Mystery of missing mum-of-two solved as she's found ALIVE after vanishing 63 years ago & reveals she has ‘no regrets'
A MUM-OF-TWO who went missing back in 1962 has finally been found alive and well.
Audrey Backeberg, now aged 82, vanished when she was just 20 years old as her family and police desperately searched for any trace.
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She left her home in Reedsburg, Wisconsin over 60 years ago seemingly never to return.
After years passed by and no one could locate Ms Backeberg, Sauk County Sheriff's Office eventually closed the missing person's case as the leads went cold.
But earlier this year, the case was finally reexamined by police during a routine review of cold cases.
Detective Isaac Hanson jumped at the chance to solve a six decade long mystery.
He conducted interviews and studied the facts of the disappearance.
And in a few short months found Ms Backeberg safe and sound.
The elderly woman had spent her life living just outside of Wisconsin, the sheriff's office said.
Her shock disappearance back in the 60s rocked the small city of Reedsburg which back in 1962 only had a population of 1,800.
Ms Backeberg was married and had two children when she vanished, according to the Wisconsin Missing Persons Advocacy organisation.
She left her home on a summer's day to pick up her salary but never returned.
The family were left shocked by her sudden move and wanted her disappearance investigated.
Shortly after cops started to look for Ms Backeburg, the family's 14-year-old babysitter claimed she hitchhiked to Wisconsin's capital city of Madison with the missing woman.
The pair then caught a bus to Indianapolis, Indiana, the babysitter alleged.
The teen decided to return home after becoming nervous about running away but Ms Backeberg reportedly refused to go back.
She was last seen walking near a bus stop before vanishing for the next 63 years.
It is still unclear what made her want to escape her family.
Her marriage was said to have been troubled in the months leading up to her running away, say the Wisconsin Missing Persons Advocacy organisation.
A criminal complaint was even filed just days before she went missing.
Her relatives insisted she would never abandon her children without a real reason, the organisation added.
But the husband was investigated by police and passed a polygraph test as he maintained his innocence.
How was she found?
Detective Hanson managed to track down Ms Backeburg by finding her sister's Ancestry.com account.
He told local news station WISN: "That was pretty key in locating death records, census reports, all kinds of data.
"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."
Hanson says he promised to keep the details of their conversation private as he didn't reveal what caused her to leave home.
He did say: "I think she just was removed and, you know, moved on from things and kind of did her own thing and led her life.
"She sounded happy. Confident in her decision. No regrets."
Sauk County Sheriff's Office ruled her disappearance as not being suspicious
They say she made the choice to leave and it "was not the result of any criminal activity or foul play".
'World's oldest cold case' SOLVED
DETECTIVES have solved the 'world's oldest cold case' as battered human bones give clues to seven brutal deaths almost 6,000 years ago.
Archaeologists discovered a scene of mass death in 2004 with nearly 100 pieces of human bone at the site of a prehistoric house.
The dwelling from 5,700 years ago had been in the ancient settlement of Kosenivka, about 115 miles south of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
The bones from most of the Stone Age skeletons were charred and burned, and two of the skulls had been brutally caved in.
The skeletons belonged to at least seven people: two children, one teenager and four adults.
Interestingly, the only four skeletons inside the house were scorched, whilst the three found outside were not.
Initially, it had been presumed that the deaths were accidental - perhaps as a result of a house fire.
However, the realisation that two of the adults suffered violent head trauma just before their deaths sparked a 5,700-year forensic investigation.
Researchers studied closely the fracture patterns and discolouration displayed by the bones to deduce all they could about the last moments of the Stone Age people.
The team concluded that the people inside had been burned to death, unable to escape the flames, whilst the others managed to stagger outside but later succumbed to smoke inhalation.
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The immigration judge hearing Kilmar's case concurred that the defendant was indeed a gang member and deportable; the Salvadoran (of course) appealed the decision, which nevertheless was upheld. Kilmar (of course) then filed for asylum, as well as for a 'withholding of removal'. A subsequent immigration judge stayed his deportation to his home country, where his wellbeing might be endangered by local gangs. Now, you might suppose that putting yourself in the way of other famously rivalrous gangs would come with the territory when you join one yourself. Like, inter-gang violence seems a natural hazard of this line of work. But it's not only British immigration judges who are soft touches. Only mass round-ups and swift group trials could effectively address the millions of gate-crashers Kilmar (of course) remained in the US. In 2022, he was pulled over for speeding while driving eight other Hispanic men of uncertain immigration status in an SUV altered to add a third row of seats for extra passengers. The officers suspected human-trafficking; Kilmar's driving licence had expired; a run of his number plate through the database turned up a federal note on likely membership of MS-13. Yet when the patrolmen contacted the feds, ICE (of course) declined to pick him up. So Kilmar was (of course) released without charge. Even so, his claim that he was merely transporting construction workers between jobs did not, under investigation, hold up. Fast-forward to 2025 and why this otherwise obscure Salvadoran who is or is not a thug merits such a detailed lowdown. Meaning (of course) that this case has to do with Donald Trump – whose evil minions in March flew more than 230 purported criminals to a Salvadoran prison, including none other than Kilmar, whom ICE did finally pick up (no 'of course' there). The flights' timing was judicially dodgy. The planes did or didn't take off after a federal judge ruled that the flights could not proceed until the deportees were given the opportunity to challenge their removal. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which directed Trump to 'facilitate' Kilmar's return to the US. Because, remember, there was only one country to which he could not be deported because of that credulous 2019 decision: his own. Hence the Justice Department's acceptance that Kilmar's deportation was an 'administrative error'. During this proxy war with Trump, Democrats have pretended to hair-tear over poor Kilmar, mouldering away in a nasty foreign prison and deprived of due process. But the story I just laid out has due process, not to mention leniency or even dereliction on the part of the authorities, up the wazoo. Meanwhile, after slyly getting their jurisprudential ducks in a row, last week Trump and co finally got Kilmar flown back to the US, only to arrest him immediately for human-trafficking – with every intention of convicting the guy and then deporting him right back to El Salvador. What do we make of this farce? The American commentariat has focused on a potential showdown between Trump and the judiciary, claiming to fear a flat-out executive refusal to follow court orders but secretly rather hoping that Trump does defy the courts and thus reveals himself as an unconstitutional tyrant. I view this absurd tale through a different lens. All these trials and flights for a lone illegal alien are expensive. The amount of 'due process' the American justice system affords every single illegal makes deportation at any scale impossible. There isn't enough time and money and there aren't nearly enough judges to make any but a token gesture toward the mass deportation of illegals that Trump has promised. That amounts to a victory not just for Democrats but also for disorder. I'd assess the odds that Kilmar is a thug at about 90 per cent. But proving membership of unofficial allegiances in court is a bastard. If every individual deportation case must be adjudicated according to exacting evidentiary rules and appeal procedures, America's drastic, undemocratic demographic change will proceed inexorably. Only mass round-ups and swift group trials could effectively address the staggering ten million gate-crashers during the Biden administration alone. What are the chances of that? In New York at the weekend, ICE raids were impeded by LA-style crowds of righteously indignant protestors screaming: 'Let them go! Let them go!' The officers just doing their jobs looked beleaguered, tired, numb and pre-defeated. After all the ICE agents' thankless labours, what proportion of their detainees will still get to stay in the country in the end? I'll take another stab at 90 per cent.
