Cassidy Senter's Abduction and Murder Was Solved, But What About Angie Housman's?

💜Angie Housman💜

“She’s always proud about what she’d make in school,” said Angie's mom. “She’d come in and say, ‘Look, Mommy!’ She is always happy. Very outgoing. She’d always tell me if she was going to a friend’s home.”

Angie was bright, happy, friendly and outgoing. She loved to make new friends and play in the parks by her house. She was a girly girl who loved Barbie dolls and anything pink and purple, who loved school and had dreams to become a nurse’s aide when she grew up.

Angie was born on February 18th, 1984 in Saint Louis, St. Louis City, Missouri to Diane M. Housman.

On November 18th, 1993, she was a 9-year-old fourth grader at Buder Elementary School. She lived with her mother, 29-year-old Diane, stepfather, 34-year-old Ronald “Ron” Bone, and 2-year-old half-brother, Ronald Jr. Their home was a duplex in the 3500 block of Wright Avenue. in St. Ann, a quiet suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.

It was about 4 p.m. when Angie got off the school bus at the intersection of Wright Avenue and St. Gregory Lane, just eight houses up the street from her bus stop. Unfortunately, none of the three children who often walked home with Angie after school were there that day.

Sometime around 5 p.m., Ron returned home to find Diane and  two-year-old Ron Jr. napping on the couch. He noticed that Angie’s white and blue book bag was missing from its usual spot on the living room floor. He became concerned when he realized she wasn’t in the house. Ron and Diane frantically searched the area with the help of several neighbors until 7:00 p.m., when someone flagged down a passing police car.

Just ten days earlier, an 11-year-old girl from nearby Maryland Heights who physically resembled Angie was ambushed after getting off the school bus, dragged into the bushes, and sexually assaulted by a older white male. After the attack, the stranger tried to guide the girl into his white car, but she broke free and ran away screaming. The suspect in that case was still on the loose and investigators wondered if this mad man had Angie.

Ron told police he last saw Angie before he left for working that morning. Going on the assumption she was abducted, police immediately launched an all-out search for Angie. The St. Louis Major Case Squad got involved in the investigation on November 22, making it the first time they had stepped into a non-murder case since 1967.

Nine days after Angie's abduction, at about 11:15 a.m., a deer hunter found her body tied to a tree 91 feet from Mueller Road, in the Busch Wildlife Conservation Area in St. Charles County. Ice chips had formed on her body.   She was gagged with a piece of fabric torn from her own underwear and had duct tape wrapped around her face, leaving only a small space for her nose to breathe. Her hands were bound behind her back with a pair of handcuffs, which were secured to the tree using a rope.

Her clothing, backpack, and a Dollar General Store bag containing ripped pieces of her underwear were discarded about 20 feet from her body. Investigators were able to lift a fingerprint off the duct tape, but it did not prove to be very helpful: it was from a part of the finger that usually is not printed, so it could not be linked to anyone even if the killer’s prints were on file. Also recovered from Angie’s body were some dog hairs and carpet fibers that likely came from an older-model vehicle.

An autopsy revealed that Angie had been held captive and beaten, tortured, and sexually abused throughout the last week of her life. Her hair had been cut and recolored, and there were deep lacerations to her thigh and both wrists. She was deprived of food and water the entire time. It is believed that she was brought to the wildlife area within 24 hours of her death. Her cause of death was hypothermia and it was surmised that she died only hours before she was found.

Investigators believed that the killer knew Angie or her family, and that he was familiar with the local area. The day before she disappeared, Angie told her teacher that her uncle was going to take her out to the country on November 18th, but she did not have any relatives who lived out in the country or were planning on taking her anywhere. 

Law enforcement has also looked into whether other cases could be related to this one. A link was sought between it and that of Cassidy Senter.

🎀Cassidy Jacquelyn Senter🎀

"Beauty Was In Her Face, Heaven In Her Eyes, In Every Gesture Was Kindness And Love.

You Will Live In Our Hearts Forever......"

She was born on June 9th, 1983 in Madison County, Missouri to Rhonda Senter. 

In 1993, Cassidy and her mom lived together in the lower half of Michael Goldbeck’s home on Tall Tree Court in Hazelwood, St. Louis County. Cassidy was a ten year old 5th grader at Garrett Elementary School in Hazelwood Missouri.

On December 1st, Cassidy returned home from school and then briefly visited with a neighbor, Mr. Goldbeck. Mr. Goldbeck tested Cassidy’s personal alarm to make sure it was functioning properly. 

Whenever Cassidy left home without an adult, she took her "pal" with her: a yellow battery-operated personal alarm that emits a piercing noise when activated.

After she was sure that her pal was working properly, Cassidy left home at about 3:30 p.m. and headed up Tall Tree Court. She was on her way to a friend’s that was two blocks away to decorate a Christmas tree. She was last seen at an intersection where Tall Tree Court became Spring Forest Lane.

