Stacia Glenn, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/13/2010 07:06:35 PM PDT
A 71-year-old man is behind bars for allegedly dismembering his live-in girlfriend nearly three decades ago.
Jimmy Joe Cox was arrested Wednesday at the Needles sheriff's station and is expected to be charged with murder today.
He has always been a suspect in the Dec. 23, 1982, disappearance of 24-year-old Carole Spearman. Witnesses saw the couple arguing at a Bermuda City tavern that night and the victim's severed hand was found the next day wrapped in a plastic bag along the Colorado River near the Topock Bridge.
A week later, Cox contacted sheriff's investigators to ask about the hand, expressing concern that it could belong to Spearman because he had not seen her in a week. He then filed a missing persons report.
It was another year before Spearman's head was found near the Topock Marine. Her body remains missing.
A motive has not been released but records show that Cox was abusive to his girlfriend. He was arrested months before Spearman's disappearance for burning her with a road flare.
Spearman's family, who lives in New York, said they had no idea Cox was abusing her but they are grateful that someone has been arrested.
"It's 28 years waiting for that news, that someone is going to be held responsible," said Spearman's younger sister, Catherine Axberg.
She was 11 when her sister went missing but she remembers the letters that Spearman always signed "I love you immensely and profusely" and the hand-made
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doll furniture that Spearman mailed her.
Axberg described her sister as a voracious reader, an honest and thoughtful woman who never forgot a birthday and a talented craftswoman who also made jewelry.
Sheriff's investigators took over the case in 1989 from the Mohave County Sheriff's Department. The county's cold case team reopened Spearman's case last year and began re-interviewing witnesses.
"We're always out there hunting and searching and we want to bring people to justice no matter how long it takes," said Sgt. Frank Montanez. "Cox killed somebody so young and stepped right back into society doing his thing. This is justice delayed."
Cox has no prior criminal record. He is being held at Central Detention Center in San Bernardino.
Anyone with information is asked to call Montanez or Detective Ryan Ford at 909 387-3598. Anonymous tipsters may call 800-78-CRIME.
stacia.glenn@inlandnewspapers.com, 909-386-3887
Read more: http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_15082045#ixzz0ntwOzwS1
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