Suspected Kidnapper Kills Himself

May 4, 2001 -- 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.

Despite the similarities in the three kidnappings, FBI officials stopped short of saying Cox was involved in all three.

"All of these cases have certain similarities that would lead us to believe that they are all linked," said FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne in Slidell, La. "We're still looking at all three cases and seeing if there's a definite link."

Victims Safely Returned

In the Slidell, La., case, Lisa was kidnapped on April 16 as she walked to a wooded area near her apartment to pick blackberries with her younger sister. The FBI in New Orleans said the man told the girl he had a gun and that he was a police officer and lured her into his car. She was held in a locked room at an unknown location for almost two weeks. Then the kidnapper put her on a bus and bought her a ticket home. Lisa was found April 29

In San Antonio, Nykema had been riding her scooter in early March when a man asked her to help him with a washing machine in the complex's laundry room. As she walked toward him, he grabbed her, tied her wrists and forced her into his car. She was held for five days in a boarded-up cabin about two hours from San Antonio. Her captor then dropped her off a block from home. She had a few bruises but otherwise unharmed.

Law enforcement officials have suspected that the kidnapper released Nykema and Lisa after worrying that authorities were close to capturing him.