True Crime All The Time - Austin Sigg

Episode Date: October 9, 2017

On October 5th, 2012, 10 year old Jessica Ridgeway left her home to walk to school. She said goodbye to her mother, walked out of the door, but she never made it to school and she would not return home that day. The community would rally in support of Jessica and they, along with police, would do everything they could to find her.What no one could know at the time was that there was a 17 year old boy by the name of Austin Sigg that was harboring a frightening secret. And as the police closed in on finding out what happened to Jessica, Austin would tell his mother what he had done.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the details of this tragic case. What happened to little Jessica that day would be beyond belief and the stuff of nightmares. Austin Sigg would tell everything and the details would all come directly from him. But what would make a 17 year old boy commit the ultimate sin? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 48 of true crime all the time. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime Mike Gibson. Gibby what's going on? Hey man. What's happening? Hey man. Hey man. What's happening? I used to like that show what's happening. What's happening with Raj? and rerun. Rerun. Yeah. Dwayne. Dwayne. Yeah. What was the girl's name? I don't remember. I don't either. But we'll give, we'll put that out because somebody will write in. That's right. Got to give it. You got to give something for people to tell us.

It's Roz or. It is Roz, isn't it? I think it might be. Yeah. A lot of people are like, don't you just put it in your phone and look it up, guys. I know. We don't do that. I don't do that.

It's part of the fun. All right. So let's do our new Patreon supporter shoutouts. We have Diana Ward, Danny McCullough, Christy Lee, who I believe Gibbs. I'm not positive, but it might be the Christi. Lee from Canadian true crime. If it's not, she's going to feel guilty that it isn't and she's going to have to. I don't want to

make her feel bad, but if it is, I want to give a shout out. And if it is or it isn't, if you haven't checked out Canadian true crime, you should. It's a good show. We love her show. Yeah, and we like Christy a lot. So I don't know if it's her or not, but it could be. Steve

Goddard, Lauren Rowe, Catherine Darker, Kristen Smith, aka Joan Crawford, AKA Mama Kay. Mama Kay. She's got a lot of A.K.A. She's pretty active on social media. She is, but she likes to go by different handles,

depending on which social media she's using. That's why you get all the A.K.A. Pretty amazing person. We have Best Show Walter, and then we have A.J. Roxy Gifford. I like that. Which I think is a pair of individuals, maybe a couple.

Yeah. AJ and Roxy or somebody's name is A.J. Roxy. I don't know. I'm going with the first. M.G. Ag. A.k.a. Mama June. A.k.a.a. G. G. G. G. Did you just call me Mama June? I did call you Mama June. I don't know why, but that popped into my head. Mama June. You don't look like Mama June. At all. At all. But AJ Roxy Gifford, they jumped out at our highest level. So, you know, big shout out there. Appreciate that. And then we're going back into the vault, closing up Gibby's jail cell. More than that.

Huh? More than that. Closing up a lot of things. Yeah. And we want to give a huge shout out to Shetty Versado, one of the best names in the business. It is. McSetty, machete, de Shetty. There's just a lot of things you can do with that name.

Yeah. I think if I had that name, Gibbs, I could rule. the world. That's what I think. I think you could. So big shout out to Shetty. You know, been a contributor, a supporter of true crime all the time for a long time. And we just want to say how thankful we are. And we're thankful for all the support we get. Whether it's Patreon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the people that are telling their friends, hey, this is what I like. Give it a try. It's been instrumental. in where we've gotten to. Now, you and I really don't know where we're at, but wherever we are,

we owe it to all of our fans. Yeah, I mean, you as an individual, you have a huge following on MySpace. I do. I do. And I'm not giving it up either, my MySpace page. Mike Ferguson at AOL.com. I remember back in the day when basically AOL was all, I mean, there was some other things, A lot of people had AOL and you had that, you've got mail. I still remember that. You got mail. That's right. Remember juno.com?

I do. Yeah. I do. So I want to give a huge shout out to Maggie for her writing and research on the episode. Maxter. Yep. We love Maggie. And then we have some voicemails today, Gibbs.

And normally we play them all at the end. But I want to play one up front. And I think people will realize why. So that voicemail actually came through the other day, Gibbs, and I was sitting down in the basement, pulled it up, started to listen to it, had to clean my shorts, get some new clothing. No, it was a little freaky. I'm going to, you know, admit right at first as it starts off. But then when they say it's froggy bar, then I go back to our mystery Patreon supporter.

Yeah. And the conversation that you and I had about, well, who's Froggy Bar? Well, at least it was a nice message? Just a disguise message. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was really creative. But I will admit, it freaked me out a little bit in the dead of night sitting in my basement. Anytime you get that voice, whatever that machine's call that changes your voice.

I'm assuming that's what that is. I don't think it's, you know, somebody that has a... I don't know. That's a cool-ass voice if that's really... If that's really their voice? You just walk around all day, like, scaring the shit out of people. Yeah, he or she's having a lot of fun right now. That's true.

It could be a she if you had the right, the machine could actually change it enough. Should get one of those. Where you could buy one of those at. I don't know. You should get one that changes your vocabulary. Why'd you go there, man? To what? From gibbysms to straight out just normal English?

No, I'm just messing with you. So anyway. loved the voicemail from Froggy Bar, wanted to play it. We still don't know who Froggy Bar is, but I like the mystery that surrounds it. And I hope we get some more. After you listen to this episode, make sure you jump over, check out true crime all the time unsolved. We've got an episode out right now talking about the murder of actor Bob Crane that was on

Hogan's Heroes. And we're going back to the late 70s, but it's a very interesting. interesting story that is still actively being investigated and, you know, there's some new information that just came out, you know, as early as last year, Gibbs, which we talk about. 70s. Leisure suits. Leisure suits. I bet Bob Crane wore a leisure suit. All right, Gibbs, you ready to get into our topic today? I'm ready. And in this episode, we're talking about Austin Sigg and the murder of Jessica Ridgeway. And we got to start out talking about Jessica.

