Up and Vanished Weekly | VANISHED: Richard Cox

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It's the evening of Saturday, January 14th, 1950, a cold, dreary night in upstate New York.

At West Point Military Academy, students are returning from winter break.

Like many other cadets, 21-year-old Richard Cox is preparing to start a new semester.

Those close to Richard can tell that something's been off with him lately.

He doesn't seem very enthusiastic about being back to school.

Richard's roommates observe him getting ready.

in his full-dress uniform and a long gray overcoat.

He shares he's going out to dinner with an old friend he met, someone they know only as George.

When he signs out of the dorm, Richard records his destination as the Thair, an upscale hotel located on campus about a mile walk from his dorm.

Like all cadets, he has to be back before 11 p.m.

curfew.

But that night, Richard never returned.

In fact, as far as anyone can tell, he never even made it to the Thayer Hotel.

All signs seem to indicate Richard Cox simply vanished.

For 75 years, his disappearance has been the focus of a lot of speculation.

Many have questioned whether he tragically died or possibly went AWOL as part of a plan to start a new life.

Others believe Richard may have been secretly recruited by a covert government agency.

But the question at the heart of everything is what role, if any, did this mysterious man known as George play in his disappearance?

From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm Payne Lindsay.

And I'm Maggie Freeling.

And you're listening to Up and Vanished Weekly.

Hey, y'all, welcome back to Up and Vanished Weekly.

I'm Maggie Freeling.

Today, we're talking about Richard Cox.

One of the things that I often talk about when we talk about missing people is how actually hard it is to disappear yourself.

If you want to know more about that, I spoke to Elizabeth Greenwood, who wrote Playing Dead.

It is a great book if you want to check it out.

I don't find this a particularly plausible scenario, but Richard is a man who may have actually had the means to do so.

This case is freaking fascinating, and it is unlike any missing person case I've covered.

We're dealing with potential espionage.

Joining me today to talk about this case is Laura Norton.

Laura, you're in studio.

I'm in your town, Atlanta.

I'm so excited to be here with you.

We are so excited to have you here.

So Laura, you know Richard Cox's story really well.

You even did an episode on him for One Strange Thing.

What stands out to you about Richard Cox's disappearance?

What stands out to me is that I think in most disappearances, I'm, you know, really focused on the serious nature of the disappearance.

But in this case, it was really easy for me to look at foul play being the least likely,

you know, thing that could have happened.

And that's what really attracted it to me.

And also that he is still to this day the only West Point cadet to disappear and stay missing.

This search went on for two months.

And

according to everything I've read, it's one of the biggest manhunts in the history of the U.S.

Oh, yeah.

And the FBI continued their search

overseas and throughout the United States for almost three years too.

It was just huge amounts of money and manpower poured into this to find this man.

And you have to think about like how difficult it would be to hide with all those people after you.

It's just fascinating to me.

Yeah, I feel like in disappearance cases, I often feel like

foul play is the number one theory.

It seems like the most plausible of Occam's razor, but that's not what we have here.

So let's start by understanding more about who Richard was.

Here's Payne with more about what we know.

In the 1940s, a dark chapter of history was unfolding, and the world was at war.

In 1946, Richard enlisted in the Army at the age of 18.

He wasn't necessarily the career soldier type, but nobody was surprised when he applied to West Point after the service.

He fit in easily at West Point.

with grades that put him in the top third of his class.

Richard had a fiancé, Betty, back in Mansfield, but the two had planned to postpone marriage until after he was finished with school.

At the time, everything was going smoothly in his life, or so his friends and family thought.

Then, in January of 1950, his mother Minnie said that Richard's correspondence suddenly changed in tone.

In an unmailed letter to his fiancée, Betty, he even discussed thoughts of leaving West Point for good.

On January 7th, a phone call came in for Richard.

He wasn't in the dorm, so another cadet took the message from the caller.

Just tell him George called.

He'll know who I am.

We knew each other in Germany.

I'm just up here for a little while, and tell him I'd like to get a bite to eat.

When Richard got the note, his reaction was very strange.

He told the cadet who took the message, he had no idea who George was.

Yet hours later, his roommates say he left to meet up with a man with the same name and same description.

So, what's the deal here?

Around 9.30 that evening, a roommate found Richard so drunk that he passed out at his writing desk.

