The wife of a Wisconsin kayaker who faked his own death moves to end their marriage

By TODD RICHMOND The Associated Press

Ryan Borgwardt appears in a Green Lake County courtroom Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, in Green Lake. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)[ASSOCIATED PRESS/Morry Gash]

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The wife of a Wisconsin kayaker who faked his own drowning 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 Emily Borgwardt filed a petition in Dodge County Circuit Court seeking a legal separation from Ryan Borgwardt. According to the petition, the marriage is “irretrievably broken.” The document doesn’t elaborate.

A woman who answered the phone at the office of Emily Borgwardt’s attorney, Andrew Griggs, on Thursday said he would have no comment. Online court records don’t list an attorney for Ryan Borgwardt.

The separation petition states that the couple has been married for 22 years and Emily Borgwardt wants sole custody of their three teenaged 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 set for April.

Ryan Borgwardt, 45, was reported missing on Aug. 12 after telling his wife the night before that he was kayaking on 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 obtained a new passport three months before he disappeared — led investigators to speculate that he faked his death to meet up with a woman he had been communicating with in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

Investigators made contact with Borgwardt in November and convinced him to return to the U.S. He turned himself in at the Green Lake County sheriff’s office on Tuesday and was charged Wednesday with obstructing the search for his body.

According to the criminal complaint, he traveled 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his family’s home in Watertown to Green Lake on Aug. 11. During the night, he overturned his kayak on the lake, paddled back to shore in an inflatable raft that he brought with him — dumping his identification in the lake along the way — and rode an electric bicycle 70 miles (112) kilometers) to Madison, where he caught a bus to Toronto, 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 in a hotel before he took up residency in the country of Georgia, according to the complaint.

Borgwardt was released from jail Wednesday in Green Lake County on a signature bond. He told a judge Wednesday that he would represent himself because he had only $20 in his wallet. The judge told him the court could appoint an attorney for him, but online court records didn’t list one as of Thursday.