The mysterious death of Peter Bergmann

I caught a link to this on one of my social media feeds and was immediately interested in it as I'm from one of the towns (Derry) mentioned in the article. It's not quite as mysterious as some of the stories on here, but very curious nonetheless.

www.derrydaily.net...
(For the record - I have no links at all to the people behind the film mentioned in the article).

In June 2009, a man boarded a bus in Derry, Ireland and requested that he travel to Sligo. Once there, he checked into a hotel using a presumably false name - Peter Bergmann - and over the course of the next 3 days, behaved in a strange and unusual manner.

He left his hotel each morning with a bag which police believe contained personal belongings, and each day he returned with the bag emptied. It appears he was disposing of all belongings and all traces of his identity (to the extent of cutting labels from his clothes), and carefully avoided CCTV around the city whilst doing so.

On the day before his death, he asked a local taxi driver to take him to the quiestest beach in Sligo for a swim. Once there, he scouted the area for a short time before returning to the taxi seemingly content with what he found.

After checking out of the hotel, it appears he disposed of what was left of his belongings before making his way to a bus station prior to heading to the beach. Whilst at the bus station, he ate a sandwich and had a coffee whilst frequently taking pieces of paper from his pocket, reading them, then folding them and putting them back in his pocket.

Witnesses on the beach described him behaving in a strange and erratic manner, walking parallel to the water and also parallel to a beam of sunlight on the beach.

The next day, 2 walkers on the beach found his body early in the morning. Despite the fact the body had been evidently washed up, the subsequent autopsy showed no evidence of drowning. There was also no evidence of foul play. The autopsy DID show that the man had advanced cancer of the prostate, bone tumours and had suffered previous heart attacks - yet toxicology showed no evidence of any painkillers or otherwise in his system.

People who encountered him remarked that he had a possibly German (or at least Eastern European) accent. However, intensive police investigations have failed to unearth any missing Peter Bergmann from Europe or the USA. The address he used whilst checking into the hotel also turned out to be a vacant parking lot. Extensive searches throughout the town have also failed to uncover any of the items he disposed of away from the view of CCTV.

So, a strange tale indeed - a nameless man apparently makes his way to a town where no-one knows him to die, and removes any possible means of subsequently identifying him.

I noted whilst researching this that there was a well-known physicist called Peter Bergmann who worked closely with Albert Einstein - probably totally unrelated, but I wonder if that was the inspiration for the name, if it is indeed a false one as suspected.

As a professor at Syracuse University from 1947 to 1982, Dr. Bergmann taught relativity to several generations of physicists and was a pioneer in efforts to reconcile Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time geometry, with the paradoxical quantum laws that rule atomic affairs. That quest is now at the center of modern physics.

a reply to: elgaz

Interesting - thanks for posting. Sometimes people know their death is coming. So I could see someone arranging for their natural death in advance. But why in this manner? Very curious.

Two thoughts to mind. One is that maybe he didn't want someone to benefit from his death. - an inheritance or life insurance. But it would seem a lawyer and a will would have been an easier remedy. Maybe he was sparing someone from a broken heart - he felt disappearing would be easier on them than dying.

Second thought... Maybe there is a quantum physics connection. Maybe he believed if no one could prove or see that he died, he would not die. You know, a convoluted interpretation of the observer effect and waveform collapse. Like Schodingers cat.

a reply to: elgaz

Even more outlandish theory...

He was a time traveler that couldn't return 'home' and had to disappear himself to avoid paradox issues. That's why there are no missing person reports that match up...

I'd better drink more coffee, I'm not making sense.

originally posted by: VegHead
a reply to: elgaz

Interesting - thanks for posting. Sometimes people know their death is coming. So I could see someone arranging for their natural death in advance. But why in this manner? Very curious.

Two thoughts to mind. One is that maybe he didn't want someone to benefit from his death. - an inheritance or life insurance. But it would seem a lawyer and a will would have been an easier remedy. Maybe he was sparing someone from a broken heart - he felt disappearing would be easier on them than dying.

Second thought... Maybe there is a quantum physics connection. Maybe he believed if no one could prove or see that he died, he would not die. You know, a convoluted interpretation of the observer effect and waveform collapse. Like Schodingers cat.

Interesting theories. The first one seems the most sensible theory, but as you say it would have been more prudent simply to hire a decent lawyer to deal with wills/inheritance issues.

The Quantum physics connection is a new one I haven't heard. Seems outlandish, but would help explain the choice of name and also why he went to great lengths to isolate himself.

originally posted by: VegHead
a reply to: elgaz

Even more outlandish theory...

He was a time traveler that couldn't return 'home' and had to disappear himself to avoid paradox issues. That's why there are no missing person reports that match up...

I'd better drink more coffee, I'm not making sense.

Indeed, even more outlandish. But I like it. Ireland's own John Titor? Again, it may seem outlandish but this is an outlandish scenario and years on, they still haven't worked out who this man was. Surely someone somewhere would have filled a missing person report of someone matching his description?

I've read a few other things since posting this. One theory was that he may have been a spy of some sort, and bearing in mind he had advanced cancer, he decided to end his life rather than no longer having a 'purpose'. And in doing so, he removed all traces of his identity.

I've also read something about why he came to Ireland to do this which I found interesting. The South of Ireland are one of the countries which don't use postcodes of any kind (Zip codes to Americans). As such, any mail sent cannot be traced back through the automatic sorting process as easily as in other countries. There is evidence that 'Peter Bergmann' also sent some mail before he died - did he send it from Ireland so that it could not be traced back to his location? Even though he may have known he would be dead by the time the recipients got his mail?