Pod Insights Conspiracy Theories Peter Bergmann, the Mystery Man of Sligo About this episode On June 16th, 2009, a dead body washes ashore on Rosses Point beach, Ireland. The Irish police force learns the deceased’s name is Peter Bergmann. Or is it? Because everything “Peter” did while alive seemed shrouded in secrecy. He gave his hotel a fake name, a fake address, and he even knew how to dodge CCTV cameras around the city. Was Peter just a private, secretive man – or was he a spy?
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Transcript 0:06 Speaker 00 A student reads a story to her creative writing class. It features an older, svelte gentleman walking along the beach, his body engulfed in a glowing outline from the setting sun. She names him “The Golden Man,” who plodded through the shallow, rippling waves. Perhaps, she suggests, he’s on some kind of mission. Other characters, based on a real-life man she saw the night before at Ross’s Point Beach in coastal Ireland. He walked and looked exactly as she described. When the student, Paula, finishes her story, her classmates stare in stunned silence. Paula assumes it’s because her story is that bad,
0:49 Speaker 00 but then they tell her the latest news story going around town. “That morning, a man matching her Golden Man’s description was found at Ross’s Point. Dead.” It turns out that Paula was one of about 16 people who saw the man the night before, alive, of course. He was withdrawn, but gave a polite smile every now and then. This was all before he seemingly drowned and washed up on the shore, with no ID in sight. To Paula, the man was merely inspiration for homework, but to the police, he’s a John Doe. And now, his true identity has stumped detectives
1:31 Speaker 00 and online sleuths for almost 20 years. Just like Paula, many of them wonder: Was he just your everyday beachgoer? Or a man on a mission? Was he a spy? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I’m Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We’d love to hear from you. So if you’re listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. This episode contains discussions of death and suicide. Consider this when deciding how and when you’ll listen. Stay with us.
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4:11 Speaker 00 June 16th, 2009. It's about 6 a.m. And Ross's Point Beach is covered by a light fog. Not unexpected for June in Ireland. An average morning, except of course for the dead body lying face down along the shoreline. Arthur Kinsella is the first to notice him. The deceased is a slender man aged somewhere around 55 to 65 years old. With short cropped gray hair. He wears a navy t-shirt tucked into black underwear. And his skin is marble cold. Arthur, along with his son, says a prayer and calls the Gardaí, the Irish police force. Officer Terry McMahon arrives.
4:55 Speaker 00 Judging by the scene, he assumes the dead man probably went for an early morning swim and drowned. But if that was the case, why was he in a shirt and underwear? Soon, the rest of the man's clothes are located on a nearby rock. They're all neatly folded. As it turns out, he is wearing swim trunks. They're just under the underwear. It's almost as if the waves swept him into the ocean before he finished undressing. Adding to the mystery, there's no wallet or any form of ID with his belongings. Which means Terry doesn't know the man's name yet. As he investigates the scene, Terry is expecting someone to run up to him.
5:40 Speaker 00 They'd be panicked, reporting that their friend or relative went for a swim this morning and never returned. Then they'd see the man's body and be able to solemnly identify him. Perhaps Terry sees some irony or symbolic poetry to that scenario? After all, the Cape of Ross's Point is called Dead Man's Point. Due to the legend of a sailor buried on the land. A bronze statue called Waiting on Shore faces the water. It depicts a woman whose arms are stretched pleadingly. Waiting for her loved ones lost at sea to return home. But if this man's loved ones are waiting for him, they never come forward.
6:25 Speaker 00 Not only do Terry and the Gardaí have to find out what happened to John Doe. They also have to figure out who exactly is he? And they're about to learn the answer is seemingly... Purposely hard to find. County Sligo, or just Sligo, is a coastal area in northwest Ireland. You may recognize the scenic views from the TV show Normal People. Or if you're a literature fan, you may have read about it in the works of Nobel laureate W. B. Yeats. He called Sligo "the land of hearts' desire." When Sligo isn't being recorded on the page or for TV, it's, well, still being recorded.
