Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Peter Bergman Pt. Two
Transcript
- 0:29Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
- 0:33death of an unidentified deceed known only as Peter Bergmann. Robin, do you
- 0:38want to catch everyone up of what we talked about in our previous episode.
- 0:42Well, this case takes place in two thousand and nine in the town in
- 0:45Ireland called Sligo, and Involl was a middle aged man who showed up there
- 0:50and decided to check into a local hotel under the name Peter Bergman, but
- 0:54he did not provide any identification and it turned out that was not his real
- 0:58name. He spent three nights at the hotel and CCTV footage captured his movements
- 1:03during that time period. It appeared he would exit the hotel caring personal items,
- 1:08and then they would be gone whenever he returned, so it almost appeared
- 1:12like he was gradually disposing of all clues to his identity because he didn't want
- 1:17anyone to find out who he was. And after he checked out of the
- 1:19hotel, he traveled to a beach in a village called Ross's Point and numerous
- 1:26witnesses saw him hanging around the beach for about eight hours or so, but
- 1:30the following morning he was found dead. His body had gone into the water,
- 1:34he was wearing limited clothing, but it turned out that his exact cause
- 1:38of death was actually cardiac arrest rather than drowning, and when a medical toxicology
- 1:44report was performed, it turned out that he had prostate cancer and likely would
- 1:48have only lived for a couple more weeks if he had not died on that
- 1:51date, But it showed no trace of drugs in his system, and it
- 1:55did show that he had a history of three previous heart attacks. But some
- 2:00of the personal items of his like his clothing, were found on the beach
- 2:02to him. A lot of his items that he was shown carrying on the
- 2:06CCTV footage was never found, so there's a lot of mystery surrounding his death.
- 2:12People have speculated that he traveled to this place in Ireland because he wanted
- 2:15to end his own life on his own terms, but he didn't want anyone
- 2:19to find out what happened to him, which is why all form of identification
- 2:23was disposed of. All the people who spoke to him said that it sounded
- 2:27like he had an Austrian or German accent, and when he signed into the
- 2:30hotel, he provided the address for a place in Austria which turned out to
- 2:34not even exist. So they've spent the last fifteen years or so trying to
- 2:39figure out who he is, but they haven't had any success, even though
- 2:43there's actual CCTV footage of him and actual photographs that have been released to the
- 2:47public, but no one has ever come forward to say that they recognize him,
- 2:52and that's why this case is still unsolved to this day. So in
- 2:55October of twenty nineteen, one of the investigators on this case, Detective Inspector
- 3:00Ray Mulderigg of the Sligo Guardee, was interviewed for an article in Vice magazine.
- 3:07He expressed his belief that Peter Bergmann had chosen to travel to Sligo for
- 3:10a reason, stating quote, there seems to have been a purpose to it.
- 3:15Everything he did seem to have had a purpose, from cutting the labels
- 3:17of his clothes and all the rest of it. The question you have to
- 3:22ask is why Sligo. If you want a scenic place to die, you're
- 3:25spoilt for choice across the west coast of Ireland or even Scotland for that matter.
- 3:30Something must have brought him here. Even if we've never been able to
- 3:35say what that was end quote. Indeed, the consensus seems to be that
- 3:38Peter was definitely not a native of Ireland, unlikely hailed from Austria or possibly
- 3:44even Germany, So what made him travel the county Sligo. Another complication in
- 3:50this case is that even though Peter's actions suggests that he had planned an elaborate
- 3:53suicide, we can't even be one hundred percent certain how Peter died. I'm
- 3:59going to make a comparison to a case which we once covered on a path
- 4:02went Chile Bonus Patreon Minniesote, and that's the twenty fourteen death of Alan Jeel.
- 4:09Alan was a sixty four year old man whose nude body was found washed
- 4:13up on Parentporth Beach in England, and he was not carrying any identification.
- 4:17In fact, the only reason Alan was identified was because he had been carrying
- 4:21an old photograph of himself as a toddler, and his siblings recognized it when
- 4:27it was circulated throughout the media. It turned out that Alan lived in another
- 4:30town located twenty five miles away, and much like Peter Bergman, CCTV footage
- 4:36would tract Allan's movements in the hours prior to his death, but no one
- 4:41could figure out why he traveled to Parentport or if he died by suicide,
- 4:45homicide, or accidental drowning. And to make another comparison to Peter's case,
- 4:49Alan's clothing and a lot of his personal items he had been carrying around were
- 4:54never recovered. Alan was pretty much considered to be a loner and he may
- 4:58have planned to travel to a location which he found comforting in order to end
- 5:01his own life. You get the sense that this was the same situation with
- 5:05Peter and that for whatever reason, he decided that the beach in Ross's Point
- 5:11would be his ideal final destination. What's really intriguing about this, though,
- 5:15is that he asked the cab driver, can you take me to a beach
- 5:19nearby? Right? Can you take me over to a beach? And he
- 5:23goes to multiple locations to these beaches, so he's not super familiar with them.
- 5:29If it was me, I would think I would do exactly what you've
- 5:31said. I would go to a place that had some kind of nostalgia,
- 5:34that had some kind of dream moment for me. And even the detectives and
- 5:40investigators are saying this is not really the place I would have picked. When
- 5:43you think about all of the beautiful locations around where he could have gone,
- 5:46even from this point where he was at, why this location it doesn't seem
- 5:53to be a place that he's familiar with, It doesn't seem to be a
- 5:56comforting area unless he literally part of the plane is just I'm going to go
- 6:00on a whim in the moment when I feel right, I'm going to find
- 6:02a place in the moment that feels safe and peaceful, and it happens to
- 6:08be this random beach. But it's really interesting that there's really no tie.
- 6:12There's no way of knowing what it would have meant to him, But we
- 6:15know he wasn't familiar or he wouldn't have asked the cab driver to take him
- 6:18to this random place. And then to add on top of it that he
- 6:23died via cardiac arrest. It makes you wonder was he really going to this
- 6:28elaborate measure to complete suicide and then his body gives out right at the end
- 6:33that this cardiac arrest is what takes him and not his plan to end his
- 6:38life with dignity. It's very very interesting the cause of death and in the
- 6:43momentary plans that were leading up to being on that beach in that moment.
- 6:48Yeah, going back to the Alan Jill case, it was established that the
- 6:51town where he died parentpoor that was a place where he spent his childhood and
- 6:57had probably some of his happiest, fondest memories. So if it was a
- 7:00suicide, you could understand why he chose to travel to that location. But
- 7:04for Peter Bergman, he has no ties to Ireland that anyone could know of.
- 7:10He did not know about this particular beach beforehand, since he asked the
- 7:14cab driver to recommend a place, and he also did not seem to have
- 7:17too much familiarity with Sligo. So it's still a big mystery like why if
- 7:23he would travel to Ireland, and if he wasn't planning a suicide, would
- 7:27what would it be his reason for going here to begin with? Maybe it
- 7:30was just so simple as he had absolutely zero connections in Ireland and he thought
- 7:36the potential for his identity being discovered if his plan was to complete suicide,
- 7:42would be slim to none. And perhaps all he really required was the ocean.
