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

[Rootje]

Hello my dear Sleuthers,

I submitted a tip on the Dutch police site about Peter Bergmann possibly being Johannes Huibert Kwist. There is very little information about mr. Kwist, so I couldn’t do a lot of digging myself. I will definitely let you guys know when I get a response from the police.
I’m Dutch, so if you ever want me to translate or if you have further thoughts about this case (and the possible connection between mr. Bergmann and mr. Kwist) please let me know! I’d be happy to help.

Update: I got a response. P.B. is not mr. Kwist.
I don’t have any more leads...
How to solve this case, how to solve this case...

 

[Bit of hope]

Update: I got a response. P.B. is not mr. Kwist.
I don’t have any more leads...
How to solve this case, how to solve this case...

Thanks for the effort and letting us know.

 

[worldwatcher]

Hi all,
I just came across (t)his story, when I was reading on another forum and I join you, down the rabbit hole!
Imo, he could also be from Switzerland?

 

[worldwatcher]

I saw that missing persons from Switzerland was already menionted.
My experiences with the average German people from that age have trouble with speaking/writing English.

Also wonder that, if he had any family,beloved ones left behind,he didn’t inform them about the terminal disease he suffered from? Seems to me that,because no traces of medication or chemo have been found, I think he left his native country after diagnosis,without telling anyone?


Here is the LE German website about him:
BKA Unbekannte Tote
‘Personenbeschreibung:

• schlank
• kurzes graues Haar
• 50-70 Jahre alt
• litt unter Prostatakrebs
• rechte Niere entfernt’

———-
and the LE Irish one:
Renewed appeal - in identifying the body of a male which was found at Rosses Point, Sligo
‘Description 55 to 65 yrs, short Grey hair, Dark Eyebrows, average height, thin build, wearing swimming trunks,

A search of the area revealed the following clothing,

Black Leather Jacket, Navy Chino style trousers, black belt, black sleeveless Tommy Hilfiger jumper, blue woollen sock, black shoes.’
——-

Odd that his eye color isn’t mentioned,on Wikipedia it says he had blue eyes;
‘He stood 5 ft 10 1⁄2 in (1.79 m) tall with blue eyes and a tan complexion. From witness reports, the man was of Germanic descent and spoke’
Peter Bergmann case - Wikipedia

 

[Bit of hope]

Could he have lost a loved one in this place....taken by the sea, that took him to this specific area?

Two major tragedies, 1950 and 1972...People killed/drowned.

Rosses Point Cemetery

Rosses Point cemetary

Feeney John Rosses Point 08/07/1950 1C3

Kennedy Kevin Rosses Point 08/07/1950 1C3

McGowan Martin Coney Island 08/07/1950 1C3

Doherty Gerald Rosses Point 08/07/1950 2C2

Two Swiss nationals were also killed. Couldn't find their names, not on the cemetary, not in the historical reports etc....


Kilgallon Michael Lower Rosses 09/07/1972 4D1

Leyden James J. (Jim) 14 Greenlands 09/07/1972 16A4

McLoughlin Michael E. Clematis 09/07/1972 12A3

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one I found interesting

Leyden John G. Heuston Texas USA 29/04/1993 2B2

There seems to be a plaque in memory off all the people who lost their lives at see at Rosses Point, but believe it or not....I couldn't find any picture of it. I want to see all names on it.....hoping the Swiss nationals are named on there...they are not on the cemetary list.

Disaster in Sligo Bay

Maybe a local could check that?

 

[worldwatcher]

Could he have lost a loved one in this place....taken by the sea, that took him to this specific area?

Two major tragedies, 1950 and 1972...People killed/drowned.

Rosses Point Cemetery

Rosses Point cemetary

Feeney John Rosses Point 08/07/1950 1C3

Kennedy Kevin Rosses Point 08/07/1950 1C3

McGowan Martin Coney Island 08/07/1950 1C3

Doherty Gerald Rosses Point 08/07/1950 2C2

Two Swiss nationals were also killed. Couldn't find their names, not on the cemetary, not in the historical reports etc....


Kilgallon Michael Lower Rosses 09/07/1972 4D1

Leyden James J. (Jim) 14 Greenlands 09/07/1972 16A4

McLoughlin Michael E. Clematis 09/07/1972 12A3

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one I found interesting

Leyden John G. Heuston Texas USA 29/04/1993 2B2

There seems to be a plaque in memory off all the people who lost their lives at see at Rosses Point, but believe it or not....I couldn't find any picture of it. I want to see all names on it.....hoping the Swiss nationals are named on there...they are not on the cemetary list.

Disaster in Sligo Bay

Maybe a local could check that?

