A Colorado man accused of murdering his 13-year-old son is finally going to trial after multiple delays. Mark Redwine, 59, appeared in La Plata County court on Monday, June 21 over the death of young Dylan, who went missing in November 2012 and whose body was discovered seven months later on a local hiking trail. While he was arrested for child abuse and murder in 2017, the trial had been postponed more than 10 times before finally beginning this week.
- Redwine killed his son over “compromising photographs.” According to prosecutors, Dylan had come across photos of his father wearing women’s underwear and eating feces from a diaper. He allegedly confronted his dad and was killed for it, The Denver Post reports.
- Redwine denies any involvement in his son’s death. His defense attorneys claim that Dylan was killed by wild animals in the Vallecito area near Durango, where his father lived at the time. However, they offer no proof of this claim. Special Deputy District Attorney Fred Johnson had an alternate explanation: “A damaged relationship, exposed with compromising photographs, photographs in the hands of a 13-year-old who is disgusted by it, which triggered a violent rage in the defendant.”
- Authorities believe Dylan was killed on the night of November 18, 2012. While he’d made plans to hang out with a friend the next morning, he never turned up and his cell phone showed no activity after around 10 p.m. Redwine claimed that he’d left the house to run errands and that Dylan was gone when he came home. However, his defense now claims Dylan ran away from home and got attacked by a bear or mountain lion.
- Dylan’s blood was found in Redwine’s living room. Investigators found traces of the child’s blood in the home and cadaver dogs also revealed that human remains were detected in the back of the man’s truck and on his clothes.
- Redwine didn’t bother to look for his son after he allegedly went missing. While rescue crews were out searching all night when Dylan allegedly went missing, authorities pointed out that Redwine wasn’t bothered about joining in. “At a time when most people would have been out in the woods with a flashlight, a time when most people would know to leave the light on in case a child was lost in the woods … At 11 p.m., the defendant’s house went dark. Dylan was gone,” Johnson told the court, as per The Daily Mail.
If convicted, Redwine faces 48 years in prison.