- 7:46Maybe he was a big ocean lover, or he was drawn to water
- 7:50like so many of us are, and just the idea that he would be
- 7:54able to end his own life in water could have been enough for him to
- 7:58go, I've got no connections to Ireland, no one's going to find out
- 8:01who I am there. I'm going to dispose of any personal identification or things
- 8:05that could lead back to my true identity, and then I've got the beach
- 8:09here, and then that's all I require moving forward with the plan to complete
- 8:15suicide. If that was indeed what he was doing. If it was what
- 8:18he was doing, it does seem very serendipitous that before he was able to
- 8:22do that, he would be struck down by a heart attack at that exact
- 8:26moment. The timing seems just so bizarre and uncanny that it's just such an
- 8:33interesting element to this case. Yeah, it's just why this story stood out
- 8:37so much because it is just so bizarre and unique. And if that was
- 8:41his plan to travel to a place where he had no connection so that no
- 8:45one would identify him, then it technically did work, because no one has
- 8:48ever come forward who recognizes him. It's been theorized that Peter may have wanted
- 8:54to drown himself and hope that his body would be washed away in the Atlantic
- 8:58Ocean forever. But it sounds like there was just not enough salt water in
- 9:03his lungs for his cause of death to have been drowning. I really don't
- 9:07get the impression that there was any foul play involved, and the medical examiner
- 9:11seemed to believe that Peter died of an acute cardiac arrest, suffering a fatal
- 9:16heart attack at the exact same time you're planning to unlive yourself. Seems like
- 9:20one hell of a coincidence. But given how the autopsy indicated that Peter likely
- 9:26had a prior history of heart attacks, I suppose it's not impossible. On
- 9:31our last episode, we mentioned that this story was featured in a short documentary
- 9:35titled The Last Days of Peter Bergman, and if you go on YouTube you
- 9:39can find handheld footage of a Q and A with the director Kieran Cassidy following
- 9:43it screening at the Sundance Film Festival in twenty fourteen. Cassidy says that the
- 9:48coroner told him he suspected Peter may have taken a fatal dose of cyanide to
- 9:54end his life, but we have not seen this information corroborated by any other
- 9:58sources. However, even though no medication or drugs were found in Peter's system,
- 10:03I guess he could have ingested something which caused his death and it was
- 10:07never detected during the autopsy. And I think you have to step back and
- 10:11say what did the autopsy actually test for? Because there's so many levels of
- 10:18testing you can do for substances that could be so in somebody's body, and
- 10:22that's how you see these cases where someone has poisoned someone and because they weren't
- 10:26looking for that chemical, because there wasn't a test for that specific drug or
- 10:30whatever is going on, it is missed. And so if it's this idea
- 10:35that this is a person who's very clearly sick, they have cancer riddled throughout
- 10:39their body, they have other issues where you can see his heart has struggled
- 10:43and he's had multiple heart attacks, then maybe they're not looking as carefully as
- 10:50possible, saying hey, listen, are we going to run all of the
- 10:52toxicology reports? Are we simply going to do these basic tests, therefore missing
- 10:56something like cyanide I mean, I think it is a possible ability that they
- 11:00simply didn't run the test given what his body was already telling them. The
- 11:05standard panel's pretty basic, right, It's going to be testing for like alcohol,
- 11:09marijuana, cocaine, methampheta means all those types of things. So unless
- 11:16they know what to test for, it's so hard to pinpoint it. Like
- 11:18look at the case of like Alexander Livinenko, the one who was the Russian
- 11:24who was poisoned in the UK with their radioactive isotope. I can't remember exactly
- 11:30which one, and it took them so long to figure out exactly what happened,
- 11:33how it was administered, and what was causing this rapid deterioration. But
- 11:39do either of you know that in the case of the ingestion of cyanide,
- 11:45is cardiac arrest the first thing that it causes A good question. I'm going
- 11:50to look that up. It says at Wikipedia at least that early symptoms of
- 11:54cyanid poisoning include headache, dizziness, fast heart rate, shortness of breath,
- 11:58and vomited and this phase mean and this phase may then be followed by seizures,
- 12:03slow heart rate, low blood pressure, loss of consciousness, and cardiac
- 12:07arrest. So that is one of the symptoms. Yeah, it says that
- 12:11suicide attempts are the primary cause. This is from a medical journal or the
- 12:16suicide attempts with the primary cause of a cyanide intake, and the majority of
- 12:20these attempts are fatal. Cyanide induced cardiac arrest or hypotension is one of the
- 12:26most common causes of death through the ingestion of cyanide. How easy do you
- 12:31want to check? How easy it is to see the effects of cyanide,
- 12:37Like would a medical examiner upon doing an autopsy think, oh, there's something
- 12:41strange here, there's been this cascade of effects, or would it simply pass
- 12:46for a heart attack unless you specifically did a panel testing for cyanide, Like
- 12:50with something in the autopsy indicate that they should test for cyanide. Let's see,
- 12:58Like it says it can be detected in an autopsy, but it depends
- 13:01on if you're looking for it. And I am reading that detection of cyanide
- 13:05poisoning can be difficult, so it's possible that And it says that a lot
- 13:09of the effects of ingestion are similar to the effects of suffocation, so as
- 13:15possible it could be missed if they're not looking hard enough. And what I
- 13:18think here is you have to look at if you were the medical examiner and
- 13:22you found this body washed up on shore and you start to explore his body
- 13:26and you see a heart that is sick. Right he's supposedly they were able
- 13:31to tell you had multiple heart attacks. So right there, you're going,
- 13:33my gosh, this is a sick heart and it looks like it actually stopped
- 13:37and that was the cause of death based on the fact that there wasn't water
- 13:39in the lungs and things like that, and then you see that he has
- 13:43an advanced stage of prostate cancer, which means cancer could have spread to other
- 13:46parts of the body. I think it would have been one of those where
- 13:48you very quickly say, given that he was found in the water, there's
- 13:52no water in his lungs, and his heart clearly stopped, and we have
- 13:56this cardiac arrest present in his heart and a sick heart. On top of
- 14:01that, we're able to see that it has multiple histories of issues. Then
- 14:07I don't know that you would dig much further. There's no sign that drowning
- 14:09caused it. And then you see that he's very sick, and then his
- 14:13heart stopped, and I bet he may have if that is the case he
- 14:18may have bet on that. Why would they test for sinide poisoning? They're
- 14:20going to see a very sick man who's in advanced age of prostate cancer with
- 14:24a weak heart, who has a history of heart attack, So why would
- 14:28they dig any further and why would they assume anything other than he was just
- 14:31struck down by a heart attack. But then when you have the director Tacidy
- 14:37Caring Cassidy saying that there was potentially cyanide adjusted, then the serendipitous timing of
- 14:45this heart attack is called into question and you go, okay, well did
- 14:48he just attempt to ingest something that wouldn't have been tested for at a regular
- 14:52drug panel. And if we look at his behavior leading up to what could
- 14:56have been his suicide or just you know, a medical cardiac event that led
- 15:03to his death, then we have to think, like the cutting off of
- 15:07the labels and the disposing of identification or anything linked to himself, then it
- 15:13is very possible that he would have chosen a substance like sinide. But then
- 15:16the other question is what would he have been doing in what type of a
- 15:20line of work would he have been in to have had access to cyanide,
- 15:24because you can't just go out and buy it. I want to say you
- 15:28can get it on I mean the dark Way. Yeah, I was going
- 15:31to say, I feel like if I wanted it, I could get it.
