Wisconsin mom missing for 62 years found ‘alive and well’: sheriff

A Wisconsin woman last seen in July 1962 has been found “alive and well’ and living in another state,” the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office announced this week.

Audrey Backeberg, a young mother of two, had filed a criminal complaint against her husband just days before her disappearance, alleging that he had assaulted her and threatened to kill her, according to the Wisconsin Missing Persons Advocacy, a nonprofit that works to raise awareness about missing people.

On July 7, 1962, a day after her 20th birthday, Backeberg went out to pick up her paycheck but never returned home. At the time, the Backebergs lived in Reedsburg, about 60 miles northwest of Madison, officials said.

Over the following decades, multiple attempts to locate Backeberg were unsuccessful, and the case eventually went cold.

On Thursday, Sauk County Sheriff Chip Meister announced the decades-old missing person’s case had finally been solved.

According to Meister, Backeberg’s case was reviewed by a detective earlier this year “as part of an ongoing examination of cold case files.”

After re-interviewing witnesses and “uncovering new insights” into the case, investigators found Backeberg alive and living in a different state.

“Further investigation has revealed that Ms. Backeberg’s disappearance was by her own choice and not the result of any criminal activity or foul play,” Meister said in a news release.

According to Det. Isaac Hansen, an Ancestry.com account set up by Backeberg’s sister was “key in locating death records, census reports [and] all kinds of data,” which led investigators to an address.

“I called the local sheriff’s department and said, ‘Hey, there’s this lady living at this address you have. Somebody can just go pop in?’” Hansen said Friday in an interview with Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate WISN.

“Ten minutes later, she called me and we talked for 45 minutes,” he said.

While the now-83-year-old woman asked investigators to keep their conversation private, Hansen said they “discussed a lot of things.”

“She sounded happy, confident in her decision [and] had no regret,” he said.