#562 - Murder On Slide Mountain - Incline Village, Nevada

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Hi, this is Steve Buscemi. You know, the actor.
Well, now I'm an actor and podcast host. From Piece of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olivections, comes Big Time, an Apple original podcast.

Each episode follows the story of one misfit with big dreams who isn't afraid to bend a few rules or take a shortcut to get there.

Well, who steals bees?

I was duped.

I shoot you in the leg.

This is Big Time.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.
Yay, and choo-choo. Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.
Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo.
I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you folks so much for joining us all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station. Let's get on board and do this.
We have, of course, a wild case for you, as always, on Small Town Murder and Small Town Murder Express. But if we only have an hour, oh man, we got to pack it in there.
So it's a lot of murder in a little amount of time. And we're going to pull it off first before we do that.
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So that said, I think it's time, everybody. Here we go.
It's time to sit back. Let's all clear the lungs.
What do you say? Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.
Shut up. Shut up.
Give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.
Hey. Let's go on a trip, shall we? We have to, yeah.
We are going to Nevada this week.

Mm-hmm.

Been a while since we've been there.

And the milk and honey.

Oh, absolutely.

And desert and gambling and nuclear waste sites and you name it.

Nevada's got it.

This is Incline Village, Nevada.

Incline Village.

It's western Nevada all the way over there by Tahoe near the California border.

It's a Nevada all the way over there by Tahoe near the California border. It's about 50 minutes to Reno if you want to go lose your money in a depressing city.
That's a place to do it. About four hours and 25 minutes to our last Nevada episode, which was Denio, Nevada.
That was episode 499 Hermit Horrors. Remember the hermit guy who was killing people out?

That was crazy.

That guy was just killing anybody that came out there.

Population of this town, 9,440.

It is a wealthy little town.

Let me tell you something.

Median household income here, median household income, $131,914.

Holy!

Which is pretty good. What are they doing? The median home price is wild.
Median home price here, $1,392,400. What is this best kept secret on the planet? This is crazy.
I don't know. This is a, and there's a lot of people like celebrities that had houses here.
This is like a little weird, what's that spot in Idaho where they all gather and they have you in Jackson Hole in Wyoming yeah there's another one in Idaho too that's a ski place where they have a thing too yeah there's Jackson Hole and there's this place there's a few of these spots throughout the west that are weird little celebrity enclaves strange uh the motto here is information inspiration progress well, we don't know anything about what that means. I don't even know what that means.
Inspiration, progress. I don't know.
History of this town established in 1882. So that's older than I thought it was going to be here.
The Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company was a logging company that operated on the Northeast side of Lake Tahoe at where incline villages now. So this used to just be like a lumber camp lumber company.
And it was named, uh, for the incline railway that served the area. That's what they call it.
Yeah. The incline, uh, village there.
Uh, the timber was required for the mines during the mining boom because you had to put the big timber up to keep everything structured down there. And the timber around Lake Tahoe was placed on an incline railway where it was taken up 1,400 feet then dropped by a gravity flume down the western side of the mountain to a 3,000 foot tunnel tunnel to Carson City.
That's cool as shit. Is that how log rides became? Yes.
I was just going to say, every six flags and everything has a log flume splash mountain, all that shit. That's what this is from.
Awesome. Yeah.
A log flume is a real thing, apparently. Wow.
Never heard of it until now, but I guess it is here. The company operated a number of other railroad lines that were in the area, too.
So that's what they did. Now, notable people that have had houses here.
Warren Buffett had a house here in the 80s, I guess. The Stu Cook of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Is that right? And then David Coverdale, Deep Purple and Whitesnake there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is with Tony Katane on the hood. That's the guy there.
The jackass from Girls Gone Wild, that idiot Joe Francis. And John Force, the race car driver.
John Force, how about that? So all sorts of famous people have gone there. Reviews of this town, not a lot of them, and most of them are good.
So we'll get into it here. Five stars.
Here we go. Incline Village is that charming town by a beautiful lake.
All right. Lake Tahoe is one of America's gems.
Calm down. Yeah, it's pretty.
It's nice. It's nice.
Incline Village sits on the north shore on the Nevada side and boosts an abundance of activities for the locals and many tourists and wanderers that visit this lovely town. Having a population of about 9,000 people, it's a pretty small town, but rapidly grows during the high of the tourist seasons.
The locals are friendly and welcoming to newcomers, as I was once the new person. Tahoe has so much to offer, from the lake to the endless hiking to the long bike rides taking in the beauty of this majestic lake.
That's still all in the same category. Yeah.
Outside, walking around, looking at the lake. Hiking, skiing, fuck with the lake.
That's it. Yeah.
Hiking, laking, bike rides, same shit. Four stars here.
We lived here for about 15 years and love our town. We wish we had Christmas lights around town, more activities off-season, more respect from tourists.
Well, you're never going to get that. Never.
No. You're pissing on everything you love.
Yeah. I'm here to spend money so you guys can have a town.
And I get to behave any way I want because of it. Sweep my piss from the streets.
That's how that works there. Things to do here.
Okay. Summerfest we have.
Sure. That is the Incline Tahoe Foundation presents Summerfest, a family favorite event during Incline Village's Independence Day week of celebrations.
Oh. So they go hard for this, but I can't get a Christmas light downtown.
Nice. So they say that they have all sorts of food.
Incline Spirits has organized beer tasting from 12 breweries featuring 24 craft beers, wine, and soft beverages. Craft beers are always a disappointment.
They're always just bitter. They just always advertise it.
Oh, they love it. There's like, out of 100 people, two people like it, and they aim for that guy.
They aim for that guy, but yet 100 people go to it, and two of the people enjoy it, and the rest of them are going, yeah, no, it's good. It's a little more bitter than I'd want.
I mean, yeah, I don't know if I drink it every day, but, you but you know it's okay i can't even taste my fucking burger the uh university of nevada reno at lake tahoe has a watermelon tent university nevada reno at top at lake tahoe that's a lot of different places i was like that's a lot that's qualifying it they'll have long game lawn games you know and fun for the whole family tickets by the way this is fucking no then there's also i'm sorry jacked up will be performing oh yeah jack jacked up these have pictures of uh football tackles on a screen behind them as it goes some guy named jack d-u-p-p fucking jacked up jacked up will be providing great music and what do you how much does all of this cost how much would you pay for all of this 12 bucks 75 dollars get the fuck out of here and that includes tasting glasses for your pissy craft beer 25 dollars for children and designated drivers. So So even children, $25 for your kid to come in, walk around, and watch Jacked Up perform.
And whine to you about how boring this is. And not get any beer.
They say, by the way, this was formerly beer and brats, apparently. That's what it used to be.
Now they've changed it to this, Summerfest. I don't know.
That said, let's talk about some murder. Oh, boy.
I want a murder. Let's get right into this.
Yeah, I'd want a murder if I paid $75 and got to taste some shitty craft beer. I'd be very upset there would be a murder happening.
So I have to give credit to an article here that has a lot of very good details. SF Gate is the publication.

SF Gate?

Yeah, they do a lot of different, very good investigative pieces.

And this is by Andrew Chamings.

Or Chamings, either one.

So good job, Andrew.

