ANTIGO, Wis. – A YouTube video seven years ago in which a man talked about his new girlfriend, who was shown tied up in a closet, that prompted Wisconsin police to relaunch a cold-case investigation of missing woman Kayla Berg turned out to be a hoax, police said.
The Antigo Police Department said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that it determined the video is fake. The department said officers identified the producer of the video, the camera operator and the man and woman in the video, and none of them have any connection to the missing woman.
The Antigo Police Department has been investigating the Hi Walter, its Patrick, I have a new girlfriend video that was...
Posted by Antigo Police Department on Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Berg was 15 years old when she disappeared.
"It sounded like her. Looked like her. It gave me chills," Berg's mother, Hope Sprenger, said about the video.
The video shows a man sitting in what appears to be his kitchen, talking about how he met a girl at a mall.
"We went shopping at JCPenney's, and she tried on a lot of clothes," the man said in the video.
The video was posted two months after Berg was reported missing.