True Crime Campfire - Mystery Grab Bag

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

There’s an old saying that if you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses, not zebras. It means that in most situations, the simplest, most likely explanation is probably the right one. But you know we deal in “stranger than fiction” here, folks, and sometimes you turn around expecting horses and you get a stampeding herd of zebras instead. Things are not always what they seem at first glance. And today, we’ll tell you two stories where digging down below the surface pulled investigators through the looking glass, and into the strangest cases they’d ever seen.Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRESource:https://fox11online.com/news/local/man-accused-of-faking-his-own-death-to-face-another-status-conference-ryan-borgwardt-green-lake-county-kayak-europe-charges-obstruction-restitution-search-missinghttps://www.wmtv15news.com/2025/06/04/another-status-conference-scheduled-wisconsin-man-accused-faking-his-death/https://www.milwaukeemag.com/what-happened-to-the-kayaker-who-faked-his-drowning-in-green-lake/https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2024/11/21/ryan-borgwardt--wisconsin-kayaker--fake-deathInvestigation Discovery's "Forensic Files" episode "Grave Danger"NBC's "Dateline," episode "Bodies of Evidence"https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-burned-alive-no-limbs-33703446Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's an old saying that if you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses, not zebras. It means that in most situations, the simplest, most likely explanation, is probably the right one. But, you know, we deal in stranger than fiction here, folks,

and sometimes you turn around expecting horses and you get a stampeding herd of zebras instead. Things are not always what they seem at first glance. And today, we'll tell you two stories where digging down below the surface pulled investigators through the looking glass and into the strangest cases they'd ever seen. This is a mystery grab bag.

See if you can guess the theme. case one grave mistake so campers for this one were in leander texas just a short drive from austin june 18th 2004 the sky was showing the first signs of dawn when the burnett county dispatch got a call about a car on fire though by the time the firefighters got to it you could hardly call it a car anymore it had gone off the road down a little hill and crashed into a tree, and the fire had torched it so badly, it was basically just a smoldering, blackened shell. The paint was burned off, the tires were melted to the ground. The firefighters had seen car fires before, obviously, but this one was different, way worse than any they'd seen before. This thing was toast. They'd never seen anything like it.

And once they had the fire out and were able to approach, they were horrified. The car was occupied. A charred body still sat in the remains of the driver's seat, and that was about all you could tell about it right then, that it was a human body. There was obviously no hope of saving the driver, so as the medical examiner got to work on an autopsy, the investigator said about identifying the victim. Fortunately, there was enough of the car left to figure out that it was currently on loan to a young married couple named Clayton and Molly Daniels. Turned out, Molly and Clay's mom Lori had been frantically trying to find him all night. He'd never come home, which wasn't like him. He knew Molly was going to need the car to get to work. Lorry had called

the police to report him missing not long before the car fire was discovered. The body in the car had been burned beyond recognition. You could barely tell it was a body, but a few things had survived the flames. A Harley Davidson pin, a silver necklace, remnants of a pair of sneakers. Lori and Molly tearfully identified the things as Clay's. I figured that Clayton had been drinking, was at a party somewhere, or just driving fast and lost control, Lori said later. Clay and Molly had two young kids who were now without a father. But to some people, that was probably a good thing. Molly's mom, for example, she'd never really thought of Clay as husband or father material.

He's a loser, she told the show Forensic Files. In the past, Clay had worked as a car mechanic, but at the time of the crash, he was unemployed. He liked to think of himself as a stay-at-home dad, but to the casual observer, it looked more like he spent all day lazen around playing video games while Molly busted her ass at work. Now, he's a loser is a pretty common sentiment coming from a mother-in-law, but interestingly enough, it wasn't just coming from Molly's mom. In fact, it didn't take the investigators long to figure out that Clay Daniels was probably the least popular guy in Leanne's, her. Nobody liked the stude except possibly his mama, and his wife, obviously. His sister-in-law told Dateline he'd always given her the he-be-jee-bees. People said he had a temper you could set off just by looking at him funny. His best friend got up at the funeral and called

Clay an asshole in front of God and everybody. Holy shit, right? And he wasn't the only one. Where most funerals are sad affairs with grieving loved ones sharing their favorite memories of the dead, Clay's funeral was full of people who'd mostly just showed up to make sure he was dead. Harsh, but true. See, Clay had recently been convicted of a disgusting crime, the sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl when he was 16. Yeah. It had taken the girl years to get up the courage to speak out, but once she did, the courts moved pretty quickly. He'd been put on the sex offender's registry and sentenced to 30 days in prison, followed by 10 years of probation, but sentence, if you ask me. Just give them the 10 years, for God's sakes.