Here we go.

Let's get right into this.

Here we go.

With a fella here.

Peter Matthew Bergna.

B-E-R-G-N-A, Bergna. He's born 1953.
He was apparently adopted. He's an adopted kid.
When he was a baby, he was adopted, so it never was like a weird, didn't grow up in an orphanage or anything like that. His parents, his dad, I believe he grew up in North Carolina because his dad, Lewis, is a district attorney in North Carolina.

So, yeah, he came up with a very decent upbringing and that kind of thing.

They have a lot of money.

His parents both have a lot of money.

And not bad.

I mean, not a bad way to grow up here.

That's a good couple of people to pick you up and bring you in. Not bad.
He'll end up as a Lake Tahoe fine art appraiser. Oh.
My old job. Appraiser.
I had to give that up to do this. That was what it was.
I said, you know what? Figure out what this shit's worth, huh? I'm tired of it. I've seen too much, and I'm going to try stand-up, and that's when I started comedy.
It's a tough world, the fine art appraisal world it's just it's too much for me it was rough you know what i mean got rough after what competitive is what it is you know people jumping each other legs getting broken it's too much um he uh ends up finding a wife here renette riella he ends up marrying uh renette r-i-n-n or r-i-n-e-t-t-eette. So Renette Riella, and she becomes Renette Riella Bergna.
She's like a year younger than him, but same basic age here. She, very well-educated, successful pharmacist.
So fine art and pharmacist, that's going together here. You can take pills and look at pretty pictures.
That sounds like a lot of fun.

They're going to have fun here.

She is well-loved by

everybody. People even call her a

saint for her compassion for people.

Which, you know, I've counted these

pills for you. Here you are.

That's a lot of compassion you can have

here. So they have a very

nice life together, these two.

I mean, living it up.

She can't have kids, apparently, by the way.

How did he hit such

Thank you. here so they have a very nice life together these two yeah i mean living it up she can't have kids apparently by the way how did he hit such lottery with rich parents and then well off he was adopted he could have been you know what i mean christ he could have so bad everything could have gone bad he could have got the wrong family or whoever put him up for adoption originally could have kept him in some trailer park or something somewhere.
Just in a bad situation or a 16-year-old mother or whatever the hell the deal might be would be not as advantageous as the situation he fell into. Just all coming up Berdner.
Good for him. Yeah.
He would like to have kids is the thing. He'd like to have a family, but his wife can't have kids.
So that's an issue's an issue. I think she would like to have a family too, but she can't.
So they do have a very nice life. They live on the North shore of Lake Tahoe there in the incline village.
And, um, he, uh, I, Oh, I'm sorry. His dad wasn't, it wasn't North Carolina.
Apparently his dad was a, uh, County district attorney for Santa Clara County. Okay.
That's why I don't't know why I thought it was North Carolina for some reason. So he also, Bergma, Peter, the son, worked at San Francisco art dealers Butterfields as well.
Yeah. So he works for them.
His job as an appraiser means that he gets to live a fancy little life. You bet.
Do you know how many parties appraisers get invited to? Oh, man, the amount of wine this guy has to drink. I was just going to say, the amount of very expensive wine and champagne.
Northern California, delicious wine. Yeah.
I mean, this is a different circle. There's like regular people, then there's rich people, then there's rich people who own expensive art, which is a whole other strata.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's totally different. They're richer, number one, and they're cultured and shit like that.
It's totally different. We would stick out like sore thumbs at one of those parties.
They would get kicked out in 15 minutes. Yeah.
There's a lot of rich people that have plenty of money and like everything's well invested and they're planned for the future.

These are people that have been planned for the future six generations.

That's what I mean.

They're doing very, very well.

We would get kicked out of one of these parties as soon as we asked where the keg was.

That would be the end of it.

They'd know.

As soon as I asked, why is it worth that?

Wow, yeah.

This fucking thing?

Worth what? How much?

Looks like squiggles to me.

I don't get it. It feels like I could do that, right? I think I could do that.
James, let's get an easel and see if we can do this. I think I can.
I think we can do it. So they're doing very well.
Yeah, he's visiting mansions and galleries. And I mean, it knows all the important people.
And they all want to kiss his ass because he's a fucking painting of Prince. He's the guy that sets the price.
Yeah. So you want to give him a couple glasses of good wine first before he does anything.
She, now Renette, has a distinguished career at the Nevada Board of Pharmacy. Oh, so good.
She was on the board. Then founded a consulting service in Incline Village, and then she took a job as an international travel director for Talk Tours, a job that would send her to Europe for, like, weeks at a time.
Wow. So these two have quite the jet set and lifestyle here.
Oh, shit. Jesus Christ.
Not a lot of Monday through Friday.

Yeah, he's going to the Louvre, for Christ's sake.

Oh, they go to Europe all the time.

Yeah.

Like nothing.

They have a beautiful house, a four-bedroom.

It's called a mountain retreat by many different publications.

Yeah, when your place is called a retreat, you're doing great.

It's fucking wild.

So they're married in about 1987. They get married.
So they're both in their 30s, early 30s. And so like even that's like responsible.
That's incredible. They don't get married when they're 22.
They both get married when they're like, you know, 35 and 34. Okay.
Like they're very, you know what I mean? They're very different lifestyle, man. Yeah.
So he, Peter, is very knowledgeable about, obviously, antiques and art because he appraises for Butterfield and Butterfield auction firm. Both the Renette and Peter both love children, by the way.
Really? Both very into giving their time and money to children's events and especially athletics. Peter gives a lot of money, donates it to the school athletic programs, and then spends time as a volunteer coach for incline high school athletic teams as well.
I don't know how you'd have time for this. I mean, she can't have kids.
They want kids so bad. he does this kind of thing yet he was adopted he's very well aware of the avenues they could take to absolutely have a child totally that's that's the other thing too is i don't get why of all people yeah of all people why he doesn't go you know we could adopt it worked out well for my parents you know but that never comes up i guess i'm appraising rich shit you know what i mean you know, we could adopt.
It worked out well for my parents, you know, but that never comes up, I guess. I'm appraising rich shit, you know what I mean? Like, we could certainly raise one of these little bastards to do good things.
There's a group of people, I don't know if it's a group, but there's a mass of people out there, though, that don't want somebody else's kid. They just don't.
They want their own kid or no kid at all, and maybe that's who these people were. It just doesn't seem like it.
There's also a subset of the population that believes that those children are going to murder them. Yeah, based on studies or science or whatever, because they've seen a couple scary movies.
That's their science. Yeah.
The main problem is you just don't know where they came from genetics wise. You don't know.
You don't know if their father is Freddy Krueger or not. But you don't.
What about this guy? You don't. You have no idea.
They believe. Yeah, you do.
Yeah, you do. Absolutely.
And I guess if you're donating your time and money already to strangers' kids, you might as well adopt one of them and fucking take them home with you. So the principal of the school said we just all thought the war of the world of both of them so yeah you have to everybody loves them they travel extensively together the bergna's they make four or five trips to italy this is a 10 11 year period uh three or four trips to england they went to Switzerland as as well they paid for a 35 day vacation to australia for peter's parents 35 days that is like that's a payback thanks for the adoption yeah have a month month a month plus in australia wow i hope they were retired or something how the hell do you take 35 days off so she uh earned about a hundred thousand dollars a year in her pharmacy consulting business and he made about that if not a little more in his in his uh thing too so and this is in the 90s 200 grand a year for a couple in the early 90s is a fuckload of money that's a you're killing it i mean absolutely killing it.
Early 90s, you made 100 grand a year.

