Peter Bergmann: The Man Who Never Existed | Random Thursday

this video is supported by brilliant at the time of this recording the number of coveted deaths in the united states is 621 thousand people and that is a tragic number there's no question about it but do you know what's crazy that's almost the exact same number of people that went missing in 2019. i'm not trying to start a new conspiracy theory here or anything it's just i just ran across that number and that's really freaking high isn't it and according to this chart from the national crime information center we're actually on a downtrend in fact 2020 was the lowest in 30 years obviously because nobody left their house but look in 1997 nearly 1 million people went missing that year a million people in 1997 equates to 0.2 percent of the entire us population just am i the only person that thinks that's bonkers like was there some kind of mini rapture in the 90s or something the point is the number of people that go missing every year is shocking at least it was to me but you know what might be more shocking than somebody disappearing somebody appearing similar out of nowhere but that seems to be exactly the case regarding a mysterious man who went by the name of peter bergman [Music] in june 2009 brian kinsella was training for a triathlon that's a swim followed by a bike ride followed by a run followed by days of debilitating pain and crying if i were to try to do it triathletes are absolute savages anyway in the morning of june 16th this particular savage was training in the waters off of ross's point in county sligo ireland while his dad was walking back and forth on the beach behind him which at least that was their plan his training got cut short that day because right after he got into the water his father arthur saw something through the fog it looked like a mannequin maybe that somebody had left at the rocks at the back of the beach a prank maybe that some kids were playing but as the fog lifted he got a better look and of course it was not a mannequin it was a human body now i know that sounds like the opening to a law and order episode but it did actually happen and i'm sure it was a deeply unsettling moment for both of them either way they had no idea that what they just stumbled on was going to set in motion one of the greatest internet mysteries of all time arthur described the man as marble cold he was tall thin caucasian with gray hair no visible blood or sign of injury lying face down in a patch of sand that had recently been covered by the tide arthur and brian took a moment to pray over the body before they called the police which is called the guard eye in ireland and around 6 45 a.m sergeant terry mcmahon from the sligo garda station arrived at the scene first thing that he noticed was that there were no footprints around the body except for those of the kinsellas it looked like somebody had drowned out at sea and then been washed back in by the tide many reports would later claim that the body was naked but that's inaccurate he was actually wearing a navy blue t-shirt and black brief style underwear his shirt was tucked into the underwear and also as it was later discovered into a pair of blue black and purple stripes swim briefs worn inside the underwear but no pants oh and a quartz waterproof watch the rest of his clothes were found on a nearby rock a black leather jacket navy chinos and a black sleeveless vest all folded neatly in a pile beside them were a pair of black shoes dark socks and a black leather belt what was missing was a wallet or a passport or any kind of identification assuming that it was just a local man who drowned out at sea sergeant mcmahon covered the body and basically just waited for a family member to come and look for them but that never happened and as they waited they started to notice some particularly weird things about this situation not only did he not have a wallet or any kind of identification but all the tags had been torn out of the clothes it was quickly becoming apparent that this was not just some local guy who went for a swim this was somebody who went to great lengths to hide his identity and he did such a good job of it that to this very day we have no idea who this person was or where he came from but this is what we do know four days earlier on june 12th at 6 52 pm a man checked into the sligo city hotel under the name peter bergman he paid in cash for three nights at the hotel 65 euro per night he come by bus from derry northern ireland security cameras show on boarding the bus in derry at 4 pm and exiting in sligo at 6 28. what they don't seem to show is how he got to derry or anything about his life before that point for all intents and purposes before that moment when he stepped onto a bus in derry peter bergman did not exist but wherever his journey began it ended in sligo sligo is a small town of about 20 000 people known mostly for its shops the surrounding county is known mostly for its scenery and for being a favorite subject of nobel prize winning poet william butler yates yates spent his summers in sligo county reveling in the stories of the old sea captains and pilots who kept watch from the watchtowers along the coast shipwrecks were common and yates once said that ross's point was the most haunted place in the world in fact an area right next to where peter bergman was found is called dead man's point because according to legend a sailor was once buried there that's probably just a coincidence but peter bergman whoever he was was very intentional about going to sligo maybe it was the landscape or the history that seemed fitting to him maybe he was a yates fan but for three days he walked the streets of sligo town taking in the sights and the sounds reading the yates poetry etched across the walls on saturday afternoon security cameras captured him picking up a certain quantity of international stamps it's not known exactly how many stamps that he bought and it was never seen him actually mailing anything out to anybody but this was a weird little clue that's never really been solved on sunday he asked a mini bus driver about a place to swim and he pointed out a specific place on the map that he was interested in but the driver told him that's actually better for surfing and the rosses point would be a better spot to go swimming so they took a quick drive out there and according to the driver the man just got out of the car kind of took a quick look around and then got back inside he asked the driver to drop him off at the bus station instead of the hotel and then the driver gave him a card and told him if he ever needed to get another ride somewhere to give him a call on the next day monday june 15th the man checked out of his hotel he went to the bus station probably on foot and had a cappuccino and a sandwich in one interesting moment captured on the security cameras he wrote something down on a slip of paper and then spent a few minutes reading it before tearing up the paper and throwing it away and at 2 40 in