The wife of a Wisconsin kayaker who pretended to drown so he could leave her and their children and meet a woman in Eastern Europe filed court documents Thursday seeking to end their marriage.
Online court records indicate that Emily Borgwardt filed a petition in Dodge County Circuit Court seeking legal separation from Ryan Borgwardt. According to the petition, the marriage is “irretrievably dissolved.” The document does not explain.
A woman who answered the phone at the office of Emily Burgwardt’s attorney, Andrew Griggs, said Thursday that he would have no comment. Online court records do not list an attorney for Ryan Burgwardt.
The separation petition states that the couple has been married for 22 years and that Emily Borgwardt wants sole custody of their three teenage children. The document adds that Emily works at a private school in Watertown. Ryan is listed as self-employed and currently residing at an “unknown address.”
A hearing in the case has been scheduled for April.
Ryan Borgwardt, 45, was reported missing on Aug. 12 after telling his wife the night before that he was kayaking in Green Lake, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Milwaukee. His disappearance was first investigated as a possible drowning. But subsequent clues – including that he had obtained a new passport three months before his disappearance – led investigators to speculate that he had faked his death to meet a woman he had been communicating with in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia.
Get daily national news
Get the day’s top political, economic and current affairs news, headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Investigators made contact with Borgwardt in November and I convinced him to come back He turned himself into the United States on Tuesday at the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office, and was charged on Wednesday with obstructing the search for his body.
According to the criminal complaint, he traveled 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his family home in Watertown to Green Lake on Aug. 11. During the night, he flipped his kayak into the lake and paddled back to shore in an inflatable raft. He brought it with him — throwing his ID into the lake along the way — and rode an electric bike 70 miles (112 kilometers) to Madison, where he took a bus to Toronto, then flew to Paris and then to an unspecified country in Eastern Europe.
He told investigators that a woman picked him up and they spent several days at a hotel before he was granted residency in the state of Georgia, according to the complaint.
Burgwardt was released from jail Wednesday in Green Lake County on a signature bond. He told the judge Wednesday that he would represent himself because he only had $20 in his wallet. The judge told him the court could appoint an attorney for him, but online court records did not list an attorney as of Thursday.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
