← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Uncle Peter | Episode 2: Behind the Mind of a Master Sex Criminal
00:47:49
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- [00:00]
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- [01:11]
Host
This episode may contain material which may be unsuitable for some listeners. He's been called the Jeffrey Epstein of Canada, but Peter Nygaard by all accounts, is so much worse. His sex assault victims allegedly number into the thousands. The stories you've heard about Epstein and Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. They are dwarfed by Peter Nygaard, a clothing tycoon now sitting in jail. Nygaard modeled himself after Hugh Hefner, but he looked more like Fabio. He was rarely seen without multiple women on his arm. Little did people know he'd been a sexual predator since likely back in the 50s. I've known Peter Nygaard since the 80s. He was called Uncle Peter. My best friends Uncle Peter.
- [02:20]
Peter Nygaard
Peter.
- [02:24]
Greg Gutzler
We do the real people. That's our marketplace. You will not find another product as competitively priced as ours.
- [02:37]
Host
Welcome back to Uncle Peter, a drop dead serious podcast. I'm about to share some very disturbing details about Peter Nygaard's sex crimes and his erotic kinks. Things he did day in, day out, often many times per day, and much of it is upsetting to say the least.
- [02:59]
Peter Nygaard
His son Kai was on the property that summer. He was knocking on the door one night when I was being sodomized and he was looking for his dad and he was just this 14 year old kid looking for his dad and I didn't scream or anything because at that point I felt worse for him than I did for myself and I didn't want his son to know what a monster his father was.
- [03:31]
Host
Greg Gutzler is the attorney representing 135 Nygard victims.
- [03:36]
Dr. Julian Goger
When he was younger, he was using.
- [03:39]
Host
More physical force and he was very violent. As he got older, he started to use different type of mechanics where he.
- [03:48]
Dr. Julian Goger
Would recruit young women and use them.
- [03:51]
Host
To lure people in later. Yeah, Peter Nygaard's niece, Angela Dyborne.
- [03:57]
Angela Dyborne
The housekeepers, when they go sort of clear his area and tidy up, there'd be bottles and bottles of pee because he would just wind up peeing in a bottle.
- [04:07]
Host
Did he also have, like, phone calls when he would be in the bathroom and not even try to mask that he was going to the bathroom on the. On the conference call?
- [04:17]
Angela Dyborne
Absolutely not. Yeah. He'd take the cell phone in and he'd pee, and he'd kind of laugh about it being in the waterfall in the background. I mean, he would.
- [04:23]
Host
He would tell the people on the.
- [04:24]
Angela Dyborne
Call, oh, yeah, there's the waterfall, or, oh, I'm next to a waterfall. And that's when he was peeing. He could answer the door in nude. People have complained that he'd answered two employees. Two employees. He could answer nude. He could answer, yeah, between. No bathroom.
- [04:42]
Host
Unbelievable humidity.
- [04:44]
Angela Dyborne
You bring stuff up and down all day for him. You know, if a FedEx came in, you'd run up the FedEx and he could open the door, jump up, and unlock it naked.
- [04:54]
Host
But to understand Nygaard's criminal behavior and how he became the monster that he is, I needed some guidance from Canadian forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julian Goger. Dr. Goger is quick to point out that he hasn't treated Peter Nygaard, so he can't formally diagnose him for us. But Nygaard's crimes, and the fact that he got away with them for so long, are so sick that it doesn't take a medical diagnosis to realize that something is very, very wrong with Peter Nygaard. And Dr. Goger's insight, much like the depravity of everything surrounding Peter Nygaard, is jaw dropping.
- [05:35]
Dr. Julian Goger
Evaluating people with sexual deviations requires an evaluation of their development also. So there may be traumatic events that might have laid the foundations for a person subsequently developing a problem.
- [05:49]
Host
Dr. Goger might be onto something here. What very few people know about Peter Nygaard is that he himself may have been a victim of sex assault as a child. His parents and his sister kept it close to the vest, but the whispers and the stories, those echoed throughout his family for decades. I'm not sure there's a person to be found who would sympathize with Peter Nygaard, but I wanted to pull on that thread about what might have happened to him at an early age. So I asked his niece to reveal the family secret. She's my high school best friend, Angela Dyborne.
- [06:30]
Angela Dyborne
My understanding was that he was actually a victim of sexual assault, that he was a really young. He was really young when he lost his virginity. He lost his virginity as a young, young guy to a much older woman.
- [06:43]
Host
That, like, what circumstance?
- [06:46]
Angela Dyborne
It was like a kind of a something people didn't talk about too much, but it came out, and I had conversations with my mom about it, about why she thought Peter was, like, the way he was. The family was horrified because Peter had to go under some woman's skirt. So that's something people don't know about him back in that day. He's confided in people that story. So when we cross connected and cross, like, referenced, you know, sort of stories that we'd heard, and as we've tried to sit there and struggle and figure out, like, what the heck is going on with him and what.
- [07:16]
Host
What made him this way. Was there anything, any more detail to who this woman was, how he ended up in the circumstance, who was around him?
- [07:25]
Angela Dyborne
I just know that he was young and he was going under some woman's skirt. But does that change somebody to make them into what they are now? Maybe as extreme, possibly a story that's.
