A Wisconsin man who faked his own drowning this summer so he could abandon his wife and three children has been communicating with authorities daily from Eastern Europe, even telling them how he did it, but has not committed to returning home, a sheriff said Thursday. Ryan Borgwardt has been talking with authorities since Nov. 11 after disappearing for three months, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said at a news conference.
The sheriff later showed a video that Borgwardt had sent the sheriff's office that day. “The great news is we know that he is alive and well,” Podoll said. “The bad news is we don’t know where Ryan exactly is, and he has not yet decided to return home.
” 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 but mostly showed just a door and bare walls. “I’m safe and secure, no problem,” Borgwardt said.
“I hope this works.” Borgwardt told authorities he fled because of “personal matters," the sheriff said. Podoll did not elaborate.
“He was just going to try and make things better in his mind, and this was the way it was going to be,” Podoll said. Borgwardt told authorities he traveled about 50 miles from his home in Watertown to Green Lake, where he overturned his kayak, dumped his phone in the lake and then paddled an inflatable boat to shore. He told authorities he .
