ST. CHARLES, Mo. _ The man accused of killing 9-year-old Angie Housman in 1993 pleaded guilty Thursday in the girl's death and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Earl W. Cox, 63, was facing charges of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual abuse after his DNA was found on a piece of Housman's clothing more than 25 years after her death.
"Your crimes not only terrified Angie and her family, but the entire community," Circuit Court Judge Jon Cunningham said before sentencing Cox, who appeared in court using a walker and with gray hair past his shoulders and a blue surgical mask covering a white beard.
Members of Angie's family appeared for the plea and sentencing, with the girl's stepfather, brother and aunts addressing the court.
Angie disappeared from her school bus stop in November 1993 in St. Ann. Cox, a disgraced Air Force veteran and convicted pedophile, was living just blocks from where she was last seen. A deer hunter found the body of the fourth-grader nine days later in a remote area of Busch Wildlife Area in St. Charles County.
She had been starved, handcuffed, sexually assaulted, and her eyes and mouth were covered with duct tape. Authorities believe she died from exposure mere hours before she was found.
The killing set off panic in the St. Louis area as one of three murders of young girls that year and led to one of the most intense police investigations ever launched in the region. Dozens of detectives were assigned to the case. A tip line dedicated to Angie's case received more than 5,000 calls in just one day from people offering information that might be used to find the killer.
But it wasn't until more than 25 years later that advances in technology allowed investigators to extract DNA from a scrap of Angie's underwear. The DNA was matched to a sample from Cox in a national database in March 2019. Cox was charged three months later.
Cox has been incarcerated since 2003, when he was convicted of being an administrator for an international online child pornography network. He completed his sentence for that crime in 2011, but authorities designated him a sexually dangerous person and kept him incarcerated at the Butner Medium Security Facility in North Carolina.
In 1982, Cox was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force and convicted of molesting four girls he babysat while stationed at a base in Germany. He was released in 1985 but sent back to prison in 1992 after he was arrested on suspicion of inappropriate contact with two girls in Overland.
Cox was released from prison 11 months before Angie disappeared.
He has been in custody in St. Charles County since he was charged with the murder last year.
