Pod Insights Criminology Ryan Borgwardt About this episode On August 11th, 2024, 44-year-old father of three, Ryan Borgwardt went missing. He had gone kayak fishing on Big Green Lake in Wisconsin. His wallet and keys were found as was his capsized kayak. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Ryan Borgwardt. The authorities and his family feared he was dead and possibly at the bottom of the lake. Massive searches ensued but information soon came to light indicating that Ryan had used his passport to cross over into Canada. What came to light was a web of lies of deceit that shocked everyone.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 340 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.
0:43 Speaker 02 And this is Mike Morford.
0:45 Speaker 01 Mr. Morford, how are you doing in this new year of 2025?
0:51 Speaker 02 I'm doing good. I've enjoyed a little downtime here over the holidays, spent time with the family and relaxed. And I'm ready to jump back into the swing of things for 2025. How about you?
1:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, same here. I mean, the week off was nice, you know, really get to recharge the batteries, spend a lot of quality time with family. So it was really good. My wife and I were talking the other day about, I guess, being younger back in the eighties. And you think about it flipping to 1980, when you're in elementary school. And then you think about how far away 2025 would be at that point in time. I mean, you think more of in the eighties, nineties, they were setting futuristic sci-fi movies at this point in time. And here we are.
1:43 Speaker 01 But of course they had flying cars and, you know, robots, you know, all kinds of really futuristic stuff. It's just hard to believe it's 2025, I guess is what I'm saying.
1:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, the older you get, the faster it goes by too, so.
1:58 Speaker 01 Well, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. Lynn Davis jumped out at our highest level. We had Rosa Escada Solis, Ann Anderson, and Brandon Holland. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it.
2:13 Speaker 02 Thank you so much to everybody that supports us on Patreon. It means a lot to us. For anyone else that would like to, you could head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.
2:24 Speaker 01 All right. So we're jumping right into our first case of 2025. And we ended 2024 talking about the disappearance of Hannah Kobayashi. Just to quickly recap, she failed to catch a scheduled connecting flight from LAX to New York. And in the days after, she sent a few cryptic texts about being hacked and stripped of her identity. Then she went completely off the grid, and her family feared the worst. Fortunately for Hannah and her family, she was fine. She hadn't been abducted, trafficked, or killed. It seems like she just wanted to disconnect a bit, and had a family that cared about her, who wasn't exactly in the loop.
3:08 Speaker 01 We thought the recent developments regarding the missing persons case of Ryan Borgwardt would be an interesting contrast to the events that unfolded during the search for Hannah Kobayashi. Ryan Borgwardt basically did what some people have accused Hannah and her family of doing, misleading the public and authorities, wasting important resources, and potentially damaging future searches for people who are legitimately missing and endangered.
3:39 Speaker 02 On August 11, 2024, Ryan and his family went to church, just like they did on any other Sunday. Afterward, the 44-year-old father of three drove the 50-something miles from their home in Watertown, Wisconsin, to Big Green Lake in Green Lake, Wisconsin, where he planned to go fishing using his kayak. The last time his wife Emily heard from her husband was at 10:49 PM, when he sent her a text to inform her he would soon be on his way back to the shore, when he didn't return. Return, it worried Emily. She reported him missing on August 12th. Authorities went to Big Green Lake to start their search. Ryan's van and the trailer used to transport the kayak were still at Dodge Memorial Park, near the boat launch there. His kayak was found in the lake upside down,
4:25 Speaker 02 with the life preserver still attached to it. Green Lake is known for its depth. In fact, it's one of the deepest inland lakes in the entire state of Wisconsin. The part of the lake where they located the kayak was more than 200 feet deep. This didn't look good for Ryan. Obviously, it appeared that his kayak had capsized, and he wasn't able to get to the life preserver. First responders worried that they would be doing recovery and not a rescue.
4:49 Speaker 01 So Morf, I know you do a little bit of fishing, right?
4:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, I do some fishing close to where we are at, but I definitely don't go out on any kayaks.
4:58 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, down in Florida, I don't think you want to be kayaking too much around, you know, alligators and things like that. I have never fished from a kayak, but I've seen it on YouTube. It looks like a lot of fun. It also looks like a lot of work, to be honest with you, but, you know, I did want to kind of talk about this lake. You think about the depth of a lake, 200 feet, you know, that's, that's pretty, uh, that's a pretty deep lake compared to what I'm used to. Most of the lakes that I fish are, you know, maybe 40 feet deep at their deepest parts, but there are some really big lakes out there.
5:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think when you go, somebody goes missing on a lake like that, with that kind of depth, you've got a whole special set of circumstances you have to think about. Maybe divers, what kind of divers are qualified to jump in there and look around? And what are the challenges of finding somebody missing in that kind of water?
5:58 Speaker 01 For weeks, authorities and volunteers scoured the lake in search of Ryan's body. Dive teams, sonar, underwater drones, air support, and multiple canines were deployed. While they did not find Ryan, they did recover his fishing pole and his tackle box, which had his driver's license, wallet, and keys inside. They knew it was his fishing pole because his wife positively identified it for them. This all backed up the idea that he had likely drowned in the lake. Investigators were undeterred by the passing of time and the difficulty of searching the lake. They feared that Ryan was dead, but they were determined to find his body.
6:42 Speaker 01 The community and Ryan's family were also convinced that he was dead. According to People Magazine, his wife Emily wrote online, "While I will never understand why God had to take Ryan home way sooner than I would have liked, I will be forever at peace, knowing that he's enjoying heaven with his Savior." And Morphe, you and I have done a lot of cases that involved searches, you know, searching for missing people, searching for people who, you know, are thought to be dead, searching for their bodies. It never fails to amaze me how many people, you know, come out, volunteer their time. Obviously, you're going to have the authorities involved.
7:26 Speaker 01 I mean, they get paid to do that, but there are a lot of people who volunteer, you know, their time freely, and it is absolutely amazing to me.
7:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think we all know about the, the police and the tools they have, the resources they have, but one thing that always seems to come into play in these kind of searches are just the sheer amount of people volunteering their time and, and energy. And sometimes they don't even know the person they're looking for. They just want to help a family out. So it was, it was clearly a group effort here. And in the eyes of the family and law enforcement, they were looking to recover his body and they thought he was, he was dead.
8:13 Speaker 01 But you can understand why people would think that. You know, you have a capsized kayak, a fishing pole, his wallet, driver's license, keys, all of that stuff. The scene would make pretty much everyone lean towards that conclusion.
8:33 Speaker 02 And had this been like a very shallow bit of water or something not very wide, maybe 10, 12 feet deep, if they didn't find his body in, under those conditions, you know, you might think, hey, what's going on here? This doesn't seem like everything meets the eye. But here in this 200 feet deep water is a little bit more of a possibility that, you know, that they weren't finding his body due to the depth of it. Sometime in early October, the search for Ryan came to a sudden stop. It was discovered that on August 13th, the day after Emily reported Ryan missing, his name was searched by border patrol in the Canadian law enforcement database.
9:16 Speaker 02 This information really changed everything for those involved in the case. It changed the entire scope of the investigation and it changed reality for Ryan's family. Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podle, who was in charge of the search for Ryan, told People Magazine, "That was something we didn't expect. Authorities stopped focusing on the lake since it seemed there was proof that Ryan was still alive and they began to look at his actions in the days before his disappearance." Ryan's wife, Emily, provided investigators with his laptop and a digital forensic analysis was performed.
9:49 Speaker 01 Looking into his online activity, it became clear that Ryan had hatched a plan to fake his own death and it seemed to work. Authorities were so convinced he was in the lake that, you know, they searched it for weeks. It's likely that if he had just stayed in the country somehow or avoided having his name run through an official database, he would have continued to get away with it. His passport being used was pretty good proof that he was not dead in that lake. There was one issue though, they hadn't been looking into the possibility. That he faked his own death because his driver's license, phone and passport were all left behind. They found the passport at home where it should have been. Police
10:33 Speaker 01 were puzzled. How could he possibly start over without any of this? This led investigators to discover that Ryan had a second passport. In the spring, he falsely reported that his passport had been lost or stolen so he could obtain his second secret passport, which was issued to him on May 22nd, less than three months early.
