Thinking Sideways: Who was Peter Bergmann

A man calling himself Peter Bergmann showed up in the Irish coastal town of Sligo in June 2009. Over the following 3 days he carefully erased all evidence of his identity, after which point his body was found on a beach north of town, dead of unknown causes.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thinking Sideways is not supported by monkeys with kinson knives. Instead,
it's supported by the generous donations of our listeners on Patreon.
Visit patreon dot com slash thinking sideways to learn more
and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't you never know stories

(00:26):
of things we simply don't know the answer too. Well.
Here there, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe,
as always, joined by Devin and Steve. All right, and uh,
this week we're going to talk about guess what, another
unsolved mystery. Yeah we're out of those. Yeah, no, we're

(00:49):
not quite out. We will be soon. Sorry about that, folks.
But it's Cooking with Joe right exactly, show how to
cook Raman the fifth Way. Actually, have you heard how
bad Roman supposed toly is for you? Now? Yeah? Really? Okay,
yeah really bad? Don't cook with it. Turns out like
fish oil is not actually all that good for you either.
We're already off topic and we're not a minute into

(01:12):
the show, haven't even Yeah, I know, let's let's get
let's going on with this. So this week we're gonna
talk about an interesting little mystery out of Ireland, which
is a stranger of mysterious island. Uh, we're gonna talk
about the case of Peter Bergman, who you guys people
people may or may not have heard of. Before we
go any further, I would like to give a shout
out to our listener John who suggested this topic. Thanks John,

(01:36):
and so let's get started. So who was Peter Bergman?
Nobody knows. Uh, it's almost certainly was not this guy's
real name. There might be somebody out there who does know,
but they're apparently not talking. So our story began in
two thousand nine, Uh, specifically in June twelfth, two thousand nine,
when Peter Bergman showed up in the town of Sligo, Ireland,

(01:57):
and then four days later he was found add on
a beach north of the town. You cut this one
close under the five year wire, didn't you there. Yeah,
it's only six years old. Six years in a couple
of months. Yeah, al right. He was found dead on
the beach. Uh. And autopsy was done, of course, and
it turned up no signs of violence or foul play.

(02:20):
It also showed that he had advanced prostate cancer, he
had bone tumors, and it appeared that he had had
a few previous heart attacks, so not in the greatest
of shape. There was no evidence of pain killers in
his system, although he did he had some aspir in
his possession when he died, but he had he wasn't
taking it apparently, which is like we should mention really

(02:41):
really odd first time, he would have likely have been
in an immense amount of pain, or at least some pain, right, Yeah,
I'll disagree with that. Well, I I just everybody says, well,
he had to be in such pain. I'm not sure.
I don't know that. I mean, I know it was
it was in his bones and everything else. But I've
known people who have had massive amounts of cancer all

(03:03):
through their body. They felt little off, that was it
until they happened ago the doctrine figure out what was
going on. Yeah, so relatively Okay, So I don't I
don't know that he necessarily would have been in really
any substantial amount of pain. It might not have been.
It's hard to say. I mean, I've seen video of him,
and he didn't didn't appear to be over him pain

(03:24):
or anything like that. Oh, there were two other strange
things that were found in the autopsy. He had had
one kidney removed and also even though he was found
apparently washed up on a beach. He didn't die by drowning.
That's a mystery. That's weird. How did he die? Yeah?
Who was Peter Bergmann? What was he up to in
Sligo in the days between he arrived on Friday and

(03:44):
he died on the sixteenth of June. What brought him
to the town, what brought him to the beach at
Ross's Point which is where he died? And how and
why did he die if he didn't drown? Really? Yeah,
it's intrigue. Yeah that sounds this is like the Tom
and Trude case. Yeah, kind of. It's reminiscent of that.
Yeah it is. Yeah, let's let's get to the last

(04:06):
mystery first, which is how did he die if he
didn't drown? Well, actually, it turns out he did drown,
even yeah, even though yeah the Wikipedia, Wikipedia and web Sluice,
etcetera say that he didn't drown, he actually did. How
do you know that? I got this from the website
of the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation in Germany, which
is kind of their equivalent of the FBI. Yeah, they

(04:30):
have what's called their unknown Dead section unidentified dead people,
and he's got his own page on there with his
description and his photograph and everything, and it lists the
cause of death that's drowning. Yeah. So it was interesting
to me because I did a fair number of actually
spent this entire afternoon because it was two thousand nine,
so there should be records of the you know, there

(04:52):
would have been newspaper articles. In my mind, right, people
would have been like, Wow, this guy washed up on
shore dead, like that's weird, and there was a weirdness
around the case anyway. And I couldn't find anything I
found said he died of drowning. I found, I didn't
find any I found one newspaper article was the only
one I could find that was pre the release of

(05:14):
the movie we're about to talk about. Um. It was
from April, and it didn't say anything about the cause
of death at all. It didn't address it. It actually
didn't address any of the health anything's so I thought
that was a little odd. But you know, you couldn't
find anything about the autopsy. You couldn't find anything about,
you know, anything from that actual time, even from that year,

(05:36):
which I thought was weird. He didn't make the papers,
he didn't make the news. It made it made the news,
but it's one of those things very local, popped up
and then died out again pretty quickly. Well, I like
searched through the archives of like the local newspapers, the
chronicle there, and it didn't have anything very odd. And
it's possible that, you know, and as I said, it

(05:57):
was just this afternoon, so it's possible. Had I, you know,
given myself more time to do more digging, you would
have cropped up. But I did a lot of googling
and it didn't. There's not a huge amount out there
about this one. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I know,
I found a lot of repetition in what was available. Yeah,
almost everything I found was more about the movie than
it was about the case. And what it was about

