Angie Housman Kidnapped & Murdered in St. Ann Missouri

On a late autumn afternoon in St. Ann, Missouri, nine-year-old Angie Marie Housman stepped off her school bus on November 18, 1993, and began the short walk toward her home. The route was routine—just eight houses from the bus stop to her front door. It was a familiar path in a quiet suburb of St. Louis, one Angie had taken numerous times. That day, she never made it home.

The moment Angie vanished, a community’s sense of safety fractured. What began as a routine day dissolved into fear, confusion, and the beginnings of a search that would stretch across decades. Her disappearance would become one of the most haunting cold cases in the region, a tragedy marked by brutality, unanswered questions, and the slow, painstaking work of forensic persistence.

The Discovery and Condition of Her Body

Nine days after Angie disappeared, on November 27, 1993, hunters in Busch Wildlife Conservation Area, located in St. Charles County, Missouri—about twenty miles west of where she was last seen—made a grim discovery. Angie’s body was found naked, bound to a tree, and left exposed to the elements. She was gagged with fabric torn from her own underwear, and a small pile of ice had formed over her body, indicating prolonged exposure to freezing conditions. Despite the harsh environment, evidence suggested she had been kept alive for an extended period before being left in that remote location.

The autopsy revealed a picture of sustained cruelty. Angie had been subjected to sexual assault. She had endured dehydration and starvation. Her body bore signs of torture. Ultimately, she died of hypothermia, the result of being left in near-freezing weather, bound and helpless. The cruelty of her captivity was underscored by the fact that she had been alive during much of her ordeal—moved, restrained, and abused—and left to perish in a place far from her community.

Initial Investigation and Early Leads

In the aftermath of her body’s discovery, law enforcement launched a full-scale investigation. Detectives combed through the available physical evidence and interviewed anyone who might have information. A latent fingerprint was recovered from the duct tape used to gag Angie, and investigators followed up on leads that included an ambiguous reference Angie had made to a mysterious “uncle” in conversations with teachers before her disappearance. Authorities also explored potential links to other child disappearances and suspicious incidents in the broader St. Louis area, trying to identify patterns or commonalities that could indicate a serial offender or shared connection.

Despite those efforts, the case stalled. No suspect was definitively identified in the immediate aftermath. The community was left grappling with the horror of what had happened, while law enforcement kept the case active but without resolution. Angie’s murder became one of the cold cases that lingered in the background of the region’s collective consciousness—a painful reminder of a child taken and justice delayed.

The Weight of Time and the Lingering Questions

As the years passed, the case of Angie Housman remained unsolved. The unanswered questions accumulated like layers of dust on evidence boxes in vaults: Who had taken her? How had they gained access to her so easily? Was there more than one person involved? Angie had reportedly been moved during her captivity, which suggested a level of planning or the involvement of one or more individuals beyond the eventual identified perpetrator. For the Housman family and the community, the absence of closure hardened into a decades-long ache. Memories of Angie’s bright presence lingered beside the haunting imagery of what she endured.

The case also exposed the limitations of investigative technology of the era. DNA analysis existed in primitive forms compared to the potential of the future. Evidence that could not be fully leveraged at the time was carefully preserved. The persistence of the investigators—those who kept her file active, those who held onto the smallest scraps of physical material—would ultimately become crucial.

Forensic Persistence and the Breakthrough

Nearly 26 years after Angie’s death, forensic science and dogged investigative work converged to reopen the case in a way nothing before had. In 2019, a painstaking review and advanced DNA analysis produced a breakthrough. Investigators focused on a scrap of fabric—the pink trim from Angie’s torn underwear—preserved from the original crime scene. DNA extracted from that fabric was entered into the national DNA database (CODIS), which yielded a match to a man with a history that cast a long shadow: Earl Webster Cox.

Cox had lived in the area near Angie’s bus stop at the time of her disappearance, putting him within striking geographic proximity to her last known whereabouts. His background was deeply troubling. A former member of the U.S. Air Force, he had been dishonorably discharged years earlier after convictions for sexual misconduct involving minors. He had a documented history of predatory behavior, including child sexual abuse, and had been previously investigated and arrested on various related charges. His presence in the community and his criminal past had not, at the time of Angie’s disappearance, been connected to her case—until the DNA evidence finally allowed that link to be established.

