The 27-year-old mystery of what happened to nine-year-old Angie Housman, who vanished just a few hundred yards from her home in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1993, has finally been solved, and the identity of her killer has sent shockwaves through the community. The man who lived among them, never suspected for decades, was a convicted predator named Earl Cox, whose DNA was finally matched to evidence from the crime scene in 2019, leading to a confession and a life sentence.
Angie Housman was born on February 18, 1984, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father left the family before she was born, and she never knew him.
When she was one year old, Angie’s mother married a man named Ronald, and they had a son. Angie adored her younger brother and was described as an easygoing child who sought friendship with everyone around her.
Her family lived in a quiet suburban area of St. Louis. In 1993, when Angie was nine, she attended the fourth grade at an elementary school located just over a mile from her house.
She took a bus from the nearest stop, which was just a few hundred yards from her home. Her parents felt relatively safe letting her go alone, as she usually walked with neighborhood kids and was watched over by several parents from their windows.
On November 18, 1993, Angie went to school as usual and finished around 3:00 p. m. She took the school bus to her stop with a few neighborhood kids, and they walked home together.
The other kids lived closer to the bus stop, leaving Angie alone about halfway. It was only a few minutes’ walk, but time passed, and Angie did not show up.
About half an hour later, Angie’s parents started worrying. She often stopped to chat with other kids, but it had never taken this long before. Her mother and stepfather decided to go outside and walk along the route from their house to the bus stop.
They spoke with other kids from the same school who confirmed that Angie arrived with them and headed toward home.
The parents also spoke with neighbors who usually kept an eye on the kids from their windows, but both women were busy that day and did not witness anything. Angie’s parents and their friends quickly initiated a search, scouring the area along the route from the bus stop to Angie’s home. This continued into the evening, and as darkness fell, they decided to call the police.
Officers immediately joined the search. Given the cold weather, it appeared unlikely that Angie would wander off on her own, prompting the police to initially explore worst-case scenarios. Adding to their heightened concern was another recent incident just ten days prior, in a nearby area, where an unknown perpetrator had nearly abducted an 11-year-old girl.
The man had approached her as she got off the school bus and attempted to drag her into the bushes, but she managed to escape. Since the assailant was still at large, the police considered the possibility of his involvement in Angie’s disappearance. Officers called in K9 units, and the dogs picked up Angie’s scent near the bus stop, tracking it roughly halfway to her house before abruptly losing it.
This suggested that Angie may have gotten into a vehicle at that point, further indicating a potential abduction. The police also deployed helicopters with thermal sensors and searched the banks of a small stream near Angie’s home, but they found neither the girl nor her belongings. The first day of searching yielded no results.
By morning, the police turned to the media, and information about Angie’s disappearance quickly spread across the city. In just one day, the police department received over 300 calls. To handle this influx of leads, they had to involve more than 20 new officers, yet all these leads did not help them find the girl.
Detectives explored all possible scenarios and from the early days began scrutinizing Angie’s stepfather. The man claimed no involvement in her disappearance and insisted he would never harm her. He agreed to a polygraph test and any other checks so that the police would stop wasting their time on him and focus on finding Angie.
Investigators also located Angie’s biological father, and here they discovered something weird. The man had never interacted with his daughter, but according to her mother, he had driven past their house several times watching Angie play outside. Detectives found this suspicious, but the man had an airtight alibi.
On the third day, the FBI joined the case, and the police department shifted even more officers to it. They all understood that something terrible must have happened to Angie; she just could not have survived on the streets in such cold weather. At one point, the police received a lead about a possible suspect.
Someone reported a strange man slowly driving a blue sedan in Angie’s neighborhood. His description matched the account of the girl who had narrowly escaped an abduction just ten days before Angie’s disappearance. Investigators decided to create a composite sketch of this person, which was featured in the news, and volunteers distributed thousands of flyers, but the identity of this man remained unknown.
Soon, the girl’s disappearance made it to national television, attracting even more leads. Police diligently examined each one, but none brought them closer to finding Angie. Due to the heightened attention to this case, psychics quickly got involved, calling Angie’s home and sharing their alleged visions.
One of them claimed that the girl was alive and even specified a location where she was being held, a large national park 25 miles from Angie’s home. But detectives paid no attention to their words. A $10,000 reward was also offered for any information about Angie’s whereabouts, leading to an increase in tips.
