Jordi Magraner: Obituary

Jordi Magraner, the famous zoologist who was doing field research on the barmanu (wild man of N. Pakistan) has been found assassinated in Pakistan. He was killed (his throat was cut) on Friday, August 2, 2002, in his house in the north of Pakistan. The primary suspect is one of his local guides. A friend Chamsu discovered the body and alerted the police and Magraner's family.

For twelve years Magraner has been on the track of barmanu, the local wild man, (which means "the big hairy one"), encouraged at the beginning by Bernard Heuvelmans. He has been studying barmanu in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In one specific expedition, from 1992 through May 1994, his French trek to the Shishi Kuh valley in the Chitral region of Pakistan investigated the barmanu and found footprints. Jordi Magraner, Dr. Anne Mallasseand, and another associate, all Europeans, said they also had heard unusual guttural sounds that could have been made by a primitive voicebox and then tracked down the witnesses who claimed to have seen the horrible smelling animal that made them. According to the expedition leaders, eyewitnesses asked to choose among various images of mystery primates, most often selected pictures of the Minnesota Iceman to describe what they had seen. Further barmanu seeking expeditions into Pakistan occurred throughout the 1990s into the present century.

Jordi Magraner was to return to France in September 2002.

-Loren Coleman

[ Appreciation to Jean Roche and Michel Raynal for this information.]