EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains the discussion of sexual violence; it also contains references to suicide. Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters. In the US, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
“Mom, I’ve got to tell you something.”
It was an evening in late October 2012, the leaves turning orange in Mindy Sigg’s Denver suburb, when her life turned upside down.
The single mother of two had come home from work and taken a shower when she found her 17-year-old sitting in her bed.
“Is this,” she asked, “about Jessica?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m a monster.”
For weeks, the community of Westminster, Colorado, had been consumed by the disappearance of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway, who had vanished earlier that month while walking to school. Days earlier, police had announced Jessica was dead, part of her body having been found and later identified as the missing girl.
Soon, Sigg was on the phone with Westminster Police, sharing with them the news that would upend her life –– and send her firstborn son to prison for the rest of his.
“Hi, I need you to come to my house,” she said, according to a recording of the call. “My son wants to turn himself in for the Jessica Ridgeway murder.”
‘I brought this child into the world’
Faced with an unthinkable dilemma for a parent, Sigg called police to help turn in her son, Austin Reed Sigg, for a violent and heinous crime. He would eventually plead guilty to more than a dozen charges stemming from the murder, sexual assault and kidnapping of Jessica, as well as a separate attack on another woman months earlier.
Sigg’s story –– told to CNN and shared here for the first time publicly –– highlights the quandary faced by parents whose children carry out or are suspected of committing high-profile, violent crimes.
Recent examples include that of Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter, whose father recognized his son in images released by authorities and urged him to turn himself in, and a mother who called police after fearing her son was responsible for an alleged arson at a Florida synagogue days before Rosh Hashanah.
Sigg’s experience also offers a glimpse at the road families like hers face in the wake of a loved one’s monstrous act: She’s struggled for years with her mental health, describing a near-debilitating remorse, even as the intense public focus on her son and his crime has faded over the years.
“I had a horrible sense of guilt,” she told CNN, “not because I had anything to do with it, but because I brought this child into the world.”
Sigg told CNN she has never spoken with Jessica’s family. She was afraid. But unbeknownst to her, Sigg’s decision to call the police on her son has long been looked upon by the Ridgeway family with deep gratitude.
“Instead of trying to hide him or trying to run away, she turned him in,” Sarah Ridgeway, Jessica’s mother, told CNN. “And that probably, in my opinion, saved other kids, because we don’t know if he was going to try to do it again.”
“For her to think of our child, of Jessica, over her own child, was amazing,” she said. “And we thank her every day for it.”
The disappearance of Jessica Ridgeway
Jessica vanished on October 5, 2012, prompting a massive search that unfolded across the Denver area.
Jessica’s grandmother, Christine, remembers her as a joyful child, one who was always smiling. Theirs is a close-knit family, and Jessica sat at the center, with her love for the color purple, her dreams of becoming a cheerleader and her enthusiastic – if off-key – singing.
“She was an exuberant child, and she was always cheerful,” Christine Ridgeway said.
Hundreds of volunteers combed fields and streets, posting fliers and canvassing neighborhoods, their eyes peeled for any sign of the small blonde girl. Hundreds more members of law enforcement –– local, state and federal –– worked the case, at one point searching more than 500 homes and 1,000 vehicles and chasing hundreds of leads.
A small break in the case a couple of days after Jessica went missing, when a resident found a backpack filled with her things, including her purple-framed glasses, according to an affidavit filed in Jefferson County Court.
But within days, the search ended: Jessica was dead, police said. Her body, they said, was “not intact.”
The case was a constant topic of conversation in the community, said Sigg, an ophthalmic technician who was raising her two boys after getting divorced from their father years earlier. Her own worst fear was that one of her sons would be abducted, she remembered. And Jessica had gone missing so close to home.
During the investigation, police linked DNA found in Jessica’s case to another: Months earlier, a 22-year-old woman jogging at a nearby lake had been attacked by a man who tried to drag her into the brush on the side of the trail. She fought him off, but police had yet to find the attacker, who the woman described as a White man with brown hair, between 20 and 25 years old, and about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, according to the affidavit.
At the time of Jessica’s disappearance, Sigg was not suspicious of her son, even after the FBI – acting on a tip from a neighbor – collected his DNA during the investigation, she said. She believed it was simply a way to help, but a psychologist, Dr. Anna Salter, later testified Sigg’s son likely felt the walls were closing in, prompting his confession to his mother days later.
