Student Charged With Fake Abduction

A college student accused of faking her own kidnapping last month was charged Wednesday with lying to police in what they suggested was a desperate attempt to get her boyfriend’s attention.

Audrey Seiler, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of obstructing officers. Each charge carries up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Seiler, 20, disappeared from her off-campus apartment March 27 without her coat or purse. She was discovered curled in a fetal position in a marsh four days later, and told police that a man had abducted her at knifepoint.

But investigators concluded that Seiler made up the story after they obtained a store videotape that showed her buying the knife, duct tape, rope and cold medicine she claimed her abductor used to restrain her. Seiler confessed after she was confronted with the tape, authorities said.

“I set up everything. I’m just so messed up. I’m sorry,” they quoted her as saying. But she later recanted the statement, insisting she had been abducted.

Hundreds of people from Madison and Seiler’s hometown searched for her after she disappeared, and her claim about an armed man touched off a major manhunt that authorities said cost the police about $96,000.

Her first court appearance was scheduled for today, but her attorney was expected to appear in her place.

Lawyer Randy Hopper would not say Wednesday whether she would contest the charges. He called Seiler a “model student, a model citizen.”

The criminal complaint depicts Seiler as a young woman upset by a fading relationship with her boyfriend, Ryan Fisher.

Friends said the two had been fighting. Seiler’s mother told police her daughter had not been herself lately.