the afternoon he took the bus to ross's point beach he was wearing the black leather jacket and navy chinos which kind of made him stand out on the beach amongst all the other beachgoers many reported seeing him wading back and forth across the beach with his cuffs rolled up of his pants holding his shoes in his hand nobody who saw him thought that he was there for a swim or was ever going to get in the water though they found it odd that he was there all afternoon just walking back and forth in fact he was spotted by a witness at 11 50 p.m still walking back and forth on the beach in the moonlight as the tide started to roll in and that person was the last person to see him alive the next day after the body was removed by the undertakers they quickly were able to trace him back to the sligo city hotel which is where the name peter bergman was first discovered no one on the hotel staff had asked him for id which was actually law so they weren't really complying with the law there but he did list his home address as ainstaterson15 vine4472 vine is austrian for vienna and uh they did claim that he had an austrian or maybe german accent unfortunately nobody named peter bergman that fit that description was ever found from vienna uh and in fact even more telling the postcodes in vienna stop at 1901 they don't go to 4472 like he put in his address book that was a total fabrication and actually the street name was fake too now is this proof that he was from vienna and made up a fake number in order to throw people off or is it proof that he wasn't from vienna and just made up a number and he had no idea that that was wrong either way it was a fake address and clearly a fake name so that plus the missing id plus the missing tags from his clothes were all signs of just you know how much this guy wanted to protect his identity but it was only after they dug into the security cameras around sligo that the investigators realized how far out of his way he was going to protect it over those three days that he roamed the streets of sligo the man left the hotel 13 times and every time he left carrying an unlabeled purple plastic bag filled with items and every time he returned to the hotel he wasn't carrying the bag some think these were multiple bags that he was getting rid of others think it was the same bag but maybe fold it up in his pocket when he returned either way he was returning with less than he left the hotel with which is kind of the opposite of what most people do on their vacations it seems that he was using these trips around town as a way of disposing of his personal belongings where it gets really weird though is that with all the security cameras around sligo capturing him walking all over town none of them captured him throwing anything away he managed to find bins that were outside the line of sight of security cameras it's almost like he knew how to avoid them an extensive search of trash bins and disposal sites around town turned up nothing that could be tied back to this man and interviews that investigators did with shopkeepers and bin men were similarly disappointing and because of this many people including sergeant terry mcmahon believe that maybe this man had some kind of law enforcement background or military background some kind of special training that would give him a leg up on doing something like this now this theory didn't open up any new leads to his identity or anything but it did open up some really interesting questions like could this guy have been a spy was he getting rid of all of his personal items to try to start his new life to escape from something did some person from that life that he was trying to escape come back to to find him is that what happened to him they still hadn't fully ruled out foul play it was only after his autopsy that the motivations for his actions became tragically clear the autopsy was conducted by dr clive kilgallen of the sligo university hospital and what it revealed was that he had prostate cancer very very advanced prostate cancer that had gotten into his lungs and his bones in fact he probably only had weeks to live and he was probably in considerable pain even though no pain medication was found in his system even though he had aspirin in his pocket none of that was in his system neither was any kind of cancer treatment in his system this this cancer was going completely untreated for all the mysteries of this story one thing that everybody seems to have settled on is that this man came to sligo to end his life he had a terminal illness and he wanted to go out on his own terms so he found a beautiful seaside town to spend his final days in a in a beach where he could go out at night in high tide swim out into the ocean and let the tide just wash him out to sea whatever his reasons he did everything he could possibly do to completely just disappear from the world like so many other countless number of missing persons every year except something went wrong instead of being washed out to sea the sea just washed them right back where he started and the reason might be found in one last surprise that they found in the autopsy according to the doctor he didn't actually show any signs of drowning no frothing at the mouth no tissue damage in the lungs he didn't actually drown in fact the coroner's report listed the cause of death as acute cardiac arrest he actually died of a heart attack now it may be possible that he took a type of poison that stopped his heart even though no poison was found in his system they didn't search for every poison known to man so it is a possibility what it seems to have happened as if this story couldn't get any weirder is that he went out there to drown himself but instead died of a freak heart attack now you know his body was clearly in a weakened state and maybe the shock from hitting the water might have caused something like that to happen maybe he was in such emotional distress in that moment that his heart gave out on him but still just wow the man we now know is peter bergman rests in an unmarked grave in the sligo cemetery it was paid for by the irish health care system an irish law forbids exhuming a body without cause so unless a family member comes forward to reopen this case that's probably not going to happen the peter bergman case is often listed alongside similar stories like the summertime man in australia in 1948 and the isdahl woman in norway in 1970. both have interesting parallels to this story and both also have been suspected of having mob or intelligence agency ties but i think the one that might more closely resemble the peter bergman case is the lyo stevic case like peter bergman lyle stevik was the fake name of a man who checked into a hotel in amanda park washington in september of 2001 and then he tragically hanged himself and he too left behind no id or no clues of his identity which sent investigators in a wild goose chase for nearly 20 years the case was finally solved using dna evidence in 2018 but the family of this man chose to not make