The United States Military Academy, also known as West Point Academy or simply West Point, is one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the country. Founded in 1802, it's one of the oldest military service academies in the world, steeped in tradition and a deep and deeply American mythology. Some of the most successful American leaders of all time have graduated from West Point, including William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin.
As a military institution charged with training the leaders of tomorrow, you might imagine that West Point runs a pretty tight ship — and you would be right. Cadets are held to high standards of behavior, and their life is very controlled and monitored while in attendance. With a little more than 1,000 cadets in each class, the logistics of keeping track of them all isn't very challenging, especially considering that cadets typically need permission to leave the campus and have to sign in and out when they do so. Unsurprisingly, West Point has almost never lost a cadet as a result.
In fact, in its entire history stretching more than 200 years, West Point has had only one cadet go missing. On January 14, 1950, a cadet named Richard Colvin Cox signed out of his dorm to meet a friend — and was never seen again. Here's the mystery of the only cadet to go missing from West Point.
HE ALREADY HAD MILITARY EXPERIENCE
According to Richland Source, Richard Colvin Cox was born in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1928. Per Front Page Detectives, after graduating high school, Cox volunteered for the United States Constabulary, a force organized in the wake of World War II to provide security and policing services in a shattered Germany. He was assigned to a unit in Coburg, Germany, and the military life obviously appealed to him — LIFE reports he applied to and entered West Point as a plebe in 1948.