10:58 Speaker 02 Ryan had apparently been planning this for quite some time. In January 2024, he secretly took out a $375,000 life insurance policy on himself with his family members listed as beneficiaries, though no one ever attempted to cash in this policy. By the time of his disappearance, Ryan had secretly racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt and his wife would still be on the hook for the payments. It's possible he felt that the life insurance money could cover anything he left her on her own to pay. Ryan had even opened a foreign bank account, began to transfer money to it so that he would have funds that wouldn't trigger any activity on his known cards or accounts. At some point, he started scrolling away cash and took $5,500 in cash with him when
11:43 Speaker 02 he disappeared. He also purchased gift cards for airline tickets.
11:47 Speaker 01 A few weeks before faking his death, Ryan secretly bought an e-bike. Ryan was self-employed. He owned his own woodworking business to hide the e-bike from Emily. He kept it at his woodworking shop instead of bringing it home. When he loaded it up into his van, he made sure to back it up in such a way that the security cameras there wouldn't capture the bike at all. The day he disappeared, Ryan changed the email addresses linked to his bank accounts. And just before leaving for Green Lake, he cleared his browser history. He had also at some point replaced the entire hard drive in his laptop in an attempt to
12:29 Speaker 01 cover his tracks. This didn't stop investigators from following his digital trail because the day he left for his new life, he also synced his laptop to his iCloud account and apparently ended up accidentally backing everything up on the new hard drive. So more of I think we need to take a second here and just kind of talk about all of the different things that Ryan did before he went missing. I mean, obviously, this was something that he had been thinking about. This was not a spur of the moment decision.
13:07 Speaker 01 You know, the filing for a new passport, opening foreign bank accounts, buying this electric bike, you know, replacing your hard drive, trying to get rid of your digital footprint. I mean, there was a lot that went in to his plan.
13:24 Speaker 02 In the whole time we're talking about these details, it made me think for a second, had this happened in, say, the 1970s or 80s before there were, you know, so much of a digital trail and clues to work with, would this have been something he easily would have gotten away with? There would probably be no way to track all this stuff and connect all these dots. So, you know, sometimes the lack of technology hurts in solving crimes, older crimes, but in newer crimes here or newer cases that we talk about at least, sometimes in newer cases that we talk about having that technology at investigators' fingertips can help provide answers.
14:07 Speaker 01 But like we see in, in many cases, right? No matter how much planning someone does, it can be hard to get everything right. And you think about this replacement of the hard drive and then the kind of debacle with the iCloud account. I don't really understand how the, the cloud works, to be honest with you. Maybe I'm showing my age there. I mean, I back stuff up to the cloud, but I don't always realize, you know, when it's happening or how to turn it off or all of the ramifications to it. It kind of goes back to your point, right? This new technology, does everybody fully understand what they're doing, what, you
14:52 Speaker 01 know, authorities are able to access? And it's always changing. So to that point, people are. Going to continue to make mistakes, which is a good thing because it sometimes leads to helping the authorities to solve some of these cases.
15:11 Speaker 02 And it just shows that as much as somebody can plan, there's always things they don't think about, you know, even something like the passport being flagged. You know, it seems like he probably, if he had been able to start a new identity somehow with an all new passport, that was the clue that got them on the path to finding out he wasn't dead. But instead he chose to use the same name and got a replacement passport. And had that not happened, he might've gotten away with this.
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16:56 Speaker 02 Investigators were able to find that Ryan was in close communication with a woman from Uzbekistan, and at least one photo of her was recovered from the laptop. There was a file on his computer titled "Promise." It contained the plans he was making with the woman from Uzbekistan, and it detailed how they would begin their new life together. Authorities were able to make contact with Ryan on November 11th. It's been reported that they found him through a Russian-speaking woman. According to ABC News, they sent him an email that made his heart hit the floor, and he answered it. Inside the email from authorities, there was a photo of the woman that had been taken from his own laptop. This caused Ryan to realize that investigators knew everything.
17:37 Speaker 01 Ryan deliberately left his laptop behind because it would have been a red flag if he took it on his fishing trip with him. In today's world, it holds a lot of weight to see technology left behind. When you walk away from your phone and computer, you're essentially walking away from everything. Yeah, you can log into things using passwords, but many times you still have to verify that it's you using that password by being texted a code. He knew that no one would buy the death if it didn't look like he left everything behind. But obviously, what authorities found on that technology was what ultimately doomed him.
