Jan Broberg was kidnapped twice by Robert Berchtold, a man she considered a "second father"
It's been 50 years since Jan Broberg was kidnapped for the first time by Robert Berchtold.
Back in the early 1970s, Jan's parents, Mary Ann and Bob Broberg, met Berchtold and his family while attending church in the small town of Pocatello, Idaho. The two families became close, and Jan eventually thought of Berchtold as a father figure -- but he had ulterior motives.
Over the course of several years, Berchtold set his sights on Jan, going as far as having separate affairs with her parents to keep her within reach. On Oct. 17, 1974, Berchtold took 12-year-old Jan under false pretenses and held her captive in this RV, convincing her that aliens had given them a mission: to have a child together and save the planet.
Soon after, Berchtold drove Jan down to Mexico, where they wed. While Berchtold was later charged with kidnapping, he continued to manipulate Jan and her parents. She still believed the alien mission was real, and Berchtold kidnapped her a second time on Aug. 10, 1976 to complete it.
In the end, the two were found, and Berchtold was sentenced to time in a mental facility, but it wasn't the last time their lives crossed paths.
So what happened to Jan Broberg? Here's everything to know about her kidnapping and where she is now.
Berchtold, a husband and father of five, met the Brobergs in June 1972 when he began attending the same church in Pocatello, Idaho, according to the 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight. The Broberg family was involved in the church as devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they invited Berchtold and his family into their home.
Over the next few months, the two families spent time together, with Berchtold earning the nickname "B." In the documentary, Jan revealed that she considered him a "second father," sharing that she initially felt safe with him. He made it a routine to visit every night to talk and play games.
"Everybody had a best friend. Between the Brobergs and the Berchtold family, there was a best friend for everyone. We had some of our best family times when we were with the Berchtold family," Jan said.
After their first encounter in church, Berchtold gained the trust of Mary Ann and Bob to get to Jan. From the beginning, the couple noticed Berchtold had a "fascination" with Jan, but he managed to distract them with his charm -- even starting separate romantic affairs with them, according to Abducted in Plain Sight.
In doing so, Berchtold was able to spend increasing time with Jan, even giving her a job at his furniture store. She also accompanied the Berchtold family on a trip to Seattle in June 1973. During an appearance on the Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and the Abuse of Power podcast, she recalled Berchtold convincing her parents for permission and her excitement when they eventually agreed because she had a crush on his oldest son Jerry -- but the visit took a turn.
One night, while they were out to dinner, Jan appeared unwell, swaying in her seat while speaking incoherently, she recounted in Abducted in Plain Sight. Berchtold took her back to their motel, where she drifted in and out of consciousness. Afterward, she only remembered waking up and seeing him without clothes.
Then, in January 1974, Berchtold was reprimanded by the High Counsel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after they uncovered his relationship with another young girl. He checked himself into a treatment center in California, and when he returned, he explained to Mary Ann and Bob that his issues stemmed from being sexually assaulted by an aunt as a child, per the Netflix documentary.
He told the couple that a part of his therapy to overcome his trauma was to be around a child who was the same age as his abuser while listening to therapeutic tape recordings from his psychologist -- and he even encouraged them to call his doctor for confirmation.
Mary Ann and Bob hesitantly allowed Berchtold to spend time with Jan while she was sleeping. He lay beside her for 20 minutes every night for nearly six months, up until the evening before her kidnapping.
On Oct. 17, 1974, Berchtold invited Jan for a horseback riding lesson. As the owner of a furniture store, he was heading to a ranch belonging to a client to take some measurements, she said on the Trust Me podcast.
Jan, who had previously ridden horses with Berchtold and his son, agreed to join -- but since it was a school night, her father said no. When Berchtold later asked Mary Ann instead, she approved as long as Jan was back before dinner.
Berchtold proceeded to pick Jan up from her piano class, and on the way to the ranch, he gave her what she believed to be her allergy medication, according to Abducted in Plain Sight. Instead, it was a sleeping pill, and when she awoke, she was tied down to a bed in the back of an RV.
As she went in and out of consciousness, a tape recording played that told her she was secretly part of an alien race. The voices told her that the aliens had been watching her since she was born, and she now had a mission to help their dying planet. Jan was instructed that a "male companion" was waiting at the front of the RV, and she must bear a child with him before her 16th birthday.
"They said if I didn't do this, my father and I would be killed, my sister Karen would go blind and my sister Susan would be kidnapped and take my place as the 'female companion.' The only thing I was thinking about was protecting my family," she told the Idaho State Journal.
Isolated and afraid, Jan believed the story. As she approached the front of the RV, she discovered Berchtold, who had orchestrated a scene to appear hurt and unconscious. When Jan "woke" him, he told her they had been driving when he saw a white flash of light, and the car started shaking.
Over the next several weeks, Berchtold drove the RV toward Mexico, during which he began sexually assaulting Jan under the guise that they were trying to complete the mission given to them by the aliens. When they arrived in Mazatlan, Mexico, the pair got married, as child marriage was legal there at the time.
