15-year-old Kayla Berg spent the afternoon of August 11, 2009, with her friend, Natasha, the same way she did most of that summer. That afternoon, she checked in with her mother, Hope Sprenger, and explained she was with her best friend, Natasha and would be heading over to her father’s place later.
Just days earlier, on Sunday, August 9, the girls had pulled a double-alibi trick, where Kayla claimed she was spending the night at Natasha’s home. Natasha told her mother the same thing.
Because neither parent verified the plan by calling the other’s household, the two were able to slip away to an unmonitored party house in Wausau. On Monday, Natasha’s mother realised the girls were not home yet and called Hope.
As morning turned into afternoon, Hope and Natasha’s mother walked into the Antigo Police Department. While the girls’ mothers were preparing to file missing-person reports, they received a call that their daughters were fine.
A furious Hope made Kayla promise to never sneak out or lie about her location like that again. Kayla promised she wouldn’t.
The next day, she and Natasha hung around the house with their two elder brothers and a family friend named Kevin Kielcheski. When Natasha left for her work shift, Kayla stayed behind to make plans with Kevin for later that night.
Then she walked back to her grandparents’ house, where her father, James, was staying, and spent part of the evening with him. He had been battling cancer for years, and Kayla deliberately split her time between her parents’ homes.
24-year-old Kielcheski was not a stranger to the family. He was Kayla’s big brother, Jimmy’s close friend and someone who had eaten dinner at the family table several times. So no one thought twice about him picking Kayla up that night.
Kielcheski arrived at 8.45 pm in a silver Jeep Cherokee, and the two went on what was later found to be a local joy ride, smoking marijuana. 45 minutes later, they arrived at a local McDonald’s in Antigo.
Kayla briefly went inside to see a friend who was working at the counter that night. She appeared chatty and mentioned she was just ‘riding around’.
Kayla and her friend agreed to touch base later that night, but that never happened. After the stop, Kayla asked Kevin to drive her to visit her 19-year-old boyfriend, Miguel Marrero, who lived in Wausau.
It was a 35-mile drive southwest across the county lines. Kevin said she gave him exact directions and they arrived at a house on Highway 52 in Wausau at 10.30 pm.
According to Kevin, the house was dark, and it appeared as though no one was home. He claimed to have watched Kayla walk toward the side of the house, but he turned his Jeep around and drove away before actually confirming she had entered it.
Kevin drove directly back to his home in Deerbrook, Wisconsin, and his mother confirmed he arrived around midnight. Kayla, though, was never seen or heard from again.
Six Days Before Anyone Suspected Anything
The next morning, James realised Kayla hadn’t come home. He called Kevin, who gave him the same story. That he dropped her off and drove away.
He also told James that he did not exactly know whose house it was or what it looked like. James then left a message for Hope but largely assumed she was at her mother’s place.
What followed was days of miscommunication, as both households assumed that Kayla was simply with the other parent. The fact that Kayla did not own a cell phone also normalised the zero contact.
In 2009, it was normal for her to be out of reach for a day or two while hanging out with friends, so neither parent was panicked on Wednesday or Thursday.
According to the Charley Project, “Kayla wasn’t reported missing for six days in part because her parents, who are separated, each thought she was in the other one’s home.”
Hope did not effectively connect with James until Thursday, August 13. Upon hearing that Kayla hadn’t surfaced, she immediately launched her own frantic search and focused on tracking down Kevin.
When he finally responded, he refused to pick up the phone and only replied via text message. Kevin claimed his phone had been dead when Hope tried to call him before.
She told WSAW-TV, “He said his phone died. So, it took a while for him to answer. And it was just texting. Then he was saying a lot of things, you know, ‘I don’t remember, there’s a lot of one-way streets in Wausau,’ but he dropped her off someplace in Wausau.”
Sifting through the leads, she called Kayla’s boyfriend, Miguel, on Friday. Miguel flatly denied seeing Kayla that Tuesday night, saying he had not seen her since a party the previous Friday.
The next day, Jimmy told Hope he thought he had tracked Kayla down to a friend’s house and gave her a number. Hope called the number but did not get an answer.
When she finally reached the individual on Sunday, they stated Kayla wasn’t there and hadn’t been seen in days. It was at that point, with all leads coming up empty, that Hope decided to bring in the police.
The Investigation Points to Kevin
Police initially classified Kayla as a runaway because of her recent activities, considering her mother was in the station filling a missing persons report a week before. It would not be until August 20 that the case was upgraded to an endangered missing case.
It was a delay her mother never stopped blaming herself for. She stated, “Every day, I blame myself that I should have done more at that point in time.”
Once police began pulling the thread, Kevin became the main person of interest. His account was the only version of the last hours Kayla was seen, and it frayed under interrogation.
The main problem with his story was the house on Highway 52 had been condemned. Marrero had already moved out to a new residence about a mile away, and it seemed Kayla was aware of it.
She had reportedly been at Marrero’s place a week before. Years later, Duley would tell reporters, “Certainly a question that has come up in the investigation and doesn’t quite make sense of why she would direct him to that particular house.”
Kielcheski was unable to describe the house where he dropped her. Neither could he confirm for certain what the girl was wearing. The more the police pushed, the less cooperative he became and eventually retained the services of a lawyer.
In October 2009, the police charged Kevin Kielcheski with second-degree reckless endangerment, tied to marijuana use earlier that night. This also provided sufficient grounds to search his vehicle and his family’s property in Deerbrook.
Evidence was collected and sent for testing. None of these produced anything that confirmed Kayla’s location or that there was foul play that night.
Kielcheski’s mother emphasised she saw her son arrive home close to midnight, which is consistent with the drive time from Wausau to Antigo. That is, if the account about the drop-off location was true.