Jessica Ridgeway was a 10-year-old girl. She had a gap in her front teeth. She liked to pretend that she was a cheerleader. She liked to pretend that she was a waitress when she was playing. And this is a little girl that loved to laugh, love to giggle. She adored the color purple. And like a lot of little girls, she wanted to be older. And I experienced this with my own kids.

They want to be older. They want to do what the older kids are doing. I remember my kids saying, I can't wait till I'm 16 so I can drive or I can't wait until I'm this old so I can do this. And I would always tell them, don't wish your life away. Now, that comes with getting older. You realize that you don't want to do that. But as a little kid, you just want to get old so you can do the things you want to do on your

own. And we say the same thing to our parents and our parents said the same thing back to us and it's just that cycle. Yeah, it really is. Jessica was a 10 year old girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And her mother would come out and say that, you know, she had talked to Jessica like most mothers do about being very cautious around strangers. Her mom even warned her to scream for help if somebody ever tried to grab her. she was aware of the whole stranger danger thing that we've talked about before. And there was an interesting story about Jessica that I want to talk about. And it centers around a school assignment that she had been working on in which she was

supposed to write out different types of sentences. And she had completed this assignment in her little child handwriting. And it was a mixture of some large letters. some really small letters. You know how little kids write. And the first sentence she wrote was, do not play at the park alone. And then next to that,

she wrote imperative sentence pretty much just means a command sentence. And the second one she wrote is watch out for strangers. And then she put, you know, this is an exclamatory sentence, self-explanatory, a sentence to express strong emotion. So pretty good for a 10-year-old girl.

Yeah, impressive. It was very impressive. And I know what you're thinking. Exactly. That you didn't know what those types of sentences were. I just say what I got to say. I don't know if I could have told you what they were. I could have maybe back in the day.

But I wanted to point that out because unfortunately it's foreshadowing. Because we know that Jessica Ridgeway is going to be murdered. You know, this was a little girl who loved to dance, love to sing. she would make up silly words and laugh at them. It was said that she had these luminous blue eyes that sparkled behind the purple glasses that she always wore. She was so full of joy. She was loved by not only her friends, her peers, but also teachers.

I mean, teachers would come out and say that this was the type of student that you wanted to have in your class. This was the type of kid that you. would be proud to say was your own. You know, that's the type of praise that would come out from teachers. And Jessica loved animals. She had a dog, some fish, even a couple of frogs. Her favorite TV shows were victorious, shake it up, and Wizards of Waverly Place. And this one kind of hits me a little hard, Gibbs, because, you know, I have two girls. I've seen all these shows. Yeah, same here. I've seen probably every episode of these shows with my own daughters. It was said that Jessica really enjoyed watching

her cousin play baseball and she liked to take care of these hairless cats that one of her neighbors owned. She participated in pee-wee cheer and told everybody that when she grew up and she got into high school, her big dream was to be a cheerleader. But Jessica Ridgeway would go missing on a October 5th, 2012. And we have to talk about the events of that day. Jessica's alarm went off at 7.45 a.m. that morning. And it will come out later that she had been given this alarm clock because she wanted to set her own alarm.

She wanted to be in charge of getting up on her own because she wanted to be self-sufficient. Like we mentioned, she wanted to grow up. Pretty amazing little girl. Yeah, she really is. And that, you know, that's what I'm trying to get across. That October 5th morning was pretty normal. Jessica had a routine. She would watch TV.

She ate a granola bar. And then she went upstairs to get dressed. And before leaving for school, she peeled an orange with her mother that she was going to take with her. Now, her mom, Sarah Ridgeway, at the time, she was a 31-year-old single mom. and she worked third shift, 10 to 7. So she had just returned home from her overnight shift. She worked as tech support for a software company in Boulder. And this allowed her to see Jessica off in the morning.

And then she would wake up by four. So she would be there when Jessica got home from school. Jessica called a friend of hers that lived down the block to see if he was going to be walking to school so that they could walk together. She ended up talking to her friend's dad who said that his son would wait for Jessica. This would come out later, obviously, from the dad. This was around 8.25 a.m. But when Jessica didn't get to her friend's house by 840, the father and son just figured that, you know, she'd either walked alone or her mom had taken her and the dad took his son and drove him to school. Her mom would come.

come out and say later that, you know, it was snowing out. I watched Jessica walk out the door. I shut the door. And this is the last time I ever saw her. When Jessica didn't make it to Witt elementary, school officials tried to contact her mother. This was not normal for Jessica not to be in school. She loved school. And her mom hadn't called in that day to say that she wasn't going to be there. So they called her mother around the school. She loved school. And her mom hadn't called her mother around 10 a.m. But they couldn't get a hold of her. Because remember, Sarah worked third shift. She had to go to sleep in order to get up by the time that Jessica got home. So all school officials could do was leave a voicemail. And Sarah Ridgeway would come out later and say that that day,

she did not have her cell phone with her in the bedroom. And it was because she had applied to a college and this college was constantly calling her. And she was super tired that day. And she really needed to get some sleep. So she put the cell phone in another room. And she would get the message on her cell phone that afternoon. She was thinking, you know, Gibbs, there's got to be some sort of mistake here. I bet. And that had to be, oh, panic. Right. I mean, I don't know how else you would describe it. the school calls and says, hey, your daughter never made it to school. One, you're freaking out. Where is my kid?

And two, I think she was probably thinking guilt because she didn't have her phone with her and could she've got that message earlier and been out there looking. If not then, that would come later for sure. You know it would. But the other thing that she's thinking probably is that it's got to be a mistake because she saw Jessica leave for school. she knows she didn't stay home. So her first instinct is to leave the house, go out looking for Jessica.

