Identified! Australia - Tasmania, Male, living photo, Swiss receipt, Jul'17 - Thomas Munger

Tasmanian police have released a photo of a man standing on New Zealand coastline in the hope of identifying skeletal remains found in remote bushland.

The remains were found in deep forest at the southern end of Tasmania earlier this week with an SD card nearby.

Police examined the SD card and found the photo, which they believe was taken at an unknown location on New Zealand's coastline in 2010. They believe the remains belong to the man in the photo.

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A backpack was found near the remains with foreign currency inside and a receipt for a purchase in Switzerland, dated December 2010.

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The photo was extracted from a SD card located with the skeletal remains, which were found by bushwalkers about 10km west of Tahune Airwalk on Sunday.

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“Forensic details indicate the photo may have been taken in New Zealand in 2010.

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Metadata from the photo reveals it was taken just after 5pm on September 22, 2010, on a Nokia 5800 phone.

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A Swiss man has contacted the ABC to say he was friends with a dead man whose skeletal remains were found in Tasmania's south by bushwalkers a week ago.

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The card contained a photo of a man, which police released in the hope of identifying the deceased.

Last night, Michael Nydegger called the ABC in Hobart from Switzerland to identify himself as the man in the photo.

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Tasmania Police initially thought the man in the photo was the deceased man.

But Mr Nydegger said the deceased man was his friend, whom the ABC will not name until the man's family is notified.

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He said the man was a stonemason who worked in a family business in a town called Gretzenbach in Switzerland.

"This is a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, one of the best friends I ever had," he said.

"We spent a lot of time together during holidays, and also with our hobbies and stuff."

Mr Nydegger provided several other photos from the same series as the photo police released to verify his story.

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Mr Nydegger said the photos were taken on the west coast of the United States in 2010, not New Zealand as police had guessed.

He said his friend left Switzerland in December 2010 and was not reported as missing.

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Tasmania Police are liaising with Swiss authorities and the family of a deceased man to confirm if human remains found in the state’s South belong to a 44-year-old Swiss man.
A friend of the man contacted the ABC with information that he was last seen by his family in December 2010 when he left Switzerland to go travelling.

The photo circulated by Tasmania Police on social media was of the man’s friend, with the photo taken on the coast of Oregon, USA in 2010.
“We are working to confirm the deceased man’s identity. It’s important to provide answers to the deceased’s family and return the remains to them,” Detective Acting-Sergeant Michael Manning said.

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As part of an ongoing police investigation, human remains located by bush walkers in the Huon Valley on 9 July 2017 have been positively identified as Swiss National, Thomas Münger, Tasmania Police say.

44-year-old Mr Münger left Switzerland in 2010.
Mr Münger’s extended family have been notified of the identification.

The cause of Mr Münger’s death remains undetermined.
Police would like to hear from anyone who may have had contact with Mr Münger in late 2010 or early 2011.

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