Kayla May Berg

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Antigo Police Department (WI)

Missing From:

Antigo, WI

Summary:

Kayla May Berg was a 15-year-old who went missing on August 11, 2009, in Antigo, Wisconsin. She was last seen when a friend drove her near a house where she believed her boyfriend was staying, and she never returned home or made contact with family or friends after that evening. The case is still unsolved.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

On the evening of August 11, 2009, Berg asked a friend of her brother, 24-year-old Kevin Kielcheski, to drive her to meet her boyfriend. Kielcheski picked her up from her father's home at about 8:30 p.m., and according to investigators, the pair stopped at a McDonald's around 9:30 p.m. Berg went inside to chat briefly with a friend who was working that night, mentioning that she planned to ride around in the car for a while. Kielcheski told investigators that he had dropped her off at the home of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Miguel Marrero, in Wausau. That house had been condemned and was under renovation. The house was 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. Berg never returned home, and her family reported her missing six days later, due to confusion about her whereabouts.

Additional Details:

Berg's mother had reportedly been wary of the relationship, as Marrero was 19 years old while Berg was only 14. According to her mother, Berg knew that Marrero had just moved and had already been over to his new house; as such, it did not make sense for her to be dropped off at the location of his former home. After Berg was reported missing, local police and the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation interviewed family members, friends, and her boyfriend, who was four years older than her. Authorities said he cooperated, and no evidence linked him to her disappearance. Law enforcement brought in cadaver dogs to sweep the location, and the car that transported her was impounded and examined for evidence. No trace of Berg was found, and investigators quickly expanded the search to include nearby woods, vacant lots, and other abandoned properties where she might have been seen. 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. Kielcheski hasn't been charged or named as a suspect in her actual disappearance, and he is no longer cooperating with the investigation. An old phone registered to Marrero somehow hit off a tower in the Lincoln County area, north of Merrill. Authorities said two short calls were placed using that phone about three hours after Kayla was dropped off in Wausau. Call logs show the calls were placed at 1:12 a.m. and 2:25 a.m. A cadaver dog reacted to Kevin Kielcheski's home and the potato farm where he worked, but there was not enough evidence at either place to take the case forward. In fall of 2016 a video called "Hi Walter It's Me Patrick Video" was uploaded to YouTube that some believed showed Kayla Berg being held captive. As this video was investigated by the Antigo police and found to be a fake, I won't go into the details of what's in it. In December 2023, police received a tip from an inmate in the Wisconsin State Prison System. Chief Duley wouldn't release their name or where they were incarcerated, but he did say their information led them to a search in Kewaunee County. Hope said the state crime lab, along with anthropologists, were there with the whole process taking about two weeks. In the end though, nothing was ever found. As of 2026, Berg remains missing, with law enforcement continuing to treat the case as active.

Case Last Updated:

Nov 11, 2026