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WOODLAND PARK, Colo. (AP) --
The remains of 18-year-old man reported missing seven years ago were found in the chimney of an abandoned cabin less than a mile from his home, and the details of his death are likely to stay mysterious, Colorado officials said Wednesday.
The remains were found last month as contractors tore down the cabin in Woodland Park that had been abandoned for more than a decade. Authorities had to use dental records to identify the remains as those of Joshua Vernon Maddux, who was reported missing in May 2008 but not as a runaway.
Maddux was probably trying to shimmy down the chimney when he got stuck, Teller County Coroner Al Born said. His death was ruled accidental, and there were no signs of trauma, Born said. It's unclear how long Maddux's remains had been in the chimney.
"There are going to be some questions out there that are unanswerable," he said.
Family members say Maddux was bright and doing well in school, and they are not sure why he was at the cabin.
"I got up one morning and he was there, then he just never came home," said his father, Michel Maddux. "We thought he was with friends, but no one had seen him."
Michel Maddux said the family searched for him for years.
"It's a long-term thing where you're grieving on hold," he said.
The cabin's owner, Chuck Murphy, said the place was abandoned but that mice and chipmunks would occasionally get in and die, leaving a bad smell.
The chimney was located behind a large piece of furniture, "so there was no reason to look in the fireplace," Murphy told The Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs last month.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) —
A Kentucky clerk who went to jail for defying a federal court's orders to issue same-sex marriage licenses says she met briefly with the pope during his historic visit to the United States.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, didn't deny the encounter took place but said Wednesday in Rome that he had no comment on the topic.
Rowan County clerk Kim Davis and her husband met privately with Pope Francis on Thursday afternoon at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C., for less than 15 minutes, said her lawyer, Mat Staver.
"It was really very humbling to even think that he would want to meet me or know me," Davis said in an interview with ABC.
Davis, an Apostolic Christian, spent five days in jail earlier this month for defying a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In a telephone interview late Tuesday, Staver would not say who initiated the meeting with the pope or how it came to be, though he did say that Vatican officials had inquired about Davis' situation while she was in jail. He declined to name them.
"He told me before he left, he said 'stay strong.' That was a great encouragement," Davis said of the pope during the ABC interview. "Just knowing that the pope is on track with what we're doing and agreeing, you know, it kind of validates everything."
She didn't say in the interview whether she had a private audience with the pope or she was part of larger crowd.
Davis was in Washington for the Values Voter Summit, where the Family Research Council, which opposes same-sex marriage, presented her with an award for defying the federal judge. While in Washington, the longtime Democrat said she was switching to the Republican party because she felt abandoned by Democrats in her fight against same-sex marriage.
Pope Francis did not focus on the divisive debate over same-sex marriage during his visit last week. As he left the country, he told reporters who inquired that he did not know Davis' case in detail, but he defended conscientious objection as a human right.
"It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right," Francis said.
JACKSON, Ga. (AP) —
The only woman on Georgia's death row was executed early Wednesday morning, making her the first woman put to death by the state in seven decades.
Kelly Renee Gissendaner was pronounced dead by injection of pentobarbital at 12:21 a.m. at the state prison in Jackson. She was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her husband after she conspired with her lover, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.
Kelly Gissendaner, 47, sobbed as she said she loved her children and apologized to Douglas Gissendaner's family, saying she hopes they can find some peace and happiness. She also addressed her lawyer, Susan Casey, who was among the witnesses.
"I just want to say God bless you all and I love you, Susan. You let my kids know I went out singing 'Amazing Grace,'" Gissendaner said.
Prison Warden Bruce Chatman left the execution chamber at 12:11 a.m. Records from previous executions indicate that the lethal drug is administered within about a minute of the warden leaving the room.
Gissendaner sang "Amazing Grace" and also appeared to sing another song before taking several deep breaths and then becoming still.
More than 100 people gathered in rainy conditions outside the prison to support Gissendaner. Among them was Rev. Della Bacote, who said she is a chaplain at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville and who spent several hours with Gissendaner on Tuesday afternoon, talking and praying.
"She was at peace with whatever was to come," Bacote said.
Gissendaner's three children visited with her Monday but weren't able to see her Tuesday because they were testifying before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, Bacote said. The parole board is the only entity authorized to commute a death sentence in Georgia.
"Kelly embraced that the children were going to talk to the Board of Pardons and Paroles," Bacote said, adding that Gissendaner was able to speak to her children by phone Tuesday.
Two of Gissendaner's three children had previously addressed the board and also put out a video earlier this month pleading for their mother's life and talking about their own difficult path to forgiveness. Her oldest son had not previously addressed the board.
Various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court denied multiple last-ditch efforts to stop her execution Tuesday, and the parole board stood by its February decision to deny clemency. The board didn't give a reason for the denial, but said it had carefully considered her request for reconsideration.
Gissendaner was previously scheduled for execution Feb. 25, but that was delayed because of a threat of winter weather. Her execution was reset for March 2, but corrections officials postponed that execution "out of an abundance of caution" because the execution drug appeared "cloudy."
Pope Francis' diplomatic representative in the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, on Tuesday sent a letter to the parole board on behalf of the pontiff asking for a commutation of Gissendaner's sentence "to one that would better express both justice and mercy." He cited an address the pope made to a joint session of Congress last week in which he called for the abolition of the death penalty.
Gissendaner's lawyers submitted a statement from former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher to the parole board. Fletcher argued Gissendaner's death sentence was not proportionate to her role in the crime. Her lover, Gregory Owen, who did the killing, is serving a life prison sentence and will become eligible for parole in 2022. He also noted that Georgia hadn't executed a person who didn't actually carry out a killing since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Gissendaner's lawyers also said she was a seriously damaged woman who has undergone a spiritual transformation in prison and has been a model prisoner who has shown remorse and provided hope to other inmates in their personal struggles. They gave the parole board testimonials from several women who were locked up as teens and who said Gissendaner counseled them through moments when they felt scared, lost or on the verge of giving up hope.
Douglas Gissendaner's family said in a statement Monday that he is the victim and that Kelly Gissendaner received an appropriate sentence.
"As the murderer, she's been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here," the statement says. "She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life."
Kelly Gissendaner repeatedly pushed Owen in late 1996 to kill her husband rather than just divorcing him as Owen suggested, prosecutors have said. Acting on her instructions, Owen ambushed Douglas Gissendaner at Gissendaner's home, forced him to drive to a remote area and stabbed him multiple times, prosecutors said.
Investigators looking into the killing zeroed in on Owen once they learned of his affair with Kelly Gissendaner. He initially denied involvement but eventually confessed and implicated Kelly Gissendaner.