1. Land of Heart's Desire

Atlantic, the unsolved mystery of Peter Bergman, an Irish Times original podcast, Episode 1, Land of Hearts Desire. It is one of those mysteries. It has created so much curiosity and speculation in so many places over the years, including my own mind, and there are so many unanswered questions that would probably never be answered. But the one I would love to get answered is who was Peter Berg? My name is Rizita Boland, and I'm a reporter with the Irish Times. Ten years ago, the body of a man was found washed up at Ross's Point Beach in County Sligo. We know him only as Peter Bergman, because that's the name he gave when he checked into a Sligo hotel back in June 2009. Despite thousands of hours of police investigations, Peter Bergman's true identity remains a mystery. Over the last few months, I've been piecing together the story of a man who set out to disappear and what is known about him from the four days he spent in Sligo before dying in mysterious circumstances on a beach that faces the Atlantic in the northwest of Ireland. I've interviewed as many people as I could find who were involved at the time. Here is what I found out. The call came in at about 27 in the morning that a man's body had been found in the beach at Ross's Point. On the morning of the 16th of June 2009, Terry MacMahon, who was responsible for the day-to-day running of Sligo Garthestation, was on duty. Immediately, you're going to a response moment in relation to that. I had a character who worked at that morning and they were dispatched out straight away. I followed on, then I actually went to a store room here in the station and did a bit of hunting and got kind of a tarp haul and kind of a thing. As I knew, one of the things we'd need to do was cover away from the public days and whatever, just to actually preserve whatever evidence there was there. The call that had come into Sligo Garthestation at 6.45 am that morning was made by Arthur Kinsler, a member of the public. He lives in the townland of Cartron between Sligo and Ross's Point and had driven out to the beach. His son Brian, who was training for a triathlon, was with him. Brian made his way down the streetway. I thought that after him I noticed this object over to the right. You know, partially covered in fog probably from a distance of 30 metres. But then when I did come closer to it, I realised actually the body of a person and he appeared to have drowned and was lying face down towards in the sand. Arthur Kinsler went and called his son Brian back from the ocean. The early morning fog that had been hovering on the beach was slowly starting to rise. We walked around the body just to make sure, you know, that he was a sort of, I would say dead. And I actually test my hand on his ankle. And it was marble cold. You know what I said to Brian, the poor man is after Diane. And he's probably blown to some time. We will say a little prayer. And we did say to our father, I think, the Lord's Prayer at the time. Ross's point is a small, pretty village with a population of less than a thousand. Located seven kilometres west of the county town of Sligo, and famous for its gorgeous sandy beaches. You go through the village first and then turn right to the beach. This is the route Terry MacMahon took when he drove out to the scene at Ross's point that June morning. Once he got there, he began to realise that there was something unusual about this particular body. For a man assumed to have drowned while swimming, he was oddly overdressed. He was wearing a navy short sleeve t-shirt. The t-shirt was tucked into both the bright, purple striped swimming trunks and the underpants he wore over them. If you were going swimming, why wouldn't you take off your t-shirt and underpants first? When Terry MacMahon and his colleague searched the beach, they found the rest of the swimmer's clothes. Terry immediately noticed something strange about them. The clothes were actually folded. As you would fold them yourself, it was as if he had taken off his shoes, then taken off his socks, put his socks into his shoes, then his trousers. And then I think there was a black kind of v-neck jumper and then a black jacket. All folded nice and legally, one on top of the other. Just left in a nice regular pile on top of the rock. Later on in their investigations, the garthy learned from eyewitnesses that Peter Bergman had not undressed until after midnight in darkness. Why would you bother being so neat with the clothes you had taken off when it was dark and there was nobody to see what you were doing? Why would it matter to you? A further discovery to do with these clothes confirmed the sligo guards that they were definitely dealing with something out of the norm. The tables had been crudely but deliberately cut off some of his clothes as if a statement was being made. I suppose the big one was that most of the tags were actually cut off the clothes. It then would tie in with somebody who had no idea with them. There was no wallet, there was no driver's license, there was no identity card. And it appeared then that, you know, this was the work of somebody who just didn't want to be