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A perplexing mystery remains unsolved 16 years later, as a man with an unknown identity was found dead on an Irish beach.
In June 2009, a man checked into the Sligo City Hotel on the 12th, registering under the name Peter Bergmann. He paid for the room in cash and provided an address listed as ‘Ainstettersn 15, 4472, Vienna, Austria.’
Dressed sharply and carrying a worn-out bag, he spent most of his stay within the hotel premises. Described as 5ft 10in tall, with short grey hair and blue eyes, he appeared to be in his late 50s or early 60s. Staff noted he spoke with a heavy German accent.
Surveillance footage showed him smoking frequently, and hotel employees assumed he was a professional in town for business.
For the next three days, the man was observed leaving the hotel carrying a purple plastic bag filled with unknown items, only to return with the bag empty each time.
What he disposed of remains unknown, as he deliberately discarded the contents in areas outside the reach of security cameras, leaving the mystery unsolved.
Authorities observed that his actions seemed deliberate, and he was later spotted purchasing eight international stamps along with air mail stickers from the local post office.
The next day, he requested a taxi driver to take him to a secluded beach for swimming, and the driver recommended Rosses Point before dropping him off there.
The same driver later picked him up and returned him to the town’s bus station.
On June 15, around 1 PM, the man checked out of the hotel, carrying the purple plastic bag, a black shoulder bag, and a different black suitcase from the one he originally brought—this new suitcase was never recovered.
He then stopped at a café, ordered a sandwich and coffee, and was seen writing on a piece of paper. After staring at it for a few moments, he tore it up and discarded it.
For years, only a brief snippet of the suspect, nicknamed the “Bridge Guy,” had been made public, featuring him ordering the girls: “Down the hill.” However, the newly released 43-second clip recorded by Libby reveals more chilling details. The footage shows Abby walking ahead with the man trailing closely behind. At one point, Abby nervously asks, “Is he behind me?” before quickening her steps.
Libby is then heard saying, “See, this is the path that we go down,” as the camera briefly points toward the ground. She adds, “There is no path going there so we have to go down here.”
Both girls sound visibly distressed, with audible sniffles and heavy breathing. The clip concludes with the man calling out “guys,” to which one of the girls nervously replies “hi,” right before his ominous and now well-known order: “Down the hill.”
Later that afternoon, he made his way back to Rosses Point Beach, where 16 witnesses recalled seeing him standing fully clothed, holding his shoes in his hand.
At 10:50 PM, he was still present on the beach and exchanged a brief greeting with a local passerby.
On the morning of June 16, a father and son discovered the man’s body on the beach. He was dressed only in a T-shirt and underwear, with the rest of his clothing found nearby on the shore.
The Gardaí launched an investigation to uncover his identity, but after five months, the case was closed due to a lack of leads.
It was later learned that the man had traveled to Sligo from Ulster, yet no record of his entry into Ireland exists, and the purpose of his visit remains unknown. No passport or identification was ever recovered.
A postmortem revealed that the man was in poor health, suffering from advanced prostate cancer, bone tumors, and signs of previous ischaemic heart disease.
Strangely, despite these illnesses, there were no traces of medication in his body. His official cause of death was determined to be acute cardiac arrest. Since no signs of injury or water were found in his lungs, the coroner concluded that his heart failed just before he entered the water.
For 16 years, authorities have issued public appeals in Austrian and German media, but no family members or acquaintances have come forward to identify him.
Police later confirmed that the Austrian address he provided was fictitious and had not existed for years.
To this day, the man who used the name Peter Bergmann remains a complete mystery, with no trace of his identity or past—almost as if he had no history prior to his arrival in Sligo.