They always go light on these sentences, and it's infuriating. She was seven, for God's sakes. I know. It's, I can't fathom it. I really cannot. Anyway, this opened up an intriguing line of inquiry for the detectives investigating the car fire. There was a family out there who, justifiably, must have had some serious rage against Clay Daniels. They'd been vocal about how much they resented his. piddly 30-day sentence. They thought he should have gone away for decades. It wasn't too much of a leap to imagine them taking justice into their own hands, ensuring that Daniels could never hurt another little girl. And there were definitely some things about the crash that were making the

investigators' antennae twitch. One weird thing was that there weren't any skid marks on the road where the car had veered off down the embankment. Normally, you'd expect to see that from the driver frantically trying to get the car under control. So the fact that those marks, weren't there, suggested that either the driver was passed out, asleep, or having a medical episode, or the driver was already dead. Was this really an accident, or could it have been a murder? In fact, when the medical examiner did the autopsy, they discovered that Clay Daniels didn't have any smoke in his lungs, suggesting that he'd stop breathing before the fire got underway. The ME classified Clay's cause of death as undetermined. The body was so badly burned that you couldn't

tell much at all. There was nothing to fingerprint. No teeth left to compare against dental records. The entire body only weighed 12 pounds. That's how charred it was. Jesus, Murphy. I mean, I've heard of that, but 12 pounds is bananas. Yeah. Another notable thing was the amount of heat it takes to do the kind of damage done to the body in the car. This fire had burned much hotter than an average car fire. So we're thinking, accelerant, right? But preliminary testing didn't find any traces of gasoline or motor oil or anything like that. The car's gas tank was still intact. They planned to do more testing, but it would take some time to get the results back. Meanwhile, Molly Daniels was a mess. She told the police how distraught Clay had been about his conviction

and the fact that he was going to be separated from her and the kids for 30 days. He was dreading prison and worried about what the other inmates might do to him if they found out what he was in for. I know. Sorry. I mean, similar sentiments over here. Molly didn't want to believe it, but she had to admit it was possible that Clay could have taken his own life. The good thing about the community in Leander was they didn't hold Clay's sins against his widow and kids. Molly was younger than Clay. She was only 20 at the time of his death. and her friends felt like she'd fallen for the first guy who showed her attention.

I'm sure a lot of them were hoping she'd get the hell out of there now that his dirty secret was out. Much to Molly's relief, the town rallied around her, bringing food and donating money to supplement her income. She worked as a receptionist for a construction company, and money was always tight. Clay had a life insurance policy, about 100K, but it would take time to pay out. When Molly put the word out that she desperately needed child care, a woman reached out to offer her babysitting services at a big discount, despite the fact that she'd never even met Molly or Clay. People felt bad for Molly. First, she'd been forced to confront her husband's horrific crime. Imagine what that would be like, finding out that your kid's father did something like that. People recognized that what Clay did wasn't her fault. She'd barely had time to process his arrest and conviction to confront. the fact that her husband was a sex offender, and now he was dead. Her kids were heartbroken,

especially the older one, who was four. But while the community seemed to feel nothing but sympathy for Molly, the investigators were beginning to feel something else entirely. They couldn't help but notice that when they spoke to Molly about her husband's death, she showed zero emotion. She was as casual as if they were talking about a minor fender bender, and she seemed to want to rush the detectives along, like she wanted them to drop the investigation. Just rubber stamp an accident or suicide and leave her alone. And then there was that $100,000 life insurance policy. And the results of those chemical tests on the car, which showed that the fire had started in the driver's seat, helped along by lots and lots of lighter fluid. Not to mention the rage a wife might feel on

finding out her husband had sexually abused a child years earlier. Molly was sweet, but her friends knew she could turn on you fast if you got in her way. She could bite your head off. To the detectives, Molly had motive oozing out of her pores. They weren't the only ones who were surprised at how well Molly seemed to be handling Clay's death. Her boss and co-workers noticed, too. She came back to work really quickly, and her work didn't miss a beat, no dip in quality

at all. Some might say that showed real bravery and strength under pressure. That was one way to look at it, but there was another. About a month after Clay's death, his sister Melissa came to visit Molly and the kids. One morning, she popped her head into Molly's bedroom, looking for something, and got the shock of her life. The closet door was about half open, and Melissa could see a pair of men's legs sticking out of it. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. There was a man lying on the floor in there.