She drove past the park near their house. No sign of Jessica there. She tried the friend's house that Jessica was supposed to walk to school with. There was no answer there at all. And then she went to the school and she found out that no one had seen her daughter all day. And Sarah Ridgeway would say, it was at that point she knew something very wrong had happened.

She talked about getting that pit in your stomach. She's my rock. She's, I mean, she's all of our rock. A mother. The bright voice of my little girl. She needs to come home. And a father. I try to stay positive about it.

But, yeah, it's hard. Two parents distraught over the disappearance of their little girl. Jessica Ridgeway was last seen, leaving her mother Sarah's home on Friday. I watch her walk out the door and I shut the door. And that's the last time I saw her. And I want to come walking back through that door. You get the pit in your stomach that is not ever, ever anything.

I want ever any parent to go through. So in that newscast, you can really, you know, you can hear the emotion. She talks about the pit in her stomach. she talks about that, you know, this is something that she wouldn't want any parent to have to go through. But, you know, in my opinion, Gibbs, this is something no parent should ever have to go through. Yeah, I mean, we've all had a little taste of it. I mean, really little taste. Really small.

When we thought we've lost our child at the grocery store or wherever we were, right, and we turn around, they're not there. And, oh, my gosh, it just makes you panic. and that's that's small. You know, this is bigger level. I can't even imagine. No, I would agree. I can't imagine it on that, that large scale. I can't imagine the feeling.

And it's at this point that Sarah calls the Westminster police to report her daughter missing. The police followed their standard procedures. One police officer went to the home that Jessica shared with her family. One went to the elementary school. The police were trying to put together a solid timeline of what happened that day to see if anyone knew where Jessica was, had been, or what had happened to this girl. The police would start looking into Jessica's father, who you actually heard on that clip. He did not live with the family.

In fact, he at the time was living in Missouri. Jessica's parents hadn't been together for quite some time. They were currently dealing with a legal issue because the father had fallen behind on his child support payments. And it was the day that his daughter disappeared that the court held a hearing about the child support issue. And the police needed to know if Jessica's father had been in court that day or if he could have possibly been involved in the disappearance of his daughter. But it didn't take police long to find out that her father had been in Missouri and had actually attended the court hearing. So that was one lead that police could let go.

They knew her father couldn't have been in Colorado that day. The police had search dogs out canvassing the park near her home, the school, houses in the neighborhood. They were checking out cars along the route that she would have walked to school. they had these dogs everywhere trying to pick up a scent of Jessica. At the same time, police and other first responders were walking across the parks, through fields, on foot, trying to find any evidence of trying to find any trail of Jessica Ridgeway. And it was by 915 that night that police made the decision that they had enough information

to assume Jessica had been taken by a stranger and an amber alert was issued. They brought in lights to light up Chelsea Park and this was the area where they were focusing a lot of their searching on for Jessica. They had firefighters using thermal imaging equipment in the darkness to try to find her as well. Police even tried to get a helicopter from Denver that had night vision, but apparently it was so cold that night that the helicopter. helicopter couldn't fly because they were afraid that the blades would get icy. But by the next day on Saturday, Gibbs, it was said that maybe as many as a thousand people

showed up to help in the search for Jessica Ridgeway. That's a lot of people. That's a good showing. That's a big outpouring of support. Yeah, I love that. Because this was not all friends and family. This was a lot of strangers. people that didn't even know Jessica but wanted to pitch in, they wanted to find this little girl.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you just have little kids in general, you're going to be out there. Even if you don't have kids, you know, you've got nieces, nephews. Well, by and large, people have huge hearts. And we've said it. But when kids are involved, people will pull out all stops, right? People will give up their time. They'll do whatever it takes. And that's a great thing to say about our society.

The problem is even with all the help, even with all the volunteers and the technology, they could not figure out what happened to Jessica Ridgeway. She had vanished. Obviously, her family is beyond worried. They just wanted Jessica to come home. But what would come out about what actually happened that day would be the stuff of nightmares. because Jessica was walking to school that day, she was going to meet her friend,

and this was not a very long walk. I mean, it was something that would have taken her four or five minutes to make. And as Jessica was walking, she's picking up handfuls of snow, making snowballs. She's being a little girl. She's doing what she's supposed to be doing.

And she's dressed in this big puffy black jacket. to stay warm, but unbeknownst to Jessica, there was a Jeep Cherokee parked down the street with someone inside who was watching Jessica and would ultimately end her life. And it's going to be a young man, Gibbs, that's hiding in this Jeep, crouched down where no one can see him. His name was Austin Sig. He was a 17-year-old student at the time. at Arapaho Community College where he was studying mortuary science. Getting freaky already. It's a little strange.

It's a little bit strange. Not to study mortuary science. I mean, there's a lot of people that go into that field. Not 17. Well, it's 17. But to know what he's about to do, it does make it strange. And the facts that are going to come out. Austin Sig had attended the same elementary school that Jessica went to.

Witt Elementary. He had gone to middle school at Wayne Carl Middle School, and he attended high school at Stanley Lake High School. He was also part of the Jeff Coe concert choir during his younger years. And apparently he liked to play video games, like most kids. He played World of Warcraft. He played Call of Duty. I mean, pretty standard. Yeah, it's pretty normal for that age group. But Austin Sig left high school in the 11th grade. Instead of graduating, he would go on to get his GED instead. He then enrolled at a school called Warn Tech, where he said he wanted to work in the health or forensic science field.

And he even won second place in a competition in the category of crime scene investigation for health occupation students of America. So some type of competition where his entry was full. focused around CSI. And this is going to be important. You know, as we move through this story, this whole subject of CSI, forensic sciences, mortuary sciences, all of this is going to play a huge factor in the story to come. Here's what we know about SIG's background. He attended Stanley Lake High School.