Good find/thoughts! from the way i saw the CCTV,he looks sad,lonely,maybe he wanted to be reconnected to a place where he felt connected,somehow..

I just read -up with a Dutch article from Vice,wich seems to be translated from English. Either way,it doesn’t matter.It gave me a few more details,but also confusion:

‘The next day he checked out of the hotel just after one o'clock in the afternoon, and left the key at the reception. He also left one of his two bags - a purple plastic bag with "bag for life" on it - and a black briefcase, which he never seemed to have had before. Then he walked to the bus station via a detour. As he passed the entrance to a shopping center, he paused as if to go back. But he walked on, and when he arrived he took some pieces of paper out of his pocket and read them and threw them in the trash. The bus to Rosses Point left at 2:20 PM.
De mysterieuze dood van een man die zijn eigen verleden heeft uitgewist

Was it the same plastic,purple bag (-bag for life-) that he took with him when he disposed personal items?
Did he leave also a black briefcase behind at the hotel,after checking out?
Am definitely going to listen to the podcast..!
–The unsolved mystery of Peter Bergmann

 

[Tabitha Sparkles]

Could he have lost a loved one in this place....taken by the sea, that took him to this specific area?

Two major tragedies, 1950 and 1972...People killed/drowned.

Rosses Point Cemetery

Rosses Point cemetary

Feeney John Rosses Point 08/07/1950 1C3

Kennedy Kevin Rosses Point 08/07/1950 1C3

McGowan Martin Coney Island 08/07/1950 1C3

Doherty Gerald Rosses Point 08/07/1950 2C2

Two Swiss nationals were also killed. Couldn't find their names, not on the cemetary, not in the historical reports etc....


Kilgallon Michael Lower Rosses 09/07/1972 4D1

Leyden James J. (Jim) 14 Greenlands 09/07/1972 16A4

McLoughlin Michael E. Clematis 09/07/1972 12A3

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one I found interesting

Leyden John G. Heuston Texas USA 29/04/1993 2B2

There seems to be a plaque in memory off all the people who lost their lives at see at Rosses Point, but believe it or not....I couldn't find any picture of it. I want to see all names on it.....hoping the Swiss nationals are named on there...they are not on the cemetary list.

Disaster in Sligo Bay

Maybe a local could check that?

Good post. By the way this is my first post on Websleuths. I find this case intriguing, not least because I have family links to the Sligo area and spent a lot of time there in my youth.

I found the names of the Swiss victims in the 1952 drowning for you in the newspaper archive:
"Pierre Reichmuth (25), a waiter, employed in the Golf Links Hotel, Rosses Point, whose address was given as 71 Navenstrasse, Basle, Switzerland"
"Marcel Bruchez (24), a chef employed in the same hotel, whose home address was given as Saxon Vallais, Switzerland"

Irish civil records website lists Mr Reichmuth as a 30 year old bachelor, and Mr Bruchez as a 24 year old bachelor. Wondered whether either were married in Switzerland with a child (Peter Bergmann?) but this implies not (unless coroner had marital status wrong, or victim was not married to child's mother)

 

[Tabitha Sparkles]

Ok, I'll try and get to the point here because I am from Derry, where this Peter Bergmann is known to have begun his journey.
I should say that the first myth I want to dispel is that "Derry is not really an international access point, and has local only flights". I see this point made in several online discussion forums and it is simply not true. In 2009 the airport reported figures of 345,857 passengers for the whole year, as per Wiki.
I think it should be known that we have one of the physically smallest airports in Ireland, much smaller than those in Belfast (with two both Belfast International and Belfast City) and the much larger airport in Dublin. If someone wanted to arrive in Ireland under the radar, Derry is the place to do it. My wager is that this man arrived in Derry on the morning of Friday June 12th, 2009. These daily flights typically arrive in the morning from as early as 6.30am and it is not possible to get a train to the bus station he was seen at from the airport. He has likely taken a taxi from the City of Derry airport to the city centre, or a bus which would have put him at the bus depot directly, earlier that morning or the few days prior to a city centre hotel. Very few people on these flights in ever have more than handluggage and from what I can tell this man was also travelling light. I think it is also worth pointing out that he was seen at the depot between 1400 and 1630. Most city centre hotels in derry have check out for 11 or 12, and all are within a 5 to 10 minute walk from the bus depot. If he arrived in Derry in the days prior and stayed in a city centre hotel, I find it hard to believe, if not impossible that he has not been seen on any of the other cctv in the city centre on the walk to the depot. Our city centre is so small that I have no doubt his journey to the depot could be traced all the way back to the hotel reception he started at. If he did in fact came straight from the airport in the early morning he would have had to have hung around the depot until the evening before catching the bus to Sligo. Either of these scenarios is possible. Surely it can be established how long he was in the depot for, and which direction he came from? Regardless, I'm very much settled that his stay in derry was a short one.
I want to say that we do have flights in each morning from London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow (all Ryanair) and it has been that way for a long time. To me, I can't fathom why it has not been possible to simply search the airline manifests for the day of the 12th or the couple of days before into City of Derry from England, for any germanic name or a similar date of birth and work backwards from his point of origin which is undoubtly one of the larger english mainland airports such as London or Liverpool. Everyone in this case is trying to solve it via what happened in those last days in Sligo, I think if we find out how he got to Derry, the mystery will be solved.

