Speaker 1: Welcome back to the path went Chili.
Speaker 2: I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I want to welcome back Ashley.
Speaker 2: How is Teddy's first Christmas?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: My goodness, it was amazing. And what's funny is you know,
Speaker 3: Teddy's three months old and so he knows nothing of
Speaker 3: what's going on. It was another day for him. But
Speaker 3: to watch my two little girls who are helping him
Speaker 3: open gifts and playing with his toys, and just the
Speaker 3: joy of having just the greatest Christmas gift ever, which
Speaker 3: is a baby brother. And our new son has been
Speaker 3: such a blessing. So could not be more excited. This
Speaker 3: little man's starting to get his personality and enjoying playing
Speaker 3: with the different things that he's getting. So just getting
Speaker 3: to actually see a little human being come to form,
Speaker 3: you know, and have his own little attitude and joy.
Speaker 1: But the girls.
Speaker 3: Watching them with him was the highlight of my Christmas break.
Speaker 1: I love the photos you send us up them because
Speaker 1: his eyes are kind of bulging out like in chock,
Speaker 1: Like what's going on here? This overwhelming celebration going on.
Speaker 1: But it's good to hear that he had fun.
Speaker 3: Oh he is so full of joy. Well, I'm glad
Speaker 3: to be back, and I'm ready to dive right into
Speaker 3: this week's case.
Speaker 2: June twelfth, nineteen ninety three, Santa Clara, California, Twenty one
Speaker 2: year old US Army Private Justin Bergwinkle leaves his girlfriend's
Speaker 2: apartment and never returns. One week earlier, Justin had gone
Speaker 2: a wall from Fort Lewis, the post where he was
Speaker 2: stationed in Washington, and kept hinting to his friend that
Speaker 2: he was working on some sort of secret mission. Three
Speaker 2: months later, Justin's abandoned car is found at a motel
Speaker 2: in Monterey with his military dog tags and most of
Speaker 2: his personal items inside. And while the Army denies that
Speaker 2: Justin was ever involved in any secret operation, no trace
Speaker 2: of him is ever found.
Speaker 1: After that The path went Chile. So this week we're
Speaker 1: going to be exploring a bizarre mystery involving a missing
Speaker 1: soldier from the United States Army, the nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: disappearance of Justin Bergwinkle. You might recall that several weeks
Speaker 1: ago we released a series of episodes about the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight disappearance of Paul Whipkey, a first lieutenant in
Speaker 1: the United States Army who disappeared while stationed at Ford
Speaker 1: Ord in California. That case had been featured on Unsolved Mysteries,
Speaker 1: and during our episodes we may mention of another case
Speaker 1: from the show involving a soldier named Justin Bergwinkle, who
Speaker 1: had also once been stationed at Fort Ord before he
Speaker 1: vanished without a trace. During the mid nineteen nineties, unsawd
Speaker 1: Mites went through a period where they produced a lot
Speaker 1: of segments involving potential conspiracies within the military. They would
Speaker 1: usually focus on American servicemen who were found dead under
Speaker 1: suspicious circumstances, but even though their deaths were officially ruled
Speaker 1: to be suicides, their loved ones were certain that they
Speaker 1: were murdered and the military was covering something up. However,
Speaker 1: the Justin Bergwinkle case stands out from the others because
Speaker 1: he went missing and was never confirmed to be dead.
Speaker 1: After serving at Fort Ord, Justin was transferred to Fort
Speaker 1: Lewis and Washington until he went absent without leave. Justin's
Speaker 1: girlfriend still lived in California, so he traveled there to
Speaker 1: visitor before he inexplicably vanished. Prior to his disappearance, Justin
Speaker 1: had been displaying paranoid and erratic behavior and implied that
Speaker 1: he was working on some sort of secret mission, though
Speaker 1: the military has always denied this. The two potential explanations
Speaker 1: seemed to be that Justin either got himself in way
Speaker 1: over his head with something and became the victim of
Speaker 1: foul play, or he suffered some sort of mental breakdown
Speaker 1: and the so called mission was nothing more than a
Speaker 1: fantasy he had concocted in his own mind. But if
Speaker 1: that's the case, then what actually happened to Justin? Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: this is not a story which has gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of coverage in the media, as the only sources you'll
Speaker 1: find online are the Unsolved Mystery segment and an article
Speaker 1: that was published in the Sacramento b newspaper in November
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety three. In fact, it's not even clear
Speaker 1: to me if there's still an active official investigation to
Speaker 1: find Justin. But since we recently covered the Paul Whipkey disappearance,
Speaker 1: I thought now it would be a good time to
Speaker 1: tackle this one, and we'll be making comparisons between the
Speaker 1: two cases on these episodes.
Speaker 3: My question for you is, does the military ever stop
Speaker 3: looking for someone if they're considered a wall. Wouldn't that
Speaker 3: be a mission to say, we're going to see why
Speaker 3: this person abandoned their post.
Speaker 1: Well, we talked about that in our Paul Whipkey episodes,
Speaker 1: how he was only missing for about a day before
Speaker 1: the army declared him a wall and started cleaning out
Speaker 1: his barracks, even though the standard proceed was that they
Speaker 1: would have to be missing for at least thirty days
Speaker 1: before you took that step. And here in Justin Bergwinkle's case,
Speaker 1: like they did declare him a wall, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like they have made any real effort to try
Speaker 1: to find him. They just kind of figured that he
Speaker 1: did his own thing and he's not really their responsibility.
Speaker 1: But of course his parents and his girlfriend were concerned
Speaker 1: because Justin kept talking about this secret mission he was
Speaker 1: involved in. But the Army has always denied this is
Speaker 1: the case, but they think that some sort of cover
Speaker 1: up has taken place.