As you can imagine, Melissa was a tad startled by this. She ran to Molly and said, there's a man asleep in your closet. No, there's not. said. There is. I just saw him, Melissa insisted. Molly was incredulous. She was like, look, let's go in there and I'll show you. There's nobody there. Molly was talking really loudly, almost yelling. And lo and behold, when they got to the bedroom, to Melissa's shock, the guy was gone. All there was was a pair of jeans and a pair of socks lying on the floor in the approximate shape of a sleeping man's legs. Doe. Melissa might have felt like a doofus, but

she probably shouldn't have, as Molly's babysitter Jenna could have told her. The first off thing Jenna noticed was Molly's four-year-old son talking about his mom's new friend Jake. Jake was fun, he said. He liked to wrestle and watch NASCAR races. Curious, Jenna asked Molly about Jake. Oh, he's just a friend of the family, she said. But then one morning, Molly's car wouldn't start. She and Jenna were fiddling around trying to find a set of jumper cables, and suddenly the bedroom door opened, and out came a dude wearing nothing but his boxers. He'd take care of it, he said, oh, Chinna thought, that must be Jake, and he was definitely more than a family friend. Molly's friends suspected something was up, too. Just a few

weeks after Clay's death, they'd taken her out for dinner and drinks, and she'd said, hey, when do you think it's acceptable for me to start dating again? Damn, Molly, they thought it hadn't even been a month. At some point, Molly must have realized the cat was going to pop out of the bag sooner or later, and she started telling her friends and family about Jake. He was a truck driver, she said, so he wasn't around a whole lot. He'd been a really good friend of clays. Her mom and sister were flabbergasted and worried. Well, her sister was worried. Her mom was pissed. I didn't raise you like this, she told Molly, you know better than to move on this fast and introduce this man to your children. What are you thinking? One afternoon, Molly's sister,

a look at her phone and found some intense text from Jake. I love yous and everything. Damn, she thought, this is moving at light speed. And it didn't seem to be doing the kids any favors, especially the four-year-old boy. Babysitter Jenna later said that not long after Jake came into the picture, the little guy started acting out, pushing and shoving other kids, trying to push one down the stairs, trying to hurt the babysitter's pets, pee in all over the wall in her bathroom. This kid needs counseling, Jenna told Molly. He's fine when he's at home, Molly said. She didn't seem even a little bit concerned,

and she refused to get the kid counseling until Jenna finally threatened to cut off her babysitting services otherwise. All this was super suspicious to the detectives, and as their investigation continued, they decided to put some surveillance on Molly, and one evening they watched Molly come out of her house with a dude. Ah, so this is Jake. The detective followed Molly's car,

turning into a Taco Bell behind them. He parked a discreet distance away and gave them a chance to go into the restaurant and order. Then he went inside. And sitting there at a table, tucking into some tacos Bell Grande, were Molly and Clay Daniels. Oh, sure. His hair and beard were a lot darker than they used to be. Clearly a crappy dye job, but it was him.

The detective walked up to the table. Hi there, Clay, he said. Oh, shit, said Clay. Oh, my God. That is one hell of a chamelon twist. It sure is. God. The detectives weren't actually surprised to see old Clay sitting there alive and well

and snacking on tacos. See, Molly had been pressuring the hell out of the life insurance company to pay out the 100K. But the life insurance company wasn't going to greenlight a payment that size without crossing all their T's and dotting all their eyes. So just to be safe, they ordered a DNA test on the body found in that burned out car. Clay's mom provided a sample for comparison, and it took weeks to get the results back. But when they did, the verdict was clear. The body in the car was not Clayton Daniels.

They didn't know who it was, but they knew it was a woman. Yeah, you couldn't really get any clearer than that, could you? y'all we've seen some dipshit criminals on this show like remember the lady who watched practical magic and decided to poison her husband with some homeopathic belladonna she got it whole foods and then she told everybody on her street she was going to do it she was pretty dumb but this guy takes home the prize if you ask me i know right like on what planet can you just dye your hair black and expect nobody to recognize you at the taco tico in your hometown where you've lived your entire life and when everybody's been thinking about you a lot anyway because you're supposed to have just died in a fiery car crash like dude come on man no no I'm not Clay my name is

Jay yeah that's it Jay I guess he was operating under the Clark Kent theory that you can just put on a pair of glasses and nobody's going to figure out your Superman he was putting a lot of faith in that box die. The difference is, is like, you know, it's like going to work and thinking, like, the guy

next to you in the cubicle is, like, a superhero. That's hilarious, right? But, like, he's a pedophile loser who sits around and plays video games all day. Yeah. And takes the whimsy out of it, for sure. Yeah, yeah. He's a pedophile loser who continue to be a petiophile loser who continue to be a pedophile loser who played video games all day.