7:10 Speaker 00 The town is heavily monitored through CCTV. Twenty-six cameras were added a year before throughout the city center, capturing every major street and intersection. The hope is that they will deter crime. These become essential to the Gardie's investigation. They searched the footage extensively and are able to spot the John Doe on them, painting a picture of his final days. The man was first caught on camera on Friday, June 12th, four days before he's found dead at Ross's Point. In Derry, Ireland, he boards a bus headed to Sligo, about a two-hour drive. From there, the Gardie are able to watch him arrive at the Sligo bus station and hail a cab.
7:52 Speaker 00 They find him again on CCTV footage entering the Sligo City Hotel later that day, which seems like a home run for their investigation. You know what hotels ask for when you check in: an ID. Hey, this case is gonna be a piece of cake. Except, when the Gardie follow up with the hotel, they learn that the front desk didn't ask for an ID, even though legally they're supposed to. But, okay, not a huge deal. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. The investigation isn't ruined yet. The hotel did get a record of the man's name. He signed the hotel register as Peter Bergman. He even gave a home address in Vienna, Austria.
8:37 Speaker 00 There we go. John Doe is actually an Austrian man named Peter Bergman. He probably came to Sligo on vacation. Now the Gardie likely have to alert the next of kin. To find them, they search for Peter in their databases: passports, records, travel records...
8:54 Speaker 00 Hold on. Well, there's no one matching the man's description with the name Peter Bergman. No passport, no missing person reports, no fingerprint identification. Nothing. And that home address he gave? It doesn't exist. Some say it points to a vacant lot, but if you type it into Google Maps, nothing comes up.
9:18 Speaker 00 Peter intentionally gave the hotel fake information. Which shed some new light on a detail from his clothing. When the guardie checked it for clues, they saw that all the tags had been ripped out. Maybe they didn't think much of this at the time. Tags get itchy, lots of people remove them. But now the guardie wonder, could Peter have removed them as a way to hide his identity? As for Peter's shoes, they do still have a label. They're made by a German company, which could mean Peter was recently in Germany and bought them there. Or maybe he lives there. The guardie can follow this trail and check flight logs or even family records,
10:03 Speaker 00 but it is not a perfect clue. You can get shoes from another country shipped anywhere.
10:11 Speaker 00 Bottom line is, the guardie have their work cut out for them. Everything about Peter is starting to point to a man who wanted to hide his identity. Investigators refer back to the CCTV cameras. They show Peter leaving the hotel 13 times throughout his stay. And they reveal another possible lead. Because every time Peter leaves his hotel, he always carries a purple plastic bag. It's really just a normal bag you might get at a convenience store. Opaque enough that you can't tell what's in it. But when Peter returns to the hotel, the bag is always gone. Either he threw it away along with its contents,
10:54 Speaker 00 or he emptied it and stuffed it into his pocket. Somehow, it's determined that Peter is probably disposing of whatever is in the bag each time he leaves. And here's the really bizarre part. Despite Sligo's cameras, despite how often he's seen on tape, he's never actually seen throwing anything away. Now, this may not sound like a big deal. What does the guardie care about a middle-aged man throwing out some trash? But why is he throwing it out himself, outside of the hotel? Couldn't he put it in the hotel's trash bins? Let them deal with it? And, more importantly,
11:38 Speaker 00 how does the guardie have no footage of him emptying the bags? In one CCTV shot, the bag is full, and the next, it's completely gone. It's almost like Peter is not only aware of the cameras around town, but he knows their blind spots. And whatever is in the bags, he doesn't want the cameras to see it. It's another piece of the mystery that fuels conspiracy theories. Over the last nearly 20 years, the Peter Bergman case has gone viral. The Irish Times covered the case extensively. The story's been featured in countless YouTube videos, a documentary, and even a play. People are especially drawn to the secrecy around these
12:23 Speaker 00 bags and the speculation about what could be hiding inside, which covers everything from drugs to body parts. Weirder still, the cameras never catch Peter at any garbage bins, so the guardie don't know which bins to search. Doesn't stop them from trying. They search the whole town, even the dump. Nevertheless, nothing pointing to Peter's bags or his true identity is found. And the guardie are left scratching their heads, which makes it seem like Peter isn't your everyday tourist. He's extremely secretive,
13:05 Speaker 00 methodically so. He's outsmarted the town's security system, and it's clear now that he's definitely hiding his true identity.
