A 50-year-old Mississippi man who was executed weeks ago for shooting his estranged wife dead confessed to another murder just before he died, a prosecutor revealed on Monday.
David Neal Cox confessed to his lawyers that in 2007, he murdered his sister-in-law, Felicia Cox, and provided detailed instructions on where her bones could be found, John Weddle disclosed at a press conference.
Cox made the astonishing confession to his attorneys before being executed by lethal injection on Nov. 17. Cox’s execution was the first in Mississippi in nine years.
Felicia’s daughter, Amber Miskelly, who was 18-year-old when her mother disappeared in July 2007, was present at the news conference. As Weddle was speaking, Miskelly stood beside her husband, weeping silently. Investigators have planned to recover Felicia’s bones but did not disclose the exact location where Cox said he dumped the body, Fox News reported.
Felicia, who was 40 at the time, was last spotted at her sister-in-law Kim Kirk Cox’s house in Pontotoc. Cox fatally shot his wife, Kim, three years later, the crime for which he was executed.
After shooting his wife, Cox phoned his wife’s father, Benny Kirk, and let him speak to his daughter for the last time. “Daddy, I’m dying,” Kim whimpered as she was gasping for air.
When Police arrived at the resident, they tried to get Cox to release his wife and the two children inside, his stepdaughter Lindsey Kirk, who was 12 at the time, and her junior brother. David Cox assaulted his stepdaughter sexually three times as his wife lay dying from the gunshot wound. The horrific incident lasted eight hours, and by then, Kim was already dead and her children profoundly traumatized.
In 2012, Cox pleaded guilty to capital murder in addition to other charges, and a jury handed down the death sentence. Cox didn’t try to fight the verdict. Nevertheless, he filed court papers calling himself “worthy of death.”
Lindsey Kirk, who is now 23, attended the execution of her mother’s killer and her abuser. Prior to taking his final breath, David Cox spoke his last words, “I want my children to know that I love them very much and that I was a good man at one time.”