(06:18):
the case tended to be not not word for word
copy paste like we find a lot, but very very
lax rewritings. Yeah I noticed that. Yeah. Yeah, So but anyway,
i'd luckily I did find that German website and so
that clears that up. Yeah, which is I think what happened.
I think I know how that got started because we

(06:39):
mentioned the film in two thousand and thirteen, again named
Karen Cassidy made a short film called The Last Days
of Peter Bergman. And in this film, it's it's he
actually splices together interviews with a lot of close circuit
TV footage from the circuit TV all over that town.
Yeah yeah, yeah, they've got it all wired up, but
they ended you. Clive Killgallan, who was the medical examiner

(07:02):
who performed the autopsy on Bergmann, and he stated in
the interview, said that initially there were no outward signs
of saltwater drowning. Uh. And my takeaway from that as
that he meant at first glance, he didn't look drowned.
That is all that he meant by it. That's as
far as he went. And he didn't say there was
no evidence of drowning. After the autopsy, he also didn't
say drowned. He didn't say it either. Yeah, yeah, you

(07:23):
know now, I mean I watched it. I watched it
again this afternoon, and I'm just thinking, was his bit
in the movie It ends almost immediately after that, doesn't
it the only interview they had with him? Right? But
I'm just saying he's on there for I don't know,
maybe a minute, But as soon as he says that bit,
it cuts to something else, and I wonder if that

(07:45):
intentionally got left out. I don't know. I don't want
to point fingers. I'm just wondering. I don't think the
film intended to mislead because like, for example, you here
the detective who investigated the case saying after that that
that he think he thinks that perhaps Bergman intended to
be carried out to see and not washed back up
on sure. So it seems to me that they just
didn't even talk about the cause of death because it

(08:07):
was just larteringly obvious, and so they didn't feel the
need to talk about it. But it didn't come across
as obvious as they wanted it, maybe, which we've been
we've been guilty of a time or two. Yeah, but yeah,
I mean I And obviously you can infer that he drowned,
because if he hadn't drowned, then that would have been
that would have added a huge bit of mystery to
this whole thing. Why did he just go to go
to the beach and will himself to die? You know?

(08:29):
And they didn't bring up anything like that and also
kill Gallen in his interview. That's again s a medical
examiner said nothing about a missing kidney, and you think
he did a pretty thorough autopsy. He found the cancer
and then the bone tumors and the heart attacks and
all that stuff, and he didn't notice it was a
missing kidney. Yeah, it seems like he would have mentioned that. Yeah,
the only place I I looked around and I didn't

(08:50):
find any mention of that other than the Wikipedia page,
So I think we can discount. And I couldn't find
I followed the links, I know, like sometimes we just
read a Wikipedia page and go on our business, but
I actually did my due diligence and tried to follow
all the links, and the one where it said that
he hadn't drowned. The in the autopsy section of the
Wikipedia linked to that German website that you posted, um,

(09:13):
which obviously they hadn't really I don't know, translated well enough. Really,
they didn't do a good job of translate. It was
just odd that, you know, on the Wikipedia page, the
source that they cited for said the exact opposite of
the thing that citing it. So there were some problems
with that Wikipedia page for sure. Definitely. Yeah, Yeah, it

(09:34):
happens anyway. So now we solved that mystery. Let's let's
talk about the rest of it, because there's still still
some remaining mystery here, lots of it. Yeah. Um, so
our mystery begins June twelve, two thousand nine. As I said,
Peter Bergmann, if that's his real name, we have to
call him that because that's all we know him by.
That's all we know him by. That's right. So he

(09:54):
got on a bus in Dairy, Northern Ireland and wrote
it to Sligo, which is also in Northern Ireland, but
in Northern Ireland, in the north part of Ireland, now
in Northern Ireland. Yeah, okay, just just so you know,
there's a couple of capitals in that isn't there to
the capital inn and I in the capital but lower

(10:14):
case in. Is that how you're differentiating these slago is
in the one with the lower case in. This is
going to get confused. Oh yeah. And Sligo is a
coastal town of about twenty people, so you know, I'm
not a city, um of course. I've looked at it
in Google Earth and the StreetView and it's a charming

(10:36):
little town. Berg went arrived in Sligo and he went
to the Sligo City Hotel and checked in. He didn't
have a reservation, he was a walk in, and interestingly,
the hotel didn't ask to see a passport or I
D or a credit card or anything. He just paid
cash up front. Yeah yeah, yeah. And so typically hotels
usually want to see a driver's license, right something. Yeah,

(10:58):
that wants something to hold in case you philch out
or you do a bunch of damage or anything like that.
Yeah yeah, I mean they did, they didn't. They did,
they did not. So when he away, when he signed
into the hotel register, he gave his name is Peter Bergmann,
and he listed an address in Vienna, Austria, which, as
it turns out, was a vacant lot. Yeah. Yeah uh.
And here's something interesting though, that is the bus station

(11:20):
in Sligo is right next to a hotel, the site
of the Sligo Southern Hotel, which basically charges about the
same rates for room as a Sligo City hotel. And
if Bergman had taken the route the most obvious easy
route to go to the city hotel, he would have
passed by the Clarence Hotel, which also charges about the
same rates. So instead of going to those hotels, he

(11:42):
went to the Sligo City hotel makes you wonder, well,
it's out ahead of time. Yeah, it is. It's almost like,
you know, maybe he went there because they wouldn't ask
to see I d maybe, but how would he know
that ahead of time? Yeah? Actually, well actually I had
an email conversation with one of our listeners, Gavin, relating

(12:02):
to this, and he he told me that there are
actually a lot of German tourists like to go to
Western Ireland. It's very pot there there among them. Yeah,
between British people, Americans and Germans are the three heaviest travelers.
So he was saying, it's it's it seems really possible
that he went there. He'd been there before, so yeah,
he might have been familiar with s but he might

