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Ariel Herrera

Episode 4: The Rape & Murder of Jessica Ridgeway


While researching this case and listening to other podcasts tell this story, I found that there were incorrect details regarding the kidnap and murder of Jessica Ridgeway. I have spent the last two weeks meticulously searching, and cross referencing the details surrounding the case. I have watched the entire sentencing hearing on the case against Austin Sigg, listened to the entire 17 minute 911 call, and have combed through the Affidavit and search warrant available online. I am not saying that my details are 100% correct, but based on the information available to me, I have been able to piece together the specific events surrounding the life and tragic death of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway. I do want to give a disclaimer that this episode is very graphic. I normally say that about all my episodes, but while researching this case I even felt nauseous at times, and had to take breaks. I usually have a high tolerance, but this case stuck with me, so I caution you to use discretion going forward.


Okay, so let’s get into this case...

Austin Reed Sigg lived with his mom in Westminster, Colorado. He was born on January 17th 1995 to Mindy and Robert.Mindy and Robert later separated when Austin was a few years old. His dad later remarried and lived in a mansion nearby where Austin grew up, but it was never described what Austin’s relationship was with his father after his parents' separation.

During his primary years of school he first attended Maranatha Christian Center, and then transferred to Witt Elementary school. Austin struggled with reading and writing in his adolescent years. Teachers said that he struggled to concentrate in school and suggested that his parents get him evaluated for a learning disability. It was later observed by pediatricians that he may have Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD.

Austin was attending Wayne Carle Middle School in 2008, when his mother, Mindy, found child pornography on Austin’s computer. This type of pornography would escalate to graphic and violent porn as he got older. Austin had an anxiety disorder which pediatricians thought the impulses and addiction to porn stemmed from. He was prescribed medication for his anxiety, but I am not sure if Austin was actually medicated. His step-mom Suzie sought treatment for him at a faith-based counseling center in 2008-2009. Austin later said that the counseling didn’t help his addiction, and that it only got worse as time went on. Austin never sought help again after his first counseling treatment and his unusual fetishes and interests fell by the wayside when it came to adult supervision. His father was advised by counselors to monitor Austin’s television and computer activity, but little was done to actually keep track of what content he was consuming. It has been reported that Austin’s father, Robert, has a lengthy criminal record which includes burglary, fraud, domestic violence, and driving under the influence. I could not find any charges relating to him abusing children, but Robert did abuse his spouses multiple times, and had restraining orders taken out on him by his common-law wife. Besides the fights between his parents in his early years, the remainder of Austin’s home life was loving and calm.

Austin had friends and a normal social life. His classmates described him as intelligent and a little odd. He was involved in the Jeffco concert choir and was sometimes teased because he had a high pitched voice for his age. He had other interests including World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, a small decorative sword and knife collection, but it was his open fascination with death that made Austin weird to some of his peers. He met his girlfriend at Warehouse: 180, which is a place for Christian teens to socialize.They dated from middle school and throughout high school without any red flags, and she later described him as a sweet guy.

He would usually spend the night once out of the week at his girlfriend’s house. His mother Mindy later said that on average he would sleep at the house 3 nights a week and where he would stay the other nights was a mystery to her. Other students described Austin as a nice kid that talked to everyone. He shared a room with his younger brother and on Austin’s side of the room he had katanas, a kimono, and other Japanese decorations on the wall alongside an Abbey Road Beatles poster.

Austin Sigg's Bedroom










Later on he developed an interest in becoming a mortician. His mom would joke about his fascination with death with friends and neighbors. Throughout his time at Standley Lake High School, Austin learned at a different pace than other students due to his ADD, and he was able to get his GED and dropped out of the 11th grade to apply at Warren Tech. While at Warren Tech he received a second place award for a Health Occupations Students of America competition in a crime scene investigation category. It seemed like he not only liked the morbid subject, but excelled in it. Austin started attending Arapahoe community college while he was still a teen, and took classes which, according to his little brother, taught Austin how to commit murder and get away with it. I want you to remember this quote because this will come back up later on in the story. This next detail is a little strange to me, but he also practiced zip tying his mother. She later said she thought it was for school and crime scene investigating.

I don’t normally like to place blame on parents because I am not one myself, but in this case I find the parent’s lack of action to be a bit negligent in his upbringing. I do give them credit for taking him to pediatricians and seeking treatment for him, but I feel they stopped paying close attention to him after this first treatment. They knew he had some issues very early on as a child and as Austin got older his interests became morbid and although his parents may not have liked the material he was studying, they certainly didn’t stop him from doing so. The fact that he wasn’t home 4 nights out of the week seems to be fairly laxed parenting and this level of freedom and independence let Austin be secretive with his comings and goings. I don’t know if stricter parenting would have solved this issue early on, but I don’t think it would have led to anything worse than what Austin would eventually become.