During the investigation, detectives uncovered a pretty disturbing fact. A few days before her disappearance, Angie told her teacher that she was planning to go on a nature trip with her uncle. The catch was there was no uncle, and her parents had no idea what their daughter meant by that.
Investigators considered the possibility that Angie might have known her abductor prior to the incident and referred to him as her uncle in the conversation with her teacher. However, they did not find anything about this mysterious man in the following days. Detectives made no progress, but everything changed on November 27, 1993, nine days after Angie’s disappearance.
A hunter called the police. He had arrived at the national park and spotted a human body in the woods. Upon arrival at the location, the police were confronted with a horrifying scene.
There was the body of a girl tied to a tree, missing any clothing, and her head was entirely wrapped in tape except for her nose. Her hands were also bound with handcuffs.
Near the site, there was a bag with items that helped the police immediately realize they had found Angie’s body. Her belongings, including notebooks with her name, were in the bag. The body was handed over to medical examiners, revealing even more 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 details.
As soon as they removed the tape from her head, experts found a piece of underwear in her mouth. They also determined that the girl had died just a few hours before the discovery, meaning she had been kept alive for nine days and then taken to this location, where she froze to death. Experts concluded that the victim had suffered numerous injuries and had been sexually assaulted.
Forensic analysts carefully examined all items found at the crime scene and managed to find a fingerprint on the tape used to wrap Angie’s head. They tried to find matches in the database and among several suspects, but it led to no leads. After the discovery of the body, the police dedicated even more resources to the investigation.
Local residents were shocked by such cruelty and feared for their children, escorting them everywhere, meeting them at bus stops, and not letting them out of their sight for a moment. Just a few days after Angie’s discovery, their concerns heightened even further. On December 1, 1993, a ten-year-old girl named Casey disappeared.
She lived in another town only ten miles from Angie’s house. Casey had asked her mother if she could visit her friends who lived just a few hundred yards away, but she had never reached their house. Casey vanished on the way, and the police could not locate her.
Detectives began to fear that they might have a serial killer on their hands.
They did not rule out the possibility that the same person was behind both abductions, but they had no evidence supporting this theory. Ten days later, Casey’s body was found in St. Louis.
She was wrapped in two bed sheets and covered with a pink curtain, with the cause of death being multiple severe blows to the head.
Detectives could not find any clues that would lead them to the killer. Moreover, they started to doubt that the same person who killed Casey was responsible for Angie’s death. The nature of these crimes was noticeably different, leading them to consider the possibility of dealing with two different murderers in the same month.
Detectives identified the man who had attempted to abduct a girl a few days before Angie’s disappearance. He turned out to be 37-year-old Gary, who often came to St. Louis for work.
He was immediately checked for involvement in the two murders, but the man had a solid alibi; he was not in the city during the disappearances of Angie and Casey.
Although during the investigation he admitted to assaulting four other girls and eventually received a five-year prison sentence, he was not connected to Angie. In February of the following year, detectives had a breakthrough when they discovered Casey’s body. Tire tracks were found nearby, and their photos were handed over to experts who determined that the tracks were left by a pickup truck widely used by a popular rental company.
Armed with this information, detectives interviewed residents in Casey’s neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen a pickup from this company. Given that these vehicles were covered with vibrant brand logos that were easily distinguishable from others, the detectives got lucky. One woman told them that she had seen the pickup from this company near her neighbor’s house about a week after Casey’s disappearance.
Police quickly discovered that there was a woman living with her partner and brother. She claimed that none of them had rented such a pickup and they had no connection to this case. But detectives did not rush to believe her.
They obtained a search warrant for the house and found blood traces belonging to Casey in the basement, along with the murder weapon.
Further investigation revealed that the woman’s brother, Thomas, had rented the pickup. Initially, he denied everything, but when confronted with the existing evidence, he finally confessed. According to his account, Casey had knocked on his door wanting to invite his nephews to go to the street with her.
He invited her into the house, took her to the basement, and attempted to assault her.
When she screamed, he struck her with a heavy object and covered the body with bed sheets. After the murder, Thomas went to work, and upon his return, his sister informed him that she had seen the body in the basement. However, she added that she did not want to know what happened and demanded to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
Casey remained in the basement for a whole week because active searches were underway and Thomas was afraid to move her. When things calmed down a bit, he rented the pickup, took the body to St. Louis, and left it there.