(12:23):
have also gotten this. He took a cab to the
hotel from the bus stations, so he might have gotten
this from his cab driver too. Maybe his cab driver
told him. We will never know. Okay, now he's checking
at the hotel. He's got a shoulder bag which is
kind of like a laptop bag, and he's got a large,
larger piece of luggage. You guys have seen it on film.
It's like it's not really a suitcase. It's more like
a really huge black bag, like a Duffel bag. Now

(12:45):
it's kind of like a it's kind of like a
big open top bag. It's it's as big as a suitcase.
But you know, imagine those shopping bags that they have
to have just the two loop handles and they're kind
of bags. Yeah, okay, yeah, So he had this really
really great big bag and he had that than his
laptop bag. That's what he had. According to the close
circuit TV cameras. Uh. He had a heavy accent, probably

(13:07):
German or Austrian, although there were some people who have
said they thought he saided more Eastern European. He appeared
to be sixty years old. He had short white hair,
was wearing glasses, and also wearing a waist length black
leather jacket. You guys have all you guys have seen. Yeah,
I mean they're really He wouldn't have stood out in
the crowd. No, not at all. There was nothing weird

(13:27):
unique about him. No, not at all. Well, anyway, he
spent the weekend. He checked it on a Friday afternoon.
I spent the weekend hanging around the hotel. He ate
in the hotel's restaurant, and he left quite often to
go out for walks, didn't they to The woman at
the front desks called him how she referred to him
as a friendly face or a familiar face around. Yeah,

(13:50):
that she would always see him. Yeah, the whole weekend.
She saw him a lot. He was around. Yeah, but
he would he would actually would leave quite often too.
And every time he left he was carrying a purple
plastic bag. And by some accounts, he left with that
bag thirteen times. And whenever we returned to the hotel,
he didn't have the bag with him. Well, I mean
he may have, like in a pocket or something, but

(14:11):
he wasn't carrying it full of stuff anymore. Yeah, exactly
because the stuff the context of the bag had disappeared.
And it's not just when people get the idea. It's
not a huge bag or anything like that. It's a
plastic bag that I would say is kind of equal
in size to what you would get from say a
grocery store. It's not act full of stuff, but it's
just a little one. Yeah, it's not a huge bag

(14:32):
like the kid you get from Forever one when you
just buy a shirt. Yeah, because I always shop it forever. Yeah,
I'm not so if I if I shop there, can
I be again? You are automatically they won't think you're

(14:52):
just the creepy old man. Yeah, cool, I'm there. Anyway,
I mentioned before the closed circuit TV cameras there not
only is a town all wired up with this close
circuit TV. I'm gonna call it CCTVs from now. And
also the City Hotel has has got a lot of
CCTVs in it also and the guard I that's that's
what they called the police in uh in Ireland, the

(15:14):
guard that I investigated this thing. Um. They got the
CCTV footage from the hotel and from all around town
and started going through it. And that must have been
a job, yeah, really a lot of TV watching. Uh.
They got all sorts of little little bits of video
of Bergman. He was leaving and entering the hotel, always
leaving with the purple bag and always returning without it.

(15:37):
There were clips have been walking around Sligo with this
purple bag and also clips of him without it. But
you never see him actually doing something like emptying the
bag and in a trash can, or handing it to
somebody or throwing it over a wall. Or you know,
you never see that, so you either see him with
it or without it. Yeah, and that's I don't know
if that's a random chance or if he actually was

(15:59):
well aware of all the CCTVs around town and he
deliberately avoided doing whatever he did with the contents of
the purple bag when there was a camera around. The
funny thing is about that is when you watch him
on the footage, he looks like he's aimlessly wandering around. Yeah,
and he's not. He's not wandering around like a tourist.
He's not looking at stuff. He's just walking around. Like

(16:23):
there's a couple of scenes I remember in the movie
that you see it and it's like, wait, that's the
same street. He walked down one side and then later
on up the other side and then came back down.
And I'm sure that they weren't all in the same walk,
but it's like, do you just one around just ump
and down? Yeah? Yeah, I don't, And I don't know.

(16:45):
I was. I was too lazy to actually, like, you know,
compare all those things to the actual Google street views,
so I can thought you'd try to retrace his track
now that it would be pointless to do that anyway,
since the clips that are in the movie, you don't
know what if they're even in chronological order, So you
really can't racist movements that way. Yeah, plus that would
be a huge job. So well, so we're the contents
of the bat or the bags or the contents of

(17:06):
the bag where they ever found? No, no, the well,
I letna tell you a little bit about the investigation.
Oh no, that's okay. Well, what they did is, after
they discovered this, this whole thing about the purple bag,
they started looking in all the garbage cans around town
and all the dumpstairs. And he even went down to
the city dump and dug around with the city dump

(17:29):
looking for seeing if they could find the contents of
what he'd been emptying out. And they found nothing because
they've just found regular garbage. Well, but if he's if okay,
I'm going to run with the idea that he's just
getting rid of his personal belongings, his underwear, his toothbrush,
you know, shaving kids, kind of generic stuff. It's yeah,
they're you're, oh, well, he always used Crest Sparkle, so

(17:52):
this must be his tube of toothpaste. You have no
idea it's amongst a whole bunch of other garbage. Yeah,
I know they were just looking for something special, like
a diary, maybe you know, for a wallet, I guess.
But then you have to wonder, like why, Like I'm
sure there was a dumpster just right outside of the hotel,
Like why wouldn't he just go and like dump all

(18:12):
of his stuff in that dumpster? Well, exactly why, Like
why these like very meticulous it's it's it's it's yeah,
it's uh. Well, the police actually formulated a theory, which
is that he was trying to erase his identity because
I don't know if I don't think I mentioned this,
but when they found the body, and they obviously took up,