A short time later, Richard stumbled to the stairwell and began screaming incoherently and eventually had to be led to bed.

Some say he was screaming an unfamiliar name, Alice.

He seemed very disturbed, and his roommates had never seen Richard like that before.

The change in his demeanor seemed to coincide with the unexpected arrival of this man named George.

So it is clear that things were not as simple as they may have appeared in Richard Cox's life.

He was a great student.

He was doing well in school, but then it started to decline a little bit right towards the last month or so.

There were so many elements here that were interesting to me.

And the one that stood out to me first was, we have this West Point cadet.

He comes back after Christmas break.

He's being a little bit quiet.

And he's writing a few letters home that are expressing some dissatisfaction.

But then around January 7th, he gets a phone call from a man named George.

And after that, things just start going downhill really quickly.

Okay, so he was a great student.

And then then suddenly he just starts acting really strange.

There's a lot of drinking.

His letters seem a little depressed.

He's kind of saying like, you know, he doesn't think he was cut out to be a cadet.

I mean,

in your opinion and your research on this case, like, what do you, what do you think was causing all of this?

What does this seem like this behavior is coming from?

It's interesting because there's a couple of factors.

We know that he had never dreamed of becoming, you know, a career military man.

and based on my research he mostly joined the army to get out of ohio this is something that's kind of interesting he was one of six kids and he had a kind of strange relationship with his mother and i don't mean like big s strange but more like they didn't get along super great he called her by her first name he called her many not mom um and she really wanted him to take over the family business which was an insurance business

And it seemed like he wasn't too into that.

So he joined the army.

And this was right after World War II.

So he didn't see direct action, but he did end up in Allied-controlled Germany.

Which, of course, you can imagine, he was seeing a lot of things there.

So after two years there, he goes to West Point.

But there's something about those first two years that is disillusioning to him.

We just don't know quite what it is.

We do know a couple of things.

He sends some letters home expressing dissatisfaction, and then there's two letters found in his room that aren't sent that express even more dissatisfaction.

One, even where he's actually drawn a little doodle of a cadet spitting on the West Point logo, which is pretty intense.

That's for the 50s?

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

Blasphemy.

Yeah, that's, you know, that's getting in trouble for that.

And he'd also gone out to lunch with one of his old buddies a couple of weeks before and said, maybe I'm not cut out for this.

But what we don't know is why.

There have been some theories.

One theory was that he was caught up in perhaps this academic cheating scandal that was going on at the time.

But when other cadets were asked about it, you know, even some who were involved, they all said Richard had nothing to do with it.

So that's not really a strong theory.

So there's nothing really there specifically related to school that seems to have upset him.

So I keep coming back to, was he more dissatisfied with his life overall?

Right.

Because he was engaged to be married to Betty.

But then I guess some friends did say he was dating other women and might not be ready to settle down.

Yeah, they had a very set wedding date.

Okay.

And it was 1952, as soon as he graduated.

So his life was kind of unrolling before him in this very organized manner, which, you know, can seem to many people like the perfect American dream.

But maybe to other people, it can feel really claustrophobic.

You know, it's so interesting because we are talking about the 50s.

A 21-year-old today, to me, as a child, this would all feel incredibly claustrophobic.

But I think we can't forget that, yes, he was a child, but back then you were supposed to be an adult.

You're supposed to be married and having kids by, you know, 21, 22 in the 50s.

So I can't imagine how much pressure he was feeling.

Especially someone that had gone off and seen the world in a way that a lot of people, you know, perhaps had not.

Of course, we did add a lot of returning soldiers, but this is is something that his family and Betty just simply could not understand on the level that he could and his friends at West Point could.

We know he didn't want to be an insurance salesman, but perhaps he was also realizing that he didn't want to be a military man either.

So what then?

Right.

And I mean, again,

being so young, but supposed to have it figured out could be devastating.

You know, he's thinking, this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing or what I don't feel like I should be doing, but I'm supposed to have kids and be married and have a career.

Like that could just feel completely life-shattering.

Precisely, especially if you're also figuring out who you are, which we all are at 21 years old.

Which is my point.

He's 21, but you're supposed to have it figured out, but you're still today a child.

It's so hard for me to look back at the 50s and like reckon with what a 21-year-old was supposed to be like then compared to now.

