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

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

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

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

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

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