His first attempt at committing a crime was on May 28th, 2012 when he was 17 years old. Austin tried to use homemade chloroform rag to knock out a 22-year-old female jogger in Westminster park near Ketner lake, but fortunately she was able to escape by fighting him off. Austin later described how he parked next to a police surveillance ( not sure if this was a camera or van), walked around the park where he noticed the jogger the first time, hid in the bushes, and then waited for her to come around again to attack her. Whatever police surveillance was referred to was not helpful in identifying a perpetrator in this attack. She described him as a 20-25 year old, 5’7” white male with an average build and brown hair. A DNA profile was retrieved from the jogger’s shirt and entered into the FBI CODIS database. CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System. After his failed attack, Austin went to the U.S. Virgin Islands with his family for a vacation, but it is not believed that he committed any crimes while there. Austin typically showed no signs of odd behavior after his attack on the jogger and Jessica Ridgeway’s murder.


A little bit about Jessica:

Jessica was born on January 23rd, 2002 in Westminster, Colorado to Sarah Ridgeway and Jeremiah Bryant. Her parents later divorced and were going through a custody battle while she stayed with her mom, grandmother, and aunt while her dad was living in Independence, Missouri. She was in the 5th grade at Witt Elementary School and was on the peewee cheerleading squad sometimes practicing at the local Standley High School. Jessica was so independent that it seemed like she was 10 going on 20. She was responsible and took care of her dog and did most things without being asked a second time. She was the 4th musketeer in the household. The 10 year-old had plans to be a zombie lifeguard for halloween in 2012. How funny is this idea? I love the irony and I feel this shows the goofy and funny nature Jessica had about her. She brightened up everyone’s life, and was always smiling with a little gap between her two front teeth. Her favorite color was purple and this was made obvious by her purple rimmed glasses she wore everyday. She had a black and white dog which looks like a Jack Russell Terrier and she made a home video of her trying to teach the dog to sit.

Jessica Ridgeway































Jessica Ridgeway was last seen by her mom on Friday morning, October 5th 2012 walking towards nearby Chelsea Park to meet with friends and walk to school. That morning was like any other with Jessica starting her day with a granola bar and some TV while getting ready. Earlier that morning, Jessica had phoned her friend’s dad to arrange to meet at the park near his house and walk to school together. Her mom, Sarah had just ended a work shift and came home at 7:30am to help her daughter get ready for school. Jessica would have been cared for during the night by either her grandmother or aunt since all 3 lived in the same house. Everyone’s work schedule ensured that there was always an adult present to care for Jessica day and night. It was snowing that day so when she left that morning for school, Jessica was wearing blue jeans, a puffy black jacket with pink lining, and black boots with little fluffy poms attached. Jessica also had purple prescription eyeglasses that she needed to wear to see and a black and pink backpack with a Disney channel character from the show VICTORiOUS. Unfortunately, this was the last time her mother would see her daughter’s face because Jessica never made it to school that day.

Jessica walked to school alone that day because she was late to meet up with her friend and he decided to leave without her that day possibly thinking that her mom would drive her to school since she was running behind. The boy had waited until 10 minutes before school started and his dad drove him that day so he could make it on time. It isn’t known when Jessica got to the park, but she must have been only minutes away. Since the friend’s house was ¼ mile from hers, it would have been too far to turn back and go home to get a ride, so Jessica decided to walk the other ¼ mile alone. A few weeks prior there were reports in Colorado of a white van trying to lure girls into the car with the promise of candy so that community was on high alert and parents talked with their kids about stranger danger. Jessica was a really smart girl and walking to school with friends would have been safer for her, but I feel that this small community was mostly safe and she had been comfortable walking this route with no issues.

She was taken while walking the half mile route to school and passing a parked gold Jeep Cherokee with a young man hiding inside waiting to grab her. Jessica’s absence was not noticed until later that day because her mother was working a late shift the night before and was catching up on sleep throughout the day. When Sarah awoke in the evening at 4pm, she realized that Jessica had not come home. When she checked her voicemails on her cell phone she was alarmed to find out the police had called at 10am to inform her that Jessica did not make it to school, so Sarah immediately phoned back the police to report her as missing on October 5th 2012. Sarah knew immediately that something was wrong because Jessica would never miss school. Sarah rushed over to neighbors house to ask if they have seen her and then went to the school to look for her there. She had a deep sinking feeling that Jessica was in danger but didn’t know if Jessica had an accident or was taken. The missing posters about Jessica described that she had blue eyes, 4’10”, blonde hair, and weighed 80 lbs.

