An upstate New York handyman who has already pleaded guilty to murdering two women is now feared to be a serial killer, as he was charged with a third homicide.
Richard Fox, 62, has been charged with second-degree murder for the death of 32-year-old Crystal Curthoys after her decomposed body was found in a home he once owned in Niagara Falls, WBKW reports.
The former handyman is already behind bars for the murders of 40-year-old Cassandra Watson in 2003 and 50-year-old Marquita Mull in 2021.
He had pleaded guilty to killing the two women and dumping their bodies off the path of Chautauqua Rails to Trails, near where he grew up.
Chautauqua County Sheriff James Quattrone said he now considers Fox to be a ‘serial killer,’ noting that there are still about two or three homicides in the New York county that remain unsolved.
‘I do believe that there [are] other victims,’ he said in September, when Fox was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison, according to WIVB.
‘We’re hopeful that Richard Fox will hopefully try to ease his conscience a little bit and give us some more information.’
Richard Fox, 62, has been charged with second-degree murder for the death of 32-year-old Crystal Curthoys
The former handyman is already behind bars for the murders of 40-year-old Cassandra Watson in 2003 and 50-year-old Marquita Mull in 2021
Prosecutors have said Fox was in a relationship with Watson around 2003, when she was last seen alive in Buffalo.
Her fate remained a mystery until a hiker stumbled upon her body in 2021, the New York Post reports.
Mull, meanwhile, had gone missing from the Broadway district of Buffalo that June.
Her remains were then found less than 20 yards away from Watson’s body.
Authorities said investigators were able to identify Mull’s remains within a few weeks of the discovery of the bodies, but it took until late 2024 for a lab that specializes in genealogical DNA training to identify the second set of remains as Watson’s.
Fox was then arrested by the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office and the Buffalo Police Department in Niagara Falls last January.
A couple months later, investigators searched a house in Niagara Falls, where Fox once lived – and found the near-skeletal remains of a woman wrapped in plastic and a tarp, boarded up under the basement stairs.
Those remains were then identified as Curthoys’ through dental records, the Niagara County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday.
Fox was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for the two homicides in September
Records show Fox was previously convicted of child sex abuse.
In 1993, he was convicted in third-degree rape of a 14 year old girl and was hit with a prison sentence of 18 months to three years, WIVB reports.
He was also convicted of first degree attempted rape and aggravated sexual abuse of a 42 year old Buffalo woman, for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In sentencing Fox to 40 years to life in September, Judge Suzanne Maxwell said he was ‘evil.’
‘I can honestly say you should never see the light of day. Evil,’ she said. ‘That is the one word that sums up this case. Evil.’
Fox is now being held at the Niagara County jail. He is scheduled to return to court on January 5.