18:18 Speaker 01 Now, they not only knew he was alive, but they knew who he was with. At the request of authorities, Ryan filmed a video of himself to prove that it was really him speaking to investigators. According to CNN, in the video, Ryan said, "I am in my apartment. I am safe, secure, no problem." While this did confirm that he was alive and that he had faked his own death, Ryan refused to reveal his location, and he was adamant that he would not be returning to the United States. He expressed to investigators that he was hesitant to come home because he feared that no one will accept him. And I think it's very understandable, more that he would fear this.
19:01 Speaker 01 You know, you think about what he had done to his family, to his friends, to everyone who knew him. You're essentially saying, "I don't want to be around you anymore, and I'm okay with you thinking that I'm now dead."
19:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think to a lot of people, that's very cowardice. He doesn't have the respect and ability to be honest with his wife and children and just tell them the truth. Instead, he has to come up with this elaborate plan instead of just saying, I'm not happy anymore. I want to leave. I want to start my life over. And he didn't do that. So I think that's what probably has a lot of people so interested in this case, that he could go through all these steps to try and avoid doing that. According to CNN, Ryan Borgwardt's family was very emotional upon learning the news that Ryan was alive. Normally, that would be amazing news, but the fact he
19:58 Speaker 02 had decided to leave them and lie to them overshadowed the joy of learning that he hadn't drowned. Just the added level of confusion and hurt would probably be overwhelming for them to deal with. The news even affected those who had spent countless hours searching for him. Keith Cormican, who runs Bruce's Legacy, a volunteer organization providing search and recovery operations for drowned victims, told the AP News, "You meet all kinds in the world, and I guess this guy went to the extremes, faking his disappearance. So it's a first." Cormican is just one of the many people who searched for Ryan for weeks. The search took a personal toll on his self-esteem. He told CNN, "My success rate is pretty good." And he added,
20:41 Speaker 02 "To not be able to find him really had me questioning my abilities, and I lost a lot of sleep over it."
20:47 Speaker 01 Authorities continued to speak with Ryan, and they tried to coax him into coming home. Sheriff Pottle told CNN, "Christmas is coming, and what better gift he could give his kids than to be there for Christmas with them?" Despite what he had said earlier about having no intention to return, Ryan wound up flying back to the US. On December 10th, once back in the United States, Ryan Borgwardt turned himself in. At the Green Lake County Government Center, he was arrested and charged with one count of obstructing an officer. This is a misdemeanor charge stemming from the actions he took to make investigators believe he had drowned. Though faking your own death is not technically illegal,
21:31 Speaker 01 deliberately misleading authorities during the course of an investigation is. His actions were specifically intended to launch a needless investigation, though I'm sure he probably didn't think it was going to end up being as large of an investigation as it ended up being. He faces up to nine months in prison, a fee up to $10,000 or both. Since none of his family members had tried to collect his life insurance, it's unclear whether he can be charged with felony insurance fraud.
22:05 Speaker 02 Extradating Ryan from another country over a misdemeanor charge may have posed a challenge to investigators. And this is likely why they were kind to him and tried to appeal to his emotions when they were corresponding, rather than focusing on the criminal or justice aspect. It could have spooked him, and then there would have been nothing they could do. Authorities are also seeking restitution for the money spent searching for him. This $40,000 maximum fee only includes the taxpayer-funded services and wouldn't provide any reimbursement to Bruce's legacy. In just the first two weeks of the search, the organization spent $10,000, which includes some damaged equipment they will need to repair or replace before they can help with another search.
22:48 Speaker 01 Ryan apparently never gave a thought to these volunteers when he hatched his plan because according to him, he had no idea that organizations like Bruce's legacy even existed, let alone that they would be involved in the search for his body. According to Sheriff Pottle in a CNN interview, Ryan does feel bad about the amount of hours that people spent searching for him. He figured that the police would quickly come to the conclusion that he drowned in the lake and it was just too deep and large to find his body. Then they would stop looking for him. One week, maybe two weeks of a search, max. But that's not what happened here. They continued to search for him for months.
23:31 Speaker 01 Sheriff Pottle told npr.org, "He didn't expect this to go more than two weeks in searching for him." Well, I hate to tell you, you picked the wrong sheriff and the wrong department.
