Joshua Maddux's family spent seven years searching for him after the 18-year-old vanished in 2008. His body was stuck in the chimney of an empty house just a quarter-mile away.
Colorado Bureau of InvestigationJoshua Maddux was last seen leaving his Woodland Park, Colorado, home on May 8, 2008.
On May 8, 2008, 18-year-old Joshua Maddux told his family that he was going for a walk. He had a love for nature and the quiet solitude of Woodland Park, Colorado. Josh often wandered for hours, sometimes lost in thought, sometimes strumming his guitar or jotting down lyrics.
When Josh didn’t return that evening, his family didn’t immediately panic. But when several days went by without any sign of the teenager, it was clear that something was wrong.
For the next seven years, Josh’s loved ones searched ceaselessly for him. They checked camp sites and homeless shelters, hoping that he’d simply run away to start a new life.
Then, in August 2015, construction workers demolishing an abandoned cabin just a quarter-mile from the Maddux family’s home found a body stuck in the chimney. It was Joshua Maddux. Had he climbed into the tight space himself and become trapped — or had something more sinister happened?
The Disappearance Of Joshua Maddux
Joshua Vernon “Josh” Maddux was born in Colorado Springs on March 9, 1990. He was a talented writer and artist from a young age, and he enjoyed playing his guitar and creating his own comic strip called Stickman and Smiley.
When he didn’t come home after going for a walk near his home in Woodland Park, Colorado, on May 8, 2008, his father wasn’t initially concerned. But when Josh still hadn’t returned the next day, Mike Maddux started calling his son’s friends. Nobody had seen him.
Maddux FamilyJosh Maddux with his sister, Ruth.
It was then that the family started to worry. Two years earlier, their oldest son, Zachary, had died by suicide. Josh had taken his brother’s death hard, and while he hadn’t seemed to be struggling with his mental health, the Madduxes were concerned that Josh had succumbed to his own demons.
Still, they never stopped searching for him. Days turned into weeks, then months, and then years. Josh’s sister, Kate, clung to hope. As the Colorado Springs Gazette reported in 2015, Kate wrote for a neighborhood website years after her brother’s disappearance, “Since Josh was 18, it has been reasonable to assume he may have decided to leave town to start a new life.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
The Gruesome Discovery Of The ‘Boy In The Chimney
In August 2015, more than seven years after Joshua Maddux vanished, a demolition crew stumbled upon a shocking scene while working at an empty cabin in the Maddux family’s neighborhood. As workers began dismantling the fireplace, they discovered a partially mummified body crammed inside the chimney in the fetal position.
The remains were sent to the medical examiner’s office and were identified as those of Joshua Maddux. The county coroner, Al Born, found no sign of trauma, such as bullet holes or broken bones. “It appears to have been a voluntary act to gain access,” Born noted. But others weren’t so sure.
Google MapsThe abandoned cabin where Joshua Maddux’s body was found, seen here in 2012.
The cabin’s owner, Chuck Murphy, told the police that there was a metal grate on the top of the chimney to keep wildlife out. There was no way Josh could have replaced it himself after crawling inside. Murphy rarely visited the residence, but when he had stopped by in recent years to check on things, he’d noticed that “it smelled bad,” according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. He’d assumed it was just a dead animal.
What’s more, Joshua Maddux was wearing only a shirt when he died. The rest of his clothes were on the fireplace hearth. He’d clearly been inside the house prior to entering the chimney, so why would he have climbed in from the top?
With each new discovery, the mystery only deepened.
What Happened To Joshua Maddux?
In the years since Joshua Maddux’s body was found, various theories have unfolded surrounding his mysterious death.
Coroner Al Born maintained that Josh had likely shimmied into the chimney in an attempt to enter the house and was unable to get back out. “It was not an instant death,” he told the Huffington Post in 2015.
“How he died is only a matter of speculation,” continued Born, “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 and the other thing would be hypothermia, which could take a day or two. We have no evidence to say which one came first.”
Hypothermia can begin in temperatures around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the low in Woodland Park the night of May 8, 2008, was 37 degrees. It’s possible that Joshua made it into the cabin, became trapped, and started exhibiting unusual behavior due to the low temperatures.
Paradoxical undressing, a phenomenon in which people suffering from hypothermia remove their clothing because they feel hot, is one explanation for why Josh was found mostly undressed. Delirious from exposure, the teenager may have crawled into the chimney in a desperate attempt to find warmth.
Kate Maddux/GoFundMeJosh Maddux loved music and playing the guitar.
However, theories of foul play have also persisted. In small towns like Woodland Park, rumors spread quickly. One tip mentioned that Josh was seen with another man shortly before his disappearance — someone who went on to have a long criminal history. However, he was never officially named a suspect in the case of Joshua Maddux.
Did Josh really climb into the chimney on his own? Was he murdered and then stuffed inside? Or, worse, did someone trap him in there and leave him to suffer?
Regardless of how Joshua Maddux died, his family was left to wrangle with their unimaginable loss.
“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,” Kate Maddux wrote. “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 authoring successful novels under a pen name so that he could keep his preferred lifestyle of solitude in the woods.”
“The last seven years has been really difficult and painful,” Kate told the Huffington Post in 2015. “But given the strange circumstances, it’s kind of a miracle that we’re having the opportunity now to give him the proper service and burial he deserves. He’s not lost anymore. This isn’t how we wanted him to come home, but he has come home, and that’s important.”
While the question of where Joshua Maddux vanished to that spring day in 2008 has been answered, the circumstances surrounding his ultimate fate remain one of the strangest mysteries in recent history.
After reading about the disappearance of Joshua Maddux, learn about Hannah Upp, the woman who vanished three times. Then, go inside 11 unsolved disappearances and the theories behind them.
