| Jessica Ridgeway | |
| Birth Date: | 23 January 2002 |
| Birth Place: | Colorado, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Westminster, Colorado, U.S. |
| Death Cause: | Suffocation caused by strangulation |
Jessica Ridgeway (January 23, 2002 – October 5, 2012) was an American girl who, at the age of 10, was kidnapped in Westminster, Colorado, and murdered by Austin Sigg (born January 17, 1995) on October 5, 2012.[1]
Her dismembered body was found five days later. Sigg was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder in November 2013.[2]
Ridgeway was reported missing on the evening of October 5, 2012. She did not come home from school, and an AMBER Alert was issued after she did not return home. Two days later her school backpack, containing her glasses, was found on a sidewalk. On October 7, 2012, her dismembered remains were found in a park in Arvada, Colorado.
On the Evening of October 23rd 2012, a 17-year-old youth named Austin Sigg confessed to killing Ridgeway.[3] Sigg initially confessed to his mother, who called the police. He told police that he kidnapped Ridgeway as she was walking towards where he had parked his Jeep. He then bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties and took her to his house. There, he forced her to change out of her clothes and into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt before he strangled her with the rope she was tied in, dismembered her body, and hid her limbs and head in a crawl space. Afterward he dumped her torso in the open space of Arvada.[4]
Under a 2005 Supreme Court decision, Sigg was not eligible for capital punishment because he was not 18 at the time of the crime. In the court case, he was tried as an adult.[1] Sigg was sentenced to life imprisonment on November 19, 2013, and in June 2014, was moved to an undisclosed out-of-state prison to preserve both his and the Ridgeway family's privacy and safety.[5] [6]