from the outside.
The game borrows the suspicious death at a polar base sealed off by winter, with no police and only a few colleagues as suspects. Characters, method and outcome are fiction.