23:43 Speaker 02 So I'm thinking about everything Ryan did here and the ripple effects it it had and could have had. For example, this organization is there to help try and save him or recover his body as a worst case scenario. And they wound up having damaged equipment. So now it affects the next family who they want to go out and help because they can't help until they've get that equipment replaced or repaired. So, you know, I don't think Ryan thought about, you know, the chain reaction this could have, or if, what if one of these divers or one of the volunteers on the search had some kind of medical emergency while they were searching and died out in the lake. You know, things like that, that could be direct results of what he had set in motion.
24:29 Speaker 01 Well, and I think it's something we talked about before. You think of it like a spider web. You know, the actions of someone have so many different effects and it just kind of radiates out. And I'm sure he didn't think about really any of it.
24:49 Speaker 02 And my thinking is if if he didn't think about the feelings of his own wife or children that he could do this to them, then he probably most certainly wasn't thinking about anybody else that would be, you know, out trying to recover him.
25:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, if you can do what Ryan did to your family, then you know, you can do just about anything and not really care about people outside your family, I'm sure.
25:21 Speaker 02 According to CNN, Ryan told investigators, everything hinged on me dying in the lake. His plan was for people to believe he was dead so that they wouldn't look for him, not for a huge search to start. This is why he used the lake instead of just parking his car somewhere and walking off. The whole idea was to sell the death. Ryan has admitted much of how he pulled off faking his death. He told investigators that he had been doing research on how to pull this off, including looking up cases of other people who faked their own deaths and figuring out which lake was the deepest near him. He also looked up how deep a body would have to be underwater for it to sink rather than eventually float. This is why he settled on Big Green Lake. It fit all the criteria.
26:05 Speaker 01 Ryan put the full plan in motion on the Thursday or Friday before his disappearance. He planned his trip for a night that looked best in terms of weather, since he knew he would be wet and the wind on him would be chilling. Ryan didn't really want to drown in the lake, so he went to Walmart to try and purchase a life vest. But they just happened to be out of them that day, so he went without one. He did have the life preserver on the kayak, but leaving that behind was a big part of his plan. At Walmart, he did buy a backpack and a UW Oshkosh hat. Of course, he was never actually going fishing. Instead, he took his kayak out
26:47 Speaker 01 onto Big Green Lake until he got to what he felt was the deepest area and then started inflating a children's boat he brought with him. Once that was inflated, he turned his kayak upside down and dropped his phone and tackle box in the water. He then went back to shore in the inflatable boat where he had an e-bike stashed in the tree lot.
27:11 Speaker 02 Ryan's plan almost fell apart at the lake. When he tried to get out of the water, he ended up in mud and muck up to his waist. As he tried to cross the road, he realized he was leaving muddy footprints emerging from the lake and heading straight to where his van was parked. He attempted to cover his tracks by washing the footprints off the road, but after just two, he gave up and continued with his plan. Luckily for him, investigators did not find these prints when they searched the area. Because it was so dark and he hadn't had the bike for long, Ryan had trouble figuring out how to turn it on. He manually pedaled it for a bit before he was able to get it powered up. He then used that bike to ride about 80 miles to Dutch Mill Park
27:52 Speaker 02 and Ride in Madison, Wisconsin. He threw away the inflatable raft and his dirty clothes and left the e-bike before continuing on his way.
28:00 Speaker 01 Now, this is a six, almost seven-hour bike ride. According to Google Maps, Just imagine, you know, if Ryan couldn't get the bike started or the battery had died, this seven hour trip could be done faster if you're riding at your top speed constantly. And I'm sure there was adrenaline from hoping that, you know, he wouldn't get caught. That would be helpful for speeding up the ride, but it was still quite the trip. If anything went wrong with the bike, he was on his own. No matter how fast he was able to get from Green Lake to Madison, it shows extreme forethought and dedication. It was such a long bike ride that Ryan needed to change the battery during the trip.
28:42 Speaker 01 He had thought of that possibility and planned for it, bringing along an extra one. Despite planning for good weather, he still had to stop and change his wet shoes and pants on the way to Madison because he got so cold while he was riding the bike.
28:57 Speaker 02 It's possible that Ryan planned to take a break sometime overnight, and he didn't set out thinking he would need to ride through the night. He told investigators that after he went to Walmart, but prior to going to Big Green Lake, he went to the home of a friend he thought was away to try and gather stove pellets. If he was planning to ride his bike straight to a bus station without stopping, it's uncertain what those stove pellets would have been used for. Perhaps if Ryan figured out he would be wet and cold, he could find somewhere to hunker down for a bit and change his clothes, warm up, maybe even cook something, then that makes more sense.
