Decades-old murder of KC teen solved with help of ‘advanced techniques,’ police say
The 1989 rape and killing of a 16-year-old girl in Kansas City was recently solved with the help of “advanced techniques,” decades after the case went cold, according to police.
Those techniques discovered that the killer of Fawn Cox, who was found dead July 26, 1989, in her bedroom at 4640 E. Ninth St., died 14 years ago, said Sgt. Jake Becchina, a Kansas City Police Department spokesman.
Police said the case was solved in partnership with the FBI, which confirmed it assisted in the investigation but declined to go into details about the techniques it used. Fawn’s relatives were told the suspect’s name Monday.
In a tweet, police said it was the department’s “honor to notify her family of this news today, and we hope they might finally have some closure after decades of uncertainty and pain.”
Three teenagers were initially charged in Fawn’s killing. But the case against them unraveled, and no evidence placed them at the scene of the crime. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges.
The case then went cold, which haunted some in the police department.
“Whoever killed her either has never been charged with a felony or is no longer alive,” Sgt. Benjamin Caldwell previously told The Star. “People don’t start killing and then quit and stay out of trouble, as if they fell off the face of the earth.”