his name publicly available to keep his identity secret because that was clearly what he wanted which does bring up a good question the peter bergman case like i said before has become one of the most pervasive internet mysteries of all time people all around the world have put forth some brain cells and some time to try to figure out this case to figure out who this guy was tons of other videos been made on this subject chances are you've seen one of them but is this one of those we were too busy thinking about whether or not we could we didn't stop and ask if we should cases the one thing that we do know about this man is that he did not want us to know anything about this man he wanted to disappear he wanted to be forgotten and the only reason we're talking about him at all is because a freak heart attack randomly happened literally minutes before he was able to take himself out i mean i've got to be honest i feel a little uncomfortable even making this video you know i feel like i'm actively thwarting a dying man's final wish like seriously the worst possible outcome for this guy is for some internet sleuth to determine his true identity do we have a right to be forgotten this is actually an ongoing question in the age of the internet especially amongst internet companies like google and the court of justice of the european union the right to be forgotten is actually a component of the privacy rights that are enshrined in eu law online the right to be forgotten means that if there is a picture of me out there wearing some glasses that i don't like then i have the right to get that picture taken down now there are limits to what can be removed but as of this law being passed google has actually removed two million of the four million removal requests that is received now of course there is the other side of this argument that removing information that you don't like from the internet is just a way of rewriting the past and as george orwell said 1984 he who controls the past controls the future that of course is a debate that's going to rage for decades but as for peter bergman or whoever he was we don't really know what his motivations were maybe he was trying to escape something horrible that he did earlier in his life maybe he just wanted to spare his family and friends the pain of of seeing him go through what he was going through maybe he was just a really private dude regardless he faced a decision that we are all going to have to face at some point in our lives and his story causes us to maybe reflect on that a little bit let's just hope that the choices that we make and our wishes about them go more smoothly than his did and before i wrap this up i want to give a shout out to rosita bolin she is a writer for the irish times who was kind enough to respond to our emails about this and set us straight on some of the details around this case she actually has a podcast called atlantic it's a three-part podcast that goes into way more detail than i have time for here it's very well done i highly recommend it i'll put the link down in the description i do want to say though i i don't blame anybody for wanting to solve this case there's just something about a mystery like this that just just draws you in makes you want to solve it of course to solve mysteries like this requires strong powers of logic and deduction and you can superpower your logic and deduction skills by taking the logic course on brilliant brilliance logic course is 37 interactive quizzes featuring 265 concepts and exercises covering everything from logic gates truth tables venn diagrams game algorithms and combinatorics and if like me you have no idea what combinatorics are well you're just gonna have to take the course and find out and the logic course is just the beginning they have four courses dealing with logic and deduction including the joy of problem solving course logic 2 electric bugaloo and knowledge uncertainty course after which you'll be a deductive master on the level of sherlock holmes what i like about brilliant is that you learn by problem solving which kind of hacks your brain's natural learning skills so you can learn it in a way that makes sense to you and then you can apply that to other areas of your life plus you can do it on your mobile device and even offline so you can take it with you wherever you go and if you want to get a taste of what i'm talking about they do have free daily brain teasers that you can do and you can do the first section of any of their courses for free so you can see what they're all about but if you do sign up for the premium subscription that gives you access to all their courses and you're one of the first 200 people to do so you can get 20 off if you go to brilliant.org answers with joe link's in the description big thanks to brilliant for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon that are helping to support this channel forming an awesome community and just just being great people i got some new names to murder this week we've got sincerity which is a great name uh tj hollywood chuck sean tyson levi schroer scott vrabel hetu nandu lanthurin scott nathan michael noe xander luke daniel irmigrand kimberly patakick ren davis uh darren bostock and oren arnarson some of those i'm just going to apologize for right now there you go thank you guys so much for joining if you want to find out more about this if you want to get early access to videos and behind the scenes stuff maybe some outtakes exclusive live streams all that kind of stuff you can go to patreon.com slash the answers of the joke all right please like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here you might want to check out this video here google thinks you might like that one or any of the others down here on the side that have a face on them and if you enjoy them i do invite you to subscribe i come back with videos every monday all right that's it for now you guys thanks so much for watching now go out there and have an eye opening rest of the week stay safe and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 2,086,141

Rating: 4.8928819 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: Ih59SiVF0Ps

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/leviathan898]

Ahhhh my friend and I went to a short film festival thing in the Freemasons in Dublin years ago and this was shown. Was so interesting and it still pops into my head occasionally.

Edit: The documentary linked in the YouTube description was shown at the festival

[u/SeamusHeaneysGhost]

A million people went missing in 1997…my jaw is on the ground…

[u/Chuckenstein78]

Cheers. Will watch this. I’ve seen other programmes on this but it’s a fascinating case.

[u/Concannon7]

Joe Scott does some brilliant videos. Will watch this

[u/sidarcy]

Similar to the Somertan man case in Aus back in the 40s

https://casefilepodcast.com/case-02-the-somerton-man/

[u/Nivermindjon44w]

I've always been interested in this case. How no ones ever thought that's uncle Joe or Fred or who ever.