Colin Madsen – He should never have left his cabin…

Delve into the perplexing mystery surrounding the disappearance of Colin Madsen, an intrepid adventurer who vanished under enigmatic circumstances in Siberia

In 2016, four friends rented a small rustic cabin near a forest in a little village in Russia. Their plan was to spend the night in this cabin and then early the next morning they would get up and hike a trail that would bring them to the summit of a nearby mountain.

So on March 27th, the friends got in their car, made their way to this little village, found their cabin, went inside, hung out for a bit, and then by 2 am they had gone to sleep. Little did they know, outside of their cabin in the forest lurking in the darkness, something was watching their cabin’s front door, waiting for one of them to come outside.

The Siberian Cabin

 

When most people picture Russia in their minds, they picture European Russia, which is literally the part of Russia on the western side that sits in Europe and is by far the most populated part of the country. But European Russia only accounts for 23 percent of the total territory that is Russia.

The other 77 percent is to the east of European Russia. It starts at the Ural Mountain range and extends all the way over 5 million square miles to the Pacific Ocean. And this vast, mostly forested expanse, which is 50 times bigger than the entire United Kingdom, is called Siberia.

And Siberia is absolutely brutal. In Siberia, it is almost always freezing cold. Literally, the average annual temperature across all of Siberia is 32.9 degrees Fahrenheit. So, it is 0.9 degrees above freezing on average every single day.

In addition to the extremely deadly weather that exists basically year-round in Siberia, Siberia is also home to a bunch of huge deadly animals such as the brown bear, which is the same as the infamous grizzly bear in North America, the gray wolf, which by size alone makes virtually all other wolves look like little puppies. Gray wolves can grow to be nearly 200 pounds.

And of course, there is the highly intelligent Siberian tiger, who is perhaps one of the only predators on earth that is known to seek out and kill people for revenge. For example, in 1997, a hunter named Vladimir Markov was walking through a Siberian forest when he came face to face with one of these Siberian tigers.

He ended up shooting the tiger before fleeing, except the tiger didn’t die. Instead, it got up and secretly followed Vladimir all the way back to his cabin. And then this tiger camped out outside of the cabin until Vladimir came out again, and the tiger pounced, killed him, and ate him.

So, unsurprisingly, Siberia has an absolutely minuscule population relative to its massive size. However, there are some adventurous people out there who are drawn to Siberia for the same reasons that most other people avoid it. These adventurous people see Siberia as one of the last truly wild places on our planet, and they want to experience it for themselves. And one of these highly adventurous people was a young man named Colin Madsen.

Colin Madsen, who came from a very successful American family, was a big outdoors enthusiast who, at some point in his youth, began researching Siberia because he fell in love with its rugged natural beauty. He quickly began researching not only Siberia but Siberian culture and Russian culture. And also, at some point, he became fluent in the Russian language.

Then in 2013, when Colin was 22 years old, he left his home in Missouri and moved to Siberia. He settled in one of Siberia’s few population centers, a city called Irkutsk, which is located in the southeast of Siberia and right along the edge of Lake Baikal, which is the world’s deepest freshwater lake.

Colin’s Siberia plan was twofold: he would go to school while he was there, and he would go out and explore. And at first, his plan went perfectly. He was accepted into Moscow State Linguistic University in Irkutsk, and very quickly, he made friends who were eager to accompany him on his adventures out into the Siberian wilderness.

From his arrival in Siberia in 2013 to 2016, Colin did well in his studies, and he spent countless hours exploring the forests and mountainous areas all around Lake Baikal and right outside of Irkutsk. In fact, Colin became so familiar with this region that he began volunteering with a nonprofit in the area that went around marking new trails, which meant Colin was literally venturing into the wilds of Siberia and just marking the trail as he went.

So, when Colin’s family heard about what happened to him in 2016, they could not believe it. In March of 2016, Colin and three of his good hiking friends – one was American, and two were Russian – decided they wanted to go on a hike together. They settled on hiking to the summit of Love Peak, which was a mountain located a few hours away from Irkutsk in a small village called Arshan.