- [07:36]
Host
Emerged about Peter Nygaard's background, that he was molested or potentially even sexually assaulted as a young boy. And the story that was told in the family was that he was forced to go under a woman's death skirt. And I know you can't diagnose Peter Nygaard, but generally speaking, if someone is molested as a boy, is that some kind of an explanation for having sexual deviance later in life?
- [08:00]
Dr. Julian Goger
From my own experience with individuals who I treat, who are sex offenders, young males, when they've been abused, develop a sense of loss of control of their sexuality at a young age. And in order to regain that control of their sexuality, then compulsive sexual behaviors becomes a way of trying to assuage the initial trauma of losing control. So it's almost an obsessive need to get control of one's sexuality. And that might explain why the person might have a compulsive desire to engage in sexual acts. It also depends on what the meaning is given to that act. And if the act is perceived as a humiliating act, but was also sexually arousing, then the person might seek out sexual acts later on in life that are degrading to the individual, but also finds them arousing so you can put two and two together and figure out if an individual had those experiences, what might be driving those behaviors.
- [09:03]
Host
I mean, it would make sense, right? Because as I have researched the story and the background and the number of victims and the incidents and the descriptions of the sexual assaults, I couldn't understand what would make someone into this kind of a monster. But does it make sense if there is a sexual assault at childhood?
- [09:25]
Dr. Julian Goger
It very much does. And we see them. I know a lot of dangerous offenders and dangerous sex offenders, and many of them have had traumatic sexual experiences in their childhood. I mean, I don't use the word monster. We still treat everyone as a human being and we approach it from a trauma informed perspective. But I use the same adage that I use always, that hurt people, hurt people. And that also occurs in the sexual sphere of being hurt sexually.
- [09:51]
Host
And yet it's so hard to have sympathy. I mean, when you describe it that way, you know, we should have sympathy for an early, you know, survivor of sexual abuse. But it's very hard to have sympathy for someone like Peter Nygaard because his victims number in the thousands. And the amount of psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse that he exacted on people, including family members, is just sort of unimaginable.
- [10:18]
Dr. Julian Goger
We can still have sympathy, but we can also have accountability and responsibility thrown into the equation. And then as much as we can feel sorry for what people have gone through, we've got to look at protection of the public. We've got to look at people taking responsibility for their actions and being held accountable. Then you can reconcile both concepts.
- [10:38]
Host
Is there anything more to it or was it really kept quiet?
- [10:42]
Angela Dyborne
It was really kept. It was really kept quiet at his.
- [10:45]
Host
Behest or just family embarrassment?
- [10:47]
Angela Dyborne
Family embarrassment. A few people knew about it, though.
- [10:53]
Host
Family embarrassment for a tight immigrant family of four with very little means. My mom, Susie Lount, knew Peter throughout the decades. So I asked her, along with Peter's niece Angela, for some context. After all, we all grew up in Winnipeg, smack dab in the middle of the frigid Canadian prairies where winter temperatures would regularly dip down to minus 40. They recall Peter's living conditions as a child. A one room coal shack in that unforgiving climate with no running water and only a wood stove for heat.
- [11:28]
Susie Lount
He came with nothing and his family came with nothing. An outhouse in the middle of winter back in the backwoods in Winnipeg, where Peter and his family had to live when they first arrived. So those things to me are sad that that's not the way he will be remembered.
- [11:54]
Host
Peter came from abject poverty, absolute poverty. Give me a description of Peter and your mom, Lisa, and their mom and dad arriving in Canada. What was their status, their circumstance?
- [12:09]
Angela Dyborne
So they left Finland after the war. They had a comfortable life in Helsinki. Helsinki, their life was not poor. My grandpa was a baker, grandma a shop girl. They had a great life. When they came to Canada, they came with a trunk, some fur coats on their bodies and nothing else. They thought they were coming moving close to their other relatives that were in Minnesota. Minnesota to Manitoba is quite far, especially back in that day. They wound up in the absolute stark prairies in living in, they called a coal shack and maybe a 10 foot by 10 foot addition to an old farmhouse that had been used to keep coal, two beds, pot stove, no running water. No running water and outhouse. So they could not communicate, they couldn't do anything. So they were isolated. So I think that really made the four of them bond. I think there was something that happened.
- [13:03]
Host
They were so poor, they were a team.
- [13:05]
Angela Dyborne
They were so poor, to survive they had to be together. So I think right there might have been some of the first times that this protect each other, loyalty to each other, family dynamics that are not traditional or not normal sort of happen.
- [13:24]
Host
Family loyalty instilled at a young age might be a positive attribute in most families, but for Nygaard, it was a weapon. And this may be the linchpin in revealing Nygaard's strategy of committing crimes under the radar. Because as this story continues to unravel, you'll see how he weaponized family loyalty and how Angela and others were victims of that. First, Angela takes us back to her days as a child and what life was like with Uncle Peter. Do you have any early, specific memories of Uncle Peter?
- [13:59]
Angela Dyborne
I remember being at the summertime at the cottage. There was somebody who was a Miss Manitoba or some beauty queen that came and I got to try on her crown. And it was just, you know, I felt so proud. I was maybe 5. Then the next day he brought somebody else to the cottage. And I said, the person left, the beauty queen left, Somebody new came. And I said, oh, the girl here like yesterday was prettier than you are. And I remember I was annihilated over that.