Charging and Legal Resolution

On June 5, 2019, Earl Webster Cox was formally charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sodomy in the death of Angie Housman. The filing of charges brought a surge of mixed emotion: relief that a suspect had been identified, sorrow over the lost decades of unanswered questions, and a renewed focus on justice for a child whose life had been torn away under incomprehensible circumstances.

As the case moved toward resolution, the legal system navigated the weight of old evidence, the horrific nature of the crime, and the clear forensic linkage that had taken a quarter-century to construct. In 2020, Cox pleaded guilty. He received a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—ensuring that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, the consequence for the violent, calculated, and devastating act he had committed against a child.

Impact on the Community and Legacy

Angie Housman’s murder had reverberations that extended far beyond her immediate family. The case had cast a pall over St. Louis-area neighborhoods for decades, altering how parents viewed their children’s safety, changing conversations about community vigilance, and becoming part of the collective memory of what happens when unsolved violence is left unresolved. The eventual breakthrough decades later demonstrated both the imperfections and the potential of the criminal justice system: that closure could be delayed, but with persistence and evolving science, it could still arrive.

Her story became a cautionary tale, a signal of both systemic failure and forensic triumph. It underscored the necessity of evidence preservation, the importance of keeping cold cases active, and the resilience of family and community in refusing to let a child’s memory fade. Angie’s name, her face, and the cruelty of what happened to her became fuel for advocacy, remembrance, and an insistence that other cases receive the same dedication.

Unanswered Threads and Continuing Questions

Even with Earl Cox’s conviction, some elements of the case remain subjects of scrutiny and debate. The possibility that Angie may not have been held or moved by a single person lingers because of indications she was transported during captivity. The investigation acknowledged potential involvement or knowledge beyond Cox’s, and whether others played a role—directly or indirectly—has kept some aspects unresolved in public discourse. That ambiguity, coupled with the long years before resolution, means the emotional closure is complex; justice in the courtroom does not fully erase the pain of the unknowns that surround how and why it happened the way it did.

The Role of Cold Case Work and Forensic Evolution

Angie Housman’s case illustrates the evolution of cold case methodology over time. What once might have been a file shoved into a stack has instead become a model of how preservation, re-examination, and DNA technology can eventually crack even the most opaque mysteries. It also exemplifies how institutional memory—detectives keeping files active, advocates refusing to let a name disappear, and forensic labs revisiting old evidence with new tools—can converge to reverse the course of injustice.

Angie’s case added to the growing body of examples used by law enforcement to justify continued investment in cold case units, forensic capacity, and DNA genealogy tools. It also reinforced the idea that victims’ families, even when forced to wait years or decades, deserve the truth and that those who commit violence can eventually be held accountable, even if delayed by time.

Remembering Angie

Beyond the case file, beyond the forensics, and beyond the courtroom, there is the girl who was Angie Marie Housman. She was nine years old. She had a life that was cut short in unspeakable ways. Remembering her means acknowledging her full humanity—her routines, the fact she walked home from her bus stop, the texture of a childhood interrupted. Her memory lives in the retelling of the case, in the efforts of those who kept searching, in the vigilance of communities shaped by what happened to her, and in the promise that her name will not be forgotten.

Conclusion

The abduction and death of Angie Marie Housman is a story of unspeakable violence, institutional delay, and ultimate forensic resolution. It is a record of cruelty inflicted on a child and the painstaking commitment by others to seek justice—no matter how long it took. Her case shows both the dark capacity of one individual and the relentless light of persistence: evidence preserved, a case reopened, a perpetrator identified, and a sentence rendered. Angie’s death on November 27, 1993, in Busch Wildlife Conservation Area remains a scar, but the eventual uncovering of the truth and her perpetrator’s accountability transformed a cold case into a closed chapter, even as her memory continues to shape how justice is sought for other victims.