He also took courses at Warren Tech North. It's on the campus of Arvada West. It's a technical school offered through Jeff Co. He took courses in forensic sciences. The classes included anatomy, forensic chemistry, and forensic science. He would learn about DNA, crime scene analysis, or CSI, and forensic pathology, the examination of a corpse. And later on, there are going to be a number of people that come forward to talk about Austin Sick. One of these would be his first girlfriend that he dated in middle school through high school.

And she said that he was a very school. sweet boy, apparently they had met at some kind of gathering for Christian teens, and she was shocked at the revelations that would come out. Now, she did say that Austin had a collection of swords and knives at his house, but she would say that there is no way that she would have ever thought that Austin Sig could be an evil person. But there were other people from the high school that he attended that shared different types of sentiments. And these were along the lines that they thought Austin Sig was creepy. I mean, that was the word that other kids used. And then we have to talk about his father, Robert Sig, you know, he had a criminal history. And he was arrested for things

like assault and battery, resisting arrest, domestic violence, driving under the influence. And, you know, a host of other crimes. So his dad had a criminal background. All right, Gibbs, we have to take a quick break to to talk about our sponsor, Audible. Audible selection of audiobooks is unmatched anywhere. Millions of Audible members access performances by A-list celebs and amazing narrators. In addition to audiobooks, there are so many audible exclusives and original audio shows. Try it on your commute and ride with audible. The best thing for our listeners to do is go to audible.com slash true crime and write now, Gibbs, I'm listening to a book called The Big Book of Serial Killers, probably something that everybody listening to this episode would enjoy. Now, our listeners can start a 30-day trial and get their first

audible book for free. All you have to do is go to audible.com slash true crime. That's audible, A-U-D-I-B-L-E dot com slash true crime. T-R-U-E-C-R-I-M-E. But getting back to that day, Austin Sigg is sitting in the Jeep Cherokee. He's watching Jessica Ridgeway walk down the street towards him. He waited until she got to the end of the sidewalk, knowing that she had to cross the street. And just as she walked past his car, he jumped out of the Jeep and grabbed her. And it was said later that Jessica screamed, just like she had been taught to do. But there was no one around in the nation.

neighborhood to hear her. Austin Sigg used zip ties to bind her arms and legs together. And as this is happening, Jessica's screaming. As you can only imagine what this girl's going through Gibbs. Austin Sigg is promising her. Everything's going to be okay. All she has to do is be quiet. He drives her around for a while making random turns. Not really going anywhere specifically, but eventually he makes it back to his house that he shared with his mother. He drove the Jeep into the garage, closed the door behind him,

he cuts off the zip ties, and he carries Jessica up to his room. He places Jessica on his bed and he puts a movie on for her. You know, turns on Netflix and puts on a movie. He next has her change out of her clothing and put on a shirt and shorts that he had laid out.

for her. And he has her do this inside the bathroom. But after Jessica had changed into the clothes, had come back into the bedroom, Austin Sig tried to strangle her with some zip ties. But as he would later tell police, he couldn't do it. As he was trying to strangle her, the ties that they dug into his pot, they was hurting him to try to strangle her. We're going to call him a lot of things and we're going to be very angry. I mean, we already are. I can see it in your face, Gibbs. You're getting pissed.

I know how you are. I know how these affect you. And this is a tough one. Oh, yeah. There's no way around the fact that this is a tough story to tell. Yeah. And I know what's coming. But because of this, he ends up strangling Jessica with his bare hands until she was no

longer breathing. But that was not enough for Austin Sigg because he, carried Jessica's body into the bathtub, filled it with water, and placed her face down just to make sure that she was dead. So strangle, drowned. Okay. And it's going to get worse because Austin Sigg would use a saw and razor blades

to remove one of her hands and one of her feet. And then he removed her other hand, cut both of the hands into as many small pieces as he could and flushed the parts down the toilet. He would later decapitate Jessica Ridgeway, take off her arms and legs. He put them into plastic trash bags. And then he took her torso, put that into a plastic trash bag as well. And he placed all of these bags in the pool shed in his backyard. The next night, because there were so many police around the city trying to locate Jessica,

Austin Sig got freaked out. And he decided to drive to a neighborhood in Superior Colorado, located north of his house, taking along with him Jessica's backpack. Inside, he had put her clothes in the backpack. But somewhere along the way, he threw the coat that Jessica had been wearing that day into a random trash can. He also threw away some of the implements that he had used to dismember her as well. And Austin Sigg would later tell the police that he put the backpack in an area north of where

she went missing so that the police would not search his house and find out what he had done to this little girl. So his thought process was he's leading investigators away from his house. Now, the backpack was found standing upright on the sidewalk like it had just been placed there. And this was on October 7th, just two days after Jessica had gone missing. A man who lived in the neighborhood had actually seen the backpack the night before around midnight, but he didn't make much of it. And he thought, okay, if it's there the next day, I'll check it out.

It was still there. The next day, he saw it. He went over to check it out and he noticed that on the backpack, there was a keychain that read Jessica. But at the time, this man had no idea that it was connected in any way to the disappearance case of Jessica Ridgeway. But what he did was that he actually posted it on a website for the town that they lived in. And this was kind of a website where people could post whatever.

jobs for hire. He posted it as lost and found. And someone in the neighborhood who saw this, they came to the man and said, hey, you have something very important. I think you have something related to the case of Jessica Ridgeway.

So the man called 911. Now, when you find something on the side of the road, I just can't believe somebody doesn't open it up. If you find a woman's purse, if you find a wallet, if you find a briefcase, backpack, you're not going to open it up. I'm not going to touch it because I don't want my fingerprints on it because who knows what it's from.

