A Wisconsin man who faked his own drowning and left his wife and three children to travel to Eastern Europe is in custody, online records show.
Ryan Borgwardt, 45, was booked into the Green Lake County Jail Tuesday afternoon, according to the Victim Information and Notification Everyday system, a service that provides information to crime victims, such as custody status of a person. No charges have been listed.
The Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post Tuesday that a news conference would be held Wednesday morning to provide an update on the Borgwardt case. The message states that no further information will be provided until then.
A person answering the phone at the sheriff’s office Tuesday evening declined to confirm whether Borgwardt was in custody. County jail officials did not immediately respond to a phone message Tuesday evening.
Last month, Sheriff Mark Podoll said Borgwardt began communicating with authorities on Nov. 11 after being missing for three months, but had not committed to returning to Wisconsin. Podoll said police were “tugging at his heartstrings” to get home. He suggested Borgwardt could be charged with obstructing the investigation into her disappearance.
Borgwardt told authorities last month that he faked his death for “personal matters,” the sheriff said. He told them that in mid-August he drove about 50 miles from his home in Watertown to Green Lake, where he overturned his kayak, threw away his phone, then rowed an inflatable boat to shore . He said he chose this lake because it was the deepest in Wisconsin.
After leaving the lake, he rode an electric bike about 70 miles through the night to Madison, the sheriff said. From there, he said he took a bus to Detroit, then boarded a bus to Canada and got on a plane.
The sheriff said at the time that investigators were working to verify Borgwardt’s description of what happened.
The sheriff’s office said the search for Borgwardt’s body, which lasted more than a month, cost at least $35,000. The sheriff said Borgwardt told authorities he didn’t expect the search to last more than two weeks.