This hike was nothing compared to the gnarly Siberian wilderness hikes all four of these guys had been on before. The trail that led up to Love Peak was fairly steep, but it was incredibly well-marked, and all four of these guys had hiked it several times before. However, because Colin Madsen and his friends were so experienced at hiking in Siberia, they knew that even the easiest hikes needed to be respected because Siberia was still Siberia. There were dangers that lurked everywhere.

And so, the men called ahead to the village of Arshan and rented one of these small rustic cabins that’s in the village, sitting right at the base of Love Peak and tucked away in this forest. This cabin would serve as their sort of base camp and would allow them to arrive in Arshan, get their gear together, and then when they were ready, they could begin this hike to the summit.

So, a few days later, on March 27th, Colin Madsen and his three friends loaded up their car and drove west to Arshan. When they got there, they stopped at a local store, got some supplies, and then made their way to their cabin.

Their cabin was just a single room with a few beds inside of it. It was enough to protect them from the elements, but really nothing more. As for a toilet, the cabin didn’t have one, but there was an outhouse outside that they could use.

So, after the friends moved into the cabin, claimed their beds, and put their things down, they all sat down and began prepping their gear, eating some food, and chatting. And then finally, at 2 am, they decided they needed to go to sleep because their plan was to get on the path up to Love Peak by 7 am, which meant they needed to get up at 5 am to make their final preparations.

Mysterious Disappearance: Colin Madsen Vanishes Into the Siberian Night

So, at 2 am, the lights in the cabin turned off, and the friends all fell asleep. And then three hours later, at 5 am, when the lights came back on again, it was immediately clear something was wrong. Colin was not in his bed.

His friends assumed when they looked over at his bed and saw his personal belongings were all still there that Colin must have gotten up and headed outside, maybe to use the outhouse or go for a quick walk, and they just hadn’t heard him leaving.

And so, the three friends initially just kind of shrugged off Colin’s absence and said, “You know, he’ll be back any minute, most likely. And if for some reason he’s not back soon, he’ll certainly be back by 7 am because that was the agreed-upon time they would leave for this hike.”

But as the minutes ticked closer and closer to 7 am, and Colin still had not shown up or tried to call them or do anything, the friends started to worry. It just didn’t make any sense that Colin would just get up and leave without telling them where he was going.

Finally, at 7 am, when Colin Madsen still had not shown up and the friends’ cursory search of the outside area near the cabin had yielded no results, they decided they had to tell someone. And so, they wrote a note addressed to Colin and put it on the front of their cabin door.

This note basically just told Colin, “You know, if you come back here and you see this note, know that we’re looking for you. So, stay put or tell someone you’re here.” And so, after putting up this note, the friends left the cabin and headed to the nearest police station where they reported Colin missing.

The police would eventually launch this huge search in and around Arshan, both in the forested area right around the village and then also up into the mountains near Love Peak. But despite this huge effort, no one could find Colin, at least not at first.

Suspicions Arise: Mysterious Circumstances Surrounding Colin Madsen’s Untimely End

On Monday, April 4th, eight days into Colin’s disappearance, a group of searchers were looking in the forest about one mile away from the cabin where Colin and his friends had been staying. They looked up ahead and saw there was a clearing, and there’s something in the middle of it. The searchers began moving their way towards this clearing, ducking under branches and stepping over brush. When they got close enough, they could see Colin in the clearing, and Colin was deceased.

He was laying flat on his back with his left arm extended out to the side and his right arm extended but closer to his body, and both of his hands were clenched in tight fists. On his hands and his wrists were visible abrasions and cuts, which later would be determined to have most likely been caused from someone or something holding onto him, trying to restrain Colin. Colin also had visible abrasions and cuts on the front of his neck.