29:32 Speaker 01 By 5:00 AM, when he knew his wife would be waking up as she normally did, Ryan felt that there was no turning back. From Madison, he took a Greyhound bus to Milwaukee, where he caught another bus to Chicago, Illinois. From Chicago, he took a bus to Detroit, Michigan. At a minimum, direct from Madison to Detroit, this is a 10 hour trip, and it would have been much longer with these connecting routes. From Detroit, he took another bus that crossed the Canadian border, using the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. According to ABC News, once Ryan was in Canada, border patrol agents were suspicious due to his lack of driver's license or any booked
30:15 Speaker 01 Travel plans, they took him aside for questioning. And this is when his name was entered into their law enforcement databases. The phone he had, likely a burner phone, wasn't working and he couldn't get it to unlock, which made them even more suspicious of him. With no criminal history, he was allowed to enter the country. He went straight to the airport in Toronto. There, he caught a flight to Paris, France. During that flight, he saw the headlines about his disappearance and figured he had gotten away with it all.
30:48 Speaker 02 Once he landed in France, Ryan booked another flight to a country in Eastern Europe or somewhere in Asia. Authorities haven't specified, but it seems highly likely that he flew to Uzbekistan or Georgia. He was picked up from the airport by a woman who then spent several days in a hotel room with him. Authorities have not clarified whether this woman was the previously mentioned woman from Uzbekistan, but it makes sense to assume that it's the same woman. After a few days in the hotel with the unknown woman, Ryan started living in Georgia. Articles and reports note that he took up residency, but nothing specific is detailed. When he was living in Georgia, he tried to follow the news about the search for him back in the States, but he was also careful not to be detected.
31:33 Speaker 02 He mostly avoided clicking on any articles and instead stuck to reading headlines. When he did click, though, he made sure he was using a VPN that placed him in countries other than Georgia. Ryan thought that if authorities figuring out that he was still alive was inevitable, as it must have seemed when the search for him just kept going, he could at least keep them from finding his current location.
31:56 Speaker 01 On Thursday, December 12th, 2024, Emily Borgwardt filed for a legal separation because their marriage, according to AP News, was irretrievably broken. In her eyes, they had been married for 22 years. In the state of Wisconsin, now, obviously, a legal separation is different than a divorce filing. With a separation, the couple remains legally married, but a judge will still rule on issues like assets and custody. Like in a divorce case, Emily is asking the court for sole custody of their three teenage children. Two of them are in high school and the youngest is in middle school. The AP News
32:36 Speaker 01 article that first discussed this development mentions that there are no further details in the document, but for Ryan to do all of this to get away from his wife, it seems clear that their marriage was indeed broken beyond repair. When your husband fakes his own death to have an affair and leaves you and the three children you shared to grieve for him and try to navigate life alone, it's pretty hard to imagine that there would ever be trust or respect in that relationship again. And we don't know exactly, you know, what the state of their relationship was before Ryan left, but obviously more after
33:18 Speaker 01 he did what he did, that that marriage is going to be broken. I think it's pretty hard to come back from something like that.
33:25 Speaker 02 It seemed like for Emily, it definitely was and she wasn't having any second thoughts. She was doing this as a, as a way to end the marriage.
33:35 Speaker 01 Well, I think for most, that would be a deal breaker. You're going to fake your death to go live your life with a woman in Europe and make us all think you're dead. Not taking you back after that one.
33:51 Speaker 02 And this isn't just a case of a husband tiring of the marriage with his wife and walking away from it. Divorces and breakups happen all the time. But in this situation, Ryan also walked away from his children with the intent to make them think he was dead. It seems like it may be hard for the kids to repair the relationship too with their father. And after all, could you really look up to your dad after this knowing he very intentionally decided and planned to hurt you and your family? At the same time, when a loved one passes, we all want just five more minutes with that person. One more hug, one more opportunity to say what you left unsaid. You'd give anything to get that person back for any amount of time. This family thought they lost Ryan. They were presented
34:34 Speaker 02 with his belongings to identify and they mourned him for months. The level of betrayal here on Ryan's part is incredible.
