GREEN LAKE, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man who faked his own drowning this summer so he could abandon his wife and three children has been communicating daily from Eastern Europe with police, even telling them how he did it, but has not committed to returning home, a sheriff said Thursday. Ryan Borgwardt has been talking with police since Nov.
11, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said at a news conference. The sheriff showed a video that Borgwardt sent police that day. Police don’t know exactly where he is, Podoll said, but it was somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Borgwardt, wearing an orange T-shirt and not smiling, looked directly into the camera in the video, which appears to have been taken on his phone. Borgwardt said he was in his apartment and briefly panned the camera to show the inside, but mostly showed just a door and bare walls. “I’m safe and secure, no problem,” Borgwardt said.
“I hope this works.” Borgwardt gave police details about how he faked his death and fled, Podoll said. He told police that he overturned his kayak and dumped his phone in Green Lake, paddled an inflatable boat to shore, and rode an electric bike through the night to Madison, the sheriff said.
That’s a distance of about 70 miles (110 kilometers). From there he took a bus to Detroit, then boarded a bus to Canada and got on a plane there, the sheriff said. Police were still verifying Borgwardt’s description of what happened, Podoll said.
“The great news is we know that he is .
