New video and emails detail Ryan Borgwardt's faked drowning, journey to Europe and back

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- New video takes us deeper inside the missing Wisconsin kayaker mystery that got international attention.

After Ryan Borgwardt was sentenced to prison August 26 and his case was officially closed, our records requests for communication and video was fulfilled.

Hundreds of pages of documents and hours of video are shining a light on what happened when Borgwardt faked his own death last August.

For months people were stumped: How did Ryan Borgwardt fake his own death on a Wisconsin lake and then flee to a small country at the intersection of Europe and Asia? And why did he do it?

In an interview with Green Lake County sheriff's deputies last December, Borgwardt said, "The amount of hours that I spent trying to disappear would blow your mind."

Borgwardt walked detectives through the night when he faked his own drowning on Green Lake. He explained he "Hopped in the boat, took a while to get adjusted, situated. Flipped over the kayak."

Then he rode a through the night to Madison on a bike. "Countless times I said, 'Why am I doing this?'"

Then he hopped a bus to Chicago, then Detroit, then Canada. At the Canadian border, a guard held him for a time because he had no license, no plane ticket, and his phone was dead.

Borgwardt said, "I think he started to wonder if I was trying to run away from something. Because he started asking questions like 'Are you married? Is everything ok?'"

Borgwardt explained the research and care he took to sell the drowning that had professionals and volunteers searching for nearly two months.

Sometimes he was somber, other times he joked, Borgwardt was reflective and candid throughout. At one point he said, "I looked at some other places to potentially die. Places closer to home."

But 54 days after he went missing, investigators found the Canadian border agents had checked his passport.

They checked a laptop at his home, the reached out to the woman he met online.

Borgwardt said his heart dropped when he saw the email. "And then I noticed that apparently I made a mistake somewhere."

For a month, a sheriff's deputy communicated with him, urging him to come back to Wisconsin and take responsibility.

They wrote about how he met the woman online earlier in 2024, writing, "we quickly became good friends and we discovered our personalities are identical."

They spoke about Borgwardt's life in Georgia, where he wrote, "I'm a cabinetmaker over here," and, "the most difficult part over here is the language."

One day he wrote, "Just remind my mom that I love her very much."

And he said, "I really just don't want to end up in jail," adding, "that's my only goal."

In the interview room with investigators, he explained in part why he decided to fake his own death. "For me, it checked more boxes for all the problems I had going on," he wrote.

Borgwardt was sentenced to 89 days in prison and was ordered to pay $30,000 in restitution.

In one of the emails with the sheriff's deputy, he acknowledged his story could make for a decent book or movie. But he wrote the only way he would consider it is if 100% of the proceeds went to other people who spent time and money on the search.