Richard Colvin Cox - A Mysterious Friend Named George

A Mysterious Friend Named George

At 4:45 pm on Saturday, 7 January 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 went 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 effects of the alcohol. (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 as if 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 for a week without anyone's 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, 8 January, 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, 14 January 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.