Mom of Dylan Redwine takes stand at ex-husband’s murder trial
Dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, the mother of 13-year-old Dylan Redwine took the stand at her ex-husband’s second-degree murder trial in Durango on Wednesday and faced the man prosecutors say killed their son and hid his remains.
“He’s wearing a blue shirt and a gray suit,” a shaken Elaine Hall said after she was asked to point out the defendant, Mark Redwine.
During testimony that spanned much of the day, Hall, of Monument, revisited fond memories of the “outgoing” Dylan, before painfully reliving the last messages they exchanged before his Nov. 19, 2012 disappearance and the “frantic” and “surreal” hunt to find him.
Wearing a blue dress and colorful bracelets commemorating Dylan, Hall briefly buried her face in her hands and sobbed recounting when Mark Redwine first told her Dylan was missing, a day after he flew from Colorado Springs to visit his father.
“Dylan, please be safe,” she told him in a text message, which she read from a court exhibit with a strained voice. “Mom is here to come get you, son.”
She got the news at work, went home, packed a bag and started driving to Durango with her now-husband and her older son, heading directly to the Bayfield Marshal’s Office before alerting the media and participating in search parties with family, friends and neighbors.
The jury also heard from Cory Redwine, Dylan’s brother, who spoke about how Dylan became “disgusted” with his father in June 2011 after discovering lurid photos of him in a diaper performing bizarre acts.
“Dylan lost any reasons for him to look up to Mark that day,” Cory Redwine said, describing it as a break in his younger brother’s deteriorating relationship with his father.
Cory Redwine said Dylan discovered the photos on a laptop while the siblings and their father were on a Father’s Day family road trip across the Midwest. The defendant was asleep in a hotel bed when Dylan summoned his brother into the bathroom to see them. Cory Redwine used his cellphone to take pictures of them on the laptop screen, which were introduced into evidence.
Their testimony came two days after a jury heard opening statements in which prosecutors said the photos sparked a “violent rage” — leading Mark Redwine to kill his son at his Vallecito home the night the boy arrived at the Durango airport.
The defense called it a “made-up motive” designed to turn the jury against the defendant, and said the boy and his father had already discussed the photos, closing an embarrassing chapter.
The jury on Wednesday reviewed contentious emails between Hall and the defendant before Dylan’s visit to Durango, which Hall admitted had become the norm years earlier. The couple divorced in 2008 and were back in court litigating Dylan’s custody in September 2012, weeks before the boy’s disappearance.
At the time, Hall was planning a move from the Durango area to the Pikes Peak region, and she wanted Dylan to continue living with her.
That September, a judge granted Hall’s request, ruling that Dylan would live with her in Monument and attend school there. At the same time, the judge ruled that Dylan would visit his father over Thanksgiving as part of their split-custody arrangements.
Hall said Dylan had complained about staying with his father — partly because he didn’t have friends in Vallecito and thought staying there was “boring,” she said. She consulted her attorney to see if there was a way out of the visit, but her attorney told her she would risk violating a court order, and advised her to seek adjustments in court if she wanted a change to the custody arrangement, she said.
Hall stopped short of saying Dylan had expressed “fear” about the upcoming visit, as a childhood friend of Dylan’s said on the stand while testifying Tuesday.
She described dropping off Dylan at the Colorado Springs airport and how he tried to leave for his flight without a proper goodbye.
“Ah, you’re too old to give your mom a hug?” she protested. “He came back and gave me a hug.”
She last heard from him moments after his plane landed in Durango.
When she asked if his father had arrived to pick him up, Dylan responded with the word “yes” and a frowning face emoji, she said, her shoulders buckling.
During cross-examination, public defender Justin Bogan emphasized Hall’s fractured relationship with the defendant, which the defense argues drove early suspicions that Mark Redwine was responsible, which they say snowballed into a “demand for wrongful conviction,” supported by innuendo and thin evidence.
Bogan led Hall to admit that Mark Redwine’s first act after losing the court battle over Dylan’s move to Colorado Springs was to buy a ticket for his son for the court-ordered Thanksgiving visit to Durango, cutting against claims of serious discord.
“I am very much looking forward to seeing the little guy,” the defendant told Hall in an email.
During several hours of testimony, Hall acknowledged that she voiced her suspicions toward the defendant within hours of Dylan’s disappearance, and that she taped multiple interviews on “Dr. Phil” and other prominent programs and outlets in which she implicated him.
“I’ve always said that I believe that he had a hand in Dylan’s disappearance, yes,” she said. Bogan questioned her about her appearance at what he called a “protest” outside Mark Redwine’s house and comments she left on social media pages such as “Warriors for Dylan” and “Arrest Mark Redwine.”
She identified the clothing items she handed over to investigators in June 2013 so that dogs could hunt for Dylan’s remains, and she described the moment she learned that searchers had finally located a sign of Dylan — a single shoe, from a pair she had bought him.
When human remains were found later that day, they were ultimately compared against one of Dylan’s baby teeth, which she supplied, and the DNA analysis established that her son was gone, she said.
When photographs or a question brought up happy memories of her son, Hall smiled or laughed.
“Dylan was sweet,” she said. “He was funny. He was charismatic. He was very empathetic. He really cared about people and their feelings. Just very sweet.”
The trial is expected to continue at 8 a.m. Thursday, with prosecutors resuming questioning of Cory Redwine, who will then face cross-examination by the defense.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald 06-21-21-Durango- Mark Redwine listens during opening remarks on Monday, June 21, 2021, at his trial in Durango Co., at the La Plata County Courthouse.
In this Nov. 26, 2012 photo, Elaine Redwine — now Elaine Hall — is consoled by now-husband Mike Hall on the dam at Vallecito Reservoir during the search for 13-year-old Dylan Redwine in Vallecito, Colo. (AP Photo/The Durango Herald, Shaun Stanley)
A 2012 family photo of Dylan Redwine, who vanished in November 2012. His remains were found in 2013 and 2015.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald 06-21-21-Durango- Mark Redwine listens during opening remarks on Monday, June 21, 2021, at his trial in Durango Co., at the La Plata County Courthouse.
Jerry McBride/Durango Herald 06-22-21-Durango- Amanda Saxton, who was a friend of Dylan Redwine becomes overrun with emotions as she testifies on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, during the Mark Redwine trial in Durango Co., at the La Plata County Courthouse. Redwine is on trial for second degree murder and child abuse resulting in death of his son Dylan Redwine.