I know.

So speaking of, he saw this war, World War II, horrible, horrible things that he saw when he was over in Germany.

What were some of those things that he was doing that could have led to perhaps some of this distress?

So it's interesting because he got there in 1948, he was just seeing the aftermath.

But when I say just, I think that's kind of minimizing because there was a lot of aftermath.

He was working with the intelligence branch, which a lot of people are like, ooh, intelligence branch.

He was a clerk, though.

So as a clerk, a lot of people said he wouldn't have seen much.

He didn't have a high security clearance, but I think we could argue that a clerk might see a lot.

And he did interact with a lot of different people with a lot of different roles.

And that is allegedly how he met this man, George, who you're going to hear so much about and we heard about at the top of the episode.

Our discussion continues after a quick break.

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All right, now back to our case.

When Richard didn't return from his dinner at the hotel, the reaction was immediate.

News of a missing West Point cadet rallied an all-hands-on-deck response.

West Point's campus stretches over thousands of acres.

Within just days, school officials had searched every inch of it.

The woods were swept by a helicopter.

They scoured the nearby town, even visiting every hotel and rooming house.

Yet, no one had seen or heard from Richard Cox.

Eventually, the search went national, with police, military, and even the FBI joining.

The school took his disappearance pretty seriously.

Upon searching his room, authorities found $87,

which was thought to be the sum total of Richard's savings.

Also uncovered were two unmailed letters.

his civilian clothes, and an heirloom watch.

When authorities read the letters, they discovered he'd been unhappy at school.

But was that enough to stage a disappearance?

Even in the 1950s, it was difficult to just simply vanish, at least not without some serious help.

As officials began formulating theories, their interest began to point back to George.

The sudden appearance of this strange outsider led many to wonder who this man really was and what knowledge he may have about the disappearance.

What we know about George was that he was allegedly an army ranger.

He made these like horrible claims allegedly to Richard about castrating Nazi soldiers and after they were dead.

And then he even said that he got a German girl pregnant and then he killed her so that she didn't have the child.

That's horrific

that he was even around someone saying these things.

Yeah.

And according to Richard, he had only kind of known George back in the day.

And so when George showed up, he was like, oh, hey.

And so they went out to eat and got drunk.

And he kind of implied that George forced him into getting drunk.

Came back, passed out at his desk, woke up in the morning and told his roommates this disturbing story.

And it was really clear to them that he was disgusted and disturbed by this.

And what they couldn't figure out was why was he continuing to associate with this man?

Because he obviously was horrified by these stories.

And

he yet kept taking his calls and kept saying he'd go out with him again.

And the best that Joseph and Dean could come up with was, well, it's winter and there's not a lot going on.

That's why he's still hanging out with him.

But I feel like you could find something else to do.

So it never really answered the question of this man that you claim claim you didn't know that well in Germany, you're going and hanging out with him.

Those experiences seem to depress you.

You're already kind of in a bad state.

Why?

Right.

To me, it seems like this was someone he couldn't say no to.

That's kind of the key.

Someone he couldn't say no to.

And the real question is why?

Is it because George had something on him?

Is it because he was afraid of George?

Or is it because he needed something from George?

It's so interesting that George pops up a week before he goes missing.

It's like, it has to be related.

I think that we have to say that.

There has to be some connection there.

His roommates, Richard's roommates, never saw George, but other cadets on campus did see this person, George, that he was speaking with.

And he stands out to people.

Can you describe George?

Yeah, and the weird thing is, is he was seen by at least two people who described him extremely differently.

One person described him as very tall and fair complexioned, blonde, at least six feet tall.

One person described him as dark and rough complexioned.

I'm still not 100% on what rough complexioned is.

Yeah, that's confusing.

I don't know what that means.

Rough complexioned and maybe more around Richard's height, which was about 5'8.

So does this come down to two people just poor witness statements?

We know this is a thing, or is it that he was talking to two different people?

And something I want to note here is that West Point folks tend to recognize each other.

So was he actually speaking to two different strangers in the same week?

That's another, you know, fold in this that's so strange.

But he definitely was speaking to George at various points during the week because he would come back and report this to Joseph and Dean at various points.

He said he saw a basketball game with him, for instance, earlier in the day before he disappeared.

