Authorities in Wisconsin believe a kayaker missing since August did not actually vanish while out on a lake, instead faking his own disappearance and fleeing the country. The discovery came after search teams had probed the deep waters of central Wisconsin’s Green Lake for 54 days in hopes of locating 45-year-old Ryan Borgwardt, said Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll at a news conference Friday that was streamed by CBS News affiliate WFRV-TV.
Borgwardt was initially reported missing Aug. 12, according to the sheriff. Authorities who responded to the report found the man’s car and trailer parked on the bank of the lake, and a capsized kayak that apparently belonged to him in an area where the water was about 220 feet deep.
Keith Cormican, of a nonprofit search-and-rescue organization called Bruce’s Legacy, helped multiple law enforcement agencies over the course of several months to try and find Borgwardt. Cormican had searched essentially every corner of the western part of Green Lake by early October, and although he told the sheriff he was not prepared to give up, Podoll recalled regrouping with his detectives on Oct. 7 and deciding to take the investigation in “a different direction.”
They learned shortly afterward that Canadian authorities had checked Borgwardt’s name on Aug. 13, according to the sheriff and WFRV-TV.
“That was something we didn’t expect,” Podoll told reporters Friday.
Partnering with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in addition to state and local investigators in Wisconsin, the Green Lake sheriff said authorities began to uncover evidence suggesting Borgwardt may not have drowned in the lake at all. A forensic analysis of a laptop that Borgwardt’s wife had given to investigators raised suspicions he had engineered the disappearance in order to flee to some place in Europe.
Analysts determined Borgwardt had replaced the laptop’s hard drive before he vanished and cleared its browsing history on the day of the fated kayaking trip, after syncing the laptop’s contents to the Cloud on Aug 11. He had also photographed his passports and taken out a $375,000 life insurance policy in the months leading up to his disappearance.. Authorities also said Borgwardt had moved funds into a foreign bank, changed his email address and was communicating with a woman in Uzbekistan prior to going missing.
“Due to these discoveries of new evidence, we were sure that Ryan was not in our lake,” said Podoll. “The expertise of Kieth Cormican of Bruce’s Legacy cannot be overstated. His dedication and persistence in searching efforts was remarkable, and initially his confidence that he could not find a body in the western part of our lake drew us in a direction that we were not looking.”
Podoll asked the public to report any information they may have on Borgwardt’s disappearance to the Green Lake Sheriff’s Office or the local Crime Stoppers line. He told reporters it was too early to comment on any charges that could potentially be brought against Borgwardt and anyone who might have helped him, if he is found, although the sheriff emphasized that recovering the expenses used to search for him would be a priority.
“Ryan, if you are viewing this, I plead that you contact us or your family,” Podoll said. “We understand that things can happen but there is a family that wants their daddy back.”