Since Jessica was such a smart and safe girl, she would have never gotten into the car with someone, so it was automatically assumed that she was abducted forcefully by someone she did not know, or got into the car with someone she knew well. Police started looking within the family to see if any of them had anything to do with her kidnapping. Jessica’s father was quickly ruled out as a suspect since he had an alibi in Missouri at the time of her disappearance. Coincidently, there was a court hearing that day he attended regarding his custody of Jessica after lapsing on child support payments. Jessica’s home and surrounding properties were thoroughly searched to find clues of where she may be. On October 6th, there was a massive search by police, family members, and the public on her normal ⅕ mile route to school. Search dogs and thermal sensors were used to search the surrounding areas of her neighborhood and along her route. After the search came up empty, an Amber Alert was sent out with Jessica’s photo and description. Police and the community placed purple ribbons around the school and her route to keep the public’s attention of her disappearance. This brazen crime shook the small and modest community of 13,000 residents. Parents now kept a closer eye on their children’s whereabouts and started looking to find a suspect close to home.

On October 7th, her backpack, which contained her glasses, boots, urine soaked clothes, and water bottle with the words “Life is good”, was found on a sidewalk in the town of Superior 6 miles from her home. Someone had found the backpack and noticed the name Jessica Ridgeway written on the water bottle and posted online for someone to retrieve the belongings. Even though the Amber Alert was sent out and still active, the person who found the backpack hadn’t made the connection to the crime and was just trying to find the rightful owner. Fortunately, someone on the internet saw this and notified police of the found backpack. DNA was collected from the backpack and a full profile of a suspect was entered into the CODIS database and was matched to DNA collected off a t-shirt in an assault and attempted abduction earlier that year. Police had collected several hundreds of DNA from several communities to test against this DNA, but this would be a slow process. The backpack was a good sign that Jessica may be still out there with her kidnapper, but was an alarming discovery since she needed her glasses to see. Police directed their search to the town of Superior to find a lead to where Jessica may be.

On October 10th, a tip lead officers 9 miles away from Jessica’s home to the town Arvada. Human remains in a black trash bag that was deemed not intact were found in Pattridge Park and Jessica’s family waited in agony to get word if this was her or not.This park was an old mining area with a lot of remaining structures like sheds and cabins for locals to explore. The surrounding areas of the park had new housing developments popping up around it. The remains were covered with a white blanket while police continued to search the area for more evidence. This was a very gruesome crime scene and shocked officers when they came upon a child sized torso with no limbs or head. I can't imagine the trauma that officers dealt with after this case and the amount of officers who had to take time off to deal with this tragedy. Police were able to identify the torso based on DNA matching Jessica’s and her family was notified. The medical examiner later noticed that the body had been cleaned, the internal organs had been removed, and that there was a foreign object found inside the body, which I will explain later in Austin’s confession interview. A DNA profile of a suspect was lifted from Jessica’s remains, but I am not sure what the source of this DNA was.

At this time, police had not ruled out Jessica’s mom Sarah and when her ex-husband and Jessica’s father Bryant was questioned about Sarah as being a possible suspect, his response was, “I don’t see how any parent could do something like that to their child.” During a 38 minute public statement, Sarah expressed her understanding and cooperation in police investigating and eliminating her as a suspect.













On October 17th, police canvassed the town of where Mindy Sigg resided. She told police that she lived in the house with her two sons, Austin and his brother who is not named in the affidavit. The police had no cause to search the home at that time, but wrote down the details Mindy provided them. Although officers didn’t get information from Mindy, the neighborhood was on high alert and this search shook up a lot of the residents who found Austin as odd and disturbed.

On October 19th, a tip by one of Mindy’s neighbors and friend lead detectives to Austin Sigg. The tip described his obsession with death and a silver cross he wore around his neck. Police questioned him and even searched his home, but could not find enough evidence to charge him. They also searched his father’s house, which was a mansion in the town of Parker Southeast of Denver. His dad owned a media company and was able to purchase a large estate that overlooked the town so it was believed that Austin could have found a spot to hide or bury the rest of Jessica’s remains and possessions. Police obtained a DNA sample of Austin via buccal swab to compare with the sample they had on the Jessica’s water bottle, her remains, and the jogger’s shirt. Austin felt the pressure by police presence and started becoming unhinged. On October 22nd, Austin felt sick and wobbly and told his friends at college that he did not feel well.

