ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. — Earl Cox, the man who confessed to the 1993 sexual assault and murder of 9-year-old Angie Housman, died in prison Monday.
Cox was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2, according to a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections. He died of apparent natural causes, the spokeswoman said.
Cox, a former Air Force computer operator, was detained in North Carolina in 2019 when he was charged with Housman's death. Prosecutors at the time said new DNA evidence linked him to the crime.
Sources close to the investigation told the I-TEAM that the new lead came from re-examined clothing evidence from the crime scene.
Angie Housman disappeared after getting off her school bus on Nov. 18, 1993, less than a block from her home in St. Ann. Her body was found nine days later in the August A. Busch Wildlife area in St. Charles County. Her official cause of death was hypothermia.
Cox pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and child molestation in August of 2020. As part of the plea deal, he waived his right to appeal and agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Then-St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar said multiple factors led to him offering Cox a plea deal, including Cox's age and poor health. He said at the time that Cox would likely not live long enough to be executed after exhausting all of his appellate rights.
Cox’s criminal history of molesting children dates to about 40 years ago.
He was deemed a Sexually Dangerous Person by the federal government following the dismantling of an international child porn ring of which Cox was a major player. He finished his sentence for that crime. Because of the designation, he remained in custody, but as a patient at a federal facility dedicated to rehabbing sexual predators. He was transferred to a Missouri prison after his guilty plea.