Wisconsin mom of two found safe after vanishing without a trace more than 60 years ago: report

A Wisconsin mother of two — who had been missing for more than 60 years — has been found alive after investigators reopened her cold case and is reportedly living a “happy” life with “no regrets” for leaving her family.Audrey Backeberg was 20 years old, living with her husband, Ronald Backeberg, and their two children in Reedsburg, a city about 55 miles northwest of Madison, when she vanished from her home on July 7, 1962.For years, investigators with the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office had followed leads trying to piece together the young mother’s disappearance until the case eventually went cold.However, the sheriff’s office made a startling announcement Thursday that, despite all the decades that have passed, Backeberg was found “alive and well” living in another state.“Through diligent investigative work, which included a thorough re-evaluation of all case files and evidence, combined with re-interviewing witnesses and uncovering new insights, the Sheriff’s Office is now able to report that Audrey Backeberg is alive and well and currently resides out of State,” cops wrote in a press release.Detective Isaac Hanson led the investigation after the cold case was assigned to him in March as part of the sheriff’s office’s “comprehensive review as part of an ongoing examination of cold case files.”Hanson spent weeks re-interviewing witnesses, re-evaluating old evidence, and hunting down new leads to solve Backeberg’s disappearance.“The sister actually had an Ancestry.com account, and I was able to use that.That was pretty key in locating death records, census reports, all kinds of data,” the detective told WISN Friday.“Ultimately, we came up with an address … So I called the local sheriff’s department, said ‘Hey, there’s this lady living at this address.

Do you guys have somebody, you can just go pop in?’… Ten minutes later, she called me.”Hanson said he spoke with Backeberg for 45 minutes and told him she fled ...