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Alcohol, but no drugs, in body of man found in snow

Brief by Allen Best

Mountain Life – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

From time to time, somebody wanders home from a ski town bar, then stumbles into a snowbank and dies. Such was the case last February in Breckenridge, when Michael “Alphonse” Barbiere disappeared.

His body was found almost two months after he disappeared, and while no evidence of drugs or alcohol were found in his blood, tests revealed an alcohol level of 0.11% in his urine. Recently, there’s been speculation about whether the bar that served him alcohol was complicit in his death. However, there is no way to tell whether his blood alcohol was higher when he died, Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson told the Summit Daily News.

Barbiere died of hypothermia.