- 15:35But what year was, like, uh dread Pygriate, Roberts and the
- 15:39Silk Road. What year did that start? Because before that it would have
- 15:43been a lot harder. Oh it was twenty eleven and this take took place
- 15:48in two thousand and nine, so I don't know if it would have been
- 15:52more difficult to obtain cyanide at this point. Also, think about this,
- 15:56if you knew I'm dying I wanted to, I would dig I don't want
- 16:00to be a burden on my family anymore. And he really is going to
- 16:03end his life. He buys that one way ticket. He says, take
- 16:06me to this place that's a peaceful beach, and he scopes a mound and
- 16:10he goes back the next day. If that's the case, can you imagine
- 16:15the fear of drowning to death. That seems like one of the most brutal,
- 16:18horrific moments that could ever happen. So if I knew that I wanted
- 16:22to end my life, it is a much more ideal situation that I ingest
- 16:27something that's going to cause me to die, and then I would be taken
- 16:33out to see after I knew that I was either unconscious or deceased. So
- 16:40I think that could very well have been part of his plan as at Cyanide.
- 16:41Who knows, but if there was an ingestion of something that would have
- 16:45caused cardiac arrest to a weak heart, that makes a lot of sense versus
- 16:51saying I want to drown myself. That seems like a very scary, painful
- 16:56way to end your life. And I know people who were very determined to
- 17:00end their own lives can indeed drown themselves in small amounts of water. But
- 17:07it's that survival mechanism that kicks in. And I don't necessarily think that you
- 17:11yourself, unless you've attempted it, are going to know if that's going to
- 17:15kick in and that you're going to pull yourself out or you're just you're going
- 17:19to pull yourself out of the water like not being able to complete it.
- 17:22But I think with Cyanide, there's that no turning back type of a thing,
- 17:26and it's very very quick. I mean, I'm not an expert,
- 17:29You too did just do some googling, But the amount of time from ingestion
- 17:33to death is pretty short, no, I think so. Yeah. Like
- 17:37you remember, we did another case, the William L. Toomey case.
- 17:41That was another decedits who did jest cyanide in a church in nineteen eighty two
- 17:45and he was waiting to go into the confession booth. But it sounds like
- 17:48he gest died it before he got his turn because someone else was in there
- 17:52and die before it can happen. And in that case, we still don't
- 17:55know how he obtained his cyanide. But before we talk more about Peter's death,
- 18:00let's go back to the beginning and track his movements. The first CCTV
- 18:04footage of Peter showed him at the bus depot and Dry before he made the
- 18:08one hundred and thirty five kilometer trip to Sligo. Since it seems very unlikely
- 18:14that Peter was an Irish citizen, he had to travel from somewhere else,
- 18:18possibly Austria, in order to arrive in Dry. This would have required the
- 18:22usage of a passport, but he probably got rid of it at some point,
- 18:26and since we don't know his real name, that makes it very difficult
- 18:29to track down when he originally entered the country. Now, in spite of
- 18:33all the theorizing about how Peter chose Sligo for a reason, his actions when
- 18:37he first arrived there give off the impression that he wasn't all that familiar with
- 18:41the city. The bus station was only about a fifteen minute walk from the
- 18:45Sligo City Hotel, so there was really no need for him to take a
- 18:48taxi. It seems like he didn't have much idea where to go. He
- 18:52never made a reservation anywhere and only wound up staying at the Sligo City Hotel
- 18:57because the first hotel he tried was full, and much like with the Jennifer
- 19:02fairgate case, it's very frustrating that the desk clerk did not ask Peter for
- 19:07identification when he checked in, even though it was supposedly standard policy in Ireland
- 19:11for all hotels to require ID from their guests. If Peter had been asked
- 19:15to produce ID, who knows how you would have reacted and if things might
- 19:19have turned out differently. Instead, he was allowed to provide a fake name
- 19:23and address, and there has been endless speculation about their potential significance. What's
- 19:29interesting is I do think that Peter was looking for a place that probably wouldn't
- 19:33have asked for identification. Like we mentioned in episode one, you know,
- 19:37the hospitality industry and law enforcement have protocols in place to help with things like
- 19:41human trafficking, fraud, all of these different things, drug networking, and
- 19:47so because now you are required to produce an ID, you are produced,
- 19:52you have to produce a credit card that matches the ID on file, and
- 19:56that's how you have to book your room. I think Peter we're out in
- 20:00the car and specifically said I want a cheap hotel and I don't really care
- 20:04where it is, and he goes to a place, assuming that the cheaper
- 20:07the hotel, the less likely they would stick to those protocol It's two thousand
- 20:12and nine. I'm assuming in Ireland they had the same rules, and he
- 20:17found a place that wanted the money, they didn't care what was happening in
- 20:19their rooms. And that's one of the issues that we run into. I
- 20:22don't think it matters what country you're in if there's a rule in place,
- 20:26and yet I'm the kind of establishment that just cares about the bottom line of
- 20:30my money. I don't care what age the people running my room are.
- 20:33I don't care who they are, and I don't care what they came for.
- 20:37I just want their money. Then why would they care who Peter actually
- 20:41was, because you even mentioned our last episode that, for all you know,
- 20:45Peter could have provided a fake story just saying, oh, I forgot
- 20:48my identification, I'll show it to you at a later time. And they
- 20:51just went for it. They said, well, we want your money,
- 20:52and that's why they decided to let him check in. And they probably never
- 20:56guessed that this would become the centerpiece of a huge mystery. Yeah, and
- 21:00I guarantee you had he been staying at a place like you know, Jules
- 21:03said to like if it was the Hilton, or if it was a bigger,
- 21:07a higher end hotel chain that does care about the protocol being followed.
- 21:12I remember just losing my room key and needing to get back in, and
- 21:15I was like, hey, here I am on the internet, Like here's
- 21:18my face, here's my school ID, here's these things. I just don't
- 21:22have my driver's license and credit card with me. They're in the room.