13:16 Speaker 00 But why? Well, the official accepted motive is a grim one. Initially, the Gardie think Peter accidentally drowned. However, his autopsy reveals that he had late-stage prostate cancer. It reportedly had spread to his chest and lungs, even his bones. He also only had one kidney, and there were signs that he'd had multiple heart attacks in the past. And then there's what the autopsy did not find. There was no indication of any ongoing cancer treatment. It was like he had purposely denied it. And there were no painkillers in his system either, which he probably needed.
13:56 Speaker 00 Due to the cancer's advanced stage, he was likely in extreme pain and had only weeks to live. With the diagnosis in mind, in one of the many Reddit posts about Peter, one user suggests that he may have had urinary incontinence. It's a common side effect of prostate cancer. In some CCTV images, you can see that the purple bags had something white inside them. These could have been incontinence pads. He might have been too embarrassed to let the hotel staff find them in the trash, so he disposed of them himself. But his failing health propels the Gardie's official story even further.
14:39 Speaker 00 It's possible that Peter knew how advanced his cancer was. He could have been so distraught over his diagnosis that he went to Sligo to die by suicide before the cancer proved fatal. Perhaps the plastic bags weren't filled with garbage, but with belongings that he didn't want to leave behind. Here's an interesting detail. On his first day in Sligo, he purchased stamps and airmail stickers. Maybe he sent out some final goodbyes. But we don't know for certain. Across all that CCTV footage, Peter is never seen mailing anything out. Like we mentioned, the suicide theory is accepted as the most probable answer for Peter's mysterious behavior.
15:26 Speaker 00 But there are those who think there's something more going on. Because Peter isn't just a terminally ill man. He knows how to hide his identity so well that even today, over 15 years later, it remains unknown. And yeah, anyone can give a hotel a fake address and name, but in all that time, nobody has identified this man from a case that went viral. It's almost like he was trained on how to stay anonymous, like a spy.
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17:03 Speaker 00 When the man known as Peter Bergman is found dead on Ross's Point Beach in 2009, Ireland's police force tracks his movements through surveillance footage. But Peter is seemingly aware of the cameras. It's like he only lets them see what he wants them to see. An aging man walking around Sligo. Snippets of this footage have been released online. You can watch him stand in doorways, deep in thought, or leave his hotel with his notorious purple bag, and of course, return to the hotel without it. The fact that the CCTV cameras never catch him disposing of the bag's contents is a big clue for the Gardaí.
17:44 Speaker 00 To them, it implies that he has some kind of law enforcement or military training. How else could he know how to spot and hide in the cameras' blind spots? Online sleuths take the theory one step further, suggesting he's an expert in espionage. He could have been in Sligo for his last spy mission, which could explain a bizarre moment in his hotel room three days before his death. That's when a housekeeper knocked on Peter's door. There was no answer, so she asked a coworker at the front desk for help. And perhaps she was concerned that something was wrong, or maybe she just wanted to get on with her work. Nevertheless, the woman at the front desk followed the housekeeper.