I am not sure if Austin often slept in his mom’s bed, but he certaintly did the night before he called police to confess to the kidnap and murder of Jessica Ridgeway. Like I said before, the trauma from his actions may have affected him and his sleep. I hope he had nightmares of what he did the night he crawled into his mom’s bed like a frightened child. I hope he still has those nightmares to this day with no warm bed to crawl to in his prison cell.

On October 23rd, he confessed to his mom, Mindy, that he murdered Jessica but told her that he did not rape her. His mother initially made the 911 call to confess for him and tell the police that some of Jessica’s remains were still in the house. The police dispatcher convinced Mindy to hand the phone to Austin so she can talk directly with Austin to get more details about where the rest of Jessica’s remains were and how he murdered her. Austin also confessed to the dispatcher that he attacked a woman in Ketner lake, and had a speeding ticket. He told the dispatcher that some of her remains were still in the house in a crawl space. This crawl space was underneath the house. There was also a marijuana plant growing in this crawl space and it was known that Austin smoked marijuana. Austin’s tone on the call started out very matter-of-fact and calm, but later escalated to frustration when the dispatcher kept asking questions about the murder. I have seen some people online comment on the dispatcher being annoying, but I think what she was trying to do is keep Austin talking hoping to get more info out of him and his mom, but also to keep them cooperative and in communication so the police know where they are and what the situation is when they arrive. The dispatcher stayed on the phone with Austin and his mom until police arrived, but Austin and his mom were both physically sick and having a panic attack. Detectives read Austin his Miranda rights in front of Mindy and she waived them so Austin could make a full statement. There was no resistance or struggle from Austin and he went with police willingly.

Austin at the time of his arrest














According to the Affidavit the initial DNA retrieved from Austin was tested, and results came back negative! Austin’s DNA did not match the DNA collected from Jessica’s backpack, body, or jogger. Other podcasts have incorrectly reported on this detail so I wanted to point this out specifically because I think it is a very important part of the case. One article by the Denver Post says that the DNA was a lab technician error, and that they later retested a second sample of Austin’s DNA which came back with a positive match.

I want to take a moment to reflect back on something that Austin’s brother said about him. He said that because of the classes Austin was taking, he was learning to commit the perfect crime. I think this has some truth to it because Austin probably went the extra mile to make sure his DNA wasn’t on Jessica’s remains or backpack. Austin admitted to police that he wore gloves when handling Jessica’s items and remains and washed her body twice. I personally don’t think that Austin would have gotten away with this crime had he not confessed. I think he would have made a mistake eventually, but the DNA not matching the crime scenes would have casted doubt in any criminal case against him had he not confessed. One thing that you can’t learn in school is how to deal with the mental and emotional trauma from committing a gruesome crime like this. I feel like even the cruelest of psychopaths and serial killers still deal with the trauma right after a murder even if they seem calm about it when recalling their actions it could be shock.

While Austin was being interrogated at the police station, Officers searching the house found black trash bags in the crawl space resembling the same bags used to wrap Jessica’s torso. Detectives did not open the bags but assumed, based off the weight, that these bags had her head and appendages.

Crawl space where Jessica's remains were found










During the interview, Austin admitted to murdering Jessica, but did not admit to raping her. He told the detectives that he went out hunting that day, and had not known or seen Jessica previously. He was, however, familiar with the area and knew the routes that kids would take to get to Witt Elementary school since Austin had gone there himself as a kid. It was no coincidence that he chose this area to go looking for a victim and probably knew areas that may have been more hidden from neighborhood witnesses. This could have been anyone’s little girl that day, but since Jessica was late to school, she was probably one of very few kids, if not the only kid, still walking to school. He explained how he grabbed her quickly, put her in his car and drove off while she was walking on the sidewalk. According to Austin, he knew from the beginning that he would murder Jessica, but told her she would be safe and that she would see her mom again to keep her calm. He bound her hands and feet with plastic ties, and drove around for a half hour making random turns before eventually driving to his mom’s house. He pulled into the garage at his mom’s house and shut the garage door. There at the house he tortured Jessica by cutting off bits of her hair while watching a tv show he put on, and then having her change into his t shirt and shorts because her clothes were soaked in her urine. During his confession, Austin goes into more detail on how he killed Jessica. He tried to strangle her with zip ties but was unsuccessful because the ties cut into his hands. He manually strangled her until she was barely alive. When he realized there was a little bit of life left in her he drowned her in the bathtub with hot water. This makes me sick thinking of this, but as you can imagine based on her remains, the brutality isn’t over yet.

