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E028: The Boy In The Chimney
1.6k Plays6 years ago
When Joshua Maddux disappeared, his family and friends assumed he’d run away to begin his own independent life. Sadly, they discovered he hadn’t gone far and, due to his tragic death, his life never even had the chance to fully begin.
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome back to Coffee and Cases. I'm glad that you decided to join us this week, whether you are new or you're returning. I hope that you enjoy today's episode and that it lets your brain kinda relax from the craziness that's going on around us.
Life Amidst a Pandemic
00:00:15
Speaker
I know that
00:00:17
Speaker
Anthony and I have been extremely busy here at home. We're getting ready to put our house on the market we think and so we've been like vigorously cleaning and kind of packing up some stuff just to kind of get ready for when that happens. So you know hopefully you're staying busy and hopefully you're adjusting to this new norm that COVID-19 has kind of shoved us in.
Podcast Format Changes
00:00:39
Speaker
Allison and I definitely thought that we would be back recording together, but sadly we are not. So if you're new to coffee and cases, know that
00:00:49
Speaker
This isn't really how our show is supposed to be. It's supposed to be Allison and I telling stories together, but because we're social distancing, we have been rotating weeks telling stories about victims. So hopefully pretty soon we will be recording together again. We have all of our fingers and all of our toes crossed that that is gonna happen for us soon. So enjoy the pretty weather, go outside today, read,
00:01:16
Speaker
Sun Tan, which is one of my favorite hobbies. Thank you for bearing with us through all of this. Thank you for understanding everything. Know that we care about you guys and that we love you and we appreciate all of your comments, all of your feedback. Stay together, united in the human spirit, even if not physically, and stay
Fear and Personal Experiences
00:01:36
Speaker
safe. Now, on to this week's episode.
00:01:39
Speaker
Fear. As much as we would like to say differently, fear plays a huge factor in our day-to-day lives. It molds our conceptions of people, places, and things. It shapes us in some way big or small. We all have fears, some ridiculous and clearly irrational, others that hold more reason.
00:02:01
Speaker
For me, I'm scared of moths. Or millers, as we like to say in Eastern Kentucky. Do I know it's a stupid fear? Of course I do. Do I still refuse to go outside when they're clustered under my porch light? Also, yes.
00:02:15
Speaker
But I'm also scared of drowning once I jumped into my grandmother's pool before I knew how to swim. And those few moments fighting the water were terrifying. My fear was later reaffirmed when I watched my boyfriend, now husband, and his brother be swept away by a riptide at the beach. As I watched Anthony try and fail to help pull Aaron to shore, I have never been more scared in my life. But thankfully, lifeguards were able to get to them both.
00:02:41
Speaker
Feeling helpless in the face of fear is quite possibly the worst feeling. Knowing that there's not a single thing that you can do to change your circumstances or make the fear go away. Recently, in my hometown, a young man, still in high school, drowned at a local swimming spot in the Briggs Interstate Park. His friend tried to save him, but the currents were too strong.
00:03:03
Speaker
Fear. For the young man fighting the water, the fear of realizing that despite your best efforts, you cannot win. Struggling and fighting an enemy too strong until you're too weak to keep fighting. For his friend, jumping into water that's already proven its strength, fighting through the fear of loss and through the fear of death to try to save the person you love. I can't imagine the moment when fear wins, when you realize that you've lost.
00:03:29
Speaker
But that point came for our victim today. When a stroll turned into a nightmare, when minutes of fear turned into days of fear. For so many of the people we talk about on this show, their fear remains nameless. We don't know who caused them to suffer. Was it Mother Nature? Was it the woman down the street? Or maybe the man from the bar? Was it a total accident? For today's case, we don't know who or what caused our victim to die.
00:03:58
Speaker
but we hope that you can help us give his fear a name.
The Mysterious Case of Josh Maddox
00:04:02
Speaker
This is the case of the boy in the chimney. This is the case of Josh Maddox.
00:04:42
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families.
00:05:02
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:05:20
Speaker
So before diving into the show this week, I wanted to remind you that Allison and I are still offering our bonus episode for you all once we get to 150 ratings on iTunes. We know that we remind you nearly every week, but we're so close to that 150 we can almost taste it. I believe we're currently at 88 and I checked this morning, so we are more than halfway there.
