Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #618

Woman Who Disappeared From Wisconsin 62 Years Ago Finally Found
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
By Hallie Golden, AP
Sixty-two years ago, Audrey Backeberg disap- peared from a small city in south-central Wisconsin after reportedly hitch- hiking with her
family’s babysitter and catching a bus to Indianapolis.
Nobody ever knew where she went or what hap- pened to her.
All that changed last week when
she was found alive and safe in another state, thanks to the fresh eyes from a deputy who took over the case in February.
Detective Isaac Hanson discov- ered an out-of- state arrest record that matched Backeberg, which triggered a series of investigative moves that led to finding her alive and safe in anoth- er state.
Turns out Backeberg chose to leave the town of Reedsburg on her own accord ― likely due to an abusive husband, Hanson said.
“She’s happy, safe and secure; And just kind of lived under the radar for that long,” he said.
Hanson was
assigned the case in late February and, after discov- ering the arrest record, he and other officials met with Backeberg’s family to see if they had a con- nection with that region. They also started digging through Backeberg’s sis- ter’s Ancestry.co m account, pulling census records, obituaries and marriage licenses from that region.
Within about two months, they found an address where a woman was living that Hanson said shared a lot of similarities with Backeberg, including date of birth and social security number. Hanson was able to get a deputy from that jurisdic- tion to go to the address. Ten min- utes later,
Backeberg, now in her 80′s, called Hanson.
“It happened so fast,” he said. “I was expecting the deputy to call me back and say, ‘Oh nobody answered the door.’ And I thought it was the deputy calling me, but it was actually her. And to be honest it was just a very casual conversation. I could sense that she obviously had her reasons for leaving.”
Most of the infor- mation he learned during that call he declined to share, saying that it was still important to Backeberg that she not be found.
“I think it over- whelmed her of course with the emotions that she had, having a deputy show up at her house and
then kind of call her out and talk with her about what happened and kind of relive 62 years in 45 minutes,” he said.
Hanson described discovering her safe after more than six decades practically unheard of. And while he doesn’t know what will happen next in terms of her fami- ly reconnecting, he said he was happy that she can reach out if she wants to.
“There’s family liv- ing here, so she has my contact number if she ever wants to reach out or needs anything, any phone num- bers of family members back here,” he said. “Ultimately she kind of holds the cards for that.”
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine