A lady who disappeared greater than 6 many years in the past is discovered protected

Sixty-two years in the past, Audrey Backeberg disappeared from a small metropolis in south-central Wisconsin after reportedly hitchhiking together with her household’s babysitter and catching a bus to Indianapolis.

Final week, the Sauk County Sheriff’s Workplace introduced that the 20 12 months outdated who disappeared round a nook on the bus cease had been discovered alive and protected in one other state.

“She’s glad, protected and safe; And simply sort of lived underneath the radar for that lengthy,” Isaac Hanson, detective with the sheriff’s workplace, mentioned Monday, explaining that she selected to go away Reedsburg seemingly as a consequence of an abusive husband.

Hanson was assigned the case in late February and rapidly found an out-of-state arrest file that matched Backeberg. He and different officers met with Backeberg’s household to see if they’d a reference to that area. Additionally they began digging by Backeberg’s sister’s Ancestry.com account, pulling census data, obituaries and marriage licenses from that area.

Inside about two months, they discovered an handle the place a girl was dwelling that Hanson mentioned shared quite a lot of similarities with Backeberg, together with date of delivery and social safety quantity. Hanson was capable of get a deputy from that jurisdiction to go to the handle. Ten minutes later, Backeberg, now in her 80’s, known as Hanson.

“It occurred so quick,” he mentioned. “I used to be anticipating the deputy to name me again and say, ‘Oh no person answered the door.’ And I believed it was the deputy calling me, however it was really her. And to be sincere it was only a very informal dialog. I may sense that she clearly had her causes for leaving.”

Many of the info he realized throughout that decision he declined to share, saying that it was nonetheless essential to Backeberg that she not be discovered.

“I believe it overwhelmed her in fact with the feelings that she had, having a deputy present up at her home after which sort of name her out and speak together with her about what occurred and sort of relive 62 years in 45 minutes,” he mentioned.

Hanson described discovering her protected after greater than six many years virtually unprecedented. And whereas he doesn’t know what is going to occur subsequent when it comes to her household reconnecting, he mentioned he was glad that she will be able to attain out if she desires to.

“There’s household dwelling right here, so she has my contact quantity if she ever desires to succeed in out or wants something, any cellphone numbers of members of the family again right here,” he mentioned. “Finally she sort of holds the playing cards for that.”