Speaker 2: I guess that's also how many resources are they going
Speaker 2: to put into looking for somebody when they truly are
Speaker 2: a wall. Like in the Paul Wikey case, it seemed
Speaker 2: like they did very little. But I think we settled
Speaker 2: on the fact that there was some kind of conspiracy
Speaker 2: or cover up with the military so the fact that
Speaker 2: they were saying he was a wall and that they
Speaker 2: were looking for him seemed unlikely. But here, yeah, that
Speaker 2: is the question. How long are you going to look
Speaker 2: for somebody and what type of resources do you put
Speaker 2: towards it. I really don't know the answer.
Speaker 3: I think in the military, it's such a horrific offense
Speaker 3: to go a wall, to abandon your post, and I
Speaker 3: feel like there would be consequences that the military would
Speaker 3: want to invoke or at least sever their relationship officially
Speaker 3: by figuring out where you went and then you owe
Speaker 3: us back resources. But I don't know. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: how that works.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Our story begins in nineteen ninety three, and our central
Speaker 2: figure is twenty one year old Justin Bergwinkle. Justin was
Speaker 2: originally born in Clinton, Massachusetts, to parents Walter and Diane Bergwinkle,
Speaker 2: and has two brothers. After being an honor student throughout
Speaker 2: high school, Justin enlisted in the US Army following graduation
Speaker 2: and initially set his sights on becoming a paratrooper. Following
Speaker 2: his completion of boot camp during the summer of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety Justin, who had been an excellent foreign language student
Speaker 2: in high school, earned a spot at the Defense Language Institute,
Speaker 2: located at the Presidio of Monterey in California. While there,
Speaker 2: he specialized in Korean language training and reportedly told his
Speaker 2: family that he was eventually hoping to serve in the
Speaker 2: elite combat unit, the Army Rangers. However, Justin's military career
Speaker 2: hit a major snag in early nineteen ninety one after
Speaker 2: a shoplifting incident where he and some friends were caught
Speaker 2: stealing some tapes from a video store. As punishment, Justin
Speaker 2: was drummed out of the Defense Language Institute and sent
Speaker 2: to Cook's School in South Carolina. He was subsequently sent
Speaker 2: back to California and reassigned to Fort Ord, located just
Speaker 2: outside Monterey, where he became a culinary specialist who prepared
Speaker 2: meals for his fellow soldiers. Justin was left pretty discouraged
Speaker 2: by the situation and was unable to rise above the
Speaker 2: rank of private But things started to look up for
Speaker 2: him in August of nineteen ninety two when he became
Speaker 2: romantically involved with a woman named Yolanda Antunas. Yolanda was
Speaker 2: a computer science student at Santa Clairs University who lived
Speaker 2: in an apartment in the city and even though Santa
Speaker 2: Clara was located eighty five miles away from Fort Ord,
Speaker 2: Justin took frequent trips back and forth in order to
Speaker 2: visit Yolanda. Even though they had a strong relationship, Yolanda
Speaker 2: did notice some odd behavior from Justin, who would sometimes
Speaker 2: abruptly end their dates or cut off his visits by
Speaker 2: saying that he needed to go back to Monterey. During
Speaker 2: her Unsolved Mysteries interviews, Yolanda stated, quote, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: he would just stop what he was doing with me
Speaker 2: in the afternoon, and he would just say, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: but I have to go to Monterey and see some people,
Speaker 2: but I'll be right back. End quote. Justin would attempt
Speaker 2: to explain his behavior by telling Yolanda that he was
Speaker 2: involved in something secret and couldn't tell her about it.
Speaker 3: Okay, you have this dichotomy of who Justin really is.
Speaker 3: He's this man who's dedicated to his military service, with
Speaker 3: huge dreams of moving up in the service, but then
Speaker 3: you see behaviors that cost him that opportunity. He's stealing things, right,
Speaker 3: and petty theft and things like that. But he's also erratic,
Speaker 3: and his mental health and stability already seemed shaky from
Speaker 3: what his girlfriend's telling us. Is there a potential that
Speaker 3: he's involved in drug dealing or drug use and that's
Speaker 3: part of the problem here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be talking more about this later on in
Speaker 1: our episodes. But the alternate theory that has been pushed
Speaker 1: forward is that Justin was not actually involved in a
Speaker 1: secret mission for the military, but could have been involved
Speaker 1: in something illegal, such as drug dealing, and just used
Speaker 1: that as a cover story because it did look like
Speaker 1: his military career was really going anywhere, So he could
Speaker 1: have got himself involved in something else on the side
Speaker 1: and then just used that as an excuse if he
Speaker 1: needed to go somewhere like Monterey and just abruptly cut
Speaker 1: off dates with his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: I mean, it could be something as simple as infidelity.
Speaker 2: Maybe he met another woman and he was using this
Speaker 2: excuse of, oh, it's a secret mission or I have
Speaker 2: to go meet some people. It doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 2: be something nefarious. And I do find it interesting too
Speaker 2: that when we looked at the Paul Whipkey case, we
Speaker 2: saw somebody with an exemplary record. His mental health was
Speaker 2: declining due to the exposure that he had with that
Speaker 2: training But in this case, we see a situation where
Speaker 2: he had a lot of potential, but Justin doesn't have
Speaker 2: the exemplary record that we saw with Paul Whipkey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not exhibiting any kind of discipline here. He's
Speaker 3: got the big dreams and the potential because he's excelling
Speaker 3: in language, he's getting selected for some elite programs, but
Speaker 3: then it's as if he's not disciplined enough to stay
Speaker 3: on that track, which makes me wonder too, is there
Speaker 3: potential that there's already some mental health issues going on
Speaker 3: before any of this begins. But the quick cutting her
Speaker 3: off and saying I'll be back, I have to go
Speaker 3: see people, it just seems odd. Like you said, Jules,
Speaker 3: could actually be something like maybe there's somebody else he's
Speaker 3: going to see romantically. It could be that he's off
Speaker 3: to secure drugs or sell drugs. But like Robin alluded to,
Speaker 3: it makes sense that this quote secret mission could be
Speaker 3: something of another part of his character or another part
Speaker 3: of his pursuit of something that he just didn't want
Speaker 3: people to know about.