He dismembered her body in the bathroom using an electric saw, utility knife, and razor blades. He labeled the bags of certain body parts, while flushing parts of her dismembered hands and feet down the toilet. He initially put the black trash bags containing her remains in the pool shed. This was a small pool shed in the back corner of the backyard to the left. The neighborhood houses are really close together so I am guessing the neighbors weren't too happy to know that a little girls remains were just on the other side of their fence. The next day Austin drove around in his jeep to dispose of her items. He threw her backpack in plain sight in Superior to throw off police, and threw her jacket in a random trash can. Because police were using cadaver search dogs in his neighborhood, Austin felt he needed to dispose of Jessica’s torso. I don’t think Austin was done with his sick fantasy because instead of keeping her torso intact when he dumped it, he decided to pretend to be a medical examiner and remove her organs from her chest and abdomen in his home and then washing the body making sure there was no more evidence. He claims he flushed the organs down the toilet.

A search of the house found the remaining body parts and cut hair from Jessica in the crawl space that Austin described earlier to the police dispatcher. Austin admitted putting a small hand carved wooden cross pendant on Jessica’s body, but during the autopsy of her body, the cross was found inside her body. Austin also admitted to etching 3 designs on the cross before placing it inside her. Police had initially released a photo of the wooden cross to the public to gather leads but did not inform the public how or why this cross with the markings was significant. Austin was able to confirm those pieces of information to the police. I really don’t want to say where, but I feel it is important to know how sick this guy was and that the cross was not an attempt at remorse but rather a disgusting use of the cross to try and throw off police by thinking the perpetrator was a religious zealot. The 1 inch wooden cross was found in her vaginal cavity. Since he had removed her organs, it wasn't like this was the only place he could have placed the cross. If there was some type of remorse for taking her life, he could have placed it where her heart would have been, not that this would have made it any less disturbing. I just think it is notable that he chose to put a holy symbol in a spot where he degraded her sexually and stole her innocence and then dumped her body in a trash bag. This guy had no respect for her before or after her death. Police asked him why he tried to attack the female jogger earlier that year and he responded that he would have done the same thing to her that he ended up doing to Jessica. He also planned to dump the jogger’s body in some sulfur pits in the Colorado mountains. In his own words, he was fulfilling a sexual fantasy and this sexual fantasy had been growing for a long time. Austin even admitted to going out before Jessica’s abduction and murder to look for little girls but never had the ability to act on his urges at those times.

He admitted to all the crimes against him on Jessica, and the female jogger he previously attacked resulting in 17 counts, 11 of them pertaining to the crime against Jessica. Because of his age, he was initially sent to a juvenile facility, but these accommodations and resources ran short. Even though Austin was a minor at the time of his crimes, he was later charged as an adult and transferred to an adult prison in Jefferson county. Because of his age, he was put into a special housing unit for the first 52 days in jail where he was isolated from the general population and escorted by a deputy. Once he turns 18, he can be released to the general population. He was represented by Defense Attorney, Ryan Loewer and his team.

Surprisingly, Austin plead not guilty to the now 15 charges later read to him in court. 2 of the original 17 charges were later dropped because they were considered the same charges. I am not sure if this was a plan by his lawyers to plead not guilty. Either way, the attempt was unsuccessful and Austin later changed his plea to guilty in October 2013 right before his trial started. He was not offered a guilty plea and wanted to spare his family and Jessica’s family the gruesome details of the crime. I want to start out by saying that the defense did a really good job given Austin’s situation of confessing to the murder. In this trial, the defense was trying to get him the most lenient sentencing as possible and i feel they did their research and brought up every single event in his life that could have mitigating circumstances and place less blame on him for his actions. I know that it can be harder to defend than prosecute, but I feel that both sides did really well and the ultimate trial and sentencing was fair.

