Ireland Ireland - Sligo, WhtMale, 50-70, aka 'Peter Bergmann', prostate cancer, Jun'09

Estelle1

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Fellow sleuthers, this one's perplexing to say the least. In 2009, a white male - estimated to be between 50 and 70 years old - arrives in the beachside town of Sligo, Ireland, by bus; checks into a hotel with a presumably false name; and pays in cash. Four days later his body is found on a nearby beach. No evidence of drowning; foul play is ruled out. The labels on his clothes and his bags are missing, and he has no ID on him. The name he gives at check-in - Peter Bergmann - is submitted to several international databases. Nothing is found - he didn't exist.

What makes this different from some of the other UID cases out there is the abundance of CCTV footage available from his time at the hotel, a lot of which is included in The Last Days of Peter Bergmann, a 20-minute documentary, which is available here for free. That's a great starting point and covers the basics.

Also, if you're familiar with Lyle Stevik, you'll notice the parallels - this unidentified male was able to seemingly eradicate his identity over the course of the weekend in the hotel. Very odd.

What we know

+ "Peter Bergmann" (PB) gets on a bus from Derry, Northern Ireland, and arrives at Sligo Station at 18.28 on June 12, 2009. He is carrying a black shoulder bag and larger travel bag. He takes a taxi to the Sligo City hotel where pays in cash for three nights. He gives his name as PB, and an address in Vienna, Austria (which was later found to be a vacant lot). Hotel clerk remembers he has a deep Germanic accent.

+ On June 13, 2009, PB purchases eight stamps and airmail stickers from the Post Office.

+ On June 14, 2009, PB asks a taxi driver if he can take him to a beach where he can swim. He is taken to Rosses Point, before returning in the same taxi.

+ On June 15, 2009, PB checks out of the hotel, and leaves with the shoulder bag, a purple plastic bag, and a dark carrier bag. The larger travel bag is no longer with him. He walks to the bus station where he orders lunch; he is spotted on CCTV looking at small pieces of paper which he takes out from his pocket. PB gets on a bus to Rosses Point.

+ On June 16, 2009 at 6.45 am, his body is found on the beach.

The bizarre bit

CCTV films PB leaving the hotel several times carrying a purple bag and then returning to the establishment without it - presumably he is gradually disposing of his clothes/personal possessions. According to the director of The Last Days of Peter Bergmann, he does this 13 (!) times throughout the weekend. Surprisingly (given the prevalence of CCTV in the UK/Ireland), not a single camera can locate where he discards these items; none of his belongings are found in trash cans in the immediate vicinity, despite law enforcement doing an extensive search. PB is filmed doing pretty much everything else that weekend (he's spotted smoking/eating/walking in various locations). How did he know about these CCTV blind spots - how is that even possible?

Unexplained death

Coroner found PB had extensive prostate cancer, bone tumours, and had suffered previous heart attacks. No evidence of any painkillers were found in his system. Cause of death is unknown.

Links

Here's a few resources to get you started...

Wikipedia page
Article from The Irish Central
Description, physical characteristics, contacts (possibly NSFW - includes autopsy photo; written in German)
 
I thought the same thing as some of them on there. That address looks like Amstetten, mixed with other towns. Maybe he is from that area, or had been there before. Maybe he remembered the town name but didn't actually know.how to spell it because he.wasn't actually from Austria.
 
I wonder if he was disposing of (mailiing) money. Can't take it with you. For instance, was he an infamous bank robber and lived in obscurity all his life? They saw him purchase stamps and airmail stickers. Did they see him return to the post office to mail anything?

I always think of Theodore Conrad, Cleveland Ohio bank robber, when I see these stories of unidentified older men. Or of escapees from Alcatraz, or of military deserters. More likely he is someone who wanted to spare his family watching him die. But still could have been mailing some distant relative the rest of his money.
 
THE UID went to great lengths to hide his ID to the extent that he cut the labels from his clothes. From what I can see he only had 3 or 4 very brief conversations that are known. Perhaps the accent was fake and put on to throw any investigation off of the scent. Lots of sleuthers are now looking to continental Europe because of the accent and fake address. If this man had recently arrived from the continent it wouldn't take sherlock Holmes to discover his ID. A little bit of cross referencing plane and ferry manifests would quickly produce a list of potentials. Maybe the answer to this mystery is a little closer to home.
 

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