An American kayaker who faked his own death and left his wife and three children has shared a video with investigators to prove that he is safe.
Wisconsin man Ryan Borgwardt has been located in Eastern Europe after he faked his drowning this summer but he has told authorities he will not be returning home.
Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said on Thursday that Mr Borgwardt began communicating with authorities on November 11, after they tracked him down.
The sheriff showed a video that Mr Borgwardt sent police that day from an undisclosed location.
The sheriff said no criminal charges have been filed and he does not believe they will be necessary while authorities "keep pulling at his heartstrings" to come home.
Mr Borgwardt, who is in his mid-40s, lived with his wife and children in Watertown, a city of about 23,000 people northwest of Milwaukee.
The sheriff said his department was told on August 12 that Mr Borgwardt had not been heard from since the previous day, when he travelled about 50 miles from home to Green Lake to go kayaking.
His wife said he texted her at 10.49pm to say he was heading to shore.
Deputies found Borgwardt's vehicle and trailer near Green Lake.
His kayak was discovered on the lake, overturned and with a life jacket attached to it, in an area where the water is about 60 metres deep.
An angler later found Mr Borgwardt's fishing rod. The search for his body continued for more than 50 days, with divers scouring the lake on several occasions.
Clues — including that he reported his passport lost or stolen and obtained a new one a few months before he disappeared — led investigators to speculate that he made it appear that he had drowned to go meet a woman he had been communicating with in Uzbekistan.
Mr Podoll declined to comment when asked what he knew about the woman, but he said law enforcement contacted Mr Borgwardt "through a female that spoke Russian."
His identity was confirmed by asking him questions that the sheriff said only Mr Borgwardt would know and by a video he made and sent them on November 11.
He has spoken with someone from the sheriff's department almost daily since. However, Mr Podoll said Mr Borgwardt's exact location in Eastern Europe was not known.
Wearing an orange T-shirt, Mr Borgwardt, unsmiling, looks directly at the camera, apparently filmed on a cellphone. Mr Borgwardt says he is in his apartment and briefly pans the camera, but mostly shows a door and bare walls. "I'm safe and secure, no problem," he says.
Mr Borgwardt told authorities he overturned his kayak on the lake, dumped his phone in it and paddled an inflatable boat to shore.
He told authorities he chose Green Lake because it is Wisconsin's deepest at over 72 meters.
He then rode an electric bike stashed by a boat launch about 70 miles through the night to Madison, the sheriff said.
From there, he travelled by bus to Detroit and then to Canada, where he boarded a plane. Police are still verifying Mr Borgwardt's description of what happened, Mr Podoll said.
Mr Borgwardt faked his death and fled because of "personal matters," thinking it was the right thing to do, the sheriff said.
Investigators found that he took out a $375,000 life insurance policy in January for his family.
"He was just going to try and make things better in his mind, and this was the way it was going to be," Mr Podoll said.
Mr Borgwardt has not yet decided to return home, and if he does it will be of his own free will, according to Mr Podoll.
Deputies are stressing to him the importance of returning home and cleaning up the mess he made.
The sheriff suggested that Mr Borgwardt could be charged with obstructing the investigation into his disappearance, but so far no counts have been filed.
The search for Mr Borgwardt, which lasted more than a month, is said to have cost at least $35,000.
Mr Borgwardt told authorities that he did not expect the search to last more than two weeks, Mr Podoll said, and his biggest concern is how the community will react to him if he returns.
