CO - Jessica Ridgeway, 10, Westminster, 5 Oct. 2012 - #22

[AmandaReckonwith]

Case archive will change (hopefully tomorrow).
There will be a sub-section "justice for Jessica" for the hearings, motions, trial, etc.

Tonight, the news from today is still in the main case archive here:
http://s296.photobucket.com/albums/mm166/crankycrankerson/Jessica%20Ridgeway%20%20-CO-/

Some files will be moved to the sub-section here:
http://s296.photobucket.com/albums/...n/Jessica Ridgeway -CO-/Justice For Jessica/

 

[otto]

What I am trying to say is that the mental illness sets in (not because of ) and then the mental illness somewhat expresses it's personality thru it's attraction to and violence.
I'm having a hard time explaining my thinking on this but I'll keep trying.

I agree with you. There are a couple of possibilities in terms of mental illness and exposure to violence/:

no mental illness, no exposure to --> low risk
no mental illness, exposure to --> low risk
mental illness, no exposure to --> low risk
mental illness, exposure to --> high risk

Only those with mental illness and exposure to could evolve into the type of person that we see in Austin Sigg, but there must be other factors.

 

[otto]

It was something like...catch the flag?

Thank you ... is that the modern version of kick the can ... hide and seek where once the hidden person is caught, they join the seeker?

 

[margarita25]

Amy Ahonen vanished on 8 July 2011. Her car was found about 7 miles west of Golden on US 6.

I think its possible that Travis Forbes killed Amy. (Thank God he's behind bars too). Amy's sister seems to think Travis Forbes may have been responsible as well.

 

[kkdj]

I think that everyone is still in shock that a 17 year was responsible for the abduction, murder and mutilation of a 10 year old child that he'd never met. It's quite astonishing for anyone to mutilate someone, let alone a child, let alone a 17 year old. Clearly something is wrong with this picture ... so why not look at society, music, virtual games, , internet ... how did this happen and, as one FBI correspondant said, is this just the tip of the iceberg?

I'm sorry but I do not think any one of these things you mentioned nor an accumulation of them would cause anyone in their right mind to commit the crimes that AS allegedly did.
I cannot imagine that he is not mentally ill. I feel certain that the courts will have him evaluated. However I also think he is quite competent. Just mentally ill.

 

[otto]

If he received no satisfaction from that hard core perhaps then he decided to try murder to get his thrills & if this "source" is correct, murder wasn't enough either so he took that further too.

October 25, 2012

According to a source, when Sigg confessed to kidnapping and killing the little girl, he told police he didn’t receive the joy from it that he thought he would, so he went further

http://fox4kc.com/2012/10/25/source-suspect-told-police-jessicas-murder-brought-him-no-joy/

BBM

That seems seriously messed up.

 

[Dr. Know?]

What the heck would a 17 year old or let's say 19 year old by the end of his trial, going into prison with 40 years. What would he be when he was released? I don't think there's a known cure for what he did. Release him? How could you? jmo

 

[katydid23]

I'm sorry but I do not think any one of these things you mentioned nor an accumulation of them would cause anyone in their right mind to commit the crimes that AS allegedly did.
I cannot imagine that he is not mentally ill. I feel certain that the courts will have him evaluated. However I also think he is quite competent. Just mentally ill.

It can be a combination. If you take a kid that is sad and lonely, and has been abused in some way, so that he feels disconnected and he is in a dysfunctional situation, then he might develop mental health issues.

So let's say someone mentors him at this time, when he is vulnerable and weak. And this mentor spends time being supportive and teaches him to play piano or guitar or to play golf or to write poetry. This fragile kid may begin to pour himself into the creative arts or sports and may go through a healing pro cress.

But if you take the exact same kid in the exact same circumstances, but his mentor teaches him to indulge himself in lewd and violent fantasies, by watching torture , and they get high together and play violent video games for 8 hours at a time, then they watch a few snuff films and watch little kids having sex with dogs, what do you think will happen? He will be a very different kid than he would be in the first situation. You cannot look at violent images for 10 hours a day and not be affected, imo.

 

[Yellow]

You make some very interesting points. There's another problem, and that is that life without the possibility of parole is not an option for a youth offender. If he has a sentence of 57 years, that would put him in prison without the possibility of parole until the age of 74. I think that is a problem because life expectancy ... a huge variable ... is 74 for some people. If Austin had a grandfather that died of heart disease at the age of, for example, 57, it might be argued that Austin's life expectancy is 57.

