Clifford Eugene Cox (left, in a Kansas DOC photo; right, in a Sedgwick County Jail photo).
A convicted murderer was granted parole for a 1984 strangulation murder, became a babysitter and molested an 8-year-old girl from 2016 to 2018. Shockingly, he blamed the victim, saying she “took advantage from him”.
Clifford Eugene Cox, now 60, was sentenced to 21 years in prison on Wednesday for sexually abusing a child, following a guilty plea in March to aggravated kidnapping and aggravated indecent solicitation of a child. If he lives long enough to see the outside of a prison again, Cox will be under lifelong post-release supervision, according to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office.
After being arrested in the case in August 2018 and questioned, Cox tried to blame the victim, calling her “flirtatious” and “sexually aggressive” while claiming she “took advantage of him”, The Wichita reported. Eagle.
Kansas Department of Corrections records show a warrant was issued in the child sexual abuse case against Cox on August 20, 2018. Sedgwick County Jail records show Cox was booked that day and that he was initially charged with rape, aggravated criminal buggery, indecent liberty with a child, and conspiracy to commit aggravated indecent solicitation of a child.
Cox had been hired by the girl’s mother to babysit the victim and her siblings in Wichita. He assaulted the victim from 2016 to 2018, when at the age of 8 the girl told her father that she had been raped by the accused.
The girl’s parents said they knew Cox as Ziggy and were unaware of her troubling past.
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“We didn’t even know his name, my ex-wife and I knew his name was Ziggy. My first reaction was like it was a bad dream. I felt anger, disgust. I only ran through my head the 3-4 times i met him thinking there were signs?and when i thought about it more the more i got lost in disarray [sic] in my own head,” the girl’s father reportedly said in 2018. “There are a million things I felt even now, including despair because I couldn’t stop her. And my ex-wife is in the same boat.
State prison records show Cox committed the crime of first-degree murder on May 6, 1984. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in September of that year and remained incarcerated until October 2, 2006, date he was paroled, records say.
Cox admitted to strangling and killing Cathryn Lynne Hutchins Kessinger, the 22-year-old wife of his co-defendant William Paul Kessinger. The husband, who offered Cox $1,000 to commit the crime, admitted to participating in the murder by holding Cathryn’s hands behind his back as his accomplice strangled him to death with rope, KAKE reported.
William Kessinger, now 59, was paroled on August 30, 2013, records show.
William Paul Kessinger appears in a 2013 photo (Kansas DOC)
Kessinger was convicted of the murder on September 21, 1984, the same day Cox was locked up for the crime.
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