He Cut the Labels Out of His Clothes, Used a Fake Name, and Erased Himself. The Peter Bergmann Case.

At six-forty-five in the morning on Tuesday, June 16, 2009, a man named Arthur Kinsella and his son Brian were out on Rosses Point beach, near the town of Sligo, on the west coast of Ireland. Brian was training for a triathlon.

They found a man's body at the water's edge.

He was wearing swim trunks, with underpants pulled on over them, and a navy T-shirt tucked in. Most of his clothes were found on the shore.

There was no wallet. No money. No ID.

And when police looked at his clothes, they found that every label had been cut out.

He had checked into a hotel in Sligo four days earlier, under the name Peter Bergmann. That was not his name. And more than fifteen years later, nobody knows who he really was.

Arrival

On Friday, June 12, 2009, a man was seen at the bus depot in Derry, in Northern Ireland, between about two-thirty and four in the afternoon.

He got on a bus to Sligo. He was carrying a black shoulder bag and a carry-on bag.

He arrived at Sligo bus station at six-twenty-eight that evening and took a taxi to the Sligo City Hotel.

He paid in cash, one night at a time.

He signed the register as Peter Bergmann, with an address in Vienna, Austria.

The address was false. Police have given it as "Ainstettersn 15, Wien 4472." No such street seems to exist. The postcode is not assigned. And postcodes in Vienna start with the number one.

The man

Hotel staff described him clearly.

He was about five foot ten, slim, in his late fifties or early sixties. Short gray hair. Blue eyes. A tan. Clean-shaven. Well groomed. He wore a black leather jacket, blue trousers and black shoes, all from the clothing chain C&A. He smoked a lot.

He spoke English with a strong German accent.

He looked like someone who had worked in an office or a profession. But that is only a guess based on how he looked.

The purple bag

Over the next few days, the hotel's security cameras recorded something strange.

Again and again, the man left the hotel carrying a purple plastic bag. And again and again, he came back without anything in it.

Police later concluded that he was getting rid of his belongings, a little at a time, somewhere around Sligo. Then he folded the bag and put it in his pocket.

Nobody knows what he threw away. He seemed to know where the cameras could not see him.

Investigators described his movements as meticulous and methodical.

Eight stamps

On Saturday, June 13, at ten-forty-nine in the morning, he went to the post office in Sligo.

He bought eight stamps and some airmail stickers.

Nobody knows who he wrote to. No letters connected to him have ever been found.

Eight stamps means he may have sent up to eight letters. If he did, somebody, somewhere, may have received a letter from Sligo in June 2009. That is one of the questions investigators still ask the public today.

"A quiet beach"

On Sunday, June 14, he left the hotel late in the morning and got into a taxi.

He asked the driver to take him to a quiet beach where he could swim.

The driver took him to Rosses Point. The man looked at the beach for a short time. Then he got back into the taxi and went back to Sligo.

Looking back, it seems like he was checking the place out. Making sure it was what he wanted. The next day, he would return.

The last day

On Monday, June 15, at six minutes past one in the afternoon, he checked out of the hotel and returned his key.

When he left, he had a black shoulder bag, the purple plastic bag, and a different black bag. The carry-on bag he had arrived with was gone.

At one-thirty-eight, at the bus station, he ordered a cappuccino and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich.

While he sat there, he took some folded papers out of his pocket and read them. Then he tore them in half and threw them in the bin.

At two-twenty, he got on a bus to Rosses Point.

Witnesses said about sixteen people saw him on the beach that afternoon and evening. He said hello to people as they walked by.

The last confirmed sighting was at ten minutes to midnight.

The next morning, he was found dead.

The autopsy

The autopsy surprised everyone.

The pathologist found no evidence of a typical saltwater drowning. There were no signs that anyone had hurt him. His death was recorded as a cardiac arrest.

And he was very sick. He had advanced prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He also had signs of past heart disease.

But there was no medication in his system. No painkillers. The pathologist said he would likely have been in serious pain.

He had also had a lot of dental work over the years. Bridges, root canals, crowns, and a full gold tooth on the upper right.

That matters. Dental work like that leaves records. Somewhere, a dentist treated this man for years. And somewhere, a doctor may have diagnosed his cancer. If either of those records were ever matched, he could be identified.

Nobody came

Police investigated for five months. They checked photo, fingerprint and DNA databases. Nothing matched.

Appeals were published in newspapers in Austria and Germany. The BBC ran an appeal. No relatives or friends ever came forward.

A French newspaper, Le Monde, later reported that there was no Interpol notice for him, because his case fit neither the category of a missing person nor a wanted person. And it reported that Austrian police said Irish police had never contacted them.

After five months, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Sligo. Four Irish police officers attended the funeral.

In 2013, a short documentary called The Last Days of Peter Bergmann was made about the case. It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014.

What we still don't know

Today, an organization called Locate International is still appealing for help, especially from people in Germany and Austria. They ask about anyone who disappeared or lost contact around 2009, about letters sent from Sligo, and about the false address.

We do not know who he was. We do not know why he came to Sligo. We do not know what he threw away, who he wrote to, or what was on the papers he tore up.

What we know is this. A man who was very sick, and not taking anything for the pain, came to a small Irish town, spent three days carefully removing every trace of who he was, and walked onto a beach.

He made sure he could not be identified. So far, he has succeeded.

The appeal asks a few specific questions. Did you know a man who disappeared or lost contact with family around 2009? Did anyone receive letters from Sligo that summer? Did you know a man with police or military training, heavy dental work, and cancer treatment, with any link to Sligo, Derry or the west of Ireland?

If you think you know who he was, contact Locate International.