Frozen bodies of Swiss couple missing for 75 years found on Alps glacier

Two frozen bodies bearing identity papers discovered on a shrinking glacier have been identified as a Swiss couple who went missing 75 years ago in the Alps, Swiss media reported.

Valais cantonal police said that the two bodies had been discovered last week by a worker on Tsanfleuron glacier above Les Diablerets resort at an altitude of 2,615m (8,600 ft).

DNA testing would be carried out to confirm their identities.

Marcelin Dumoulin, 40 and Francine Dumoulin, 37, were parents to seven children. Marcelin was a shoemaker, while Francine was a teacher.

They had gone to milk their cows in a meadow above Chandolin in the Valais canton on 15 August 1942 and never returned.

"It was the first time my mother went with him on such an excursion. She was always pregnant and couldn't climb in the difficult conditions of a glacier," their youngest daughter, Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, 75, told the Lausanne daily Le Matin newspaper.

"The bodies were lying near each other. It was a man and a woman wearing clothing dating from the period of world war two," Bernhard Tschannen, the director of Glacier 3000, told the Lausanne daily Le Matin.

"They were perfectly preserved in the glacier and their belongings were intact."

"We think they may have fallen into a crevasse where they stayed for decades. As the glacier receded, it gave up their bodies," Tschannen told theTribune de Geneve.

"We spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day," Udry-Dumoulin told Le Matin.

"I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm."

Udry-Dumoulin said she would not wear black for the funeral and would rather wear white, which would be more appropriate as it represents hope, which she never lost.