I think majority people open it up. No. And I agree with you because really that's the only way to find out who it belongs to. And if you're an upstanding citizen, you want to get that back to the person that has lost it. Yeah. I don't think it makes you a bad person because you open up somebody's. purse that you found or backpack, you know? I mean, how else you're going to figure out where it goes? Right. But the flip side argument to that gives is so if he had opened it up, what would it have

told him? Well, true. Because all that's inside are some little girl's clothes. So when Jessica's mother finds out that the backpack had been found, I think initially she has some hope there. Because her thought was that the backpack had been left in plain sight and why would someone harm a child in a bad way and then purposefully just leave some evidence out in plain sight. That was her thought. Right. Again, I can't falter for that. I have to believe in that situation.

You're looking for any type of hope. And anything that happens, you're trying to. you're trying to see the best in it. And after the backpack is found, now keep in mind, just a couple of days after she'd gone missing, Jessica's father made the trip to Colorado,

and as a family, they're waiting for any news about Jessica. But we know Gibbs, and this is the heartbreaking part of it, she's never coming back. I mean, she's already been murdered by this point. They're still holding.

out hope for Jessica's return. They're asking the media and the public for any help that they can give to help bring Jessica back. And during this time, Austin Sig is very worried about the police and all of the tactics at their disposal that they were using to try to find Jessica. And by extension, try to find the person that had either taken her or possibly harmed her. And Austin Sig should be worried at this point in time. He has done something so horrific. It's hard to even talk about it. It's hard to even put words around it that a 17-year-old kid could do something like this.

But because of this worry, because of this concern, Austin Sigg said that he knew he had to do something with the rest of Jessica's body. Because remember, he still has some of it. So he brings the torso back into his house from the shed, washes it, puts it in two black trash bags with red handles and ties the handles together to secure it. But what he would later say is that prior to placing her torso, So in the trash bags, he had removed all of the organs from her body and flushed them down the toilet. So he gutted her. Essentially.

Essentially. What he did. Yeah. Which is disgusting. The whole thing is disgusting. And then took the time to flush piece by piece down the toilet because there's no way you could just flush that hole. So he had to sit there and chop and flush and flush and. Wow.

But I go back, Gibbs, to the fact that this kid is learning about mortuary sciences. He's learning about forensics, CSI. How much of this of what he's doing goes back to those things that he's learning about. And maybe we'll talk about it more as we go on into why would he do this in the first place. But I kind of wanted to bring it up now because he would talk about it later that, that he used gloves. Sure. He was trying to be very careful.

He didn't want to leave any fingerprints on her body. This is not normally, I would say, how a 17-year-old's mind works. No, he learned things from this class because he even placed a cross within her vagina area in hopes that when the police find the torso, it throws them off and again makes them think that it's some kind of religious wacko or cult. Maybe a cult has done this. Right. I just go,

I go back to the fact that a 17 year old doesn't normally take these type of precautions. So I think you're right. I think he learned a lot of this in the studies that he had been taking. On October 10th, there were some maintenance workers picking up trash in a park. they discover a plastic garbage bag around 2 p.m. And it's sitting out in the open near a drainage ditch on the roadside. They said that the bag was very heavy and they actually flagged down an animal control officer that was driving by.

He gets out, looks inside the bag and immediately sees human remains. And this created a media firestorm. Because you have to think the evening news is talking about Jessica. The whole town, surrounding towns, the whole state is focused on finding this girl. I don't know how far it extended, but pretty far I would imagine. The police are not giving out exact details at this point, but they have said that they found a set of human remains that were not whole. And these remains, it turns out, were found only nine. miles from Jessica's home. And it's two days later that the police make the announcement that

DNA testing done confirmed the remains were that of Jessica Ridgeway. So unfortunately, at this point, Jessica's family, they know, they know that she's gone. They know she's never coming back. And that's a feeling Gibbs that I have a really hard time with, trying to, understand or trying to even think about what did they go through. But police have to switch gears. And they have to go from searching for Jessica to trying to bring her killer to justice. And you think about what the community was dealing with. They've now gone from looking for a little girl and putting their resources towards that

to thinking, hey, we've got a murderer in our town. and nobody knows who it is. Police increased patrols around the schools, parents, they didn't drop their kids off anymore. They were walking them all the way into their classrooms. And they were going into the school to pick them up. Yeah. I mean, everybody's on high alert. Yeah, absolutely.

And should be. I would be too. You know, this brought about an increase on talking with kids about stranger danger, the awareness of how to deal with with certain situations. Right. Buddy system. Remember the old buddy system? The buddy system. And also how to talk to children about the death of Jessica Ridgeway. Because remember, she was loved in this school. So all of her friends are going to find out what happened. And you have a whole set of parents that have to figure out how to tell. their kids what happened to their friend. I mean, this, it was, it had to have been tough for

everybody involved. And it was senseless. We're going to talk about that. Now, we have to go back a little bit in time to Memorial Day of that year because police were working a case about a jogger near an area called Ketner Lake. And this was very close to where Jessica had lived. And the case involved an attempted kidnapping of a woman at Ketner Lake on Memorial Day. Police had asked anyone if they had any details. I don't think they had any idea at this point whether or not the attempted kidnapping could be related to Jessica's case, but I don't think they were ruling it out. So they're asking people if they had any details about either case.

