A Mississippi man became the state’s first execution in nearly 10 years on Wednesday after he was convicted of killing his wife and sexually assaulting his stepdaughter while her mother was forced to watch as she was dying.
David Neal Cox, 50, pleaded guilty to capital murder in 2012 and pleaded guilty to other charges including sexual assault. The crime was committed in 2010 when he shot and killed his estranged wife Kim Cox. His stepdaughter Lindsey Kirk, now 23, was present at his execution.
“I want my children to know that I love them very much and that I was a good man at one time,” Cox said just before his death, according to the Associated Press. “Don’t ever read anything but the King James Bible.”
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Kirk told the Associated Press that she had been assaulted by Cox for several years when her mother was out of the house, and Cox threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
Kirk eventually told her mother about the assault in 2009. Cox was arrested and charged with statutory rape, sexual battery, child abuse, and possession of methamphetamine. However, he was released without standing trial in 2010, a month before the murder.
Cox held his wife, stepdaughter, and one of his stepsons hostage for eight hours on the night of May 14 into the next day in Sherman, Mississippi. Cox shot his wife and then sexually assaulted Kirk three times while her mother was dying. By the time police arrived and got inside, Kim Cox had died.
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Burl Cain, the state corrections commissioner, told the Associated Press the execution had gone “picture perfect.”
Cain also confirmed the use of three drugs for the execution: midazolam, a sedative, vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. The drugs are hard to obtain due to pharmaceutical companies frequently blocking their use for executions.
Mississippi currently has 30 inmates on death row, though no other execution has been scheduled.