Speaker 1: And on the subject of infidelity, we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: this later, but I have seen some unconfirmed rumors online
Speaker 1: from people who claim to have known Justin personally that
Speaker 1: he may have had another girlfriend on the side besides Yolanda,
Speaker 1: and that could have been his excuse for like abruptly
Speaker 1: cutting off there get togethers. Things became more complicated in
Speaker 1: February of nineteen ninety three when Justin was transferred from
Speaker 1: Florida or to Fort Lewis, which was located in Washington State,
Speaker 1: over eight hundred miles north from Santa Clara. But in
Speaker 1: spite of this, Justin continued to maintain his relationship with
Speaker 1: Yolanda and would travel back to California to visitor whenever
Speaker 1: he could. In May of that year, Justin was granted
Speaker 1: a two week furlough from Fort Lewis and went to
Speaker 1: stay at his apartment, but she noticed that his behavior
Speaker 1: was becoming even stranger. Justin brought along a briefcase on
Speaker 1: the trip, which he was very secretive about and would
Speaker 1: never open in front of anyone. If he did open
Speaker 1: it inside Yolanda's apartment, Justin would ask her to turn
Speaker 1: her head and not look. But there was one moment
Speaker 1: when she managed to catch a glimpse of Justin over
Speaker 1: her shoulder, and she saw him pulling small pieces of
Speaker 1: paper out of the briefcase, which he tore apart with
Speaker 1: his hands. There was also another incident where Yolanda found
Speaker 1: Justin's sobbing alone inside her living room, but he refused
Speaker 1: to say what was bothering him and said there was
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. The strangest event which occurred during Justin's visit
Speaker 1: was when Yolanda received a phone call at her apartment
Speaker 1: from an unidentified man who asked for Justin. When Yolanda
Speaker 1: told the caller that Justin was out with friends, he
Speaker 1: asked her to let him know that quote unquote the
Speaker 1: missions off Even though Yolanda asked for clarification about what
Speaker 1: the caller meant, he simply responded to quote, just tell
Speaker 1: him the missions off end. Quote. When Justin returned to
Speaker 1: the apartment later that night, Yolanda believed that he looked
Speaker 1: very pale, and she told him what the caller said.
Speaker 1: This caused Justin to become enraged and start storming through
Speaker 1: the apartment, but when Yolanda asked what was going on,
Speaker 1: he replied, quote, you don't want to know. After Justin's
Speaker 1: furlough ended, he returned to Fort Lewis and phoned his
Speaker 1: parents in Clinton, and they said that they did not
Speaker 1: notice anything unusual about him. But around the same time period,
Speaker 1: credit card records would show that Justin purchased two handguns,
Speaker 1: a three fifty seven revolver and a ninety nine millimeter
Speaker 1: semi automatic, as well as over one hundred rounds of
Speaker 1: ammunition and some gun cleaning equipment. At four thirty am
Speaker 1: on Friday, June fourth, Justin was scheduled to report for
Speaker 1: kitchen duty at Fort Lewis, but he never showed up.
Speaker 1: Since he had a good record, the dining facility decided
Speaker 1: to hold back on reporting Justin's absence to the superiors
Speaker 1: as they hoped they could find him and deal with
Speaker 1: the situation internally. However, by Monday, June seventh, Justin had
Speaker 1: still not turned up, so he was officially reported as
Speaker 1: absent without leave aka awol okay.
Speaker 3: So he's officially been listed as a wall. But when
Speaker 3: you go back and you're looking at his behavior, he's
Speaker 3: visiting with his girlfriend and he has this briefcase that
Speaker 3: she cannot open.
Speaker 2: Could it be.
Speaker 3: Something created like this reminds me some of like Ray Rivera,
Speaker 3: where that briefcase could be something like the notes and
Speaker 3: things that Ray had around his house that made no
Speaker 3: sense right. They were to him clues to something, and
Speaker 3: yet they were likely created by him. Here is it
Speaker 3: possible that the briefcase contains some fictitious item or something
Speaker 3: that he's constructed in his mind as important, or could
Speaker 3: it include drugs or something like that and names of
Speaker 3: people who owe him money or he's supposed to deliver
Speaker 3: drugs to. It is odd when this phone call comes
Speaker 3: into play that it wouldn't be necessarily just quote made up,
Speaker 3: because when you have this man say the missions off
Speaker 3: and the girlfriend wants to know what's he talking about,
Speaker 3: and he becomes so defensive, justin so angry you don't
Speaker 3: want to know, and starts to buy guns and weapons
Speaker 3: and ammo and things, almost as if to protect himself
Speaker 3: from something. It really makes me feel like there's something
Speaker 3: either a drug deal or drug dealing or sex trade
Speaker 3: or something that's happening that he's gotten involved in, and he's,
Speaker 3: like you said, just in over his head.
Speaker 2: The little pieces of paper were interesting to me, So
Speaker 2: it could be somebody who's shredded documents that were important
Speaker 2: or they didn't want other people to see. But to
Speaker 2: harken back to what actually just said about the drug dealing.
Speaker 2: Some people will sell drugs packaged individually, like in folded
Speaker 2: up little pieces of paper, whether it be newspaper or
Speaker 2: other types of paper. Some people do it in plastic bags.
Speaker 2: So it could be something where he was portioning out
Speaker 2: paper in order to put drugs in to sell. I
Speaker 2: mean that's a possibility.