And that was one of the different descriptions was they saw him at the basketball game talking to this man that was quite tall, I believe.

Yeah.

Which, again, if the person was closer to Richard, that'd be 5'8.

I wouldn't necessarily describe that man as tall.

So one of the things that's really interesting is when Richard goes to meet George, he's only carrying $5, even though they're allegedly going out for dinner.

And then when the roommates discovered that Richard was missing and his room was searched, they found his prized possession, at least according to his roommates, his watch in the room, which he wouldn't normally leave behind.

They found money in the room, which amounted to about $1,000 in today's currency.

It's really weird for someone who would maybe be going to start a new life to leave all of these things.

I mean, you could sell the watch for money.

Why not take your thousand dollars?

You know,

what do you make of that if he was going to run away?

He also left all his civilian clothes behind, including some he'd sent out to be cleaned and brought back.

So if someone was meticulously planning, it's strange.

Unless they were meticulously planning, that's the thing.

Okay, tell me more.

Give me the look.

If you wanted to plan to make it look like you disappeared by accident, leaving your things behind would make it look like you had accidentally disappeared or there had been foul play.

If you took all your stuff, it's extremely clear that you left on purpose.

Right.

There we go again.

We're back to the same problem.

But that watch was something his family really hung on to.

The idea that he would never leave that watch behind.

But the issue is, of course, whenever we talk to people who know someone really well, they tell us things they'd never do.

I don't know about you, but I do things that people would probably expect me to never do at least once a week.

So, you know, the idea of like what choices we make in the moment,

you know, what choices we might make to surprise people

in order to, you know, send them down the wrong path.

If I wanted to make people think I had disappeared against my will, there are certain things I would put into place

to create that image.

If you believe this theory that he, you know, left with George somehow, it almost seems like they were planning, like, get your clothes cleaned so it looks like you kind of just vanished, like you were, you were planning your future.

So I can't help but think maybe in that week, that's what they were discussing.

That's what some people think.

And also making George seem kind of weird, gross, disgusting.

I don't really want to be meeting with this person.

Could also help that out a little bit, you know?

Let's talk about that.

Why would he disappear?

I mean,

on the surface and from what we know, it seems like he had a fine life.

What was he disappearing or running from that he couldn't do as Richard Cox?

So some people think it's because he wanted to leave West Point.

That's kind of a weak one because you can leave West Point.

You can even get discharged.

You know, Edgar Allan Poe managed it.

119 years before.

So you can leave West Point, whether by choosing to leave at the proper times or through a dishonorable discharge if you really want to get out.

Some people think that he wanted to leave because

he was living a heterosexual lifestyle that he did not want to live.

There have been some reports that he was part of the LGBTQ community and that was not something he could express openly at West Point.

It's a little bit more than rumors.

Now, there were some letters that came in from New York City from people who said they had dated Richard.

These letters were kind of treated like, eh, because people always send in letters.

But later on, when the FOIA files were released by the FBI, there were actually a couple statements from cadets suggesting that Richard may have been bisexual or, you know, we can't really label someone's sexuality, you know.

But this is something we're looking at the incredibly repressive 50s.

We're looking at West Point.

This is not a military career starter here.

You know, someone who may have been looking at trying to live their life in a more authentic way in a way that they couldn't.

And if that's the case, some people have said maybe George was a romantic partner, you know, that that could be an option.

You know, it was the 1950s.

Every state in the U.S.

at the time had anti-sodomy laws until 1964.

So we're talking about 1950.

And so at this time, actually in the military, you could not be gay.

And we've all heard of don't ask, don't tell laws, but back then, actually, you could be discharged for being gay in the military.

What did you make of all this when you were looking into the possibility that he did run away?

So in terms of like

Richard's romantic life, we don't have strong answers, you know, and honestly, you know, that's his life too.

You know, those, those are not answers for us.

But we do know that a few people reached out to his roommates and said that they had dated Richard from New York.

His friend Joseph said that he wasn't aware that Richard had ever dated men, but I would say back to his friend Joseph, that's not something you'd necessarily know.

It did come out when the FBI FOIA released that there were a few statements from cadets who did indicate that they'd been romantically involved with Richard.

And that was something that, you know, they weren't willing to go on record with their names.

attached to it for for obvious reasons.

