With no permanent residence, violent crime in Antarctica is very low, but low doesn't mean

zero and the mysterious death of Rodney Marks is thought by some to be one of the only murders on the continent.

I'm Charlie and welcome to crime lines. Welcome to Crime Lines and this day's installment of the 12 days of Crime Lines. I ended up getting sick halfway through this series

luckily I had most of the episodes recorded but you're going to hear it in my voice

in this one and probably a couple more, but we are going to plow ahead and not delay the

series because I sound good enough to record.

With this year's 12 days of crime line series, I tried to cover cases from around the world.

And though I fell a little short of being in a different country every single episode, I did decide when I started this that I was definitely

not going to cover tourists who went missing or were murdered abroad. I wanted to cover the cases of the people who lived in the

countries we were discussing. This episode is the sole exception and that's

because we're talking about Antarctica.

It's actually illegal to live on Antarctica full-time.

The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 set the continent aside for scientific research.

It does not recognize or dispute any existing land claims at that point,

which again, 1961, but no future land claims would ever be accepted.

Mining is illegal and military activity is also illegal except for peaceful scientific research.

At the time of the treaty there was already a permanent research station that had been there since 1956.

It is called the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station, named after Roald Amundsen and Robert

F. Scott, who both led teams that raced to the South Pole in the early 1900s, which is when

Pole Exploration became more popular.

The Scientific Research Station is under the jurisdiction of the United States.

So that is the setting of today's case being that it's one of the few

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