Britt Jones
A woman who vanished without a trace in the 60s has been found alive, and she’s broken her silence.
Audrey Backeberg was 20 years old when she disappeared in July 1962, having been last seen in Reedsburg, Wisconsin.
The young mother shared two children with her husband, when she suddenly vanished.
After six decades, all hope had been lost that the young woman was alive, until a breakthrough came on Thursday (May 1).
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The Sauk County Sheriff's Office announced that Backeberg had been found 'alive and well' in another state, as it stated: “Through diligent investigative work, which included a thorough re-evaluation of all case files and evidence, combined with re-interviewing witnesses and uncovering new insights, the Sheriff’s Office is now able to report that Audrey Backeberg is alive and well and currently resides out of State.”
Isaac Hanson, who was the detective on the case, revealed how they managed to find Audrey.
He told WMTV: “I ended up locating an arrest record that I suspected was likely Audrey, so I contacted her family. She has a living sister in the area.”
Her sister then gave him the missing pieces to the puzzle which helped him locate her.
The Wisconsin Missing Persons Advocacy (WMPA) organization said Audrey had married Ronald Backeberg at 15 years old and that there were allegations she was being abused.
This led to Audrey to file a criminal complaint which claimed that her husband had beaten her and had also threatened to kill her days before she went missing.
However, her husband was taken in for questioning and passed the polygraph test when he claimed he was innocent.
Around the same time, the couple’s 14-year-old babysitter told police she had hitchhiked to Madison with the mom and then took a bus to Indianapolis with her before returning home solo.
“The juvenile was interviewed again as an adult, maybe 15 years ago,” Detective Lt. Chris Zunker said.
“She stated Audrey had taken a bunch of pills, put them in a Coke can and drank it before taking the bus down to Indianapolis.
“She reported Audrey potentially hooked up with some construction workers that may have been in the area.”
Sadly, this didn’t lead to any new information, but when Hanson was assigned the case and re-interviewed witnesses, he finally managed to track her down.
“The sister actually had an Ancestry.com account, and I was able to use that. That was pretty key in locating death records, census reports, all kinds of data,” Hanson told WISN. “Ultimately, we came up with an address.
"So I called the local sheriff's department, said ‘Hey, there's this lady living at this address. Do you guys have somebody, you can just go pop in?’ Ten minutes later, she called me, and we talked for 45 minutes.”
That conversation led to something shocking being said.
According to him, she left of her own free will and had ‘no regrets’ about leaving her children with her husband.
"I told Audrey that I would keep it private," Hanson said. "She had her reasons for leaving and we discussed a lot of things.
“I think she just was removed and, you know, moved on from things and kind of did her own thing and lead her life. She sounded happy. Confident in her decision. No regrets."