David Neal Cox, who was executed last month, had been a longtime suspect in Felicia Cox’s 2007 cold case disappearance.
Days before a Mississippi man was executed in the murder of his wife and sexual assault of her 12-year-old daughter, the 50-year-old confessed to also murdering his sister-in-law, officials said. Authorities are now working to confirm the information by David Neal Cox, who was executed by lethal injection last month, District Attorney John Weddle said.
Cox had been a longtime suspect in the cold case disappearance of his sister-in-law Felicia Cox, who had been missing since July 2007, according to Weddle.
Cox’s attorneys were able to share a letter from Cox written three weeks before his execution, in which he allegedly admitted his guilt and shared the alleged location of his sister-in-law’s body, officials said, adding that Cox had waived attorney-client privilege effective upon his death.
Local authorities and experts are now coordinating the search and recovery of her body, so her family can give her a proper burial.
"Mr. Cox felt deep remorse and wanted to bring closure to her family," the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel said in a statement
Felicia Cox’s daughter, Amber Miskelly, who attended the news conference with her husband, was just 18 years old when her mom disappeared, CBS News reported.
Miskelly had been seeking answers since, and even wrote a letter to Cox demanding he come clean days before his lethal injection and after the date officials believe he allegedly wrote the letter confessing his guilt
“I had originally been told that it [execution] was supposed to be next year,” she told WTVA. “So, I thought I had more time to try to figure out — or at least contact David myself or something.”
Miskelly claimed Cox was the last person to have seen her mother alive when she had been attempting to visit his wife, Kim Cox, WTVA reported.
Kim Cox was murdered by Cox three years later, in May 2010. At the time, Cox had been out of jail on bond following his arrest for sexually abusing his stepdaughter Lindsey Kirk, the Associated Press reported.
Kirk, now 23, claimed he had been sexually assaulting her “for a few years” but had been too afraid to tell anyway because “he always told me that he’d kill us,” she told the Associated Press.
She finally worked up the courage to text her mom in 2009, and when he was released from jail in 2010, her mom had gotten a restraining order and moved in with her sister, the AP reported. Days later, Cox shot her to death in front of her family, according to the Associated Press.
Cox pleaded guilty to her killing along with other charges including sexually assaulting Kirk, and was sentenced to death, the Washington Post reported.
His November 17 execution broke a nine-year death penalty hiatus in Mississippi, and seemed to come with much anticipation for Cox, who waived all right to appeals in the months leading up to his execution. He claimed that “horrible living conditions” at the “inhumane prison” was what led him to waive his appeals, according to the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel.
