Green Lake kayaker faked death; man shares story in interrogation

Wisconsin man who faked death shares story

Ryan Borgwardt, the Wisconsin kayaker who admitted to faking his death, shared his story during a law enforcement interrogation in December.

GREEN LAKE, Wis. - The Wisconsin kayaker who admitted to faking his death shared his story during a law enforcement interrogation in December.

Ryan Borgwardt shares story

What they're saying:

Through an open records request, FOX6 News obtained the video of that interrogation. Ryan Borgwardt said he thought about the plan to fake his death for months.

Interrogation of Ryan Borgwardt

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"The amount of hours that I spent trying to disappear would blow your mind last year. The things that you have to do now in 2024 to make that possible, it is almost impossible," he said. "I knew there would be cameras that I would be in front of. I knew that there would be a situation where you have to flash your passport. You're attempting to do this without breaking the law in any way."

Then, the day came: Aug. 11, 2024. Borgwardt texted his then-wife around 10:50 p.m. but never returned home. The next morning, she texted back "where are you" and called police. 

Text messages sent to Ryan Borgwardt

Dispatch then started working on the case, and deputies searched for the kayaker. He wasn’t found.

"At some point, I decided to do it," Borgwardt recalled. "Inflated the boat. Hopped in the boat, took a while to get it trusted and situated. Flipped over the kayak, I was still getting situated and adjusted. The kayak was out of sight.

"I guess everything kind of hinged on me dying in the lake."

Borgwardt told deputies he left the kayak, took an inflatable boat to shore, jumped on an e-bike and rode early 70 miles to Madison.

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"I did a lot of research on a quiet stretch because that was something I was really afraid of is being on a bike at night getting hit by someone and then actually dying," he said.

Borgwardt ditched the bike and then hopped on a Greyhound bus to Milwaukee, Chicago and then the Canadian border.

"Obviously the whole idea was to sell the death," he said.

Borgwardt went to the country of Georgia to be with a woman he met online. Back home, the search continued. On Nov. 8, the Green Lake County sheriff had a message for him. Days later, he revealed he was alive.

Surveillance of Ryan Borgwardt during attempted disappearance

Now, Borgwardt is back in the U.S. He was convicted of obstruction, and his wife divorced him.

"I guess in the end it came down to the feeling of failure in about every aspect of your life. Hoping to be remembered for the better things, not all the mistakes that you have. And if you don't have maybe the best communication relationship with your wife," he said.

"I love my kids, they're awesome. It's really hard to work somewhere and not talk about your kids when they're awesome. That was hard. But, I guess, too, if you're feeling like you're kind of feeling that end of things, too, just for a host of reasons, they're never that interested in doing things with you, and it's not like they have to like my hobbies or anything or whatever, but if you try to do stuff with family, that happens to be a hobby and they don't have any interest or want to do it with you either, it's just more stuff in the mix. 

"I think just the inability to feel like you can talk to your wife about some of this stuff and maybe that complete hopelessness that you have in the situation that you're in. And you end up meeting a friend somewhere on the other side of the world that sort of has a somewhat similar story, and then you just end up becoming friends and then the friend thing ends up turning you into more, but you didn't really play that and it wasn't your intention."

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Green Lake kayaker faked death, Borgwardt sentenced to jail

Ryan Borgwardt, the Wisconsin kayaker accused of faking his own death on Green Lake and fleeing the country, pleaded no contest and was sentenced.

Green Lake County deputies asked why he did what he admitted to. He said he felt like a failure in every aspect of life. He said he had $75,000 in credit card debt and $130,000 in business debt.

"My first priority was to make sure that she didn't get in trouble," he said. "I didn't want all of a sudden you guys to call the state department, the state department to get involved, and all of the sudden Georgian officials become storming an apartment complex to make sure I'm not dead somewhere. I thought that was a legit concern." 

Borgwardt said he became friends with the woman in Georgia in February or March of 2024 and started to research disappearing that April.

"It's seven years before a missing person turns to dead, so, right?" he said. "I mean I researched that kind of stuff. I knew seven years would be ideal, and then I was hoping that after at some point that it takes 10 years to become a more citizen of – there's a trick of how do you go from one citizen sitting to another citizen when the citizen is already dead. I wasn't sure I was going to do that yet. I was gonna hope to figure that out in the way. But yeah, the magic numbers that anywhere, seven years and then 10 years of living in Georgia, you can just apply to be a citizen."