Cold cases: Crime and punishment in Antarctica

An unsolved death. Assault with a deadly weapon. Lots of alcohol-fueled misbehavior. It's quite a rap sheet for a continent where almost nobody lives.

Antarctica is a vast place, nearly twice the size of Australia, but it has no permanent population, other than a few thousand scientists and support staff members from dozens of countries who are sent temporarily to conduct research.

Still, anywhere there are humans, there are bound to be violent acts and petty offenses, and that raises the question: How are criminal cases handled where sovereignty is a muddle and there are no permanent courts, prisons or police forces?

[Who do you call when you need to mount a daring rescue mission to Antarctica? This Alaskan]

Under the terms of the 53-nation Antarctic Treaty, workers accused of serious crimes at a research base are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country.

So when a U.S. cook attacked a co-worker with a hammer in 1996 at McMurdo Station — the largest base in Antarctica, with as many as 1,000 workers — the FBI sent agents to investigate and take the cook into custody. In the meantime, he was simply confined to a hut; where was he going to run?

Extreme weather can make traveling to Antarctica impossible for days or weeks. So just in case, the station manager at McMurdo is also a special deputy U.S. marshal, with training in evidence protection and the power to arrest Americans for offenses committed against other Americans. Other countries have similar arrangements with station chiefs at their bases.

Robberies are rare because people can't bring much into Antarctica, and there's almost no use for money. Drinking is common, though, and that sometimes leads to fights or incidents of indecent exposure (brrr). Minor offenses are often dealt with simply by firing the culprits and sending them home.

Where it can get complicated is with crimes involving citizens from multiple countries.

"As soon as anything touching on Antarctic territorial sovereignty arises, one is, frankly, in a hall of mirrors," said Alan Hemmings, a polar legal expert who used to command a British base in Antarctica.

Seven countries — Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New Zealand and Norway — assert claims of sovereignty over parts of the demilitarized continent. The rest of the world says that no nation owns any inch of it.

The three bases run by the United States, including McMurdo, lie in territory claimed by New Zealand. When Rodney Marks, an Australian, died in 2000 at one of the bases — Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station — his body was flown to New Zealand for an autopsy, which concluded that he had died of methanol poisoning. New Zealand police investigated but never determined whether his death was an accident, a suicide or perhaps Antarctica's only recorded murder.