GOLDEN — Only when it was inevitable that DNA would reveal him as Jessica Ridgeway’s killer did a 17-year-old confess to his mother: “I’m a monster.”
It was one of numerous revelations at a preliminary hearing for Austin Sigg, now 18, on Friday in which Judge Stephen Munsinger bound him over for trial on 18 of 20 counts relating to the death of 10-year-old Jessica and an attack on a jogger at Ketner Lake over Memorial Day weekend last year.
Prosecutors dismissed two additional charges.
Sigg didn’t admit he kidnapped, strangled and dismembered Ridgeway until a neighbor called a tip line Oct. 19 and gave police the lead they needed to solve the case, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing.
On that day, two FBI agents went to the Sigg home, and Sigg submitted his DNA. Four days later, after he confessed, he chided authorities for taking so long to process the DNA with someone as dangerous as him running around. They should have brought in more resources, he criticized.
Westminster police Detective Albert Stutson testified that Sigg got on the phone after his mother called to report him and said, “I murdered Jessica Ridgeway. I have proof that I did it. You should send a squad car down here. I’ll answer all the questions. I won’t resist.”
During Stutson’s testimony, a tape of the phone call Sigg’s mother, Mindy Sigg, made to police Oct. 23 was played. Several members of Sigg’s family who were seated behind him began sobbing while the tape was played.
“My son wants to turn himself in for the Jessica Ridgeway murder. He just confessed to killing her,” Mindy Sigg is heard saying.
When the dispatcher asked her what her son had told her, Mindy Sigg replied, “That he did it, and he gave me details.”
The dispatcher told her she was doing the right thing, and she replied, “He did it. He’s turning himself in.”
Then, Austin Sigg took the phone and confessed.
Detective Michael Lynch later interviewed Mindy Sigg.
He testified that she said she came home from work and that her son was lying on her bed and told her he needed to tell her something.
“I’m a monster,” he told his mother.
He also said he had attacked the jogger. He said he used a red rag soaked in chloroform that he made using a recipe he found on the Internet.
Lynch’s testimony of his interviews revealed that Austin Sigg grabbed Jessica when she was walking by his car. He put her in the back seat and tied her with zip ties around her arms and legs, then drove around for a while.
Sigg took Jessica to his bedroom. He took her clothes off. He tried to choke her with zip ties, then strangled her.
Under defense cross-examination, Lynch said Sigg denied sexually assaulting and torturing Jessica.
He told his mother that he dismembered her body in the bathtub with a saw he found in the garage. He then bagged up pieces of her body and hid them in a crawl space beneath their home.
Two workers from a dump found Jessica’s torso in a shiny garbage bag. One of the men opened the bag and found another bag inside. He dumped that bag on the ground. A supervisor arrived, opened the bag with a pocket knife and saw the torso.
Mindy Sigg told police some of Jessica’s remains were in the crawl space of her house.
An autopsy determined that the cause of death was asphyxiation secondary to suffocation or strangulation.
Anissa Jones, a sexual-assault nurse examiner, testified that she examined Jessica’s torso and determined that there was evidence that she had been bruised, cut and sexually assaulted.
The lead police detective in the case testified that DNA evidence linked Sigg to the clothing of the jogger who was assaulted May 28 and to the clothing and body of Jessica.
Detective Luis Lopez testified that a wooden cross was found along with Jessica’s torso. DNA on the body was linked to evidence found on clothing of the jogger.
Lopez said evidence found in Jessica’s backpack also pointed to Sigg. The backpack contained Jessica’s prescription glasses and clothing — her tie-dye T-shirt, her pants, panties and boots with pompoms.
After authorities released photos of the wooden cross, a neighbor of Austin Sigg’s called police, Lopez testified. The neighbor said Sigg wore such a cross, and she said he was taking mortuary-science classes and was interested in dead animal and human bodies.
Jessica was kidnapped on her way to school Oct. 5. Her body was discovered by the two workers five days later in a field in Arvada. Sigg was arrested Oct. 23.
The Colorado Supreme Court on Thursday reversed an order by Munsinger closing the preliminary hearing.
Several media organizations, including The Denver Post, challenged the ruling, saying Munsinger did not follow the law before closing the hearing.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, denverpost.com/coldcases or twitter.com/kmitchelldp