Like, it's, it's, there's no. Yeah, he just goes into the phone booth and dyes his hair and he comes out exactly the same dude. Exactly. Like, like, Clark Kent, like, changed his, like, demeanor, you know, at least. Like, God. So the detective took Clay into custody while Molly melted down in the middle of Taco Bell, screaming and swearing and generally acting like a bratty three-year-old.

Aw, puppy. Did our master plan go tits up on us? What a bummer. Someone needed a gentle parent, Molly. Seriously, God. They arrested her, too, by the way, for trying to hinder Clay's arrest. Meanwhile, a search of the Daniels' house turned up all kinds of juicy stuff in a folder marked Mexico. Great job, guys.

A plus. Stuff on changing your identity, IDs in the name of Jacob Gregg, Clay's chosen new identity, fake school transcripts and credit reports, a ton of internet searches on Molly's computer, stuff like how to fake a death and how to burn a body so there's nothing left. Oh my God. Yeah, they also found a half-empty can of lighter fluid, so go figure. These people are not the brightest bulbs in the box. So who was the woman in the car? Had Clay and Molly? murdered somebody? This was the million-dollar question, but the investigators didn't have to

wonder for long, because in the grand tradition of many barely sentient mouth-breatzers before him, Clay decided to confide in his new jail bestie. And the story he told was something straight out of a classic horror movie. He'd stolen a body, he said, from its grave. See, Clay had been due to report for his 30-day prison sentence about a week after the crash. As Molly later told Dateline, his conviction was going to upend their lives, even after he served his time. They'd have to move out of their house because it was too close to a school. Clay wouldn't be allowed to be a stay-at-home dad anymore, and he'd have a hard time

finding a job, and people would stare at them, whisper about them. So, Molly, who in her own words has always liked to fix things, came up with a plan. They would kill Clayton Daniels. Molly would collect on his life insurance, and they'd use the money to move to Mexico and start a new life. Clay Daniels would become Jacob Gregg. Molly did some research on decomposition rates, cremation, car accidents involving fire, and they spent some time prowling the local cemetery, looking for a candidate. Eventually they settled on the grave of 81-year-old Charlotte Davis, a much-beloved woman who had been a light in the life of everybody who knew her and who had died

six months before. She had some developmental delays, so she was in a wheelchair and lived most of her life in care homes, but she had a bright, curious spirit, and she loved life. The people who cared about her had chosen her burial dress with care and shared their favorite memories about her at her memorial service. People still missed her very much. Of course, Clay and Molly didn't know any of that, and they couldn't have given less of a shit. To them, Charlotte was just a tool for them to use in their ridiculous little pinky-in-the-brain-brain-esque scheme. Anyway, later that night, Clay went back to the cemetery. Terry with a shovel and after hours and hours of digging, I cannot even imagine, stole Charlotte's

body from her casket. And then he badly filled the hole back up again. So, yeah, grave robbing, for God's sake. I'm actually surprised, like, that's a pretty high effort, high commitment crime. I mean, you'd have to dig forever. I wouldn't have even thought it was possible for one person, not to mention have the stomach for it. I would not have expected that level of effort from our boy Clay. And of course, this was the only part of the plan they put any real thought or sweat into. And obviously, they still managed to cock it up royally by stealing a female body. Did you not know that DNA can tell the sex of the victim?

It's just, it's dumb beyond belief. This might be the dumbest person we've ever covered for real. For real. Bonkers. For real. This, fun fact, this, they won an award in the insurance fraud, Hall of Shame. And, you know, only the cream of... Only the cream of the carav could get those.

Yeah, because you know they've seen some dumb shit. Like, you know, they have. Yeah, yeah, they are... It's so funny. So, anywho, Clay's jail buddy ratted him out immediately, of course, and the investigators went to the cemetery to corroborate the story. And, yep, sure enough, they found the disturbed grave site. The flowers, somebody had left for Charlotte,

had been scattered around in the dirt. he and Molly both tried to deny everything at first Molly said she had no idea her hubs was still alive until a month after the crash when he just popped in on her but her internet searches gave her away and she finally gave in and confessed said she got the idea from CSI oh my god you people have much to answer for

she ended up pleading guilty to insurance fraud and hindering apprehension and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Clay pled guilty to insurance fraud, arson, and desecration of a corpse. He got 30 years in prison. Some of the investigators served as pallbearers when they reburied Charlotte Davis. In a prison interview, Mully had the gall to tell Dateline how much it annoyed her that people got so mad at them for robbing Charlotte's grave. They need to understand it was just a body, she said.