His defense attorney tried to paint a troubled start to Austin’s life by admitting to the court that his mother, Mindy, suffered a fall 3 months into her pregnancy with Austin and inhaled paint fumes in her last trimester. The defense doesn’t say if the inhaled paint fumes were recreational or if this could have been while painting the inside of a house, but it was noticed that Mindy called her doctors and was concerned for her baby after this incident. During Austin’s delivery a vacuum was used to help get him out of the birth canal leaving a temporary misshapen head. The defenses argument was that these incidences led to intestinal complications which resulted in multiple surgeries and procedures throughout Austin’s childhood, and deformities in the shape of his head during birth could mitigate his culpability in his crimes. Looking at pictures of Austin, his head size and shape seems pretty normal, and even if it was slightly large, then this would be from genetics and not during childbirth. Again, I am not really sure where this angle was going because both don’t seem to point to an extremely troubled youth or head trauma commonly seen in violent killers. I also find it peculiar that the defense team said significant intestinal surgery and needing a colostomy bag. They did not say the surgery was a colostomy so I am not sure if the bag is intuitive or if a colostomy bag can be used in a variety of other ostomy surgeries. I was born with intestinal complications when I was a child and had multiple surgeries before I was a toddler. I know what happened in each surgery and I knew what they were called so I find the lack of detail by the prosecution to be possibly a sign that they are dramatizing these events. There were more hospital visits of any injury related to his head but there was no significant damage. The defense team also brought up Austin’s ADD and anxiety disorder to point out that this affects the frontal lobe which is responsible for impulses and planning. This is the only part of the defense that I think is somewhat decent, but still doesn't describe how someone can meticulously plan, murder, and then clean up a crime scene. If this was a different case with different circumstances then I can see that angle working, but Austin did not act on an impulse in my opinion. He acted on a desire and knew what he was going to do before he did it.


Austin was found guilty of the following charges:

First degree murder (x1)

second degree kidnapping (x2)

sexual assault of a child

robbery

sexual assault

sexual exploitation of a child (x3)

violent crime (x5)

attempted second degree kidnapping

Austin Sigg at trial














Although Austin was 18 at the time of his sentencing, he was charged as a minor since the crime took place when he was 17. A 2005 Supreme Court Decision from case Roper v. Simmons made it unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on anyone under the age of 18, and this ultimately spared Austin from capital punishment. On November 19th 2013, Austin was sentenced to life in prison. Austin’s sentencing concluded that he would spend his entire life in prison with an 86 year sentence on top of his life sentence. This means that after his minimum of 40 years served of his life sentence, the 86 year sentence will start.

Anna Salter, a psychologist, noticed Austin showed signs of a sadistic necrophiliac with psychopathic traits, but that he was not truly psychotic. Salter did not formally examined Austin, but assessed him based on what she observed and the details of the crime and confession tapes and testified her conclusion in court during his sentencing hearing. During her testimony, Dr. Salter explained how remorse for crimes happens before the perpetrator is caught and that Austin did not show signs of remorse until police were closing in on him. She is alluding to the conclusion that Austin was not remorseful for his actions, but rather that he was getting caught. She also noticed that on reviewing video surveillance from Austin’s neighbor that he dropped off his brother at Standley High school and came back home waiting around 50 minutes before leaving again. This is significant because this time frame shows that Austin was targeting children walking to elementary school. According to the school schedule in that area the high school starts earliest, middle school second, and elementary school last. Salter points out the brutal nature Austin has when he keeps her skull and takes it out to look at it because he is fascinated with it.

During the trial, a letter was read by Jefferson County District Court Chief Judge Stephen Munsinger. The letter read, “ I don’t know about society because I’ve never really been that great with it, but I know that personally, I am a monster. There’s no better word to describe what I’ve done than evil.” Throughout the trial Austin sat emotionless and with a blank stare at the ground never looking up, but it wasn’t until the victim impact statement that he started crying and showing some shred of human emotion. I hope these tears were for Jessica and that he felt deep remorse for what he had done. I hope he thinks about what he did to her every single day in his tiny and cold cell. I can continue to berate Austin for the monster he is, but I am sure a lot of people share the same level of disgust for him.

Jessica’s mom, Sarah Ridgeway did not give Austin the satisfaction of knowing how much he has damaged he has done to Jessica’s family. Instead, she told Austin that after she left the courtroom, she would never remember his name, and focus on Jessica’s legacy. To Jessica’s family, she will be 10 years-old forever now in their minds. A year after her death a park close to where she was abducted was constructed and named in her honor. The Jessica Ridgeway Memorial park structures are purple to signify her favorite color and dragonflies to signify her free spirit. A memorial rock and bench was placed in the park where her remains were found.

In 2014 Austin was transferred to another prison out of Colorado for his safety and the location was not disclosed to the public.


Research for the following episode was retrieved by the following sources:

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I hope Austin Sigg burns in hell for all eternity. End of sentence.

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