(18:34):
took him for the autopsy, removed the clothes. They also
found the rest of his clothes down the beach little ways,
and they found out all the tags from everything, every garment,
all the tags have been cut out. So once it's
more like Tom Tom and shoot again, um and so,
And of course there was no idea in the body
or anything like that. And so the belief was that

(18:54):
he was trying to erase his identity by getting rid
of every article of anything that he owned. Yeah, I
still just I guess. Yeah, I hear that. I just
still I'm not totally sure why I had to be
in this like very meticulous like spread out around. Well. Yeah,
the thing about it is is, um, this is what
I don't like about this theory is that he got
on a bus and dairy and god knows where he

(19:15):
was where he was before he was at dairy. But
while it was in dairy, he could have just pitched
everything into a dumpster. If he was really worried that
slide open the guard I we're gonna trace its identity.
He could have just pitched all the dunster there or
wherever he was before then. Yeah, exactly. So that's that's
that's the problem that I have with the GUARDI theory. Yeah,
but luckily we've got some other theories to work with. Yeah,

(19:37):
well we were not eies. We'll talk about that. What
I was gonna say, can we go back there real
quick to the all the labels in his clothing. Yeah,
so I know that one of the things that they
do in the movie is they show, you know, they
put in front of the camera. Look, they're snipped out,
and I think it's it's a tag in a shirt.
It's the tag and his underwear, and it might be

(19:58):
the tag in his pants, the tagging a speedo to
that speed when Yeah, which are all tags that rub
against your skin. And I don't know about you, but
there are certain brands that I always have to cut
the tags out because I swear to god they're made
out of cardboard with barbed wire on, because they just
scratched the heck out of you. Yeah, he may have

(20:20):
been like weirdly sensitive. It's it's fair. But when you
cut those tags out, do you just you just snip
right down to the seam right, like as far as
you can go right. Yeah, So on those they were
kind of like haphazardly, like there was still enough tag
that if it was irritating his skin, it would have
continued to irritate his skin. That's truely didn't do that.
It wasn't a great job. It wasn't a totally It

(20:43):
wasn't like this is like scraping the crap out of
my skin. I gotta get rid of it. It was
like I will agree with I will, I will give
you that. I mean, you know, it might be that
he just needed to get most of it off, or
maybe it is just it was a hat job, no
pun intended. Yeah, yeah, so I don't know how much
you can read into the whole tags removed and it
looks a little funny. But anyway, I want to go

(21:05):
back to the investigation a little bit. Uh. Yeah, they
canvassed the town. They found everybody that could possibly find
who could who could have talked to him or had
any kind of contact, and they didn't get a huge
amount of stuff. But they did find out that on Saturday,
the day after he arrived, he went to the post
office about eighty two cent stamps and airmail stickers. But

(21:25):
if emailed letters, and he probably did the emailed any letters.
Nobody knows because obviously there by the time they discovered
the body that the letters were long gone, and they
obviously don't keep a record of that. So well, some
places do. Some places the mail is sorted digitally. It's
a camera taking pictures of it. But if you don't

(21:46):
know what post box he put it into to be
able to trace it, and he didn't put you know,
a return address, we don't really have a good example
of his handwriting. Yeah, it's just it's a needle in
a haystack. Yeah, it would disappear It would be very hard,
and I don't know how long they keep those records
for either, I don't know. Yeah, but it sounds like
they figured this out pretty quick. I imagine that the

(22:09):
all the postal services probably have to keep, you know,
a month or five records some number for liability. Yeah,
but there would be literally no way to know they
were his or not. You'd have to canvass everybody in
the town and all of the tourists and say, hey,
did any of you send This would have been the
only possible way that they could have got a break

(22:29):
on that was if the Slago City Hotel had its
own stationary and he sent some letters on that. That
might have been But he seems like he was fairly
throw to cover his tracks. Yeah, so you probably would
have used just generic white envelopes, you think, Yeah, I
think so. Okay, So he bought the stamps and he
mailed anywhere between one and eight letters to a bunch

(22:49):
of people. I guess I assume those stamps coming sheets, probably,
and that's why you bought eight. But maybe he did
actually need exactly eight. I don't know. Nobody will never
know that, or maybe will never know that. The next
day on Sunday in the morning, he got in a
cab and he asked the driver where a nice quiet
beach was, and the driver recommended Ross's Point, which is
north of town, and they drove up there. Bergman got

(23:11):
out of the car, looked around, got back in the car,
and they drove back to Sligo. So that was his
day at the beach except for the next day, of course,
Monday afternoon. Peter Bergman checked out of the hotel around
one pm. He and he had intentionally asked for a
late checkout rate. Yeah, yeah, he did. Yeah, he said
he was. He was just heading out. He was like
at loose and his bus wasn't leaving until next so,

(23:31):
you know, could he stick around? Yeah yeah, I said yeah,
they said fun. But when he checked out, here's the
funny thing. He still had a shoulder bag, but the
large bag was gone, and in his place he had
a small piece of black luggage, which the police called
a hold all. I think that's one of those small bags.
It's got the draw stringing cinch on it. You see

(23:52):
a lot of people using those for backpacks now, yeah,
because when you see it in the footage, like those
Nike Yeah, yeah, it is and you can wear it
is the people wears a backpack with the strings. I
think that's all that was. That's what I got the
impression of looking at it. Yeah, I'm not sure. It
looked to me kind of like one of those slim
little bags that that zips across the top and then

(24:14):
there's two loops for handles. Looks kind of like one
of those to me, but it's hard to tell. It's low,
it's kind of low rest foot and I thought I
read somewhere that it was like a wrist bag, like
it had a wrist trap on it, so it's like
a like a shaved bag almost, you know, like a
toiletry bag. It looked it looked kind of flatter and
longer than that to Yeah, did to me too. But ye,
so we had all kinds of stuff online this week