You make a very good point about the cases being separated. That seems like a very good defense move. In fact, the attack on the jogger may be a case that could successfully be argued as belonging in youth court. Without the subsequent case of abduction, murder and dismemberment, that case, viewed in isolation, may be considered one where appropriate counseling and monitoring would mitigate any potential for further violence.

I think it will become a very interesting legal argument, and since it is one of the first major tests of the new law that is intended to see youths tried as youths for crimes where the youth can be rehabilitated, I think the Judge has to tread carefully ... careful regarding precedents that could undermine the intent of the change in law ... which could open a can of worms in terms of appeals.

Regarding the attack on the jogger, I think the argument of murder could be made in the sense that a toxic substance was used ... and any toxic substance can be fatal, depending on the dosage. Still, without proof of the type and amount of toxic substance, assumptions are required ... and assumptions are not really admissable.

Another problem is that the jury pool is probably already tainted, so a change of venue will be required. The more I think about it, the more I see this as taking years to wind through the court system.

Yes, I agree with your points, if you think about it, the fact of the crime is not in dispute, it is only the penalty. His defense has an incentive to get him out as some point in his life, or at least have the possibility of getting out 40 years down the road, after assuming years and years of (fruitless, i believe, in this case) mental treatment.

We forget too that he may have been involved in either than 1st attack on the jogger or the little boy attempt. If the first jogger is linked to him, he was only 15.

I do not think the judge will want to take a chance of trying the JR case w the jogger bc there could be too much of a risk that if there is some legal issue w the case it could mess w everything. Plus I think it would be very prejudicial to AS to try the Jogger case at the same time. If you hear of the JR case there is no doubt you would find him guilty of the JR case. But if you JUST hear the jogger case you might think it was only an attempted rape. Even if they have evidence of the rag that still would not show murder. They probably just have the joggers account of the rag. I was really surprised they charged him w attempted murder bc I think if they would have arrested him in May when the jogger attack happened they would NOT have charged him with that. They only charged him w that bc of JR. As a matter of criminal law that probably is not right.

I think I heard this on Tricia's radio show but there is also the remote potential that the state could challenge what the Supreme Court said about not giving minors the death penalty. There is no question that had he been born 4 months later the state would have tried for the death penalty. How is it fair to apply the death penalty if someone committing the same crime to different standards just bc of thei birthday? What if he commits the crime a day before 18th birthday?

I doubt the state would try to raise it bc it would be very complicated procedurally and maybe not even possible (CO would have to change its statute and it probably would not apply to him so I do not think they could do that). But perhaps his case could change things for the future so that future teenagers who commit horrible crimes like this ( like the DC sniper too) can get death.

Legally he cannot be sentenced to life as a mandatory sentence but he will get life after the judge raises all the factors. The problem is that life in Colorado is only 40 years so unless CO changes their statute, he gets out in 40 years unless they can find more crimes to charge him with. So they got to find more stuff to add another 20 or 30 years. Indeed, even then, w life expectancy being what it is, he might get out in his 70s or 80s. They really have to find 2 crimes where he can serve 2 separate life terms to be on the safe side. I doubt the jogger case would be sufficient for a life term of 40 years.

Probably his lawyers got him zipped up on that jogger case. They will try to get confession thrown out bc they will not want the jogger confession in...especially if the physical evidence is not too strong. Absent the JR murder, all they got is someone grabbing someone in a public park in the middle of the day and putting a cloth over them. Still a crime, but absent the eyewitness and whatever link they found bw jogger and JR it is not a lot to go on especially if confession is thrown out. The link could be the cross, but if JR does not come in it won't matter. Also I wonder if jogger was able to identify him in a lineup. She never made a sketch so I wonder how well she got a look on him and whether she could identify him.

 

[kkdj]

I agree with you. There are a couple of possibilities in terms of mental illness and exposure to violence/:

no mental illness, no exposure to --> low risk
no mental illness, exposure to --> low risk
mental illness, no exposure to --> low risk
mental illness, exposure to --> high risk

Only those with mental illness and exposure to could evolve into the type of person that we see in Austin Sigg, but there must be other factors.

Ok. Now I feel the need to share more of life experiences. I'm not young so I have many. Plus a very large family, so I'm privy to lots.
So here goes. I have a Family member who is in his 50's. When he was a teen he got into drugs. Apparently the drugs (from what I have been told) exacerbated his underlying paranoid schizophrenia. He has been in and out of mental institutions and on many medications. Currently he is doing well but has never lived a normal ADR life.
Anyway, he attempted to murder his father several times as a teen. He also attempted suicide. He also ran thru his neighborhood naked.
As his illness progressed he had auditory hallucinations. Specifically, he believed God was speaking to him personally. Because of this, he heard God tell him to cut off his penis so that the world could be saved. So he did. Crazy huh? And he tried to hide the butcher knife! Because something told him he had done something not right!
But he left his cut off penis in plain sight!
My point is
My family member is nuts
Nothing happened in his upbringing to cause this. There are 3 siblings of his whom are all functioning successful adults.
He is just mentally ill.
Now I feel that AS should never be released into the general public. I believe he is seriously mentally ill. And a danger to society.
I have more to say but probably shouldn't just yet.