18:29 Speaker 00 She knocked on Peter's door too. Again, no answer, so she unlocked it and opened it to find Peter standing in the middle of the room. He froze, staring at them in shock. One of the hotel employees recalls, quote, "It was nearly like I caught him doing something that he shouldn't have been." But once the surprise wore off, Peter seemed relieved that it was her, not someone else. The question is, who did he think it was? Well, maybe he wasn't answering the door because he thought it was someone dangerous, someone who was looking for him. That's a fun theory.
19:12 Speaker 00 The whole Peter Bergman case reminds me of the Somerton Man, which we've covered here before. He was another unidentified gentleman whose dead body was found on the beach. In his case, it was Australia in 1948. But just like Peter, the Somerton Man didn't have any ID. And the tags had been removed from his clothing, and no missing person records matched his description, which led many to believe he too was a spy who died under mysterious circumstances. And much like the Somerton Man case, everything we know about Peter seems as though it were ripped straight out of a spy movie, without the shootouts. As far as we know, anyway.
19:55 Speaker 00 Naturally, people want to know. If Peter really was a spy, then what was in that purple bag? It's only assumed that he threw things out every day. But maybe he was actually passing something off. He could have been meeting up with another spy, giving them confidential items or maybe weapons. But since the Sligo CCTV's aren't giving the Gardie any more answers, investigators expand their search. The hotel staff mentions that Peter had a German or Austrian accent. Assuming that the accent wasn't fake, the Gardie believe Peter was from somewhere in mainland Europe, not Ireland originally.
20:40 Speaker 00 So they think there's gotta be a record or footage of him entering an Irish airport. And, well, maybe there is. But they only have a fake name to work with. Peter could have used a different pseudonym at the airports or even his real name. Just in case, the Gardie search flight and passenger records for every plane entering Ireland or the UK. But that's a dead end. They also try facial recognition technology. That should allow them to see if anyone arriving at the airport looked like Peter. But it doesn't provide any results either. Who knows? If he was in the airport, maybe he wore some kind of disguise or mask à la Mission Impossible.
21:25 Speaker 00 Since he's nowhere to be found in the airports, the Gardie determine that he must have entered Ireland by ferry. But ferries have little to no surveillance footage. So it seems like Peter successfully entered the country completely unrecorded.
21:45 Speaker 00 There is the shot of him at the bus station when he's already in Ireland, but buses don't check ID as extensively as airports do, if at all. In fact, buses are probably a perfect option for spies. They're crowded enough that you can easily blend in. You just have to avoid any memorable one-on-one interactions. Which is where Peter may have had a bit of an espionage hiccup. Because he also took a couple of cabs. An enclosed space. Nowhere to hide. And the guardie actually finds some cab drivers who remember Peter. When Peter arrived at the Sligo bus station, he hopped in his first cab and asked his driver for a hotel recommendation.
22:29 Speaker 00 That's how he ended up staying at the Sligo City Hotel. On the third day of his stay, he hailed another cab. He asked that driver for a nice place to go swimming. This driver brought him to Ross's Point, the place where Peter's dead body is found days later. But on that day, he didn't step foot on the beach. He just got out of the car, briefly surveyed the area, and then asked the driver to bring him to the Sligo bus station. The driver probably found it a bit odd that Peter asked to go to a beach and then he just stared at it for a bit. It's definitely memorable,
23:11 Speaker 00 which is theoretically the last thing a spy wants to be. So what happened? Did Peter let his guard down for a moment? Or were these cab rides purposeful acts of misdirection? Okay, think about it. A cab driver probably wouldn't bat an eye at a tourist asking for recommendations. But if Peter is a spy, he likely doesn't actually need recommendations. He apparently knows Sligo like the back of his hand. What, he knows all about the town's cameras, but doesn't know where the beach is or even a hotel? In this scenario, Peter doesn't need the driver's opinion. He needs it to look like the hotel was the driver's idea from the beginning
23:55 Speaker 00 to reinforce the whole innocent tourist cover story. Remember, the Sligo City Hotel didn't ask for ID, which makes it awfully convenient for Peter to get away with using a fake name. Oh, wait a minute, Carter. How did he know the cab driver would direct him to that specific hotel? Well, it was only a short walk from the bus station. So there's a good chance that if Peter asked, the driver would recommend it. And, according to the driver, he actually brought Peter to a different hotel first. There were no rooms available. But get this: reportedly, that first hotel doesn't remember turning Peter away. Oh, that's weird.