(24:35):
on Luggage Tuck. Yeah yeah, yeah, And he also had
a purple bag, the trademark purple bag, and so but yeah,
the big bag was gone. He walked to the bus station.
When he got there, the black hole doll was gone.
So he had either disposed of it somehow, or maybe
he put it inside his shoulder bag. I'm not really sure.
That's he's the big disposer. Here the bus station. You've

(24:57):
got a cheese sandwich and a capuccino. Um. And while
he was sitting in this table, he pulled out some
pieces of paper and looked at them. And it's hard
to tell from the from the video, but it looks
at one point like he's writing something down, and then
at another point it looks like he could either be
folding the paper back up or maybe tearing it and
tearing it up to tell I thought the investigator said
that he had torn it up. Yeah, it sounded like

(25:19):
he said that, but you see it all over the
internet that he's tearing it up. And when I looked
at it, because it was folded into quarters when he
opened it and it looked like he had folded it again,
was almost folding rolling it back into the smallest ball
of paper possible. Yeah, that's possible. It was really hard
to tell. And his bust didn't leave until to twenty,

(25:43):
so between the incident with the pieces of paper and
to twenty, he apparently got rid of the shoulder bag
and the purple bag because um well, he went to
the beach after this, and the beach was where he
was found dead. The next morning, and they weren't. Ross's point,
they weren't. They weren't. Those items were not found on
the beach. They also don't you see him boarding the

(26:03):
bus on CCTV. Yeah, and he doesn't have Yeah, so
he disposed of those things. Yeah, again without a camera
seeing him, though with a camera seeing But here's here's
the thing about it is it would be very easy
to missay a pair of underwear that gets the city dump.
But they had seen him multiple times with the purple bag,
and then when they were at the dump going through everything,

(26:26):
that purple bag should have really stood out like a
sore thumb, but they didn't find it dump. It's well,
he's at the bus depot, and it's very possible for
him to have stuffed that stuff into the shoulder bag
and then intentionally left it in the men's room, knowing
that somebody's gonna go, oh, free bag of stuff. I

(26:48):
wonder what's in here, because people do that garbage all
the time and just wandered away. And the guy watching
the footage isn't gonna go, well, that's weird. There's a
there's a totally different guy with the same kind of
He's not going to notice that at all. Yeah, although
it's a very distinctive purple bag. I mean even but
if it's jammed in the shoulder bag this other it's

(27:09):
not going to stand. We're saying. Then that guy gets
on a bus and like or wanders away or something.
He's eventually going to throw it away, though, isn't he? Okay? Well,
you know, there's this story is full of so many
leaps of faith, and that I'm going to make the
leap of faith that he left town with this other
person's shoulter bag and then threw it away. It could be.
It could but you know the problem is is that
it's unpredictable, so somebody might find it in the men's

(27:31):
room and uh and turn it into lost and found. Yeah,
that seems like a risk that he may not have
been really willing to take. Yeah, so anyway, what happened
to those things? I don't know. He flushed him, Yeah,
that's so anyway, you gotta he caught his bus. He
bought it one way to take it out to the
beach that afternoon and evening. He was seen by lots

(27:51):
of witnesses on the beach for as many a sixteen
Nobody saw the bag, the purple bag, or the shoulder bag.
But one woman reported that he had a newspaper under
his arm. It's okay, I guess, And if he's getting
rid of everything, it seems weird that he'd picked up
a newspaper. Well, you know, yeah, he had some time
to kill because I got a feeling like he didn't
go for a swim until after dark. And it turns

(28:13):
out so he didn't write because somebody saw him at something. Yeah. Yeah,
that's and the sun doesn't even sit there until ten
ten on that date. Yeah, um, And so yeah, he
would have if he wanted to wait until after dark
so nobody would witness it and maybe try to save him,
then it would have been pretty late. And somebody did
see him. They're quite late. Yeah. Apparently when they found

(28:34):
the body the next day at six five am, he
had apparently stripped down to his his underwear and a
T shirt. That's still a modest guy, and he put
on a speedo over the top of the shorts, which
is weird. Yeah, also weird that he would put I
mean weird in general, right, I mean, if he was
trying to kill himself, why bother with a swimsuit? With

(28:55):
a speedo, and so I think he was probably a
modest guy. Yeah, but pis the modest guy. Why is
he putting on a speedough? Well, also, like, why isn't
he just wearing his pants? I mean, why isn't he
just wearing his clothes? There? Actually it's that's a better
way to drown, if you wear your clothes. Yeah. So, yeah,
you'll drown a lot faster that way. So they find
the body about three meters done the beach. They found

(29:16):
the rest of his stuff, which was his shoes, socks, trousers, sweater, uh,
the black leather jacket. In his pockets they found some
cash and a packet of tissues, some sheets of blank paper,
aspirin tablets, a wristwatch, and some soap from a hotel,
probably the city hotel. And that was all. No wallet,
no passport, nothing, And that was one of the they discovered.

