Disappearance Of Kath

2021-08-27 20:58:16 Written by Katherine

On the 18th of August 2002, 37-year-old Kath Bergamin sat down in her living room to watch the 2000 film Coyote Ugly. Her home, a rental in the heart of Wangaratta, Australia, was empty that night as her friend and roommate Sandie Riley was working until 11 pm. At 7:16 pm, Mandy Duke picked up the phone to call Kath. They were close friends — had been for years — and they spoke about catching up soon. Kath put down the phone, ending the call. That was the last time anyone saw or heard from her.

Kath Bergamin at a formal event Image source

Kath was reported missing by Sandie Riley on the 19th of August and police quickly jumped on the case. From the very beginning, they knew something just didn’t add up. Kath wasn’t the type to up-and-leave, let alone leave her phone, purse, and all her belongings behind. She’d left her electric blanket on — which she generally did right before hopping into bed — and her toothbrush and towel were all set down in the bathroom as if she were about to get in the shower. Her handbag was hidden beneath Sandie’s doona — a habit Kath had to defend her youngest children from stealing from her — and one red Nike ankle sock was abandoned in the hallway — the same type of sock Kath was wearing the last time Sandie saw her.

On the 22nd of August, the Homicide Squad Missing Persons Unit was assigned to Kath’s case. They began by searching Kath and Sandie’s home, hoping to find clues as to where Kath might have gone. What they found left them terrified.

In the backyard near the home’s garage was a long piece of silver Nitto brand duct tape, woven into the shape of a figure-8; the perfect size for ankle cuffs. Inside the house, detectives recovered more duct tape, this time a single piece stuck to a cushion on the living-room sofa. Both pieces of tape were sent away for forensic testing and the make-shift cuffs were verified to have red fibers eerily close to the type on Kath’s Nike socks.

At first, Kath’s case might have appeared like a typical opportunistic kidnapping, but this was quickly ineffective when police found there was no sign of a break-in. Either this kidnapper was an expert with a knack for flawless break-ins, or Kath had let her kidnapper into the house.

At that very moment, all heads turned to four people: Kath’s husband, John Bergamin, and her three children, Steven, Renee, and Dylan.

Kath had been undergoing a divorce at the time of her disappearance, and it wasn’t pretty. Her husband John was known to be abusive, terrifying both her and those around her, and this dangerous behavior rapidly worsened when Kath made the bold decision to escape her family home and move to Wangaratta. He started following her, hiding outside her new house and watching her, calling her incessantly, and telling friends that he was planning on hiring a hitman to provide her a ‘fatal overdose’.

 

Kath and her husband John Bergamin

The day after Kath vanished, John Bergamin reported a fire at his farm. He told it’d been lit by a wild spark from a welding tool he’d been using that morning, but Insurance Auditors started to have their skepticisms. John had only seen the fire about 45 minutes after he’d completed using the welding tool, the smoke was dark in color — a formal sign that an accelerant such as gasoline was used — and the fire itself appeared to have started in the back passenger seat of a Toyota Camry — a car which was registered to none other than Kath Bergamin.

When police questioned John Bergamin, they soon noted some odd behavior. He seemed nonchalant about Kath’s disappearance, even though he’d previously been very opinionated when it came to his wife. His and Kath’s eldest son Steven was noted by Senior Constable Mick Harvey as acting ‘extremely agitated like a cat on a hot tin roof’ when he even brought up the subject of his missing mum, giving increasingly contradictory tales about what occurred on a fateful night Kath disappeared. Both Renee and Dylan, the Bergamin youngest, similarly gave confusing stories to the police.

 

However, with all this seemingly damning proof, years began to pass by without any solid answers. In 2006, Steven Bergamin was imprisoned and charged over an unusual plot to bomb a local winery due to the belief they were undercutting grape prices (a charge he narrowly avoided prison for) and although he was heckled by the press, he continued to keep his mouth shut. It was starting to look very bleak for Kath’s case.

That all changed, however, in 2017, when police were sent a mysterious letter containing a plea for protection and a strew of data that only the abductors and likely killers could know. There was hope again. Police began searching for their writer, running forensic tests, making public speeches convincing their writer to come forward, and releasing the first two letters of the writer’s suburb, ‘BE’.

 

In September of 2020, five people — four from Victoria and one from New South Wales — were taken in for questioning. They were all released, but police reaffirmed their determination to find Kath’s murderer, stating they were re-testing evidence found at Kath and Sandie’s apartment with hopes of making a DNA match.

 

To this day, the case of Kath’s kidnapping and murder remains unsolved, but Kath’s loved ones aren’t giving up hope. Kath’s brother, Roger Russel, told ABC News:

‘These cases, you often see them pop up again after ten years or so, so we understand people know what’s occurred, and consciousness will finally come to the forefront, and we believe the case will be solved’