The view from the overlook on state Route 878 is vast. There may be no wider horizon in the West. The curved access road that wraps around Slide Mountain is sometimes used as a launching pad for hang gliders, to soar over the Washoe Valley half a mile below. But on a summer’s evening in 1998, that same rocky ledge became a crime scene when a man staged a crash that would take detectives years to solve. Lake Tahoe fine art appraiser Peter Bergna was found clinging to the rocks shortly after midnight. His Ford F-150 had crashed through the mountain road’s guardrail — 800 feet below him were his wrecked vehicle, and dead wife.

Bergna claims to this day he is an innocent man. He says the brakes failed on his pickup as he smoked a cigar out the open window and that he was ejected from the vehicle as it tumbled down the cliff. As Bergna awaits his next parole hearing, SFGATE sat down with Sgt. Jim Beltron, the retired detective who helped solve the mystery of what happened on the mountain that night.

“I got a call at home. There was an accident off Mount Rose Highway,” Beltron said at a recent meeting at a Truckee coffee shop. “In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

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To most, Peter and Rinette Bergna lived an enviable life on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. Bergna, the son of longtime Santa Clara County District Attorney Louis Bergna, worked at prestigious San Francisco art dealers Butterfields. His job as an appraiser saw him moving among high society, a sophisticate, visiting mansions and galleries in the Sierra Nevada. After a distinguished career on the Nevada Board of Pharmacy, Rinette founded a consulting service in Incline Village before taking a job as an international travel director for Tauck Tours, a job that allowed her monthslong trips to Europe. Their four-bedroom mountain retreat on Geraldine Drive appeared to be a happy home, but by 1998, their 11-year marriage was falling apart.

On the evening of May 31, Rinette, 49, landed at Reno-Tahoe International Airport after a six-week trip to Italy for her new job. During her trip, court transcripts reveal, Bergna, 45, had been planning to end their marriage and making advances on women while at work. While in Italy, Rinette scoped out apartments.

After attending an evening charity function at Incline High School, Bergna said he stopped at an Ampm gas station to fill up two 5-gallon plastic jugs for a trip to Las Vegas. He left the containers unsealed in the bed of his royal blue 1997 Ford F-150 — a detail that puzzled investigators from the start.

Rick Fernandez of Washoe County Search and Rescue, left, and Nevada Highway patrolman John Schilling, stand at the scene of the crime.

Bergna picked Rinette up from the airport at around 11 p.m. She had been traveling for 25 hours straight, over two days and four airports, but instead of driving to their home in Incline Village, he took a turn off the Mount Rose Highway. Bergna later told police that the scenic turn-off was a favorite spot of the couple — they enjoyed the view of the Reno lights. He said they discussed their marriage and how he was frustrated with her traveling. “It might be part of your job, but I’m home, and I’m alone, and I don’t like it,” Bergna recalled telling her. He told officers that the conversation ended on a good note, when Rinette agreed to cut back on her travel for the sake of their marriage. As the couple were heading back down the mountain road just after midnight, disaster apparently struck.

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“I started to brake and it wasn’t braking,” Bergna later told police. “… I know I hit the guardrail and the next thing I’d wake up, I’m on the dirt and I don’t see the car and I’m yelling for my wife.”

Bergna claimed he found himself hanging on to the side of the mountain, about 80 feet below the........

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