(29:39):
The tags been taken out of his clothes. It's possible
that he intended to be swept out to sea and
then just disappear, although at the same time, I don't know,
because then maybe he wouldn't have left all his clothes
and stuff on the beach if he intended to just
vanish off the face of the earth. Yeah, it's weird, Yeah,
because I mean if I if I had intended to
have vanish, you know, by swimming out to see first
of all, you gotta pay tention to the tide tables,

(30:01):
and apparently he didn't. And also you gotta make arrangements
for your clothes and stuff to go away, especially if
you're like trying to get rid of everything. Right, that's
my problem with he was trying to erase his existence, Like,
then why didn't he just go with all his clothes on?
Why leave anything? But yeah, well what I would have
done is I would have taken the clothes off and
I would have brought a plastic garbage bag from town

(30:23):
and stuffed everything in there, squeezed all the air out
of it, and and then all by the way, put some
big rocks in there for wait, and then tie out
all shut and take it out to sea with me. Yeah,
and when you drowned, you let it go. And yeah,
but again yeah, it's it's that's that seems like an
extra step, and it's an extra complicated step. But if
you really truly wanted to vanish without a trace, that
would be the way to do it. But you gotta

(30:43):
pick the right time, you gotta you gotta jump into
the water right at high tide and go to your
drown and then and then then then then maybe he
would not have been washed back up on the beach.
As you know, we've already talked about the police's belief
that he was disposing he was personal property, and they
decided that the death was a suicide. And then he
had come to Slow I Go specifically for this purpose,
of course, because probably had terminal cancer. It appears he did,

(31:06):
and he was disposing of his stuff. And again my
problem with this is it's a lot of trouble to
go to for something that's very easily accomplished in dairy
by just throwing it all away. Yeah. The question is then,
if his personal possessions weren't in the purple bag being
distributed all over town, then what was in the bag? Yeah? Yeah,

(31:28):
So I've put together a few theories. Yeah, oh boy,
what was in the purple bag? Okay? Theory number one
beer cans? Suppose he was a raging alcoholic and are
he was celebrating his impending in and so he but
he was embarrassed. Had the cleaning lady find all these
empties in his room, so he trucked him out and

(31:50):
got rid of the mil square. Yeah, I don't know
about No, I don't think so either. Actually, if you
look at if you look at the bags, you can't
you can't. You obviously can't see what's in the bags.
But what's outlined to me is more angular and not
beer hand shaped or whiskey bottle shaped. So that's that,
that kind of but I just thought i'd throw that
theory in there. Yeah. By the way, did either of
you noticed that there was a really particular bit of

(32:13):
footage that I saw and it was just kind of
strange of him. Stay, he pops out of a door
when he's inside the hotel, and the camera catches him
walking out of this door, you know, hallway against another
door behind him, and he stands there and likes his cigarette.
He's just sitting standing there smoking, Like it's weird that
he is just randomly walking around and then hides in

(32:34):
a hallway to have a cigarette. That that bit of footage, too,
is like odd to me because it's clearly the same person,
but he looks so different. I wonder if it's the
angle of the camera it is the angle of the camera.
But it's that, you know, you have that perception that
you because he kind of looks like he's older, older
and kind of maybe you know, a little a little

(32:56):
slower and a little like hunch more like of a
friendly neighbor, like like a little bit of like a Mr.
Rogers type guy, right sweater. Yeah, and all of them
except for that one bit of footage when he's like
out there smoking, he looks like a totally different It's
it was very weird to me seeing that bit. It
was like I recognized that the same human being like

(33:17):
in flesh, but it looks like it doesn't look like
the same guy to me at all. Which, yeah, so
that that's been struck. Yeah, he moved really fast. If
he knows he was power smoking like he was take
a drag exhale, Take a drag exhale, Take a drag
exhale that fast. It seemed like in the footage which
was just he was really moving really kind of rapidly.
Where is you when you walk him everywhere else he's

(33:39):
kind of trunned a little along. He pushes the doors
standing there. Ye, maybe he was having an anxiety attack.
He needed some nicotine to calm him down. Maybe maybe
Well there is that whole thing about the staff walking
into his room when he was in there and surprising him.
Maybe shortly after that, and he was whigged out for whatever, maybe,
And I really want to talk about that very much,

(34:02):
because I don't I don't think it really meant much
of anything. I don't think it means much either. It's
it's just another bit of oddness. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
this this this sort of she sort of implies like
he was like really relieved it was her and not
somebody else, like maybe his life was in danger. I'm
guessing more it's he was relieved that it was a
person he recognized and not some random person walking into

(34:23):
his room. Could have been that, you know, I mean
as far as as far as you know, if he
was being pursued by somebody or his life was in danger,
you know, I don't think so, because when you see
him walking around town, he's not looking over his shoulder
at all. Yeah. About the cigarette smoking incident, that makes
me suddenly realized something, which is that in the in
his pockets they didn't find any cigarettes or matches. They

(34:43):
didn't weird. Yeah, maybe he gave up gave it up. Yeah,
it could have been. I don't know, but he was
walking on the beach for quite a while. Nobody reported
seeing him smoking a cigarette there. Maybe that was his
one cigarette of the week. They smoked him. Let's move
on to our next theory. Uh, maybe he just stuffed
random stuff in there and left the hotel and came

(35:05):
back with the stuff random stuff gone because he just
knew he was being videotaped and he thought he'd create
a mystery. He deliberately created his own little unsolved mystery.
You loved making this a theory and just about everyone
you can, because he's going to do that. Yeah, I
just that's what I gotta do. And my last thought
is that perhaps what was in there was money. So um,

(35:26):
and this splits into two theories, which is one, he
was leaving the hotel with a bag full of money
and every time he would and he had he had
figured out somehow he had gone around town and figured
out some very very good hiding spots that were safe,
and he was stashing the money in these hiding spots.
And then possibly that's maybe that's why he bought those stamps,
just because he wanted to send letters to friends and

(35:47):
relatives and tell him where to come to get the money.
I also found there was a guy about eleven months later,
a guy in Sluger named geles Ford was arrested in
May two thousand ten, and he happened to have two
thousand euros on him in fifth year old notes rolled
up in his pocket. Uh. And he was, according to
the police quote, never known to work. He was believed

(36:09):
by the police to be involved in the drug business.
But at the same time, if he had a lot
of fifty year old notes, unlikely. Yeah. You're gonna have
all kinds of denominations, right, You're going to have small denomination.
Oh yeah, lots of that. And as it happens, the
apartment where he lived at the time of his arrest
is just right around the corner from the hotel. Yeah.

