Posted By Danny Wicentowski on Fri, Mar 5, 2021 at 3:39 PM MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS Earl Webster Cox. Last year, Earl Webster Cox was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1993. On Friday, a second victim, now an adult, faced Cox on a video feed as he took an Alford plea, admitting that prosecutors had enough evidence to potentially win a conviction against him on four counts of sodomy — the legal term for sexual assault — against a victim below the age of fourteen. The crimes took place in 1988 and 1989, when the victim was seven years old. For Cox, it was just one chapter in a horrifying, decades-long spree of violence, child abuse, sexual exploitation.