10/09/2025
On May 8, 2008, eighteen-year-old Joshua Maddux left his family home in Woodland Park, Colorado, for what seemed like a routine walk.
The nature-loving teenager with long blond hair and a passion for music often hiked alone through the Pike National Forest surrounding their small town of eight thousand residents.
When he told his sister Kate he was going out, she thought nothing of it. But Josh never came home.
Days passed with no word from the young musician. His father, Mike Maddux, called friends and searched frantically, but no one had seen Josh.
Five days after his disappearance, Mike filed a missing person report with police.
The authorities, along with friends and family, scoured the neighborhood and nearby parkland where Josh might have gone walking.
Months turned into years with no trace of the missing teenager.
Joshua Maddux
On May 8, 2008, eighteen-year-old Joshua Maddux left his family home. Credit: Handout
Josh’s family clung to hope that he had simply left town to pursue his dreams.
His sister Kate imagined he might be touring with a band or writing novels under a pen name, living the solitary life he loved. She expected him to return one day with a wife and children to meet their family.
The disappearance had come during a difficult period for the Maddux family. Two years earlier, Josh’s older brother Zachary had died by s**cide just before his high school graduation.
Mike later reflected that Zachary’s death had been devastating for Josh, pushing him over the edge emotionally.
Despite this tragedy, those close to Josh said he had been doing well and seemed happy with his life before he vanished.
Seven years later, in August 2015, construction workers made a grim discovery that would finally answer the question of what happened to Josh, MailOnline reports.
Chuck Murphy, a builder, was demolishing an abandoned cabin on his property to make way for thirty-two new homes.
The old wooden structure on Meadowlark Lane had stood empty for over a decade, surrounded by tall pines and filled with rotting timbers and debris.
Murphy’s brother had lived there until 2005, but since then it had only been used for storage.
Joshua Maddux
Months turned into years with no trace of the missing Joshua Maddux. Credit: Handout
As workers used an excavator to tear down one of the cabin’s two chimneys, they made a shocking find: wedged inside the brickwork was a mummified body, cramped into a fetal position with the knees above the head and legs disjointed from the torso.
Police were called immediately, and dental records soon confirmed the worst: the body was Joshua, per Strange Outdoors.
The cabin sat less than a mile from the Maddux family home, just two blocks away. Despite extensive searches in 2008, no one had thought to check the abandoned property.
The circumstances surrounding Josh’s death immediately raised troubling questions.
When his body was found, he wore only a thin thermal shirt. His other clothes, pants, shoes, and socks, were discovered inside the cabin, neatly folded near the fireplace.
Even more puzzling, a heavy wooden breakfast bar had been torn from the kitchen wall and dragged over to block the chimney from inside the cabin.
Teller County Coroner Al Born conducted an autopsy but found no signs of trauma, broken bones, knife marks, or bullet holes. No drugs were present in Josh’s system.
Born initially ruled the death accidental, theorizing that Josh had climbed into the chimney and became stuck, eventually dying from hypothermia as temperatures dropped into the high twenties Fahrenheit during the nights following his disappearance.
Joshua Maddux
Five days after Joshua Maddux’s disappearance, his father filed a missing person report with the police. Credit: Colorado Bureau of Investigation
But cabin owner Chuck Murphy strongly disagreed with this conclusion.
He revealed a critical detail: during the chimney’s construction twenty years earlier, he had installed a thick wire mesh grate hung from steel hooks near the top to prevent animals and debris from entering. The heavy-gauge mesh should have made entry impossible.
“There’s no way that guy crawled inside that chimney with that steel webbing,” Murphy insisted. “He didn’t come down the chimney.”
Born explained that the mesh wasn’t visible in photographs because it had been collected with other scrap metal during demolition before anyone realized its significance.
He conceded it could have rusted away over time, though Murphy maintained the metalwork had been sturdy.
Faced with mounting inconsistencies, Born reopened the case three days after his initial ruling.
The position of Josh’s body particularly troubled investigators – he appeared to have entered the chimney head-first, which Born noted would likely have required two people to accomplish.
The coroner revised his determination to include accident, murder, or undetermined causes as possibilities, though he maintained his belief that Josh had come down the chimney.
“This one really taxed our brains,” Born admitted. “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 not linear thinking.”
Joshua Maddux
Joshua Maddux was found trapped inside a chimney after a seven-year search in a bizarre case. Credit: Colorado Bureau of Investigation
Police received anonymous tips suggesting that someone had bragged about putting Josh ‘in a hole.’
One suspected individual with a history of violent crime had allegedly been seen with Josh before his disappearance and was later arrested for a fatal stabbing in New Mexico.
However, investigators said they couldn’t verify specifics going back seven years, and Born doubted one person could have positioned Josh in the chimney alone.
Murphy occasionally checked on the vacant cabin during those seven years and had noticed a bad smell, but assumed rodents had died inside.
He never thought to check the chimney, especially with furniture blocking the fireplace.
Given the cabin’s remote location, about fifty feet from the road with no adjacent homes, police noted that even if Josh had cried for help, no one would have heard him.
For Josh’s family, the discovery brought an end to years of uncertainty but little comfort. Kate acknowledged the situation made no sense – they had expected Josh to be anywhere else in the world, not so close to home all along.
“It’s a real conundrum. A tragic, terrible story,” Murphy reflected. “All I know is he did not go down that chimney. He got in the fireplace and went up. But why? I think it will remain a mystery. One of those sad stories.”
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