(36:30):
So I wonder did giles Ford stumbled across the stash
of Bergman's cash. Yeah, I don't know. Of course, this
is all this is all sheer speculation. But I still
like my theory better than the police theory. Yeah. Another
reason you know he might have the Bergman might have
done this is that he might have been the kind
of guy that would enjoy leading his relatives and friends

(36:51):
on an Easter egg hunt. You know who knows. Maybe
he maybe he planned a whole series of clues for
people to find the hidden treasure. Hidden. Yeah, a play,
And if if those guys managed to miss any of them,
there might still be some big wads of cash laying
around South Sligo somewhere. Let's go to money number two.
So it was nice. The second thing thought is that
he brought it to Sligo to maybe park it with

(37:14):
an attorney or as they call him over there, solicitors
or barristers. I'm thinking the reason he might have done
this would have been to perhaps avoid inheritance taxes, which
in some countries and the in Europe can be rather high,
like the UK and France. So if he was planning
on on dying, uh, And let's say he had a
house and a lot of money and savings and investments,

(37:36):
he might have just left the house as is, but
cashed out everything else and then brought it in a
big suitcase to look down like Sligo where perhaps, as
I said before, he perhaps he had been there before,
perhaps he already had himself an attorney there, so he
shows up, he shows up kind of late on Friday.
When he showed up on Friday was I think about
six dirty sligo time, and so it might have been

(37:57):
too late to go visit his attorney, but he probably
contacted him maybe on Saturday and started. And obviously he
doesn't want to walk out of the hotel carrying his
whole big suitcase full of money, so he takes it
out in the small batches in his purple bag. This
also has a security component to it too, where as
if against rob or if he loses it, well, he's
not losing the entire kiddie, He's just losing part of it.
That's true. Yeah, well but my but my question is

(38:21):
if he's got a bag full of cash, so well,
let's say it was all in the bigger piece of
luggage that he had. That thing would have been really heavy,
which you would imagine we would see him kind of
struggling with that bag as he walks around. And I
never got that impression, you know, as he would kind
of get pulled off balanced by its way here there

(38:43):
that I never saw that. Yeah, No, I agree, it
didn't look like a weight a time, but I mean
it might have been at the bulk of the cash
was in there, but the rest of it was in
the shoulder bag. And also waste length leather jacket has
tends to have lots of large pockets in it. So
I mean he could have had the money distributed all
over the play. True, he could have worn the money.
You could yeah, I mean you could. Yeah. So I
mean he could have had large sums of money on them.

(39:06):
But okay, But of course for the solicitor that he
leaves all this money with, this would seem a little fishy.
And I think that I a solicitor, upon finding that
Bergman has died, would realize that probably what Bergman was
doing was trying to evade inherance taxes. So next question
is is would he be in any obligation to report
this to the authorities? And it turns out now, so

(39:28):
I want to take this. I want to take a
moment to thank our listener Gavin, who is in the
legal profession in the UK, and you gave me lots
of good information regarding attorney client privilege there and it's
very similar to what it is in the US. If
I hire you, you're supposed to keep my secrets. So
if you suspect wrong doing, you can report it, but
there's a good chance that you'll be sued. And it's

(39:50):
just not something that's not a path that most lawyers
are going to choose to go down. You just you
need to keep your clients secrets. Do you keep your
mouth shut? You need to keep your mouth shut. Yeah,
you know. But again, this is all speculation on my part.
It might be also that he just knew somebody who
was a trustworthy person in Slago and left the money
with them. It could be he knew somebody in Slago
he wanted to give the money to. Or it could

(40:12):
be that that there was not money in the purple
bag to begin with. I don't know. I like I
just like the money idea, of course, did yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, okay, So that's the money theory. You guys
have any more thoughts on that, the money theory. The
money theory wasn't money, Yeah, last theory. It was his
Barbie doll collection. And you can see why he didn't
want to get rid of that. That's the weirdest you

(40:35):
and your theories. Yeah. So, anyway, which of all the theories,
which one are you guys are gonna go with? You're
gonna go with personal possessions or money. Well, I'm surprised
that you didn't bring up the possibility of foul play. Um.
I know that the autopsy didn't show that he was
strangled or anything like that, but it doesn't mean that

(40:56):
somebody didn't drown him. Um, it's entirely possible some of
a couple of guys could have grabbed him and hauled
him out to see and drowned him. Yeah, and I
mean I mean, would they have they have like stripped
him and then dressed him as a speedo before or
after they drowned him. I don't know. I don't know,
but I don't think that's what happened, but I've seen
speculation of that. I mean, this, this story is just

(41:17):
full of so many possibilities, and people seem to just
get on fire about each and every one of them.
Do you want to hear a ridiculous one that I
stumbled upon. It's it's super super dumb, it's a really
weak But I stumbled on this when I was looking
for information about Peter Bergman's obituary, because I was thinking, Oh,

(41:39):
they found a dead guy, they'll be an obituary. Not
so in Ireland, however, on April eighteenth of the same year,
a fifty nine year old man named Peter Bergman died
in New York City. Yeah, maybe it's him. Yeah, I mean,
I'm just saying, like, of all of the tenuous like threads, like,
was the Bergman spelled the same with winds at the end? Okay,

(42:01):
I think I saw the same one. I came across
an obituary for the other Peter Bergman who was eight
seven when he died, the guy who worked with Einstein. Yeah,
not this, but this guy died what a month? Yeah,
that was a few months before. That's one of the
things that made me wonder about that is, um, I
thought for sex for a moment occurred to me that like, well,

(42:21):
was this guy related to this Peter Bergman? Did you
know this Peter Bourbon and take his name? So obviously
he's not the same guy, but maybe he somehow had
some connection with this Peter Bergman who had died more recently,
or maybe it was Peter Bergman was like there was
some final business to take care of. He got ill,
he baked his own death, went over there, tried to
like even more cover up who he was by affecting

