Candid comments from kayaker who faked his death to start new life with other woman

A married kayaker who faked his own death so he could start a new life with another woman described his plan as a "crazy, emotional dream".

Ryan Borgwardt, 46, text his wife Emily he loved her and he had gone to a lake to watch the Northern Lights, only to overturn his kayak in the water and disappear. The dad of three wanted to start a new life with a woman in the country of Georgia, and so he biked through the night to catch a bus on what he hoped would be the first leg of his elaborate journey.

But after he was eventually snagged - after police traced his movements by using data on his computer - Borgwardt told detectives that he was a failure and called his plan to abscond to the country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia a "crazy, emotional dream."

These frank comments, the first the dad gave upon his arrest and detection of his plan, have been released by police today in Green Lake, Wisconsin, give a glimpse into the man's tense marriage. His wife eventually divorced him in May, several months after the plot unravelled.

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Borgwardt was last month convicted of obstruction and jailed for 89 days. The case documents now lay bare Borgwardt's twisted determination to fake his death, after he left his family home in in Watertown, Wisconsin, with the elaborate plan in mind.

After intentionally overturning the kayak in a spot of nearby Big Green Lake, the father paddled back to shore in an inflatable raft. Borgwardt, a cabinetmaker, retrieved an electric bike he had stashed nearby and rode 70 miles (112 kilometers) through the night to the Wisconsin capital of Madison, where he caught a bus to the Toronto airport.

Police searched for the man's body for 50 days after finding the overturned kayak in August last year. During this period, Borgwardt made it to Tibilsi where he met a woman named Katya he'd met on a dating website around eight months prior. They had been communicating online during this period.

Borgwardt began researching faking his own death by April 2024 after becoming closer to Katya online. A court heard investigators eventually contacted him via email using information on a laptop he had left behind. They convinced him to return to Wisconsin, largely by pleading with him to do right by his family.

Before they booked Borgwardt into jail, investigators asked him during a three-hour interview why he did it. He said he felt like a failure, saying later in the interview that he has accumulated about $75,000 (£55,000) in credit card debt and $130,000 (£96,000) in business debt. He said he didn't have a good relationship with his wife and his children didn't want to do anything with him anymore.

The defendant said: "I think just the inability to feel like you could talk to your wife about some of this stuff, and maybe the complete hopelessness that you have in the situation that you're in."