 

[kkdj]

Oh my! I need to continue my thoughts. My nuts family member, without , still had his mental illness focus on his penis!
Please see my prior post.

 

[kkdj]

I agree with you. There are a couple of possibilities in terms of mental illness and exposure to violence/:

no mental illness, no exposure to --> low risk
no mental illness, exposure to --> low risk
mental illness, no exposure to --> low risk
mental illness, exposure to --> high risk

Only those with mental illness and exposure to could evolve into the type of person that we see in Austin Sigg, but there must be other factors.

Totally agree!
I think the mental illness comes in before the perversion.

 

[otto]

I don't know about Colorado in particular but in most states, the question of mental illness is limited to the legal definition of sanity: did the perpetrator know right from wrong at the time of the act?

I have no doubt that Sigg meets the legal standard of sanity. I also have no doubt that he's mentally ill.

The sanity definition seems to vary widely, depending on the law ... and that's varies too.

It seems to me that right from wrong is too simplistic in terms of determining mental illness. The man that stood at the top of the clock tower and shot university students with a scope and rifle was mentally ill, he had a brain tumor. Bundy also seems quite mentally ill, yet he understood right from wrong.

 

[Darcyline]

I feel like a lot of what people are mentioning as warning signs and/or possible contributing factors and/or "pieces of the puzzle" are things that I myself have done or experienced. Never snuff or torture , but definitely and some that, looking back, makes me mildly uncomfortable (sorry if this is too personal and I haven't watched any in years upon years). My parents let me watch R rated movies when I was a kid-they never restricted that stuff. I remember watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre with my Mom when I was like, 8. I listened to some of "that" music. I have played RPG. Weird obsession with death that lasted most of my teenage years. Dabbled in drugs. I was abused as a kid.
However, I never killed anyone, life is precious to me, and I cried yesterday when I accidentally ran over a possum. Like, even during the weird teenage years where I was a bit...wild I still felt and loved and cared and...was human.
I guess what I am getting at is what is different between me and him or him and any other weird unsupervised watching "dark" teenager out there? Mental illness? Was I born with a soul and he wasn't? What made me want to hurt myself (never others) but made him want to hurt others? Was he broken in just the "right" ways to make him into a monster? Are some people just evil? Did he hit his head as a kid making him unable to feel?
I am rambling and not making sense, but no explanation that I have heard completely satisfies my question of why the hell a 17 year old kid would do what he did to a beautiful little girl and then be like, whatever about it in court. Just does not compute.

 

[Backwoods]

I'm not in the legal field but my understanding of legal insanity is that the perp would have no understanding that what he did was wrong. If I am correct then the fact that AS purposely placed her backpack miles away to hopefully throw off LE indicates his personal understanding that he did something wrong. Therefore he would not be found legally insane.
Anybody the knows differently please feel free to advise.
This is just my layman understanding of the law.

The legal definition/standard of insanity does differ among the states. The link below looks like a good one to start researching the different ones among the states:

The Insanity Defense Among the States

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/the-insanity-defense-among-the-states.html

 

[otto]

Warning: Graphic Comment

I'm wondering about what police found and where. There's a fireplace behind the garage and there is a crawl space under the fireplace. Houses sometimes have a trap door in the crawlspace to clean out the fireplace. What about this house? Did Austin kidnap Jessica, take her to his house, assualt her, murder her and dismember her on a sheet of plastic in the crawl space ... put some remains in the fireplace ... and then he didn't know what to do with the torso, so he left the backpack in Superior, hoping to distract police, and then left the torso by the open space? This is a teenager ... it can't be too sophisticated ... which may be why it was nearly impossible to solve ... except for his mother.

I don't believe that he confessed to his mother. I think that it was a "Casey Anthony" thing, where his mother confronted him about his missing cross. He lost it in the open space where Jessica's remains were found.

What happened between 8:30 AM October 5 and 1:30 October 10?