You were upper middle class.

That was doing very well.

Then in about late 1997,

Peter fully pays off the balance

on their $500,000 home.

Wow.

Pays it off.

Actual homeowner. 1998 comes around.
They have a paid off house. Wow.
And all of this wonderful, nice things that's going on here. What a dream.
Drinking wine, doing all this shit. So she goes away in April.
Renette goes to Italy for her new job doing the international tours. And she does a six-week trip to Italy.
Wow. She lands back at the Reno Tahoe International Airport on May 31st, 1998.
Yeah, to go from like Florence to Reno has to be a real kick right in the fucking teeth, doesn't it? Not even like, like you know a little bit at a time like a

decompression chamber like bring you to bring you to boston or something or there's a right into reno right to the brown feet deep and then just shooting you straight to the surface that's it right to the brown fucking ground enjoy oh that is rough that's a rough thing so during her trip apparently

Peter had

been telling some people that he planned to end their marriage oh my and he'd also been known to during that six week time he'd been making advances on women and while at work that's a nice picture but a better ass let me tell you something sweetheart i'll tell you something right now your tits are as pretty as his picture baby you bend over and look down at it it's a nice picture, but a better ass. Let me tell you something, sweetheart.
I'll tell you something right now. Your tits are as pretty as this picture, baby.
You bend over and look down at it. It's a better angle.
Van Gogh ain't got nothing on your cleavage. Let me tell you one thing right now.
It's a nice work of art. It's a work of art.
Let me tell you. I got something else I could appraise.
I bet those are about 10 G's, huh? You went to a good doctor for those

bad boys, didn't you see? Sometimes I got to touch them. I was going to say, let me feel the weight.

I got to put my hand under him. Now we can, it's all right.
Now we'll find out. So, and also,

while in Italy, Renette had been looking at apartments in Italy. Oh, so, hmm.
Yeah. So,

this day, May 31st, 1998, Peter attends an evening charity function at Incline High School. Then he stopped at the AM-PM gas station to fill up two five-gallon plastic jugs for a trip to Las Vegas with gasoline.
Yeah. So cans, gas cans, extras.
Yeah. I get.
They were saying they were going to be driving to Vegas like the next day, I guess.

So they say there is not a lot of places to stop between Reno and Vegas.

Really?

So I guess if you want to keep extra gas with you just in case or I don't know.

That's what he's saying.

And it seems to be like logic that everyone accepts of like, yeah, that just in case okay the hell does he drive it's a Ford F-150 97 yeah so that sucks gas it's a royal blue 97 Ford F-150 and he put those two in the back and he picked her up from the airport around 11 p.m. she'd been traveling.
This is a 25-hour trip. She'd been traveling for 25 hours straight.
This is her landing spot, her fourth airport of the day. Oh, boy.
Yeah, it's a long, long trip because I think she had to go from Italy to New York, from New York to Denver, from Denver to Reno or some shit like that. Like it was one of those real circuitous routes here.
So he picks her up. But instead of going home to Incline Village, he takes a turn off the Mount Rose Highway.
This is a very mountainous area, by the way. A lot of mountains, as you might imagine, from Incline Village here.
So I guess this is like a scenic spot where you can see all the lights of the valley and things like that. So this is one of their favorite spots, Peter said.
And they enjoyed looking at the Reno lights. If I just got home from a 25-hour trip, we're not stopping anywhere.
I don't even want to see my bedroom light. I want this shit shut off.
Take my ass home. Period.
I want my couch. I want an eye mask.
Dude, six weeks on the road and 25 hours in a day. All I want is my couch at that point.
Just give me my couch and my things. Yeah.
I mean, the couch at minimum. I want the bed.
Yeah. And I want you to leave.
No, I want to go in the fridge. I want to do shit I haven't been able to do.
You know what i'm saying like i want to lay diagonal in my own bed and tell everybody to get the fuck out so he said that they discussed their marriage i guess and how he was frustrated with her traveling okay apparently he said you know that might be part of your job but i'm home and i'm alone and i don't like it i like being home alone for six weeks at a time which six weeks is a long fucking time that's a long time you know even if you're in the nba you come home every week or you know you're on the road for a week or two you come home you're there it's that's this is crazy weeks i just heard about the longest vacation i've ever heard of and it was still shorter than her business trip that's so long yeah 35 days blew me away so i guess that he says the it ended on a good note when she agreed to cut back on her travel to save their marriage okay so they're heading back down the mountain road just after midnight is after this they went up there to the scenic spot to have this deep conversation about their existence or whatever the fuck so very serious conversation. Now I'm going to cut to Sergeant Jim Beltran.
Oh.

He's a retired. It's always good when we make a hard cut from a, from a couple talking about their marriage to detective Sergeant Jim Beltran.
He said, quote, I got a call at home. There was an accident off Mount Rose Highway.
He said, in all my years, I've never seen anything like it. Now, Peter Bergna, they pull up, the police pull up, they respond to a 911 call from Peter.
And they pull up to find him clinging from the rocks hanging off the side of a cliff. Oh, wow.
That's how they find him. His Ford F-150 apparently had plunged through the guardrail, and that is 800 feet down below.
And he kept his cell phone cling to a rock and called for help. Called.
Wow. So two Nevada Highway Patrol troopers found the broken guardrail and noticed a baseball cap with incline written on it lying in the road yeah okay they noticed that and they were like this must be the spot i guess yeah no guardrail and a hat so he was hanging on the rocks like we said and as he's rescued he told the troopers my wife the truck.
You got to find my wife. She's 800 feet that way.
Probably, yeah. Down there.
So they end up using the helicopter spotlight and they find this mangled, destroyed wreck of a truck. I mean, this is, it plunged down a 800 foot ravine.
It's fucking, it's bad. So they find that lying in the road or lying down there, the mangled wreck.
And, um, inside is Renette and she is, she's absolutely deceased. Yeah.
She is, uh, injuries too numerous to even chronicle. I mean, it's insane.
She's crushed in there. So to crash through this, this was at the East bowl of the Mount Rose Ski Tahoe Resort.
It is basically what he shot it down into.

So apparently she was seat belted into the passenger seat.

Yeah.

And it plunged nose first, landed on the side of Slide Mountain.

That's what this is, by the way.

Slide Mountain, an inclined village.

You knew what was going to happen in the story. It's coming down, yeah.
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How are you here?

What's going on?

And he said the truck's brakes failed.

And he didn't have his seatbelt on.

And he had the window open.

It was 60 degrees outside, but he had the window open because he was smoking a cigar.

Just kind of like hanging out the window, smoking the cigar.