- 21:25They had to have security escort me to my room, produce the documents before
- 21:29I could be, you know, back down at the front desk and get
- 21:32a copy of the key. But it was a very serious thing. They
- 21:34said, no, no, I don't care what else you produce with your
- 21:37name on it. I don't care what pictures you show us. It has
- 21:41to be your government issued idea and it has to be the credit card that
- 21:44matches it. And I went, goodness, okay, So I mean it
- 21:45is a it's serious for them. That's something that you know a lot of
- 21:51higher end hotel chains. I don't think you're going to bend. And Peter
- 21:53won, if he was ending his life, doesn't want to pay a lot
- 21:56of money. But I think he knew that he could probably get away with
- 22:00saying this is my name, I'm Peter, and I can write down a
- 22:02fake address and it doesn't really matter. And Robin, one question for you.
- 22:08I think you'd mentioned it in episode one and I forgot to ask,
- 22:12and you'd said that they never asked him to produce ID. Do we know
- 22:17for a fact that they never asked him to produce ID or did the person
- 22:22ask him to produce ID? And he said that he wasn't able to at
- 22:26that moment, and they just let it slide. It's never been clarified.
- 22:30I don't think that they've ever asked the desk clerk to confirm it, so
- 22:33that is kind of a mystery in this case. I know that's one of
- 22:36the big controversies in the Jennifer fairgate case, because apparently the desk clerk at
- 22:41the hotel there like has given conflicting stories about why they did not ask Jennifer
- 22:47for her ID and why she was allowed to check in, So who knows.
- 22:51Maybe the clerk was no longer working there by the time this became a
- 22:55mystery, and they just were never able to track them down and get their
- 22:57side of the story. I could almost understand in the Jennifer fairgate case because
- 23:03it's in nineteen ninety five, but with Peter Bergmann, it's two thousand and
- 23:07nine. It just seems so inconceivable that somebody wouldn't ask for identification. Now
- 23:14there's been differing accounts from different sources about whether the address he provided from Vienna
- 23:19led to a vacant lot or just never existed in the first place. I
- 23:23know that if you type the supposed street name in Stetterson into Google, the
- 23:29only matches you're going to get are sources related to this case, so I
- 23:33wonder if it might have been a misspelling or of some sort, and if
- 23:36Peter just made the name up. The thing with the postal code he provided
- 23:41four four seven two is that even though Vienna's four digit postal codes only begin
- 23:45with one, there is another section of Upper Austria which it does use that
- 23:49particular number. But it doesn't sound like investigators ever found any significance to it.
- 23:56And of course you have to wonder if there's a reason why he shows
- 24:00the name Peter Bergmann. Bergmann is spelled with two ends, not one,
- 24:04and if you type that name into Google, you'll find a Wikipedia page for
- 24:07a prominent German American physicist named Peter Bergman, who work with Albert Einstein and
- 24:14publish a couple of textbooks on such topics as general relativity before his death in
- 24:18two thousand and two. But it's possible this connection is nothing more than a
- 24:22coincidence and the name provides no clues about the man's true identity. It's interesting
- 24:29that the people who have talked to Peter and who have actually interacted with him
- 24:33can identify this Austrian accent. But then when he makes up this address,
- 24:37there seem to be bits and pieces that'll match, but things like the postal
- 24:40code doesn't match a place in Vienna. He does have a street that could
- 24:45be real, but it actually traces back to more of an abandoned lot instead
- 24:51of an actual home where he would live. So is Edmund to confuse people?
- 24:56Is he taking bits and pieces of reality and trying to put some pieces
- 25:00down or is this all just simply made up, like his name. Well,
- 25:04to make another comparison to Jennifer Fairgate, when she checked into her hotel,
- 25:08she provided the name of a village in Norway, and they did check
- 25:12this out, but cannot find anyone who recognized or knew who she was.
- 25:17So it seemed apparent that she might have just just chosen this place at random
- 25:21and it had no real connection to her. So, for all you know,
- 25:22maybe Peter did that. Maybe he chose a location that just didn't even
- 25:26exist because it just popped into his head and said, well, if anyone
- 25:32tries to track me down, they'll never find me because I'm not giving them
- 25:34any information. So, unlike the aforementioned Jennifer Fairgate and Lyle Stevick cases,
- 25:42Peter did not die until after he checked out of the hotel, so you
- 25:45have to wonder about his reasons for staying in Sliego for three nights. In
- 25:51the Last Days of Peter Bergmann documentary, the hotel manager shared a story about
- 25:55an incident in which she visited Peter's room and knocked on the door but received
- 25:59no anas, sir. When she decided to unlock the door and go inside,
- 26:03she saw Peter standing in the doorway with a startled look on his face,
- 26:07and he almost appeared like he had been caught in the middle of doing
- 26:10something. But then he apparently gave off a look which almost seemed to indicate
- 26:14he was relieved that it was only a member of the hotel staff who was
- 26:18visiting him. So I don't know if this can be seen as a sign
- 26:21that Peter traveled to Sligo to hide from someone. Of course, you can
- 26:25understand why Peter might have valued his privacy, as the CCTV footage captured him
- 26:30exiting the hotel no less than thirteen times while carrying a purple plastic bag,
- 26:34and then returning out a later time with nothing in his hands. This is
- 26:38why investigators believe that Peter spent his entire three night hotel stay, gradually disposing
- 26:45of most of his personal possessions and taking steps to ensure that no one would
- 26:49ever be able to figure out his true identity. We saw another example of
- 26:53this when Peter was shown checking out of the hotel with three bags in his
- 26:56hand, but he was only carrying two of these bags when CCTV footage captured
- 27:02him arriving at the bus station less than thirty minutes later, so I'm guessing
- 27:06he had some additional items in that bag he wanted to get rid of.
- 27:10The authorities were unable to recover any of the possessions that Peter supposedly disposed of,
- 27:15but the problem is that they really didn't have any idea what they were
- 27:18looking for, and I'm not sure if these items would have had any distinctive
- 27:22characteristics to prove they belonged to him. Since Peter was never shown getting rid
- 27:26of any personal items on CCTV, it's been theorized that he knew the camera's
- 27:32blind spots and went out of his way to avoid them. This is why
- 27:36we've seen online sleuth speculate that Peter might have been in the police or the
- 27:40military, or had experience as a spy because he had the necessary skills and
- 27:45training to avoid security cameras. However, this seems to contradict the assertion that
- 27:51Peter did not have much familiarity with Sligo, as they seemed to know so
- 27:55little about the downtown area that he had to ask the taxi driver to find
- 27:59him at Tell when he first drived. So how would he have known where
- 28:03all the CCTV cameras were. I have a feeling that Peter not being captured
- 28:07on camera disposing of any possessions was do more to luck than anything. Yeah,
- 28:12I have to lean more towards it that a luck thing. He seemed
- 28:17very unsure of a lot of things in this area, like, Hey,
- 28:19is there a cheap hotel I can go to? Hey? Is there a
- 28:22nice beach I can go? To? Take me to any of those?
