Dylan Redwine’s brother details fight over lewd photos as defense attacks motive
Dylan Redwine’s older brother confronted his father with lewd photos of him three months before the Monument teen disappeared, his brother testified Thursday.
Under cross-examination by the defense, Cory Redwine said he sent the images — which showed his father, Mark Redwine, eating feces from a diaper — to his father via text message in August 2012, more than a year after the siblings had discovered them on their father’s laptop.
“You are what you eat,” Cory Redwine, then 21, said in an accompanying message. Other photos showed Mark Redwine wearing women’s clothing and makeup. In other texts, his son called him a “sperm donor” and “sweetie” and told him to “lick —- off (his) shoe.”
The graphic details came on the third day of testimony at Mark Redwine’s second-degree murder trial, as the defense pushed back on the claim he killed 13-year-old Dylan on Sept. 18, 2012, in a “violent rage” after the boy confronted him about the photos.
Mark Redwine’s attorneys have called it a “made-up motive,” and in their questioning of Cory Redwine, they pointed out their client responded with a lecture, not rage, after Dylan’s older brother sent him the lurid photos and insulted him in deeply personal terms.
After receiving them, Mark Redwine accused his son of violating his privacy in an attempt to hurt him, and admonished him that their quarrel over the embarrassing images could also “hurt Dylan,” Cory Redwine testified.
“He asked, ‘If you cared about Dylan, why did you want to see him hurt,’ right?” attorney John Moran asked, as Cory Redwine agreed.
Cory Redwine has for years accused his father of playing a role in Dylan’s disappearance. At first, he denied sending the lewd photos to Mark Redwine when questioned about them in court. He revised his account after being confronted on the stand with an FBI report in which he told an agent he sent them, saying it refreshed his memory.
In testimony Wednesday, Cory Redwine described how Dylan found the photos during a June 2011 road trip in which the brothers and their father toured the Midwest. Cory Redwine said he used his cellphone camera to capture the images while his father was asleep in their shared hotel room.
More than a year later, in early August 2012, Dylan and his father were alone on a different road trip to Boston. Dylan repeatedly called and texted Cory Redwine asking his brother to send him the “poop” photos.
Dylan said his father had been lecturing him about his older brother and mother being a bad influence, and that he wanted to show his father “who he really is,” Cory Redwine testified.
The older brother did not send the photos to Dylan, saying he didn’t want to fuel the boy’s conflict with his father. But he sent them to his father the next day, he acknowledged Thursday.
It remains unclear if Dylan Redwine had also discussed the photos with his father during the Boston trip, as the defense has claimed.
But according to witness Amber Harrison, the attorney who represented Dylan’s mother in her 2008 divorce and 2012 custody petition, Dylan wasn’t over his embarrassment.
Harrison was called to the stand after Cory Redwine and said Dylan asked a judge to live with his mother at a September custody hearing, after previously mentioning his disgust at the photos, she said.
“He told me that he was creeped out by them, and that he didn’t want to visit his father,” Harrison said.
Another witness, Kathi Barry, testified that Mark Redwine hadn’t gotten over the photos either.
During a charged encounter with the defendant outside his home after the boy’s disappearance, Barry said she “lost her mind” and called Redwine a “—-eater” among other epithets, referring to the photos, which she said she had heard about.
Already angry, Redwine’s demeanor changed in a flash, she said.
At that point, he picked up a log from outside his house and came toward her car, though he stopped short of it and didn’t make physical contact. Crying, she “hit the gas” and began driving away, she said.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a cartoon where the eyes bulge out and all you can see is the whites of the eyes, but that’s all I saw and it scared the —- out of me.”
Attorneys for Redwine pointed out that Barry had accompanied a woman who was shouting accusations and insults at Redwine, who responded by shouting back ugly insults in turn.
They pointed out that Redwine didn’t make contact with Barry, her new BMW or the passenger involved in the verbal sparring.
“No. He restrained himself,” Barry said.
Testimony is expected to continue Friday morning, with a focus on early efforts to locate blood evidence in Mark Redwine’s Vallecito home.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been revised to correct the source of testimony about a confrontation outside Mark Redwine’s home.
Mark Redwine, listens as a witness testifies during his trial on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, in Durango, 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.
Elaine Hall, mother of Dylan Redwine, becomes emotional as she testifies during the Mark Redwine trial on June 23, 2021 at the La Plata County Courthouse in Durango. Mark Redwine is on trial for second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death of in the death of his son Dylan Redwine.
Dylan Redwine