Long Article on Cox (TX LA abductor)
Insomniatrix
Felon had chances to turn life around
By ALAN BERNSTEIN and LISA TEACHEY
Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle
For many years in the northern suburbs of Houston, Gary Dale Cox was a
bustling businessman with a wife and three daughters.
Gary Dale Cox
But his mind and body stirred with at least one dark constant. He repeatedly
exposed his genitals to and molested pre-teen and teen-age girls. He was
convicted of indecency charges in 1988, 1993 and 1995.
He got probation the first two times. He was sentenced to eight years in
prison in the last bundle of cases.
Cox unsuccessfully argued to a judge in a 1996 letter from prison that he
deserved the earliest form of release, called "shock probation."
"At one time I thought that the idea of jail therapy was some sick joke,"
Cox printed on white legal paper. "But now I realize that coming to (prison)
was the shock I needed to recognize the seriousness of my offense and make a
dramatic change in my thinking and behavior."
Cox was paroled in 1998, imprisoned in 1999 for a few weeks for pornography
on his home computer and released in February 2000 to a Houston halfway
house, which he fled a month later.
If police suspicions are correct, the only major change he made was toward
deeper evil -- and the only sick joke was on a justice system that gave him
so many chances.
Cox was a prime suspect in the Tuesday abduction of Leah Henry, 11, of
Houston.
FBI officials in Houston had planned to release Cox's name and background
early Friday. Leah was rescued later that morning by a Kerr County deputy,
an FBI spokesman said.
Police are still determining whether Cox is the man who shot himself Friday
near a shack outside Kerrville, where Leah was rescued.
Cox was suspected of abducting girls in Houston, San Antonio and a New
Orleans suburb.
Cox, a short and stocky 48-year-old who once appeared sad-eyed and brooding
in a law enforcement photograph, was no stranger to therapy that was
designed to curb diabolical urges.
He underwent psychological treatment, according to records from his 1997
divorce case, which his wife initiated while he was incarcerated. And he had
therapy behind bars.
"I deeply regret my crime and realize I have a debt to pay," he wrote from
prison in 1996. He asked to be released so he could rejoin his wife and
children.
In a meticulously lettered statement he wrote a year later for the divorce,
Cox identified himself as the defendant and his wife as the plaintiff.
"Although the defendant loves plaintiff with all his heart and is
broken-hearted by this action, defendant believes that all issues of this
divorce will be amicably settled between the parties with no need for
trial," he said.
The divorce records contained no indication that he was ever indecent with
his daughters, now 21, 18 and 15. His wife has remarried.
A therapist also worked with Cox during his aborted two-month stay at the
halfway house, the Reid Community Correctional Facility on Old Beaumont
Highway, a Reid spokesman said.
On the evening of March 30, 2000, Cox returned to the halfway house from
outside activities that typically included job training. But he was missing
at a midnight bed check, officials said, and a warrant was issued a few
hours later for his parole to be revoked.
There was no public information Friday on where Cox spent the following 13
months.
But his roots in the comfortable suburbs of Humble, Crosby and northwest
Houston were clear.
Cox, who got married in Harris County in 1978, identified himself in court
papers as a self-employed businessman and laborer.
He owned Marathon Track and Falcon Track, which built tracks for joggers and
other athletes, according to public records and a firm that sold him
equipment. He also owned a pressure-washing business and a few properties in
northeast Harris County.
Cox used the name Gregory Marvin Cox, records show.
His first known trouble with the law as an adult cropped up in 1988, when he
pleaded guilty to exposing himself to a girl. Apparently because of Cox's
good behavior, a Harris County judge ended the probation in 1990 and the
charges were dismissed, according to court records.
In 1993, Cox got eight years' probation after pleading guilty to exposing
himself twice. His 1995 Harris County case involved touching a girl's
breast.
In a 1995 Montgomery County case, he was accused of trying to lure a
12-year-old Porter girl into his car and then exposing himself.
About four months later, the girl recognized Cox's car as he drove by her
house, authorities said. Her father followed him and saw his license-plate
number, and he was arrested.
Cox got out of prison three years later, registered as a sex offender and
began life as a paroled, divorced man at a trailer park on Rocky Road in
Conroe.
Sgt. Morgan Bennett, coordinator of the Montgomery County sheriff's
sex-offender unit, said Cox appeared to be a mild-mannered loner.
"I had done compliance visits and never had any trouble out of him," Bennett
said. "He was by himself every time we went by."
Conroe defense attorney Steve Jackson said that during this time, Cox was
"just an ordinary person."
"Until I saw his picture on TV, I didn't even remember what he looked like,"
Jackson said. "I saw nothing unusual about him and about the way he looked."
Cox was jailed in late 1999 for allegedly violating his probation by
possessing the pornography. Jackson, paid by Cox's father and other
relatives, persuaded the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to let Cox go to
the halfway house in February 2000.
He moved to the Reid Community Correctional Facility under the highest level
of supervision by parole officers and the halfway-house staff, officials
said. Until his disappearance, Cox was reprimanded only for minor violations
such as being late for activities, a Reid spokesman said.
But a few hours after fleeing the halfway house last year, Cox was a wanted
man. In addition to facing the warrant to revoke his parole, he was charged
with failing to re-register as a sex offender. Law enforcement agencies
failed to find him for more than a year.
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Valerie
"Insomniatrix" <clar...@nospam.netscape.com> wrote in message
news:jGNI6.619$tF5....@news2.atl...
> May 5, 2001, 12:03AM
>
> But his mind and body stirred with at least one dark constant. He
repeatedly
> exposed his genitals to and molested pre-teen and teen-age girls. He was
> convicted of indecency charges in 1988, 1993 and 1995.
I can't even count the amount of times men have exposed themselves to me,
which frightened me, as a child. I even had an incident when a man exposed
himself to me when I was in college, which didn't scare me but *grossed me
out*. I was able to identify this pervert ( a known sexual predator) who
*supposedly* went on to continue treatment.
I wonder what the statistics are of men who DO expose themselves and
eventually commit rape because the thrill of exposing themselves doesn't *do
it* for them any more.
We need to change the laws on these *sickos* to protect our children. It's
similar to letting repeat DUI offenders go until they end up killing someone
on the road.
I'm glad this man can't hurt any more children. What a sad childhood HE must
have had.
Valerie
glas
Outrageous. Three years in prison for trying to abduct a little girl and
it's obvious that he was already known to be a sexual predator with
seriously unacceptable inclinations and a clear pattern of escalting
misbehaviour. No wonder so many children are abducted, molested and murdered
in this country.
Something is seriously wrong with the justice system when a pervert like
this is set loose in three years while thoroughly decent human beings have
rotted away in jail cells for decades because of something as trifling as
being in possession of pot.
glas
PattyC
of nothing--->Cops several years back said to me that those who expose
themselves do not rape.
Sure.
This Cox is one scary example of a loser predator. I wonder how many girls
he hurt in one way or another that were not actually kidnapped.
PattyC
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
Valerie <stan...@datasync.com> wrote in message
news:9d0mu2$ib$1...@news.datasync.com...