24:38 Speaker 00 Does the cab driver just have a bad memory? I don't actually think so. Okay. Assume Peter wanted to go to the Sligo City Hotel from the start. Well, the driver bringing him to another hotel first is an easy fix. Peter just needs to walk in, wait a couple of minutes, and come back out. "Oh, no, they don't have any rooms. Do you have another recommendation?" Peter may have never even gone to the front desk. He simply pretended he had. Now, that could explain why the first hotel doesn't remember him. Peter buying stamps could also be part of his cover. He's gotta send some postcards to everyone back home. But here's another suspicious part of the story.
25:22 Speaker 00 The post office's security cameras reportedly malfunctioned while Peter was there. Now, we don't know how this happened. I, like I think, Peter used some kind of camera jammer, a little handheld device that, with a push of a button, sends out a signal that disrupts the CCTV, rendering the cameras useless. You can actually get these devices on Amazon. They may not have been publicly available in 2009, but that would be no problem for a seasoned spy. Here's one more possible act of misdirection. On Peter's final day alive, he checked out of the hotel with one of his usual purple bags, along with two pieces of luggage
26:05 Speaker 00 that were different from the luggage he arrived with. Where did those come from? Perhaps they were dropped off by an associate under the cover of CCTV blind spots? We don't know. And after checking out, Peter heads to the bus station. On their cameras, we can see that now he only has one of those new pieces of luggage. When and where did he get rid of the other one? Again, we don't know. At the bus station, he sits down at a table and pulls out a piece of paper. He studies it, even writes something down.
26:45 Speaker 00 Then he tears it up into tiny pieces and throws it away. If we follow along the official story that he was planning to die in Sligo, the paper could be some kind of grim checklist. Things he wanted to do, people to write letters to, personal items to get rid of, etc. Or maybe it's some kind of secret message. You know how in movies, the spy sits at an empty park bench with a newspaper already on it? It looks like trash until an associate at another nearby bench discreetly tells our hero to pick it up inside his top-secret intel or pictures of their target.
27:25 Speaker 00 Well, if you watch the footage of Peter reading his piece of paper, you'll see two other people at the tables oddly close. Peter then hopped on a bus to Ross's Point with a one-way ticket. Despite what I said earlier about buses being perfect for blending in, this time, somebody did notice him. In later reports, a bus depot employee recalls that Peter was dressed professionally: long pants and a collared shirt. It was strange because Peter was on his way to the beach, only he looked like he was going to a work meeting, not swimming, and he seemed very stressed. In fact, people noticed Peter's outfit once he arrived at Ross's Point, including Paula
28:10 Speaker 00 from the beginning of this episode. His pants were rolled up past his ankles as he walked the shoreline. Even though he stood out, he wasn't inherently suspicious. Just an oddly dressed man, smiling politely at anyone who met his eye. He did so from when he was first seen at 4:00 PM to when he was last seen at 11:50 PM. That's nearly eight hours of pacing back and forth, back and forth. The next documented time anyone saw Peter was the following morning when the Kinsellers found his body. So what happened between 11:50 PM and 6:00 AM? Some report that he still had one of his purple bags on the beach.
28:55 Speaker 00 Was he waiting to throw his last personal item out in the ocean when the beach was deserted? Or was he waiting for someone? Someone who eliminated Peter once he'd completed his last job. Peter could have even known that this was a fatal, final mission. It would explain why he looked so stressed out at the bus station.