So I think that we have to look at that and the repressive context it exists in, right?

This is not only just repressive, but violent context.

Incredibly violent and repressive, sure.

Like the physical repercussions that could come to someone at West Point

who

was seen to be gay by the people around them.

I can't even imagine what that would be like.

But would that affect his decision to simply leave West Point?

Very likely it could.

Would that make him want to disappear?

You know, leave everything he knows, change his name?

That's a whole different question, I think.

So when I think about the fact that Richard may have chosen to disappear,

whether or not he was gay is not the main factor for me.

I think it might have had to do with pressures at home that had something to do with his family, that has something to do with perhaps not wanting to pursue the family business, some other factors.

More of our discussion after a quick break.

You're listening to Up and Vanish Weekly.

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Now, here's John with this week's critical missing case.

On Saturday, April 5th, 2025, 49-year-old John Gans mysteriously went missing from the Thomasville, Missouri area.

According to reports, John left an Airbnb in Springfield, Missouri around 4.10 that Saturday afternoon, and his family later spoke with him on the phone around 9.12 p.m.

that evening.

He's not been seen or heard from since.

Now, police later found his abandoned car along along with his keys, wallet and ID, a laptop, tablet, and a suitcase and carry-on bag.

John is of Caucasian ethnicity.

He has a height of 5'10 inches and a weight of 190 pounds.

He has brown hair and hazel eyes.

Identifying marks include multiple tattoos, such as a dragon on the back of his leg and a woman on one of his arms.

So, listeners, if you know any information about the disappearance of John Gans, you're asked to please reach out to Sheriff Eric King with the Oregon County Sheriff's Office at 417-778-6611.

And you can reference case number 25-9641.

All right, now back to our case.

The FBI soon became deeply involved involved in the search, but it wasn't long until that, too, turned out to be a dead end.

Years passed, and Richard's whereabouts remained a complete mystery, but the speculation continued.

Then, four years after he disappeared, authorities finally caught a break.

A possible sighting of Richard Cox.

Ernest Shotwell, an old friend of Richard, spotted him at a bus station in DC.

He called out to him by name, and the man turned and answered, Yes, how are you?

The two chatted for several minutes.

Ernest stated that his old friend was acting strange, jumpy even.

He didn't think too much about it until he later heard that Richard had been reported missing for years.

Authorities considered Shotwell's encounter to be a genuine sighting.

Then, in 1960, an undercover FBI source was on location at a bar in Melbourne, Florida.

While there, he met a man who called himself R.C.

Mansfield.

Initially, the introduction didn't raise any red flags, but then the two got to drinking and talking.

At one point, the man said, quote, the U.S.

Army and my mother think I'm dead.

Then he claimed that his real name was Richard Cox.

The FBI source tried to set up another meeting, but he never showed.

were these two sightings, years apart, merely a coincidence?

Or had Richard Cox been in hiding this entire time?

Or maybe there was a different explanation entirely, one that possibly involved a covert government program with national security implications.

These alleged sightings that happened years after Richard went missing are really interesting to me.

What are the chances of something like this this happening?

Not only once, but twice.

So the first one was an old friend of his named Ernest Shotwell saw him at a bus station in 1952 and had an entire conversation with him.

He said that he was acting a little bit weird, but that Richard answered to his name.

But he didn't actually report this to the FBI until 1954 because he didn't know he was missing.

And the FBI said this was a credible sighting and, you know, put it out there, reported it to everybody.

So that feels to me like a pretty credible sighting.

Not just saying I saw him, he looked like Richard, but they had a conversation.

Would there be any reason for this man to lie?

And again, you made the point, like he didn't know he was still missing.

So like,

he didn't, to me, it doesn't seem like there's a reason to lie.

It seemed like it would be a weird lie.

And we could say, okay, but maybe he just ran off to start another life, right?

It could be because he was feeling repressed

because of the reasons that we mentioned.

It could be simply because he hated the military, you know, and he didn't want to get married and he wanted to have more freedom.

But then we get to that 1960 sighting that you just mentioned with the FBI.

And that sighting just feels a little more CIA espionage-y.

Let's talk about that sighting.

So in 1960, he's seen in the Shoe Bar Tavern in Melbourne, Florida.

Again, this is super far from West Point.

Allegedly, he's on an undercover assignment and an FBI source begins drinking with a contact.