found or didn't want to be identified. The day after I interviewed Terry back in March, I did another interview with Ray Malderig. He is now the detective inspector at Sligo Garthestation but wasn't working at Sligo back in 2009, so wasn't directly involved at the time. He's inherited the unsolved Peter Bergman mystery. So when I was talking to Terry yesterday, he told me that when they found the clothes, they were all folded very neatly together in a pile. And what do you think, if anything, that says about the state of mind of the person who did that? It was organized, very organized. And somebody who knew exactly what they were doing, somebody who was, this was, to me, the deliberate act. It's not somebody in a state of panic or crisis. Somebody who knows exactly what they're doing, why they're doing it. I suppose the morning we found them, we were kind of thinking, you know, this man, did he go for an early morning swim? Why was he in the water? And would a case like this, you're expecting possibly a family member to come looking for him because obviously at this stage he's missing. So that was my theory at the time was this gentleman had gone for an early morning swim. And I suppose when we were waiting for the undertaker to come to actually retrieve the body, we were kind of waiting for a family member to turn up. And I remember on one occasion, there was actually one lady came walking very purposely towards us, so it was actually on the phone to me, super intended, and at the time, I actually caught the call with the super intended, and I said to him, I think we have a relation common here, or his wife is common here, and actually the lady walked by us and never even looked at the tarpaulin on the ground. No family members ever did turn up that June morning or ever after to claim the body. Whoever the dead man was, it soon became obvious he wasn't from Ireland. Sligo in the summer is a busy buzzing town, but it's a small town. Tourists stop here, on route to Danygol to the north, or on route to Mayo, Galway, Claire, and beyond to the south. The unofficial slogan for Sligo, and the one the Irish tourist board loves to promote, is The Land of Arts Desire, which is the name of one of William Butler Yates's plays. This is part of what's known in Ireland as Yates Country. WB Yates, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, is buried in Sligo. If you've never been to Sligo, you'll discover pretty fast when you Google the place name, that Yates' name is synonymous with the county. However, if you were an international tourist to Ireland, and wanted to see The Land of the Arts Desire, you probably only have it on your itinerary as a stop-off. Sligo people wouldn't agree with me, of course, but the town is not considered to be a destination in itself, in the way that some really popular tourist hubs are, like Kalarni, or Dublin, or Galway. So how did Peter Bergman end up here? The first we know for certain about Peter Bergman's movements in Ireland date from 4pm on the 12th of June, 2009. At that time, on that date, CCTV footage at Derry Bus Station recorded him boarding an ultra-boss, destination Sligo. Ten years ago, John O'Reilly was detective inspector of the Sligo-Litrim region, the job that Ray Maldereg now has. He has since been promoted to another region, but he took his self-confessed obsession about the Bergman case with him. Back in 2009, the police service of Northern Ireland gave John that CCTV footage from Derry Bus Station. He checked with the two different buses. One was going to Galway, and the other one was going to Sligo, and he initially got on the Galway bus, and asked the driver, "Is this bus going to Sligo?" or something to do that effect. And he said, "Galway, no, but the Sligo bus is over there, got on the sleigh of bus, so sleigh was in his mind. - sleigh was his destination. - It was in his mind. - This is what we know from CCTV footage later taken from sleigh of bus station. At 6.28 p.m. on the 12th of June, Peter Bergman got off the 4 p.m. Ulster bus from Derry after he had arrived in sleigh of bus station. He was dressed in black and wearing a black leather jacket. He was carrying two black bags. One was a hold-all-type bag with soft handles which he carried in one hand. The other, he carried over his shoulder. It had a long strap and was like the kind of bags people carry laptops in, although no evidence was ever to emerge that Peter Bergman had a computer of any kind with him. Sligal bus station, like the railway station, is within easy walking distance of all the hotels and town. It appeared he didn't know the town because he took a taxi once he arrived at the bus station. It also became clear that he had no advance booking for any accommodation in the town. - And he was looking for somewhere cheap this day. He took him to the Khrushkiin Lawn and Kamele Street and then to the Sligal City Hotel. The manager in the Khrushkiin Lawn doesn't recall anyone looking for accommodation, but the taxi driver told us that he went in and it was full. - Which would be understandable because it was summertime, it was in the middle of June. - Yeah, it would and it would be really, Sligal