Keith Cormican, founder of Bruce’s Legacy, said he examined sonar data for days only to learn that Ryan Borgwardt may have planned his own disappearance.

A volunteer who assisted the Wisconsin sheriff’s office in the search for a man who allegedly faked his own death shares his reaction to the unexpected development.

Keith Cormican – founder Bruce’s Legacyan all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that assists in search and rescue missions as well as rescue efforts for drowning victims, spoke with the Wisconsin news outlet NBC 26 on his role in the search for Ryan Borgwardt, a married father. Believe staged his own disappearance.

Cormican, who helped search for Borgwardt by conducting sonar checks on Wisconsin’s Green Lake for more than a week and boating on the waters for 23 days, said he felt a sense of relief but also a nagging uncertainty about what would happen.

“My first feeling was, ‘Okay, I didn’t miss him, he just wasn’t there,'” Cormican told NBC 26, recalling the moment he learned Borgwardt was alive.

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“This was definitely a very, very difficult situation to deal with emotionally,” he added. “There were nights when I woke up in the middle of the night because I couldn’t sleep, and I got up and sat in front of the laptop and started looking at the sonar data.”

Borgwardt has not been seen by his family or authorities since Aug. 12, when deputies responded to a missing persons call and found his vehicle and trailer in Green Lake County. Sheriff’s office deputies found his capsized kayak, fishing rod, car, wallet, driver’s license and keys unattended near a fishing spot.

But on Nov. 8, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said a search of Borgwardt’s laptop in October discovered that investigators had replaced his hard drive and deleted his internet browser history the day he disappeared. Authorities later determined that Borgwardt had taken photos of his passport, transferred the money to a foreign bank account, changed his email and contacted a woman in Uzbekistan.

The sheriff said earlier this month that the father of three had taken out a $375,000 life insurance policy months before he disappeared, and authorities were tipped off when they discovered his passport had been checked by Canadian law enforcement on Aug. 13, the next day. was reported missing.

Police now believe Borgwardt is “somewhere in Europe.”

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For Cormican, who started his nonprofit after his firefighter brother Bruce Cormican drowned in 1995; The initial search kept him awake at night because he was afraid of disappointing Borgwardt’s family if he could not find the missing father.

“The stress of it… the emotional feelings of wondering if I miss him… Did I let the family down? Did I let the sheriff’s department down? Did I let the community down?” Cormican told the local station.

Cormican, who now plans to focus on another missing person search in Wyoming that he had to postpone while searching for Borgwardt, said this incident will not change his mission to find missing persons.

“I feel very, very sorry for the family that you know are having to deal with these types of circumstances, what happens now? What happens next for them? Yeah, it’s pretty tough,” Cormican said.

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At a press conference earlier this month, Sheriff Podoll urged Borgwardt to come forward for the sake of her children.

“They thought their father had drowned,” he said, according to a local television station on November 8. WBAY. “They found out the day before that it wasn’t.”

Podoll also thanked Borgwardt’s wife, calling her a “strong woman.”

“Ryan, if you see this, I’m asking you to contact us or your family,” the sheriff said. “We know things can happen, but there is a family that wants their father back.”