Thinking Sideways: Who was Peter Bergmann

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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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.

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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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, 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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would be great. Anyway, that's it for this week. You guys have any last I think we've we've run this one dry, yeah, I think so. Okay, bye everybody. By guys,