On a warm day in 2008, 18-year-old Joshua Maddux left the family home to go for a walk. This wasn’t unusual, but the Maddux family immediately panicked when he didn’t return that evening.
They searched for the teenager in the days after his May 8 disappearance. Days passed with no sightings. The days rolled into weeks, which eventually rolled into years without so much as a clue as to where Joshua had gone or what had happened to him.
Image 1
Then, in 2015, seven years after he vanished, there was a macabre break in the case.
Chuck Murphy owned a cabin near Joshua’s home. He was in the process of tearing the old building down when he made the shocking discovery: a body wedged in the chimney. It wasn’t a fresh corpse; in fact, the remains were mummified.
It was the body of Joshua Maddux.
A Promising Teenager
The Maddux family lived in Woodland Park, a picturesque municipality in Colorado. The tiny city only had a population of a few thousand and was surrounded by the Pike National Forest.
Joshua was a creative young man who loved playing the guitar and listening to music. He has been described as a “free spirit” who was “carefree” most of the time. He loved nature and would often head out on solo walks or hikes to bask in his surroundings.
When Joshua headed out for a walk on May 8, his family knew not to expect him back anytime soon. However, a day passed, and the Maddux family became unsettled when Joshua didn’t return. After days of worrying about where he might be, they contacted the police on May 13 to report him missing.
Nobody had seen him: no family, friends, or acquaintances.
The family had already scoured the local areas for Joshua, but the police expanded the search to cover a wider area. Still, there were no signs of him or evidence to point the authorities in the right direction.
Months passed by with no leads for the police to follow.
The Maddux family had ample time to consider what may have happened to Joshua. He was easygoing with no enemies, so they felt confident enough to rule out a rival killing.
They also considered Joshua’s mental state in the lead-up to his disappearance. The family agreed that Joshua seemed his normal, happy self, although they acknowledged that his brother’s suicide two years prior had affected Joshua greatly.
Image 2
The years passed, and the case became increasingly cold. It seemed that the mystery of Joshua’s vanishing would never be solved.
The Madduxes eventually decided to move from the family home, though the father, Mike, refused to sell it. He wanted to keep it just in case Joshua ever decided to find his way home.
Seven years later, when all hope was lost regarding finding out what had happened to Joshua, there was a break in the case.
A mummified body had been found in a cabin close to the Maddux family home.
The Corpse in the Chimney
Chuck Murphy was a builder from nearby Colorado Springs. He’d owned the old wood cabin for years, though he didn’t live there. More recently, Chuck’s brother had inhabited it until he left in 2005.
Thereafter, Chuck had simply used the derelict cabin as a storage space. Now and again, he’d come and maintain the property, namely getting rid of animals who had tried to claim the cabin as their own.
In 2015, he decided to demolish the building. Part of the demolition involved manually dismantling the chimney, and when Chuck reached inside it, he saw a disturbing sight: the body of a man.
The corpse was almost folded in half, with the legs stretched over the body’s head. Chuck called the police, and the body was removed from the crumbling chimney. The mummified body was sent for forensic testing, and the dental records brought a match: the body was that of Joshua Maddux.
The family was immediately contacted and told the heartbreaking news. Any hope they had of Joshua coming back had now been stomped out. However, amid the heartbreak, the Madduxes had more questions than before.
Had someone killed Joshua, or had he climbed into the chimney of his own free will?
An Accidental Death?
The coroner carried out an autopsy and found no drugs in Josh’s system. There was no evidence of foul play: Joshua had no stab marks, no bullet wounds, and no defensive injuries.
Throughout the search for Joshua over the years, Chuck’s cabin evaded everyone’s attention. It was less than a mile away from his childhood home, yet nobody thought to look for Joshua there.
For seven years, his body remained in the chimney. The coroner corroborated that the death was not instant or quick. It would have been days, at least.
There were three possibilities for the cause of death: starvation, dehydration, or hypothermia. It was difficult for the forensic examiner to ascertain which one killed Joshua, but either way, his death was not a quick one.
By the end of September 2015, Joshua’s death was ruled “accidental.”
Image 3
In order to explain the most probable way he died, the coroner suggested that Joshua climbed down the chimney of his own accord. Then, he got stuck in the tight space. Any screams or cries for help would have been in vain.
The nighttime temperature around the time Joshua died dropped to -6 Celsius at times. This led the coroner to rule that hypothermia was the most likely way he died.
But many found this explanation hard to digest.
Discrepancies
Chuck Murphy knew his cabin—and thus, his chimney—more than anyone. He asserted that Joshua would have been unable to climb in of his own free will.
When the chimney was initially built, sturdy wire mesh was placed inside to keep any animals from nesting there.
Upon finding Joshua’s body, the mesh was noticeably removed. However, it was nowhere to be found.
Chuck made his views public that the death was highly suspicious and voiced his concerns that something more sinister was at play.
The coroner refuted Chuck’s claims, however, saying that the demolished cabin and any metals found in the debris had been disposed of, which is why the mesh was never found.
Then, there was the mystery surrounding the position Joshua’s body was found in.
His legs were over his head, entirely disconnected from his torso. This position would have been undeniably painful to get into by yourself. This fact caused Chuck to suggest again that other people were involved in Joshua’s death.
There was another interesting aspect of the case that didn’t sit right with people: Joshua had seemingly taken his clothes off before entering the chimney. His pants, top, socks, and shoes were all beside the fireplace. All he wore was a thermal shirt.
Going by the coroner’s version of events, this meant Joshua had entered the cabin, removed his clothing, climbed barefoot onto the roof, and dove headfirst into the chimney until he found himself in a tight fetal position.
This sounds like an unlikely scenario, though it’s the only explanation the authorities have for Joshua’s death. However, this raises another question: if Joshua did all those things willingly, it shows he wasn’t thinking clearly. This brings up a new plethora of unanswered questions.
Also, a section of the cabin’s breakfast bar had been used to block the fireplace entrance. Someone—be it Joshua or other assailants—seemed to want to make an exit from the chimney impossible.
Still, the coroner issued his final statement on the case: “We’ve come up with the most plausible explanation, and it will remain an accident. He did come down the chimney; that’s our conclusion.”
Chuck Murphy refused to accept this as the truth.
A Possible Suspect?
There was only one suspect in the aftermath of Joshua’s death, though the police never investigated him.
The suspect was a man named “Andy” on a Reddit post in 2015. While rumors or claims online should be taken with a pinch of salt, the “Andy” theory took off when a poster on the social media site claimed they went to school with Andy.
According to the post, Andy had already admitted to killing others in the past. One of his alleged victims was a woman whom he’d stuffed inside a barrel.
After this, he allegedly went on to stab a man to death and was arrested for this crime. While speaking with the police, he admitted to the body in the barrel crime, but by the time he did, they’d already arrested another man for the crime.
He was never charged with the killing of the man, either, due to a lack of evidence.
Apparently, in the wake of Joshua’s disappearance, people called the local authorities to report having heard sinister rumors that Andy was bragging about “putting Josh in a hole.”
Nothing came of these police reports.
The case of Joshua Maddux is classed as an accidental death, but many people, including Chuck Murphy and several of Joshua’s peers, still believe something sinister happened to him.
There are too many unanswered questions in this perplexing death for a satisfactory explanation of Joshua’s final moments and, therefore, his death.
Sources
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/strange-indoors/joshua-maddux
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3255121/Body-18-year-old-missing-7-years-chimney.html
Leave a comment