- [14:25]
Host
But you were little.
- [14:26]
Angela Dyborne
I was little, I was five. And it was a very honest opinion. Somebody came with a crown, I tried on a crown. The next person didn't come with a crown and she wasn't as beautiful. I just remember being though that was the worst thing I could have ever said. And that was probably one of my earliest memories. But I think it's one of my earliest memories because it's one of the first time I learned that you got in trouble. I got in trouble and you cannot. I learned that you can't. Peter has got a private life and we do not discuss Peter's private life with anyone else.
- [14:52]
Host
Who got mad at you, Peter or your mom or dad or anybody else.
- [14:56]
Angela Dyborne
I remember everybody. I remember Peter being very upset.
- [15:02]
Host
A five year old girl punished for accidentally revealing that Peter was two timing his girlfriends. It was an early warning sign that Peter would lash out at anyone but himself and take no accountability for his actions. And as Angela continues we get the real Jekyll and Hyde Persona exposed very early in life. He was a fun uncle.
- [15:27]
Angela Dyborne
He was. He was a sailor so he'd put us on the trapezes of his sailboat. It was adventurous things that most young children.
- [15:36]
Host
He was also super rich. And if you have a super rich uncle it just defies logic that you're not excited about him showing up with whatever toys he had a lot of.
- [15:46]
Angela Dyborne
Toys he did at the lake. Absolutely.
- [15:49]
Host
He didn't have his own nuclear family. He had girlfriends with whom he had children. But just going to the nuclear family of your family and uncle Peter being part of it. Do you remember family dinners where he'd show up?
- [16:02]
Angela Dyborne
There'd be times when we were all in town together and he would show up and we would normally at my grandparents house and we would be waiting for him and waiting. And we would sometimes have to wait till 11:12, one in the morning until he blasted in the door honking that horn. We'd sometimes fall asleep on the couch. But everybody had to wait on almost on call for him to arrive.
- [16:24]
Host
Wait on dinner. Like you got an entire family with.
- [16:26]
Angela Dyborne
Young children waiting at the grandparents house to sit with Peter till midnight easily. And then he'd waltz in and have 1, 2, 3 women on his arms. People we'd never met before.
- [16:36]
Host
But he'd bring women to family dinners.
- [16:39]
Angela Dyborne
Oh yeah.
- [16:39]
Host
Like women. You didn't know women.
- [16:41]
Angela Dyborne
We did not know women. New women, women all the time. Like there was and multiple. Multiple.
- [16:47]
Host
So you're like 2, 3, 4, 5 years old and this is becoming normal.
- [16:52]
Angela Dyborne
Absolutely. Christmas, same thing. Presents under the tree. Celebrated Christmas Eve. We had to wait for Peter to arrive before we could start opening those.
- [17:02]
Host
And women would show up Christmas Eve.
- [17:04]
Angela Dyborne
We always have different. Oh yeah, yeah.
- [17:06]
Host
Did he ever just come alone?
- [17:07]
Angela Dyborne
I absolutely cannot remember him ever coming alone.
- [17:10]
Host
He had to have this awful kind of entourage always on his arm.
- [17:15]
Dr. Julian Goger
Yeah.
- [17:15]
Angela Dyborne
And at the time it was a glamorous entourage. At the time it was. You just. It was sort of. I don't think I ever thought of it as awful at the time. But now looking at it. Absolutely.
- [17:25]
Host
We have a different lens now, but. Yeah, so. But what about your mom and your grandma? I'm not gonna ask about your grandpa. Cause he probably thought it was great. Men did. Men, look at you, you're scoring. But what did your mom and your grandma think about these random women always showing up at these private family events?
- [17:41]
Angela Dyborne
I think it was normal. They probably had to have been hurt. I mean, why would.
- [17:45]
Host
They didn't show it.
- [17:46]
Angela Dyborne
They didn't show it. But you really reflecting and have been spending a lot of time reflecting over this last few years. I now remember kind of feel there was a bit of tension. Yeah. Tension or sadness or just why aren't they good enough? Almost that. And so you're almost always striving to be good enough. For Peter, it almost felt like they weren't enough or weren't good enough.
- [18:06]
Host
Even just his sister and his mother.
- [18:08]
Angela Dyborne
I know, right? It wasn't about enjoying the time with the family. It was about this manufactured. Almost a manufactured. Yeah.
- [18:15]
Host
Manufactured joy.
- [18:16]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah.
- [18:17]
Host
Did you think of it that way back then or do you only look at it in retrospect and realize that like you just thought that was normal?
- [18:23]
Angela Dyborne
You know, I thought it was normal. I look at it in retrospect, you know, now looking at it in retrospect, we did. We thought it was normal.
- [18:32]
Host
It was an image that Peter Nygaard insisted was front facing. Ever since day one, he was obsessive about documenting through photographs and videos, his playboy lifestyle. Angela and I have pored over dozens and dozens of photos never before seen and many that should never be seen. We also talked about things we experienced together.
- [18:55]
Angela Dyborne
With Peter, there's always about this quality of time.