- 28:26Hey, I got on the wrong bus a few times. I mean,
- 28:29we see him make decisions and actions that show that he's not familiar with his
- 28:33surroundings. It doesn't seem like he's actually at this stage where he's planned out
- 28:38so carefully that he can avoid these cameras. Yes, he's doing some careful
- 28:42planning. If he's disposing of items. But is it also the fact that
- 28:47I don't know about you guys, but anytime I've been with law enforcement in
- 28:49like pulled security camera or you were looking for camera coverage of a certain business
- 28:56or businesses, it's like it's very purposely placed on one segment of the building,
- 29:03the doorway right or the front desk or things like that. Possibly not
- 29:07in the areas where the receptacles are, where the trash cans are located.
- 29:11Maybe they're simply not priority areas in these establishments where he's visiting, and they're
- 29:15focusing on places like where the cash register is located, where the front door
- 29:19is located, where other potential large gathering areas might be, but that they're
- 29:26not in these smaller locations or these more corner obscure locations where someone might go
- 29:32to dispose of something. And so I think it's more luck or placement of
- 29:36the cameras versus saying he was able to elude them. We caught him on
- 29:41CCTV. You just didn't see him disposing of the items. But they also
- 29:45don't place trash cans in the middle of the room. They don't place the
- 29:47trash can right in front of the front desk at the hotel, So I
- 29:51think it could just be the placement of these items. I don't think he
- 29:55was familiar with where he was, therefore, I don't think he was at
- 29:57the point of being able to elude ude the recordings. Yeah, that's a
- 30:03good point. If he was going to, say a dumpster in a back
- 30:06alley to dispose of items, that's not a place where you're going to find
- 30:08a security camera. So I think he probably just lucked out and just went
- 30:12to locations that just didn't happen to have any cameras. Now, one thing
- 30:18we do know about Peter's stay and Sligo is that he stopped by the post
- 30:22office and purchased airmail stickers and ten eighty two cent stamps. Well, it's
- 30:27never been officially confirmed that he mailed any letters, the fact that these stamps
- 30:33and stickers were not found on him when he died would imply that he did
- 30:37well. It's easy to believe that Peter was some loner who did not have
- 30:40any family or friends, why would he have felt the need to mail out
- 30:44any letters. But if he did have family and friends, then these actions
- 30:48do make sense, especially if he knew he was going to die sometime in
- 30:52the near future. However, not one person has ever come forward to say
- 30:56that they received any letters from Peter, which would be all the more surprising
- 31:02if he mailed them to ten separate people. At that time, the postage
- 31:06to mail a letter to someone in Ireland was fifty five cents, and it
- 31:08was eighty two cents to mail something outside the country. So the fact that
- 31:12he purchased eighty two cent stamps obviously suggests that any letters he had sent had
- 31:18an international destination, right. And also you have this idea that maybe he
- 31:25was sending information for work, maybe he had to mail in time cards,
- 31:29or maybe he had to mail in receipts, or maybe he was mailing in
- 31:33I don't know, bills for his medical expenses, so his partner wasn't burdened
- 31:37with him. I mean, we really have no idea where these were going.
- 31:41I really would have assumed that they would have found them on his person,
- 31:45except for the fact that it seemed like he did have a plan for
- 31:48either getting rid of his things preparing for the end of his life. There
- 31:52was a meticulous decision made when you see the actions of him trying to check
- 31:56things off the list, right like minimizing on his person getting these postage stamps,
- 32:02and then we assume subsequently mailing letters. So either it was sent to
- 32:07someone like you said earlier, where he's trying to say, I'm not here
- 32:12anymore. I ended my life. Please don't worry about me. I wanted
- 32:15to die with dignity. I mean, it is possible people receive letters and
- 32:20weren't connected to the Peter Bergmann case, but that they know that their loved
- 32:25one was dying of cancer. Didn't want them to have to see him at
- 32:30the end of his life where he wasn't able to have all of his faculties
- 32:32about him, and he wrote the truth, I'm taking my life with dignity.
- 32:37Please let me be I love you with all my heart. This is
- 32:39the way I want to do it. Please honor and respect that. And
- 32:43they were at peace with that, and therefore when they don't link themselves to
- 32:47Peter countries away, then it's kind of the end of that story. So
- 32:53I don't know. I think the fact that you didn't find the postage stamps
- 32:57likely he did send them to some one, or he was doing something more
- 33:00practical where you wouldn't have really had anyone paying attention, like paying a bill
- 33:05or sending something to his workplace. I just don't think that we can operate
- 33:08under the presupposition that everybody in his life, if he did have these close
- 33:14relationships or relationships at all, that they were aware of his councer diagnosis,
- 33:19because if he wanted to end his own life, he may have been dealing
- 33:22with this on his own without the supportive family, because they might not have
- 33:27known that they had to support him if he didn't disclose his diagnosis, which
- 33:31some people don't, especially if they find out about the disease in the end
- 33:36stages, and then he may say, well, I don't want to burden
- 33:38people with this and watching my rapid dissent, so I'm going to take it
- 33:43upon myself. But I don't want to make people sad. And so if
- 33:46that is the case, we can't assume that he disclosed the truth, which
- 33:50would be I'm ending my own life, I'm going to be at piece.
- 33:52Well, then I would think that one of those people would have heard about
- 33:55the Peter Bergman case because their antennas would have been up and somebody would have
- 34:00contacted the authorities. I just think that if he did send letters, there
- 34:04would have been an element of misdirection involved. One of the big complicating factors
- 34:09with identifying Peter Bergmann is that, even though his story got extensive coverage in
- 34:14Ireland, it's very unlikely that he was an Irish citizen, and I'm not
- 34:17sure how well known his case is and other countries. If Peter hailed from
- 34:22Austria or Germany and his friends and family received some letters there, they may
- 34:25have had no idea that he became an unidentified John Doe in Ireland. According
- 34:30to a twenty fifteen article in the French newspaper Le Mont, the Austrian authorities
- 34:37claim they were never contacted by the Guardee about this case, so I don't
- 34:40know how much effort has been spent attempting to match Peter with missing persons in
- 34:45Austria. There is also no official interpoal notice for Peter Bergmann because their only
- 34:51two categories are missing person and wanted person, and as far as anyone can
- 34:54tell, no one has ever reported this guy missing. It would be the
- 34:59responseb of his home country to do so, but we don't even know which
- 35:02country's from. On the other side of the coin. It's also possible that
- 35:07the people who received Peter's letters are well aware of his story, but he
- 35:10gave specific instructions for them not to come forward and claim his body, and
- 35:15they've decided to respect his wishes. But of course we still can't be one
- 35:19hundred percent certain that Peter mailed any letters in the first place. That's right,
- 35:23I mean, we have no idea that he You didn't take those postage
- 35:27stamps in that purple bag and discard of them somewhere. You could just as
- 35:30easily throw the postage stamps away as you could mail them. It. Just
- 35:35because I wasn't found with his belongings doesn't mean that he actually used them.
