A co-worker described tonight’s story as what might be the creepiest story ever! It involves an old man, a young boy, a remote cabin and a surgical knife!!!
(Read the story here.)
When Anna Hewson and I first heard the name John Taylor, it didn’t mean much. Now it’s synonymous with some of the wildest allegations either of us have ever heard.
Early in the year police sources urged me to look into the case of a man recently charged with molesting kids.
“There’s more to the case,” several people told us.
After weeks of repeated phone calls, days of digging through court files and hours double checking facts, we figured it out.
Police don’t just think Taylor molested two boys as he’s charged in Denver District Court, police believe he abused and then chemically cremated a third victim.
We knew the allegations at first, but when an anonymous letter arrived at 9NEWS containing a search warrant sealed by the courts, 9 Wants to Know learned the WHOLE story.
The allegations involve a remote cabin in Clear Creek County.
You’ll see, in the story, we packed our camera equipment more than a mile up a steep trail to investigate the cabin. .
What you won’t see is that the first day we hiked to the WRONG place. Wrong trail, wrong cabin and wrong information.
We had to do a retake the next day.
The area is picturesque but in February, the weather was cold.
Yes I said February -- We’ve been investigating for six months.
The details we uncovered in our story shows why it took so long.
We’re proud of it even though we understand it might be hard for some to watch. We’re proud because without a source urging us to dig deeper in what seemed to be a routine crime story, you might never know what happened to 16-year-old Ian Richardson. It’s our hope that now his family might take a small amount of comfort in at least knowing what may have happened to their son, brother or cousin.
No one deserves to die the way police believe Ian did.
I have to give a lot of credit to our fantastic producer/editor Anna Hewson and both executive producers, Nicole and Tiffani.
We told an important story tonight.
Even though Ian disappeared 17 years ago, no one should be forgotten.
