Saturday, January 13, 2001
Ready to believe
Wife, daughter see no reason
to doubt story about amnesia
By Loretta Fulton
Reporter-News Staff Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A poised and confident
Beth Cox said Friday that even after a week of startling revelations,
she believes her missing husband’s story: He was beaten unconscious
16 years ago and has suffered amnesia ever since.
“I want to and I don’t have any
reason not to,” Cox said of Wesley Barrett “Barre”
Cox’s claims that he has no memory of his life before disappearing
in Jones County in the summer of 1984.
Beth Cox answered questions from journalists
from across the country Friday in a press conference at her church
in Nashville. She was joined by her 17-year-old daughter, Talitha.
While Cox, who never remarried, shed little
light on the unfolding drama, she answered questions gracefully,
even injecting a little humor.
Asked what has been the most difficult part
of her roller coaster ride, Cox replied, “This,” bringing
laughter to the approximately 30 reporters and photographers covering
the event.
But most of the 30-minute press conference
focused on Cox’s up-and-down journey and the fact that she
must reopen a painful past after believing her husband was dead
for 16¤ years.
“It’s all the unknown again,”
she said. “I don’t know what the future has in store.”
‘Trying to understand’
On Monday, Beth Cox’s story was relayed
to the nation during a press conference at Abilene Christian University,
the place where she met her future husband while both were employees
in the early 1980s.
She said Cox, who now uses the name James
Simmons, told her in a phone conversation that he was found in
a car trunk in Memphis, Tenn., about two weeks after disappearing
on July 12, 1984. He told his wife he awoke in a Memphis hospital,
unable to remember his name and life after being in a coma two
weeks.
Neither Memphis law enforcement agencies
nor hospitals have been able to verify this account. Doctors have
also questioned the claims of amnesia.
A former student and colleague of Barre
Cox also doubts the story.
In the late 1970s, Algene Steele took classes
from Cox as he taught art at Freed-Hardeman College, a Church
of Christ-affiliated school about 85 miles west of Memphis.
Steele and his wife later moved to Memphis,
where they lived in 1984 when Cox claims he was found comatose
in a car’s trunk. Steele said many former Freed-Hardeman
students lived in the Memphis area at the time and no one remembers
seeing Cox or hearing about a missing man in the media.
Otherwise, Steele remembers his former professor
as a kind, compassionate teacher.
Since Monday’s press conference, Barre
Cox has been located in Mill Valley, Calif., where he was employed
as housing director at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary
under the name James Simmons. Simmons, 49, resigned Tuesday to
accept the pastorate of White Rock Community Church in Dallas,
a 700-member congregation that ministers to gays and lesbians.
Faced with that information, plus the accusation
that Barre Cox assumed the identity and Social Security number
of Clarendon rancher James Simmons, Beth Cox said Friday she still
believes her husband is a victim of amnesia.
Since the tumultuous turn of events began,
Cox said she has experienced total excitement, unbelief and confusion.
She acknowledged that isn’t likely to change soon.
Cox said she has spoken with her husband
five times since he was recognized Dec. 10 while auditioning for
the Dallas position.
“He says he doesn’t know me,”
Cox said, adding that she doesn’t doubt him.
Cox called the couple’s daughter on
her birthday, Jan. 1, and the teen said Friday she was thrilled
to hear from him. Her mother said she had always been honest with
Talitha about her father as she grew up.
“It was hard, but I dealt with it,”
Talitha said.
Beth Cox said all the phone calls have been
short, awkward and general in nature. She said the couple and
Talitha plan to meet at an undisclosed place for their first face-to-face
meeting.
“I want to sit down and talk to him,”
she said. “I’m trying to understand all this.”
Beth Cox collected Social Security and life
insurance after her husband was legally declared dead in 1991
and has believed until now that he was indeed dead.
“What was missing was the finality,”
she said. “Now I have an answer.”
Even so, she acknowledged that more questions
arise daily and said she has no more answers than anyone else.
“All I know is what I read,” she
said.
Wishes
Beth and Barre (pronounced “Barry”)
Cox met while he was an admissions counselor and she was special
events coordinator at ACU.
They eventually moved to San Antonio, where
he was employed as a family minister at MacArthur Park Church
of Christ. On the night of July 11, 1984, Cox called Beth at their
San Antonio home and told her he was leaving Lubbock later that
night for Abilene and would be home on the 13th.
Cox was in Lubbock working on a doctorate
at Texas Tech University, where he also had earned a master’s
degree.
But Cox never appeared in Abilene and his
abandoned and ransacked 1976 Oldsmobile 98 was later found on
a farm road in Jones County. An intense air and ground search
revealed nothing.
He was last seen when he walked into a Rotan
convenience store with a gas can, saying his car had run out of
gas. He was given a lift back to his car by a police officer.
The officer noticed a small motorbike in
the trunk that was later missing and has never been recovered.
Investigators speculated at the time that Cox intentionally disappeared
on the bike.
He hadn’t been heard from again until
Dec. 10 when he was recognized in the Dallas church. Since then,
Beth and Talitha Cox’s lives have been turned upside down.
But both appeared relaxed, if not a little overwhelmed, at Friday’s
press conference.
Cox, her minister and a friend credited
her strong faith with the woman’s ability to cope. After
her husband disappeared, Cox and her infant daughter remained
in San Antonio for a while before relocating to California, where
her parents lived.
She said Friday that MacArthur Park Church
of Christ continued to pay her his salary until the end of 1984.
She later earned a degree at Church of Christ-affiliated Pepperdine
University in Malibu, Calif., before heading east to Franklin,
Tenn., at a friend’s suggestion.
She no doubt instantly felt at home in Franklin,
a prosperous community about 15 miles south of Nashville. The
area is speckled with Church of Christ congregations. David Lipscomb
University, a Church of Christ-affiliated school, is located near
her church on Nashville’s southern edge.
Her minister, Rubel Shelly, said the Nashville
metropolitan area has 120 Churches of Christ.
Ironically, Shelly, who hadn’t met
Cox before she joined his church about five years ago, taught
with Barre Cox in the late 1970s at Freed-Hardeman.
Shelly taught Bible and philosophy. Barre
Cox, who Shelly described as “cheerful and bubbly,”
was an art instructor.
At church, Beth Cox is known as being bright
and capable, Shelly said, and is a model of calm in the midst
of a storm.
“A lot of us have marveled at how steady
God has allowed her to be,” he said.
A friend of hers agreed. The friend, Cathi,
who asked that her last name not be used, said Cox had told friends
and Bible class members about her husband’s disappearance,
but never dwelled on it.
“In her mind, he was dead and she conducted
life like that,” Cathi said.
Now that Cox knows her husband is still
alive, her life has changed dramatically. She said Friday it’s
hard for her to analyze the week’s turbulent events.
“There’s a part of me that says
this is the way God wants it done,” she said. “But the
human part of me wishes it had never happened.”
Staff writer Sidney Schuhmann contributed
to this story.
Contact staff writer Loretta Fulton at
676-6778 or fultonl@abinews.com.
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Copyright ©2001,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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