And one thing that the police did, they released pictures of the wooden cross found on Jessica to see if anyone had information about that. Because I think police knew Gibbs that this was a clue that could be integral to catching whoever killed Jessica Ridgeway. Yeah, so I think at this point they're thinking, you know, this wasn't actually Jessica's cross. so it had to come from the suspects home or somehow tied to him or her at this point

so I think that's why they wanted to get it out there to see if anybody could recognize it. A friend of Jessica's family created a website where people could remember her and at the same time help her family pay for some of the funeral costs. On the day of Jessica's funeral, and this blows me away, Gibbs,

more than 2,000 people showed up to remember Jessica Ridgeway. And that's pretty impressive, knowing that a thousand people went out to look for. I mean, that just shows you how much people cared. 2,000 people. Yeah, that's a lot. Now, this was a time of grief for the family, no doubt about that. But Jessica's favorite song was Call Me Maybe by Carly Ray Jepson. And it was played to a montage of photos of Jessica.

showing her life so that they could celebrate the way Jessica lived her life and her memory. And it was said that a lot of people that showed up to the funeral wore purple to honor Jessica because they knew it was her favorite color. On October 17th, the police are still canvassing and they're starting to get closer to the area where Austin Sig lived. And at this point, a friend of Austin's mother called the FBI saying she was worried about Austin and that he could possibly have been the killer because she recognized the cross that police were showing. And there pays off. So police went to Sig's house to collect a DNA sample and questioned sick.

But Austin said that he had been home sleeping at the time when Jessica was killed. and during the interview police noticed that he was wearing a cross and police asked him about it but they would come out and say that he was very calm in answering their questions so they left they sent his DNA off with all of the other DNA that they had collected

to be tested but at that point in time police did not think that Austin Sig was the killer five days later on October 22nd the media announced that there had been a connection made between the jogger at Ketner Lake, who had almost been kidnapped, and the murder of Jessica Ridgeway. It was after this came out that Austin Sig reportedly told fellow classmates that he felt wobbly and very sick.

And his mother would later say that he actually slept in her bed that night. So you know Gibbs, this 17-year-old is feeling the pressure. It's coming down for sure. The walls are closing in around him. And at that age, he's not going to be able to handle it. And it's the very next day that Austin Sig would tell his mother, Mindy, that he had something really important to tell her. And for some reason, his mother must have had some kind of intuition about this, because

she asked him before he even started talking, does this have something to do with Jessica? It could be her cleaning up the bathroom and maybe he didn't leave it as clean as he thought or I don't know. I think the router, the router people coming out to clean out the drains from everything he flushed down there. Did you say router router router? What's it called? Well, roter router. Router router. Roder router. Yeah, you don't want you root or router. Yeah, you don't want too rude or rout it. No, you don't. But she did.

She had some kind of intuition about this. Yeah. And, you know, they set down. Moms normally do. They do. Moms have an intuition. They know what's going on. They sat down.

He basically told her everything. And she immediately called 911. Hello? Hi, this is Mallet Westminster. Please. Can I help you? Hi. Um, I need.

He'd come to my house. My son wants to turn himself in for the Jessica Ridgeway murder. And what's going on there? Not hearing me. He just confessed to killing her. I know. I want you to tell me what's going on. Can you tell me exactly what he said?

But he did it and he gave me details and her remains are in my house. Did you see them? No. Is he there with you? Yes. Is he cooperative? Yes. How old is your son? 17.

What is your son's name? I think. So I have to say, this 911 call 17 minutes long. And I think a lot of it's very important. So I've chunked it up into some smaller bites. But we've talked about Gibbs what Jessica's family went through. imagine what Mindy Sig is going through right then when she makes this call. Yeah, I can't, I can't imagine that either.

You know, I mean, clearly she did the right thing calling right away. And you can, I think you can kind of gauge by her voice that I think she's in, she's in shock. She would have to be. You know, she's in shock for sure. Your child has just come to you and said that they've murdered a 10-year-old girl. I don't even know how you process that, and I don't think she could have in the time before she made the call. Do you think that Austin would talk to me? Will you talk about?

Yeah. Okay. Hello. Is this Austin? Yes, it is. Hi, Austin. This is Molly at the Westminster Police Department. Hi.

Can you tell me a little bit about what's going on right now or how you're feeling or, or, or, or, How did this come about? I don't exactly get why you're asking these questions. I murdered Jessica Ridgeway. Okay. I have proof that I did it. There is no other question. You just have to send a squad car or something down here,

and I will answer all the questions that you want to ask. Okay. Or anyone wants to ask of me as soon as you just need to get down here. Okay. Austin, I have a police officer that's going to come over to your house, okay? Can you tell me what part of the house that her remains are in? Underneath the house and across this. Okay, did you know Jessica before this?

No, I did not. Do you have any weapons in your house? I do, but I plan to use absolutely none of them. I will be sitting in my front room when the police officer arrived. I'll be right next to my mother. I have knives in my room, and we own a few guns, but I'm giving myself up completely. There will be no resistance whatsoever. Okay.

Have you committed any crimes like this before? I mean, do you have a criminal history of any sort? The only other thing that I have done that before this was the Ketner Lake incident where the woman got attacked, that was me as well. And other than that, the only criminal history I have is a speeding ticket. So I think the 911 operator is doing a really good job, staying positive and not freaking them out on the other side, you know? Yeah, I agree.

She's trying really hard. If you listen to the whole thing, that's such a stressful job. I would never really try to. critique and 911 operator, but she does get under their skin a little bit if you listen to the whole thing. I don't know if it's in the parts that I have. You can tell in her voice she's trying to be very soft. But the more she gets on tape, the better it is for the case, just in case when they get there, they recant, right? I mean, they have a 911 recording. It carries a lot of distance. Yeah, and I assume that they have a playbook for different scenarios.

And she's following that playbook because at one point, I think it's Mindy does say, can you just stop asking questions? We'll answer all the questions when the police get here. But to your point, I think she's doing her job. I think she's trying to get as much information as she can. It's going to be on tape and it's going to be used. if needed later on. Is Austin still there with you?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I won't lie my website. Okay. Where are you guys at in the house? In my room. Okay. Has Austin been diagnosed with any mental health issues? Does he see a counselor or take any medication?

