FAYETTE COUNTY, W.Va. (TCD) — A 62-year-old man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for fatally shooting his daughter and his son-in-law in 2022.
Fayette County Prosecuting Attorney Anthony Ciliberti Jr. announced April 22 that a judge sentenced Carl Cox to two life sentences for the first-degree murders of his daughter, Rhonda Cox, and his son-in-law, James “Jimmy” Neal II. The defendant must serve 30 years before parole eligibility. A jury found Carl Cox guilty in February following a five-day trial.
According to the prosecuting attorney’s office, on Jan. 29, 2022, law enforcement officials responded to a home on Dempsey Road to a report of a shooting. Carl Cox told an officer he heard a gunshot coming from his daughter’s room. He reportedly said he ran there and Neal had shot her. The prosecuting attorney’s office said Cox told the officer that he “wrestled the gun from Neal and then used the firearm to kill Neal.”
Investigators reportedly noticed that both victims were “lying in their bed and appeared to have been shot where they were found.” The prosecuting attorney’s office said Rhonda Cox had suffered a gunshot wound to her chest, and her husband sustained gunshot wounds to his neck, chest, and hand.
According to prosecutors, investigators believe Neal had been shot while he was in bed because there were two bullet holes in the mattress near his body. Additionally, the victims’ blood was found on the mattress, and investigators didn’t find any signs of a struggle.
Officials reportedly obtained home surveillance footage showing Carl Cox walking toward the bedroom with a gun right before the shooting.
In court, Cox said he left the weapon in the bathroom and Neal must have found it there, the prosecuting attorney’s office said. Investigators reportedly found additional surveillance footage showing Cox going to the living room after the shooting, which was just a couple of minutes after the first surveillance footage.
According to the prosecuting attorney’s office, Cox also told a fellow inmate he had killed the victims.
Cox reportedly told another inmate he had “intended to kill his son-in-law, Jimmy Neal because Neal was threatening to come forward with information that Cox had been involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter, Rhonda when she was a minor child.” Cox allegedly said his daughter got in the way as he was killing Neal, and so he killed her too.
According to the prosecuting attorney’s office, another daughter and a former son-in-law of Carl Cox also reportedly provided information “to support the allegations that Cox had been involved in an incestuous relationship” with Rhonda Cox when she was a child.
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