While Lori was in middle school, Barry and Janis started frequenting the Santa Anita racetrack, often taking Lori along for good luck. In May 1984, the fifth grader won the Trapp Elementary School spelling bee and was singled out in a local newspaper report. Lori Cox was a popular student who always got good grades without trying too hard. “When Lori and I were in the pool, he was always watching us and I didn’t like that.”
“Alex just gave me the creeps,” said Rose. The tall, gangly teenager never had a girlfriend and seemed fixated on his younger sister Lori. “My father hated him because he refused to pay taxes.”Īs Rose got to know the Cox family better, she tried to avoid Lori’s older brother Alex.
Outspoken at social gatherings, Barry Cox would often argue that taxes were illegal and that the IRS was a criminal organization. “The reader will learn the American public has been brainwashed or indoctrinated by IRS propaganda,” wrote Cox, “which is used as a weapon of FEAR to scare the hell out of every American.” In 2019, Barry self-published a manifesto entitled How the American Public Can Dismantle the IRS, dedicating it to all freedom-loving USA citizens. Lori’s parents also did not believe in taxes and would battle the IRS for decades. “They would leave all the kids alone and go to Hawaii for the weekend,” said Rose. Janis favored high heels, tight leopard-skin pants, short tight tops, bleached-blond hair, and freshly done nails. Rose’s mother was a teacher and strict, so nothing had prepared her for Lori’s unconventional parents. “They went to church occasionally, but it wasn’t like they were superdevout.” “Her family did not act Mormon,” Rose explained. But Rose, who was not Mormon, noticed that the Coxes were far more flamboyant than other big LDS families in Rialto, and not particularly religious. The Coxes attended the Redlands California Temple in Redlands, where Lori and her siblings were all active in the children’s program. “Her parents were well-off and bought the kids everything they wanted.” Lori and her four siblings were raised in affluence and always had the best of everything. The Cox family lived in a large house on the ultraexclusive El Rancho Verde Country Club, across from the eighteen-hole golf course. “We were together all the time,” said Rose. The two girls soon became inseparable, and Rose was always at the Coxes’ house in Sycamore Avenue, where she got to know Lori’s parents and siblings well. In third grade she became best friends with Rose Vaughan (not her real name), whose parents knew Barry and Janis Cox. She was slightly overweight with blond hair and blue eyes, her natural charm and affability drawing people to her like a magnet. In 1980, seven-year-old Lori, known by the family as Lolo, started at Trapp Elementary School. He won the award again the following year, and his bosses took out an advertisement in the San Bernardino County Sun to publicly congratulate him. A lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), he served as a missionary in England in the early 1960s.Īlthough he failed to win a seat on the city council, Barry was appointed the 1974 Beneficial Life Insurance man of the year for selling over a million dollars of insurance. Prior to the election, Cox, then thirty-three, was profiled in the San Bernardino County Sun, which highlighted his Mormon credentials. “I support programs that benefit the needs of the youth and the elderly and want to reduce all unnecessary spending.” “I would like to see more long-range city planning,” read his campaign statement. In March 1974 he actively campaigned for a vacant seat on the Rialto City Council. Barry was a successful life insurance underwriter with political aspirations. The Cox family had deep roots in Rialto, named after the bridge in Venice and just fifty-six miles east of Los Angeles. Four years later, Janis gave birth to Summer Nouvelle, completing the family. A daughter, Laura Lee, was born on August 7, 1971, but tragically died at the age of six weeks. Their eldest, Stacey Lynn, had been born seven years earlier, followed by two sons, Alexander Lamar in 1968 and Adam Lane a year later. Lori Norene Cox was born on June 26, 1973, in Rialto, California, the fifth child of Barry and Janis Cox.
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