00:05:42
Speaker
During this time of social distancing you all have no clue how excited we get when we get another five star rating or a written review. So please give us something to smile about and consider writing our show if you love listening in each week. It only takes a second and we promise the bonus episode we have in the works will not disappoint. So let's get to today's episode.
00:06:04
Speaker
Okay, so I know that I say this each week, but this case you all, I'm telling you, it was so interesting, so heart wrenching, and so involved that it was hard for me to stop reading up on it and actually write this week's episode. Today we'll be talking about Josh Maddox, and sadly, his case has left people puzzled for years.
00:06:22
Speaker
18-year-old Josh Maddox lived in Woodland Park, a small city with a population of around 7,500, nestled among Pike National Forest in Teller County, Colorado. Woodland Park is pretty close to the size of Pikeville. I think last time I checked Pikeville's census, it was like 6,000 and some people that lived in Pikeville. So I'm sure just like in Pikeville, in Woodland Park, everyone knew everyone because that's what happens in small towns.
00:06:49
Speaker
Josh was often referred to as carefree by his friends and family. He loved to play the guitar and he loved to ride. He was a great student and for most accounts was described as happy despite the fact that his brother had committed suicide a few years earlier. His parents were divorced, but he was handling that just fine. He lived with his dad Mike and his two sisters, Ruth and Kate. Honestly, in all the research that I did, I never really heard a lot of mention about the mom.
00:07:16
Speaker
so I'm not really sure about their relationship there. As I mentioned before, Josh was carefree and would often spend his time taking long walks around the town and surrounding area. So it was nothing out of the ordinary when on May 8th of 2008, he left the house telling his sister Kate that he was going for a walk. I'm sure that Woodland Park has plenty of walking trails since it is in the Pike National Forest. So I too would have been taking full advantage of being outside.
00:07:45
Speaker
Okay so a couple fun random and kind of funny interesting facts about me. I absolutely love springtime. I feel like spring is a time of rebirth and a time of renewal and I just love when all the flowers are blooming out and everything looks beautiful outside. I just feel like it kind of refreshes me after winter because you know I'm literary because I teach English so I feel like winter and fall just are very like
00:08:15
Speaker
dreary and like I have feel like everything dies and spring just is Rebirth and renewal so I love to be outside when all that is happening. I love going on walks I like to read I like to soak up the Sun and when I was living in Pikeville There was a huge walking trail in a park that took you up in the woods And I'm pretty sure it was used as like a cross-country trail, but I would walk that all the time
00:08:39
Speaker
And this was my pre-everyone is a murder or a kidnapper face, so I was a lot braver then. But when we moved and where we live now, I found a similar area and decided that I was gonna go for a walk. When I got home, I was literally broken out all over my arms, all over like my chest and my back and my face. And I'm not talking like little bitty pimples, I'm talking like full blown hives.
00:09:06
Speaker
I thought that maybe I'd gotten into poison ivy because I'm allergic to that. Well it went away and came back several times that summer actually when I was at dance camp with the dance team that I coached and that was fun. My breakouts finally went away in the fall but this spring the first warm day when I went outside and I read for like three hours outside I came back in and I was broke out again and so I finally
00:09:30
Speaker
This, I had gotten allergists and all that. So I went back to the doctor and basically it turns out that I'm allergic to Kentucky and all of the pollen and all of its allergens. So spring and summer now are filled with me having to take lots of allergy medicine and lots of Benadryl. But regardless, like Josh, I would have taken full advantage of the pretty weather because I'm sure that May 8th that year was a beautiful early spring day and he just wanted to go outside and enjoy the
Josh Maddox's Disappearance and Discovery
00:10:00
Speaker
sun.
00:10:00
Speaker
Well, hours passed and Josh never returned home. Those hours turned into days that turned into weeks that turned into months that turned into years.
00:10:12
Speaker
Josh's family prayed for a miracle as the days passed. I know they fought giving into fear, but according to the Dark History's podcast, Joshua Maddox, The Boy in the Chimney, as the days passed and Josh still hadn't returned home, his father took his disappearance a little more seriously and finally on May 13th called the police to report Josh missing. So up until this point, they had just kind of figured that, you know, Josh was
00:10:39
Speaker
like kind of wandering somewhere. He was 18, so that wasn't out of the realm of possibilities. His dad says, I quote, I got up one morning and Josh was there. Then he just never came home. The next day he still didn't come home. I called his friends. Nobody had seen him. Nobody knows where he is.