- [18:59]
Host
Not quantity time, but quality time is an interesting concept. When it came to Peter, like for you and me, quality time would be let's have a family dinner and we'll all be here and we'll play games and not watch television. It felt like when I was watching you and your family, quality time for him was as long as we can get cameras to capture the images and everyone has to be staged properly. Am I?
- [19:25]
Angela Dyborne
You're absolutely correct. Yeah. It was the pre Instagram Facebook days where now like we kind of see that, but more in like an organic way. But for Peter, it was a very orchestrated. We are having the family together on the sailboat today so we can take photos and show how wonderful I am with my family. And everybody in my family will be working on the shoot to make sure.
- [19:47]
Host
It looks so I was there for one of those. I came to visit you at Falcon Lake, which was about a 40 minute drive from where I spent my summers with my family. And Peter was there, his longtime girlfriend Pat was there, his three children, Bianca, Aaliyah, and at the time his name was Bader Kai. He shortened it to Kai. He might have been a toddler. And I remember you and I had to be in a chase boat taking pictures with a photographer of him with that little nuclear family, so to speak, unmarried family on the sailboat. He was barking orders at us non stop from start to finish. This was not a sailing day. This was a photo op day. It was weird.
- [20:35]
Angela Dyborne
Absolutely. It was never about the actual event. It was about getting the picture because it looked so great in that scenario.
- [20:44]
Host
Pat is Pat Bickle. She was Peter Nygaard's long term girlfriend in the 80s and I remember her being absolutely beautiful, like a 1970s cover girl. They had three children together, Bianca, Alia and Kai. But they never married, even though Pat desperately wanted to. Peter seemed closer to his parents than to Pat.
- [21:08]
Angela Dyborne
Hilka was like, which is. His mom was one of the main loves of his life and one of the kind of the female, the alpha female in his life.
- [21:18]
Host
But did he never feel like he was an embarrassment to her or that he was falling short of her expectations with this horrendous behavior?
- [21:27]
Angela Dyborne
I don't think anyone saw it as horrendous behavior. It was just nasty.
- [21:29]
Host
Did Hilka.
- [21:30]
Angela Dyborne
I don't think she saw it as horrendous. I mean, I can think of a few situations where she might have been a bit embarrassed or just a little bit uncomfortable, but that was just who he was. As Peter's own private business, it's also 50 years later. Peter was the hero. He was the success. He was.
- [21:44]
Host
Did Hilka not want him to settle down, maybe marry Pat or marry sul someone and stop this playboy lifestyle? Did she at some point articulate that or never?
- [21:54]
Angela Dyborne
It never came up. It just was not who he was.
- [21:57]
Host
You thought it was normal.
- [22:01]
Angela Dyborne
Exposure to sex. It's such a. Not necessarily people having intercourse, but the normalcy of sex and people having sex with multiple partners is one of them. The sexual standards. We were, when we were little, we would play Uncle Peter's girlfriend because we wanted to look like these women and these people that were, you know, that.
- [22:23]
Host
We glamorous girls that he had on either arm. So, wait, you played dress up as Uncle Peter's girlfriends?
- [22:32]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah, Most people played as Cinderella. We played Uncle Peter's girlfriends. We would take my mom's clothes and put on different dresses. I'd make all the kids from the neighborhood come over and play Uncle Peter's girlfriend. You know, the fact that we couldn't be on a certain part of the cottage in the morning because that was Peter's side. It wasn't to be quiet, but it's because, you know, it's thin walls, small, like a little cottage. People are having sex over her, you know?
- [22:55]
Host
You knew it.
- [22:56]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah. You knew it. Just the absolute normalizing of sex, of multiple children, multiple partners. Yeah, we were made to think, even, like, your bodies were very, you know, open with our bodies.
- [23:08]
Host
To be clear, Angela was inundated as a young girl with the sexualization of women. And that exposure was damaging. You told me a story about, like, breast size and how he would. What was that story?
- [23:25]
Angela Dyborne
When we were younger, at dinner one time, he started talking about the ideal female. One of the main physical features was that your breasts, the perfect breast size, would fit into a champagne glass, like one of those old champagne cups from the 50s. That was just the perfect hand for this.
- [23:42]
Host
How old were you when he's discussing the size of your perfect breasts?
- [23:46]
Angela Dyborne
Easily eight, because my grandparents would have been there, so eight.
- [23:49]
Host
Did you have any. Do you remember any reaction to it, or do you remember how you processed it?
- [23:53]
Angela Dyborne
I remember looking at cups thinking, wow, how can a breast fit into a cup? I sort of remember that in my head. He didn't like women at that time that were anything like larger than a size 8.
- [24:06]
Host
He had his standards. He had his standards, and he wasn't ashamed to tell you that these were standards you should ascribe to.
- [24:13]
Angela Dyborne
Oh, no, that was beauty. That was how you. That's what people are supposed to look like as a child, just looking almost, like, sexy. The beauty standard would start early. You start early, and the longer you're blonder your hair at the time, the better. And I never had long blonde hair, so I sort of almost had this complex.
- [24:31]
Host
Yeah.
- [24:31]
Angela Dyborne
That I was sort of ugly and, you know, I sort of had a different look. And I was never going to be that. So it really starts to mess with you a bit, too. You wind up having eating disorders. You wind up trying to fit that model.
- [24:43]
Host
Did you have an eating disorder?