(42:44):
a very deep accent giving a place of different I
don't know. Again, like I said, super dumb, but I
like it. But there's there's somebody actually put that theory
out there. Did you make okay? Cool? Yeah? You know,
here's another thing that that I've couldn't believe that nobody
has looked into, and I we don't hear have the

(43:04):
resources to do it. But that address that he gave
in Vienna, it's an empty lot. Chances are good it
was not always an empty lot, and so it would
be interesting to find out what was there before two
then maybe you know, if it was a house. Yeah,
because it's weird to like just pull out of thin

(43:26):
air say oh, yeah, this is my address and it
just happens to be an empty lot. Well, it's possible.
It's it's entirely possible, just by random chance, random chance.
Or it could be that he knew that address from
some point in time. You could try and pin things
backwards that way, you might, you know. The The thing

(43:46):
about it is, too is we still don't know for
certainty that he was totally trying to conceal his identity
and disappear, but apparently it was. But he might have
actually owned that vacant lot. Yeah, you know, I mean,
I don't know if anybody's bother to check land ownership records.
I think they would have. Yeah, you could also check
adjacent properties to and and you can almous as you say,

(44:09):
go back, I mean last stuff change his hands. So yeah,
I personally think that was probably mostly randomness. That's probably
as we could have done what I would have done,
which is, you know, go out, go to Google street
view and wait till you go and find an empty
lot and then grab the address off the street view.
Street view wasn't a thing, probably not quiet, it wasn't

(44:31):
mean yeah, yeah, but online maps were a thing, and
he could have gone and figured out what it was. Yeah. Yeah, Well, anyway,
that's it for the theories. I'm going to go for
the money, um, just because I like it better, but
also because if you look at the contents of the
bag when he leaves with most of his personal possessions

(44:53):
would have been closed almost you know, almost all of
them would have been closed, and so the bag would
have had a nice round you look to it, and
instead it looks like he's carrying angular something some corners,
you know, what, something that's got corners. Yeah, and so
that's the other reason. Almost every time you see that bag,
it's got something kind of kind of squash it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(45:14):
I don't know, man, it could be. It would also
help explain why he was kind of startled when somebody
came in. Yeah. Maybe he was busy stuff in his
purple bag for the cash. Yeah, or maybe he was
up to something worse, you know, you know, I mean,
it could have been up to something embarrassing that happens sometimes.
That he did say that felt you just say he
was he had this look in his face like he
was doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing. So,

(45:37):
you know, you never know. Yeah, I'm I'm undecided on this.
I do not think that the whole thing was a
giant suicide set up. I don't. I don't think that
that was the plan. But what happened really I think
So you think his death, his death was an accident,
then well I don't think that he went there with
this grand built up scheme to then swim out to

(46:01):
see and disappear. I think I don't know that he
you know, that he died on purpose. It's entirely possible
that he wanted to go swimming and was a weirdo
about swimming at night and went too far, swam out
to see too far. I mean, I don't know if
either of you had done this, but it's very easy

(46:22):
to be swimming and not realize how far you've gone
and then suddenly realize how tired you are. And I
have thought I was going to drown before because I
was positive I wasn't gonna make it because I don't float.
I think like a rock. And there's there's there's such
things as reptides and currents and stuff like that too.
You know, there's there's all sorts of ways. But I

(46:43):
don't I don't think he intended to come back to
Shore alive, my personally, because I mean he was out
there really late, you know, and a long, long walk
from town that was miles from town, and you're gonna
go for a swim. He didn't bring a towel with him,
by the way, gonna go for a swim, and then,
by the way, good luck getting transportation back to town. Yeah,
I don't know. Yeah, it's sad too because the poor

(47:07):
old guy I wandered around town for for days, you know,
just with his purple bag. Hardly talked to him, talked
to staff, and I that really is kind of hit. Yeah, yeah,
and he didn't he didn't interact much with anybody. And
then he went out to the beach that afternoon and
just walked up and down the beach for hours and
because but he talked to him then either no, not

(47:28):
really like he said hi, and he never really said
anything back. He did not politely and move on. Yeah,
but of course he had to. He had if he
was planning and killing himself, he probably had bigger things
on his mind. Yeah. A tough, a tough thing. And
I feel bad for the guy. But obviously, you know,
he made if he did indeed commit suicide, obviously he
felt the alternative, which was you know, agonizing death by cancer,

(47:51):
was worse, you know, And I guess I can't blame him.
It's just too bad that he had to make that choice. Yeah, agreed. Well, okay, anyway,
after that ray of sunshine, I know, I know I've
got you all depressed. If you guys have any thoughts
on this, any theories of your own, or if you
happen to have found a big chunk of cash and sligo,

(48:11):
we would love to hear it. From you. Yeah, yeah,
we would totally like to hear from you. So you
can reach us at our email address at Thinking Sideways
podcast at gmail dot com. We also have a website
where you can download our episodes and listen to them.
You can. We'll have links up there where you can
follow some of the information that we're pertaining to this topic,

(48:32):
and you can, of course leave comments. Please leave nice comments.
We prefer those. Uh. You can also find us on iTunes.
If you do, then please subscribe and leave us a review,
preferably a really good review. Uh. You can also stream us.
You can stream us from damn near anywhere, so that's that.
Find us on Facebook, we have our page. We also

(48:52):
have a group. We're also on Twitter, so we are
Thinking Sideways that's without the G and we are also
on Patreon if you don't know, it is a service
where you can basically pledge a certain amount of money
per episode if you want to support the podcast. It's
entirely optional, but if you feel like doing that, that
would be great. Anyway, that's it for this week. You

(49:13):
guys have any last I think we've we've run this
one dry, yeah, I think so. Okay, bye everybody. By guys,