Mississippi executes man who killed wife and sexually assaulted stepdaughter

By Edward Era Barbacena

A Mississippi white inmate who killed his estranged wife and sexually assaulted her young daughter was executed by lethal injection Wednesday night.

David Neal Cox, 50, was put to death at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman after filing court papers calling himself “worthy of death” and ditching all appeals.

Cox in 2012 pleaded guilty to fatally shooting Kim Kirk Cox in May 2010 in the small town of Sherman.

He also pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting his then-12-year-old stepdaughter in front of her dying mother.

Cox previously admitted to sexually assaulting his
then-12-year-old stepdaughter, Lindsey Kirk
 (pictured), in front of his wife, Kim Kirk Cox.

The stepdaughter, now 23, witnessed Cox’s execution.

“I want my children to know that I love them very much and that I was a good man at one time,” Cox said just before the injection started. “Don’t ever read anything but the King James Bible.”

He also thanked the state corrections commissioner, Burl Cain, for “being very kind to me” before adding, “That’s all I got to say.”

Cox was the first Mississippi inmate executed in nine years.