Not hanging out, but his arm out the window or whatever so yeah he said that the brakes totally failed uh they found him by the way about 80 feet below the road whoa which is about 20 feet above the truck's initial impact point because it fell 100 feet then another 700 okay so it's like a picture like a little little kind of a little platform picture fall and fall landing, not having enough to stay on it, and then tumbling all the whole rest of the way down. He said, yeah, the brakes failed, and I must have been ejected from the vehicle here out the window as it tumbled.
He said, I started to brake, and it wasn't braking. I know I hit the guardrail, and the next thing I'd wake up, I'm on the dirt, dirt and I don't see the car and I'm yelling for my wife.
So he said he found himself hanging on to the side of the mountain about 80 feet below the guardrail. And there he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and called 911.
Thank God for that. Well, thank God for good pockets, man.
Yeah. Some loose pockets.
Those are rough. Yeah, that too.
So he said, my car rolled down the hill. My wife is in the car is what he said on the 9-1-1 call i'm sliding down the hill and i can't hang on he was told to listen and for the siren stay on the line you can hear him yelling renette he's yelling yelling so he said yeah they said that the uh the cap belongs to him by the way the incline cap, in case you're wondering, that's his hat.
Now, one of the people here, a care flight nurse, Phyllis Tejada, who attended to Peter on the mountainside, said later on that he kept saying, my wife, my wife, my wife, I think she's dead. She said, but he didn't have any tears or anything.
He was just saying it. Like thought that was a little weird, very strange.
She said that, quote, he said he was ejected. She asked him if he lost consciousness, and he said no.
Now, he said on 911 that he did. He said he was out, and he woke up on the side of a mountain.
So that's very interesting. And the thing he was really concerned about, concerned about two things, Renette, obviously, and his fanny pack.
He's very upset that he can't find his fanny pack. Very upset.
One of the cops there said, I found it kind of odd, first of all, somebody would be asking for a fanny pack when a very short distance away his deceased wife is down there. Get my wife and my fanny pack.
Get my wife. If you can find her alive, great.
If not, I do have a fanny pack with a couple. These cigars are good.
Like, they're not bad. They're Cubans, and I don't want to lose them.
I've paid a lot, yeah. This cop said he never, there was no emotion.
It was like he just kind of had a blank stare. That's what he said.
Then there's an ER nurse because he goes to the ER. You know what's hurt? He's got a little ankle injury.
That's what's hurt on him. Is that right? That's the only injury he has.
His ankle's a little sore. Twisted it.
This is not a good story for seatbelts. No.
Well, no, he didn't have it on. That's my point.
Yeah, yeah. You can be ejected.
No seatbelt, a little ankle twist. Keep your seatbelt dead as fuck.
Plunge down. But you died with the car.
You went down with the ship, I think, is the point there, is what you're trying to do. So this woman from the ER said that Peter didn't seem distressed or distraught when he arrived at the emergency room.
She said that thereafter she heard Bergen on the phone having a horrible, heart-wrenching sobbing conversation but when she turned around she was astonished because she he sounded so horrendous but had no expression on his face whatsoever she said he was just totally kicked back and just kind of looking around the room but having this like oh my god but like just you know Yeah cool interesting so another cop said about the guardrail he said the hole ripped through the guardrail he said it wasn't a scrape and punch through the guardrail it was a t-bone so blasted through it hit it front first they didn't scrape a little and shoot off of it so he said that was a little bit weird um then the cop said that his wife's his wife was right a bag. He didn't say boo about his wife.
He's more interested in what happened to his travel bag. And they said, you know, also she was wearing her seatbelt.
Her airbag had been disabled. Oh, yeah, everyone, you could do that? Yeah, with the key.
You put the key in and took it off. Can't do that anymore.
No, they used to do that for what? If you had like a car seat in the front or some shit. Yeah.
Yeah. Then they just basically said if you put a car seat in the front and your kid loses his head, it's on you, not us.
Yeah, that's your problem. That's a you problem.
You're an idiot for putting your kid up there. So he was found.
The suspicions start when they figure out he was found wearing a winter jacket and gloves. And they were like, that seems excessive for 60 degrees.

60 degrees, yeah. Sounds like

someone who expected to be on the side of a mountain

for a while. Right.
They said just a

fractured foot is inconsistent

with being ejected from a truck as it

careens over the rocks. Didn't even have a concussion

or anything. Yeah, fractured foot.

They said he was clean except for his

backside. Yeah.

It didn't even look like he rolled or tumbled or anything. So he slid on his ass? That's it.
Yeah, that's what they're thinking down the hill. One of the detectives said, when you get pitched out of a vehicle, you're dirty.
You tumble. The ejections I've seen, dead or alive, you're dirty.
You're going to look like pig pen. Yeah.
You're going to be tumbling. A hundred percent, yeah.
You're going to have to, whatever speed you're going, your body's going too, and you're going to be all fucked up. He said there was no scuff, no skid, no brake fluids, no debris, no tire marks of any kind.
If you knew you were headed to the edge, you'd be stomping all over those brakes. It's reflex.
Yeah. So, they said it also didn't make sense that the driver would have turned right directly toward the guard rail on the banked curve of the road even if the brakes failed yeah you turn away from the curb and then turn that thing off that's this is very much like that hawaii episode that we did except that they the lady was all upset remember that one where she did the same she turned into the guard rail this by the way i if someone can fucking help me out with this this exact story someone did blow for blow in a TV show and I thought it was Monk the TV show Monk that did it because I remember the exact thing I remember they showed up there was a hat lying in the road the guy was down there he said he was smoking a cigar it was the exact thing but I can't fucking place what show it was i thought it was monk but now i don't think it is if anybody can tell me holy shit that would help a lot hit me up on instagram or something let me know so by the way um later on the next week at her funeral people are asking him how her how his foot felt he said to somebody it wasn't hurt that bad and i wish i had been hurt worse okay which i i guess that you know a guilt feeling somebody would have maybe survivor's guilt yeah maybe so the morning after the crash this is you know the next late morning here yeah they sit down with peter at the police station and he gives them the rundown.

He said, yep, she was in Italy for about six weeks.

I was excited about seeing her, picked her up.

We talked often on the phone the whole time she was gone.

He said, I left my Incline High School Booster Club function around 9 p.m.

to give myself plenty of time to get to the airport because I knew I had to stop at the a.m. p.m.

to fill up some plastic gas containers

in anticipation of our

trip to LA a few days later.

Oh, they're going to go to LA now.

Or not LA, Vegas.

A few days later, but he needs them

on the way to the airport. Right now.

He said Delta Flight 803

got on the ground and

was at the gate by 10.15.

