Tom Holzel

Born in Berlin during WW-II, Tom, his brother and mother escaped to the West in 1946 landing in Montclair, NJ. A champion 440-yd/400-m runner, he won major events in high school, Dartmouth College and Germany. He returned several times to Germany, once as an exchange student in 1956-57 while the country was still rebuilding from the devastation. He became fascinated with the history of the last days of the European war, believing he had discovered an entrance to Hitler's bunker. On his return to NJ, he built primitive scuba gear using a surplus Air Force diluter-demand oxygen regulator. His mission--to seek the spent cartridge casing of the shot with which Hitler ended his life. A natural bent for technology and a gift for explaining how things work drove him to become an international hi-tech marketing and sales executive for Raytheon, his own company Arcturus and various U.S., British and French technology start-ups. He has traveled to 24 countries on business and to climb mountains. In 1971 he became fascinated with the disappearance of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, last seen high on the flanks of Mt. Everest in 1924, seemingly only hours from the top. Did they reach it, beating Sir Edmund Hillary by 29 years? His research uncovered a large trove of expedition data about this famous climb, and a curious desire by the British to keep the episode shrouded in glamorous mystery. His startling discovery was that the disreputable oxygen breathing apparatus the men were using could have spelled the difference between success and failure--a claim that angered the British old guard. In 1986 he mounted a 30-man expedition to the North side of Mt. Everest to seek clues to their disappearance. He brought with him a map showing where he believed Irvine's body might lie and with it the Vest Pocket Kodak camera they were known to have taken. Would it contain an image from the top? Scientists at Eastman Kodak had assured him that "printable images" might still result from the perpetually frozen film. Another Everest ghost, the nay-sayers muttered. The expedition was unsuccessful, beaten back by high winds and heavy snow, and losing a Sherpa teammate in an avalanche. But, back in Beijing on the last day of the trip, he met a Chinese climber who---in spite of repeated denials by Chinese officials--admitted that on a huge Chinese expedition, he had found "an English dead" almost exactly where Tom had predicted. In 1999, Mallory's body, not Irvine's, was discovered at that precise location--but no camera. Recently, by means of aerial photography, Tom believes he has discovered the exact location of Irvine. He is now actively trying to launch another search expedition to finally solve this great historical mystery.