Mike Kadow grew up hearing stories about a father he has no memory of.
The Craig Kadow he knew was shot to death in a remote Jefferson County cabin before he was 3 and what he knows about him he learned from his mother and grandmother. There was little emotional attachment, but a lot of curiosity.
So last summer when Jefferson County Sheriff’s cold case investigator Cheryl Moore came to his Littleton house and apologized that the investigators had failed to investigate the man who shot his father he wanted to learn as much as he could, even though they were terrifying details about his father’s last moments alive.
Mike Kadow wanted to read a description of why his father was killed and a point-by-point explanation of what happened. The explanation is cold. Edward Kelly Russom talks about carrying his father’s body around like it was a hazardous bag of garbage he couldn’t wait to discard.
Yet, as terrible as the circumstances are it adds to the meager details Mike Kadow ever knew about a father he can’t picture in his mind.
When asked, Mike Kadow also said he wanted his father’s cremated ashes.
Since he received them he has been on a mission to leave his father’s ashes in cairns across the state on trails leading to 14ers.
“It’s a tribute to my dad,” he said. “Some of the cairns save people’s lives.”
And for him it’s the first memories he’s had of doing something with his dad.
You can read a transcript of a taped interview in which Kelly Russom confessed to his role in the murder here, and read my full story about the lapses in the investigation of this murder on DenverPost.com.