- [24:45]
Angela Dyborne
I did when I was younger. I did.
- [24:46]
Host
Like, what age?
- [24:47]
Angela Dyborne
Probably, I think, like grade 10. Yeah. Everyone's not swinging. I think that cause of girls say, hey, I've got embolimic. But no, for a while there I was very bulimic. Like I was like, I didn't lose weight off it. I just sort of, you know, the binge and purge and that became more of, I think, a control thing than a weight loss.
- [25:08]
Host
All through her childhood, Angela witnessed hundreds of beautiful women parading in and out of her uncle Peter's life. Peter Nygaard presented himself as the perennial bachelor, the international playboy who would never settle down. But for a blink of time, he did settle down. Most people don't know it, but Nygaard was very briefly married in the 1960s. And looking at the pictures, the wedding was one part Lawrence Welk, one part Mad Men and one part chiffon cake topper. Short hair, cookie cutter, clean and crisp. My mom actually asked him why he ditched that life.
- [25:50]
Susie Lount
Unfortunately, Peter had a need for excessive naughty things.
- [25:58]
Host
Gratification, it seems.
- [26:00]
Susie Lount
Self gratification, perhaps. Yes.
- [26:02]
Host
Was there any question about his choice to be a perennial bachelor? Never to marry and to swear off the notion of ever marrying? Did anyone ever wonder about that or talk about that?
- [26:15]
Susie Lount
I think I remember saying to Peter, you know what, you know, gosh, you really should have a lovely wife. And Peter said, I had a wife and it was a very quick happening and I don't want another one. And I said, well, I don't blame you, you know, there was no room in Peter's life for a wife. That says it all.
- [26:38]
Host
Nor any desire to commit to a.
- [26:39]
Susie Lount
Woman and nor any desire to commit to one woman.
- [26:43]
Host
It seemed the only thing Peter Nygaard would commit to was getting anything he wanted and selling his image as a very rich Hugh Hefner. His ego grew as fast as his business. He was self enthroned and always surrounded by women.
- [27:05]
Angela Dyborne
On and on about him being a playboy. It was also, it went, it was a success. And him being this world famous, now renowned playboy, international jet setting playboy. Exactly.
- [27:16]
Host
Which was, by the way, considered a badge of honor.
- [27:18]
Angela Dyborne
Oh.
- [27:19]
Host
Was like, people looked at that as though you had achieved everything. If you were like Hef, you'd made it.
- [27:26]
Angela Dyborne
And his life was modeled after Hef. Hef was his superhero. I mean that was everything that he started to, how he started to emulate and how he started to build his success and build his personal, personal life. Modeled what Hef's, especially back in the 70s and 80s, the age of sexual liberation. And yeah, no, he would, but he was, it wasn't a secret and people knew that Peter Nygaard was a playboy.
- [27:48]
Host
The difference is there was nothing wrong with it back then.
- [27:51]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:52]
Host
And there was something. I mean, there was, but nobody seemed to think it was untowards. My mom reminded me what society was like back then.
- [28:03]
Susie Lount
What did men think of Peter? I think they probably thought, darn, I wish I had that. Wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't it be great if I could just, you know, walk around and have any girl, I want her be a playboy? I'm sure some women thought, I would really like to be on Peter's arm. I really would love to be one of those girls. You know, there was glamour attached to it.
- [28:28]
Host
The way people looked at him with all of his young women that he surrounded himself with, you know, the bachelor for life kind of lifestyle. Nobody derided him for it, right?
- [28:41]
Susie Lount
No, they didn't. I think there was a certain amount of secretive lifestyle then, and I think what's happened is anybody's secretive lifestyle now is blown right out from under them, and they are all of a sudden known in the world, and perhaps that's correct, that they should be questioning it. Some of these men lived very, very nasty lifestyles. They did, and they were never questioned about it.
- [29:14]
Host
Peter Nygaard was a sex criminal operating in plain sight. An international playboy with no, no boundaries between his private life and his Nygaard business empire. He reigned over offices in Canada, California, New York and the Bahamas. And in those executive offices were bedroom suites. Smack dab in the middle, right out in the open. Almost like a scene out of Austin.
- [29:40]
Angela Dyborne
Powers, the old one of them talking about you push a button and the bed opens up. I mean, this is what. It wasn't a scene secret. This was this bragging about this kind of. These kind of feats. I think he bought got Marina Del Rey in 1984 there. He completely modeled it after the Playboy Mansion. And so, yeah, it was absolutely the whole. Where you. Where girls stay who get switched rooms, the whole. Especially with multiple bedrooms in his office, only one bed, but with the different. When the houses and the different properties grew, it was modeled under that exact scenario. I remember when he was building the Bahamas, he was trying to explain to me that when he builds this, one girl will be able to leave his bedroom and someone will come up a different way, because that way they'd never cross paths. That's how he was planning strategy, because he thought they know each other were there, but he just didn't want them to have to run into each other. Just that was the kind of logic and what you Tell your, your niece as you're sitting there explaining how you're building. How about, we're gonna put a pool, we're gonna put an aquarium. No, it's gonna be like we're gonna have all these different secret passages to go back and forth. So nobody wants.
- [30:46]
Host
He's telling his like teenager or maybe 19, 20 year old niece about the strategy for how he's gonna have a constant stream of girls.