Speaker 1: I mean they have talked about the idea that he
Speaker 1: was doing this all for show that there was nothing
Speaker 1: important in the briefcase, but he wanted to make Yolanda
Speaker 1: believe he was a lot more important than he was
Speaker 1: and working on some secret mission, and that's why he
Speaker 1: did this whole facade with the briefcase. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about the phone call is that the whole thing
Speaker 1: about the mission's off. You could assume that perhaps Justin
Speaker 1: made the phone call himself just as part of this
Speaker 1: elaborate trade to make it look like make Yolanda think
Speaker 1: that he's working on something important. But I do think
Speaker 1: that she would have recognized his voice if that was
Speaker 1: him on the phone. So the fact that she talked
Speaker 1: to an outside party does suggest that that Justin was
Speaker 1: involved in something, though it may not have necessarily been
Speaker 1: connected to the military.
Speaker 2: Okay to play Devil's advocate, though you could very easily
Speaker 2: ask a random person just on the street be like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll give you, you know, five bucks or whatever, I
Speaker 2: need you to make this phone call and this is
Speaker 2: what I need you to say.
Speaker 1: Well, i'll talk about this more later. But it has
Speaker 1: been alleged that Justin would get other members of his
Speaker 1: army units to make phone calls on his behalf, So
Speaker 1: it does not sound like that kind of thing would
Speaker 1: have been out of character for Justin in this particular situation.
Speaker 2: Well, it turned out that Justin had made an unexpected
Speaker 2: trip from Fort Lewis to Santa Clara on June fourth,
Speaker 2: and surprised Yolanda by arriving at her apartment that night.
Speaker 2: He remained there for the next several days, and would
Speaker 2: frequently leave to take what he described as important trips
Speaker 2: to Monterey. Yolanda also noticed that Justin was carrying the
Speaker 2: two guns he'd recently purchased at all times. When Yolanda
Speaker 2: learned that Justin's absence from Fort Lewis was not authorized,
Speaker 2: she advised him to phone his parents. Justin agreed to
Speaker 2: call them and told his parents that he was not
Speaker 2: actually a wall but working. Though he refused to share
Speaker 2: any specific details about what he was doing, the Bergwinkles
Speaker 2: still advised Justin to contact fort Lewis, so later that night,
Speaker 2: he phoned his unit to let them know that he
Speaker 2: would report back as soon as possible after he took
Speaker 2: care of a few things. However, Justin continued to remain
Speaker 2: at Yolanda's apartment, so she made an attempt to follow
Speaker 2: him on one of these so called clandestine trips to Monterey,
Speaker 2: but before they even exited the building, Justin saw Yolanda
Speaker 2: and a confrontation ensued, which led to her demanding an
Speaker 2: explanation about what he was doing. Justin's only response for
Speaker 2: her was to watch the movie White Sands, a thriller
Speaker 2: which had been released the previous year and featured a
Speaker 2: story about a protagonist who becomes involved in the world
Speaker 2: of international arms smuggling. Justin had also mentioned White Sands
Speaker 2: during a previous conversation with his parents, and specifically told
Speaker 2: them to pay attention to the character played by Mickey Rourke,
Speaker 2: an arms dealer who turns out to be a CIA agent.
Speaker 2: Will be providing more details about White Sands in Part two,
Speaker 2: but at the time Justin's reference to the film really
Speaker 2: didn't shed much light on what he was actually doing.
Speaker 3: Okay, so not to knock any position in the military,
Speaker 3: because they're all important. In fact, my fantasy at one
Speaker 3: point I thought, wouldn't it be cool to be in
Speaker 3: the army band or choir, you know, jobs like that?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, are you saying, yeah, what cats you do?
Speaker 1: Absolutely right, he said.
Speaker 3: But here he's a cook, right, and when you have
Speaker 3: a idea that maybe he's been called up for some
Speaker 3: secret mission. In our other case, with our military man
Speaker 3: who goes missing, it makes sense because of his exemplary record. However,
Speaker 3: here you have somebody who's been demoted, who's been moved
Speaker 3: to a new unit because he was shoplifting, and is
Speaker 3: now in the kitchen crew. I don't see them necessarily
Speaker 3: going to that crew to say, we have this highly
Speaker 3: secret operative mission for everybody. We're gonna go pick one
Speaker 3: of the line cooks and get him up here to
Speaker 3: do this secret mission. It doesn't make sense, especially because
Speaker 3: Justin very recently has been in trouble in the military,
Speaker 3: so he's showing that he's not dependable, and to me,
Speaker 3: it almost seems like whatever quote mission this is is
Speaker 3: him taking that frustration out of I'm not moving up
Speaker 3: quick enough, I'm not getting where I want to be
Speaker 3: in the military. So I'm going to take life by
Speaker 3: the you know, by the horns, and make money and
Speaker 3: clout somewhere else, aka in drugs or trafficking or whatever
Speaker 3: else he might be getting involved in. And he's finding
Speaker 3: his worth there versus the military or the CIA or
Speaker 3: somebody actually calling up Justin. It just doesn't fit with
Speaker 3: his behavior and record in the military.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't the CIA tap somebody from an elite unit like
Speaker 2: Seal Team six to do a secret mission. If they
Speaker 2: were going to bring somebody into the CIA, they would
Speaker 2: bring They've got the pick of the litter. They can
Speaker 2: choose anyone they would like. They would want somebody with
Speaker 2: an exemplary record. They wouldn't take somebody who'd been kicked
Speaker 2: out of the Defense Foreign Language Academy and demoted to
Speaker 2: cook And he can't can't be he can't go above
Speaker 2: the rank of private. It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that is the big difference between this case
Speaker 1: and Paul Whipkey, because, like we just talked about, he
Speaker 1: had an exemplary record, and unlike Justin I don't believe
Speaker 1: Paul was ever in a relationship like he was devoted
Speaker 1: to the military. He had no wife, no children, And
Speaker 1: those are the type of people that you would want
Speaker 1: to choose for secret missions because they have no ties