00:11:00
Speaker
end quote. Now, Sleuthhounds, I think one of the saddest things we talk about each episode is how sudden everything happens. With cold cases, there's no real buildup for these families. I mean, sure, there are some cases that we've talked about where people felt like they were being stalked or that someone was following them, but still, for the families,
00:11:23
Speaker
Our victims disappearances are sudden, and to me that's the saddest part. Like Josh's dad said, it's like one day they're there, you're laughing with them over the dinner that you burnt, and the next day they're gone and you're left wondering what the heck happened. Mike, Josh's dad, caught all of Josh's friends. No one had heard from him. A large-scale search took place, nothing turned up, surrounding areas were supposedly combed, and nothing came from any of the efforts put forth.
00:11:53
Speaker
It's stories like these that make me realize how much I complain about the small things in my life. And I've noticed that
00:12:01
Speaker
Since we've been in quarantine, I have been doing this a lot more often and I'm trying to be better about it. But if one or two things are a skill, my life's over, I'm a loser, nothing can go my way, but then I get slapped in the face when I read about a dad and two sisters who exhausted every possible avenue to find their missing loved one only to come up empty-handed. That makes me realize how truly lucky and blessed that I am.
00:12:26
Speaker
Like I said, many believe that since Josh was 18 and a free spirit, that perhaps he just decided to start a new life for himself. I mean, there's nothing illegal about this, right? At 18, you're an adult. And if you decide to leave and start a new life, then you can. Nothing is stopping you. What's weird though, is that if he had done that, he didn't tell anyone. Surely his family thought if he were leaving to focus on his writing or to maybe try to make it big as a guitar player, he would have let someone know.
00:12:56
Speaker
According to mysterious disappearance of Joshua Maddox, his sister Kate said,
00:13:12
Speaker
that this was the case. I have expected Josh to return home to my father's house at any time with a wife and small children so that they can meet their grandparents and two aunts. Josh has always been known for his musical and literary talent, so maybe we would find him playing music with a band on tour or catch him writing successful novels under a pen name so that he could keep his preferred lifestyle of solitude in the woods." Like so many other cases, Josh's family hung desperately onto that hope.
00:13:41
Speaker
I think it would be almost impossible to give in to fear that your loved one may not be coming home, no matter how much you felt that pull in the back of your mind. Despite the fact that Josh's family was struggling to understand their new reality, life in Woodland Park slowly returned to normal.
00:13:56
Speaker
Just two blocks from the Maddox home sat a cabin owned by Chuck Murphy. According to teen body found in chimney by Cat Lee, Chuck bought the cabin in the 1950s and it had been previously known as the Thunderhead Branch, an infamous drinking and dining establishment.
00:14:12
Speaker
Later, Chuck's brother lived in the cabin until 2005, but afterwards it became a decaying storage facility that Chuck rarely visited. Then, on August 6, 2015, Chuck began demolishing the cabin for property development.
00:14:28
Speaker
What he found while demolishing his cabin was shocking. As they were excavating the chimney, they stumbled upon a mummified body. Alright Sleuthounds, I know what you're thinking because I was thinking it too. How long does it take a body to mummify?
00:14:43
Speaker
When I picture a mummified body, I think about old movies or maybe the movie The Mummy, which I love by the way, and I think it takes so long for bodies to reach that point. But after reading an article called From Flesh to Bone, The Role of Weather and Body Decomposition, I realized that the process is much faster than I thought. In the right conditions, mummification can take as little as three months, which is definitely not what I thought, but apparently is very true.
00:15:08
Speaker
So remember, by the time this body is discovered, Josh had been missing for seven years. After examining dental records, it's confirmed that the boy in the chimney was Josh Maddox.
Coroner's Report and Theories
00:15:22
Speaker
The coroner outborn stated that his death had not been instant. Most likely he died of either dehydration or hypothermia.
00:15:31
Speaker
So my initial thought was that maybe Josh decided to go down the chimney to enter the building instead of breaking a window or door to get in and he got stuck. But the details I'm getting ready to share with you totally changed my mind. Now the police have ruled his death an accident as there were no wounds on his body. There were no stab marks. There were no gunshot wounds. There was nothing of that nature.
00:15:55
Speaker
Now the autopsy report showed no signs of drugs in his system either. Born said, quote, the hard tissue showed no signs of trauma. There were no broken bones, no knife marks. There were no bullet holes.
