Missing teen found trapped inside chimney after 7-year search

Joshua Maddux went out for a walk — and never returned.

Years later, his remains were discovered trapped inside a chimney, and the circumstances of his death remain unexplained.

A frantic search

Joshua Maddux was an 18-year-old with a free spirit and a love for the outdoors.

A bright student with a flair for writing and music, he lived in Woodland Park, Colorado, with his father and two sisters. Life had already thrown him unimaginable hardships — the painful divorce of his parents and the devastating loss of his brother to suicide in 2006 — but Joshua’s resilience shone through, keeping his optimism and adventurous nature alive.

On May 8, 2008, Joshua left his home for what seemed like a simple walk. The nature-loving teen with the long blond hair often wandered alone through the nearby Pike National Forest.

He even told his sister Kate he was heading out — but he never came home.

Days turned into a frantic search. His father, Mike Maddux, called friends and combed the neighborhood, but there was no sign of Josh. After five days, a missing person report was filed with local authorities. Despite the police and family scouring the nearby woods, months stretched into years with no clue.

Josh’s family clung to hope. His sister Kate imagined he might be touring with a band or writing novels under a pen name, living the solitary life he loved. They expected him to return one day with stories, perhaps even a family of his own.

At the same time, the family couldn’t help but reflect on the tragedy that had struck just two years earlier, when Josh’s older brother Zachary died by suicide shortly before graduating high school.

Josh’s father, Mike, later said Zachary’s death had hit Josh hard, but friends and family insisted that, before his disappearance, he seemed happy and full of life.

A grim discovery

It would take seven long years before anyone found Josh.

In August 2015, construction workers made a grim discovery while demolishing an old cabin on Meadowlark Lane to make way for new homes.

Inside one of the cabin’s chimneys, wedged in a fetal position, was a mummified body. Dental records confirmed the worst: it was Joshua Maddux.

“I about had a heart attack,” Mike Maddux said.

The abandoned cabin was less than a mile from his home, just two blocks away.

“When his body was found, he wore only a thin thermal shirt. His other clothes, pants, shoes, and socks were neatly folded inside the cabin,” authorities reported.

Even stranger, a heavy wooden breakfast bar had been dragged to block the chimney from the inside.

Teller County Coroner Al Born conducted an autopsy. There were no signs of trauma, no broken bones, no knife marks, no bullets. No drugs were found. Born initially ruled the death accidental, theorizing Josh had climbed into the chimney, become stuck, and died from hypothermia as nighttime temperatures dropped into the 20s.

But Chuck Murphy, the cabin’s owner, strongly disagreed.

“The place was damp,” Murphy said. “It smelled like hell. There was raccoon poop all over the place.”

Twenty years earlier, he had installed a thick wire mesh near the top of the chimney to prevent animals from entering. “There’s no way that guy crawled inside that chimney with that steel webbing,” Murphy insisted. “He didn’t come down the chimney.”

Reopened the case

Faced with the inconsistencies, Born reopened the case. The position of Josh’s body suggested he entered head-first, likely requiring two people. He revised his determination to accident, murder, or undetermined causes — but still believed Josh came 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.”

Police received tips claiming someone had bragged about putting Josh “in a hole.” One suspect with a violent past had been seen with Josh before his disappearance and was later arrested for an unrelated fatal stabbing. Investigators, however, couldn’t verify anything. Born doubted one person could have placed Josh in the chimney alone.

Unsolved mystery

Murphy occasionally checked on the cabin over the years and had noticed a bad smell, but assumed rodents had died inside. He never thought to check the chimney, blocked as it was by furniture. And given the cabin’s remote location, no one would have heard Josh’s cries for help.

For Josh’s family, the discovery ended years of uncertainty but offered little comfort. Kate admitted the situation didn’t make sense. They had expected Josh to be somewhere else, far from home.

“It’s a real conundrum. A tragic, terrible story,” Murphy reflected. “We’ll never really know what happened to him. It’s a horror story in my mind to imagine what my brother must have gone through.”

“All I know is he did not go down that chimney. I think it will remain a mystery. One of those sad stories.”