Oh my God. Bitch, are you serious? Oh, my God. She also shrugged off the trauma she and Clay inflicted on their little boy. Yeah, he'll be fine. Right. Fortunately, she did serve a pretty long sentence, like 12 years. They let her out in 2016. I have to go back to her statement because here's the thing.

It's just a body is an okay statement to say when it's your body. Like, it's just a body. You can throw me in a trash can, whatever, it doesn't matter. But when it's not your body, that loses all, loses all, because it's not your body. If somebody's loved one, you absolute asshole, yeah, that's horrific. She's, uh, she deserves, she deserves to be thrown out of the TCC trabushages for that. I think aside from desecrating Charlotte Davis's memory that the worst thing Molly and Clay did in this case was put their four-year-old son through absolute. This poor kid, first they tell him his dad's dead. Then his mom brings his dad right back

into the house with his hair a different color and tells him, no, no, this isn't your daddy. This is Jake. God. This kid was being gaslit all day, every day by his own parents. No wonder he was freaking out. I really, really hope both he and his sister got some really good counseling and are doing well today. Yeah, and there's another really sad story that I forget which source it was in, but Melissa, the sister, was taking care of the kids afterwards and said that she went to the salon to get her hair colored one time. And the little boy freaked out. He hated it. He was really upset when she got her hair colored.

And she realized, oh, it's because of what happened, you know, because Clay died his hair. So she had to sit him down and explain, like, I'm still the same auntie, you know, this is just my hair. It's not me. Poor kid. It's so sad. It's so sad. There's a bunch of videos on like reels or wherever you watch short form videos where like dads will shave their hair or if they have long hair, they'll cut their hair. And like kids will freak out. And I think those videos are kind of sad. Because the kids are really upset. Like it's not like they're like surprised or like shocked or acting like it's funny. The kids are genuinely terrified and horrified. And I, I, I'm just like, poor babies. That's the, this kid was going through every day.

It's like, that's my dad. And then it like basically reversed how he reacts to hair color changes. That's horrible. Horrible. That's his little heart. Okay, so moving on to case two. We're calling this one best-laid plan. So, campers, for this one, we're in the cute little town of Green Lake, Wisconsin.

August 11, 2024. A 44-year-old Ryan Borgwart had the kind of life that most people hope for. a pretty wife, three teenage kids, and a solid career as a carpenter. The Borgwarts, and that is definitely a real German name and not some creature Jennifer Connolly met in Labyrinth. The Borgwarts lived in a beautiful part of the country, the town of Watertown, about an hour south of Green Lake, all greenfields spreading along the banks of the Rock River. Sure, it was a small town.

But Waukesha was just 40 minutes away if you wanted the thrill. of a big city. If by thrills of the big city, you mean Olive Garden and Bath and Body Works. And I do because I went to college in a small town and I used to drive an hour just for Chipotle and Starbucks. So, listen, I feel your pain, small town livers, okay? That Sunday started out as normal as you could imagine. Ryan and his wife, Emily, went to church with their kids in the morning. That evening, Ryan drove his van and trailer to his woodworking shop where he kept his kayak. and load it up for some fishing up in Green Lake. Oh, you know, it was late in the day,

but you know, you have to wait till dusk for the crappies to really start biting. Boy, yeah. I apologize to all Wisconsin nights for that dreadful hate crime that I just... You're going to get us canceled. Oh, super. Oh, heck, oh, heck, oh, you didn't even stop for a breath before you issued your formal apology. I just, you know how sometimes you immediately know,

that you stepped in it like yeah you were like oh this is not good here's the thing is like i know that your accents aren't that thick but it sounds that thick when you're talking to us okay i think it's absolutely wonderful i love that accent it is adorable yeah it's one of my favorites listen some of my some of my teammates uh in college had those accents and the way they would say certain stuff they would say coach coach they would say coach with like like two syllables, coach, and it was wonderful. I just loved it. I would repeat it and they hated it, but I loved it.

It's affectionate, I promise. It's very much so. Yes. At 10.49 p.m., Ryan texted Emily that he was done fishing and was going to start paddling for shore, but he never came home. A frantic Emily called the police, and they started searching the lake the next day. It didn't take them long to make an unsettling discovery. Ryan's kayak overturned with a life jacket attached to it.