And this contact is accompanied by a woman and a man named R.C.

Mansfield.

Do you want to take it from there and kind of explain this R.C.

Mansfields?

So, and actually, this is fascinating.

I ran into this like 1950s Life magazine article when I was researching this about how people choose pseudonyms.

And they say that people will often stick with their real first name

people are just really attached to them and they'll pick a last name and if the last name is not their middle name they're going to choose either the town they're from or a street they lived on

it's making me think of db cooper i know immediately and then i started to be like i'm gonna do better than this when i go undercover and you know leave behind my husband child and mortgage you know but you know rc mansfield manfield of course is the town that richard cox is from, Mansfield, Ohio.

And so that was what was so fascinating about this.

But the FBI source didn't pick up on it immediately because why would you immediately think of Mansfield, Ohio?

But luckily, our friend, R.C.

Mansfield, got drunk and explained it to him and let him know that he was indeed Richard Cox and that his mother and the army were looking for him.

which makes me think he had to be pretty deep in his cups there to explain that.

And so the FBI source is like noted,

goes back, shares the information, sets up another meeting,

but RCD Mansfield never shows up.

And it's really fascinating to me that rather than following up on this lead, the FBI just kind of pulls back and doesn't further explore it.

Right.

So the FBI actually was allegedly 24 hours of finding Richard, and then they were called off.

So that to me makes me feel like there was someone higher up calling the shots shots than the FBI.

So let's talk about the CIA theory.

That is the most prominent theory and I find the most plausible theory.

So it is alleged that perhaps George was a CIA recruiter and he was recruiting Richard.

What I find confusing is

why?

Why Richard?

Do you have any thoughts on that?

I don't, unless there's just a lot about his time in Germany that Richard simply never shared, even with the people who were working with him there, or if there's stuff that went on while he was at West Point that we simply do not know about.

There are some people who thought that because of his ease in Germany, his contacts in Germany, his ability to speak Russian, that he would simply be able to move around easily.

And that, you know, would have been helpful.

That's the strongest theory I've seen.

Yeah, I think what I'm a little, you know, I get, it confuses me is at the time they were building the CIA, they were doing a lot of recruiting.

So if Richard was recruited to the CIA, wouldn't there have been a bunch of other guys going missing also?

Like, wouldn't you have a bunch of missing West Point cadets?

Like, why is just one missing?

That's the interesting thing.

And I also go back to, would the FBI have done such a thorough hunt for this man?

Like, you mean, like, wouldn't they know from this, like, you don't need to be searching?

And I don't know how much these two agencies communicate.

So, from what I vaguely know is that they actually really don't communicate.

Like, the CIA is clandestine and they operate rogue is my understanding from my partner, who is actually a former Army Ranger who was going to go into the CIA.

This is really interesting to me.

From what I understand is they, it's, they do what they do.

So the FBI would not need to be informed of something like this.

Um, like, so, okay, we see this with witness protection, right?

Police will be looking for a missing person, and then you hear these theories, like, oh, they were put into WIPRO because they saw this thing.

Well, police don't know that, police don't need to know that.

So, my assumption and my understanding is it's similar.

They don't need to know.

In fact, it would be more secure for the FBI to not know that.

But again,

if it's so secretive to recruit to the CIA, they're obviously recruiting other people.

Why are there not other missing cadets?

Why just Richard?

The only thing I could come up with,

and this is just on the fly, is that they needed him for something specific based on someone he knew.

That would be it, you know?

And then they needed him to do something specific.

And we're not talking necessarily high-level operative here, right?

Because a lot of times we see them referred to like an FBI source, you know, a CIA source.

And And this is not someone who's out there doing what we consider to be like espionage, but just stuff, gathering information, living out in the world, doing things.

So I do wonder if there was just something he learned when he was out there.

We do know that they really looked into his background in Germany and found out he was not involved in the black market there because there was a thriving black market.

What he mostly did was he played basketball, army basketball, and he did a lot of sightseeing.

Those were the two major things he did in Germany.

And that he was really interested in the rise of communism in Russia.

That was something he was keeping up with and writing to a friend about, actually, you know, that was what was going on.

But did he encounter someone during his time there?

Did he work for a particular officer when he was the clerk?

