Michael J. Cox (Madison County Jail mug shots)
Prosecutors in Madison County, Indiana, suddenly reversed course on a plea agreement in the case of a suspected child predator after realizing that the same man was convicted all the way back in 1983 of murdering an elderly woman.
Michael J. Cox, 66, was charged in October 2021 with committing numerous sex crimes and was set to be sentenced in August for only three offenses: Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a felony, dissemination of material harmful to minors, a felony, and a misdemeanor for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Cox was initially charged with two counts of promoting child sex trafficking, two counts of disseminating harmful material to minors, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, sexual misconduct with a minor, and child solicitation, court records show.
Local NBC affiliate WTHR reported that Cox was accused of plying young boys with money, alcohol, and marijuana in exchange for illicit sex acts and that the defendant had cameras in his residence and “videos of another boy on his phone.”
The plea agreement was filed on July 17 and the defendant pleaded guilty two days later, court records say.
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On Aug. 21, just two days before Cox was scheduled to be sentenced, prosecutors asked the judge to move the sentencing date to Oct. 4. We now have a better idea of why.
Madison County Prosecuting Attorney Rodney Cummings said that his office didn’t know about Cox’s decades-old murder conviction in the death of Ruth Heaton because the murder case didn’t appear in the database the office uses.
“Once we were aware of the murder conviction, we filed to have it (the plea agreement) withdrawn,” Cummings explained, according to the Herald Bulletin. “I’m not going to offer a plea agreement to someone with a murder conviction.”
Law&Crime attempted to locate Cox’s murder case in the Indiana court database by searching “Michael J. Cox,” but the case didn’t show up. When we searched “Michael J Cox” instead, the case did appear and it showed he was found guilty of first-degree murder on Aug. 29, 1983.
Cox’s co-defendant John W. Drake was convicted in Madison County Circuit Court on June 13, 1982, his case docket shows.
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An Indiana Supreme Court decision from 1986 upholding Cox’s first-degree murder conviction said that Ruth Heaton, an “elderly and nearly blind widow,” was brutally strangled to death on April 7, 1977 after she was repeatedly hit over the head with a candelabra.
Cox, the high court noted, was tried and convicted “under the theory he aided and assisted the actual assailant, John Drake.”
The trial established that Cox worked as a handyman for Heaton after her husband died, and that he “began to tell acquaintances he anticipated receiving a large sum of money at the time of Heaton’s death. ”
On the day of the murder, Cox took Heaton out to lunch and then to a bank where the defendant worked.
“Appellant had worked at this branch and was familiar with the tellers and the bank procedures. After Heaton had completed her banking business, appellant gave the teller an $11,000 check and a deposit ticket reflecting a deposit to his account for that amount,” the decision said. “The check was drawn on Heaton’s account and was made payable to the bank. Appellant told the teller he did not need a receipt and drove away.”
It took several years for investigators to file murder charges against Cox and Drake — and the latter man’s statements to relatives proved to be crucial.
“After consuming alcohol and drugs one evening, John Drake became very emotional and told the others [family members] that he had killed Heaton while appellant [Cox] watched and smiled,” the ruling recounted.
Although Cox was initially sentenced to life in prison like Drake, the murder sentence was eventually reduced to 40 years and the defendant ended up serving 17 years behind bars, the local reports said.
At the time of his 2021 arrest, Cox was the president of Stepping Stones for Veterans Inc., a since-shuttered organization dedicated to helping homeless veterans with alcohol and drug abuse issues, the Herald Bulletin reported.
You can read the Indiana Supreme Court’s 1986 decision here.
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