- [30:55]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah. And how they won't have to cross it.
- [30:56]
Host
She didn't think there was anything wrong with that.
- [30:58]
Angela Dyborne
It was absolutely. No, that was just.
- [30:59]
Host
And at that point in your life, did you think there was anything wrong with it or did you just think gross?
- [31:03]
Angela Dyborne
I don't even think I even thought gross at that time. Like, I probably. I wouldn't have thought anything about it. Just like, oh, wow, that's how he makes it work. I've always wondered that. It was like a sex cult. The lines weren't there. It was normalized. It was very normalized.
- [31:16]
Host
I actually do think you grew up in a sex cult because I remember thinking about, like, I talked to you a lot about it as a teenager and I remember just being like, ew, gross. However, never in a million years did any of us think there was anything wrong. But the way I looked at it as a teenager is just that he was gross. But there was nothing illegal, like there was nothing sinister. It was just a different choice.
- [31:43]
Angela Dyborne
He was definitely involved in an alternative lifestyle and part of the swinger set and the sexual revolution of the 70s.
- [31:51]
Host
But I think even men who weren't into the swinger part wanted to get in on some of that money and power.
- [31:57]
Angela Dyborne
My kind of feeling I'm having right now is more. I can't believe I didn't think of this before. And even as we go through this conversation, see it that way.
- [32:05]
Host
We're talking about life back then, but we're sitting in 2024 to get an idea of how normalized Peter's lifestyle was. I'm going to tell you something particularly disturbing. A fetish Peter had that was so disgusting, so sick, that even his own housekeeping staff didn't believe it at first. There were lots of rumors that he had, like a fixation on feces.
- [32:31]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah. I felt bad for the man. Like, I thought that maybe he was incontinent or had something going on with his gastric system. Like that he's aging, that he pooped his pants, you know, or whatever. Like, I really. That's what I. In my head when we, the housekeepers. Because My husband normally worked with the housekeepers, and they'd complained to him, to my husband, about, you know, the bedding keeps getting ruined and soiled, and they'd have to throw it out.
- [32:59]
Host
Angela's husband is Morton Dyborne. They met in the 90s while working for Peter Nygaard, and they'd been married almost 30 years. You'll hear how he, too, was a victim of Peter Nygaard, on the receiving end of Nygaard's verbal and financial abuse and forced to literally clean up after his boss and his filthy sexual fetish.
- [33:24]
Angela Dyborne
Morton was getting in trouble because he had to keep buying bedding from Costco or wherever to replace the stuff that's being soiled and thrown out. And I just thought. I felt really bad, actually. I was like, oh, my gosh, poor guy. You know, he. There must be something wrong.
- [33:37]
Host
Nobody thought it was his sexual kink.
- [33:41]
Angela Dyborne
Not the first few times. But then you start putting it all together and like, this is just hitting next level of insanity.
- [33:48]
Host
And looking back to the housekeeper stories and you and Morton having to replace.
- [33:52]
Angela Dyborne
Sheets, you're like, holy hell, this is true.
- [33:55]
Host
You realized it really was a sexual kink and not incontinence from an old man.
- [34:00]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah, I feel like, almost bomb. I'm like, I'm almost gonna, like, vomit in my mouth. And I mean, it is hard stuff to talk about, right? Like, it is like, I'm almost getting teary eyed a bit because it is like such a perverse and such a deviant. Most people don't know what their uncle does in the bedroom on a good day.
- [34:19]
Host
That revelation was so mind blowing to me that I had to ask forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julian Goger to try to explain it. One of the recurring stories from Peter Nygaard's victims and alleged victims is that he had a particular set of kinks. He would often rape his victims and sodomize them, but he would also insist that his sexual partners would defecate and that this became a regular issue. I can't even get my head around that. Tell me, in your professional estimation, what is it about a person that would have a kink that would require people to defecate?
- [35:03]
Dr. Julian Goger
Well, one of the things we know when we assess sex offenders is that if you have one sexual deviation, you're using the word kink, but in a technical jargon, we call it a sexual deviation. Another word that we use is a paraphilia. So when an individual has one paraphilia, then you want to look for other paraphilias, one of which could be coprophilia or a certain attraction to urine or feces, where either the act of defecation or feces itself has an erotic quality to it.
- [35:34]
Host
Can you explain that, that kind of deviation?
- [35:36]
Dr. Julian Goger
To me, the attraction to defecating may have different qualities to it. One is the person itself might have an attraction, an erotic attraction to urine or to feces. But if a person was defecating, it might also play in to underlying themes of sadomasochism, where the person is extremely controlling and to defecate would add to the degradation that the person might feel. So it might have aspects of sexual sadism to the sexual act itself.
- [36:08]
Host
And what is it about the person's mind that they find, you know, a sexual partner defecating on them erotic?
- [36:15]
Dr. Julian Goger
If the other partner is defecating, it depends on how you're defecating. And the defecating is part of an act of humiliation of the individual who the person is having sex with, then it would fit in with features of sexual sadism. On the other hand, if the person wants the partner to defecate on them, it might fit in with features of masochism, which the person might also have as an additional sexual deviation.