Speaker 1: and are willing to throw themselves into it one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And here's a guy who's got kind of a mediocre
Speaker 1: record and was caught shopped lifting, and I hear in
Speaker 1: the military they treat that very seriously because they feel
Speaker 1: if you steal from us, you're someone that we can't
Speaker 1: trust with important secrets, So why we should we send
Speaker 1: you on some sort of top secret mission. And he's
Speaker 1: also like commuting back and forth to see his girlfriends,
Speaker 1: so he really does not seem like a likely candidate
Speaker 1: to be picked for something that could involve say arms
Speaker 1: dealing or the CIA. On the morning of June the twelfth,
Speaker 1: Justin left Yolanda's apartment at ten am and told her
Speaker 1: that he would be back at around four pm. But
Speaker 1: he never returned, and this would turn out to be
Speaker 1: the last confirmed sighting of him. Even though Justin had
Speaker 1: told his mother he would call her the following day
Speaker 1: in order to update her about the situation of Fort Lewis,
Speaker 1: he never did, according to his parents. When Justin failed
Speaker 1: to resurface, they tried contacting the police, the army, and
Speaker 1: even some US senators in order to get someone to
Speaker 1: launch an official investigation and a search effort for Justin,
Speaker 1: but nothing was done and no attempt was made to
Speaker 1: find him. Well three months after he originally went missing,
Speaker 1: the Bergerwinkles were informed that his abandoned Chevrolet Cavalier had
Speaker 1: been found in the parking lot of the Monterey Marina
Speaker 1: Bay Travelodge and Isolated Beachfront Motel, located in Monterey near
Speaker 1: Fort Ort. Walter and Diane took a trip to Monterey
Speaker 1: in order to search the vehicle and found a briefcase
Speaker 1: in the trunk. It contained Justin's wallet, car keys, credit cards,
Speaker 1: some blank checks, his US Armed Forces identification, and his
Speaker 1: military dog tags. The discovery of the dog tags was
Speaker 1: particularly concerning, as Justin once had a conversation with Yolanda
Speaker 1: in which he told her that if his dog tags
Speaker 1: were ever found somewhere, that meant he was dead. The
Speaker 1: only personal items of Justin's that couldnot be found inside
Speaker 1: his car were the two handguns and ammunition he recently purchased.
Speaker 1: A check of the motel registry showed no record of
Speaker 1: Justin ever having stayed there, but the manager confirmed that
Speaker 1: the cavalier had been parked in the lot for nearly
Speaker 1: three months, as he assumed that it belonged to a
Speaker 1: guest who had left on a business trip and would
Speaker 1: return to pick it up at a later time. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: no trace of Justin could be found in the area.
Speaker 1: Justin's loved one started to wonder if he really he
Speaker 1: had been working on some sort of secret, clandestine operation
Speaker 1: which put his life at risk, but the Army denied
Speaker 1: any knowledge or involvement in Justin's disappearance. The alternate explanation
Speaker 1: was that Justin had suffered some sort of mental breakdown
Speaker 1: and that he concocted an elaborate fantasy about a secret
Speaker 1: mission before he disappeared on his own accord. Justin's disappearance
Speaker 1: received very little media coverage at first, though it finally
Speaker 1: attained national exposure when it was featured on an episode
Speaker 1: of Unsolved Mysteries which aired in January nineteen ninety five. Sadly,
Speaker 1: the episode failed to bring about any solid leads, and
Speaker 1: in April of two thousand and six, Justin's mother, Diane Bergwinkle,
Speaker 1: unexpectedly passed away at the age of fifty three, and
Speaker 1: her obituary listed Justin as having predeceased her. There had
Speaker 1: been no further developments in this story, so after more
Speaker 1: than thirty years, Justin Bergwinkle continues to remain a missing person.
Speaker 1: So I guess you could say the path went Chiley.
Speaker 3: It's really sad when you think about the impact that
Speaker 3: this disappearance has on the community, the family, the military.
Speaker 3: But here you have a mom and dad and his
Speaker 3: girlfriend who were all very concerned about him, and the
Speaker 3: mom and dad seem to have stayed focused on helping
Speaker 3: to understand what happened, Where's our son? And then poor
Speaker 3: Diane dies just a few years later at fifty three.
Speaker 3: That's so young, and I can't help but think to
Speaker 3: what extent died The stress and the trauma of not
Speaker 3: knowing where her son is put her health at risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a recurring pattern, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these unsolved cold cases we cover where a victim's parents
Speaker 1: wind up dying unexpectedly at very young ages, which is
Speaker 1: probably brought about by the stress. And here it must
Speaker 1: be so concerning because you hear all these rumors that
Speaker 1: Justin is on some sort of secret mission, and even
Speaker 1: though the Army denies this, of course that's what they're
Speaker 1: going to do, even if this is even true. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's just so hard to get
Speaker 1: an investigations launch because he technically went a wall. He
Speaker 1: decided he's an adult, he decided to disappear on his
Speaker 1: own accord. So I don't even know, like if law
Speaker 1: enforcement has ever been actively working on this case for
Speaker 1: the past several years. And of course it's very concerning
Speaker 1: when you find his abandoned car and they have all
Speaker 1: of his personal items inside and the only items that
Speaker 1: coulnnot be accounted for are his guns and his ammunition.
Speaker 1: So it makes you wonder, did he decide to go
Speaker 1: into an isolated area somewhere and die by suicide and
Speaker 1: they've just never found his body. So, like I mentioned
Speaker 1: in the intro, there is very little information available about
Speaker 1: this case other than the Unsolved Mystery segment and one
Speaker 1: article which was published in the Sacramento Bee in the
Speaker 1: months following Justin Bergwinkle's disappearance. However, if you search online
Speaker 1: discussions about this case, you'll find a lot of comments
Speaker 1: from people who claim to have known Justin personally and
Speaker 1: offer some interesting insight into a story, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that momentarily. Over the years, unsaw Mysteries produced
Speaker 1: a lot of segments about suspicious suicides and military conspiracies,
Speaker 1: a many of which I covered on the Trail and Cold.
