Post by Graveyardbride on Apr 5, 2015 8:21:09 GMT -5
Murder at the Drive-Thru Window
The Last Customer. His voice was unremarkable for that part of town – a little bit of a twang, but probably educated; he didn't sound like a country bumpkin. Even the order seemed normal: a roast beef combo. The driver pulled around to the small Hardee's drive-thru window, where Peggy Cox prepared to serve the last customer of the night. Then two pops, like someone had dropped a couple light bulbs. Cox collapsed to the floor.
Looking back – as he does often – Jude Cox said he's sure there wasn't enough time for the driver to demand cash like he'd expect in a robbery. One of the bullets pierced his mother's brain stem, killing her on her 49th birthday: February 1, 1991. At the time, he was working in the kitchen. "I still hope every day that they find out who done it and find out why," he said. "Because it just didn't make any sense."
Almost 25 years later, it still doesn't. Franklin authorities have offered a reward for tips, consulted with an elite society of investigators who solve cold cases and started a Facebook page. They've produced a slick YouTube video and, last year, they persuaded a local bail bond company to put Peggy Cox's picture – friendly gray eyes smiling through a pair of round Coke bottle lenses with a pinkish tint – on a billboard for several months.
Meanwhile, Franklin itself has changed. Glowing corporate centers line what was once an interstate heading into darkness. Sprawling tracts of homes have sprung up on former plantations and farmland, drawing thousands of suburbanites from around the country. The city's population has more than tripled, from about 20,000 in 1990 to almost 69,000 in 2013, according to US census data. Still, Cox's death remains Franklin's only unsolved murder – a lingering scar that has bedeviled a police department and left a family struggling to imagine life with closure.
A Quiet Life. Desiree Cox has gotten used to talking about her mother. Her voice doesn't crack when she discusses the murder. She doesn't tear up. Peggy Cox's oldest child, now 47, has over the past quarter century become the family's de facto spokeswoman – doing media interviews, sharing updates from detectives with her two siblings. What's ironic, Desiree said recently, is that her mom would be mortified by all the attention. "She'd be crawling under a chair somewhere," she said with a wry laugh on a recent evening. For the most part, she said, her mother was an introverted stay-at-home mom. She descended from local "die-hard Catholic" lineage, as Desiree put it. She got married in her early 20s to a guy she met through a church group – a union man who followed in his dad's footsteps to work at the same phone company.
In 1973, a car crash left her father in a vegetative state. So, a short time later, Peggy Cox moved the family to Thompson's Station, where they'd be closer to her parents and siblings. Desiree, who inherited her mother's shy, dimpled grin, said life there reminded her of Green Acres, the 1960s television show about New York city slickers who decamp to a farm. Their house, she said, was on a gravel road with water from a well. Although her grandparents helped out with the family, caring for her father took its toll on her mother. Her father died in 1983. "She sort of had bouts of depression," she recalled. "She wasn't really prepared for that life skill."
Nevertheless, Peggy Cox seemed to find happiness in little things. Her kids taught her to swim, and she enjoyed that. "She was the only mom at the pool who would do forward somersaults into the pool," Desiree recalled. She could read a romance novel a day and had a thing for Sean Connery. Co-workers at Hardee's called her "Mama," and her children's friends would swing by the drive-thru just to say hello.
Jude Cox, who lived at home after graduation, said "she was about my best friend in high school." When they worked at Hardee's together, she'd give him rides to the restaurant. They could talk about anything, he said. On the night she died, Jude was the first to reach his mother. She'd been hit as she backed away from the window. He'd dropped to the floor, too, not knowing whether more bullets might be flying. He remembers those moments clearly. The next hours, he said, passed in more of a blur.
In the City of Franklin's video describing the case, Jude and Desiree Cox's middle sister, Rachel Cox, said she arrived at the restaurant as police were talking with her brother. He was clutching their mother's bloodied glasses.