- [36:43]
Host
Sadomasochism, extreme sexual deviation disorder, demanding sex multiple times per day. But Nygaard also had another obsession, longevity, which on its face is not out of the ordinary in today's society. But as with everything else in Nygaard's life, he took it to an extreme. Peter Nygaard turned to steroids and stem cell treatments to stay young and fit. He wanted to live forever and even claimed to have cloned himself.
- [37:18]
Greg Gutzler
I may be the only person in the world who has my own embryonic stem cells growing in a petri dish. Can you imagine that in the petri dish that is me before I was born.
- [37:30]
Host
Describe for me his obsession with like fitness, health, longevity and virulence to be.
- [37:40]
Angela Dyborne
Able to attract younger women. As he was aging, I think he was trying to age back to.
- [37:46]
Host
So that was his whole rationale for this like crazy health kick.
- [37:51]
Angela Dyborne
I think it started because when my grandma was ill and died and he started to explore alternative health options. But as he was looking at that, he realized all the benefits to also some of the anti aging stuff out there.
- [38:07]
Greg Gutzler
I just want to personally make sure that I do everything possible to keep myself alive, everything possible to keep myself healthy. I want to do preventive medicine. And then I started discovering more and more about it and I start being a leading edge on this stuff. I have taken more stem cells today than anybody else in the world.
- [38:25]
Host
He was like big into human growth hormone.
- [38:28]
Angela Dyborne
Hgh. Yes.
- [38:29]
Host
Took shots.
- [38:30]
Angela Dyborne
Yep. What about steroids, Testosterone shots?
- [38:33]
Host
I mean, he's so effing jacked up in those, like beauty shots that he's basically branded his whole company with. Was that all as a result of steroids?
- [38:43]
Angela Dyborne
Yeah, steroids and diet, but definitely steroids.
- [38:48]
Host
So tell me about that. Like at the time he was really heavy into his steroid use. And those pictures that show him so jacked, you know, in his 70s, late 70s. What was his personality like?
- [39:00]
Angela Dyborne
You just want to get near him. You had to avoid him at all costs. He was already so worked up and in such anger and such a escalated state of aggression.
- [39:11]
Host
You knew you could tell like, bro needs to lay off the steroids or we're all gonna die.
- [39:17]
Angela Dyborne
He's gone through three months supply in the last one month. Like he's using way too much.
- [39:22]
Host
Three times the amount.
- [39:24]
Angela Dyborne
So he was like misusing steroids so.
- [39:26]
Host
The doctor refused to fill it?
- [39:28]
Angela Dyborne
Yes.
- [39:30]
Host
How did it affect him?
- [39:32]
Angela Dyborne
I think it did put him in to a hyperdrive of making sure he surrounded himself with younger and more women. So I think maybe that's where some overcompensated.
- [39:40]
Peter Nygaard
Yeah.
- [39:40]
Angela Dyborne
That he was really pulling in more, surrounding himself with more. Unable to believe or understand that women and girls that are in their late teens to mid twenties do not want to hang out with leathery old 82 year old men, no matter how successful you think you are. Yeah.
- [39:58]
Host
And maybe he wasn't able to process that. So as he aged and became sort of maybe less attractive. And I don't just mean that physically, I mean that overall, I mean, things were really seemingly falling apart. He was a shell of his former self. I remember him telling me more than once that he's on this regimen, Ashley.
- [40:27]
Angela Dyborne
Oh, it's gonna change the world. Gonna live forever.
- [40:31]
Host
I'll do the story with you. What was it? What was he doing? What was the stem cell treatment?
- [40:36]
Angela Dyborne
I think he went through a number of them over the years. All out of China, I think, a couple out of Oregon. But it was all different ways. On the onset of people figuring out better ways to use stem cells, he was figuring out how to use them for longevity.
- [40:51]
Host
Was it working? Like, did he actually think he was reversing his age? Did anybody think he was reversing his age?
- [40:56]
Angela Dyborne
I think he was hoping to clone himself, which in one way he sort of did.
- [41:00]
Host
Wait, seriously?
- [41:01]
Angela Dyborne
He had a picture of Mini Me, he called it. And it was some reproduction of him of his exact genetic Makeup in a cell form.
- [41:11]
Greg Gutzler
Taking my old skin cell, I took it. I took a woman's egg, put took her DNA out of it, put my DNA into it, and grew it in vitro and developed my own stem cell lines.
- [41:27]
Host
He was like, he had it frozen somewhere.
- [41:29]
Angela Dyborne
It wasn't frozen from before, but it was created from his current stem cells.
- [41:34]
Host
Okay, so Frankenstein pretty much, yeah. Did you ever hear or did you get wind that he was truly trying to create a dolly version of himself, like a human clone?
- [41:45]
Angela Dyborne
Yep, absolutely.
- [41:46]
Host
Was he. Was he vocal about it?
- [41:47]
Angela Dyborne
He was very vocal. He had pictures a part of his. His Zed card or part of his card that when he met people had at one point had his, like me before and me, me 50 years after or whatever. It was like his picture of like his stem cell of this cloned cell.
- [42:02]
Host
Of him and what it will be.
- [42:04]
Greg Gutzler
I'm the only guy in the world today who is. Has me in a petri dish before I was born.
- [42:11]
Angela Dyborne
That's amazing.