Speaker 1: But when I researched these cases, I'd often find that
Speaker 1: there was very little or no outside sources besides the show.
Speaker 1: And as much as I love Unsolved Mysteries, it's no
Speaker 1: big secret that they sometimes had a tendency to distort
Speaker 1: the facts in order to further their narrative and add
Speaker 1: more mystery and intrigue to their segments. So when I
Speaker 1: am not able to find many outside, independent sources about
Speaker 1: these stories, I have to wonder if we're getting the
Speaker 1: whole picture. We really don't know all that much about
Speaker 1: Justin Bergwinckle's service in the Army, as it is mostly
Speaker 1: based on secondhand information he supposedly shared with his parents
Speaker 1: and his girlfriend, Yolanda Antounis, who were interviewed during the
Speaker 1: UNSAWD Mystery segment. The only other interviewee was a retired
Speaker 1: Army first sergeant named James Tyler who served with Justin,
Speaker 1: though it was not clear what kind of relationship they
Speaker 1: had or if he was Justin superior. But the segment
Speaker 1: it does not feature official comments from anyone else affiliated
Speaker 1: with the military or law enforcement, which I find a
Speaker 1: bit unusual. I mean, it would be one thing if
Speaker 1: Justin had been killed and his death was ruled to
Speaker 1: be a suicide and the investigation was officially closed. But
Speaker 1: he was a missing person who went a wall and
Speaker 1: had still not been found. Was there anyone else besides
Speaker 1: his family who was actually looking for him. It's interesting
Speaker 1: how in many of the Unsaw Mystery segments about alleged
Speaker 1: military conspiracies, Robert Stack would often state that the military
Speaker 1: declined to participate in the broadcast, but he never actually
Speaker 1: said that during this segment. This has to make you
Speaker 1: wonder how much the show actually consulted with the army
Speaker 1: while putting together this segment, or if they were basing
Speaker 1: most of their information on second hand stories shared by
Speaker 1: Justin's friends and family.
Speaker 3: So to me, again, it's odd that we don't have
Speaker 3: more information about a search for Justin in a law
Speaker 3: enforcement and military effort looking for him. I was just
Speaker 3: looking up online what happens when a when a military
Speaker 3: member goes a wall, and it says that they do
Speaker 3: collaborate with military police and even local law enforcement to
Speaker 3: try to locate that individual, and that there's a deserter
Speaker 3: apprehension team that oftentimes will go look for the a
Speaker 3: wall soldier, but also utilizing local law enforcement. And so
Speaker 3: you would think that there was more attention on this
Speaker 3: case of saying, where is this kid? Right, it's a
Speaker 3: young guy in the military who just up and left,
Speaker 3: and like I said earlier, it's such a disgrace and
Speaker 3: an abandonment of your post in the military that you
Speaker 3: would think there was more attention here, that the parents
Speaker 3: would be part of an investigation with local law enforcement,
Speaker 3: with the military to say, we need to put hands
Speaker 3: on this young man and see is he sick, is
Speaker 3: he doing something criminal, is he in harm's way? Did
Speaker 3: he complete suicide or did he just run away? Those
Speaker 3: questions need to be answered, and there's nothing here, which
Speaker 3: to me is the most perplexing part.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you look that up, because I really
Speaker 1: was curious, like what was standard procedure for military and
Speaker 1: law enforcement in order to find a soldier who went
Speaker 1: a wall? And it sounds like they really should have
Speaker 1: done more for justin. I mean, it's not like he
Speaker 1: was like a top flight military person with a lot
Speaker 1: of like classified intelligence, because he was only a private
Speaker 1: who worked in the kitchen, so I doubt he was
Speaker 1: privy to a lot of confidential information. But it would
Speaker 1: be one thing if there was no trace of him.
Speaker 1: You could just assume that he disappeared and started a
Speaker 1: new life somewhere. But he would think that after they
Speaker 1: found his abandoned car and like a briefcase with all
Speaker 1: of his personal items, that there would be a lot
Speaker 1: more urgency to try to find them, because it really
Speaker 1: suggests that either he got himself involved in something he
Speaker 1: should have or he was suffering from some mental health
Speaker 1: issues and needed to be found.
Speaker 3: And think about the risk he could post to other people.
Speaker 3: Let's say he is the individual who parked the car
Speaker 3: and absconded with all only weapons. Think about the mental
Speaker 3: state he'd be in at that point. And he has
Speaker 3: two weapons, and we know at least one hundred rounds
Speaker 3: of ammunition that he had bought. So there's a fact
Speaker 3: that not only could he be a risk to himself,
Speaker 3: but he could be a risk to other.
Speaker 2: People as well, and it seems like his connection with
Speaker 2: reality is tenuous at best at this time, where it
Speaker 2: seems like these are really deep rooted fantasies where he's
Speaker 2: talking about working with the CIA and on these secret
Speaker 2: clandestine missions and then tells his girlfriend Yolanda, if you
Speaker 2: find my dog tags, then I'm dead. But it's very
Speaker 2: possible that that's what he's set up intentionally because he
Speaker 2: wanted her to believe that. And then if he doesn't
Speaker 2: end his own life, what is he going to do?
Speaker 2: And yeah, like you said, as she could be a
Speaker 2: danger to other people, because why did he procure these weapons?
Speaker 2: We don't believe that he was part of any secret
Speaker 2: mission or the CIA, so why did he need them?
Speaker 2: And all of these rounds, It really does beg that question.
Speaker 1: And even if he was suicidal, why would he need
Speaker 1: to get two guns?