Thomas was eventually sentenced to death, but he died in prison from illnesses several years later.
In connection to Angie’s case, he denied any involvement, leading detectives to conclude that these crimes were indeed unrelated. The investigation hit another standstill for many months, with fewer and fewer leads coming in. Several years after Angie’s murder, detectives faced another challenge: the expiration of the monetary reward for information, raising concerns about a decline in public assistance.
However, an unexpected turn came in 2001 when a businessman in the community donated $250,000 as a reward for information on Angie’s case. This generous amount of money, one of the largest at the time, led to a massive influx of tips for the police, but unfortunately, all of these leads proved to be dead ends.
This continued until 2001, when detectives received a call from a prison inmate named Corey Fox, who confessed to over ten murders, including Angie Housman. Detectives rushed to speak with him, and Fox recounted how he and his friend abducted her from the street, keeping her captive in his house for several days.
Initially, the criminals planned to demand a ransom, but concerns about potential identification led them to choose murder. To the surprise of detectives, Fox provided many accurate details, such as tying her to a tree, even specifying that his accomplice was using her underwear as a gag. However, discrepancies arose when questioned about how they restrained her hands.
Fox claimed they used plastic handcuffs, whereas in reality they used iron ones. Detectives also found out that Fox could not have committed some of the murders he confessed to. Police concluded that he likely fabricated parts of his confession, possibly drawing information from extensive news coverage on Angie Housman’s case.
In the summer of 2002, another event reignited attention on Angie’s case. In a different area of St. Louis, an unknown man abducted a six-year-old girl from her home and killed her.
Police initially considered a possible connection to Angie’s case, but it turned out otherwise. The perpetrator was apprehended just a few hours later; it was a neighbor who confessed during interrogation.
Several more years passed until 2007, when detectives decided to revisit the case. Reviewing the documents, they noticed a peculiar detail. Shortly after discovering Angie’s body, police noticed a parked car nearby with a man named Roger Martin inside.
When questioned about his presence, Roger claimed he came to the area for hunting.
However, upon a brief inspection of his car, the police officer found no hunting gear. This led the new detective team to take a closer look at Roger, discovering his criminal record for offenses against children. Moreover, he had assaulted one of his victims near the location where Angie’s body was found.
Remarkably, all of these crimes occurred before Angie’s death, and this information was in the database. But during that time, the police did not thoroughly investigate Roger, prompting the new detective team to start from scratch. Roger was called in for questioning, but he denied any involvement in Angie’s murder, insisting he was near the location by chance.
Roger added that during the time the girl was left there, he was still at work. Although the police could not confirm this alibi, despite a nine-hour interrogation, detectives could not reach any conclusive results. They took Roger’s fingerprints, comparing them with the one left on the tape from the victim’s head.
Experts determined they did not match, leading to Roger’s release.
While the police refrained from ruling him out as a suspect, they lacked substantial evidence to hold him. There was no progress in the case until 2018, when the St. Louis Police Department formed a dedicated task force.
The new detectives aimed to re-examine all existing evidence with significant advances in technology since 1993, hoping to uncover new leads.
The detectives focused on three key pieces of evidence: the handcuffs, the tape from Angie’s head, and her underwear used to silence her. Despite repeated attempts since 1993, experts struggled to find the perpetrator’s DNA on them. Undeterred, they decided to re-examine these items with modern technology.
First, they attempted to find DNA on the handcuffs, but it was quite challenging as they were almost entirely covered in the victim’s blood. They then turned to the tape from Angie’s head, encountering another issue. When they opened the box containing this evidence, they found that the tape had literally disintegrated over the years.
Finally, they examined the underwear, despite having little hope for this particular evidence, as it had been in the victim’s mouth for several hours, potentially erasing any foreign DNA. They pursued it as a last resort, employing state-of-the-art technology to meticulously inspect every inch of the underwear. At last, there was a breakthrough.
A tiny sample of unfamiliar DNA was discovered, sufficient for analysis. Experts confirmed the DNA belonged to a male, immediately uploading it to the FBI database. In such cases, it is pretty common not to find any matches, requiring additional efforts to identify the person.
However, luck was on the detectives’ side this time.
