Police Say YouTube Video Investigated in Girl's Disappearance Is Fake

Courtesy National Center For Missing & Exploited Children(ANTIGO, Wis.) — Police in Wisconsin now say a disturbing YouTube video investigated in the 2009 disappearance of a teenage girl is fake.

Investigators “identified the video producer/camera man, actor and actress in the video,” the Antigo police said in a statement, adding that that the department, “has been able to identify that this video is 100 percent fake.”

The video has no connection to the disappearance of Kayla Berg, the statement added.

In the nearly minute-long video — called “Hi Walter! I got a new gf today!” — a man talks into the camera, saying he met a girl at the mall and then took her back to his place. The video then shows a woman screaming on the floor in a dark bathroom. She appears to be bound.

The video was posted on Oct. 11, 2009, “but has recently gone viral, and many believed it was connected to our missing person Kayla Berg,” said the police in Antigo, a town of 8,000 people about 200 miles north of Milwaukee.

Berg, who would now be 23 years old, vanished on Aug. 11, 2009, in Antigo, and her disappearance remains a mystery.

Her mother, Hope Sprenger, told ABC television affiliate WAOW in Wisconsin that the young woman in the video sounded and looked like Berg.

“I thought it looked a lot like her,” Sprenger said. “I pray to God it’s not.”

“The clothing could be a big possibility,” she added. “We do believe she was wearing that type of shirt. We know she had jeans.”

“It made me sick to my stomach,” Sprenger said.

The FBI had been assisting the Antigo Police with Kayla’s case since 2009 and also said it looked into the video.

Eric Roller, the chief of police in Antigo, said he was notified this weekend after somebody found the disturbing video online and then researched missing females from that time. Berg “came up” in the search, and that individual shared the video with police, he said.

According to Roller, in the seven years Berg has been missing, the police have followed every tip they have received about her disappearance.

“Every tip that we do get on Kayla we take seriously,” Roller said. “One day we’re going to have that one tip that’s going to make that difference, and we are gonna find something.”

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