Everything we know about missing mother-of-two as she suddenly reappears 60 years later after family thought she had been murdered

Mother-of-two, Audrey Backeberg, was just 20 years old when she disappeared seemingly without a trace in Reedsburg, Wisconsin.

She managed to remain in hiding for more than 60 years, leading her family to think she had been murdered, before she reappeared unharmed.

But who is Audrey and why did she have 'no regrets' after leaving her two children and her husband behind back in the 1960s?

When did she go missing?

Audrey Backeberg was found more than 60 years later after first going missing in 1962 (Wisconsin Missing Persons Advocacy Inc)

She left behind her husband and two children in July 1962, leaving what is said to have been an abusive home. In the days before she went missing, Backeberg logged a criminal complaint against her husband.

She left the house to pick up her salary, before hitchhiking to the capital city Madison with her 14-year-old babysitter on July 7.

The teenager eventually became worried and travelled home, making her the last person to see Audrey before she went missing and last saw her walking towards a different bus stop.

Her case went cold, with her distraught family eventually accepting she was dead after more than six decades.

When was she found?

Now 82, she has been found alive just outside of Wisconsin, not far from where she lived, detectives confirmed.

Sauk County Sheriff Chip Meister revealed that officers revisiting her cold case had managed to make contact with Audrey and speak to her.

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How was she found?

Now, over the decades, Audrey's family insisted she would never have left her children willingly and insisted she had been murdered.

Her husband was initially suspected in her disappearance, so he undertook a polygraph lie detector tests which showed he was innocent.

Detective Isaac Hanson was responsible for re-opening the cold case of the strange disappearance, and as part of his investigation, he re-interviewed several key witnesses.

Detective Isaac Hanson revisited the cold case (WMTV15 News)

What did she say when she was found?

The breakthrough came when Audrey's sister had an Ancestry.com account, and by using the available death records and census reports, they tracked down an address.

He asked the local sheriff to 'pop in' and see if it really was Audrey.

"I had high hopes; there wasn’t a certainty that we would know it was her," he recalled. Audrey then phoned Detective Hanson and had a 45 minute conversation with him.

He promised to keep the nature of their conversation private, but he has said he could not rule out the difficult marital issues being the reason why she left.

Audrey apparently has 'no regrets' about what she did. The detective did say he did know know why she stayed away for so long and never came back.

He said: "I think she just was removed and, you know, moved on from things and kind of did her own thing and led her life."

Detective Hanson added: "She sounded happy. Confident in her decision. No regrets."

Police have closed the case and no further action will be taken, as they say her disappearance 'was not the result of any criminal activity or foul play'.