Crime & Safety
Twin Falls Man Who Killed 3 Kids Suspected In Cellmate's Death
Glenn Cox died early Friday at the Idaho State Correctional Institution. He was serving one to eight years for a felony DUI conviction.
BOISE, ID — A Twin Falls, Idaho man serving three life sentences for killing his twin 6-year-old boys and his 2-year-old daughter with rat poison and medications more than a decade ago is suspected of beating his cellmate to death, who was serving one to eight years for a felony DUI conviction.
Glenn Arthur Cox, 52, was found unresponsive early Friday at the Idaho State Correctional Institution in Kuna, about 10 miles south of Boise, state Department of Correction spokesman Jeff Ray wrote in a prepared statement. Cox shared the cell with James Junior Nice, 45, who was the only other person in the cell when the attack happened, spokesman Patrick Orr said.
Medical staffers tried to revive Cox but he died less than an hour later. (For more information on Cox's death and other Boise-area stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)
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The Ada County Sheriff's Office is investigating the case, and officials said Nice was taken to the state's maximum security prison in the meantime.
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Ray declined to answer questions about the two men, including how long they had been sharing a cell. The department didn't want to say or do anything that could interfere with the Ada County sheriff's investigation, he said.
Cox's DUI conviction was handed down in Bonneville County two years ago. The judge said he could seek parole after serving one of the eight years of his sentence.
Nice was sentenced in Twin Falls County in 2006. He agreed to plead guilty to murdering his three kids in exchange for avoiding a possible death sentence. His children, twins Justin and Spencer, and Raquel, were found dead Dec. 21, 2005, in a house in Twin Falls. At the time, police said Nice told them he didn't want the kids to suffer through the divorce.
Nice also tried to poison himself but survived, authorities said.
Another child in the family died a year earlier, prompting state officials to temporarily remove the kids from their parents' custody. Twenty-two-month-old Ian Nice was found drowned in a park in May 2004.
By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press
Photo credit: Idaho Department of Correction via AP