29:16 Speaker 00 Or perhaps were following the wrong conspiracy theory. Peter isn't a spy, but a fugitive. Some theorize that the items in Peter's purple bag could have been illegal contraband, like drugs or evidence to another crime. He was throwing them out around Sligo so they couldn't be traced back to him. Or that could be why he was so relieved when it was the hotel staff banging on his door. The employee did say he looked like he was, quote, "doing something that he shouldn't have been." Or maybe he thought they were the Gardie. If that's the case, then he could have been waiting for a criminal associate at the beach.
29:58 Speaker 00 And once Peter got rid of all the incriminating evidence around town, the associate betrayed him. Again, just a theory, based on nothing more than another assumption about his life that we may never get proof of.
30:15 Speaker 00 And it's these assumptions that create Peter's mystery. That he knew about the camera blind spots, that he tore off his clothing tags to hide his identity, that he wanted to die by suicide. We've mentioned that the last one is generally the accepted official version, or as official as the Gardie can get with all of the unknowns. The easiest answer is that Peter Bergman went to the ocean that day to die. But even that theory has some holes. Because the autopsy didn't just reveal Peter's cancer. It also showed no signs of drowning. And the true cause of his death
30:58 Speaker 00 raises even more questions.
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32:03 Speaker 00 When Peter Bergman's body was found on Ross's Point Beach, his clothes were drenched. The officers who arrived at the scene immediately assumed that he went for an early morning swim and drowned. An accidental death. It's not until the coroner discovers Peter's prostate cancer that a new theory emerges. And there was no evidence of any cancer treatments, not even painkillers, which he would have likely needed due to his advanced prognosis. And judging by how much the cancer spread throughout his body, he likely only had weeks to live. So Peter may have come to Sligo with a plan to die by suicide and end his suffering. Perhaps on the bus ride to the beach, he wasn't stressed. He was in pain.
32:47 Speaker 00 However, there's a big wrinkle in the Peter died by suicide theory as a whole. The autopsy revealed the true cause of his death. Peter didn't die from drowning, but from a heart attack. If you'll recall, there was also evidence that he'd experienced prior heart attacks, suggesting he was prone to them. His cancer would have put him at greater risk. His actions that night probably didn't help either. After his last sighting at 11:50 PM, it seems Peter got undressed for a swim. Some believe the shock of the cold waves triggered cardiac arrest, which can happen.
33:28 Speaker 00 You know those polar bear plunges where swimmers jump into freezing water? Well, doing that can cause a sudden rise in blood pressure and heart rate. It can actually be kind of risky, especially for someone like Peter. And even in mid-June, the water in Sligo stays chilly. It was almost certainly below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other hand, some say Peter would have been used to the temperature. He'd been out there for hours, walking with his feet in the water. Either way, we can't exactly call the heart attack random, and yet it's hard to believe Peter could have planned out the timing of it down to the day.