00:16:11
Speaker
There's so far no answers to a number of things. It is very confusing." End quote. But what's most confusing is the position that Josh's body was found in. His body was found in the fetal position with his legs over his head, which to me says that he was going down the chimney head first. So let's stop there.
00:16:31
Speaker
He was in the fetal position, with his feet over his head. Now, I'm a visual person, Sleuthhounds, so it took me a bit to imagine this. But if he willingly went into the chimney, which has to be the case if his death was ruled an accident, how did his feet get over his head and better get? How did he end up in the fetal position? This just does not add up to me.
00:16:54
Speaker
Born said, quote, it was not an instant death. How he died is only a matter of speculation, but we know he did not starve to death because that takes many weeks. So then you go down the chain and you have dehydration, which can take just a few days. Or the other thing would be hypothermia, which could take a day or two. We have no evidence to say which came first, end quote.
00:17:19
Speaker
Since the cabin was on a larger plot of land with no houses really that close by, any cries for help that Josh might have made went unheard. I can't imagine this. In the intro, I talked a lot about fear and not giving in to fear, but as I picture myself in the situation and I put myself in his shoes, if the police are correct in saying that he indeed died in the chimney, there's absolutely no way that I would have been that brave. Sure.
00:17:47
Speaker
Like, the first couple minutes, first couple hours, I would've been like, okay, somebody's gonna come find me, it's gonna be fine. But as the minutes tick by, and then maybe even days, I think eventually I would've given up.
00:18:05
Speaker
My pleas weren't being heard, everything was going unanswered, I would have just given up. I can't imagine his fear, I cannot imagine how helpless he must have felt. The police are sticking with the story that Josh climbed into the chimney. Head first, which for a smart person, and we know he was, makes complete sense.
Chimney Entry Debate
00:18:24
Speaker
Did you pick up on my sarcasm there?
00:18:26
Speaker
But Chuck, the cabin's owner, wasn't pleased with this conclusion. Chuck knew that Josh hadn't been able to climb down the chimney because he had put rebar and steel mesh at the chimney's opening to keep animals out. He stated that it would have been impossible due to that rebar and the thick mesh that hung on steel hooks
00:18:47
Speaker
for Josh to have gotten down the chimney. Since Anthony is a civil engineer, I know that rebar is used in a lot of road construction, specifically bridges, so it's really strong and I even kind of talked to him a little bit before I recorded this episode if someone would have been able to break through like
00:19:09
Speaker
rebar and he said that it would have had to been like really weathered or he would have had to have some type of tool to help him, none of which were recovered at the crime scene. So it would have been nearly impossible for Josh to have easily broken through that barrier. But what other explanation could there be? According to Teen's Body Found in Chimney by Catley,
00:19:31
Speaker
there are three possible reasons why we should consider foul play in the case of Josh. Reason number one is what I just talked about that rebar. It would literally have been impossible for Josh to climb down the chimney if the rebar were intact but no rebar was found at this site. Now
00:19:52
Speaker
At first, I was kind of like, well, that's really weird. But then when I was talking to Anthony, he made the point that maybe somebody took it away from the scene of the crime, which could have been a total possibility. But there were no rebar at the crime scene, so the police kind of ruled that one out.
00:20:11
Speaker
Reason number two, a huge wooden breakfast bar had been ripped from the wall and placed in front of the chimney, sealing it. Okay, so this to me, like, and then when I get to reason number three, you're gonna be like, yeah, this was foul play. Okay. One, it's weird that this really smart person decided to enter a cabin through the chimney. That's weird. Two,
00:20:39
Speaker
It doesn't raise suspicion that he was in the fetal position.
00:20:45
Speaker
with the mouth, which I know is not the correct word, and that's very Eastern Kentucky, but we're going with it, of the chimney sealed by breakfast bar. It just does not make sense. So Chuck installed the rebar to keep the animals out. Okay, so if I'm thinking like someone who doesn't think foul play is involved, we have the rebar to keep animals out. Maybe Chuck also moved the breakfast bar in front of the opening to the fireplace to also keep animals out.
00:21:15
Speaker
which we know is not true because out of all of the articles that I read, I could not find a single one where Chuck said that he moved the breakfast bar in front of the chimney. Also, several accounts I read stated that this breakfast bar would have possibly needed more than one person to help move it. So I like, the more you read about this case, it just was not an accident.
