Published: April 14, 2009 09:18 pm      

Prisoner accused of threatening Tapp, Montgomery

Somerset — A man currently serving prison time for the 2002 murder of a Pulaski County man was indicted by a grand jury this month on additional charges.

Claude R. Cox, Jr., 42, currently housed in the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville for the January 2002 murder of then-68-year-old Kenneth Hallock, was indicted by a Pulaski County Grand Jury last week on two counts of retaliating against a participant in the legal process, a class D felony, third-degree terroristic threatening, a class A misdemeanor and persistent felony offender.

The indictment reports that Cox allegedly wrote a threatening letter to Pulaski Circuit Judge David A. Tapp on December 19, 2008 in which he “knowingly threatened to engage in conduct causing bodily injury to a person ...”

The letter also contained threats against Commonwealth’s Attorney Eddy F. Montgomery.

Tom Marshall with the Kentucky Attorney General’s office, who is prosecuting the case, said Cox didn’t stop there.

“Threats were made in the letter to Judge Tapp, to the Commonwealth’s Attorney (Montgomery), to the governor (Steve Beshear), to the new president of the United States (President Barack Obama) and actually to other judges in the county,” Marshall said.

According to the indictment, Cox committed third-degree terroristic threatening when he “knowingly threatened to kill another person, to wit: Hon. Steve Beshear.”

According to earlier articles published in the Commonwealth Journal, the letter sent in December wasn’t the first threatening piece of mail Cox had sent to a public official.

Cox wrote a threatening letter to former District Court Judge Walter Maguire, who oversaw his case in 2002. He was indicted on that charge and later sentenced to an additional 18 months in prison.

Marshall said a hearing date has not been scheduled, and he said he’s uncertain whether Pulaski Circuit Judge Jeffrey T. Burdette will ask for a special judge in the case.

Cox is currently serving a 15-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in connection with Hallock’s death. That case began on the morning of Jan. 12 2002 when Cox asked law enforcement to check on Hallock at his apartment on West Columbia Street in Somerset.

Cox said he had been to Hallock’s apartment and found the glass broken out of the front door.

When police arrived at the apartment, they found Hallock dead on his living room floor. An autopsy performed on Hallock revealed that “the cause of death was suffocation due to constriction of the neck by blunt objects” and the death was deemed a homicide.

Two days later, after Cox admitted to several people that he had strangled Hallock to death, he was charged with his murder.

In a statement to police, Cox said he had gotten into an argument with Hallock on the night of his murder. He said that when Hallock accused him of being a child molester, he became upset and couldn’t take it anymore, and that that was when he strangled Hallock.

During his guilty plea Cox claimed he was under extreme emotional duress at the time of the murder.

Cox had previously served prison time for a 1986 second-degree arson conviction in Franklin County.