would be a busy place. And it goes into the Sligal City Hotel at 1852 on that day. - Back in 2009, it cost 65 euro a night for single occupancy with breakfast at the Sligal City Hotel. Peter Bergman paid up front in cash for three nights. He was given room 705. In CCTV footage later examined by the guards, he is seen taking a pen out of his left inside jacket pocket and signing the register with his right hand. He gave his name as Peter Bergman and this address. A-I-N-S-T-E-T-T-E-R-S-N-F-F-D-V-E-N-F-4-4-7-2. Vene is the German name for Vienna in Austria. He was not asked to produce any kind of identity, no passport or credit card, nothing. - As part of your investigations, can you recall if you went around the hotels of Sligal and asked what was their policy when somebody a walk-in arrived paying cash, where they, if they were walk-in paying cash, were they not asked for any identification? - Well, the legislation is very clear. They're obliged to ask for identification. All hotels are being placed legally door of light. Do they do us? I think we both know they don't. - What would Peter Bergman have done if he had been asked to show ID that day? We'll never know. But the address that he subsequently wrote into the Sligal City Hotel register, Einstein's letters and 15 does not exist. It's not just that there is no number 15, the street name itself doesn't exist. It's invention. Put it into Google Maps and see for yourself. Austria introduced postal codes in 1966, and why that's a fact that Austrian post-codes are made up of four numbers, Vienna's codes, Rononi from 1-0-0-0 to 1-9-0-1. They don't go up as far as 4-4-7-2, which covers a region of upper Austria. In the coming days and weeks, it was to become clear to the Sligal Guards that the man who checked in under the name of Peter Bergman had not in fact given his real name. Once they began to investigate, they could not trace anyone of that name who matched the description of the man found dead on Ross's point beach. - Witnesses describe him as having a German or an Austrian type accent. He spoke very good English. He certainly knew about the address in Austria, not existing, that would suggest that he had some knowledge of that area. He used the name Peter Bergman. I suppose that's possibly a relatively common name in parts of Europe. So my gut would tell me he came from mainland Europe as in Germany, Austria, that general area. We have no idea where the man who called himself Peter Bergman was before he showed up on CCTV at Derried Bus Station that afternoon of the 12th of June. We don't know how or where he entered Ireland, but he must have entered Ireland very close to the date of the 12th of June, because nobody ever came forward who had seen him in Northern Ireland. No restaurant air, no hotel air, no taxi driver, or anyone who might have sold him a bus ticket or rented a car to him. He moved with seeming and visibility. Well, first of all, we checked the manifest into Derried Airport, Belfast International George Best, the Larn and Belfast port. And we discovered we would have been fine, which is how we say it with the airports, but for foot traffic onto the ferry boats, there is no checks. You can walk on or walk off if you're coming from the UK. So we, possibly, that's how he came into the country. And we went to the UK to see if we could identify if he flew into any airport. In the UK, we couldn't find any trace of any person by the name of Peter Bergman with the address that he provided to us. Is it possible that we know that his name was not Peter Bergman? Is it possible that he was actually arrived in Ireland using his real passport with his real identity and flew in and then disposed of his identity papers? Is that possible? Anything is possible. But yeah, you couldn't discount it. I'd be foolish to discount it. But again, going back through the immigration system, when we ran the facial recognition checks, nothing came up matching the features of this man. Facial recognition is a controversial method of profiling people. In May this year, San Francisco made international headlines by becoming the first American city to ban its use. We probably have no idea how many times a day our faces are caught by various methods of what has become everyday surveillance, CCTV cameras and shops and banks and restaurants at ferry ports and land borders and airports. The San Francisco ban of facial recognition means that organizations such as local law enforcement won't be allowed to access such data to identify, for instance, suspected criminals because the city has decided this infringes on people's civil rights. When John says facial recognition checks were run on Peter Bergman, this is what he means. Images of Peter Bergman's face, taken from CCTV, were put through computer systems at British airports to see if this person was showing up at immigration anywhere there in June 2009, regardless of what name this person had given. Nothing did. Sligo City Hotel is still in business and I went in one day to look around the lobby. The layout is still the same as it was when Peter Bergman checked in 10 years ago. The reception desk has a wall of pigeonholes