Audrey Backeberg, a Wisconsin woman reported missing over 60 years ago, was revealed to be alive earlier this month, May 2025.
Backeberg’s case has been cold for years but recently, “the case was assigned to Sauk County Sheriff’s Detective Isaac Hanson,” reports an article on ABC News (Forrester, May 5). Since then, he has looked through all of the evidence again and re-interviewed multiple key witnesses. Next, the same article on ABC News says “he was able to obtain an address from Backeberg’s sister’s online ancestry account” (Forrester, May 5). So, he reached out to the Sheriff’s department for her county and asked them to visit her home. “10 minutes later, she called me and we talked for 45 minutes,” Hanson told WISN, a Wisconsin based ABC affiliate.
According to a statement released by the Sauk County Sheriff’s office, “Ms. Backeberg’s disappearance was by her own choice and not the result of any criminal activity or foul play” and she is “alive and well.”
She and the family babysitter disappeared from her home in Wisconsin on July 7, 1962, when Backeberg was just 20 years old. They reportedly used a combination of hitchhiking and bus rides to get to Indianapolis, Indiana. Where the family babysitter says she last saw Audrey disappearing around a random corner. What’s interesting is one article by Pilar Arias on FOX News says that “The babysitter stated Audrey chose to leave of her own accord and said she would not return, but Audrey’s family members insisted she would never have abandoned her children” (May 4). This babysitter also passed a polygraph, a type of lie detector test used in formal investigations.
Additionally, Pilar Airyas cites a quote from The Charley Project to explain that “Audrey married Ronald Backeberg when she was ‘about fifteen years old’ and that their ‘marriage was troubled and there were allegations of abuse’” (Arias, May 4). This is supported by News 18 which reported that “Her decision to leave was driven by her unhappiness in the marriage” (Baidya, May 7).
As a final statement Sauk County Sheriff Chip Master said, “This case shows that it’s possible to reach justice and truth even in old cases, just dedication and patience are needed” (Baidya, May 7).
