The Fishing Trip With a Big Catch
Green Lake is a lake (no surprise there) about from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Here’s a map.) It’s the deepest natural lake in the state and a good place to fish. And that’s probably why, at 10 pm on the night of August 11, 2024, Emily Borgwardt probably didn’t think twice when her husband, Ryan, decided to go fishing there. She probably didn’t think much about it when, even later that evening, he texted her saying he was done for the night and was about to turn his kayak around and head home. But when he wasn’t home the next morning, she likely feared the worst — her husband and the father of their three kids had some sort of accident on the water and was hurt, if not dead.
That’s not what happened. But it was, somehow, even worse than that.
On the morning of August 12, authorities arrived at Green Lake to determine what had happened, and from the start, it looked bad. The initial investigation turned up evidence that he had indeed been kayaking on the lake that day — they found a life jacket, his fishing rod and tackle box, and the kayak itself, which had capsized. But after that, authorities struggled to figure out what happened to Ryan — and not for lack of trying. For 54 days, the police employed sonar divers, drones, cadaver-sniffing dogs, and more to search for Borgwardt or his remains, ringing up bills exceeding $25,000s. Local volunteers canvased the surrounding areas for any evidence of Borgwardt — and came up with nothing.
The search came to a stop in early October because authorities came across something fishy, and that’s not a reference to the carp in Green Lake. As ABC News reported, “The case took a turn in October when investigators discovered Borgwardt’s name had been checked by law enforcement in Canada on Aug. 13, the sheriff said.” And shortly thereafter, police found out that before the accident, Borgwardt had been communicating with a woman in Uzbekistan. Their new theory: Borgwardt hadn’t drowned at all. He had faked his own death and fled to Eastern Europe to start a new life with his mistress.
When police turned their attention toward that potential explanation, other clues emerged. Per ABC, “other behavior [they discovered] included clearing his browsers the day he disappeared, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks, getting a new life insurance policy, obtaining a new passport, and replacing his laptop hard drive.” It was pretty clear that Ryan Borgwardt was very much alive. In November 2024, they took to the press, pleading with Ryan that he return home to Wisconsin, while simultaneously trying to locate him in or around Uzbekistan. They ultimately found a picture of a woman, likely his Uzbekistani girlfriend, on the laptop at his wife’s house, and used that to figure out a way to email him. When that happened, Borgwardt realized that the jig was up.
Borgwardt decided to own up to his actions. As the BBC reported, just a day or two after the updated story hit the press, authorities were able to get in contact with Borgwardt. The not-quite-dead scofflaw wouldn’t tell the police where he was, but he did start sending them selfie videos proving that he was very much alive, and ultimately, outlining how he made his way to somewhere in Eastern Europe. Per the BBC, “police say that after sinking his kayak and mobile phone in the lake, he paddled a small child-sized boat to shore where he had stashed an E-bike. He cycled overnight to Madison, Wisconsin, then boarded a bus to Detroit and got on a plane in Canada to an unknown location.” His plan had a flaw, though: as Fox 11 News Wisconsin would later report, Canadian border officials found it strange that Borgwardt didn’t have a driver’s license on him, and detained him briefly as he tried to enter Canada. That created the record of his travel there, ultimately collapsing his house of cards.
After a few weeks of back-and-forth with US-based authorities, Ryan Borgwardt ended up coming back to the United States of his own volition that December. He was charged with one count of misdemeanor obstruction of justice (which seems like a pretty light charge!) and — as you could have guessed — his wife filed for divorce.
Bonus fact: If you visit Disneyland in Anaheim, California, you can stop by Tom Sawyer’s Island, one of the many attractions at the theme park. It’s a man-made island on an artificial lake, so there aren’t any fish there, but that wasn’t always the case. When the Island opened in 1956, guests were invited to grab a fishing rod and some bait and catch themselves some catfish, bluegill, or trout — and many did. No one wants to carry a fish on Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, though, so, as the Disney Food Blog explains, “the idea was that you’d catch a fish, and [theme park employees] would take it and store it on ice at the former Aunt Jemima Pancake House (what is now River Belle Terrace) until you were ready to take it home at the end of your day.” Unfortunately for guests who don’t like fish, not everyone took advantage of the fish storage. Per the Disney Food Blog, “just ended up carrying dead fish around the park, eventually tossing it wherever seemed convenient at the time.” By the mid-1960s, fishing at Tom Sawyer’s Island was gone for good.
From the Archives: A Fishy Sentence: Meet the man who went to jail for catching a different type of fish than he thought he had caught.