Niagara Falls Police Criminal Investigation Division (CID) detectives spent Tuesday digging in the backyard of a Orleans Avenue home linked to a suspected serial killer.
The home is also the site of the grisly discovery three weeks ago of the skeletal remains of a woman in a stairwell.
On Tuesday, Falls Police Crime Scene Unit (CSU) detectives spent much of the day digging up a small plot of land in the backyard of the home and then meticulously sifting through the soil. The operation appeared to involve retired CSU Captain Nicholas Paonessa, regarded as one of the preeminent forensic investigators in upstate New York.
Neither Falls police nor prosecutors from the Niagara County District Attorney’s Office would comment on the activity or whether anything was recovered as a result of the dig. They also declined to comment on whether there was any additional digging planned at the site.
Prior to March 28, Falls police had been assisting an investigation, by Buffalo Police and the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office, into Richard Fox. Fox, 62, who has lived in both the Falls and Buffalo, was taken into custody on Jan. 7 by a Niagara Falls Police Narcotics & Intelligence Division (NID) detective and a Warrants Unit detective, assigned to the U.S. Marshals Violent Felony Fugitive Task Force, as he walked in the 1000 block of Portage Road.
At that time, Falls police said investigators with the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office and the Buffalo Police Department had contacted them for assistance in locating Fox, who had a warrant for his arrest for failure to register as a sex offender.
Shortly after his arrest, Fox was charged with the cold case murders of Marquita Mull and Cassandra Watson.
On March 28, acting on a tip, CID detectives, along with Buffalo Police Homicide Squad and Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office investigators, executed a search warrant at an apartment building at 2419 Orleans Ave. that led to the discovery of what was described as the “badly decomposed” remains of a woman under a stairwell and enclosed in drywall.
Law enforcement sources later confirmed that Fox had lived in an apartment in the Orleans Avenue building and had worked as a handyman for a former owner of the property.
Since Fox’s arrest for the Mull and Watson murders, law enforcement sources have said that he was a “suspect in other unsolved crimes”, including possible homicides. Investigators have referred to Fox as “a possible serial killer.”
Fox is described as “a person of interest” in the discovery of the skeletal remains and Falls police have said they are working to identify the victim. Sources have told the Gazette that crime scene unit investigators were able to recover DNA evidence from the unknown victim, but evidence recovered from the apartment building crime scene has not led to any immediate connections to local open missing persons cases involving women.
Just over a week after the discovery of the Orleans Avenue victim, Falls and Buffalo police detectives and New York State Police executed additional search warrants at locations on Pierce, Pine and LaSalle avenues. In the 1100 block of Pierce Avenue, investigators seized and towed away a white Chevy Express Utility van parked behind a residence.
Sources said the van was linked to Fox.
Mull, 50, from Buffalo, but who at one time lived in the Falls, is believed to have been killed in 2021. Investigators have estimated that Watson, also from Buffalo, was slain in 2003 or 2004.
Prosecutors in Erie County have charged that Mull, who was last seen in June 2021, was killed shortly after her disappearance. Investigators believe she was killed in Buffalo but her body was found near a hiking trail in the Chautauqua County Town of Portland three months later in September 2021.
Chautauqua County Sheriff’s investigators found Mull’s remains as they were searching the trail following the discovery by a hiker of a human skull a short distance away.
The discovery of that skull was then linked to Watson, whose remains were also found along the hiking trail near Mull’s. Sources have told the Gazette that Mull and Fox may have been acquainted at the time of her disappearance.
Fox has pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Mull and Watson and multiple counts related to his failure to properly register as a sex offender. He is being held without bail at the Erie Correctional Facility in Alden.