Suspected Kidnapper Kills Himself
May 4 -- A man suspected of three kidnappings in Texas and Louisiana killed himself today when authorities stopped his car and found one of his victims in the passenger seat.
FBI authorities said Gary Dale Cox, 48, killed himself when a sheriff's deputy stopped his car about 6 miles outside of Kerrville, Texas.
In the passenger seat of the car was 11-year-old Leah Henry, who had been reported missing when she didn't return to her Houston home after school on Monday. As Cox got out of the car, holding a pistol, Leah escaped, police said. Cox then shot himself in the head.
Leah was apparently unharmed and being examined at a local hospital.
"She sounded very timid and not as confident as she normally is, but she is alive and well," said her relieved mother Linda Henry.
"The main thing is that the child is safe and the individual is dead," said Ben Morris, police chief of Slidell, La., where one of two other girls linked to the suspect had been kidnapped. "The perpetrator is in the hands of God and hopefully He has washed his hands of him and put him where he belongs."
Tentative Link to Other Abductions
FBI and state officials suspect Leah's disappearance is connected to the kidnappings of 11-year-old Lisa Bruno in Louisiana and 9-year-old Nykema Augustine in San Antonio, over the past two months. On the day Leah disappeared, a witness reported seeing her get into a man's white hatchback — the same type of car described in the other two abductions.
Both Lisa and Nykema gave similar descriptions of their kidnapper. Lisa told police that her abductor was a heavyset white man in his 30s or 40s with dark blond or light brown, slicked-back hair. Nykema described him as a potbellied man in his 30s with thinning, light brown hair. Based on the highway signs both girls said they saw and the description of the cabin where their abductor kept them, law enforcement officials searched for a cabin or shack in South Central Texas.
Texas authorities went after Cox's car after the Kerr County sheriff's department received a tip of a suspicious vehicle near Kerrville. When they came upon Cox and Lisa, he was driving a hatchback, but it had been painted over and had a different license plate than the one suspected in the other abductions.
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