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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 who ever disappeared without being found dead or alive.

A mysterious friend named George

Cadet Cox was born in Mansfield, Ohio on July 25, 1928 and graduated from high school in 1946, the immediate aftermath of World War II. The following year he served in the U.S. Army's Sixth Constabulary Regiment in Coburg, Germany. He served in the S-2 (intelligence) section of Headquarters Company within the Constabulary. Located near the recently created border of West Germany and East Germany, "the Constabulary's job," according to a military journalist and 1949 West Point graduate named Harry Maihafer, "was to man border posts and run patrols. Across the border, just beyond the barbed wire and minefields and less than a football field away, were frowning East German and Soviet troops, armed with submachine guns and constantly watching the Americans through binoculars and telescopic sights." Also serving in the S-2 section at the time (1947) was a mysterious army official who later used the name "George." Later in 1947 Richard Cox applied for and received his appointment to West Point, arriving at the preparatory school at Stewart Field (located near the academy proper) in January of 1948.

At 4:45 p.m. on Saturday, January 7, 1950, a man telephoned Cox's West Point classmate Peter Hains, the charge of quarters in Cadet Company B-2 (part of the North Barracks) who answered incoming calls for company members. Hains said later the phone caller's "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, signed out in the Company B-2 Departure Book indicating he would have dinner off-campus and met "George" in the visitors' area inside Grant Hall. The two men repaired to George's car, which was parked on the West Point campus, and drank from a bottle of whiskey while sitting inside the car. Cox returned to B-2, signed the Departure Book, took a shower and slept off the buzz. (His two roommates later revealed this.) At an indeterminate time that evening, Cox altered the military time he had written in the Departure Book, changing "1923" to "1823" to make it look like he had attended the 6:30 p.m. cadet supper formation.In fact, he had skipped the formation. This detail was not discovered until two years later when an agent of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command had the Departure Book examined in a laboratory. Cox remained at the military academy, where classmates called him "Dick Cox," for a week without anyone noticing his offense; if anyone had Cox could have been charged with violating the Cadet Honor Code and likely expelled. "George" made a second visit to Cox on Sunday, January 8, the day after their drinking bout. If Cox consumed alcohol on that occasion, no one noticed it and he never admitted it. (On Sunday morning before "George" arrived for the second time, Cox admitted to his roommates that he had drunk whiskey with his friend the previous day.)

According to Harry Maihafer, one of three people 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 Saturday, January 14, 1950, when "George" paid Richard Cox a third visit, the two men left the grounds of the academy and vanished without a trace. Throughout the 1950s the American media considered this one of the most mysterious missing persons cases in history. Richard Colvin Cox was declared legally dead in 1957.

Disappearance re-examined

In 1985, upon his retirement from teaching history in a Miami-Dade County, Florida high school, Marshall Jacobs re-opened the investigation and spent almost eight years interviewing witnesses, including Cox's two roommates, and reviewing FBI documents received under the Freedom of Information Act as well as documents from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Eventually, Jacobs worked with military writer and 1949 West Point graduate Harry Maihafer to write the book Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox, originally published in 1996. It proposes a solution to the mystery. Maihafer died in 2002 at age 77. Jacobs lives in the Miami area.

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

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.61
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. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.23-6
7. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.23-6
8. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.90-1
9. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.90
10. Maihafer, Harry J. Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1996. p.26

• Disappeared people