His water bottle was found floating too. Later in the day, a couple of guys out fishing on the boat found Ryan's fishing rod. There hadn't been storms or anything the night before, but there had been a stiff wind blowing, enough to set waves rolling across the lake. It wasn't hard to imagine someone out on the water after dark getting into some serious, deadly trouble. In Dodge Memorial County Park, by the southwest shore of the lake, they found Ryan's van and trailer parked there while he went out fishing. The authorities thought they needed to recover Ryan's drowned body from the water. The police, along with the Department of Natural Resources and a

charity specializing and recovering drowning victims, set out onto the water. They used sonar in the deeper part of the lake where Ryan's kayak had been found, and that was no joke. At around 220 feet, Green Lake is the deepest natural lake in Wisconsin. The lake is about a mile and a half across, which I'd put it at a distance you wouldn't want to try and swim, but you'd believe that other people could swim it. Like, not you. Right. Not you, but other people.

Somebody who's actually physically fit, right? People can definitely drown there, but it wasn't so huge that you'd expect a body to stay undiscovered for long. But there was no sign at all of Ryan Borgwart. The next day, fishermen found Ryan's tackle box washed up on the shore. inside were his wallet, keys, and driver's license. It certainly looked like everything Ryan had taken out with them had been found, just as you'd expect to find the detritus of a capsized boat.

Everything, except for Ryan's body. I don't think we can convincingly string out the suspense here much longer. You've probably figured it out by now that this is a grab bag of people who faked their own deaths, so here's what actually happened. Ryan had been busy making some purchases that were definitely not suspicious at all. First, a few months before he vanished, he got himself a new passport without telling Emily. He said he'd lost his original passport and needed a replacement, so now he had two. One extra that he could, for example, leave at home so no one would think he'd left the country.

He bought an e-bike, which he stashed in his woodworking shop in Watertown. And he bought a child's inflatable raft, the kind of thing you'd get a kid for messing around in a swimming pool. So back to Sunday, Ryan left his wife and kids and went to his woodworking shop with his van and trailer to pick up his kayak to go fishing. He also stashed his e-bike, raft, and a backpack with a change of clothes in the trailer, then drove the 65 miles up to Oshkosh to pick up a few extra things at the Walmart there. Then he went to a buddy's place and hung out for a while, because that's definitely something you want to do when you're trying to disappear completely. ditch your wife and kids without a word, sure, but you can't do your homies like dad. I mean, come on. You gotta go visit the friends. As the sun started to set, Ryan finally headed down to Green Lake, getting there around 10 p.m.

He paused on his way around the lake to get the e-bike and backpack out of the van and hide them in some brush at the side of the water, then carried on down to Dodge Memorial Park, where he unloaded his kayak and fishing gear and set out onto the water just like any other fishermen. It wasn't coincidence that he'd chosen this night to go out. Ryan's computer and phone records showed that he checked the weather at Green Lake obsessively. That in itself isn't that weird for a keen fisherman looking for a good night to get out on the water, but for most people, stiff winds and choppy waters would be a negative. They were what Ryan had been waiting for, and Wisconsin had no shortage of lakes. Ryan chose Green Lake precisely because like we said earlier,

it's one of the deepest pieces of water in the state, and he figured no one would be too suspicious if a whole human body just vanished into the depths. He didn't do any actual fishing. A fat trout flopping around in his kayak wouldn't have made the execution of his plans any easier. What he did was pull out the deflated kids raft from wherever he'd hidden it,

probably just stuffed inside his shirt, and huffed and puffed at it until it was full. At 1049, he called Emily to say he was headed back to shore. These were the last words he ever intended to say to his wife of 22 years. After he hung up, he tossed the phone into the water, along with the tackle box that held his wallet and driver's license. Now, fishing people, is that normal? By the way, keeping your wallet in your tackle box and not just in your pocket like you usually do, it seems to me like this was a step to try and make Ryan's death more convincing.

Like, well, obviously he didn't run off. He left his wallet behind. A man might give up on his family, you know, but he's not giving up that Costco card. come on Ryan put the raft onto the water and slid onto it paddling with his hands to turn around and capsize the kayak he paddled slowly through the darkness low to the water and I'm sure he felt very James Bond I'm equally sure however that the raft he was on was bright blue and covered with starfish and happy sea horses and he had to sit crisscross applesauce and the raft made squeaking noises every time he moved. Almost certainly.

