Authorities in Fulton County, Arkansas announced that a widow has confessed that her late husband was responsible for the 2002 murder of a woman and her son.
In a press release shared by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, it was revealed the investigation into the missing persons case of 20-year-old Angela Mack Cox and her 4-year old son Thomas “Mikey” Rattew was closed due to the new information. The two were reported missing in December 2002, and it is believed that a man named Clarence Krusen killed them and told his wife about it before he was fatally shot in Laredo, Texas in 2012.
Detectives spoke with his widow, Barbara Krusen, in 2020 and said she first met him in the fall of 2002. She told authorities that Angela had been working at their farm in Alton, Missouri, and had planned to move to California. She signed papers that would allow the Krusens to adopt her son, but she later had a change of heart and came back to get him. “Barbara stated that it angered both her and Clarence,” the statement reads. “She told Angela she needed to come back and pick up Mikey. That she didn’t want to just be a babysitter.”
She went on to explain that they sent Angela money for a bus ticket, and picked her up in Springfield, Missouri. The next day, Barbara says there was no sign of Angela or Mikey. On April 2, FBI agents traveled to Virginia to submit Barbara to a polygraph test, which she failed. She allegedly told the agents that her late husband “had done away with” the mother and son by “killing them and destroying their bodies in a furnace that they had attached to their farmhouse.”
She added that Clarence told Barbara about the murder years later when he said they needed to get rid of the furnace. She is not facing any charges in connection with the case, and detectives believe her claims about Angela and Mikey. Since the furnace has been removed, no trace of the victims’ remains have been found.