When Jan and Berchtold didn't return home on the night of the horseback riding lessons, Mary Ann and Bob grew concerned.
That evening, Berchtold's wife Gail came over and tried to reassure the couple that they would come back soon, according to Abducted in Plain Sight. Mary Ann suggested calling the police, but Gail told her to wait. Since Mary Ann and Bob didn't believe Berchtold would harm their daughter and didn't want to upset Gail, they held off on calling the police.
Two days later, Jan and Berchtold still hadn't returned, so Mary Ann called the FBI. Unfortunately, the office was closed for the weekend, and another day passed before Mary Ann dialed a different number. Upon receiving the message, FBI agents immediately headed to the Broberg's home -- beginning a nationwide search for the little girl.
Weeks went by with no sign of Jan or Berchtold. On day 35 of Jan's abduction, Berchtold called his brother Joe and told him that he wanted to come home -- but he needed to first convince Mary Ann to give her parental consent for his marriage to Jan as it was not legal in the United States, per Abducted in Plain Sight.
Joe approached Mary Ann, who denied Berchtold's request and informed the FBI. Joe's phone was tapped, and the next time Berchtold called, they traced it back to a hotel in Mexico. Berchtold was then arrested by Mexican police, but before Jan's parents arrived, he bribed a prison guard to let him see her again.
Berchtold told her that the aliens had visited him, who had warned them not to mention their mission to anyone. If she disobeyed, her sister Karen would go blind, her father would be killed, and her sister Susan would be taken -- and she would be "vaporized." Berchtold convinced Jan to tell her parents he had taken her on vacation and believed they had parental consent.
After Mary Ann and Bob arrived in Mexico, they flew back to the U.S. with Jan but noticed something was different about her. Soon after, they issued a request to Mexican authorities for the marriage between Jan and Berchtold to be annulled. Jan was also taken to a doctor for an examination, who incorrectly concluded that she hadn't been sexually abused, according to Abducted in Plain Sight.
Although she returned to school, she says she was concerned about how she would continue the mission with Berchtold. In addition, the FBI warned the Brobergs against spending time with the Berchtold family, but they ignored the advice.
Meanwhile, Berchtold was taken back to the U.S., where he appeared before a grand jury. He was indicted on kidnapping charges. While reflecting on the situation in Abducted in Plain Sight, Mary Ann says Gail came over on Christmas Eve of 1974 and threatened to expose Bob's affair with Berchtold if the charges weren't dismissed.
"I was quite shocked. I felt terrible, especially for my husband," Mary Ann recalled. "I just thought, 'Oh, no. That can't happen.' So we signed the affidavits."
In the affidavits, Mary Ann and Bob stated that Jan hadn't been taken by force and wasn't confined against her will -- and that Berchtold believed he had their consent to leave with her. When the affidavits were presented in court, a federal judge overruled the request to drop the charges. Mary Ann and Bob eventually withdrew their affidavits, per the Trust Me podcast.
Although the trial was delayed, Berchtold pled guilty to a felony charge of kidnapping in June 1976. He was sentenced to five years in jail, which was reduced to 45 days. After receiving credit for his time behind bars in Mexico and good behavior, he only spent about 10 days in jail.
After Berchtold returned from Mexico, he was released from jail while his trial was delayed. He moved to Utah to work at his brother's car dealership but returned to Idaho every weekend. During that time, he secretly began seeing Jan, visiting her in the middle of the night and telling her of his communication with the aliens.
"He came in and he would talk about the mission and that the mission was going to continue, and that they were making plans and preparations for us to be together, and just to keep doing what I was doing, and to keep following the rules," she recounted in Abducted in Plain Sight.
Jan began receiving love letters from Berchtold and willingly wrote back. She even confessed her feelings to her mother, telling Mary Ann that she wanted to marry Berchtold and have children with him.
"I loved him as deeply as I've ever loved anyone. My level of commitment and love for him was as profound as anything that I have ever experienced in the realm of real love," Jan shared. "But it was profound, it was committed, it was in me in every sense of the word."
During that time, around the spring of 1975, Berchtold also continued communicating with Mary Ann, and they restarted their affair. After Bob found out, they almost divorced but eventually realized that Berchtold was ruining their lives and that they needed to cut him out.
Fast forward, in the summer of 1976, Berchtold bought an amusement park in Jackson Hole, Wyo., while waiting to report to jail. Berchtold convinced Jan's parents to let her visit, and even though she returned after two weeks, she was unhappy. He also repeatedly called Mary Ann and told her he was going to kidnap her again.
"'I'll take her to the jungles of Africa. I'll take her to South America. You'll never find us,' " Mary Ann recalled in Abducted in Plain Sight. "I said, 'Leave me alone. Leave my children alone. Stay out of our lives forever.' And he did not like that, because he didn't leave Jan alone. And the result was her disappearance a second time."