- 35:40The only other significant movement we know about from Peter Stan's lago was when he
- 35:45asked a taxi driver to take him to a quiet beach and they took a
- 35:49brief trip to Ross's Point. It doesn't sound like Peter was aware of this
- 35:53location beforehand, but it made a strong enough impression for him to travel back
- 35:58there when he decided to check out of the hotel. We know that Peter
- 36:01subsequently took the bus to return to the beach the following day, and while
- 36:07we don't know the exact time he died, Several eyewitnesses placed him on the
- 36:10beach at various times between four and eleven fifty pm. Most of them described
- 36:16Peter as introspectively pacing and walking through the water in his bare feet. But
- 36:22why would he remain at that same location for eight straight hours if he was
- 36:27planning suicide by drowning himself in the ocean. Perhaps he wanted to wait until
- 36:30the middle of the night and then there was less chance of someone coming along
- 36:34and rescuing him. But for a guy who liked to keep to himself and
- 36:37was going out of his way to erase all traces of his identity, he
- 36:42still managed to leave an impression on all the people who saw him. Most
- 36:45of the witnesses who spotted Peter on the beach would later say they distinctly remember
- 36:50him because he seemed at a place there and something about him really stood out.
- 36:54While it's not uncommon for people to end their life by jumping into a
- 36:59body of water, walking into the ocean to intentionally drown yourself is a lot
- 37:04more complicated way to die. Even though it's been theorized that Peter hoped to
- 37:08be swept out into the Atlantic Ocean and lost forever, part of me wonders
- 37:13if he actually wanted his death to be as mysterious as possible so that he
- 37:17would be remembered. In fact, I'm genuinely curious to know if Peter might
- 37:22have been familiar with the Somerton Man case, because both men went to the
- 37:25trouble of removing all the labels from their clothing, and this could also be
- 37:30the reason that Peter intentionally chose a beach as his final destination. So are
- 37:36the similarities between these two mysteries just a coincidence or did Peter orchestrate the whole
- 37:42thing intentionally. Well, if Peter did want to be forgotten about after he
- 37:45died, then it's truly ironic that his actions have led to him becoming the
- 37:51subject of endless discussion in the media and on the internet. Yeah, exactly,
- 37:57I mean this idea. I think it's a coincidence between the cases in
- 38:00my personal opinion. But one of the things that really caught my eye when
- 38:05I was listening to this is that he went to the beach so early in
- 38:07the afternoon, right, it was around what two thirty or three o'clock When
- 38:10he gets there at four o'clock, four o'clock and then we know for a
- 38:15fact that there's people who are saying they see him well into ten eleven,
- 38:19eleven thirty at night. You would think if you were going to the beach
- 38:22to end your life, you would go at dusk at the you know,
- 38:28as the evening's rolling in, or even later, so that there aren't other
- 38:30people on the beach. But you also feel this sense that if he did
- 38:35take a substance to render himself unconscious or to cause cardiac arrests before being swept
- 38:39out, that's all of this is a huge decision, right, And so
- 38:44I could see going and having thirty minutes an hour where you're pacing back and
- 38:49forth and saying like, Okay, this is it, this is it,
- 38:51this is it. That's a to me, a horrifying thought that I'm about
- 38:54to dictate exactly when my life ends. So I could see the delay in
- 39:00actually executing that plan. But the hours upon hours upon hours that he's there
- 39:06is odd. It opened him up to being talked to by multiple people by
- 39:10being identified, you know, later down the road, And in my mind,
- 39:15it's like, is that part of that kind of delirium psychosis that he
- 39:19could have been experiencing where he says, I'm going to go down there,
- 39:22I'm going to wait till it's dark, But he's not really factoring in how
- 39:24long this takes. I don't know. It's sad if he's if he's waiting
- 39:30to end his life, that seems like a very sad, drawn out to
- 39:32me scary circumstance that you would be there for eight hours waiting to end your
- 39:37life, contemplating, though, you know, pacing back and forth thinking about
- 39:43your life. Because once, if we are to believe he did take Seinid,
- 39:47or even if he was just going to walk out into the ocean,
- 39:50the finality of it, it could take a lot of nerve. Even if
- 39:53you're sure exactly what actions you want to take and your hell bent on taking
- 39:59the actions, I think getting the courage to actually take that action that will
- 40:06end your own life and not knowing what awaits you on the other side is
- 40:10a truly scary endeavor for anybody who's going to be in a position such as
- 40:15that. So eight hours does sound extreme, but I think given the gravity
- 40:22of a situation, if we're to believe that was his objective, then I
- 40:24can completely understand. In addition to the unanswered questions, about how exactly Peter
- 40:31died. There's also some mystery about the items he did and did not leave
- 40:36behind. Various witnesses from the beach saw him with the small black bag slung
- 40:39over his shoulder and the purple plastic bag in his hands, but neither of
- 40:44these bags were recovered. It's one thing for him to dispose of items like
- 40:47this in the middle of town, but there would have been a limited amount
- 40:52of places to get rid of them on the beach unless he carried the bags
- 40:54into the water and the tide took them out to see. His glasses also
- 40:59disappear, though I suppose he could have lost those in the ocean as well.
- 41:02And even though he was found wearing a navy T shirt, he had
- 41:06been seen wearing a long sleeved pale blue shirt when he left the hotel,
- 41:10and it was not on the beach either. It's also odd that Peter was
- 41:14wearing underwear over top a speedo if his plan was to drown himself all along.
- 41:20I wonder why he even removed any of his clothing to begin with,
- 41:22because wearing all those heavy articles into the water would have made it easier for
- 41:27him to sink the way the clothing was neatly folded, almost gives off the
- 41:30impression that Peter was legitimately planning to go for a swim before he unexpectedly succumbed
- 41:37to a fatal heart attack. That's also very possible that this was not a
- 41:42place to go in his life. That maybe he had a sensory issue where
- 41:45he's cutting the labels out of his clothing right where he doesn't want the tags
- 41:50on his clothes, or maybe he you know, it was part of his
- 41:54mental health that you know, where he's going. I don't want the name
- 41:57brands on here. I don't want the label on my clothes. My daughter
- 42:00can't have labels touching her body. So who knows if Peter had something like
- 42:04that as well, But it is possible that he was going just for a
- 42:07swim. I don't know as a man, why you would put undies over
- 42:13your speedo. I mean, it feels like just two layers of an undergarment,
- 42:16So that seems very odd to me. If you were going with the
- 42:20intent to swim, why not just wear the speedo under your clothes. Why
- 42:23put the pair of underwear on top of it. You also have a bag
- 42:27with you, why not put the extra pair of underwear in your bag for
- 42:29when you're done swimming, you can just change from the speedo to the underwear.
- 42:32That seems a little bit odd to me. Yeah, as a man,
- 42:37I can tell you that's not normal. So I can't think of anyone
- 42:38who's going a sweeto with underwear or obnet while going for a swim. But
- 42:45now let's explore the personal items which were left inside the pockets of Peter's clothing.