Speaker 2: Exactly. So now's a good time to address some comments
Speaker 2: which have been made about this case online by people
Speaker 2: who say that they have a personal connection to Justin
Speaker 2: or his disappearance. One of the best resources is a
Speaker 2: lengthy thread about this case from the Unsolved Mysteries message
Speaker 2: board at the sitcoms online forum, which dates all the
Speaker 2: way back to two thousand and four. I'll have a
Speaker 2: disclaimer that we have no idea if any of these
Speaker 2: commenters are legitimate, but with so little hard information available,
Speaker 2: we thought they were worth mentioning. Most of these comments
Speaker 2: are from posters who claimed to have gone to high
Speaker 2: school with Justin or served with him in the army,
Speaker 2: and they describe him as a very likable, funny, and
Speaker 2: intelligent guy who did not give off any outward signs
Speaker 2: that he might have been suffering from some sort of
Speaker 2: mental illness that caused him to have delusional fantasies. However,
Speaker 2: one poster under the username neon Noodle, which let me
Speaker 2: just say that I lie, I figured you would. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that Justin would sometimes do daring things just to
Speaker 2: see if he could get away with it and avoid
Speaker 2: being caught. In fact, it's been theorized that this was
Speaker 2: the basis for the shoplifting incident, which got Justin drummed
Speaker 2: out of the Defense Language Institute, as he may have
Speaker 2: committed this completely senseless crime just to challenge himself, but
Speaker 2: it wound up backfiring on him in a huge way
Speaker 2: when he got caught. I get the impression that Justin's
Speaker 2: attempts to become an army ranger were greatly exaggerated by
Speaker 2: unsolved mysteries, as he might have told friends and family
Speaker 2: that this was his goal, but the shoplifting incident pretty
Speaker 2: much ensured that it was never going to happen. It
Speaker 2: sounds like Justin was reassigned to become a culinary specialist
Speaker 2: just so he could fulfill his remaining service obligations, but
Speaker 2: after three years of enlistment, he'd still not risen above
Speaker 2: the rank of private. So it's definitely not unbelievable that
Speaker 2: Justin could have been fabricating all of his stories about
Speaker 2: these secret missions to overcome compensate for the fact that
Speaker 2: his military career didn't seem to be going anywhere. And
Speaker 2: I get the impression that Justin's friends and family initially
Speaker 2: thought he was exaggerating these stories, but wound up taking
Speaker 2: them a lot more seriously when he turned up missing.
Speaker 1: If you look at.
Speaker 3: Someone like Justin, it's kind of easy to see how
Speaker 3: someone who had so much potential and likely a lot
Speaker 3: of pressure on their shoulders, like you're a smart kid,
Speaker 3: You're able to achieve a lot. You've been selected for
Speaker 3: this advanced language program and pursuing Korean language, and then
Speaker 3: he has these dreams, right, I'm going to be an
Speaker 3: army ranger. I'm going to do you know, these elite missions,
Speaker 3: and he goes off in shoplifts. It's almost as if
Speaker 3: he has tons of pressure on him, but not the
Speaker 3: kind of oomph to go and chase the dreams anymore.
Speaker 3: Like he's just not going to measure up to what
Speaker 3: he's already set himself up to be, and so he
Speaker 3: starts to lie to people and kind of build a
Speaker 3: person he thinks he's supposed to be for his parents
Speaker 3: and his friends. Right, he was a big achiever, and
Speaker 3: he was a big dream chaser. And then when he
Speaker 3: starts realizing that it takes a lot more effort and
Speaker 3: a lot more work to make those things come to fruition,
Speaker 3: and a lot more discipline and effort than he's willing
Speaker 3: to put in, he just starts making up these stories
Speaker 3: so that they think he's as grand as maybe they
Speaker 3: had held him to, right, and he can't live up
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: And the fact that he was just gonna fulfill his
Speaker 1: being service obligations, Like if he had stayed in the army,
Speaker 1: he probably would have remained a culinary specialist for a
Speaker 1: few more years and got an honorable discharge. But he's
Speaker 1: probably thinking to himself, what's next, because if I can't
Speaker 1: have a career in the military, what am I going
Speaker 1: to do with the rest of my life? And I
Speaker 1: think maybe he was just getting to that point where
Speaker 1: he was almost like having a midlife crisis even though
Speaker 1: he was still in his twenties, because he wasn't achieving
Speaker 1: his goals and didn't know what his future was going
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: And I think too, when he finishes military service, it's
Speaker 2: almost like he'd had these delusions of grandeur and everyone
Speaker 2: in his life would soon find out that he wasn't
Speaker 2: as successful as he claimed to be because his career
Speaker 2: trajectory would go where. I mean, he's not like he's
Speaker 2: going to get this exemplary record, so he's not going
Speaker 2: to continue on in the military, I wouldn't think. And
Speaker 2: what type of job prospects would he had? Like Ashley
Speaker 2: had mentioned, it seems like he wanted all of these things,
Speaker 2: but if he wasn't really going to put in the
Speaker 2: investment or the effort to attain them, and instead he
Speaker 2: lied about attaining them.
Speaker 1: I do wonder if he maybe had original plans that
Speaker 1: I'm going to disappear for a few years and then
Speaker 1: come back and resurface, and I'll just tell my family
Speaker 1: and friends that I was off on some sort of
Speaker 1: secret mission, and they'll say, well, if the Army denies this,
Speaker 1: that's what they're supposed to do. You can't prove that
Speaker 1: I'm not telling the truth. And he hopes that maybe
Speaker 1: he could just coast on this for a while, but
Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe he planned to disappear for a while,
Speaker 1: but then something else happen to him, and that's why
Speaker 1: he's never reserviced.
Speaker 2: Do you think that he thought that he could just
Speaker 2: work odd jobs, because I would think if your social
Speaker 2: insurance number is used that that would trigger something for
Speaker 2: authorities that they would then be able to track him down.
Speaker 1: Well, if it works odd jobs, like in construction or something,
Speaker 1: then he doesn't need a social insurance company. He can
Speaker 1: just get paid under the table in cash. Or alternatively,
Speaker 1: if he was involved in something illegal like drug dealing,
Speaker 1: he could have done that and then spent all those
Speaker 1: years supporting himself and then when he resurfaces, he can
Speaker 1: just tell his family, oh, I was on a secret
Speaker 1: mission with the Army and I can't tell anyone now this.