He gave his wife a big hug, then drove

up the Mount Rose Highway

toward their incline village home. He said that he turned off State Road 878, an access road that dead ends into the parking lot of the Slide Mountain side of the Mount Rose Ski Tahoe Resort.
They said skiers and hang gliders use the short, isolated scenic road to do their thing. They jump off the fucking mountain.
He said it was one of our favorite spots. He said they had a lot to talk about, catching up, chit-chatting.
He said, we've been discussing the idea of me having problems with her being gone because I'm lonely. I like being with people and there's a real problem.
He said, I'm a lonely guy. You know, you have a great time and it might be part of your job, but I'm home and I'm alone and I don't like it.
He told them that's what he was saying. And I said that the end of the conversation was pretty exciting for me because she said she would cut back on her travel and she'd be home with me.
So he said it was him who suggested going down the road to a spot overlooking the lights of Reno. A parking bay was on the right side of the road with a guardrail separating the pullover from the mountain slope.
So he said, I started to break and it wasn't breaking. It wasn't stopping.
I couldn't figure out why it wasn't stopping. And the next thing you know, I hit the guardrail.
And the next thing I'd wake up, I'm on the dirt and I don't see the car and i'm yelling for my wife and i don't know where she is and that's all i remember what happened that's it he said it just kept going it wouldn't stop he said i started panicking and i'm breaking and i'm breaking and i'm pushing as hard as i can and nothing's happening nothing's happening i just kept going it wouldn't stop hit the fucking e-brake, you idiot. Do something.
E-brake, throw it in neutral.

There's a lot of things you can do.

I'm putting it in fucking park.

We'll leave the transmission back there, but we're stopping.

You know what I'm saying?

It's fucking happening right now.

Brace yourself.

I'm throwing it in park.

Don't give a shit.

It's better than flying off a mountain, right?

Yeah.

We'll worry about the truck later.

So he said, when I finally figured out where I was, it was on the sand.

I was sliding down the hill.

I'm trying the best I could.

Looked up to see if I could see the truck, see a fire, see something, yelling for her.

So he said, I had my phone on me, luckily.

So I called 911.

He said, it took them so long to get to me.

They said, when they arrived, by the way, he had his head resting on his phone because they was listening. He said, I can't move my legs, but I'm okay.
Find my wife. So they do, 795 feet below.
And the cop said it was lying on what had been its roof with the nose of the vehicle pointing back up the hill. And it was pretty crumpled up from the tumbles that it took down the hill.
Up laying on its cap that's crazy man oh my and backwards upside down and backwards is not good aiming uphill yeah yeah that thing got all fucked up i have a picture of it too it's yeah disturbing so um the cop said there was some grief when he told us i tried to stop i tried to stop but it was nothing more He looked like he was hyperventilating, but he wasn't. He spontaneously said, I don't cheat on my wife out of nowhere.
Okay. What's the lady's name? The cop said it was like, ding, ding, ding.
No one asked you that. Yeah.
If you're ever in an interrogation, don't answer questions that aren't asked of you first of all that's number one don't anticipate what's coming answer the questions as concisely as you can try not to ramble and don't give extra information because that sounds terrible for you it's not good uh that is fucking wild he spontaneously spontaneously said, I don't cheat on my wife.

So they take a little tactic here where they're like, let's give this a shot.

It's legal to lie to people.

And they do.

Yeah.

Okay.

They said they told him that a caretaker on the mountain was nearby.

Oh.

At the time of your alleged conversation. And he came.
He's come forward to it with us to tell us what he heard that night oh he he overheard he overheard yeah he overheard he was hanging out nearby yeah he heard yelling there's a lot of yelling you guys were doing right he heard you guys that's why he wasn't even right by you when he heard you so what what's up with that? I thought it was a nice conversation.

And the cop said, we just threw it out there.

It set him back.

We watched his micro-emotions, his face, his hands.

It all looked like somebody had slapped him.

The cop said he was told about the caretaker.

The police told him about a caretaker that may have heard. At that point, his story changed completely.

Really?

Yeah, the cop said.

That's all it took? That's all it took. the cop said that's when he started admitting it was loud that he was boisterous and he swore oh this is like someone say i've never even been in that lady's apartment well is there any reason why your fingerprints would be there actually i was there for like three hours that one day and then that's that's what this is someone on the block saw you walk in the door oh that's right i did do that yeah i was just bringing her haram way though you know it's it so they said that uh yeah he was boisterous and swore then he said we worked out our 11 or 10 years worth of marriage problems in an hour so you know of course it got heated at times um but so the prosecutors are thinking hmm so they have marriage have marriage troubles.
She's very much insured. He's getting some money off of this.
And yeah, they don't know. They say the police think that he's angry because his wife quit her high-paying job as a pharmacist locally where she was home at 5 o'clock every night to become an overseas travel tour guide, a career that would keep her away for months at a time.
So that's what they're thinking. They're thinking he was just mad at her and rather than get a divorce and have to split all this up, it's easier just to kill her.
So they said when, um, when Bergna couldn't answer the questions, his head would tilt a little. He said, like when your child says something that's not true.
Oh no, that's his dad too. Cause they brought his dad in.
Oh, because he said like when your child says uh something that's not true oh no that's his dad too because they brought his dad in oh because he said he wanted his dad with him oh his dad's an attorney yeah yeah so he said whenever bergner couldn't answer the questions his dad's head would tilt a little bit like like when your child says something yeah so he told police the one thing i did not want to be is alone and now

i'm alone and the other cop says he admits going up there with his wife he admitted having a peaceful discussion with his wife about problems in their marriage and that's what we got they said how about a polygraph maybe you'll do a polygraph he said sure what the hell line me up Absolutely.

So they said he looked full of angst.

They said that while you're doing this, they said, sure, what the hell? Line me up. Absolutely.
So they said he looked full of angst. They said that while you're doing this, they said, you don't have to remember the truth because it is.
You have to remember the lie. Right.
That's easy for people to tell the truth. The test was eventually ruled inconclusive, which happens with a lot of them.
Yeah. It's just kind of a mess.
A lot of times if they're on any kind of medication or if their emotions are all over the place it comes out all messy. So with doing some physical tests after this, they concluded that the vehicle was turned toward the guardrail at an angle of 60 to 90 degrees in order to bust through it like that.
Which is straight at it, basically. They also said it was doubtful that a one-year-old truck's brakes would just not work at all.

Yeah, it's a new truck.

Brand new truck.

So they were like, that's weird.

Then they said there was two unsealed cans of gasoline in the back, maybe to try to make

sure there was a fire.

Oh, right, right.

They were thinking that's possible.

So yeah, the investigators drive similar trucks along the same route to see how they would handle the turn and try to figure out, okay, if I'm here, I'd have to do this.

The guardrails were tested at different angles of impact to try to recreate the hole made at the crash scene as well.

One of the most consequential pieces of evidence was an asphalt mark found on his sneaker and the location of his baseball cap. His baseball cap was on the road.
Yeah, and if you're tossed out of the truck, the asphalt wouldn't touch you because you would be off the road before you get tossed out. That's what they're saying, yes.
A veteran accident investigator and reconstructionist said, I don't feel he came out of that driver's window or any other window, period. In my opinion, he came out of that car sometime before it went through the guardrail.
And in my opinion, I would have to say he came out of that car voluntarily. He said, I don't believe that the brakes went out.
So, yeah, they said the investigator said it was first investigated as an accident. They said when this thing happened, we didn't even get called the crime scene people.
They said there was a lot of investigating officers and people involved who felt this was a traffic accident. But then later on, they called them all in all these investigators and said, no, they said, you can start with no skid marks on the roadway.
But that's why I said his brakes didn't work. So the fact that he wasn't killed or seriously injured was suspicious there as well.
It's interesting here. So they said that about his dad, Peter's dad, they said he had lived this career.
He knew exactly what we were going through. He knew we wouldn't charge this case unless we could prove it.
He knew we believed he did it. Talking about the dad.
So the investigator said, quote, this thing smelled bad. Yeah, it's such a like old timey.
I tell you, it smelled to high heaven. I'll tell you, this thing stinks.
It stinks, I tell you, it stinks.