for keys right behind it. The desk faces the glass panel doors that lead out onto the street through which all guests must enter. There's a shelf with free maps of the area and flyers for tourist attractions. There are CCTV cameras in various locations, including over the desk and one that is pointed at the front door. Every day as Peter Bergman came and went from the hotel during those four days in June, he was recorded by CCTV. Each day he is something distinctive in his hand as he departed the hotel. - The proper bag. - The proper bag. - The infamous purple bag. On later examination of CCTV footage, it turned out that during his short stay in Sligo City Hotel, Peter Bergman had left the hotel 13 times, carrying a purple plastic bag which was evidently full of something. The bag was the size of one you would get in a supermarket where the cameras picked up no branding of any kind visible on the bag. Each time he returned after going out with his full plastic bag, he was not carrying anything. Like so much else about this case, it's unclear if he was coming back with the same bag now folded unseen into one of the pockets of his black leather jacket or if up in his hotel room were a stash of similar plastic bags. At the time, generally hoped that finding the contents of this bag could help their investigation. - You know, we obviously searched bins, second hand shops, last and found property store in the bus office. We checked our own stores. We searched high up and low down all over the city itself, including underground car pranks. We found nothing. - I'm not the only person to have been fascinated by the story of Peter Bergman. Back in 2013, an Irish documentary maker, named Kiron Cassidy, made an excellent 18-minute documentary about the case. It was called The Last Days of Peter Bergman, and throughout he used CCTV footage that the guards had collected from the hotel and from various locations around Slygo. I spoke to Kirin about the work he had done reviewing the CCTV footage around the purple bag. I asked John O'Reilly what he thought, the contents of the purple bag that nobody ever found or saw him disposing of. Here's Arthur Kinsley again, the man who found Peter Bergman dead on the beach. He has his own theory about the purple bag. The purple bag was obvious, so that would have been a type of double jeopardy decoy if you like, that he must have wanted to be seen at one level, and yet another level he was able to completely disappear and no one had any sight of him. It was a Friday when Peter Bergman checked into Slygo City Hotel for his three nights' day. On the Sunday, soon after 11am, he left the hotel. There's only one taxi rank in Slygo, and it's the right opposite the Slygo City Hotel on Key Street. When I had gone into the hotel from my own look around reception, I had noticed that there were free maps the region, left out on a shelf for guests, near the left side of the reception desk as you walk in. This practice was in place when Peter Bergman was occupying Room 705, because you can see these maps and flyers in the exact same place on the CCTV footage in Cure and Cassidy's documentary. I picked a map up myself the day I was in there. On one side, it has a street map of Slygo. On the other side, there's a map of the wider locality around the town. It names the mountain ranges, Ben Bulbun, Naknarei, Kesch Koran, and the villages and various place names around Slygo Bay, Strand Hill, Lissa Del, Ross's point. The driver who was at the top of the rank awaiting a fair that Sunday morning was Gerald Higgins, and he is the person who brought Peter Bergman out to Ross's point. I know this because I went and found Gerald in the hope that he would give me an interview. He doesn't work the rank anymore and he doesn't live in Slygo town, but it's Ireland, so everyone knows everyone. It took me less than five minutes working my way down the taxi rank to patch together enough information about which village he lived in and which estate. It didn't matter that nobody knew his house number. I knew when I got there, a neighbor would direct me to the correct front door which they duly did. As a reporter, you always hope people will talk to you, and although this still amazes me, usually they do. It's a bit more tricky when you turn up on announced at their door for obvious reasons. Gerald was initially taken back when he opened his door, but he did recognize Peter Bergman's name as soon as I said it, and he said he had never forgotten him and often thought about him. Gerald didn't wish to be recorded and he felt unprepared to talk to me just then, but he promised he would send me his memories of that day by email. Four weeks later, when I'd almost given up hope, the email arrived. The day I met Peter writes Gerald, I was number one in the taxi rank. Peter was standing with a map in his hand. It was very easy for me to notice him as he was straight ahead, so he headed across the road in my direction and I got out of my mini-boss to say hello because a man with a map wishes to go someplace. In the email, Gerald explains that Peter Bergman pointed to Strand Hill, seven kilometers from Slygo and asked him if