As soon as the DNA sample was uploaded, they received a full match. The DNA belonged to 58-year-old Earl Cox, who had been in prison since 2003. Cox had never come to the police radar regarding Angie’s case, but his criminal history was substantial.
Earl first landed behind bars during his military service in 1982 in Germany.
He had a part-time job as a babysitter until four girls reported that he had sexually assaulted them. Earl received an eight-year prison sentence in the USA and was discharged from the Army. After serving only three years, he was released early and relocated to St.
Louis. Four years later, Earl was arrested again when two seven-year-old girls accused him of sexual assault.
Despite the charges being dropped due to insufficient evidence, his arrest violated the terms of his parole, leading to an additional year in prison. Upon his release in 1992, he resettled in St. Louis, where his relatives lived.
A year later, he seemingly abducted and killed Angie.
In 2002, Earl faced another arrest for running a major anonymous internet platform where predators shared materials depicting child 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮. The FBI had been investigating him for a while, and Earl took the bait when an undercover agent posing as a 14-year-old girl contacted him. Earl expressed intentions to make her his slave, sent money for a bus ticket, and showed up at the agreed meeting place.
Instead of a girl, Earl encountered armed FBI agents, resulting in his arrest. On his computer, they discovered 45,000 photos of child 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, along with evidence that he was the mastermind behind the perverse platform. This information led to the arrest of 60 more individuals associated with the site, marking one of the country’s largest operations against pedophiles.
In 2003, Earl was sentenced to ten years in prison, but when his term ended, a judge refused to release the offender using a legal loophole allowing the detention of individuals deemed a serious threat to children. As a result, he remained behind bars, and in 2019, his DNA matched the sample from Angie Housman’s case.
Detectives went to prison to speak with him, but Earl denied his involvement and promptly asked for a lawyer. The police recognized that the man had little chance of winning the case in court given the presence of his DNA, but they decided to try something else. Investigators reached out to Earl’s lawyer, stating they would seek the death penalty for Angie’s murder.
However, if the perpetrator confessed, the prosecution would abandon the death penalty in favor of a life sentence. Apparently aware that he would likely lose the case, Earl agreed to the deal. Detectives returned to the prison, where he provided his version of events.
It is worth noting that some parts of his story sounded outright implausible, but the crucial thing for investigators was the confession to the murder.
Earl claimed that on November 18, 1993, he was driving through the area where his mother and sister lived. His car stalled in the middle of the road, and while he was trying to figure out what was wrong with it, a school bus pulled up and several kids got off. They all went into their houses except for one girl, Angie.
According to Earl, when she approached him, they had a brief chat, and he noticed she looked freezing. He offered her a ride in his car, and as he claimed, she agreed. He then took Angie to Burger King, fed her, and brought her to his home, where he sexually assaulted her for several days.
After some time, he decided to get rid of Angie, took her to the location where her body would later be found, and tied her to a tree, allegedly while she was still alive.
Detectives doubted the truthfulness of certain parts of this story. Angie clearly could not have agreed to go anywhere with a stranger, especially considering she only had a short distance to walk home. Investigators also questioned the car breakdown in Earl’s story.
He claimed the car stalled, but as soon as Angie approached, the car surprisingly started again.
More likely, the perpetrator noticed Angie and immediately decided to abduct her. He could have lured her into the car with lies or even threats. It appeared much more realistic than Earl’s version.
Nevertheless, detectives obtained what they needed: the confession to the murder.
In August 2020, he appeared before a judge who sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Unfortunately, Angie’s mother did not live to see this moment. She passed away from cancer in 2016.
Her husband, Ronald, told reporters that Earl should have been tried for two murders because he held him responsible for his wife’s death. After losing her daughter, she lost all interest in life and essentially died.
As for Earl, his story did not end with the verdict. The prosecutor wanted to review the case of sexual 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 involving the two seven-year-old girls for which the offender faced no consequences, serving just a year in prison for parole violation. Police reached out to one of his victims, now an adult, asking her to testify against Earl.
The man, already destined to spend the rest of his life behind bars, admitted his guilt, and he was sentenced to an additional ten years in prison. After the sentence was announced, his victim spoke in court. She expressed that despite Earl’s heinous crime, she would lead a happy and fulfilling life while he rightly fades away in prison.
