American woman mysteriously disappeared 63 years ago, she has just been found...alive

The Sauk County Sheriff's Office (Wisconsin, United States) has reason to be pleased: a 63-year-old case has just been solved.

It was July 1962 in Reedsburg, a city in the state of Wisconsin. Audrey Backeberg, a 20-year-old American at the time, suddenly disappeared in July 1962 without leaving any traces behind her. Married at the age of 15 and mother of two children, she went to collect her pay at the factory before vanishing, reports the media L’Indépendant.

Case closed without resolution

At the time, Audrey Backeberg had gone to the bus stop for Indianapolis accompanied by the babysitter who looked after her children, who was herself barely 14 years old. The babysitter eventually gave up on leaving the town with Backeberg. Despite the mobilisation of the police and investigators to trace the missing young woman, the case was closed without resolution and placed in the county's cold cases files (unsolved cases).

It's thanks to the investigations of a specialised cold case investigator that the file was reopened. His research led him to the place where Audrey Backeberg had been residing for more than 60 years, outside the state of Wisconsin. A flight that was of her own volition.

A voluntary disappearance

According to a missing persons search association, the young woman had filed a complaint against her husband for domestic violence and death threats, just a few days before her disappearance, indicates L’Indépendant.

(MH with Raphaël Liset - Source: L’Indépendant - Illustration: ©Unsplash)