Kelli Ann Cox - Denton, TX
Posted by: 
WalksfarTX
N 33° 12.624 W 097° 09.087
14S E 672284 N 3676134
Memorial to a University of North Texas honor student who went missing after a tour of the Denton jail with her criminology class in July 1997. Monument created by sculptor Tom White was placed here on May 20th, 2020.
Waymark Code: WM14BFC
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 06/05/2021
Views: 4
Dallas Observer"Kelli Cox vanished in the late '90s after using a payphone not far from the Denton Police Department to call someone to pick her up because her spare car key wasn’t working. For two decades, her parents didn’t know what happened to her. Then, in February 2016, a truck driver and suspected serial killer named William “Bill” Reece led investigators to his dump site in Brazoria County, where he said Cox’s body could be found.
Law enforcement officials identified her remains through dental records. On Thursday, a Brazoria County grand jury indicted Reece on a capital murder charge.
The last time Jan Bynum saw her then 20-year-old daughter, Cox was going to the Denton Police Department to meet her criminal justice class for a tour of the city jail. She’d been attending the University of North Texas for a couple of years, trying to finish her degree in psychology and hoping to work as a juvenile counselor. The last words Bynum heard her daughter say before she headed out the door were “I love you."
Cox hid a spare car key in a magnetic box underneath her car and locked the rest of her belongings — including her cellphone, which Bynum says the professor would not let her daughter bring into the jail — in the car.
The jail tour ended at noon. Cox quickly left the group because she had to take a test on campus, but when she tried her spare key, it wouldn’t open her car door, Cox stepfather, Nyles Bynum, told the Observer in April 2016.
Cox’s boyfriend called her mother at about 4 p.m. and asked if she had heard from her daughter, who had called him about noon from a payphone at a gas station not far from the police department. Cox’s car was still in the parking lot when he arrived 45 minutes later to help her, but she was nowhere to be found."
The larger than lifesize sculpture depicts Kelli Ann wearing a blouse and shorts. She is barefooted and her hair hangs over her shoulders.
On her lap is a little girl also in shorts. Both are looking at a baloon bouquet that Kelli Ann holds in her right hand.