that was a good beach for swimming. Being a local, Gerald knew that Strand Hill was a surfing beach, no good for swimming, so he suggested Ross's point instead. Gerald writes, "I asked him to sit in front so in he went and off we went. He was a bit chatty asking if there were buses going out there and I told him yes about once every hour. He was a pleasant man, well dressed in an Italian leather jacket, not carrying any bags that I remember. There is one thing, he had two gold teeth, one very prominent and one partly hidden behind other teeth. We drove around Ross's point. I showed him the two beaches and I stopped to the car park at the entrance to the second beach. He didn't get out but then said, "Can you bring me to the bus station?" So I said, "Okay," and told him the fee would be 20 euro and he was happy with that. On the way in, we chatted a little when I asked him where he was from and I think he said Austria. I drove to the station and gave him my card and told him if he wanted to taxi again to call me. He was grateful and paid me in a brand new 20 euro note and went into the station. Why did he want to go to the bus station? It's probable that he was checking the bus timetables out to Ross's point because he took a bus out there the next day which was to be his last day alive. On Monday the 15th of June, Peter Bergman asked for a late check out from the Slygo City hotel. Late check out was 1pm. He left the hotel not long after that. He was wearing a long-sleeved pale blue shirt with a black tank top over it and the black leather jacket over that again. He had dark colored trousers on. He was carrying three bags, the purple plastic bag and the two black bags he had had on arrival. One of them a soft hold-all with handles he carried and the other a laptop-type bag he wore over his shoulder. It's a 15-minute walk from the Slygo City hotel to the town's bus station, a little longer if the pedestrian lights are against you. I walked the route myself a couple of times. It was the bus station that Peter Bergman had asked to be dropped off at the previous day. At 1.32pm Peter Bergman showed up on CCTV arriving at Slygo bus station. Although he had left the hotel carrying three bags, he now had only two, the purple plastic bag and the bag he was wearing over his shoulder. Somewhere along the way, during his 15-minute walk, he had dumped the black hold-all bag. It's possible that everything that had been in it on his arrival at Slygo City hotel had since been disposed of in the previous days, put into bins or other places around the town, unseen by either CCTV or members of the public. The bag looked to be a soft one and when empty it would fold up and slot easily into a bin. Whatever happened to that bag, the fact is it was gone by the time he got to the bus station. Back in 2009, there was a little cafe at the bus station with a few round tables that people shared. It's now gone, it closed last year. At 1.38pm that day, Peter Bergman bought a cappuccino and a toasted sandwich. He shared a table with a couple of other people to whom he did not speak. At some point when he was sitting down, he took a small notebook out of his pocket and wrote something on a piece of paper. He spent some time looking at whatever he had written and then tore up the piece of paper and left it on the table. At that time Vincent Dunbar was the depot inspector at the bus air and station in Slygo. On that particular day, I was returning from a break at just after two o'clock when this gentleman approached me and asked me about the bus to Russ's point. He did, I understood, he did know the time of it but he wasn't sure what bay it left from. There's five bays in Slygo departure and he wasn't sure what bay and he just, you know, he didn't want to miss it. So I told him the bay it departed from and that was just after two p.m. The bus wasn't there at the time it arrived in from Russ's point to two twenty and leaves again at two forty. So I told him he had time. So if he had missed that two forty both the next one was four p.m. Would have been at four p.m. Yeah, he would have got the four p.m. or he would have got the four forty. He three more choices after two forty but he seemed to be that he wanted to get there. He didn't strike me as a man no, I learned after he went for a swim but he didn't strike me as a man that was going for a swim. He just, you know, as if he was going to maybe meet somebody or, you know, or maybe just go for a walk. And how did he strike you? What was his manner like? Well, when I met him, I just felt that he was a wee bit uptight and a bit worried, looking and stressed, looking. I taught first of all before we spoke that he was an Eastern European, but when he spoke then I thought he had a German or a Dutch accent, but he seemed to have been a wee bit uptight about getting the boss a bit stressed and he wanted to make sure that he did get the boss. Can you say that he didn't strike you as a man who was going for a swim? Well, the way he was stressed and what he was carrying with him, if anybody was going for a swim that usually you'd know that have a towel rolled up and tanks rolled up and that'd be leisurely