- 42:50Many of them, such as the envelope containing money, were not unusual,
- 42:53but the two items which seemed a bit odd were the aspirin and the
- 42:58wrap bar of hotel soap. Under normal circumstances, the aspirin wouldn't be weird
- 43:02at all, but the toxicology report showed no traces of any medication in his
- 43:07system, including aspirin, even though Peter's cancer likely would have been causing him
- 43:13great pain. I mean, if he were one of those people who didn't
- 43:15believe in drugs or painkillers, that would be one thing, But then why
- 43:21would he be carrying around aspron to begin with? These particular aspirin tablets were
- 43:25distributed in Germany by the country's pharmaceutical company, Bayer. So I don't know
- 43:30if this could be seen as a clue that Peter originally hailed from there.
- 43:35The soap in Peter's pocket wouldn't be unusual if he had taken it from the
- 43:38Slago City hotel, but the rapper had the words Mild Soap Hotel Care printed
- 43:44on them, and this particular brand is not made or stalked by any hotels
- 43:47in Ireland. So obviously Peter must have stayed at a hotel in another country
- 43:52and carried the soap into Ireland with him. But after Gwen is so much
- 43:57trouble to dispose of all of his personal items, why did he still have
- 44:00this soap on him at the time of his death. And it's the soap
- 44:04on him, it's not in his possession like in one of his bags.
- 44:07Like we teased earlier. A lot of us take the free soap from the
- 44:10hotel right just in case, but I never have it on my person.
- 44:15I don't have it in me in my pocket when I'm discovered, right when
- 44:20I've been out at the beach, I don't have it sitting in my pocket.
- 44:22It was just a very odd location to have a bar of hotel soap
- 44:27on you. Overall, the one thing about this case I'm fairly certain of
- 44:32is that Peter was not the victim of foul play, so it's not like
- 44:36we're looking for some unknown killer here. I do believe his death was either
- 44:39suicide or natural causes. But even if he was a loner, you still
- 44:44have to think there must be someone out there who misses this guy and is
- 44:46wondering what happened to him. In a lot of the more recent cases in
- 44:51which John or Jane does have been identified, it turned out they were living
- 44:54a transient lifestyle and had no fixed address at the time of their death,
- 45:00which is why they were never officially reported missing and it took so long to
- 45:02figure out who they were. But I do not get the impression that that
- 45:07Peter Bergman was a transient So if he resided in another country, did he
- 45:10not have a house or an apartment under his name somewhere which suddenly went unoccupied
- 45:15and left people asking questions? He was in the advanced stages of prostate cancer
- 45:21and had bone tumors, so were there no medical professionals who were treating him
- 45:24at that time? And why ed why he just stopped showing up for appointments
- 45:29hell, Peter was missing one of his kidneys, so unless he sold it
- 45:31on the black market, there have to be records somewhere of an operation where
- 45:36that kidney was removed. There had to have been, and there had to
- 45:39be. The teeth records are the ones that really bother me where you say
- 45:44there were specific things like bridges made for his mouth, there were rude canals
- 45:49performed in his mouth, Like, there had to be dental records that said,
- 45:52this is so obviously this person and having those very clear health issues,
- 45:59knowing he had hard issues, know any had the prostate cancer, it seems
- 46:02like his body gave keys to who his identity was. Yeah, that's the
- 46:07thing, Like they could use his teeth and match them to dental records if
- 46:12they could figure out where he was from. But that's the issue is where
- 46:15do you start, Which country do you go to, which city you go
- 46:17to to start checking dental records? And I just have a feeling if they
- 46:22can narrow it down a bit that even if they do not use DNA,
- 46:24those distinct dental records could be used to identify them. Again, the key
- 46:30to uncovering Peter's true identity is figuring out if he mailed any letters from Sligo,
- 46:36and since he purchased ten stamps, there could have been as many as
- 46:38ten recipients who heard from him. It's unlikely he would have referred to himself
- 46:44as Peter Bergman and these letters, so you can understand why these recipients have
- 46:47never put two and two together. But you also have to wonder if there's
- 46:52anyone out there who recalls receiving a letter postmark from Slago, Ireland in June
- 46:57two thousand and nine and never heard from the writer again. Like we mentioned
- 47:01earlier, there are CCTV images of Peter Bergmann plastered all over the Internet,
- 47:07and his Wikipedia pages even has an actual post mortem photograph of him. So
- 47:12unless Peter's friends and family have their own reasons for not coming forward, there
- 47:16may be a day where someone comes across one of these images of Peter and
- 47:21recognizes him. During our episodes, we've made mention of this. Somerton Man
- 47:25another case in which an unidentified John Doe died under such strange circumstances that many
- 47:30people speculated that he was a spy involved in espionage, but now he's likely
- 47:36been identified as Charles Carl Webb. We know that these spy theories were nothing
- 47:40more than smoke and mirrors, and the decedent was an ordinary guy who lived
- 47:45an unhappy life and suffered from serious mental health issues. So the same logic
- 47:51might apply to Peter Bergman, as he was also probably not a spy with
- 47:54a larger than life backstory, but was simply an ordinary man who traveled Slago
- 48:00for his own personal reasons. That is exactly what I think happened. I
- 48:04think if Peter had been some kind of larger than life entity and there had
- 48:08been this huge romantic story as to how he got there, there would have
- 48:14been more attention. There would have been more links to him to external places
- 48:19other than just the location where he was discovered. So I for me,
- 48:24the prayer would be that someone would be able to see Peter and know,
- 48:29for their own sake, this is what happened. He is at rest,
- 48:31They have his body, we can actually bury him with a headstone, we
- 48:35can cremate him and have him back in our care, those kinds of reasons.
- 48:39It's my prayer that they recognize Peter. But I don't think there is
- 48:43some huge international spire espionage happening with Peter. I just don't think it's the
- 48:47case here. I mentioned in our last episode that the Guardie have confirmed that
- 48:52they do not use websites like ancestry dot com, as I think the rules
- 48:58for using genetic genealogy and criminal investigations might be a lot different in Europe than
- 49:01North America. So even though the authorities do have Peter Bergmann's DNA, I
- 49:07do not believe identifying him will be as simple as submitting his DNA into a
- 49:12genealogical database. But of course, if they manage to find anyone who seems
- 49:15like a promising candidate to be a biological relative of Peter's, they can still
- 49:21use his DNA to make a genetic comparison and positively identify him. While I've
- 49:25already addressed the potential ethical issues of identifying Peter if it goes against his final
- 49:30wishes, I still hate the idea of this man having loved ones out there
- 49:35who are suffering because they don't know what happened to him. And that's why
- 49:38I believe every investigative possibility should be explored. So if you happen to have
- 49:43any information about the identity of the man known only as Peter Bergmann, please
- 49:47contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley, any final thoughts on this case?