He saw a counselor years ago for porn. And we were talking and we think that my life to, but I don't know. So if you couldn't hear that, that was porn? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So Mindy says that Austin saw a counselor for a porn addiction.

And in the talk that they had, they must have had before making the 911 call, there was some back and forth of him saying that maybe that led to what happened. Mindy, take a couple of deep breaths for me, okay? Is Austin still there with you? I'm hugging him. Okay, you guys are hugging. Okay, you definitely did the right thing. You tell me when the officers get there.

They're coming to your front door. Okay. I don't see them. You don't see them? No. And you're at the front door. Yeah. Okay, they're on their way.

And like I said, they're plainclosed Westminster officers. There's no way here. Okay. They're walking up to your house. Okay. They, for their, for their safety reasons, they park down the street and they're walking up. Okay. And like I said, they're going to be plainclothes.

They're not FBI. Okay. They're Westminster police officers and they're coming to help you. We're going to get this all sorted out. Yes. Okay. I don't see them. You are?

I don't see them. You don't see them yet? No. Do you have a front porch light on or anything that I could make sure that they go to? Yeah. Your front porch light is on. Sorry, what are you saying? Okay.

Are you still with Austin? Yeah. Okay. What is? I know. I know. Are you with the officers or what just what's? No, they're not here.

Okay. Is Austin still calm? How is his demeanor right now? I'm trying to get them to hurry, okay? Like I said, we're getting officers there as quickly as we can. Is Austin okay with you right now? Yeah, he's just getting really anxious and so all right. Okay.

They're in here. They're coming up. They're coming up to the door? Yeah. Okay. Do you see the Plankless officers in their badges? Yeah, they're here. Okay, I'll let you go speak with them, okay? Okay.

Okay, thank you. Okay, bye. Goodbye. So like I said, this entire 911 call lasted 17 minutes. We heard just a portion of it. Seems like a little bit of time before somebody got there. Seems like a, yeah, seems like a long time to me, to be honest with you. I mean, if it was a break-in, I think somebody could have got there faster.

I'm just surprised. I thought about that too, Gives, as I was researching it. But one of the things I wanted to talk about is, so I broke it down into four clips. And we talked about in the first clip, it was almost like his mom was in shock. And in the first three, she was holding it all together pretty well. But by that fourth clip, and that's towards the end, that's the last couple minutes of the 17 minute 911 call. You can hear it. She's starting to cry.

She's starting to become a little agitated that it's taking so long for officers. to respond and she even says you know Austin's getting agitated as well right so that's why I say I think it was a very long 17 minutes yeah I'm sure it felt like two hours yeah or longer you know so and I'm sure at that point she it's all sinking in and it's you can only hold so much in before it really just starts pouring out so once police got Austin to the station he confessed for six hours giving very details telling everything that he had done in such a way that there was no question that he was the person that killed Jessica Ridgeway. Obviously, this is where we got much of the detail that we provided early on. Now, this confession, it was a surprise to police because all along they thought that the

suspect that they were looking for was going to be an adult male. And that makes a lot of sense. I mean, most suspects are. You know, you don't have a lot of 17-year-old murderers. Now, one thing that Austin said, and it kind of goes back to the part of the 911 tape that talks about porn is he said that he was dealing with a very high sexual drive when he kidnapped Jessica. Now, he initially denied sexually assaulting her, but later on, he confessed to doing so. The DNA testing would come back and it would link Austin Sig to the murder of Jessica Ridgeway, as well as to the attack on the woman at Ketner Lake. And Austin Sig would tell police that his plan had been to do to the woman at Ketner Lake

the same thing that he had done to Jessica. But the woman managed to escape him. Sig ended up pleading guilty to all of the charges against him right before he was getting ready to go to trial. He pled guilty to first degree murder, sexual assault of a child, and attempted kidnapping. Those first two charges were related to Jessica Ridgeway and the third was related to the woman in the Ketner Lake attack. But since Austin Sig was 17 at the time of the murder, he would not be eligible for the death penalty.

He could only get a life sentence. Testimony and sentencing included graphic descriptions of how Austin Sig killed the 10-year-old. A psychologist says Sig displayed callousness and called him a necrophiliac. He planned it before he kidnapped her because when he was asked by police, what were you planning on doing to the, jogger. He said the same thing that I did to Jessica. The only time that Austin Sig showed any emotions during his sentencing was when he cried at the point where Jessica's family was giving

their impact statements and talking about their memories of the little girl. Prior to this, he had been absolutely stoic, but it was said that he openly wept as the family shared how they were going to remember Jessica. I don't think that the defendant has the right to hear how he affected me, my family, or who Jessica was. Once we walk out of this courtroom, we'll not remember his name. She was an amazing little girl. Her light touched so many people and it was snuffed out before her time. I cannot help but have joy and relief in my heart because my lovely little little

Jessica is safe in a place where no one can ever hurt her again. So that first person was Jessica's mother, Sarah, and then the second one was a friend. Jessica's grandmother also gave an impact statement saying, quote, I miss her with every breath. And many of the family members talked about the light that Jessica brought to them and how they were learning to deal with her being gone the best they could. Her mother shared photos of Jessica growing up from a baby to a little girl and said that her baby Jessica would stay 10 forever. Austin Sig was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years on November 19, 2013. Sig called himself evil in regards to what he did to Jessica. And he was given a very complex sentence. The

judge imposed the maximum for several of the 15 counts, essentially ensuring that Austin Sig would never be a free man. So although he got first degree murder with a possibility of parole after 40 years because he was only 17, the judge decided to give Austin an additional 86 years after he is eligible for parole. So I mean, that tells you Gibbs how heinous, how brutal this crime was. Yeah. The judge was going to make damn sure that this man, boy,

at this point, he's 18. Yeah, he's a, he's a, he's a man now. He's never going to see the light of day. October 5th, 2012 was a tragic, tragic day. But it started the quest for justice.

