BRAZORIA COUNTY, Texas – Denton police have confirmed through dental records that the remains found in Brazoria County are those of Kelli Ann Cox, a woman who went missing nearly two decades ago.
Crews were digging just north of Angleton, in a field off Highway 288 near County Road 49, when the remains were found on April 1.
The remains were determined to be human and sent to a lab for further testing.
"Through forensic analysis of dental records by the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification's Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology and the Galveston County Medical Examiner's office, an identification has been made from the human remains recovered by Investigators in Brazoria County. Those remains have been positively identified as Kelli Ann Cox," Denton police released in a statement Monday.
“The answer I wanted was for her to come home. It is what it is. She's gone. I know she's in God's arms,” Cox's mother, Jan Bynum, said from her home in in north Texas Monday.
“I've dealt with it for 19 years with, you have an element of hope and then, now that hope's been pulled away, even though it also takes away the fear that she's been harmed somewhere,” Bynum said.
Cox was an honor student at North Texas State in Denton and the mother of a baby girl when she disappeared in July 1997 after touring the Denton jail with her criminology class. She phoned her boyfriend to pick her up from a pay phone nearby, but was never heard from again.
At the time, William Reece, 56, was a suspect in the case but was never charged. But now Reece, who is serving 60 years for aggravated kidnapping in Harris County, is talking.
Cox is one of five women who was kidnapped, or who disappeared or was murdered in 1997 under similar circumstances. Sources tell Channel 2 Investigates all five are connected to William Reece.
Reece began cooperating with police and Texas Rangers in February. His Houston attorney, Anthony Osso, says Reece opened up to investigators because he is suffering from inoperable heart disease.
“I think he understands his life span is going to be shortened by his heart disease, and so I think that factors into it. He wants to put these cases behind him at this point in his life, also,” Osso said.
Osso says Reece wants to remain in Texas in the general prison population.
“What our objective is at this point is to keep Mr. Reece off death row. Hopefully both in Oklahoma and Texas, and that's one of the reasons he's cooperating,” Osso said.
Osso says Reece also wants to help provide closure for the victims' families.
Last month Reece accompanied police to another dig site in southeast Houston where on March 18 police found skeletal remains that may or may not be those of 17-year-old Jessica Cain, the Tikki Island girl who disappeared the same year as Cox. Investigators are awaiting DNA results to make a positive identification.
Crews bringing in dirt compactor at dig site. Friendswood PD says starting to fill in dirt they've removed @KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/XWiGzKceT9
— Samantha Ptashkin (@SamPtashkin) April 5, 2016
Reece was charged with murder and kidnapping last year after DNA evidence linked him to a teenage Oklahoma girl who also was killed in 1997. He's also suspected of kidnapping and murdering 12-year-old Laura Smither of Friendswood, who was killed the same year.
Charges are expected to be filed in all three cases as soon as next week.
Reece began cooperating with police after he was linked through DNA to the 1997 kidnapping and murder of Tiffany Johnson, of Bethany, Oklahoma.
Sandra Sapaugh is the only woman known to have encountered Reece and survived. Sapaugh was kidnapped in 1997, but survived by jumping out of Reece's truck as it sped down the Gulf Freeway.
Reece was convicted in 1998 of kidnapping Sapaugh and sentenced to 60 years in prison. State records show Reece was temporarily released from prison in February to the custody of Galveston County law enforcement officials who are working on these cases.
Cox's daughter, Alexis, is a woman now, 20 years old — the same age as her mother when she went missing.
Cox's mother says she's planning to visit the pasture where her daughter's remains were recovered, and still wants to know details of her daughter's abduction and murder.
I've still got a lot of questions, and still got things I want answers to, and I know Alexis wants answers, too.” Bynum said. “ I don't know if we'll get answers to all those questions.”