A father of three from Wisconsin who hasn’t been seen since August 12 may have faked his vanishing and then gone to Europe.
Ryan Borgwardt’s family reported him missing on Monday when he didn’t come home. For months, Wisconsin police and volunteers looked for the 45-year-old after finding his overturned boat in Green Lake on the same day.
Two fishermen who were casting along the bottom of Green Lake “came up with a fishing rod” the next day, which police took as evidence. Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll told reporters on November 8 that Borgwardt’s wife recognized the rod as her husband’s.
After months of searching by police and volunteers with Bruce’s Legacy, a Wisconsin-based group that helps find and rescue drowned people, no one found the body.
“On Oct. 4, which was a Friday, I met with Keith Cormican from Bruce’s Legacy, and he said to me, ‘Sheriff, I’ve done a lot of searches, and I can’t find him,'” Podoll said. “He said, ‘We searched, and we searched.’”
Podoll told the press conference that Cormican’s information caused police to look into the case in “a different direction” on October 7.
The sheriff’s office then chose to do a digital forensic analysis of Borgwardt’s computer. They quickly found that the missing father and husband were probably still alive “somewhere in Europe.”
Digital forensic analysis also showed that before Borgwardt went missing, he had changed his laptop’s hard drive, cleared his browser history, taken pictures of his passport, moved money to a foreign bank, changed his email address, and been in “communication with a woman from Uzbekistan,” as Podoll explained.
Borgwardt also “took out a $300,000 life insurance policy in January and purchased airline cards,” the sheriff said. These actions led authorities to think that he was still alive somewhere, but not in the United States.
“Because of these new pieces of evidence, we were sure that Ryan wasn’t in our lake,” Podoll said. He later said that his office’s case is like a “puzzle” with many complicated pieces that they have to “put together.”
Police are trying to figure out if a crime was committed and if anyone may have helped with it.
Podoll also talked about how much taxpayers lost because they paid for a search that went on for months for a man who might not be missing at all.
The sheriff also thanked Borgwardt’s family, especially his wife, for helping to find the 45-year-old.
“That woman is strong…” “I have no idea what she’s going through,” Podoll said.
Podoll told Borgwardt, “Ryan, if you’re reading this, please get in touch with us or your family.” We know that things can go wrong, but a family needs their dad back.
According to the sheriff, the search for Borgwardt will go on and “involve a lot more people” in the future.
Source: Missing father of 3 may have faked his own death and fled to ‘someplace in Europe’: officials