In hindsight, one instance stands out in Sigg’s mind. When Sigg heard the description of a possible suspect on the news, it “sounded just like” her son, she remembered. When she texted her son to tell him so, thinking it was a strange coincidence, he didn’t express surprise like she expected.
Instead, he asked, “Where did you hear that?”
‘We were really close’
Sigg’s first child was her “world” when he was born, she said, describing him as a “beautiful baby.”
“Nobody else existed. I don’t know what music was popular. I don’t know what TV shows were popular,” she said. “He was everything I could have possibly wanted.”
He was a good kid, his mother told CNN –– the kind who got only compliments from teachers and other parents. He was smart, she said, “smarter than other kids.” But he struggled with school, unable to keep up with his homework.
Only later did Sigg learn her son was bullied, she said, for the sound of his voice.
“We were really close,” she said. But he never told her about the bullying.
Sigg’s son dropped out of high school his junior year and got his GED –– a decision Sigg supported, saying he found school boring. He started attending Arapahoe Community College, where he was studying to become a mortician at the time of his arrest.
Sigg thought nothing of his chosen career path.
“Somebody’s got to do it,” she thought, “right?”
“But later,” she remembered, “people were like, ‘That’s creepy.’”
‘He just confessed to killing her’
Though she hadn’t suspected her son, Sigg somehow knew what he was going to say when he approached her to confess.
“I just knew. I don’t know why, but I just knew.”
Sigg fell to the floor, sobbing. Asked what went through her mind, she said, “Horror. Disbelief. Like, ‘This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening.’”
“I’m going to jail,” her son said.
“I know,” Sigg told him. “You’ve got to call the police.”
“And he said, ‘Can you do it for me?’”
Sigg first called the Jessica Ridgeway tipline, she said, before being transferred to the Westminster Police. In a recording of the call later released by police, Sigg and her son – both emotionally distraught – sound frustrated by the dispatcher’s questions, feeling they were not being taken seriously.
The dispatcher asked: “What’s going on there?”
“Did you not hear me? He just confessed to killing her,” Sigg said. “He said that he did it, and he gave me details, and her remains are in my house.”
“I don’t exactly get why you’re asking these questions,” Sigg’s son told the dispatcher when his mother handed him the phone. “I murdered Jessica Ridgeway. I have proof that I did it.”
Mother and son waited about 18 minutes for plainclothes detectives to arrive at their home, the recording shows, though Sigg said it felt much longer. Over the course of their call, Sigg told the dispatcher her son would not leave her sight.
Asked if he was still with her, Sigg said, “Yeah. I’m hugging him.”
‘I was fearful’
Sigg and her son were taken separately to the Westminster Police Department –– he in an unmarked vehicle, and she in a patrol car.
There, in a recorded interview with police, Sigg’s son described driving around and looking for a victim. He did not specifically target Jessica, he said.
“It was random place, random time. Random everything,” he said.
He lay in wait for Jessica the morning of October 5, 2012, snatching her on her walk to school and tying her hands and feet with zip ties. He took her back to his house. No one else was home.
He killed her and dismembered her body, leaving some of her remains in a nearby community. The rest were found in a crawlspace of the Siggs’ home after his confession.
Why did he kill Jessica? Because he felt there was no way to escape justice otherwise, he said.
“I think the second I pulled her into my car I knew she was dead.”
Mindy’s son admitted to another crime: It was he who had attacked the woman jogging months earlier at Ketner Reservoir, attempting to place a rag with homemade chloroform over her face before she fought him off.
Asked by police what he would have done if his attack was successful, he said, “Probably to do the same to her that I did to Jessica.”
The night of her son’s confession, Sigg stayed with her sister. In the basement, they placed children’s beds together, so they could lie side-by-side. But Sigg couldn’t sleep.
“I kept feeling like Austin was going to come down the stairs,” she said. “And I was fearful.”
A life in prison
On October 1, 2013, at his parents’ urging, Sigg’s son pleaded guilty to a raft of charges, including murder, kidnapping, sexual assault of a child and exploitation of a child after police found evidence of images depicting child sexual abuse during the investigation.
He was ultimately sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 40 years for Jessica’s murder. But the judge sentenced him to dozens more years – nearly 100 – for his other crimes, virtually ensuring he will remain behind bars the rest of his life.
Over the investigation and subsequent sentencing hearing, Sigg’s son emerged as a sexually disturbed teenager. In his interview with police, he described the kidnapping as an acting out of a sexual fantasy, according to the affidavit written by a detective who interviewed him.
