Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 05/04/2025 2:56:03 AM PDT by lowbridge
A Wisconsin woman who disappeared more than 60 years ago has been found alive by authorities.
Audrey Backeberg left her Reedsburg home in July 1962 when she was 20 years old, a press release from the Sauk County Sheriff's Office said.
During a review of cold cases earlier this year, a detective reassessed the initial evidence and re-interviewed several witnesses, Sheriff Chip Meister said in the release.
Law enforcement departments across the country have been reviewing cold cases with the aid of new DNA technology, including the self-submit websites such as Ancestry.com.
As such sites have expanded, so have the number of solved cold cases, although not many cases result in a positive ending, especially over half a century later.
A babysitter for the Backeberg family originally told investigators that she and Audrey had hitchhiked to Madison, Wisconsin, where they caught a bus to Indianapolis, according to a missing poster that was on the Wisconsin Department of Justice's (DOJ) website.
The babysitter said she last saw Backeberg walking away from the bus stop around a corner on July 7, 1962.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
A better time.
If you wanted to begin again you could.
I would like to hear the rest of the story.
Me, too.
Like who went to jail because they thought he murdered her?
Also, why would she submit her DNA to an internet site unless SHE was looking for family?
She didn’t. Her sister had an ancestry.com account that linked to her address.....so apparently she was in contact with the sister? If Audrey herself submitted DNA there was no indication of it in the article....nor even that her sister had submitted her own DNA.
I have an ancestry.com account and have never submitted DNA.
For the address where they “found” her to be linked to her sister’s ancestry.com account, someone had to have linked it. Either she or her sister or some other relative that knew where she was.
That means her whereabouts was already known before the detective “found” her.
So the whole story is anti-climactic …. she wasn’t missing - and she obviously wasn’t trying to hide her location from anybody.
The family knew where she was, but no one bothered to inform the police.
“Also, why would she submit her DNA to an internet site unless SHE was looking for family?”
She probably was interested in learning more about her ethnic background.
She walked away from a toxic situation and started a new life. That was an option, then.
So would I. But according to the article:
“”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, and we talked for 45 minutes,” he said.
Backeberg may have originally left home due to an abusive husband but it’s unclear why she stayed away and out of touch for all these years, Hanson explained.
He would not reveal what exactly they discussed during that 45-minute call, saying, “I told Audrey I’d keep it private. She had her reasons for leaving.”
Some questions the article doesn’t mention. Why was the babysitter of this woman’s family decide to hitchhike with this woman and move out of state to; Indianapolis? Why would the babysitter let her out of her sight since they were both leaving the state? How old was she when she left the state? Who was the man that you see in the video that greets her, which seems strange as the article goes out of the way to say that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to reconnect with her family.
So many weird unanswered questions in this story.
I know we will never know, but I would still love to hear what Audrey’s story was/is.
I can somewhat imagine what her reasons for such a drastic step must have been.
How and why would the sister who had no idea where the estranged sister lived, actually link her own ancestry account to the estranged sister? Makes no sense at all.
The story doesn’t even mention who filed a missing person’s case back in the 60’s. Her siblings? Her parents?
Why isn't it an option now?
Perhaps her sister submitted her DNA sample to confirm that this really was her sister?
https://charleyproject.org/case/audrey-jean-good-backeberg
Audrey married Ronald Backeberg in 1957, when she was about fifteen years old. The couple had two children together and resided in Reedsburg, Wisconsin...
Authorities said that Audrey and Ronald's marriage was troubled and there were allegations of abuse. Audrey filed a criminal complaint against her husband on July 4, 1962. She said that Ronald beat her shortly beforehand, resulting in head injuries. Audrey also stated that Ronald threatened to murder her...
Audrey departed from her family's residence during the day on July 7, 1962, three days after she contacted authorities regarding Ronald's alleged behavior...
The couple's fourteen-year-old babysitter returned to Wisconsin shortly after Audrey disappeared. She claimed that she and Audrey hitchhiked to Madison, Wisconsin and then took a Greyhound bus to Indianapolis, Indiana shortly after Audrey vanished. After they left the bus, the girl decided to turn herself in as a runaway. She said she last saw Audrey walking around the corner away from the bus stop. 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...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.