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‘Disturbing’ isn’t word enough to describe the 2017 true-crime documentary ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’. It takes viewers back to 1970s, a time when people trusted neighbors like family, unlike today, where people in big cities don’t even even know who lives next door.
Directed by Skye Borgman, ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ revisits the 1974 kidnapping of 12-year-old Jan Broberg. She was taken away by Robert Berchtold, a trusted neighbor on the pretext of a day out, only to go missing for months. Jan was rescued and reunited with her family after FBI stepped in started investigating the case. But things didn’t end there.
The documentary features interviews of the entire Broberg family, including Jan’s parents, her two sisters, while investigators who worked on the case recall how they cracked the case. What unfolds is a horrifying account of manipulation, blackmail, and child abuse.
While Robert Berchtold was already dead by the time ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ was filmed, the documentary does feature his biological brother, who doesn’t blink twice before branding Berchtold a ‘pervert’ with an obsessive fascination for young girls. Jan Broberg wasn’t his only victim, even though she and her family suffered the most from his actions.
The documentary uses actors to re-create scenes from the past and one really wishes they would’ve added some sort of disclaimer at the top that they’re just representational videos to indicate its not real archival footage. Especially since some of the audio tapes played in the documentary are real voice recordings of Robert Bertchold, who the FBI had tapped.
Jan Broberg’s kidnapping is one of the rarer cases where the investigators were pro-active and swift. Her parents unfortunately were extremely gullible, to the point that it might be frustrating for modern viewers to grasp their naivety. But raised in the Christian faith, in a strongly knit community, they easily trusted the Bertchtold family.
Kidnapped, drugged, and brainwashed into believing aliens are real, Jan Broberg’s childhood was stolen and destroyed. The case gets bizarre, twisty, and tragically absurd as more details emerge.
A few more voices could’ve been featured in the documentary, like perhaps the lawyers who worked the court case.
Overall, this is an unsettling look at how a child predator got away with kidnapping the same girl twice.
Watch ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ on Netflix.
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