At the shore, Ryan trudged through mud and cat tails, pulling the raft with him. He deflated it and found the e-bike where he'd hidden it earlier. The electric engine and the power of Ryan's peddling combined for an awesome 15 miles an hour. It took them all night, six hours on backroads, to get down to Madison. And this strategy of moving unseen seems to have paid off. But I'm just saying, a big guy on a tiny bike zipping through the back country at O'Dark 30 in the morning is something I'd probably remember seeing it. Yeah. In a Madison park, Ryan ditched the e-bike behind some bushes, changed clothes, and walked 45 minutes to the Dutch Mill Park and ride.

There, having not slept all night and after hours of physical work, well, he probably didn't look too different to anyone else getting on a Greyhound bus for a trip through Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit before finishing. in Toronto. In the early hours of the morning, the bus crossed the Detroit River from Michigan into Ontario. This, of course, meant border control. And Ryan, sleepless and nervous, caught their eye enough that they took him aside for questioning. He had nothing on him except his passport, a prepaid Western Union card, and about six grand in cash. And he had only the vaguest answers about what he planned to do in Toronto. He looked pretty suss, but nothing came up. He was a when they ran his name through their database. So the border officer scanned his passport and let him through along with everyone else.

Ryan apparently didn't anticipate that there would be an electronic record of him traveling from one country to another. I mean, duh, it's 2024, Ryan. They don't just put a stamp on it anymore. Kind of puts the kibosh on the whole, I'm dead in a lake in Wisconsin story. Oopsie. I cannot. It's honestly so stupid.

In Toronto, he headed straight for the airport and used his Western Union card to buy a ticket to Paris. And from Paris, he flew to what authorities just described as a country in Asia, but which was almost certainly Uzbekistan. Now, we all, of course, have a deep and intimate knowledge of Uzbekistan, the former Soviet Republic to the north of Afghanistan. Vast, mostly hot, and mostly dry, home to 37 million people, the most venomous cobra on earth, and a spectacular variety of wild cats. Snow leopards, caracol, palace cats, sand cats. We don't have to know any more than that to love you, Uzbekistan. But those of you trying to figure out just what the hell Ryan was doing probably won't be too surprised to learn that those were not the pussy. That brought him there.

I see what you did there. I mean, I hate it, but I see it. Thanks. I appreciate your acknowledgement. Yeah, yeah. Fifty days after he disappeared, authorities still searched for Ryan's body in Green Lake, although not as intensely as they once had.

Other things happened. Other people needed their attention. Some bodies are just never found. His wife and kids grieved terribly. their lives wrecked by an apparent misfortune. We don't know quite how it shook down, but I would guess

a Canadian border official happened to see a story about Ryan's parents and thought, oh yeah, that sketchy guy. Regardless, in October, Dodge County investigators got a call to let them know that their waterlogged corpse had actually been on a bus for Toronto.

Obviously, this didn't so much shake up the case as turn it completely upside down. A confused used Emily let officers look at their computers. Ryan, like many a dumb ass before him, thought he was being clever, but in fact might as well have been following a checklist called, I'm about to fake my own death. Shortly before he vanished, he backed up his laptop to iCloud,

then replaced the hard drive on the assumption that this would erase his entire electronic presence. That is not how it works. A little more digging showed that on the day he disappeared, Ryan changed the email addresses linked to his bank accounts. He'd looked into how deep a body has to fall in water that it won't resurface. They also found he'd just gotten a new $375,000 life insurance policy, with Emily as the beneficiary, which I guess shows he was still capable of at least some shame and guilt.

He also searched on how to move money to foreign banks, so it seems clear he was planning to steal a chunk of Emily's money when he left. And of course, there were a whole bunch of communications, with a lady from Uzbekistan. The sheriff's office hasn't revealed the exact nature of these communications, unfortunately, but pictures were shared, and the end result was Ryan throwing out his whole life and traveling halfway around the world so you can probably take a guess. Thus far, at least, we know frustratingly little about her,

other than that after he landed, she and Ryan spent days together, shacked up in a hotel room, you know, hunting the Caspian cobra. I can make dirty jokes, too. We'll call her Salihah, the most common female name in Uzbekistan, which is definitely a thing I just happened to know and didn't Google at all, because I'm smart. After a little while, Ryan and Salihah moved to another former Soviet Republic, Georgia, on the Black Sea coast with a pleasant Mediterranean climate. If you had to pick somewhere formerly Soviet to live, you could do a lot worse.