He said, we just didn't think we were going to ever have enough evidence here.

So they said that other things, just to run down the evidence here,

damage to his clothing was minimal,

not what someone would expect for someone who tumbled 80 feet down a mountain.

Right.

So they think he positioned that truck to be dead on with the guardrail and then jumped and landed on his feet and slid on his ass or some shit. Yeah.
Like just slid his ass down the whole way. Okay.
Is what they're thinking here. So they said that his airbag deployed, but there were no signs of bag impact on his face.
So he didn't get hit with it. Very small amount of injuries.
Obviously, there's no bruises or scrapes indicating he'd been thrown through the driver's side window. They did find scrapes on the top side of the canvas shoe he'd been wearing.
That could indicate it scraped across an asphalt road. The road at that point curves and is steeply banked, much as true like at an auto racetrack.
It's that kind of thing. It goes elevated.
A vehicle traveling on that road would turn toward the mountain, not outward through the guardrail down the side because it curves to the left, not to the right, where you shoot off the mountain. They said that it would have to be steered through the guardrail.
They said the wreckage of the truck, it had 23,452 miles on it, was airlifted

out by helicopter. They said they found no reason for the brakes to go out.
It had dual brake systems,

meaning if the front brakes failed, the rear brakes should hold and vice versa.

Oh, how about that? He's got two sets of two different master cylinders in this thing.

Yeah, and then no evidence of brake tampering. His driver's side window was in the down position.

He said, because he was smoking a cigar, he told police he didn't wear a seatbelt ever. A switch in the truck allowed him to shut off the airbag on the passenger side.
Because his wife was short about five feet, he was concerned about an airbag injuring her, which is fair. hey everybody just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more

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They also said that when a vehicle strikes an object, the occupant would be thrown toward the object. So, at the angle of the truck at the guardrail, they would have expected Peter to be thrown toward the passenger-side windshield, not out the driver's side door.
Okay. The force would have taken him that way, not the other way.
Yeah. He also told police he was looking for a fire after the accident, but rarely does a vehicle actually explode or burn on impact.
It's just in movies because it looks awesome. It does, yeah.
It looks so cool. So they said, yeah, that's something seen in movies.
They said perhaps three months after the accident as well, Bergman told Rick Riella, one of Renette's brothers, that perhaps he hadn't been hitting the brakes after all, and maybe he accidentally hit the gas. Oh, yeah.
Which you would imagine 30 years of driving experience would keep you from doing that, but I guess not. So the police tested the guardrail, piling up to see what force it would take to dislodge it from the mountainside.
They did everything. They also have a guy named, an engineer, a mechanical engineer named Robert H.
Turner. He says that in his opinion, it's not possible that Bergner had been in the truck when it went over the cliff.
He said that if Bergner had been ejected from the truck, he would have had about the same velocity as the truck and would have probably landed the same place the truck landed. Right.
He would have went with it because you're both you're in the car you're

now a person that's can travel 50 miles an hour because you're in a fuck that's it you're all you're traveling that fast you feel still truck or not right exactly yeah the truck disappeared if it just fucking dematerialized you'd be going you're doing how the truck was going yeah that's it. So now they do all this investigation.

This takes months.

Yeah.

And then it takes two years.

Oh, boy.

And in the meantime, he got a $450,000 life insurance payout from his wife's insurance and started traveling the world.

He also received $275,000 for her share in the family ranch where she grew up as well. He sold it to her brothers, her share.
So this was outside Manteca, California, which her parents owned and now the kids all own it. So he made business trips or just hanging out.
He went to London, Hawaii, Mexico, Canada, all over the place here. So then here they start trying to put something together, the prosecutors here.
They drove down the hill at 30 miles an hour, sharply turned into the guardrail, and they were trying to figure out maybe if that was what he did. So they said there was a mark on the top of his head.
As he jumped out, he hit the button of his cap on the door jam. If you've ever hit that little button on top of your hat, God damn it, does that hurt? Crush your goddamn skull.
And that's how the hat came off. That's how the hat came off.
They said there was asphalt on his shoe where he twisted his ankle. That meant he was out on the roadway.
His cap was found on the edge of the road. It didn't blow off his head and land 30 feet above him.
Yeah. How did that happen? So the prosecution here, the district attorney is trying to put this together.
They said after jumping to safety, they think he slid down the slope on his butt, found a branch to hang on to and started sobbing before making the 911 call. They said that her body suffered so much trauma, the coroner could not note a specific cause of death.
And they said it was impossible to determine if she was dead before the car crashed through the guardrail or not. They don't know.
She was so fucked up. They said dead or unconscious, we couldn't prove anything.
She was so messed up from the tumbling. She's flown from Italy to New York to Salt Lake City to Reno, and you're going to pull over on the side of the road to talk about your marriage? She was tired and could have felt comfortable falling asleep.
He just pulls up there and does his deed. They think she might have been asleep in the passenger seat.
Oh, my God. Which would that day of travel right yeah i'd pass out too yeah a lot of times you get somewhere and you're you know you feel like you want to sleep on the way home i do it after the road all the time i've flown home from columbus and driving home from the airport i'm like i should have just got an uber i am gonna fall asleep on this freeway i always get like an hour nap in on my ride home from the airport.
Always. I don't know at all.
So they said, we don't have any statements from the victim. We don't have any eyewitnesses.
We don't have anything. They decide, though, through all of this science that they're going to arrest Peter.
Okay. They said that, yeah, they think he steered the truck through the guardrail, jumped out, hit his head on the driver's side doorway, knocked his baseball cap over, dragged his right foot and shoe on the pavement as he steered the truck toward disaster.
They think he had his foot out the door and jumped out that way. So they said that, yeah, each time we got a report, it indicated a couple more tests to do is what they said.
They said there were more interviews and more interviews and not being in a rush to judgment. It's a serious matter.
So they said they took their time. They said his motive is he wants a wife to stay home with and he wants a wife will have children with him.
He takes her up on a cliff to argue with her about the marriage and he elects to kill her. So they do.
At the same time, her brothers here, Richard, John, and James,

are suing Peter

in Washa County or Washa District Court, a wrongful death suit.

Yeah.

Claiming that he intentionally and deliberately caused the vehicle to leave the road and go off the mountainside for the purpose of causing injury and or death to his wife.

