What Really Happened to Marilyn Bergeron?

People all over the world tragically disappear every day. Often, it’s of their own choosing, although in some cases, something much more ominous has taken place. In the case of Marilyn Bergeron, her family is convinced it’s the latter.

On February 17, 2008, the then-24-year-old left her family home in Quebec, Canada, to head out on a long walk.

It was a cool, crisp winter morning, and Marilyn donned her large black coat and sturdy boots and took her backpack with her.

She took little else with her, not even her phone or purse. All she carried was a singular credit card. She would never be seen again.

Questions began popping up in the wake of her disappearance. Had she run away from something or someone, or had she been taken against her will?

Who Was Marilyn Bergeron?

Marilyn was a creative and precocious child born in 1983 in Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada.

The Bergeron family enrolled Marilyn in music lessons from a young age, and the girl’s interest in music only grew stronger over time.

She was highly intelligent, speaking three languages: English, French, and Russian, and excelled in her many extracurricular activities.

However, as is the case with many creative types, Marilyn’s need for adventure and new experiences fueled her, especially as she entered her teens.

As her parents put it, she began hanging out with “the wrong crowd” and acting recklessly. She would get in trouble—nothing too serious, but enough to worry her mother and father.

Despite her wayward phase during her teens, she earned a degree in media arts and technology before moving to Montreal in her early 20s.

Here, she found freelance work at a local TV station, but something would happen in the city shortly after she moved there, though she wouldn’t tell anybody what it was.

By the start of 2008, she told some members of her family that she felt nervous and unsafe in Montreal. It was clear to her loved ones that Marilyn had been spooked by something or someone.

Still, she wouldn’t tell them exactly why she felt unsafe, though she did tell her mother that she was going to return home for her own safety.

When Marilyn’s mother asked her why she was feeling uneasy, she clammed up.

She said she’d tell her why she had to leave the city, but only once she was safe and sound back home. Knowing her daughter was coming back home to live, Marilyn’s mother didn’t press the issue further.

On February 10, 2008, Marilyn moved back to the family home in Quebec, though she made several trips back to Montreal in the days after to pick up the rest of her belongings.

Despite being home and apparently somewhere safe, Marilyn’s parents knew something was still troubling her. When they probed her about what was bothering her so much, Marilyn admitted she was feeling low, though she refused to discuss it.

According to her sister, who also tried to speak to Marilyn about what happened in Montreal, something awful had taken place in the city, though she refused to say what.

Was it large debts or perhaps a failed relationship that was troubling her? Marilyn’s mother, Andree, would plead with her daughter to tell her what had happened in Montreal. However, Marilyn would consistently refuse to tell her.

Then, Andree, concerned it was something more sinister, asked her if she’d been hurt or assaulted. While Marilyn didn’t say she had been, it seemed this question evoked a much more emotional response. She burst into tears.

Her sister, Natalie, would go on to say that Marilyn would often simply cry during the period she moved back home, refusing to talk about what may have occurred in Montreal.

The Puzzling Disappearance

At around 11 am on February 17, 2008, just a week after Marilyn had moved back home, she left the house after telling her parents she was going for a walk to clear her mind. She took nothing with her other than one of her credit cards.

Later that afternoon, the Bergeron family began questioning where Marilyn could be.

She loved to walk and bask in nature, but a four-hour stint out of the house was unusual for her, especially since her frame of mind had been fragile of late.

The family was concerned and took off to search the local area for her. They found no trace of her, and come sundown, they reported the 24-year-old missing.

Investigators began by retracing Marilyn’s steps that afternoon, which initially proved easy thanks to the help of surveillance cameras and the fact that she used her credit card to pay for a coffee.

On the day of her vanishing, she was caught on a bank’s CCTV trying to withdraw $60. The bank was busy, so there were plenty of witnesses to track down and question what they saw that day.

**The final photo of Marilyn Bergeron shows her withdrawing money from an ATM. Photo via Reddit.**

All of them who remembered seeing Marilyn said the same thing: she seemed nervous and appeared to be looking over her shoulder constantly.

It was almost as if she felt someone was following her, though none of the witnesses said they saw anyone tailing the missing woman. After that, Marilyn bought herself a coffee 12 miles away from her parent’s home.

The barista who served her would later say they remembered Marilyn’s custom since she was visibly keen to leave the store and had a somber demeanor. This was the last time she was seen alive.

What happened after that is a mystery. The trail goes completely cold. The police were unable to figure out her subsequent movements, and nobody came forward to say they’d seen her that day. Her credit card was never used again.

Theories have since been banded about over the years, trying to answer the question: what happened to Marilyn Bergeron?

Further Developments And Theories

Nothing new was uncovered for years until January 2010, when a man claimed to have spotted Marilyn in Hawkesbury, Ontario. In fact, he hadn’t just seen her once; he had seen her regularly over the years with a man she was in a relationship with.

When investigators did a little more digging, they found many people in the local area had allegedly seen Marilyn. At a restaurant downtown, the regulars were shown a photo of the missing woman. They all said she dined there with her partner.

Naturally, this piqued the interest of the Bergeron family, though they felt the police were doing little to solve the case by then.

They wanted them to investigate what may have happened in Montreal, which could lead to answers as to what happened or where she went that fateful day in February.

The Bergerons felt as though Marilyn’s friends from that area would have some information that would be useful to the police.

Still, law enforcement appeared to be treating her disappearance as a simple missing person case as opposed to anything more.

Certainly, Marilyn’s fragile state of mind led law enforcement to consider the possibility that Marilyn had taken her own life, a consideration the Bergeron family refuted.

In 2017, some renewed hope was breathed into the case when a hotline was set up for people to call if they knew something about Marilyn’s disappearance. In total, the tipline brought in over 40 alleged sightings of her.

Sadly, this line of inquiry bore no fruit. Marilyn’s story slowly dropped from the news pages, and it seemed her case was being forgotten. Until 2022, when some more information came to light.

There had been a possible sighting of Marilyn in 2009, though the details weren’t made public until a 2022 press conference.

This sighting was different from the rest: it involved a married couple who say they had a strange encounter with a woman they believe to be Marilyn.

The couple, who lived in Hawkesbury, Ontario, said Marilyn knocked on their door in the early hours of December 2009. It was freezing and raining outside, but she was dressed in high heels, a thin T-shirt, and a cool-weather jacket.

By this point, she was blonde, though almost all of the photos shared in the news of Marilyn had been ones where she was brunette. Still, the couple insisted it was her.

The woman was soaking wet and upset, and while the couple handed her a towel to dry off, she asked to use their phone.

It seems she didn’t manage to speak to anyone and headed back out into the darkness, despite the husband offering to give the distressed woman a lift to where she needed to be.

The couple went to the police with this information in 2010. Since then, the Bergeron family believes that Marilyn has set up a new life in Ontario.

However, if this is the case, there are many unanswered questions, like what really happened in Montreal, why she would want to abandon her family, and why she doesn’t want to be found.

If Marilyn has begun a new life, her mother has said she will accept that: “If she has a new life and wants to be left alone, we will respect that,” she has since stated.

However, there is no clear proof of this, and there are still multiple possibilities as to what truly happened to Marilyn Bergeron.