That, you know, may have created some connections that they found valuable.

So that's really, you know, the closest I can come up with.

But would that then lead someone to maintain that secret identity for the rest of their lives and never contact their family again.

Well, it's funny because any one of us could be a CIA operative sitting around here because it's so secretive.

I know.

That's kind of the scary thing to me when I've talked with my partner about like, what would you have done in the C, like just finding out all these things about how the secret organization operates, keyword again is secrets.

We really don't know what, what they do.

I find it interesting too that allegedly the FBI had been within 24 hours of finding him, but they were abruptly removed from the case, suggesting that a higher-up was pulling the strings.

And the only higher-up from the FBI would be CIA.

And I think the other really interesting thing is, too, is that this RC Mansfield, he mentioned Cuba and Castro.

And this was right before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

So he, you know, this is interesting pointing kind of to the CIA too, because at the time, the CIA was trying trying to push out Fidel Castro from power in Cuba.

And so the Bay of Pigs invasion was about to happen in 1961.

And when the FBI met with this RC Mansfield, he knew information about this before it happened, which again just makes me think that there was this CIA connection.

I mean, he knew this information before it was happening.

So when we look at the idea that maybe Richard was just trying to escape for whatever reason, right?

And we know there's kind of several reasons on the table.

People have looked at this man named Deion Frisbee, and he first came to the attention of the public because of a citizen sleuth who was working with the Miami Herald, who then brought it to the attention of the police, who then investigated it.

And they found that a man named Deion Frisbee, who had actually been stationed in Kentucky briefly with Richard,

had actually come up on murder charges.

He'd killed an elderly woman on a cruise ship, and this is how this all kind of came to light.

And it turned out that he'd been living in New York City around the same time that Richard disappeared.

And his major business there was black market fake IDs.

And so the theory developed that perhaps he was George because he fit one of the physical descriptions and it was the taller physical description.

And people then said, what if he was George?

And he made Richard a fake ID and helped him get out?

My issue with this, although it's a very popular theory, is there are a few too many what-ifs in that sentence for me.

What if they reconnected?

What if they did this?

What if they did that?

Right.

And what if all of these things came together and he gave him a fake ID and helped him get out?

But what if he never saw him again?

What if he didn't remember Deion Frisbee?

You know, what if their paths never crossed?

So that's kind of that angle for who George might be.

Because I think that people headed in that way because they could find absolutely no George in the past of Richard Cox.

They could fit.

They looked into every single George he'd ever known.

They actually almost arrested one George.

And this is a George who knew a woman named Alice, you know, because he shouted a name that sounded like Alice down the stairs.

They found out that poor guy had been at a dance on the night in question.

They had to let him go.

So to me, the whole Deion Frisbee angle, while interesting, is ultimately kind of grasping at straws.

More on this case after a quick break.

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And now, back to the show.

One of the people who has found out

a lot about this case is a retired history teacher named Marshall Jacobs.

He decided to pursue this as a research project.

And Jacobs probably got farther than a lot of people have gotten in his research.

Can you tell me a little bit about what Jacobs found or what Jacobs believes?

Yeah, so Jacobs was a writer who, I think in his retirement, got really obsessed with this case and just sort of doggedly followed it.

He's not the only one, but he seems to have gotten the furthest, as far as we know, in terms of his research.

His research can be seen as somewhat controversial in that the family of Richard Cox disputes almost all of his claims.

But I think it comes down to what assumptions he makes about Richard's life and their essential point, which is they simply do not believe that Richard would have gone out of contact for the rest of his life.

And Jacobs very strongly believes that not only did Richard join the CIA, but that Richard lived out his life not only overseas, but came back here and actually died in America under assumed identity without ever making contact with anyone he knew ever again.

So I think that's something that's been kind of difficult for them to deal with if that was indeed the case.

So,

knowing all of this, Laura, and you've looked into this for a bit, and I said to you that I believe he went into the CIA, I think that's the most plausible.

What do you think happened?

I am like, let's say 60, 40, okay?

So, I'm like 60

CIA, 40 simply started a new life.

I don't have quite enough to say it was the CIA.

I know people saw him, right?

But you can see someone without them having joined the CIA, right?

They can be out and about in the world.