Justice for Jessica and justice for the individual that committed one of the most horrific crimes in memory. Today, the legal proceedings have been concluded. Mr. SIG has been held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. The sentence imposed is life plus 86 years. We are confident that this sentence ensures that Austin SIG will never, ever,

leave the Department of Institutions, and he will never, ever be in a position to praise, on members of our community. Got what he deserved. Yeah, and I think that sums it up pretty well. So in 2014, Austin Sig was moved out of state, out of Colorado to another prison.

He was moved to an unknown location for the safety and privacy of himself, his family, and the family of Jessica Ridgeway. Now, I don't know what that's all about, but somebody felt strongly that he had to be moved. A year out, after Jessica was killed, the park where she used to play was rededicated in her memory.

It was named the Jessica Ridgeway Memorial Park. And it wasn't just rededicated. It was remodeled to include slides, swing sets, and they were all done in her favorite color, purple. That's awesome. It is awesome. It gives me the chills a little bit. And on top of that, the sidewalk around the park,

has knock-knock jokes written on it, the kind that Jessica loved. They also set up a memorial fund for girls to attend cheerleading camp in Jessica's memory. And Jessica is also the inspiration for what is known as the Lassie Project. And this is a system which tracks a child through phone GPS. In 2014, at the park name in her honor, there was an event to honor missing children of Colorado where balloons were released into the air. And Jessica's memory continues to live on with the Jessica Ridgeway Legacy Fund. And this fund helped support animal and youth initiatives in her memory.

So I know she's gone, Gibbs. Yeah. And Austin SIG did a terrible, terrible thing. Yeah, can't even describe how bad it was. And I don't know if that's something that he would take back if he could. I don't know anything about his mindset, but it wouldn't matter because he can't. No, what's done is done. I mean, this is one of those things that it can't be unwound.

He changed the future for so many people with that one decision. No, I think you're right. He changed all of Jessica's family, her friends. he changed his own family. Yeah. Forever. Exactly. I mean, it's hard to imagine how many lives this one action touched above and beyond the most precious, which was Jessica.

Right. So, a tough one. Yeah. So somehow we're going to transition into some voicemails. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to transition away from, you know, this type of evil. but we have to do it. So let's play a voicemail.

Hey, Mike, hey Gibby. This is Shelly. I just want to tell you all, you are my absolute favorite podcast. I listen to T-Cat and T-Cat Unsolved constantly, and I mean constantly, and love every minute of it. I am hashtag Team Mikey and Gibby, by the way.

Can't go one or the other. I just wanted to tell you all, I'm from a little town called Midlothian, Texas, and we have a great story from the 80s about an undercover police officer that was killed here and it is an interesting story it goes into devil worship everything and then just a little over a year ago missy beavers um was murdered here and um it's still unsolved and it was somebody dressed in sweat clothes a police officer's uniform and it's a pretty interesting story anyhow i just wanted

to tell y'all i love you listen to you all the time wish you could make me a podcast a day but i know you have lives. So, you know, be safe and keep your own time ticking. Shelly, we love you too. We love that voicemail. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we'll look into those cases. But I'll tell you what, Gibbs. If somebody wants to pay us, we'll make a podcast today. Podcast a day. We'll make it happen. Maybe twice a day. Twice a day. Mike and Gibby twice a day. That might be a little oversaturation. Hi, Mike and Gibby. What is up? This is Emma calling from Beautiful Sunny

Alberta, Canada. I work in early childhood development, and I listen to your show to escape that every day. Just something interesting you mentioned that Kenneth Bianchi was born to an alcoholic mother, and it just sounds to me that he might have had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Some of the results of this can be learning difficulties, difficulty focusing. They can appear to be highly intelligent due to their great communication skills, but underlying there's a lack of understanding. There's difficulty understanding consequences. chronic sealing, lack of understanding boundaries, often resulting in sexual misconduct, urinary disorders, another thing you mentioned.

And most importantly, is a lack of empathy. So our prisons are full of people with this completely preventable disorder. So just a shout out to mothers out there. Please don't drink while pregnant. Anyway, I love your show. Listen to you every day and keep up the good work and keep your own time ticking. Love it. Great email.

and I tell you Gibbs, I think... It's a voicemail, but go ahead. Did I say email? Yeah. Ooh, you got me. I did. No, yeah, it was a voicemail. You're right about that.

Well, I was getting ready to say, unlike myself, we have some of the smartest listeners out there. Well, I know you were really excited that she explained, because you had that look when she gave that big term in the very beginning about what she was talking about. What was the term? that you were like, huh, wonder what that means. What was it? You know, the fetal thing. What was it called? Fetal alcohol syndrome?

Yeah, and the rest of it. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I just, I like it when you're trying to give me shit and you can't pull it off. That's what I like. But you did catch me on the email thing. I did get you on that. You got me on that. So, no, I appreciate her email and her.

You just said email. See? I've fallen in your trail. I do appreciate her voice bill. No, we really do. And her PSA. Yeah, and the PSA. And what I was going to say, unlike me, we've got some really smart listeners that not only in voicemails like this, but we get emails, we get instant messages about some really intelligent things about what we talk about.

I mean, you and I don't pretend to know everything. Nope, but our community sure can add to it. Gibb. So that was it. This was a tough one. Yep. This is one that it's going to be hard to cleanse. We're going to have to take a little time off, watch some stupid-ass comedies. Yeah. That's what makes me get over it. That's it. Stupid-ass comedies because this one was brutal. And I really have to commend Maggie again because this was a hard research right. You know, you and I did did our part. And I know it had to be hard on Maggie. It had to be hard on her. So good job, Maggie.

So she did an unbelievable job. Thanks for helping. All right. So that is it. Another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.