He's Supposed To Be Dead // The Ryan Borgwardt Story
episodePreviously titled “He's Supposed To Be Dead // THe Ryan Borgwardt Story” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Why don't people just get a divorce? Like, why are people out here committing all kinds of crimes just to get out of a marriage? For example, this guy, Ryan. And Ryan is 43 when the story starts, and he's living in Watertown, Wisconsin, and life isn't going so well for him right now. He's over $200,000 in debt, and on top of that, he's been married for 22 years, but he's no longer happy with his wife. It's just not working out. Plus he feels like his own three kids no longer want anything to do with him. So one day in 2023, he starts looking for something to spice up his life. And that is when he joins an international dating site where he can meet foreign women abroad. And there he matches with this woman, Katya.
Why did Ryan Borgwardt start an international dating profile while deeply in debt?
And Katya is a Ukrainian woman living in the country of Georgia. And so they match and Ryan thinks she kinda foine. And she's into him too. And they hit it off and they start chatting and soon they're communicating as often as they can. And of course they end up falling in love and they start talking about finally meeting in person so that they can be together.
Now, at this point, Ryan could, you know, just divorce his wife like a normal person and go be with Katya.
It's perfectly legal, no one's gonna stop him. But, for whatever reason, he decides he's not gonna go that route. He decides he'd rather abandon his whole family and just disappear completely. And the best way to do that is by... Faking his own death. But see, Ryan, he's not a total asshole. I mean, he's not a monster. He wants to make sure that before he disappears, his family will be financially taken care of. So he goes and he takes out a $375,000 life insurance policy on himself. Then once that's done, he gets on his laptop and he starts doing research. And he Googles things like how to successfully disappear and how to fake a drowning. And he takes note of some of this information. And from there, he comes up with the perfect plan.
His plan is to stage his death during a kayaking trip. That way, it'll look like he drowned. And after that, he'll secretly make his way across the border to Canada, then he'll fly to Georgia to start his new life with Katya. So one night in 2024, he puts his plan into motion. He leaves his house without telling his wife or kids where he's going, and he travels about 50 miles over to a lake called Green Lake, which is one of the deepest lakes in Wisconsin, perfect place for someone to get lost. And when he gets to Green Lake, he sends his wife a text saying he's gone on a kayaking fishing trip to see the Northern Lights, and that he'll be home as soon as he's done. Then he paddles way out into the lake, and once he's far enough from shore, he pulls out an inflatable raft that he brought with him, and he inflates it.
Then he climbs onto it, and he tips his kayak over. After that, he throws his phone into the water so someone can eventually find it, and he quietly paddles his raft to the shore. Then he walks over to where he hid an e-bike, and he rides that e-bike nearly 70 miles until he reaches a bus stop in Madison. And from there, he takes a bus to Detroit, and then into Canada, and he travels all the way over to Toronto. And he eventually arrives at the airport there, and he boards a flight to the country of Georgia, where I assume he meets up with Katya. Meanwhile, back in Watertown, Ryan's wife wakes up in the morning, and he's not there. So she starts getting worried. I mean, he's been out all night, he hasn't come home, and he's not responding to her messages.
So she's thinking something terrible must have happened to him. so she reports him missing to the police and pretty quickly the sheriff's office sends a team over to green lake and first responders send rescue boats out and they eventually discover ryan's abandoned overturned kayak floating adrift on the water and they're like oh I guess he drowned. And they think his body must be on the bottom of the lake, and this is one of the deepest lakes in Wisconsin, so this search is gonna be tough.
How did Ryan and Katya’s online relationship develop into plans to meet in person?
So they launch a massive search to find this body, and they have dive teams underwater looking for him, and they got cadaver dogs combing around the shoreline, but there's no sign of Ryan.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:48
2
Why did Ryan Borgwardt start an international dating profile while deeply in debt?
0:48–4:23
3
How did Ryan and Katya’s online relationship develop into plans to meet in person?
4:23–6:45
4
Why did Ryan choose to fake his own death instead of divorcing his wife?
6:45–8:21
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
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