The State of Mississippi on Wednesday executed a man convicted of murdering his wife and sexually abusing his stepdaughter. The stepdaughter, now 23, watched as David Neal Cox, 50, died by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the New York Post reported. Cox pleaded guilty to shooting and killing Kim Kirk Cox in May 2010. He also admitted he sexually assaulted his stepdaughter, then 12, in front of his wife as his wife died in the attack.
“Her stepfather sexually assaulted her three times in front of her dying mother — even as police surrounded the home and tried to get him to release the hostages,” the AP said of Kirk.
In 2018 he wrote:
if I had my perfect way & will about it, Id ever so gladly dig my dead sarkastic wife up of in whom I very happiliy & premeditatedly slaughtered on 5-14-2010 & with eager pleasure kill the fat heathern hore agan . . . & would do it agan & agan, happilly if chance was given.
Not long after that, he waved all appeals and asked to be put to death.
I am worthy of death & I do not wish to challenge the State of Mississippi any further, I seek the termination of all counsel & all appeals on the grounds of ineffective and ineficent counsel.
I seek the termination of all appeals wheather it be in the present or in the future. I seek to bring clousure to my victims & family & all I hurt whether it be emotionally, phsyikally or both, by the speedy execution of my guilty body.
Jesus
“I want to tell my children that I love them very, very much, and that I was a good man at one time, and only read the King James [version] of the Bible, and I appreciate the Commissioner for being so nice to me,” Cox said before he died. “That’s all I got to say.”
Moreover, I am Anabaptist, namely, old order Amish, & it is in conflict with my religeon to have lawyers. The First Amendment of the United State of America gives me the freedom of Religon & in Anabaptism we Anabaptist do NOT associate ourselves with any lawyers or state representatives. . . . I ask the court to evaluate the First Amendment & grant me my American rite as a American citizen to exrocise my Anabaptist faith in God with good conscious in the sight of Jesus Christ-my mediator.
In an earlier interview prior to the execution, Cox’s stepdaughter seemed ambivalent.
“When I found out that he was wanting to go ahead and get it over with, I wasn’t really happy about it. Like, I kind of just wanted him to sit there,” the stepdaughter, Lindsey Kirk, told The Associated Press last week. “I guess I’m OK with it now.”