Until he starts talking, Ryan's life here is essentially a, blank. He was a carpenter, which is something that can get you work anywhere in the world, but he was also kind of a loser, so it's easy to imagine him sponging off of whatever work Salihio was doing, just like he'd sponged off of Emily. Sometimes police work is lots of deep psychological consideration, and sometimes it's just doing grunt work forever. Investigators got a list of every single phone number and email address on Ryan's laptop, and just started reaching out to all of them. Eventually, they reached a rush

speaking woman, most likely Siliha herself, and from her, they got Ryan's current email address. Which doesn't exactly suggest Ryan's new romance was a bed of roses, does it? Whenever you hear about somebody flying off to foreign lands to meet a love interest they met online, there's always a suspicion of some degree of catfishing. It's only speculation, but in this case, I kind of suspect Ryan was the one setting himself up to be more than he actually was. It's easy to imagine Saleha, whoever she was, expecting to get more than a deadbeat cheesehead with $5,500 in his pocket. Of course, true love can easily overcome that, but nothing we've seen in this story suggests that Ryan Borgwart was all that charming. Anyway, whoever the police got in touch

with, she passed on Ryan's Georgian deeds with no hesitation, and so the sheriff's office sent him an email. On November 11th, they received a video Ryan took on his phone. The sheriff wanted to see him to make sure this really was Ryan, alive and well, and not some extended identity theft scam. A self-taken proof of life video. I'm safe and secure, no problem, Ryan said in the video, although he looked absolutely miserable. He said he was in his apartment and swung his camera around, although it just showed bare walls. It could have been anywhere, and no matter where you were in the world, it looked like the dwelling of a dude and living alone without a girlfriend.

He told the sheriff he'd fled the country because of personal matters, which is hard to argue with. Wanting to stick your dick in a Newspecky girl definitely qualifies as a personal matter. He thought his plan was going to pan out, but it didn't go the way he had planned, said the sheriff. I mean, who could have imagined it not working out? Faking your own death and abandoning your family to fly off to a land completely. alien to you and hook up with someone you've never met in person.

And so now we're trying to give him a different plan to come back, the sheriff said. He said planned like 18 times in that sentence. Jesus. At least at this time, the sheriff was just working both for Ryan's well-being and the well-being and peace of mind of his family. No criminal charges had been filed related to his disappearance. And all Ryan was ever likely to face was misdemeanor obstruction. He was ready to quit his brief tour of the post-Soviet world and come back to America's Dairyland. But the big barrier was how people would react, meaning everyone would know he'd done something colossally stupid and shitty. He was embarrassed.

You should be embarrassed, Ryan, you're an asshole. The sheriff's plan was to tug at his heartstrings. Christmas is coming, he told Ryan, and what better gift could your kids get than to be here for Christmas? So they can kick the shit out of you for doing this to them. It worked. On December 10th, four months after his supposed death by drowning, Ryan Borgwart flew back to Wisconsin and handed himself to the Green Lake Sheriff's Department.

He was charged with obstructing an officer but bonded out for $500. He ran back home to the loving embrace of his wife's filing to have their marriage in old. Emily cited their marriage as irretrievably broken, which is hard to argue with and sought full custody of their kids. A hearing on that was scheduled for April 28th this year, but we can't find anything on it. I can't imagine Emily will have too much trouble getting out of that marriage. Court proceedings continue for Ryan's criminal case, with no sign of a trial date yet. This looks like the kind of low stakes matter that'll be settled one way or the other without a trial.

But we'll see. So yet another asshole willing to put their children through hell. Unbelievable. I'm sure you all remember John Darwin from an earlier episode. Remember we called him Loserous? He faked his death, too, and his adult children spent years mourning their father as dead before he just popped back up, alive and well. That level of selfishness is hard to understand, isn't it?

Molly, annoyed at the people who resented her for disturbing a grave. Ryan telling the cops he was safe and secure while his wife and children were living in hell back at home. You'd think these cases would happen once in a blue moon, but we've seen a ton of them. Look at Sherry Papini, a gal who is definitely different. do for the TCC treatment in the near future. She didn't fake her death, but she did fake her violent kidnapping, leaving her husband and young kids terrified for her for weeks and wasting an obscene amount of law enforcement's time and resources.

It's hard to wrap your head around, but some people genuinely do not care about anybody but the person they see in the mirror. The only silver lining is that these people tend to be pretty dumb, so their best laid plans will probably blow up right in their face, and then the rest of us get to laugh at them and we never get tired of that so that was a pair of wild ones right campers you know we'll have another one for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire if you haven't booked your spot yet on the crime wave true crime cruise from november 3rd through november 7th get on it y'all there

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