Close to the same time, Mr and Mrs. Hanneke, who resided on Spring Tree Forest Lane next door to Cassandra Quinn, Brooks sister, heard a noise and followed the sound to identify it. The Hannekes found a yellow alarm and a pen near their property line. The alarm was buzzing. A telephone installer who happened to be nearby had told them it was a personal alarm like the one he had just purchased for his wife. But the alarm carried no identification, and they had no idea whom to contact. Not knowing the significance of their find, they buried it to silence it.

Cassidy never arrived at her friend's house and her friend thought that she had changed her mind.

A few minutes after 5:00 p.m., Rhonda returned from work. It was dark and she was worried that Cassidy wasn't home yet, so she called Cassidy’s friend’s house and she learned that Cassidy had never arrived. 

Rhonda also called her own mother in a nearby nursing home. Cassie's grandmother told one of the nursing home employees about her granddaughter's disappearance and mentioned the personal alarm.

Coincidentally, the employee, Diane Cordes, immediately thought of the small shrieking gadget her husband and neighbors had discovered in her front yard earlier that afternoon and called the police.

After Ronda and Mr. Goldbeck frantically searched for Cassidy, and came up empty, Mr Goldbeck telephoned the police as well. Around the same time, Mr. Goldbeck received word that Cassidy’s personal alarm was found on the Hannekes’ lawn. When Mr. Goldbeck told this to the police, the police instituted a ground and air search almost immediately. The search continued for days with the assistance of hundreds of volunteers.

Cassidy's school friends made pins of pink ribbons and tied other pink ribbons to mailboxes and lamp posts and Rhonda appeared on a news conference. She held back tears as she pleaded for her daughter's abductor to let her go.

"Please just leave her in a public place and give us a call to let us know where she's at. We just want her home," Pleaded Rhonda.

On December 9, 1993, two boys walking in the city of St. Louis discovered Cassidy Senter’s body in a littered alley near Martin Luther King and South Grand Boulevards. The child was wrapped in two bed comforters and a pink curtain. Her jacket and sweater were pulled above her chest. Her jeans were pulled down over her ankles, inside out. A sheet was looped around each of her ankles and then tied in the middle to hold the ankles together.

The autopsy revealed decomposition on the upper portion of her body and at least four tears to the scalp and multiple fractures in the skull. There were bruises on Cassidy’s chin, right check, right shoulder, breast bone, abdomen each side of her chest wall, and on the upper back at the base of the neck. Numerous other bruises were found over her body.

The condition of Cassidy's scalp indicated that she was alive when she received many of her injuries. The physician who performed the autopsy opined that there were at least significant five blows to the head and concluded that Cassidy died from the head injuries.   It appeared that Cassidy lived less than an hour after the blows were sustained.

Examination of tire tracks left at the scene where the body was found revealed a unique tire pattern that could have been made only by a Goodyear Work Horse Light Tire Truck.   

FBI, state, and local authorities formed a 100-man task force to investigate the possibility that a serial child predator was stalking the city’s children. They started with 200 suspects in Angie’s death, but the number quickly ballooned to over 1,000 as they learned just how many known pedophiles were living in the area, and there was sharp disagreement over whether Angie and Cassidy’s murders were even linked. 

FBI released the same psychological profile for both girls’ killer. They predicted that their murderer, or murderers, was an intelligent white male between the ages of 20 and 45, who may have recently started living alone and owned more than one vehicle. They described him as a loner who didn’t get along with women and may have experienced a recent death of a loved one or lost his job.

On December 9, a neighbor of Cassandra Quinn, Brooks’ sister, saw a U-Haul truck backing out of the driveway at Cassandra Quinn’s home. The body was discovered that day. A comparison of the tire tracks left where the body was discovered to the tires on the U Haul truck that Brooks rented revealed a positive match.

Police also discovered that Denise Johnson, who had occupied Quinn's home prior to Quinn's occupancy, had left behind a pink floral comforter and pink curtains similar to the ones found on Cassidy's body when Ms. Johnson moved from the house

On February 3rd, 1994, 27-year-old Thomas Brooks was arrested for murdering Cassidy. His sister and her roommate, who were living in the home Cassidy was going to visit the day she disappeared, were charged with hindering the investigation.  The sister's home was searched. Fibers from the residence matched fibers taken from morgue sheets, both comforters, the curtain, and the victim's panties, socks, jacket, and blouse. DNA testing revealed that Cassidy's blood matched that found in stains on the basement floor at Cassandra Quinn's home. A bed slat taken from the basement of Quinn's home was consistent with having caused the injuries suffered by Cassidy. Testing revealed that paint from the U-Haul dolly matched paint samples taken from the sheets, comforters, and clothing found on Cassidy in color, texture, chemical composition.   

At first Brooks denied having anything to do with Cassidy's disappearance and death.  Eventually, he told detectives he abducted the girl with the intent to rape her, but that she fought back so much that he “had” to beat her to death. He covered the body with bedding and drapery, then left for work.