On Aug. 10, 1976, Jan disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind a note to her family, per Abducted in Plain Sight. In it, she declared she was running away without Berchtold until her family allowed her to live her truth. While she claimed to be leaving on her own accord, it was later discovered that Berchtold had aided in her disappearance.
In the following days, Berchtold contacted the family, telling them Jan had contacted him to let him know she had run away. Despite being increasingly concerned, the Brobergs waited nearly two weeks to contact authorities, fearful of the public's reaction to a second disappearance. Though Berchtold pretended to be concerned, FBI agents knew he was involved.
Three weeks into Jan's disappearance, Berchtold began his jail sentence. He only served 10 days behind bars, and upon his release, he moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. He kept in contact with the Brobergs while the search continued. In reality, Berchtold had enrolled her in a Catholic girl's boarding school in Pasadena, Calif., before he began his jail sentence.
Three months after Jan's disappearance, authorities finally found Berchtold. After monitoring him for several weeks, they discovered that he left the directory open to a page with a number scribbled on it after making a call in a phone booth. They traced the number back to the boarding school and realized Jan was enrolled under an alias.
Berchtold had told the nuns that Jan was his daughter and he was a CIA agent who had escaped from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War. After moving to Utah, Berchtold would visit her on the weekends.
Jan was removed from the school, and Berchtold was arrested the next day for federal parole violation.
After the second kidnapping, Jan struggled to assimilate to life at home, and her family says she grew "distant" and "hollow." When her father's florist shop burned down, she believed it was a punishment because she hadn't yet completed the mission.
Jan continued to speak with Berchtold occasionally, but looking back, she says he began to "lose interest" as she got older.
By 1978, Jan began questioning the truth behind the alien story. While at a summer camp in Utah, a boy her age began to show romantic interest in her, and she feared that the aliens would take revenge because it was not a part of the assignment.
When nothing bad happened, she says she had her first thoughts that the whole thing might have been a lie.
Ahead of her 16th birthday, Jan said she was still afraid that her family would be punished for not fulfilling her duties. She even considered killing herself and her sister Susan in a worst-case scenario.
When Jan woke up on her birthday and saw that everyone was okay, she realized the aliens hadn't been real. Jan eventually told her sister and best friend, who encouraged her to tell her parents.
Following the second kidnapping, Berchtold faced several criminal charges, including first-degree kidnapping and impersonating a central intelligence agent. Welsh also revealed on Abducted in Plain Sight that it was discovered Berchtold hired two men he met in jail to start the fire at Bob's flower shop, and he was accused of arson.
Still, he wasn't charged with either after court proceedings. Berchtold was later acquitted of the kidnapping charges by reason of mental defect. In June 1977, he was sent to a court-ordered mental facility and was released a few months later.
Throughout his life, Berchtold allegedly sexually assaulted at least six other children, using "alien psychology" on one of his other victims, according to Abducted in Plain Sight filmmaker Skye Borgman's interview with Vanity Fair. Of those six assault cases, Berchtold was only found guilty of rape of a child once and spent one year in jail, Jan told Vulture.
Years after Jan's kidnapping, when she published a book and began speaking about her experience, Berchtold tracked her down. He started going to her events, telling attendees that it was all a lie -- and threatening the Broberg family that if they didn't get rid of the book, he would make their life "miserable," per the Netflix documentary. Berchtold began posting flyers around town, claiming that he had been given total access to Jan in exchange for sexual favors with Mary Ann and Bob.
Jan filed a stalking injunction, which Berchtold contested. They ended up in court, where Jan had to come face-to-face with Berchtold for the first time in 30 years. She was granted the stalking injunction for the rest of Berchtold's life.
Despite this, Berchtold showed up to a women's conference where Jan was speaking. At the time, Jan was being protected by a local Bikers Against Child Abuse chapter. After Berchtold began making threats, he clashed with the group and ran over one of the BACA members with his car. Berchtold, who had a gun with him, was arrested.
When he returned to court, he was found guilty of guilty of the offense of possession of a firearm by a restricted person and aggravated assault. But before he could be sentenced in 2005, he died by suicide.
After experiencing several years of traumatic events, Jan was able to return to a somewhat normal life and finish school. In order to move on, she forgave Berchtold, although it took time.
"Forgiveness is a tricky word. In my mind, not forgiving somebody only puts up the jail cell kind of around you. I figured out that I can live with my tragedy in a way that the tragedy doesn't run me anymore," Jan said in Abducted in Plain Sight.
In the early '90s, Jan began an acting career and has gone on to appear in films and on shows like Everwood, Criminal Minds and 40, per her IMDb. She also worked at Disney World as a performer for a time, according to the Trust Me podcast. While she still auditions for various projects, she keeps busy running a theater company in Utah.
Away from cameras, she makes speaking appearances in the hopes of preventing the same thing from happening to other children. She also started The Jan Broberg Foundation to support other adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.