In March 2010, the Wisconsin National Guard flew thermal-imaging helicopters over the region, searching for disturbed ground. The next year, the police returned to Kielcheski’s parents’ property and visited a potato farm where he worked.
They brought along cadaver dogs after what Chief Dan Duley described as “some indications around that property that prompted us to do a more thorough search at the property.”
They still didn’t find anything. That August, a judge also dismissed the reckless endangerment charges for lack of evidence.
It was a ruling that Hope still has not reconciled, saying “I’m like, okay, he took her over county lines, he admitted that he smoked marijuana, whether he gave her marijuana, an illegal drug, and they still said that no secondary reckless endangerment and they dropped it,” she said. “I am still very upset about that. I can’t let that one go. I’m very, very upset about that.”
No charges related to Kayla’s disappearance have ever been filed against Kevin Kielcheski or anyone else. The police also looked into her boyfriend, Marrero, whose cell phone activity backed up the claim that he had not spoken to Kayla that night.
However, an older cell phone still registered to him pinged a tower 40 miles north of Wausau in the early morning hours after Kayla went missing, and he received two unanswered calls.
When detectives confronted him about why an old device linked to his name was suddenly routing data 40 miles north of his house right after his girlfriend vanished, he refused to answer questions and retained legal counsel. He did cooperate with the initial search of his house.
Several years later, Duley has been careful not to close any lead in the case, stating, “I would say that nobody necessarily has been ruled out in this investigation.”
‘Hi Walter’ Video
Kayla’s case was dormant in the press until October 2016 after a video named, “Hi Walter! I got new gf today!” surfaced online. In the video, a young woman was crying in a basement while a man addressed the camera.
The video had originally been posted two months after Kayla disappeared, but it got significantly more online traction with this reposting. Viewers noted a resemblance to Kayla, and the clip spread so quickly that it gained 3 million views.
The FBI moved in afterwards to track down the creators. It turned out the video was a staged horror short made by amateur filmmakers and unconnected to Kayla in any way.
For Hope, though, the fallout was real. “That was horrifying,” she said. “I guess the only benefit that I did get out of that was worldwide coverage. Her name went worldwide, real quick. Other than that, it was a nightmare, just a living nightmare.”
A Tip From Kewaunee County
In the years after, local and state investigators conducted more than a dozen searches. Most of these have concentrated in central and north-central Wisconsin near Antigo and Wausau.
In 2023, the Antigo police department got a sudden tip concerning the case. It did not come from an anonymous hotline but from an inmate incarcerated in the Wisconsin State Prison system.
The tip consisted of a series of emails sent from a prison terminal to the Antigo Police Department. It was also highly geographical, providing directions for a rural plot of land in Kewaunee County.
This was groundbreaking because every previous search had focused on central or north-central Wisconsin, whereas Kewaunee County was 100 miles east. Due to the security and investigative protocols, Chief Dan Duley did not release the inmate’s name or the specific prison where they were being held.
Before tearing up the property with machinery, the police conducted a screening at the site with specialised cadaver dogs. The dogs gave positive indications in specific areas of the property, indicating the scent of human decomposition.
This provided detectives the legal justification to escalate the investigation. Acting on this alert, the crews and investigators moved heavy equipment onto the property and began digging up the earth.
Unfortunately, the excavation yielded no evidence. There were no bone fragments, personal belongings, or clothing fibres tied to Kayla Berg on that property.
It resulted in another heart-rending dead end for the family, though Chief Duley continued to emphasise the case remains open and active. Hope was blunt concerning the result, saying, “Guess it was just somebody wanting something and manipulated and used my story, or Kayla’s story, as a way to get it.”
Regret and Residual Grief
Because the gruelling cancer treatments and dialysis left him physically weak, James moved back into his parents’ home in Antigo, Wisconsin, so they could assist with his day-to-day. Medical care.
Following Kayla’s disappearance, James’s health collapsed under the intense psychological stress. He actively cooperated with the Antigo Police Department but grew increasingly frail.
James Spanbauer lost his battle with cancer on June 15, 2011, at the age of 51, at Aspirus Wausau Hospital. Jimmy, who spent his childhood as Kayla’s protector, still carries significant guilt over not being there the night she disappeared.
Earlier that evening, Kayla had asked Jimmy for a ride to a party with him, and because he had other plans, he said ‘no’. Some investigators believe the rejection is part of why Kayla looked for alternative plans with Kevin Kielcheski.
The fact that his friend Kevin was also a major reason Kayla vanished did not help either. The same also applied to Natasha
While she was not a biological family member, she also shared the psychological weight of the disappearance.
Natasha made a point of avoiding the media spotlight but did not hide from investigators and actively spoke with the police behind closed doors. She provided timelines and confirmed her shift at the restaurant.
The Search Continues
The Antigo Police Department currently classifies Kayla’s disappearance as an active investigation rather than a cold case. Duley said the lack of resolution weighs significantly, “The fact that there is no conclusion is very sad to me; it’s a case I think of on a daily basis.”
The FBI still lists Kayla as an endangered missing person and has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
At the time she disappeared, Kayla was five feet two inches tall and weighed around 108 pounds. She had brown eyes, a pierced navel, and scars on her right shin.
Kayla would be 32 years old today. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Antigo Police Department at 715-627-6411 or the Langlade County Crime Stoppers at 715-627-6472.
For more stories on unsolved disappearances, explore our articles on Brian Laspisa and Marina Boelter.
Image notice: Images used in this article are credited to their respective owners and sources. They are reproduced for editorial reporting, identification, historical context, commentary, and public-interest documentation. Skip Boring does not claim ownership of third-party images.
If you are a copyright holder and have concerns about any image used here, please contact us with the relevant details, and we will promptly review the request and remove the material where appropriate.