Speaker 1: Aforementioned thread from the Unsolved Mysteries message board also contains
Speaker 1: a post by someone claiming to be Justin's little sister Katie,
Speaker 1: who wrote, quote, Justin, it's a total shot in the dark.
Speaker 1: But if you are out there and by some twist
Speaker 1: of fate you find this, please know we love you
Speaker 1: and miss you very much. End quote. There are also
Speaker 1: a few comments from a post or claiming to be
Speaker 1: Justin's younger brother, Casey, who maintains that his family never
Speaker 1: saw any signs of mental instability in Justin as he
Speaker 1: was growing up. He also claims that when Justin went missing,
Speaker 1: the police would touch the case, and the Army did
Speaker 1: not communicate with the family or officially declared Justin to
Speaker 1: be a deserter, which is standard practice after someone has
Speaker 1: been a wall for thirty days. However, I should mention
Speaker 1: that I've seen Diane Bergwinkle's obituary from two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and it says that the names of her surviving sons
Speaker 1: are Jeffrey and Jared, not Casey, and it does not
Speaker 1: list her as having a daughter named Katie. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's possible that Casey could have been a
Speaker 1: nickname for one of Justin's brothers, But since this is
Speaker 1: the Internet, I would take those comments which were made
Speaker 1: by Casey and Katy with a huge grain of salt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting because the one that Katie post is
Speaker 3: actually really genuinely hurtfelt like, Hey, if you happen to
Speaker 3: be out there and you see this, I love you,
Speaker 3: I miss you, contact us, basically is what it's screaming.
Speaker 3: Why would someone make that up? Like it's just very
Speaker 3: bizarre to put yourself in that position. But we've seen
Speaker 3: that many times before. And if she had those two children,
Speaker 3: they'd be mentioned somewhere in her obituary. I would assume
Speaker 3: to go out and say hey, we're looking for you,
Speaker 3: we miss you. Means they were close enough to Justin,
Speaker 3: and so I doubt Mom would have had no relationship
Speaker 3: with those kids to a point where she wouldn't want
Speaker 3: them listened to her obituary.
Speaker 1: It's a strange situation. I had no idea why someone
Speaker 1: would attempt to impersonate the sibling of a missing person
Speaker 1: who disappeared decades ago. But people just do weird things
Speaker 1: in cold cases to insert themselves.
Speaker 2: We also wanted to make mention of a few more
Speaker 2: comments in that thread, which were made by a poster
Speaker 2: under the username NPI Guy, who said he was the
Speaker 2: lead investigator when Justin first went a wall and was
Speaker 2: unhappy that unsolved mysteries never bothered to seek any input
Speaker 2: or information from him. He believes that Justin was planning
Speaker 2: to rescue his girlfriend from a bad situation and bring
Speaker 2: her back to Fort Lewis with him. This was why
Speaker 2: he purchased the two handguns prior to his trip to California,
Speaker 2: but Justin wound up getting himself in too deep. However,
Speaker 2: MPI Guy acknowledges that the girlfriend in question might not
Speaker 2: have been Yolanda and Tunez, but another secret girlfriend that
Speaker 2: Justin had who lived in Seaside, California. Yolanda lived in
Speaker 2: Santa Clara, but Seaside is located seventy five miles away
Speaker 2: in very close proximity to Monterey. So when Justin kept
Speaker 2: leaving her apartment on these so called secret trips to Monterey,
Speaker 2: could it have been related to a situation involving another
Speaker 2: woman like we referenced earlier. After all, Justin would have
Speaker 2: had an ample opportunity to meet someone else while he
Speaker 2: was stationed at Fort Ord other than MPI Guy's message
Speaker 2: board comments. We've never seen any information to corroborate this,
Speaker 2: but it's an intriguing theory. Well, it seems very unlikely
Speaker 2: that Justin was actually working on some sort of secret
Speaker 2: mission for the military or the government. Perhaps he got
Speaker 2: himself mixed up in something involving a legal activity which
Speaker 2: put his life at risk. However, the most prominent theory
Speaker 2: is that Justin suffered some sort of mental breakdown and
Speaker 2: they have killed himself shortly after abandoning his car, and
Speaker 2: his body has just never been found.
Speaker 3: It intrigues me to think about the idea that someone
Speaker 3: could complete suicide and their body wouldn't be found. I
Speaker 3: mean unless you went to some just bizarre remote place
Speaker 3: and like by a cavern or something like that, how
Speaker 3: would his body never be found?
Speaker 1: What is possible? We've seen documented cases of this where
Speaker 1: people just go out into remote areas to end their
Speaker 1: own life and their bodies can be missed for like
Speaker 1: years or decades. And it even happens for when they
Speaker 1: perform searches of these areas for the missing person and
Speaker 1: then not find them. But then someone stumbles upon the
Speaker 1: remains years after the fact because they were missed the
Speaker 1: first time around, and he was also near this Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 1: so he could have potentially drowned himself or something like that.
Speaker 1: The possibilities are endless, but until they find his body,
Speaker 1: there's just no way of knowing for certain. This would
Speaker 1: be a good time to bring an end to Part one.
Speaker 1: Join us next week as we present part two of
Speaker 1: our series about the disappearance of Justin Bergwinkle.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon.
Speaker 1: And if you join our highest tier tier three, the
Speaker 1: ten dollars tier, one of the features we offer is
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawd Mysteries
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 1: download a commentary track at which I make more smart
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Speaker 1: Tier three.
Speaker 4: So I want to let you know a little bit
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Speaker 4: they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
Speaker 4: turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those.
Speaker 4: So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
Speaker 4: them in the show notes.
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Speaker 4: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy