Wisconsin woman has been found alive after being reported missing 63 years ago

A former Reedsburg, Wisconsin, woman whose family reported her missing 63 years ago and has been looking for her ever since has been found “alive and well,” according to authorities.

Audrey Backeberg, 82, who no longer goes by that last name, was found after detectives re-evaluated the evidence and conducted new interviews with family members and other witnesses, Sauk County Sheriff Chip Meister said Thursday.

On Monday, after following a hunch that led him to request the help of an out-of-state law enforcement agency, Sheriff’s Det. Isaac Hanson said he succeeded in speaking with Backeberg by phone for about 45 minutes.

She chose not to reveal her current location, Hanson said, but she is living in the United States, outside of Wisconsin. She remarried after going missing, Hanson said, but he declined to provide her new last name or indicate if she had any children with her second husband.

“She was very cooperative, answered all my questions,” Hanson said, adding that she was friendly on the phone. “She had her reasons for leaving the area. I told her I wouldn’t discuss her location because it is important to her. Based on the things that she told me, I think that she is confident in the decision that she made. ‘Did what she had to do,’ type thing.”

Backeberg had been reported missing in July 1962, when she was 20. She was living in Reedsburg at the time, and was last seen in the Sauk County city on July 7, 1962.

A witness said she last saw Backeberg walking around the corner from a bus stop in Indianapolis, according to the state Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children and Adults. Hanson spoke with the witness roughly a month ago, who confirmed the account.

Complaints made to the police shortly before her disappearance suggested she had been abused by her husband, then-sheriff Randy Stammen said in a 2002 interview on the 40th anniversary of her disappearance.

“(She reported) her husband had loaded a couple of guns and put them into the trunk of his car and threatened to kill her,” Stammen told the Baraboo News Republic in 2002.

Family members had long accepted that Backeberg had been murdered. In the same 2002 article, a sister said she just hoped Backeberg’s body would be found and the person responsible for her killing brought to justice. Barbara Bennett, Backeberg’s younger sister, Bennett said in 2023 that their mother died without knowing what happened to Audrey.

‘Living her life’

Backeberg largely corroborated the account of her disappearance, Hansen said, adding that she had left of her own accord and has been “living her life ever since then.” He said the two did not discuss the abuse allegations.

“She left things behind, has done her own thing, and has done well,” Hanson said. “I was happy that she talked with me and I was able to get as much as I did.”

While not seeming upset at having been discovered, Backeberg seemed to want to protect her privacy, the detective said.

“It’s a lot,” Hanson said. “Sixty-two years, then, 10 minutes later, she’s talking to somebody, her locator, when she doesn’t want to be bothered or located.”

After speaking with her, Hanson said, he notified Backeberg’s family members. Bennett and other family members were “elated” but also experiencing mixed emotions at the news that Backeberg was alive, Hanson said.

Bennett could not immediately be reached Friday.

Backeberg had two children with her former husband, Ronald, who died in 2006. One of those children, James, died before Ronald, according to his obituary. Hanson said he had not spoken with Backeberg’s surviving daughter.

More information about the case, including photos, may be available next week, once an official report of Hanson’s investigation is completed, Lt. Scott Steinhorst said.

A cold case heats up

Hanson was assigned the case in late January, the first time it had been opened since 2002. From there, he examined police records from around the time Backeberg disappeared and other archived files, spoke with roughly 20 witnesses and family members, and consulted with about 10 law enforcement agencies around the country.

“I essentially got a box with all the case files from the ‘60s all the way up to present time,” Hanson said, adding that the most recent entry was from the mid-1960s, an arrest record from an undisclosed location outside Wisconsin and an alleged sighting around Reedsburg.

Most of the records related to the case from other law enforcement agencies were unavailable in digital format, Hanson said, meaning he had to go through microfilm archives and other archived files. He also relied on other records from the 1960s unrelated to the case, Hanson said.

“Good things happen when everybody works together,” Hanson said. “Without some of that stuff, I don’t think you solve the case. It’s crazy.”

An account of Bennett’s on Ancestry.com, as well as obituaries, yielded other clues, Hanson said.

“It was just a bunch of puzzle pieces,” Hanson said, adding that the sources led him to an address that he suspected was Backeberg’s.

He contacted a law enforcement agency in the area, which sent a detective to the address to investigate. Fifteen minutes later, the detective reported he had gone to the address and that the woman was indeed Backeberg.

“Honestly, it was just digging and digging and digging and digging, and kind of putting it all together,” Hanson said. “It ended up working out.”