34:41 Speaker 01 It's obvious that Ryan knew what he was doing was wrong. You know, you mentioned it more, plenty of people leave their partners, people even abandon their families. There's that stereotype of a father going out for milk and never coming back for some reason. The stereotype is not that he faked his death and flew overseas to meet his online girlfriend. Ryan wanted to be free of his family and not have anyone look at him in a negative light. We see this very often in the true crime world. And I guess all we can do here is be happy that he thought he could get away with faking his own death. I mean, all too often, some of these men that want to be free of their families, resort
35:24 Speaker 01 to violence to reach that goal. And you think about Chris Watts, Jeffrey McDonald, John List, Ronald DeFeo Jr. These were all family annihilators. And the list could go on and on. While Ryan's actions were hurtful and deceitful, it is a relief that we can say he still has a family to face in the wake of his actions.
35:51 Speaker 02 So now we know how Ryan did what he did. But the big question many are still asking is, why? Aside from seeing another woman, we don't know why Ryan decided to fake his own death. According to Sheriff Pottle, in an npr.org interview, Ryan gave a number of reasons for his actions, adding that he just had personal matters going on, and he thought this was the right thing to do. We also don't know exactly why Ryan decided to come back to the United States. The sheriff Pottle admitted that investigators had been pulling at his heartstrings and telling him that he could still clean up the mess that he had created. Sheriff Pottle told Vox 6 Now that the public may never know why Ryan decided to come home. And that's something that's going to be up to him someday. We're not going to release that.
36:37 Speaker 01 We don't know how things went with the woman Ryan met overseas. And $5,500 couldn't have lasted him very long, especially with multiple international flights and having to pay for hotel rooms. He could have come home to make amends and own up to what he did, but he also could have just run out of other options. In the proof of life video he sent to investigators, Ryan looks very down. The fact that he started living in Georgia, not Uzbekistan, is also odd if he went there to be with the woman. There are rumors that he may have been catfished by someone and that the woman was a decoy or allure.
37:20 Speaker 01 She did take an hour to pick him up from the airport. So maybe she never expected that he would actually show up there in person.
37:28 Speaker 02 There's one additional detail that may not even be Ryan, but it's interesting. There's a video clip online of a man riding a bike in San Diego who stops to talk to a young woman, holding a sign that says, "Ask me for free advice." The man asked her if he should go to Uzbekistan or if he should stay with his family. When the woman asked him what would be in Uzbekistan for him, he said he wanted to meet a woman and talked about being unhappy in his marriage. While the man does resemble Ryan, it's hard to tell if it's him. Seeing the hairline would really be helpful. Unfortunately, this man was wearing a beanie that managed to cover all of it. It would be even more compelling if the video had been filmed in Wisconsin, not California. And authorities involved in the investigation into his disappearance
38:13 Speaker 02 did watch this video and they did not believe that it was Ryan. But what a huge coincidence. Uzbekistan for a woman, cycling, unhappy marriage? Those are all elements of this case. And we do know that Ryan was planning this for at least a few months. The video is from June of 2023 or 2024. So it fits in with the timeline of Ryan hatching this plan.
38:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, like you said, Morf, we don't know if this is Ryan or not, but it's such a strange thing. I mean, what are the odds that a random person is riding a bike, asks this woman if he should go to Uzbekistan to be with a woman? And is unhappy with his marriage? If it's not Ryan, it's the weirdest coincidence ever.
39:02 Speaker 02 And does that mean some other guy out there is planning something similar to what Ryan did for a similar situation?
39:09 Speaker 01 Or a lot of men are being catfished by women from Uzbekistan. I don't know. One interesting thing to note in this case is that investigators are concerned that they can't provide any help or protection to the woman Ryan was with. The question is, why would authorities in the U.S. be worried about protecting a woman from overseas who seemingly entered into a relationship with Ryan? It's not clear what or who they would want to protect her from. Sheriff Pottle seems like a very empathetic person, and it's possible that he's concerned that she will face judgment in her community since this made such big news.
39:52 Speaker 01 They're being pretty careful not to reveal her identity so far, and it seems deliberate.