Colin’s clothing, which consisted of a long-sleeve thermal shirt, heavy pants, and hiking boots, were ripped and torn in several places. Interestingly, Colin Madsen was not wearing socks under his boots. Now, that seems inconsequential, but Colin had surgery on both of his ankles and had scar tissue on his ankles. If he didn’t have socks on, those scars would rub against the inside of his boot, and he said it was very painful. So, he always wore socks.

Also, Colin’s body showed virtually no signs of decomposition, and all of his wounds and abrasions looked “fresh,” according to medical personnel. In short, Colin looked like he had recently been in some sort of physical altercation, and whoever or whatever he was grappling with had eventually overpowered him and killed him. Although it was not clear how he actually died, Russian authorities were very quick to suspect Colin’s three friends who had been with him.

But they were brought into the station and they denied having anything to do with Colin’s death, and they all passed their lie detector tests. After that, Russian authorities quickly closed this case by concluding that, well, if his friends didn’t do it, then that means Colin must have been high on drugs or drinking alcohol, or both, and he just wandered out of his cabin and he got lost in the woods and he died of hypothermia, he froze to death. The end.

However, Colin’s parents just could not accept that as being what happened to their son. There were a lot of reasons for skepticism, but the main one was that Colin was an absolute expert at navigating this particular region of Siberia. And so, the idea that he would leave his cabin for a quick walk or something and get so completely lost that he would die eight days later seemed way too far-fetched.

Findings Disputing Official Claims Surrounding Colin Madsen’s Tragic End

And so, Colin’s parents hired a US-based private lab to do a review of Russia’s autopsy of Colin to give their opinion if the autopsy was accurate or not. And this US-based lab pretty much immediately found that the Russian autopsy was not remotely accurate.

Number one, Colin Madsen was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He was sober. Although technically, he did have very small amounts of THC in his urine. THC is the chemical that is found in marijuana, but the amount was so little it basically meant he had consumed the THC days before he went missing, and so he would not have been remotely affected by that small amount of THC in his system.

Number two, the lab determined that Colin almost certainly did not die from hypothermia. Instead, all signs pointed to Colin dying from being suffocated, meaning he was murdered. Someone crushed his airway or in some way restricted him from breathing, and that’s what killed him.

And three, based on the lack of decomposition, the freshness of the injuries on Colin’s body, and the lack of animal predation on his body when they found him, indicated that Colin did not just wander out of his cabin and immediately die somewhere in the forest.

Instead, he was alive for most of the time people were looking for him, meaning when they found him, he likely had died within hours of being found. And so, these findings by this US-based lab kind of create a general theory about what must have happened to Colin.

After Colin Madsen left the cabin in the early morning hours of March 28th, maybe to go to the outhouse or to go for a quick walk, when he went outside, someone or something was nearby, and they either lured Colin to them or they straight up ambushed Colin and took him away.

Now, we have no idea what happened to Colin after he was abducted, but we can safely assume that after being abducted and taken somewhere, he was alive, and he stayed alive for several days until on the eighth day of his disappearance, Colin was killed, likely by his captor, either at the spot where he was found or he was killed somewhere else, maybe in the forest, and then moved to the spot where he was found.

Many people believe it was the Russian government who targeted Colin. They kidnapped him and they killed him, and their botched investigation into his death was actually a calculated cover-up. Colin had participated in at least one peaceful environmentalist-led protest in Siberia, and after the protest, Colin apparently got a written warning by the Russian police not to attend another protest.

But why would Colin Madsen, who was just one of many people involved in these protests, be singled out by the Russian government and killed for his participation? And why would the government elect to kill Colin when he was with three of his closest friends who would immediately notice his absence? It just doesn’t add up.

Today, Colin’s parents are still trying to figure out what happened to their son, but unfortunately, their son’s case is closed in Russia. And so, no one on the Russian side is talking to the parents or giving them any new information.

And so, as a result, they and the rest of us are left to wonder who or what was lurking in the shadows when Colin stepped out of the cabin that morning and then where did they take him and what did they do to him for nearly a week before they killed him deep inside of that Siberian Forest.