Finally, I too have tried the missing person databases in my spare time these last few hours and although some attempts have been made to link certain missing people to the case, the wiki report clearly has him down as being 5'10.5" tall (roughly 1m 80), having also been described as tall by those who have seen him in Sligo. Some of the leads in this thread are to people considerably smaller.

On the point why this person wanted to go to Sligo, this is the birthplace and burial place for Yeats, one of the most famous writers ever. If this person is indeed of foregin origin and speaks english, he has likely encountered Yeats somewhere along the way of his studies if he got to a proficent standard. He has been described as looking like a professional working man and I am basing this assertion off that fact. Sligo, to a lot of Irish people, isn't really known for much else other than being the home and final resting place of Yeats.

The last thing I want to say is that the comparables to the Tamam Shud case are quite amazing and I would be suprised if this person had never heard of it and wasnt trying to emulate certain aspects of it. For what reason is anyones guess.

Apologies if that was all a bit of a ramble, but this is my first post here and I created an account for it.

Maybe someone will find it useful.

Find out how he got to Derry, thats the key here IMHO.

I don't understand either why the Gardai (Irish Police) didn't pull out the passenger records of flights for a few weeks before, for Derry/Belfast/Knock airports - looking for Austrian/German type names. Unless they did and didn't find anything....

 

[annemc2]

@Bit of hope The John G. Lyden is a strange outlier. He was 71 when he died in 1993, buried next to Stephen F. Lyden (d. 1975). The only thing I could find associated with John G. was a post office box in downtown Houston.

They're not buried in the same row as James. J. Lyden (who died at sea) but in the same cemetery. It looks like the plaque is located here and does not list the names Rosses Point Co. Sligo Ireland Home Page

Good general info as well as contact info on this site, although it's been awhile since it was updated. I like the idea that "Peter Bergmann" felt called to this area as a result of the sea taking the life of someone close to him.

 

[Bit of hope]

Good post. By the way this is my first post on Websleuths. I find this case intriguing, not least because I have family links to the Sligo area and spent a lot of time there in my youth.

I found the names of the Swiss victims in the 1952 drowning for you in the newspaper archive:
"Pierre Reichmuth (25), a waiter, employed in the Golf Links Hotel, Rosses Point, whose address was given as 71 Navenstrasse, Basle, Switzerland"
"Marcel Bruchez (24), a chef employed in the same hotel, whose home address was given as Saxon Vallais, Switzerland"

Irish civil records website lists Mr Reichmuth as a 30 year old bachelor, and Mr Bruchez as a 24 year old bachelor. Wondered whether either were married in Switzerland with a child (Peter Bergmann?) but this implies not (unless coroner had marital status wrong, or victim was not married to child's mother)

Wow...great you found the names and welcome! Yes, it's an intriguing case. I have to to check of either of them fit in the timeline, now we know there ages and names. They both could have had children out of wedlock....

 

[Bit of hope]

@Bit of hope The John G. Lyden is a strange outlier. He was 71 when he died in 1993, buried next to Stephen F. Lyden (d. 1975). The only thing I could find associated with John G. was a post office box in downtown Houston.

They're not buried in the same row as James. J. Lyden (who died at sea) but in the same cemetery. It looks like the plaque is located here and does not list the names Rosses Point Co. Sligo Ireland Home Page

Good general info as well as contact info on this site, although it's been awhile since it was updated. I like the idea that "Peter Bergmann" felt called to this area as a result of the sea taking the life of someone close to him.

You found the plaque? Yes, you are right, John G. Lyden stood out to me (not in relation to the drowning accidents) and I put him on my "list" so to say because he was from America, not knowing if this could be relevant

 

[worldwatcher]

I don't understand either why the Gardai (Irish Police) didn't pull out the passenger records of flights for a few weeks before, for Derry/Belfast/Knock airports - looking for Austrian/German type names. Unless they did and didn't find anything....