 

[katydid23]

I feel like a lot of what people are mentioning as warning signs and/or possible contributing factors and/or "pieces of the puzzle" are things that I myself have done or experienced. Never snuff or torture , but definitely and some that, looking back, makes me mildly uncomfortable (sorry if this is too personal and I haven't watched any in years upon years). My parents let me watch R rated movies when I was a kid-they never restricted that stuff. I remember watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre with my Mom when I was like, 8. I listened to some of "that" music. I have played RPG. Weird obsession with death that lasted most of my teenage years. Dabbled in drugs. I was abused as a kid.
However, I never killed anyone, life is precious to me, and I cried yesterday when I accidentally ran over a possum. Like, even during the weird teenage years where I was a bit...wild I still felt and loved and cared and...was human.
I guess what I am getting at is what is different between me and him or him and any other weird unsupervised watching "dark" teenager out there? Mental illness? Was I born with a soul and he wasn't? What made me want to hurt myself (never others) but made him want to hurt others? Was he broken in just the "right" ways to make him into a monster? Are some people just evil? Did he hit his head as a kid making him unable to feel?
I am rambling and not making sense, but no explanation that I have heard completely satisfies my question of why the hell a 17 year old kid would do what he did to a beautiful little girl and then be like, whatever about it in court. Just does not compute.

But as you said, you never got involved in torture , or snuff films or violent, hard core images. And THAT is what I think is a very negative force these days. It is not just regular old , or regular old fashioned drug use that encourages this kind of sick and twisted behavior, imo. I think it is the easy access to online, violent and the new designer drugs and pills which are much more potent and scary then what we had back in the day.

 

[Elley Mae]

I feel like a lot of what people are mentioning as warning signs and/or possible contributing factors and/or "pieces of the puzzle" are things that I myself have done or experienced. Never snuff or torture , but definitely and some that, looking back, makes me mildly uncomfortable (sorry if this is too personal and I haven't watched any in years upon years). My parents let me watch R rated movies when I was a kid-they never restricted that stuff. I remember watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre with my Mom when I was like, 8. I listened to some of "that" music. I have played RPG. Weird obsession with death that lasted most of my teenage years. Dabbled in drugs. I was abused as a kid.
However, I never killed anyone, life is precious to me, and I cried yesterday when I accidentally ran over a possum. Like, even during the weird teenage years where I was a bit...wild I still felt and loved and cared and...was human.
I guess what I am getting at is what is different between me and him or him and any other weird unsupervised watching "dark" teenager out there? Mental illness? Was I born with a soul and he wasn't? What made me want to hurt myself (never others) but made him want to hurt others? Was he broken in just the "right" ways to make him into a monster? Are some people just evil? Did he hit his head as a kid making him unable to feel?
I am rambling and not making sense, but no explanation that I have heard completely satisfies my question of why the hell a 17 year old kid would do what he did to a beautiful little girl and then be like, whatever about it in court. Just does not compute.

Thank You for your post.

bbm, I do feel that we are "wired" differently, and I agree that he was and is "broke". I do believe that some of us are evil. We just haven't figured out how to eliminate it.

 

[Dr. Know?]

Warning: Graphic Comment

I'm wondering about what police found and where. There's a fireplace behind the garage and there is a crawl space under the fireplace. Houses sometimes have a trap door in the crawlspace to clean out the fireplace. What about this house? Did Austin kidnap Jessica, take her to his house, assualt her, murder her and dismember her on a sheet of plastic in the crawl space ... put some remains in the fireplace ... and then he didn't know what to do with the torso, so he left the backpack in Superior, hoping to distract police, and then left the torso by the open space? This is a teenager ... it can't be too sophisticated ... which may be why it was nearly impossible to solve ... except for his mother.

I don't believe that he confessed to his mother. I think that it was a "Casey Anthony" thing, where his mother confronted him about his missing cross. He lost it in the open space where Jessica's remains were found.

What happened between 8:30 AM October 5 and 1:30 October 10?

I agree she nailed him on something. It had to be big. I'm afraid she found Jessica's remains or it could just be the cross that she nailed him on. Poor woman, he might have been out of her control, sad reality. She was extemely stong for what she did, may no one mess with this mom. She holds the answers. She knows what her son can do. jmo

 

[marlywings]

I don't believe that he confessed to his mother. I think that it was a "Casey Anthony" thing, where his mother confronted him about his missing cross. He lost it in the open space where Jessica's remains were found.

I tend to agree with that as his arrest was only a few days after the release of the cross photos?? But then I also think it may have been a combination of things & he figured it would only be a matter of time before LE started closing in on him as he'd given DNA sample.

FOX 31 Denver has learned the teenager suspected of killing Jessica Ridgeway was one of 500 people whose DNA was taken during random samples.

http://kdvr.com/2012/10/26/134114/