34:11 Speaker 00 So the question is, could someone else have planned it? You see, there's one thing that the coroner didn't test for: poisons. Or at least, not all of them. One theory is that Peter ingested something that caused the heart attack. A substance that wouldn't even show up on a toxicology report. There's a small, known list of poisons that would do this. For example, the one that the CIA used for their heart attack gun during the Cold War. It was a shellfish toxin that was put into a frozen bullet, which, once it was shot into someone, would melt. The toxin then entered the person's bloodstream and caused a reaction that mimicked a heart
34:56 Speaker 00 attack. It leaves little to no trace in an autopsy. But, just like every theory in the Peter Bergman story... You eventually hit a fork in the road. A turning point where you have to ask, does it make more sense that somebody did this to Peter? Or that he did it to himself? We can talk spy scenarios all day, but it's also reasonable to infer the other scenario. He's just a normal civilian. Like we said, it's not unheard of to remove the tags from your clothes. They get itchy. The purple bags could have been filled with incontinence pads that he wanted to throw out himself. And then there's him dodging the CCTV cameras. It's suspicious,
35:40 Speaker 00 but according to a detective assigned to the Bergman case, the cameras are highly visible all over Sligo. Perhaps they're not actually that hard to avoid. If you look up and see one, maybe you can easily just step behind it. The truth is, we may never really know what's real about Peter and what's just conjecture. That is, until we answer the most important question. Who was Peter Bergman, really? The Gardie have gone through extensive lengths to find his true name. They pored over airline records and missing person reports. They've contacted other countries. The case itself has gone viral online
36:23 Speaker 00 with thousands of online sleuths sharing the specifics, hoping that someone reaches out with more clues. And nobody has come forward to reveal his true identity. Peter's health seemed like a huge lead in the beginning. Cancer, heart attacks, a missing kidney. Oh, there has to be at least one doctor out there with his name in a file. But if so, they've never spoken out. Even Peter's dental records were supposedly circulated through Interpol. He had a gold tooth and other distinctive dental fillings and procedures, but they yielded no results. You may be thinking, why don't the Gardie just send his DNA
37:06 Speaker 00 to one of those ancestry websites? It turns out that they just don't do that. Reportedly, they claim that doing so could reveal Peter's ancestry, but it doesn't advance his identification.
37:21 Speaker 00 Personally, I'm not so sure about that. There are thousands of stories of people sending their DNA to one of those companies and then finding out that they have a long-lost family member. And with advances in forensic genealogy, there are more and more John and Jane Doe cases solved every year. In fact, the Somerton Man, the Australian case from 1948, is considered more or less solved nowadays. A dogged researcher named Derek Abbott and forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick linked the Somerton Man's DNA to a man named Carl Webb, who doesn't seem to have been a spy so much as a poet.
38:04 Speaker 00 Until a family member—or anyone, for that matter—comes forward, Peter's true identity may never be revealed. For now, it seems the Gardi are no longer actively looking for new leads. In speaking to Vice in 2019, Detective Inspector Ray Mulderig compares the case to a sleeping computer. "When something new comes up, or someone credible comes forward, then we will move the mouse and it will spring back into action." And if any of these theories are true, whether he was a spy or just a man hoping to erase his identity, then Peter didn't want anything credible to waken that sleeping computer.
38:45 Speaker 00 Now, there's one bit of that plan we haven't explained yet, though. If he was so secretive, why did he go to Sligo, a town that's so heavily monitored by CCTV, even if he did know the blind spots? Well, the answer may lie in the poetry of W. B. Yeats. Yeats is an immensely influential figure in Irish culture, especially in Sligo, where he grew up. They even call the area Yeats County. Yeats mostly wrote poetry, but he also wrote a novella and short story called "John Sherman and Doya." It's fictional, but contains some autobiographical elements from his life.
39:24 Speaker 00 According to the Irish Times podcast series about Peter, John Sherman yearns for Sligo and wants to die anonymously. Maybe Peter was a fan of Yeats and mirrored his last days after the author's semi-autobiographical tale. The host of the Irish Times podcast even wonders if the fake name Peter Bergman is a nod to John Sherman. It's possible. Everything Peter did seemed to have a purpose, so I wouldn't put it past him. And no matter his true identity, Peter's main purpose was to be forgotten.
40:09 Speaker 00 Ironically, this made him more noticeable and memorable. There's a case to be made that we should respect his wishes. As intriguing as the mystery is, do we have the right to identify him? Maybe we don't. Peter left behind a mystery that so far can't be solved. I love the idea of him being a spy. However, I can appreciate if the answer to this riddle comes from a work of art that he loved. And as Yeats said, "What can be explained is not poetry." Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday.
40:52 Speaker 00 Be sure to check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include the Irish Times podcast, Atlantic. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story is not always the truth. This episode was written by Brandon Rizzuto, edited by Miki Taylor and Justin Sales, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, engineered by Alex Button, and video edited and sound design by Jamie Yucich. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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