How Child Predator Robert Berchtold Kidnapped Actress Jan Broberg Twice In The 1970s
In the summer of 1972, Berchtold and his family moved into the same neighborhood in Pocatello, Idaho, that then-9-year-old Jan lived in with her parents, Mary Ann and Bob Broberg.
Jan later said that Berchtold befriended the family and began grooming her by doing everything from bringing her gifts to taking her horseback riding. According to Jan, her adult neighbor became almost like a second father to her. “He used to come to the back door of our home,” Jan told Deseret News. “He’d open the door and say, ‘Time to wake up. It’s a great day!’ He was our own personal alarm clock.”
“There was enough of a basis of trust that pretty much anything he said you kind of believed,” she explained.
On Oct. 17, 1974, Berchtold broke that trust when he put Jan in a motor home and abducted her. “Keep in mind that this man and his entire family had been our best friends for 2 and a half years prior to this experience,” Jan told ABC News in 2004.
Jan’s parents reported their daughter missing, and authorities located the girl and her captor in Mazatlan, Mexico, five weeks after they disappeared. Jan was returned home, but she was scared and kept quiet about what had happened. “I said, ‘No, Brother B did not hurt me,” she recalled. “At age 12 I was a pretty good actress.”
Two years later, in 1976, Jan was 14 when Berchtold convinced the teenager they needed to complete their original mission. He abducted her for a second time and hid her at a Catholic school for girls in Pasadena until the FBI rescued her four months later.
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Berchtold spent just days in jail after Mary Ann and Bob decided to drop the kidnapping charges against him. The couple insisted the situation involving their daughter was just a misunderstanding.
Broberg’s parents were devoted members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Berchtold reportedly took advantage of their shame about what happened with Jan and twisted it to his advantage.
According to Borgman, Mary Ann and Bob secretly had another reason to stay quiet since they allegedly each had affairs with Berchtold. “I think [Jan’s father] Bob realized that it was a critical element to the story, and how [Berchtold] was able to get into their family this way so seamlessly,” the filmmaker told Vanity Fair of the surprise revelation Jan’s dad made during the filming of her documentary.
Berchtold was again able to avoid serious prison time on kidnapping charges. He served just days in jail and around five months in a psychiatric facility after convincing authorities he battled mental health issues, The Deseret News reported.
A decade later, in 1986, Berchtold pleaded guilty to one count of rape of a child in Salt Lake City, Utah, and spent one year behind bars.
Berchtold killed himself at age 69 on Nov. 11, 2005. At the time of his death, he had just gone to court and was found guilty of simple assault, criminal trespassing, and disorderly conduct after he got into a fight with a demonstrator at a Bikers Against Child Abuse event.