Why On Earth Did They Dismiss Those Claims?
“Joshua Maddux was an easy-going 18-year-old who thrived in the outdoors. He was a good student with a passion for writing and music. He lived with his father and two sisters in Woodland Park, Colorado. Although he had endured the grueling divorce of his parents and the heart-shattering suicide of his brother in 2006, Joshua’s maddening resilience allowed him to remain as free-spirited and optimistic as ever.
On March 8, 2008, Joshua told his father that he was going to go for one of his routine walks. However, this time he never returned. His family relentlessly searched for the teenager, contacting friends and relatives and scoping out homeless shelters and campgrounds. But alas, nobody caught sight of the young man, and his father officially reported him missing a few days later.
Perhaps, he thought, Joshua decided to start his life anew someplace else and pursue his dreams as a writer or music artist. Or maybe he was still troubled by the death of his brother which prompted his self-imposed disappearance. Or maybe something much, much more sinister had happened to Joshua. There was no way of knowing. And as years and years slipped by without a solitary trace of Joshua, the trail went cold and his loved ones began losing hope that they would ever see him again or, at most, find out what really happened to him.
In August 2015, a man by the name of Chuck Murphy began the process of demolishing a cabin he had owned for a decade, just two blocks from the Maddux home, that he rarely visited. There, a frightening discovery was made during the tearing down of the chimney: a human body curled in a fetal position, with its legs above its head, wearing nothing but a thermal shirt. The corpse was identified as Joshua Maddux.
Chuck Murphy had visited the cabin every now and then and noticed a strange odor but chalked it up to dead rats. The autopsy found no traces of narcotics in his system, nor did he sustain any trauma. His death was ruled accidental. It was theorized that Josh probably tried to crawl through the chimney to get inside the cabin, got stuck, and died there. But Chuck Murphy vehemently disagreed with this conclusion.
First, he argued, he had installed steel rebar on the chimney to avoid issues with animals and debris. It would have been impossible for him to access the chimney from the outside. Secondly, a large breakfast bar that had been ripped from the wall was used to block the fireplace. And lastly, the rest of Joshua’s clothing was neatly folded beside the fireplace.
Investigators, upon learning this information, decided to reopen the case which was once ruled accidental.
There have been very few suspects in the case, although police have received plenty of tips about one peculiar individual, a young man by the name of Andrew Richard Newman, a new friend of Joshua’s.
After graduating high school, he became a drifter and had several encounters with the law including grand theft and assaulting a police officer. He was also arrested in New Mexico for stabbing a man to death and had confessed to murdering a woman and stuffing her in a barrel. Although the police had arrested somebody else for that case. Tipsters reported that Andrew had bragged about having ’put Josh in a hole,’ and despite repeated persistence to investigate him, police have dismissed these claims.”
