The deaths of Wanda and Maurelle Cox

Charles W. Cox 
South Bend Tribune

The #52ancestors prompt this week is "challenge." There are a number of ways to take this prompt, but the one that stood out to me as I thought about it was that of a legal challenge. I've seen a few land disputes taken to court in my research, but no legal challenge in my research has reached the level of coverage or public interest as the 1934 case of Wanda and Maurelle Cox, two young girls who were found to have died of arsenic poisoning. Arrested and tried for their deaths were their father, Charles W. Cox, and a nurse, Nell Baker. The story was picked up by the Associated Press, giving it national coverage.

headline from the Owensboro, KY,
Messenger-Inquirer, 22 July 1934.

The headline was pretty sensational. The two girls' father and nurse had been arrested and were being charged with murder. The case was reported in many area newspapers nearby.

Charles W. Cox, born in 1891 in Kentucky, the oldest son of Otway "Ott" Giles Cox, was at one time a divinity student. In the 1910 U.S. census he was a farm laborer, presumably on his parents' farm, as he was listed with them and his siblings there in Madisonville, KY. Charles married Martha Elizabeth "Bessie" Finley in Indiana in 1912. In 1916, their first daughter Bessie Maurelle Cox (hereinafter referred to as Maurelle because the newspaper accounts prefer that name) was born in Kentucky. In the 1920 U.S. census, Charles is shown with his wife Martha E. Cox, and daughter Bessie M. Cox. He listed his occupation as an insurance salesman. Then Wanda Cox was born in 1924, also in Kentucky. The 1930 U.S. census shows Charlie Cox with daughters Bessie M. Cox and Wanda Cox as lodgers under Mrs. Cross Wilkins in Hopkinsville, KY, with Charles still working as an insurance agent. I have not yet found his wife Bessie in the 1930 census. On the FamilySearch Tree, these are the only children listed for this couple. Wanda died on 4 June 1934, and Maurelle died on June 11. 

I still have several research questions to answer on this family. So far, I don't know why Bessie was not listed with the family in 1930. She had not yet died (as later articles note that she was present for at least some of the trial), but it seems likely that she and Charles had separated. The newspaper reports of the trial have a number of misspellings for both daughters' names.

The nurse mentioned in the headline above was Nell Baker, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Baker of Salem, KY. She was 38 or 39 at the time of the trial in 1934. I have not yet been able to link her to a specific person in the FamilySearch Tree; the names are a little too common and the newspaper items I've found on the trial don't give much more information.

After the Kentucky state board of health lab concluded that both deaths were caused by arsenic poisoning, Charles and Nell were arrested and jailed, with reported bond amounts ranging from $5,000 to $7,500 (equivalent to about $118,000 to $188,000 today when adjusted for inflation). Nell was able to post bond with assistance from other family members, but Charles could not. During his incarceration, Charles maintained his innocence; he passed a hand-written note to a reporter from the Madisonville, KY, Messenger that read:

excerpt from the Madisonville, KY, Messenger, 3 August 1934

A story by the Associated Press (AP) published a week later suggested that Nell had testified that she and Charles were expected to be married, and cast doubt on Charles's declaration. The AP reports a portion of the testimony as follows:

excerpt from the Louisville, KY, Courier-Journal, 11 August 1934

The article doesn't state when Bessie Cox was in the hospital or why she was there. The trial progressed through the fall and into the next year. Nell's case was separated from Charles's case to try the two of them individually. Ultimately, Nell was acquitted in March 1935 on charges for Wanda's death, and prosecutors declined to bring further charges for Maurelle's death saying to the AP that "the death of Wanda was 'a much stronger case.'" Very soon after that, Charles's case was also dismissed following a motion from the prosecution.

clipping from The (Covington) Kentucky Post
and Times-Star, 18 March 1935

Charles Cox didn't marry Nell after the trial. He moved to Ohio, appearing in the 1940 U.S. census in Lima with a wife named Faye Cox. The FamilySearch Tree suggests that this was Faye C. Addison, who was born in 1893 in Ohio. Her ancestry is not yet documented in the Tree, and I have not researched it yet. Charles died on 4 January 1968 in Lima, Ohio. I don't know much about his time after the trial except that he registered for the World War II draft and that he had returned to selling insurance, by then for the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, based in Nashville.

I have not heard any stories of this situation from family members yet, and only know what I've seen in newspaper accounts of the time. What I want to find now are the court transcripts and/or judgment documents from the trials. There will likely be many more details to be gleaned from those documents.