A missing woman who vanished without a trace more than 60 years ago has been found alive — and the detective who tracked her took just two months to find her.
Audrey Backeberg - who was just 20 years old when she disappeared from her hometown of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, in July 1962 - has been located “alive and well” at the age of 82, authorities announced on May 2, 2025.
The case had haunted her family and investigators for decades. Audrey had told her husband she was heading out to collect a paycheck at a local woolen mill. She never returned.
“I ended up locating an arrest record that I suspected was likely Audrey, so I contacted her family. She has a living sister in the area," Detective Isaac Hanson told WMTV.
Hanson had reopened the case in 2024 as part of a wider cold case review by the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office.
According to Hanson, it was a combination of combing through dusty archives, faded microfilm records, and old police files that began to produce leads.
“[Audrey's sister] had been collecting materials and several other family members had been collecting over the years," Hanson revealed, before adding: “What helped the case immensely was combing through death records and marriage licenses.”
But it wasn’t until Audrey’s sister’s Ancestry.com profile lit up with a connection to a specific address that things took a turn. Putting all the "puzzle pieces" together, he asked the local sheriff’s office to check out the address.
“I had high hopes; there wasn’t a certainty that we would know it was her,” Hanson told WISN.
“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.”
That phone call changed everything. After more than six decades of searching, Audrey Backeberg was no longer a missing person - and it took Hanson less than two months to piece everything together.
“[Audrey] sounded happy. Confident in her decision. No regrets,” Hanson told WISN. “I think she just was removed and, you know, moved on from things and kind of did her own thing and lead her life.”
Authorities confirmed that Audrey had left her home of her own accord and was not a victim of crime or foul play. “Detectives were able to determine Backeberg left her home of her own accord,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “She decided to leave and had not been a victim of criminal or foul play.”
At the time, her marriage to Ronald Backeberg — who has since died — was reportedly troubled. Then-Sheriff Randy Stammen noted that a criminal complaint had been filed just days before she vanished, including allegations of abuse.
Still, it’s unclear why Audrey never made contact again. “I told Audrey I'd keep it private. She had her reasons for leaving,” Hanson said.
Those reasons remain with her.
Despite taking Hanson less than two months to locate Audrey, the case was anything but simple. Early leads, including one from a 14-year-old babysitter, pointed to Audrey hitchhiking to Madison and then on to Indianapolis. The babysitter said Audrey left the bus stop and vanished.
Years later, that same woman recalled Audrey taking “a bunch of pills, put them in a Coke can and drank it,” and said she may have “hooked up with some construction workers.”
For decades, the truth remained out of reach. Files were digitised or destroyed. “Some of the evidence was on microfilms,” Hanson explained. “Records that weren’t felonies or open criminal investigation — all those records got wiped out.”
But Hanson wasn’t the only one looking. Audrey’s sister had been collecting materials and several other family members had been collecting over the years. It was this collection — combined with modern genealogy tools — that finally cracked the case.
Now, after 62 years of silence, there’s a strange and bittersweet sense of closure — not because of a funeral or a gravestone, but because Audrey was found alive, simply living a different life.
Sauk County Sheriff Chip Meister praised the work of investigators. “Despite the significant challenges that many cold cases present, this resolution underscores both the importance of continued work and the dedication of the Sheriff's Office to providing answers to families and the community.”
It remains unknown whether Audrey plans to reconnect with her family or return to Wisconsin. For now, she’s reportedly content where she is — living quietly, and, in her own words, without regret.