I feel like if people had seen him overseas, That would push me 100% into the CIA camp because he knew so many many people who'd been in the military and even people who'd been in intelligence, you know, who they could have seen him overseas pretty easily.

I also wonder if he was indeed in the CIA, if he would have even acknowledged people who knew him

or if he would have blown his cover.

But then also, maybe I'm giving him too much credit,

you know, so I don't know.

But I do think we can 100% rule out foul play.

Yeah.

You're buying the sightings.

You believe he was actually seen alive.

I do.

I think they are credible sightings, particularly that shotwall sighting is credible to me.

Yeah, I guess I struggle with running away to start a new life.

I guess, why?

Again, I just, I just think you could have left West Point.

Like, why?

I don't have a good answer for that.

Except that, you know, when you're 21, you don't have a full frontal cortex.

I don't know.

Well, that's always, that's always my,

my counter to this person ran off is

it's very difficult to stay hidden.

It's very, very difficult, not just because people will cite you, but for yourself, for your want to connect with people that you once knew, to connect with family.

I mean, you really have to think he went.

the rest of his life, 50 years,

never reaching out to family members just because he wanted to start a new life.

It's, it's, it's not plausible for me.

Often, often.

I would say in this situation to me, it doesn't seem plausible either.

Yeah.

And to your point, oh, you're, you're working on me here.

Even in the 1950s, I was reading some stats that over 95% of people who went missing were eventually found where foul play hadn't been committed.

Yes.

And I think without some help, it would be quite difficult.

Now, certainly people can start start a new life.

It was easier to get that paperwork in the 50s, but as an adult, it's more difficult still.

And

like you said, he could simply have waited out the year.

He could have not gone back to West Point.

Did he need to do all the pomp and circumstance to disappear?

Where would he be getting the money?

Of course, he could have had money put away, but we know.

based on what we've learned in this episode that they couldn't find a single bank account tied to him.

So without some sort of outside source of money, and then who would be providing that?

And he left all of his money.

Yeah.

He left $1,000.

Yeah.

Which is a lot.

It's a lot of money.

And so he'd have to have someone giving him money.

And who would that be?

Okay, I'll go 80-20.

I'll go ADCIA 20 start a new life.

Laura, thank you so much for talking with me about this case.

If people want to know more about you or the work you do, where can they find you?

So, of course, they can always listen to my podcast, The Fall Line, or One Strange Thing.

I'm also a writer.

My book, Lay Them to Rest, was released last year.

I have a website, laurinorton.com.

You can learn more about that and my work on unidentified persons cases, John and Jane Doe's.

I'm sure at this point, y'all can understand why this case drives me insane.

There's a handful of really strong theories about Richard's disappearance.

And each one has some level of credibility to it.

And it's easy to go back and forth the deeper you dig.

In March 1950, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Howell, the West Point Provost Marshal, told the Des Moines Register, I am convinced this is foul play.

I'm sure we will not find this man alive.

In July 1951, Ms.

Rupert Cox told the Daily News, Dick was a fine boy who wouldn't worry us if he was thinking straight.

Something must have snapped in his mind.

There must have been some problem he couldn't work out by by himself, so he took this way.

Like I said earlier, it's extremely difficult to disappear yourself and start a new life completely disconnected from everything you once knew.

And for someone like Richard, that seems impossible to do with a multi-continent and multi-agency search underway,

unless He was somehow helped by someone.

We're now 75 years past Richard's disappearance, and it's very likely we will never know what happened to him.

I think this case is a good reminder that we may not always understand what other people are going through or why they do certain things.

It's also a reminder that sometimes we simply can't explain things.

Y'all, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Up and Vanish Weekly.

Be sure to tune in next week as we dig into another new case.

Until next time.

Up and Vanish Weekly is a production of Tinderfoot TV in association with Odyssey.

Your hosts are Maggie Freeling and myself, Payne Lindsay.

The show is written by Maggie Freeling, myself, and John Street.

Executive producers are Donald Albright and myself.

Lead producer is John Street.

Additional production by Meredith Stedman and Mike Rooney.

Research for the series by Jamie Albright, Celicia Stanton, and Carolyn Talmadge.

Edit and mix by Dylan Harrington and Sean Nerny.

Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Artwork by Byron McCoy.

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For more podcasts like Up and Vanished Weekly, search Tinderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us at Tinderfoot.tv.

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