A woman who went missing nearly 63 years ago has been found “alive and well”.
Audrey Backeberg, a mother of two, disappeared in the summer of 1962, leaving behind her husband and two young children.
According to the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office, the woman, now 82, has recently been found outside of Wisconsin where she had resided.
Back in 1962, Backeberg had gone to pick up her paycheck and then hitchhiked to Madison, the capital of Wisconson, with her teenage babysitter.
Just a few days prior to that, she had filed a criminal complaint against her husband.
Backeberg and her babysitter eventually took a bus to Indianapolis, before the teen grew nervous and decided to go home. She was the last person to see Backeburg, who was 20 years old at the time.
Her family insisted that she would never abandon her young children. At the same time, her husband was cleared of any suspicion after passing a polygraph test.
While investigators have tried to track her down for many years, they were ultimately unsuccessful and her disappearance eventually became a cold case. It wasn’t until earlier this year that Backeberg’s whereabouts were finally discovered.
Detective Isaac Hanson, the one who found Backeberg, interviewed several witnesses and re-examined the evidence. In the end, however, it was thanks to her sister’s account on Ancestry.com that allowed him to get the answers.
Using the available census reports and death records, Hanson was able to determine the address of Backeberg. He subsequently called the local police department and asked them to check in on her.
While Hanson “had high hopes”, there was no guarantee that it would be her.
Several minutes after making the request, Hanson received a phone call from Backeberg herself and they talked for 45 minutes. He promised to keep what they spoke about private but did not rule out the possibility that she had left way back then due to marital problems.
While it’s unclear why she had “stayed away for so long”, Hanson said “she sounded happy” and had no regrets on what she did over six decades ago.
After updating police on the situation, officials decided to leave Backeberg be, concluding that her disappearance was not due to foul play or criminal activity.
The discovery comes just a few months after a British woman was re-discovered after going missing decades ago.
In 1972, Sheila Fox, 16, disappeared from her Coventry home, leaving her family worried. There were rumors that she had left with an older man, whose identity remains a mystery.
In the end, her whereabouts remained unknown for several decades. It wasn’t until detectives put out a new appeal earlier this year with her photo that she was found.