And so, yeah, they cast him as a capable person for the felonious and intentional death of their sister. Okay.
They want all the insurance money back. They want all that shit back.
So 2001, they take him to trial. All right.
Been three years almost here. So one witness here who's known Peter about 10 years, her name is Joan Dunkley, told the court here that she was a volunteer bartender at the function and that he started talking a lot about personal things that he'd never talked about before that night.
She said he was saying his wife was not at the function because she was on a trip to Europe as a guide, but she'd be coming home in a few days. He was really anxious to have his wife come home.
All he really wanted was a wife and children. He wanted a wife who would stay home, be around, and he wanted to have kids.
He had a similar conversation with two other women at the party, just going around complaining that my wife doesn't want to have kids with me, and she just goes off gallivanting. Is he trying to cheat on her tonight? Because if so, this is the wrong conversation to have to entice someone to come home with you.
I really want to love my wife and sit next to her on the couch. You want to fuck me? It's weird.
It's very weird. So shortly before all this here, he also called a bank employee he'd met through a professional appraisal function and asked her out as well.
Oh. So he's been looking around.
This woman, Janet Mello is her name. She said, he asked me if I'd be interested in going to see a movie with him on Friday night.
I thought it was strange. I didn't understand it.
I didn't like it. I said no.
I knew he was married. Okay.
Yeah. So I don't really, I don't blame her for saying that.

That seems crazy.

She said that another woman who worked at the bank, the trust officer for Seattle Bank,

said that she met him at a social function.

This woman he ends up being engaged to after his wife dies.

Oh.

Robin Russell.

And they were scheduled to wed, and now he's having a murder trial instead. She said that she didn't think it was unusual for people associated with bank trust departments to be invited out by people in Peter Bergner's line of work.
She said that was normal. The girl took it all wrong, is what she said.
She said that, you know, I met him at a social function. She said it's not unusual for people working in those areas to be invited to concerts, movies, the theater, lunches, dinners, whether they're married or not.
That sounds like a fucking horny, nice industry they got going on there. She said this is co-owner of the Christmas tree restaurant on Mount Rose highway said Peter and Renette were getting a divorce.

She was through with him.

This is a friend of Renette's.

So on her side,

she said she knew Renette through the American association of university

women.

And she said that they talked on the phone all the time and all that kind

of thing.

So there you go.

She said she was buying things and talking about her trip. She was very excited about her trip.
She's delightful. She was charming.
She seemed like a very bright lady. So they bring in that.
They bring in all the physical evidence we talked about, and the jury comes back, the hung jury, mistrial. Three jurors chose nine to three in favor of conviction three jurors held out one did not like policemen at all this is a quote from the prosecutor one did not like policemen at all one didn't like the evidence and one said it should be in god's hands oh for fuck's sake that's you're missing the whole point of everything, sir.
You don't get to do that. So now they're going to try him again, but he gets bail.
He gets released from custody on bail in between the two murder trials. Yeah, they talk them into that.
So, I don't know. Friends of his, he's trying to get all the people on his side.
Friends of his said he had a great one of his friends gary espinoza said it was just a beautiful marriage this is just ridiculous so june 2002 trial number two fuck here we go now the first time they mainly said his main motivation was financial so he had financial gain but they kind of had that shot down a little bit because not only is he financially secure he's also in line to inherit because his dad died during the first trial he's in in line his mother says to inherit his her six million dollar estate as well and his house is paid off and he's very old and he lives in a pay she's very old and he lives in a paid off house. So money isn't really a big motivator here.

It's a tough, tough sell to people on a, on a jury.

Monetarily, this isn't changing his lifestyle basically.

Right.

So this trial now, now it's a little bit different here.

They bring in a neighbor of theirs who testifies to seeing Peter aim a snowblower with full force at Renette a few months before she left for Italy. She said that one day she watched Renette bringing baggage to her car and that Peter Bergna tracked her down with the snowblower and aimed it at her and shot it at her at close range and followed her, blowing snow on her as she walked from the front of the house to the car and aimed it onto the into the car.
She opened the door. That is the funniest domestic abuse I've ever heard in my life.
Domestic violence. Never funny.
That one's kind of funny. If it was a joke, it'd be hilarious.
Yeah. Even if it's aggressive, it's never funny that one's kind of funny if it was a joke it'd be hilarious yeah but even if it's even if it's aggressive it's pretty funny it's just weird it's snow it's a strange fucking thing but that snow comes out fast out of those snowblowers that shit could hurt oh god it could knock you over that's what i mean it's a little much but yeah they said that renette looked extremely upset and fearful yeah she's trying to get in the car covered in snow he's drowning her with the salt.
So the neighbor said that Renette looked extremely upset and fearful. Yeah, she's trying to get in the car covered in snow.
He's drowning her with a salt. Wow.
So the neighbor said that she continued watching because she wondered if the situation would escalate and she might have to call 911 to help. Yeah.
They heard from multiple women, the jury does, who testified that Bergner was hitting on them in the weeks leading up to his wife's death, including the night before she flew back from Europe.

Wow.

Six weeks after the tragedy, Bergna invited a woman to his hot tub.

She said that he showed no sadness about his wife's death and that he snapped after she rejected him and he grabbed her breast.

And grabbed a titty.

Want to come to my hot tub? No, I don't. Fuck you tit what a weird this guy's weird yeah between this and the snowblower he just has real weird reactions to shit they heard from his first wife he's been married before who said she feared for her life while married to him she described that he went absolutely berserk and screamed at her after she made hash browns incorrectly.
Oh, he's a real petty fucker. Wow.
Just burn them and they're correct. They're hard to fuck up.
It's a hash brown. This guy's a little crazy, I think.
I mean, if you burn them, they're better. That's what I mean.
Just burn them and they're good. That's all you have to do to him.
This guy's a picky asshole. This is Rebecca Tillery, his first wife.
She said that he portrayed himself to friends and family as outgoing, gregarious and a really nice guy. And that privately he was extremely volatile and angry toward her.
she said that she constantly walked on eggshells around her husband and lived in fear she said that money was pretty much everything to him and that she felt he gained his self-worth

through money. Well, I mean, yeah, that's not hard to do there.
That's most people, too. Yeah.
Then they get a cellmate in here, Daryl Corsi. He testified that he and Peter had been housed at the Washoe County Jail and were in a Bible study group together.
He testifies that Peter told him he had killed his wife because of financial issues and because she did not want to have children. There's alternating things, whether she didn't want to have kids or couldn't have kids.
So we're not sure which. Well, if you can't have kids, you can still have kids.
And he knows that she didn't't want kids. Maybe she just didn't want it.
Yeah. So he testifies also that Peter told him that Renette was unconscious when he drove the truck off the road and that he had jumped out the window.
He said that Peter told him that he did not think he would be convicted because he had a really good attorney. Next up, they bring in an expert, Dewey Willie, who does not sound like an expert in anything except maybe had a tap a keg.
Possibly. Yeah.
That's it. I already chose that thing a lot.
One of the two. So he's the equipment mechanic fleet supervisor for the Nevada Highway Patrol.
He said part of his job is to inspect fatal vehicular crashes, and that he inspected about 230 fatal vehicular crashes in six years. He inspected the truck, including brakes, tires, suspension, and steering, and stated he found no unusual mechanical failure whatsoever.
The seatbelt on the passenger side had been cut to get Renette out of the car. The passenger side airbag was turned off, and the driver's side seatbelt was intact and fully retracted.
It was not in use at the time of the incident, which he said he didn't have a seat belt on. The windows on both sides were broken.
The driver's side window regulator indicated the window was down and the passenger side window regulator indicated that that window was up. The emergency brake was not engaged.
They said no trail of brake fluid found on the roadway, no other evidence of an actual rupture of the complete brake hydraulic system was found. He testified that any tests conducted on the vehicle three or four years later, like now, would be problematic because any car sitting in storage for two years or more would suffer dry rot of the rubber components of the braking system.
So he testified also that he did not attempt to measure the amount of brake fluid that was in the brake system when he performed his inspection. He testified he was unable to ascertain whether the left rear drum brake worked because it was gone, but that the condition of the right rear drum brake shoes was good.
He also said he visually inspected the master cylinder and vacuum booster, but conducted no other testing on them. He said he did not conduct further tests because there was no recall notice from Ford Motor Company for the braking system.
And because this particular truck had not had brake problems prior to this crash. Ever.
Yeah. Ever.
The defense arguments include here detailing physics here.

