How Child Predator Robert Berchtold Kidnapped Actress Jan Broberg Twice In The 1970s

In the 1970s, a young girl from a small town in Idaho was groomed by her older neighbor and kidnapped — not once, but twice in less than two years.

“A brainwashed person does not know he’s brainwashed,” Jan Broberg told Deseret News of her yearslong ordeal involving child predator Robert “B” Berchtold. “Sometimes the experiences we have in real life are more fantastic and unbelievable than the experiences we even see in the movies and television, and mine is one of those.”

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.

She continued, “All of the brainwashing, the seeds, had been planted prior to waking up in the back of that motor home, strapped to the bed, with an ivory box playing in my ear in a high-pitched monotone voice that I had been kidnapped by a UFO and was to do everything they told me, and if I didn't, I would be instantly vaporized.”

Skye Borgman, the filmmaker who chronicled Jan and her family’s story in the documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, noted Berchtold’s bizarre plan was likely connected with the zeitgeist of the mid-1970s. “This whole idea of science fiction was popular, and tape recorders had just come out,” Borman told Vanity Fair. “There were also a lot of newspaper articles about U.F.O.s and whether or not they were real.”

“To be able to actually kidnap somebody is incredibly difficult,” Borgman said. “Then to be able to maintain this ruse for years and years really takes somebody who has very little empathy for anybody else. It really does take a sociopath.”

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.”

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.

After the kidnapping ordeal, Berchtold managed to regain the couple’s trust and he continued to spend time with their daughter. “I don't think they had any inkling at all,” Jan said of Berchtold’s true ulterior motives, the BBC reported. “I mean literally, that was just not at all possible, because of the amount of love he had showered on the family.”

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.

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.

In an interview for Abducted in Plain Sight, Joe Berchtold said his brother refused to spend time incarcerated again. “He says, 'If it's one day in prison, it's going to kill me. I'm not going there,’” Joe recounted. “He had taken all his heart medicine and drank Kahlua and milk. He drank that and died."

Jan’s parents remained a couple until Bob’s death in November 2018.

Jan, now 60, went on to become an actress, starring in shows that include the drama Everwood.