A woman missing for over 60 years has been located.
According to ABC affiliate WISN, Audrey Backeberg went missing from her home in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, at age 20 in 1962. Backeberg’s disappearance had long been in the cold case pile until Detective Isaac Hanson of the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office decided to take another crack at it.
“The sister actually had an Ancestry.com account, and I was able to use that,” Hanson says. “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, and we talked for 45 minutes.”
Backeberg is indeed alive and well, though the exact reason for her initial departure remains unknown.
“I think she just was removed and, you know, moved on from things and kind of did her own thing and [lived] her life,” Hanson says. “She sounded happy. Confident in her decision. No regrets.”