For months, it was believed Ryan Borgwardt drowned in a lake in an unfortunate kayaking incident.
But now authorities say they think the missing Wisconsin husband and father of three faked his own death so he could flee to eastern Europe.
The last time Borgwardt’s wife heard from him was on Aug. 11, when he let her know he was finishing up a paddle on Green Lake and was heading to shore. He never returned home and the next day was reported missing to police.
While searching the lake, deputies found the 44-year-old man’s overturned kayak with a lifejacket attached to it. They also located his vehicle and trailer nearby and, in the following days, an angler discovered his fishing rod.
Search and rescue crews scoured the lake for more than 50 days, believing his kayak had capsized while he wasn’t wearing an floatation device. Divers searched the lake on several occasions and high-end sonar equipment was brought in, as well as cadaver dogs, but Borgwardt’s body never turned up.
Green Lake Sheriff Mark Podoll told a news conference late last week that the entirety of the lake had been searched over the course of eight weeks.
“On Oct. 7, I got my crew together — my three detectives and my chief deputy — and we talked, and we said, ‘We have got to go in a different direction,’” Podoll told reporters last Friday.
“We don’t know where he is, but he is not in our lake.”
From there, they began to look into Borgwardt’s personal life.
In early October, Podoll’s department learned that Canadian law enforcement authorities had run Borgwardt’s name through their databases the day after he was reported missing. The news release did not say why they ran his name or offer any further details about the circumstances.
Further investigation revealed that he had reported his passport lost or stolen and had obtained a new one in May. His family easily found his original passport, the sheriff said.
An analysis of a laptop — the release did not say whose — revealed a digital trail that shows Borgwardt had planned to head to Europe and tried to mislead investigators.
The laptop’s hard drive had been replaced and the browsers had been cleared on the day Borgwardt disappeared, Podoll said in the news release. Investigators found passport photos, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks and communication with a woman from Uzbekistan. They also discovered that Borgwardt also took out a US$375,000 life insurance policy in January.
“At this time we believe that Ryan is alive and likely in eastern Europe,” Podoll said in the release.
During Friday’s news conference, Podoll sent a message directly to Borgwardt.
“Our most important thing, for us, is to know that you’re safe,” he said. “We can talk through all this and we can work things out.”
The sheriff told ABC News this week that he was “shocked” by the turn of events.
“It was just unbelievable that we would have a case like this where some party actually staged his death.”
The sheriff’s office said authorities hope to pursue restitution for the search expenses and are “looking into what charges could be filed,” but called it a “work in progress.”
The owner Bruce’s Legacy, a nonprofit organization that specializes in recovering drowning victims and spent hours extensively searching Green Lake and scouring sonar data and images, called the Borgwardt search “disheartening.”
Keith Cormican started the company in honour of his brother Bruce, a firefighter who drowned while searching for a drowning victim in 1995.
“You meet all kinds in the world and I guess this guy went to the extremes faking his disappearance, so it’s a first,” Cormican told The Associated Press. “He definitely cost us a lot of grief, a lot of money, repairs and equipment. I just hope he comes forward sooner rather than later so the family can move on.”
— with files from The Associated Press