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Richard Colvin Cox was a second-year military cadet whose disappearance from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1950 is still unsolved. He is the only West Point cadet to have disappeared without being found.

A mysterious friend named George

Cadet Cox, who was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio, had a mysterious friend who had served with him in the U.S. Army's Sixth Constabulary Regiment in Coburg, Germany in 1947. Cox had served in the S-2 (intelligence) section of Headquarters Company within the constabulary. At 4:45 p.m. on January 7, 1950, the friend telephoned Cox's classmate Peter Hains, the charge of quarters in Cadet Company B-2 who answered incoming calls for company members. Hains said later the phone caller was a man whose "tone was rough and patronizing, almost insulting." After Hains told the man that Cox was not in his room, the man replied, "Well, look, when he comes in, tell him to come on down here to the hotel. ... Just tell him George called -- he'll know who I am. We knew each other in Germany. I'm just up here for a little while, and tell him I'd like to get him a bite to eat." Later that evening Cox got the message, met "George" in the visitors' area in Grant Hall, they sat in George's car and drank from a bottle of whiskey and Cox returned to his room in B-2 to sleep off the buzz.Dick Cox and "George" visited again the following day, January 8, although nothing is known about that encounter.

According to Harry Maihafer, one of two writers who investigated the case decades later, "During the next few days, Dick Cox mentioned his visitor a few times, but never by name, even when asked. ... The man, Cox said, was a former ranger who liked to brag about having killed Germans during the war. He had even boasted about cutting off their private parts afterward. Another story he had told Cox was about having gotten a German girl pregnant and then murdering her to prevent her from having the baby."Around 6 p.m on January 14, 1950, after "George" paid Richard Cox a third visit, the two men left the grounds of the academy and vanished without a trace. In the 1950s the American media considered this one of the most mysterious unsolved missing persons cases in history. Cox was declared legally dead in 1957.

Disappearance re-examined

In the 1980s, historian Marshall Jacobs re-opened the investigation and spent close to eight years conducting interviews and reviewing documents received under the Freedom of Information Act and other documents. Eventually, he worked with writer Harry Maihafer to write the book Oblivion, which proposes a solution.

See also

• United States Military Academy
• Military cadet
• Missing persons
• legally dead
• List of people who have disappeared

Bibliography

• Maihafer, Harry, Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox, Potomac Books, 1999. ISBN 1-57488-224-4

References

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1. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.42
2. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.60
3. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.23
4. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.23
5. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.23-6
6. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.26

• United States Army personnel stubs
• Disappeared people