dressed, you know, he wasn't like that at all, he looked like a man that he was on business. He didn't seem to be dressed to go for a leisurely walk and he didn't seem to be dressed to go for a swim either, you know, you think he was just going, maybe to meet somebody or go on business. I just have one last question Vincent, which might sound a little odd, but was he polite? Did he thank you for the directions or what was his manner like? No, he didn't, he didn't really know, he just, when I told him that was all he just turned and walked away, he didn't say thank you very much, he didn't let me know, it was none of that, there was no interaction whatsoever, none whatsoever. He just looked like a man that was, you know, that was stressed or in pain or just not himself. He just looked, whether it is faith, he just looked stressed out and worried, looking and tensed up and not a great, he hadn't got a great complexion, not a great collar. Why did Peter Bergman want to take the public boss to Ross's point instead of a taxi as he had done the day before? Did he think he would be less noticeable? But why then draw attention to himself by asking which bay the boss left from? Pretty much everyone I interviewed with this podcast was of the opinion that Peter Bergman had deliberately chosen to come to Slaigo for two reasons to die and in-depth to make sure nobody would identify him afterwards. Ray Mulderig, the current detective inspector at Slaigo Garthestation for one is convinced of it. Do you think that he planned to come to Slaigo and I? Yes, I do, I do, all of the actions are indicative of somebody who planned what he was doing, take for example the removal of the clothing, take for example the disposal of property, take for example the avoiding CCTV, going down to where beach at a particular hour of the morning, taking off the clothes, folding them, pulling on swimming talks, pulling on clothes over them, where or how he found out about Slaigo, but I think that everything is pited at an individual coming here with a particular intention. And if you take a new look at it on the face that this would appear to be the actions of somebody who intended to disappear, who intended to possibly enter the water and not be found and then everything planned to that degree and then face intervenes and something else. The first time I went to Slaigo for this story, it was still winter. I drove out to Ross's point beach on a cold and windy February afternoon. The sky was grey and so too was the Atlantic, scattered with white tipped waves. The tide was in. I parked at the upper car park, which is at a height where you can see far out over the beach. I opened the car door with caution, feeling the wind buffeting and shaking the entire car. It was a man with his dog in the far distance, out on the dunes, but other than that, nobody else in sight. I wanted to get a sense of the place where Peter Bergman had chosen to spend his last day on earth. While driving out from Slaigo, I'd kept wondering what was going through his head when the day taxi driver, Gerald Higgins, had driven to Ross's point beach. They had parked where I myself had parked my car and looked out over the same view. Had he been thinking about it as a place to swim the following day? Was it a place to swim and then be taken far out by the tide and not return? Did he know the next day was to be his final one? I could not get these unanswered questions out of my head. I walked around the area without any idea about where I was going, it started to rain. I clambered up on the dunes where the dog walker was and looked out over the ocean. I went back on the path and walked towards the yacht club, which is located on the far side of what local people call the first beach. The second beach is separated from the first by a rocky headland and is much longer. The first beach is where the body of Peter Bergman was found washed up, not far from the narrow concrete slipway that leads down onto the beach from the dunes. The map took me completely by surprise. It was a section of the Sligo Ordnance Survey map of the locality blown up large on a board as an information service for Taurus. It was a map that showed exactly where I was with place names of nearby landmarks and the names of geographical and marine features nearby. I was looking at the long yellow strip that were the Ross's point beaches. Behind me was a golf course, before me the Atlantic and the name of the little headland on which I was standing. I stared at the map, a sudden shiver went through me. The name of the little headland was Deadman's Point. I was here meditating on Peter Bergman, the same Deadman who had been found so close to this place 10 years ago at a location named Deadman's Point. It was a total coincidence, but it also felt like fate or something deeply weird. In the weeks and months I spent working on this story, of course I kept wondering. Might someone listening to the podcast recognize the person who called himself Peter Bergman? I would love to make one more episode, to solve this mystery that has obsessed me and so many others who worked on the case. You can contact me at [email protected].