Kayla May Berg

• Missing Since 08/11/2009
• Missing From Antigo, Wisconsin
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 08/29/1993 (30)
• Age 15 years old
• Height and Weight 5'2, 108 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A red spaghetti-strap top, a dark blue hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, tan low-heeled sandals and a silver ringed necklace.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Kayla has a scar on her right shin and small chicken pox scars on her right cheek and the right side of her nose. She has abdominal scars from laparoscopic surgery, and her appendix has been removed. Her navel is pierced and her ears are double-pierced. Her nickname is Kay Kay.

Details of Disappearance

Kayla was last seen on August 11, 2009. That evening, she was with a 24-year-old friend, Kevin J. Kielcheski. A photo of Kielcheski is posted with this case summary.

He drove her around her hometown of Antigo, Wisconsin and the pair allegedly smoked marijuana. They were seen at a McDonald's restaurant at 9:30 p.m. and Kayla spoke to a friend who was working there. She made plans to call her friend later that night.

This is the last confirmed sighting of Kayla, but many reports state that the last sighting was after that. Kielcheski said he dropped Kayla off at the home of her nineteen-year-old boyfriend, Miguel, on Highway 52 in Wausau, Wisconsin, about a forty-minute drive from Antigo. He never actually saw her go inside the house and there were no lights; it looked like no one was home.

Authorities do not believe this story. The house on Highway 52 had been condemned and Miguel had moved out, and Kayla knew this. She had actually attended a party at his new home a week earlier.  She would have had no reason to visit his previous home in Wausau anymore. Besides Kielcheski's statement, there is no evidence that she was ever dropped off in Wausau, not even digital evidence such as phone records.

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. Her parents had a fairly open living arrangement for her and her younger brother, and they often traveled back and forth by themselves between one parent's house and another.

Kayla, her brother and her mother had moved to Texas earlier in 2009, but the two children were homesick and their father was then diagnosed with cancer. After just three months their mother took them and moved back to Wisconsin. After she returned to Wisconsin, Kayla began going to parties out of town with friends and meeting up with boys and men significantly older than herself.

Earlier in August, Kayla and a friend went to a party without telling either of their parents and didn't get in touch with their parents overnight or the next day. Their parents were in the process of filing missing persons reports for both girls when the girls finally contacted them.

Authorities initially believed Kayla was a runaway, and they stated her friends appeared evasive, as if they were trying to conceal her whereabouts. Police began to reconsider the runaway theory as weeks passed without any contact. Miguel, her boyfriend, denied having seen her the day of her disappearance.

In October 2009, Kielcheski was arrested and charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, a felony; this is related to his illegal drug use with Kayla on the night she was last seen. The charge was dismissed for lack of evidence in July 2011, however. Kielcheski hasn't been charged or named as a suspect in her actual disappearance, and he is no longer cooperating with the investigation.

Kayla is described as a passionate gymnast who was looking forward to being on her school's team. She didn't own a cellular phone or a computer at the time of her disappearance and apparently didn't use the internet very much.

Although there is no hard evidence of foul play in her case, she's believed to be in danger. Her case remains unsolved.