MADISON: The wife of a Wisconsin kayaker who faked his own drowning so he could leave her and their child and meet a woman in Eastern Europe filed court papers Thursday (Dec 12) to end their marriage.

Online court records show 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 does not 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 do not list an attorney for Ryan Borgwardt.

The separation filing states that the couple has been married for 22 years and Emily Borgwardt wants sole custody of their three teenage children. The document adds that Emily works at a private school in Watertown. Ryan is listed as self-employed and currently lives at an “unknown address”.

A hearing in the case has been set for April.

Ryan Borgwardt, 45, was reported missing on August 12 after telling his wife the night before that he was kayaking on Green Lake, about 100 km northwest of Milwaukee.

His disappearance was initially 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 a woman he had communicated with in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

Investigators contacted Borgwardt in November and convinced him to return to the United States. He turned himself in to 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 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 he brought with him – and dumped his kayak. identification in the lake along the way – and rode an electric bike 112 km to Madison, where he took a bus to Toronto, flew to Paris and then to an unspecified country in Eastern Europe.

He told investigators a woman picked him up and they spent several days at a hotel before he settled in the country of Georgia, according to the complaint.

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