39:58 Speaker 02 Ryan, who's now 45, has been released on bail. He didn't have to pay any percentage of the $500 signature bond that was issued because this type of bond only requires a promise that he will appear. If he does, he won't owe any money to the court. It's interesting that he was released on his own recognizance because this is generally only used when the person is facing minor charges and poses no flight risk. Ryan's crime involved leaving the country, so he clearly seems like a flight risk, although he did have to surrender his passport as a condition of his release. Hopefully both passports, just in case. Ryan's parents were present at his initial court hearing, but did not speak with him at all.
40:40 Speaker 01 Brian Borgwardt is due back in court on January 13th. He's indicated that he has plans to represent himself in court due to a lack of funds. He told the judge at his initial hearing that he had just $20 left in his wallet. He does still have the option of being assigned a court-appointed public defender. He will likely decide which path to take at this next hearing if he doesn't decide to plead guilty to the charge. There's also a hearing regarding the separation in April.
41:12 Speaker 02 So at the beginning of this episode, we mentioned we wanted to cover the Ryan Borgwardt case right after covering the Hannah Kobayashi case to compare and contrast the details. In Ryan's case, his actions were clearly deliberate and he's only been charged with a misdemeanor. There was no GoFundMe setup for him, but volunteers did spend a ton of money. The restitution he's potentially looking at paying so far doesn't include any of the volunteer funds or equipment and his family is obviously broken. Ryan deliberately laid a plan into motion to make it seem like he was dead, wasting resources in the time of investigators. Whereas in Hannah's case, she simply walked away from her life. In both instances, families were affected and heartbroken and will never be the same.
41:57 Speaker 01 So there are some similarities between the two cases, but there are a lot of differences. When I look at, you know, what Ryan Borgwardt did, this elaborate plan to fake your death, for what? To leave your life, to be rid of your wife and kids so that you can create a new life with this woman in Uzbekistan? I mean, it's just, it's so wrong on so many levels. You know, first off, I'm thinking about his family and it just has to be devastating for his wife, for his kids, to think about, you know, a man that you've been married
42:40 Speaker 01 to for 22 years and that he's willing to go to these lengths to get away. Okay. That's going to be tough on anyone. Same with the kids. But I, I'm just left with, you know, how selfish this guy was. Now, obviously more if it was all about him, he didn't care about his family. He didn't care about what people would go through in attempting to locate him or find his body. He didn't care about anything other than what he wanted.
43:18 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I think there's key differences between his case and Hannah's case. Hannah's case seems like it was sort of a haphazard, last second, unplanned, no real plan at all, whereas Ryan took specific steps.
43:39 Speaker 02 A long time in advance to get ready to do this and to fool his family and police and everyone that would be looking for him. So, and I think we mentioned it's clearly elements of Ryan's plan involved the crime, involved trying to get the police to do something based on false information. So I think that's a key difference in the case, in the cases.
44:10 Speaker 01 But I think a lot of people, you know, are or are going to be upset that, you know, what's really going to happen to Ryan? I mean, this was a misdemeanor charge. So, I mean, what are the ramifications going to be? You know, it's not like he's going to spend a lot of time, if any, incarcerated. Now, he's wrecked his life, but he did that on his own. His family will never be the same. He's never going to be viewed the same
44:45 Speaker 01 as, you know, he was before. He may be wrecked financially, but as far as sanctions imposed on him by the state, I don't think there will be all that much.
45:01 Speaker 02 And ironically, he got what he wanted. He's away from his family, just not the way he pictured it. And I wonder if there's somebody out there that's willing to pay him for a book or a movie about this case. And it is an interesting story, but you hate to see somebody that did this, was this deceitful profit in some way from it.
45:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, you don't want him to reap any benefits, right, for, for doing what he did, but it could happen. It has happened before. But I guess we'll have to to wait and see how things kind of play out. But that's it for our episode on Ryan Borgwardt. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a five star rating. You can leave a review as well. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps us out.
45:56 Speaker 02 If you want to find us on social media, we're on X with the handle at criminology pod. You can also find us on Facebook by Facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans.
46:11 Speaker 01 So that's it for another episode of criminology, our first of 2025. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next week with a brand new episode. So for Mike.
46:24 Speaker 02 And Morph.
46:24 Speaker 01 We'll talk to you next week.
46:26 Speaker 02 Take care, everyone, and happy new year.
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