- [42:12]
Greg Gutzler
That is amazing. Science fiction is scientific fact now. That's huge because now you can take those immortal stem cells, plant it back in your body, and renew your body parts.
- [42:22]
Host
So the stem cell fixation wasn't just to either, you know, stop the aging process, maybe reverse the aging process. It was literally to create a copy of himself so he could literally live another life.
- [42:35]
Angela Dyborne
Correct. And yeah, absolutely. That was one of his key. I mean, to leave everything he had back to him when he dies.
- [42:42]
Host
He was delusional.
- [42:43]
Angela Dyborne
He was absolutely delusional. Got it.
- [42:46]
Greg Gutzler
Hi, sirs. It's all over.
- [42:49]
Angela Dyborne
It's caught over.
- [42:50]
Greg Gutzler
We're going skinny dippy. She says this is just like my dream come true over here.
- [42:54]
Host
Delusional about his vitality and delusional about his sex appeal, Nygaard was now targeting and trafficking younger and younger girls. This is the attorney for Nygaard's victims, Greg Gutzler. What is the age range of the alleged victims at the time they were assaulted?
- [43:14]
Dr. Julian Goger
Ages 14 was the youngest that I know of. And in terms of the oldest, I don't. I don't recall any client of mine who was assaulted over the age of maybe 35 or so.
- [43:28]
Angela Dyborne
So Nygaard was looking for.
- [43:30]
Dr. Julian Goger
For younger women and girls.
- [43:34]
Host
What do you make of the really dark turn that he took to children? Like 14 years, 15 years old. Like really, really frightening criminal behavior?
- [43:49]
Angela Dyborne
I think that was a surprise to all of us. I just think it's just a different level of perversion, a different. I mean, you've crossed the line. It just changed. You crossed the Line now from going from a shit fetish to pedophilia. I mean, that's the only thing I can guess.
- [44:05]
Peter Nygaard
My name is Jennifer Gilmer, and I was a victim of Peter Nygaard.
- [44:11]
Host
Jenny Gilmer had no idea what was waiting on the other side of that massive Jurassic park gate that allowed guests into Nygaard Cay and kept them there. Her coach had brought her there for an innocent game of tennis at Peter's resort home.
- [44:30]
Peter Nygaard
I wasn't that girl that was, you know, promised. Promised work or modeling gigs or anything like that. For me it was very different. It was just me being left there by my tennis coach and I was just, you know, an easy target. All of the rooms at Nygarqui are like tree houses. They're kind of all over the place. And he has his on the very top level and it's all glass. And we walked in and he. He took me in there to, you know, to get a drink. He wanted to show me around. And when the doors close, it's. Everything's locked. It's all glass. You can see out, but no one can see in. And he has a code system on it. And he. And it was locked. I, you know, screamed for him to stop and he did not. And unfortunately he did rape me, but he sodomized me. And that was probably the worst pain that I have ever experienced and never want to experience. And that is kind of the day that my life changed and I went numb.
- [45:53]
Host
Jenny says her passport was taken and that she was held there against her will and raped multiple times over three weeks by Nygaard and his friends.
- [46:04]
Peter Nygaard
In those moments when I was. When I had to be with other people, I felt safer than any other time I was there because I didn't have to be with him because he, he was, he was violent, you know, and, you know, to be sodomized by a monster, I would take being having sex or being raped by a stranger than, than having that. And that's. It's a horrible way to, to compare, but that is how I felt at the time.
- [46:41]
Host
Her story is just one of thousands of Nygard's victims stories. But apart from the sexual abuse, Nygaard was a master of psychological abuse. And anyone in his path could be a target.
- [46:55]
Angela Dyborne
People were terrified of him. You just never knew we had this thing. Don't make eye contact when he's walking through the building. Really, when he's walking through the building, everybody, they either ran and hid, like literally hid. People would hide or you look at somebody else, you do something else. You like, you if you, if he caught it that you were standing there, it's too late to hide. Then you just don't make eye contact. You look something else and people just don't make eye contact with him. I think people would tell him, I think other executives would warn him, start saying, hey, I think you're kind of pushing the envelope, or I think this is a little too much.
- [47:28]
Host
How do you react?
- [47:29]
Angela Dyborne
He would be, he couldn't be told no one. He would. He reacts violently and oppose like he violent opposition to anything anybody says.
- [47:38]
Host
So not only can you not tell him that, he will verbally abuse you for telling him something he needs to.
- [47:45]
Angela Dyborne
Know or shun you or fire you. He would look at that as a challenge. It would be your fault about that statement. If you had him in person, he'd be spitting in your face and looking at you and glaring and oh, it was frightening.
- [47:59]
Host
On the next episode of Uncle Peter. She was a teenage tennis student when she says Nygaard held her prisoner at that luxury resort home in the Bahamas, taking turns with his friends and raping her for weeks. Her moment to Moment account, plus the lawyer representing her and more than 100 other Nygaard victims was stories that are equally disturbing. Also twisted details of Peter's other specialty, verbal and financial abuse. Here are the tactics that he used to keep his employees paralyzed with fear.
- [48:37]
Angela Dyborne
He turns into a monster. Sometimes it was. He was in full monster mode.
- [48:42]
Host
You've been listening to Uncle Peter, a drop dead serious podcast. If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, please, please call your local sexual assault hotline.