Wisconsin kayaker who faked his death and fled to Eastern Europe is in custody, online records show

GREEN LAKE, Wis. — A Wisconsin man who faked his own drowning and left his wife and three children to go to Eastern Europe is in police custody, online records show.

Ryan Borgwardt, 45, was booked into the Green Lake County Jail on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Victim Information and Notification Everyday system, a service that provides information to crime victims such as a person’s jail custody status. No charges were listed.

The Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday in a social media post that a news conference would be held Wednesday morning to update the Borgwardt case. The post said no further information would be provided until then.

A person answering the phone at the sheriff’s office Tuesday night declined to confirm whether Borgwardt was in custody. County jail officials didn’t immediately return a phone message Tuesday night.

Last month, Sheriff Mark Podoll said Borgwardt began communicating with authorities on Nov. 11 after disappearing for three months but that he hadn’t committed to returning to Wisconsin. Podoll said police were “pulling at his heartstrings” to come home. He suggested Borgwardt could be charged with obstructing the investigation into his disappearance.

Borgwardt told authorities last month that he faked his death because of “personal matters,” the sheriff said. He told them that in mid-August he traveled about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his home in Watertown to Green Lake, where he overturned his kayak, dumped his phone and then paddled an inflatable boat to shore. He said he picked that lake because it’s the deepest in Wisconsin.

After leaving the lake, he rode an electric bike about 70 miles (110 kilometers) 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 has said the search for Borgwardt’s body, which lasted more than a month, cost at least $35,000. The sheriff said that Borgwardt told authorities that he didn’t expect the search to last more than two weeks.