Brooks' sister told him the next day that she did not want to know anything about the body in her basement;  she just wanted him to get rid of it. Some time later, Brooks returned to his sister's house and moved the body from where it had fallen to behind the freezer, in an attempt to conceal it. 

On December 8, 1993, Brooks rented the U-Haul truck, drove it to work, worked his shift, then went to his sister's house where he removed the body with the two-wheel dolly and drove it to the place where the body was later recovered. 

Brooks was convicted of first-degree murder for which he received a death sentence and the felonies of armed criminal action, kidnapping, and attempted forcible rape.

Brooks was a former convict on parole for an armed robbery conviction.

After questioning Brooks and comparing hair samples, detectives determined that he had nothing to do with Angie’s murder.

Thomas Brooks was 33 years when he died on May 16, 2000 at the Moberly Prison, from an undisclosed illness.

On February 8, 1994 detectives announced that they were looking for a middle-aged white man who was seen in Angie’s neighborhood in 1993, on November 16th, November 18th, and February 4th. He was seen by three separate people on the day she disappeared. He is described as a heavyset man between the ages of 38 and 45, with deep-set eyes and wavy brown hair. On one occasion, he was seen with a tall, slender white man who appeared to be in his late 20's and had reddish or light brown hair, and they may have been driving an faded blue, older-model sedan. 

In March 1994, 23-year-old John Wayne Parsons was arrested after he tried to get explicit photos of children developed at a store in Manatee, Florida. He was charged with molesting two children, one of them a 9-year-old girl in St. Louis (where he previously worked as a freelance roofer). When detectives searched his home, they found a stash of child pornography, along with a color photo of Angie and newspaper clippings about her murder. One of Angie’s neighbors thought they saw someone resembling Parsons working on a roof near her home the day of her disappearance, but detectives were never able to place him in Missouri on November 18th.

In May 1994, law enforcement asked for help in locating a second suspicious car, which was described as a grey older-model station wagon with rust on the hood and passenger’s side door, and streaks of rust along the side.

Many people were suspects in Angie's murder.

A father and son duo lived near Angie's home and were busted for their part in a child pornography ring. 

An accomplice of a child killer reportedly confessed on his deathbed that he had murdered Angie.

A man claimed responsibility for 12 deaths in Missouri, including Angie’s murder and the plane crash that killed former Missouri governor Mel Carnahan. 

A 13-year-old boy told his family on Thanksgiving 1993 (days before Angie was found) that he had a dream in which she was tied to a tree in the Busch wildlife area.

Despite all of these suspects and a costly and lengthy investigation into Angie’s murder, it went unsolved for 25 years. 

In 2018, detectives retested the shreds of Angie’s underwear and discovered a DNA sample that had previously gone undetected.

On March 1st, 2019, that DNA was entered into into CODIS, the national DNA database and matched 61-year-old Earl Webster Cox, a convicted child molester and former child pornography ringleader. At the time of Angie's murder, he had family that lived just three blocks from her school.

Cox is a disgraced U.S. airman with a sickening past. In 1982, he was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force after molesting four girls while stationed in Germany. He was paroled and returned to the St. Louis area in 1985, where he was questioned in two separate child molestation cases in the four years prior to Angie’s murder, one of which took place behind Angie’s school. One incident resulted in an arrest in October 1991; the charges were ultimately dismissed, but it was found that he violated his parole anyway, so he spent another year in prison between January and December 1992.

In 1997 or 1998, his name showed up on a list of at least 1,000 sex offenders compiled by the FBI, but he was never questioned.

He moved to Colorado in the 90's.

January 2003, he attempted to hook up with a 14-year-old girl he met online (who turned out to be an FBI agent). When investigators searched Cox’s computer, they found 45,000 explicit images of children and learned that he was an administrator for an online child pornography ring called the Shadowz Brothers. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

He was expected to be released in 2011, but was deemed a sexually dangerous person under the Adam Walsh Act. He tried to appeal this ruling, saying that his health is too poor to reoffend, but all of his appeals failed. He remained in custody for the next eight years.

On June 5th of this year, Earl was formally charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sodomy in Angie’s death. 

Investigators believe that Earl did not act alone in Angie's murder. 

“The way the evidence unfolded at the crime scene, the way she clearly was held for a period of time at a particular location, and then transported to the woods, which was obviously another location, just some other things we observed at the crime scene, it would lead us to believe he did not act alone,” says Prosecutor Tim Lohmar. “That doesn’t mean that he didn’t act alone, but there’s a hunch for all of these guys involved that there could possibly be another person involved.

We have reason to believe that Earl W. Cox was not the only suspect ... we do believe that it was very possible that another person was involved.”

Cox's DNA wasn't the only one recently found in Angie's underwear. Her stepfather's, Ron, DNA was also found. It could be as simple as he lived in the house and that is why his DNA was there.  

Justice For Angie Housman