Several years earlier, in 2008, he’d received treatment after being caught watching videos showing child sexual abuse, testimony showed. Salter, the psychologist, testified for the state that Sigg’s son had been searching online for gruesome and violent pornographic imagery, pointing in part to comments he made in his interview with police.
The defendant exhibited sadistic traits, Salter said.
But his upbringing did not contribute to his crime, she testified, adding he had not been abused as a child.
Speaking to CNN, Sarah Ridgeway echoed this sentiment, saying of Sigg, “There’s nothing she did that caused this … I don’t think how she raised him had anything to do with what he did.”
‘I couldn’t think straight’
Sigg went to every hearing, she said, often accompanied by family and friends. “I needed to know what happened. I needed to know what was going to happen.”
The people in her life were supportive, she said, except for her own mother. Noting her mother struggled with her own mental health, Sigg said she was in denial, coming up with alternative theories for her grandson’s involvement in Jessica’s murder. When her mother learned Sigg had told her son to plead guilty, she was angry. They never spoke again.
After her son’s confession, Sigg fled her Westminster home. After staying with her sister, she took up residence in a hotel and then a condo, returning to the family home only after nightfall to recover belongings. Soon after, she said she suffered her first panic attack, while shopping in the DVD section at Target.
“I couldn’t think straight,” she said. “I’m thinking, everybody that I saw knew who I was and what had happened. Which is crazy,” she added, “because it was clear across town.”
It was the precursor to a yearslong struggle with her mental health. Sigg described often wrestling with suicidal ideations.
“I’d be going home and think about running my car off the road,” she said. “Why can’t that semi just crash and tip over on me? Why do other people get cancer that don’t deserve it, when I am willing to bring it on? … Why can’t any of these things happen to me?”
Every now and then her struggle was exacerbated by the changing colors of the leaves, or a harassing phone call. She described once getting a voicemail that was simply a recording of her call to police. Whenever these things happened, she said, “I knew I wouldn’t be going to work the next day.”
‘I would trade my life for Jessica’s’
She has never second-guessed her choice to call the police that night in October 2012 – though she wondered aloud whether she would have done the same if he had committed a crime less egregious, like a hit-and-run accident.
“Would I have protected him,” she asked, “or would I have made him confess to a lesser crime?”
“I think I would have made him confess,” she added, “but I don’t know.”
Her message to other families faced with having to turn in their child, she said, is “try not to blame themselves,” acknowledging that is easier said than done.
“You have a hard time not blaming yourself for what your kids do,” she said.
Sigg does, however, lament the relationship she once had with her son. They have not spoken in years, since shortly after he was sentenced to life in prison. The FBI, she said, had asked to interview Sigg to profile him. He was unwilling, and that angered his mother.
“I haven’t talked to him since. I can’t,” she said.
“Part of the reason why I don’t talk to him is because I don’t feel like I’m going to hear the truth about anything,” she said. “I can’t be lied to by him. And I’ve never gotten an answer as to why … and I need something.”
He hasn’t tried to speak with her, either, she said. “I’m guessing he feels like he doesn’t deserve it.”
After years of therapy, Sigg’s mental health has improved. She “graduated” therapy, now going only once or twice a year when she needs the support. She also credited ketamine therapy, saying it “rewired” her brain and helped her where other treatments had failed.
But even after her recovery, she said she would pay with her own life to spare Jessica. Asked if she had a message for the Ridgeway family, she said:
“I would literally give my life to change what happened. I would trade my life for Jessica’s. Even now that I’m feeling better, I would do that if I could.”
For the last 13 years, the Ridgeways have taken their own journey. Each day they go “step by step,” they said. There is no “moving on,” and there is no “closure.”
Sarah Ridgeway likened Jessica’s murder and its effect on her family to the shattering of a dinner plate, with each of its broken pieces representing a family member.
“You try to put it together, but there’s that one piece that you lost, that’s missing,” she said. “And you can’t quite put it back together correctly and completely.”
But the Ridgeways, in learning about Sigg’s experience, expressed empathy and grace.
“My heart goes out to her. If we could have hugged her in court, and they would have let us, we probably would have, but we couldn’t,” Christine Ridgeway said. “I want her to know that we think about her a lot.”
“We understand that she lost a son, too,” Sarah Ridgeway added. “It’s a different loss, but she still lost a son.”