For nearly two decades, she was a ghost, a woman who vanished from her life in Buffalo, New York, without a single missing person report ever being filed. Cassandra Watson, a 40-year-old female, was living with her boyfriend, Richard J. Fox, when she disappeared sometime between 2003 and 2004. Her absence went unnoticed by the wider world, allowing her story to remain a secret kept by her killer for almost twenty years.
The silence surrounding her disappearance was a quiet tragedy that unfolded long before the horrific details of her death came to light.
The first piece of Cassandra’s final chapter surfaced on September 26, 2021. A hiker walking along the Chautauqua Rails to Trails path near Woleben Road in the Town of Portland, a rural area south of Buffalo, discovered a human skull. Investigators arrived and began a careful excavation. Forensic analysis would later determine the skeletal remains had been buried at the site for more than a decade. The discovery was grim, but it gave a name to the unknown, though not immediately. For years, she would be known only as the Portland Jane Doe.
The investigation into Jane Doe’s identity was complex. Initial analysis incorrectly suggested the remains were of a white female. It wasn't until the case was taken on by advanced forensic labs that a more accurate picture emerged. Using forensic genetic genealogy, a technique that analyzes DNA to find relatives in public databases, experts determined the victim was a woman of African descent. This breakthrough led investigators back to Buffalo and eventually to the identity of Cassandra Watson. In December 2024, nearly two decades after she was killed, Cassandra finally had her name back.
The identification immediately cast suspicion on Richard J. Fox, the man Cassandra was living with when she vanished. By the time police confirmed Cassandra’s identity, Fox was already on their radar for another murder. During the search of the trail area in 2021, investigators had found the body of a second woman, 50-year-old Marquita Mull, who had been reported missing in June of that year. The discovery of two victims in the same remote location, an area near where Fox grew up, pointed to a serial predator.
Fox’s violent history stretched back decades and included multiple convictions for sexual assault. His pattern of violence was chilling. In 1976, he stabbed his own grandmother, Beatrice Meabon, to death, a crime he could not be prosecuted for because he was a juvenile. His crimes continued with the murders of Cassandra and Marquita, and later, 32-year-old Crystal Curthoys, whose remains were found in 2023 hidden in a Niagara Falls home where Fox once lived. His methods were brutal, involving strangulation, stabbing, and blunt force trauma.
In September 2025, Richard J. Fox, then 62, pleaded guilty to three counts of Murder in the Second Degree for the deaths of Cassandra Watson, Marquita Mull, and Crystal Curthoys. He was sentenced to a total of 65 years to life in prison. During the sentencing for the murders of Cassandra and Marquita, Erie County Court Judge Suzanne Maxwell Barnes looked at Fox and said, "This is the first time I've said this in my courtroom. I can honestly say that you should never see the light of day. Evil. That is the one word that sums up this case, evil."
The families of Fox's victims found a sad solidarity in their shared grief. Wendy Mull, the sister of Marquita Mull, became a voice for the quiet family of Cassandra Watson, whose immediate relatives had reportedly passed away. "It's like gaining a new family," she said of meeting them. "They [Marquita and Cassandra] are going to find justice together." In court, she spoke of the two women being "together in heaven."
The case of Cassandra Watson is a haunting reminder of how a life can be erased, not only by a killer's hand but by the quiet passage of time. For years she was a nameless victim, her story untold. It was only through the persistence of investigators and the power of science that her identity was restored, finally bringing a measure of justice and ensuring that Cassandra Watson would not be forgotten.