If I remember correctly, they did, but found nothing. I listened to the Irish podcast and it was said he had a golden tooth. (I found that unasual)
Also how he was found in his swimming gear was odd.

"MacMahon noted that the dead man was oddly dressed for a swimmer. He had on a pair of purple striped Speedo-type swimming trunks, with his underpants over the top and a navy T-shirt tucked into them. This was only the first of a number of strange things about the dead man on the beach."

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-unsolved-mystery-of-peter-bergmann-1.3923308%3fmode=amp

 

[Tabitha Sparkles]

I don't understand either why the Gardai (Irish Police) didn't pull out the passenger records of flights for a few weeks before, for Derry/Belfast/Knock airports - looking for Austrian/German type names. Unless they did and didn't find anything....

To a

If I remember correctly, they did, but found nothing. I listened to the Irish podcast and it was said he had a golden tooth. (I found that unasual)
Also how he was found in his swimming gear was odd.

"MacMahon noted that the dead man was oddly dressed for a swimmer. He had on a pair of purple striped Speedo-type swimming trunks, with his underpants over the top and a navy T-shirt tucked into them. This was only the first of a number of strange things about the dead man on the beach."

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-unsolved-mystery-of-peter-bergmann-1.3923308%3fmode=amp

I also wonder how long he had been in Ireland for.

 

[Rootje]

If I remember correctly, they did, but found nothing. I listened to the Irish podcast and it was said he had a golden tooth. (I found that unasual)
Also how he was found in his swimming gear was odd.

"MacMahon noted that the dead man was oddly dressed for a swimmer. He had on a pair of purple striped Speedo-type swimming trunks, with his underpants over the top and a navy T-shirt tucked into them. This was only the first of a number of strange things about the dead man on the beach."

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-unsolved-mystery-of-peter-bergmann-1.3923308%3fmode=amp

Thanks for the link!

 

[Tabitha Sparkles]

Does anyone know if the case has received any significant publicity in Germany or Austria?

I can try checking on the German language news sites myself when I get a chance - an excuse to brush up on my very rusty German.

 

[Bit of hope]

If I remember correctly, they did, but found nothing. I listened to the Irish podcast and it was said he had a golden tooth. (I found that unasual)
Also how he was found in his swimming gear was odd.

"MacMahon noted that the dead man was oddly dressed for a swimmer. He had on a pair of purple striped Speedo-type swimming trunks, with his underpants over the top and a navy T-shirt tucked into them. This was only the first of a number of strange things about the dead man on the beach."

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-unsolved-mystery-of-peter-bergmann-1.3923308%3fmode=amp

Would this have been a visible tooth? Indeed a strange way to dress for a swim, could he have been disorientated...or his testicles hurt in the cold water....I don't know.

 

[worldwatcher]

Would this have been a visible tooth? Indeed a strange way to dress for a swim, could he have been disorientated...or his testicles hurt in the cold water....I don't know.

‘Higgins particularly recalls this male passenger, who told him he was from Austria, because of a prominent gold tooth. Later examinations of Peter Bergmann’s body were to reveal he had a gold tooth in the upper back right of his mouth.’

About the stamps:
‘Back in 2009 it cost 55c to post a letter within Ireland; an 82c stamp would take a letter to the rest of the world.“

Arrival:
‘ It was, for instance, impossible to ascertain how he arrived in Ireland, and where he entered the country. The name he gave did not appear on any passenger manifest, and for foot passengers on ferries from Britain there were no identity checks.‘

‘“He had training of a sort, I think,” speculates Terry MacMahon. “So it would be easy to see that he was ex-military or ex-police. Why I think that is because, in relations to the cameras, how he was able to go about his business without people learning anything more about him.”

Source : Irish Times (the one that I posted above)

 

[Deleted member 102539]

Does anyone know if the case has received any significant publicity in Germany or Austria?

I can try checking on the German language news sites myself when I get a chance - an excuse to brush up on my very rusty German.

November 2019
PressReader.com - Your favorite newspapers and magazines.
Auf der Suche nach 'Peter Bergmann': Wer ist der Unbekannte?

 

[Deleted member 102539]

Update: I got a response. P.B. is not mr. Kwist.
I don’t have any more leads...
How to solve this case, how to solve this case...

bbm
Oh, that's disappointing to me.

 

[Deleted member 102539]

I wrote a mail to a crime author with the same name PB. I asked him, if he would know a reason, why PB took his name and if PB's "story" would fit with some content of his books. A little bit stupid maybe, but I tried. We will see, whether I will get an answer or not. It is possible, that mods deleted my mail as an inappropriate one.