Dead Ends. Franklin Police were baffled by the slaying. Peggy Cox hardly fit the profile of a woman with enemies. No angry ex-husbands or boyfriends, as far as anyone has been able to find. She hadn't even been scheduled to work that evening. The shooting happened late at night on what was then a much more sparse commercial strip along Highway 96. It was dark, and no pedestrians passed by on that chilly night. No customers were inside the restaurant and no surveillance camera captured an image of whomever placed that final order.
A manager who was doing paperwork in a back office made the frantic 911 call. Within moments, a Franklin police officer, now Lt. Kevin Teague, arrived at the scene. But by then, the killer was gone, police said.
It would be the only murder in Franklin that year, handled by a department of 48 sworn officers. Today, the department has about 120 officers. In 2013, Franklin had no murders.
Early on, police said the shots may have come from someone in a small blue-gray car or white Impala, according to a 2005 Tennessean story. That was it, though – no DNA evidence, no witnesses. An early theory was that Cox's death could have been an act of gang violence, perhaps an initiation killing, the story said. However, while investigators have emphasized they haven't ruled anything out, Franklin Police Chief Deborah Faulkner said gangs were essentially a nonfactor in the area. Another theory, The Tennessean reported, was that the killer may have attempted to rob the place but got spooked. No suspect has ever been identified.
Peaks and Valleys. Faulkner, who sat in a conference room recently in the department's spotless headquarters, said the case stands apart in her mind. "Franklin is unique in that it has one cold case," she said. "Other cities have more. And you never forget them."
A longtime law enforcement official, Faulkner took the helm of the Franklin Police Department last year. Since then, Faulkner has led an effort with help from the governor's office, the FBI and the city of Franklin to raise a $20,000 reward for tips leading to successful arrest and conviction. "Now you can't go anywhere and not be on camera. We didn't have that then," she said. "It's going to take someone with a conscience who knows to tell us."
Not long after she started, Faulkner said, Detective Darren Barnes, the latest of several detectives to handle the case over the years, approached her about the case. It has remained a priority. "We still talk about it almost every day," she added. "It's peaks and valleys: you jump on something, but then, oh, they were in jail, they couldn't have been there."
Barnes said he asked to take the case in 2011. He grew up in Franklin and remembered hearing about the murder. The violence and apparent randomness struck him. "Everybody remembers that case," he said. At the time, he was working as a Williamson County 911 operator. He joined the Franklin Police Department the next year.
The case has been reviewed at least once a year since the killing. Barnes said that, at the beginning, he had the rather un-glamorous task of combing through old documents, stored in three large file boxes, searching for hints of something that might have been missed – any detail that might have been overlooked.
In 2013, more than two decades after the murder, the department sought help from the Vidocq Society, a Philadelphia-based organization that helps investigators crack cold murder cases. Nine times each year, between 50 and 80 volunteers with expertise in a range of investigative fields – from criminal profilers to crime scene analysts, from retired coroners to DNA lab owners – convene to take another look at cold cases from around the country.
Barnes said the experience was a little intimidating, but helpful. "At the end of the presentation, just about every hand shot up," he said. While he wouldn't get into specific recommendations about the investigation, he said that one piece of advice was to just get the case out there on social media. Hence, the Facebook page and the video. All of it, Barnes said, has helped generate new leads.
William Gill, case manager for the society, said the organization usually works with smaller departments that may not have access to some high-tech resources. Or, they could just use fresh sets of eyes. "Our role – they don't call it a cold case for nothing," he said.
Bill Fleisher, who helped found the organization in 1990, said it solves most of the cases in which they are involved. The problem is finding enough evidence to prove the crime. The former US Customs Service and FBI special agent said that in most cases, victims know their killers. That's why Fleisher said one of the first things he asks when looking at cold cases is simple: "Cui bono?" "Who benefits?"
A $20,000 reward is available for tips that lead to the killer. Anyone with knowledge of Peggy Cox's murder is urged to called the Franklin Police tip line at 615-550-8404 or submit an eTip at bit.ly/10l10U0.
Source: Jill Cowan, The Tennessean, March 23, 2015.