00:21:44
Speaker
Reason number three, and the one that makes this feel the most murdery, if that's a word, to me, is that Josh was found wearing only his thermal shirt, okay? The rest of his clothes, including his pants, his socks, and his shoes were found inside the cabin neatly folded beside the fireplace.
Ruling and Skepticism
00:22:07
Speaker
The Dark Histories podcast that I talked about earlier quoted Borna saying, quote, this one really taxed our brains. We found his clothing just outside the firebox. He only had on a thermal t-shirt. We don't know why he took his clothes off, took his shoes and socks off, and why he went outside, climbed on the roof and went down the chimney. It was no linear thinking, end quote.
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, it makes no sense. I mean, May is warm in Kentucky, like early May. This year it was unseasonably cold, so I don't know that there would be rhyme or reason as to why you would strip all of your clothes off. Maybe he was warm and started taking layers off, but why would you try to go down the chimney with no pants on? It just really doesn't make sense to me at all.
00:23:00
Speaker
So Bohr quickly concluded that given his options, that a cause of death being accidental made the most sense. He said, quote, 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. End quote.
Rumors and Suspicions
00:23:18
Speaker
So basically,
00:23:20
Speaker
what I'm gathering from this, and you all comment and tell me if you disagree, is that the police really had no idea what happened to him, and instead of investigating further, they just kind of said, all right, it's an accident, let's move on.
00:23:36
Speaker
Alright, so I'm sure by this point you have to be wondering if there were ever any possible suspects in this case. The short answer is yes, but the person was never named. Now, I of course dug around on reddit and I did find a thread on there where a person was named and in a couple of other
00:23:56
Speaker
podcasts and blogs and stuff that I read and then some of the things I mentioned today they do name him but in this one I'm not going to release his name because he was never convicted of the crime he was never really even questioned that much of the crime so I don't want to put blame on someone that the police said not I will let you kind of be a sleuth which you all already are and look into it a little bit for yourself
00:24:25
Speaker
A Reddit user posted this, quote, I went to high school with this skinny, dorky hippie kid named Blank, who played guitar in a band. I was never good friends with him or anything, but a year or so after I graduated, one of my friends, Josh, started hanging out with him and then went missing, end quote. So naturally that kind of like perks my interest a little bit.
00:24:47
Speaker
Side note, my cat's trying to get in this closed door right now and you may hear my husband stomp through the hallway here in a second. Anyway, so it turns out the more I read about this no-name guy the weirder that he got.
00:25:05
Speaker
It turns out that this man is believed to have killed a couple different people, actually, a disabled man in New Mexico, and when police questioned him about it, he also told them that he killed a woman and stuffed her body in a barrel. Now, the cops had indeed found a woman stuffed in a barrel, but they already had somebody in custody, so they were just like, meh, we'll stick to that guy instead, because that makes perfect sense.
00:25:31
Speaker
So the pattern of sticking someone in a barrel that you've murdered and sticking someone in a chimney that you have murdered.
00:25:38
Speaker
that just didn't click. Those little similarities did not click. So despite the fact that Josh was last seen alive with No Name Man before this No Name Man went on his killing spree in New Mexico and people caught in to report that they'd heard rumors that No Name was bragging about quote having put Josh in a hole, this person was never really questioned by police about what happened to Josh.
00:26:02
Speaker
So to this day, Josh's mysterious death is still considered an accident.
Call for Information and Episode Conclusion
00:26:08
Speaker
Release. There's nothing that compares to the feeling when you finally release all your worries. Maybe you pray and you turn them over to God. Maybe you meditate. Maybe you just simply face facts and accept that things are the way that they are. However you get your release, it feels good to just let things go. Not all releases are peaceful though.
00:26:30
Speaker
I think about Josh, scared, cold, and hungry in a chimney, whether he was pushed in, crawled in, or somebody placed him there.
00:26:39
Speaker
He must've had so much fear. To know that no one can hear you and that no one can help you. To pray for a release. I just hope that his release was easy and that in those final moments he did feel peace. His family still yearns for a release. They hold to hope. To the hope that someone will come forward with information on this case because clearly this was no accident. Josh's family need your help, Sleuthounds. Help give them release.
00:27:08
Speaker
Help bring them closure.
00:27:10
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
00:27:40
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.