They try to detail physics to show how Bergner could have been thrown clean through the driver's window as the truck tumbled. And they also introduced evidence that there were 1997 Ford F-150 trucks that had known brake issues.
That was a thing, a known thing. they also questioned

why would a 45 year old man

choose this method of murder

which would be so dangerous to him suppose he fucked it up at all he'd be dead they said betting the guardrail would break and that he could jump from the vehicle and do it all in pitch darkness they said apparently mr bergna has better vision than someone with 2010 wearing a night vision helmet, better reflexes than a cat, and is more psychic than John Edward or Sylvia Brown, which is possible because I think anyone listening right now, you're probably more psychic than those fucking hack charlatans, fucking full of shit assholes. So they also, the defense also questioned why their client being horny was relevant to his urge to kill.
So what if he's horny? Literally, they said that. So what if he's horny? Oh, that's so funny.
What's the difference? That doesn't mean he's a murderer. They bring in a friend here.
One of the guys here said that Peter took a long time to come out of this. They said it took a lot of spirit out of Pete.
And he also, this friend said he believed the hot tub incident never happened. Oh, it didn't happen at all.
Didn't happen. He said it was common for Bergman and other male appraisers to socialize with potential business contacts, including single women.
They said it's probably one of the most important things for any appraiser. These bank people, because then they can refer people to him that need this service, I guess, is what it is.
So he said that they did have some disagreements about travel schedule, but he said, by God, they were going to work that out. Wow.
Another witness testified that Peter was grief-stricken after his wife's death.

They said inside he was devastated.

His mother testifies here.

She said that her son was in shock, near shock at the funeral of his wife.

And she said that he's not angry with his wife all the time.

She never saw them fight during multiple vacations abroad and other outings. She said they always wanted to do everything and see everything.
And, yeah, she said that I was very close to Renette. She was a bundle of energy.
It was such a hard time for everyone after she died. And, by the way, he stands to inherit part of her $6 million estate.
So he shouldn't be real worried about money. Prosecution closing, they said that Bergner cared as much about the person he sent over the cliff as he did about his truck.
Both are replaceable. Wow.
So after this prosecutor, who's a female prosecutor, finishes her closing argument, he loudly calls her a bitch. bitch nice which is not great for your case at all and uh the detective watching it said you couldn't have stabbed yourself harder than doing that that it's a verdict uh the verdict comes in it's a jury of eight women and four men you really fucked this one up man and he is found guilty of first degree murder this time wow guilty absolutely mother held her hands there heading her hands all sad sentencing comes around you sir may fuck off 20 years to life okay no parole for 20 years that got him got him apparently so the prosecutor said that uh said that he's only out for himself prosecutor said pompous is a good word after deliberating how to describe him he was very smug throughout the whole thing i think he thought some expensive attorneys could get him off justice was a long time coming but we got there in the end they said he was just one of approximately 4 000 convicted felons will be sentenced in washaw county this year all the glamour is gone now bergner created the glamour to us he was always the same as every other defendant and the defense said this they he was turned into a celebrity target by the prosecutors and oh come on fuck off so i think that one that one of the things that engendered so much zealousness was the thought of who Peter Bergner was.
It was almost a joke with the defense. His first name was no longer Peter.
It was wealthy art appraiser. I've met dozens and dozens of professional prosecutors and talking about the one of the prosecutors.
He is probably the least professional I've ever met my sense of things is he had uh whipped up the public fervor over this case wow um peter said that the media portrayed him as being guilty guilty guilty and that the public quote hates people with money i mean that's why every famous person's super rich oh they do they hate people with money. That's true That's why every famous person's super rich.

Oh, they do.

They hate people with money.

That's true.

They want to see you fail, but they also defend you like crazy.

They hate people they don't particularly agree with about things that have money.

If they like the person, what they stand for, they love that they make money.

That's the thing.

It depends.

Can't suck their cock harder.

No, it's wild.

It could be.

It's how they say they're right about everything. Yeah.'s super rich how could he be dumb real easy with me so he's great yeah it's lots of people are rich and dumb it happens so they said that uh will there be appeals the prosecutor said right now the way this case stands there should be no issues but hey you never know basically um so

the appeals do come in and there's he appeals a bunch of times one says that he uh could have

that he would have to have been suicidal or schizophrenic to pull off such a stunt that he

was neither oh which i don't know how you'd get like legally prove that yeah here uh they said

the state's theory is that peter could or murder his wife by staging a vehicle accident which

Thank you. I don't know how you'd get, like, legally prove that here.
They said the state's theory is that Peter could or murder his wife by staging a vehicle accident, which by design placed him in mortal danger, is weird. So they said the prosecution's theory was, quote, weird.
That's how they dealt with it. It's happened a million times.
Right. They also said that he was wearing sneakers, blue jeans, and a windbreaker, not an astronaut jumpsuit worn by stunt car drivers.

Just because he wasn't dressed like Evel Knievel doesn't mean that he didn't do it. Yeah, he left his stunt leathers at home.
Couldn't have done it. Couldn't have done it.
The theory that this design stage accident featured him driving his truck straight into a guardrail in pitch darkness on a steep pitched mountain road is even weirder. A person who would do that would have to either be suicidally depressed or schizophrenic.
They also claim that the guardrail was missing eight or nine bolts, and that's why it failed, too. They said, get the fuck back to prison, stupid.
Go praise the fine art that people do in poop on the walls. It's going to be excellent.
Tell those are worth go go praise gacy's work there you go uh he is next up for parole in 2025 this year oh he is up for parole oh yeah he's had he's had one or two already and now he's got another one coming up in 2025 and he thinks he might get out this time so it's possible yeah keep an eye out everybody so there you go peter bergner renette bergner crazy ass fucking story someone tell me where that came from on tv by the way please someone tell me what show that was on because it's driving me fucking bananas number one and i got i got i got no i got no remorse for him being it for sure did it right yeah he didn't fall that's crazy yeah he didn't fall out especially the episode of whatever i saw it on he seemed really guilty in that one so i'm gonna go with yes i don't know head over to shut up and give me murder.com february 7th in pittsburgh february 8th in columbus get your tickets right now for the whole rest of the year those ones at the end of the year selling fast seattle portland dc philly get those right fucking now because you're gonna do it yeah you're gonna miss them if you don't so get those we thank you for doing that shut up and give me Murder.com, Patreon.C., Philly. Get those right fucking now because you're going to miss them if you don't.
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