- 49:53This one for me, it's more about the family that there is a family
- 49:58summer saying I wonder what happened to my loved one. He was sick,
- 50:04And the reality is that when you have a person who makes a decision to
- 50:09end their life, that is a very personal, very big decision that that
- 50:14individual is struggling with. Yet they still have a family who is waiting to
- 50:20understand what happened where they are and just having their body to say that this
- 50:23is a closed part of our life that he passed away. He was sick.
- 50:29We want to honor him and have a place where we can go and
- 50:30honor him as a final resting place. There's a family that doesn't have that.
- 50:36And there's still the potential that Peter did not complete suicide, that he
- 50:39did go, let's say, to get away and left. He was having
- 50:44a mental health crisis and just needed to get away and clear as mind,
- 50:47knowing that he was not going to live much longer. This might be his
- 50:50last chance to travel. Maybe he was going to go home and had that
- 50:53cardiac arrest on the beach. Still again, there's a family wondering what happened
- 50:59to our loved one if he had not left detailed plans of where he was
- 51:01going, which he likely did not. When he's using false names and things
- 51:05like that, then someone's wondering, where is my brother, where is my
- 51:09uncle, where's my cousin, where's my coworker, where's my husband? So
- 51:15it's just sad. And my prayer is that the authorities who say the DNA
- 51:20and genetic genealogy would do nothing to help this case, that they step back
- 51:23and they rethink that there's too much progression in terms of genetic genealogy. I
- 51:29believe it is being practiced very heavily, and databases are being used heavily.
- 51:34In Europe. This would be the prime case to say who is this John
- 51:38Doe and give that family some answers. I agree. I think genetic genealogy
- 51:45absolutely should be used in this case, but like we mentioned throughout, I
- 51:49am completely unaware of what the laws are in Europe with regards to using it,
- 51:53and Robin had said that it's only used in Canada and the US.
- 51:58So I really hope moving forward, as you know, the technology continues to
- 52:02improve, and there's so many different Jane and John doe cases that are solved
- 52:07through genetic genealogy that countries in Europe get on board as well. But if
- 52:13they are unable to do so, even something so simple as radiocarbon dating could
- 52:17allow them to figure out potentially where Peter Bergman grew up, where he's lived,
- 52:23you know, in the last few years of his life, and it
- 52:25might narrow down this zone. And as far as what his objective was,
- 52:32I mean, I personally think that there's a strong likelihood or probability that his
- 52:38intention was to complete suicide. And since Kuran Cassidy, the director of that
- 52:44fourteen minute short that showed at Sundance and I think won in a word at
- 52:47Melbourne International Film Festival, Robin is that right, Yeah, that's correct.
- 52:52Yeah, that Cassidy had said that there was a potential that cyanide was used,
- 52:58and I think that for me, that makes a lot more sense than
- 53:01just a random heart attack just before one could complete suicide. But I think
- 53:07that I can't discount any possibility in this case. And as Ashley just mentioned,
- 53:13I really really hope that moving forward they can figure out the identity because
- 53:17somewhere out there there's friends and family who are missing this man, and who
- 53:22wonder what happened to him, And it's just so heartbreaking that he died while
- 53:29staring down this insidious disease all alone on this beach. Just it really breaks
- 53:34my heart. Yeah, Like we've talked about how in recent years, identifying
- 53:39John or Jane Does and giving them their names back has pretty much become a
- 53:44weekly and sometimes a daily thing because there are literally hundreds of decedents who have
- 53:49gotten their identity back thanks to genetic genealogy. And I remember when they started
- 53:52using it in twenty eighteen. One of the first John Does who was identified
- 53:58was Lyle Stevick, which was a very similar case, like we said to
- 54:01Peter Bergman, where he checked into a hotel under a false name and then
- 54:06took his own life, and they couldn't figure out who he was until they
- 54:10submitted his DNA into a genealogical database. And it seems inevitable that the vast
- 54:15majority of these cases will be solved someday in North America. But there is
- 54:19kind of a gray area here where genetic genealogy does not seem to be implemented
- 54:24much in Europe or in many other foreign countries or continents, and The two
- 54:30prime examples of this are the Jennifer Fairgate case and the Peter Bergmann case,
- 54:34about two mysterious folks who checked into a hotel under a false name and then
- 54:38died under very strange circumstances. And I think if these cases had taken place
- 54:44in North America, they would already be solved now because they would just enter
- 54:46their DNA into a deep database and try to find some relatives. But here
- 54:52things are a lot more complicated. I mean not only taking into account what
- 54:55potential laws there might be in Ireland, but also potential laws in other countries,
- 55:00because it seemed like Peter was from Austria or perhaps even Germany, and
- 55:05that just makes the whole situation all the more complicated. I do think that
- 55:09he probably traveled to Ireland with the intention of ending his own life because he
- 55:15probably did not want to suffer from the cancer he was facing anymore, and
- 55:19he was in so much pain that he wanted to end things before he died
- 55:22of natural causes. And maybe he just picked out Sligo randomly on the Internet.
- 55:28He said, this seems to be a nice place where I can die
- 55:30peacefully, and then just decided to get rid of all clues to his identity
- 55:36before he went out into that beach. I mean, we may never know
- 55:38what was going on in his mind. Perhaps he was lucid and he chose
- 55:43that place for a reason. But like we said earlier, perhaps his cancer
- 55:46was just causing a lot of mental health issues or delusions and he was just
- 55:51not thinking rationally. Maybe he thought people were after him. Maybe he was
- 55:54just not in his sound mind. But it sounds like even if he was
- 56:00planning suicide, a severe coincidence could happen and he just died of cardiac arrests
- 56:05before that took place. But all that being said, I do think that
- 56:08this is one of the cases we covered that has one of the best chances
- 56:12of being solved sometime down the line, because even if they do not use
- 56:16genic genealogy, they still have Peter's photograph and images of everywhere all over the
- 56:22internet, So there is always a chance that the right person might see those
- 56:27images and recognize them and come forward, and that's how they'll be able to
- 56:30positively identify him. And in spite of the fact that he may have wanted
- 56:35to die under these circumstances, he may not have wanted to be identified.
- 56:38I still think we should figure out who he is because he probably does have
- 56:43a family or friends out there who are wondering about what happened to him,
- 56:45and they definitely deserve to get some answers. Robin, do you want to
- 56:50tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The
- 56:53Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these
- 56:57standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
- 57:02and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon.
- 57:07If you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus
- 57:12episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went
- 57:15Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our
- 57:20highest tier tier three, the ten dollar tier. One of the features we
- 57:23offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries, where you
- 57:30can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on
- 57:35Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background,
- 57:39where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode.
- 57:45And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over
- 57:49was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary
- 57:52track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be
- 57:57sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know the bit
- 58:00about the Jewles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The
- 58:04Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over
- 58:07an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
- 58:10turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope
- 58:15you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the show notes. So
- 58:17I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to
- 58:21share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
- 58:24appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
- 58:29You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time,
- 58:31be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
- 58:37Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy