BRANT, N.Y. (WKBW) — Suspected serial killer Richard Fox, who pleaded guilty to murdering two Buffalo women and was indicted for a third murder, has now been connected to a fourth murder.
Town of Brant police said Fox admitted to investigators last year that he killed his grandmother, Beatrice Meabon, at her home on Cain Road in 1976 when he was 13 years old.
Police said that in July 1976, authorities found Meabon lying on the floor of her home. She had been stabbed and she was taken to a hospital where she died of her injuries. Her case was considered "suspicious," but no one was ever arrested.
WATCH: Police: Suspected serial killer Richard Fox admitted that he killed his grandma in 1976
Fox, who is 62 years old, was arrested in January 2025 after investigators connected him to the murders of Marquita Mull and Cassandra Watson. The women were murdered nearly two decades apart. Fox admitted to killing them and leaving their bodies off the path of the Chautauqua Rails to Trails in Portland, near where he grew up.
Then, in May 2025, investigators searched a house on Orleans Avenue in Niagara Falls, where Fox had once lived. There, police found the near-skeletal remains of a woman wrapped in plastic and a tarp, boarded up under the basement stairs of the house.
In December 2025, the remains were identified as 32-year-old Crystal Curthoys, and Fox was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge in connection with her death.
I sat down with Captain Jake Stahley and Lieutenant Alex Nutt of the Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office about the investigation that finally brought closure to this decades-old case.
The breakthrough came when Chautauqua County investigators, working with Buffalo police, were zeroing in on Fox as a suspect in Mull and Watson's killings. As they began looking at Fox as a potential suspect, they learned about this unsolved case in Brant and began working with Brant police.
"There was this story where a suspicious death happened that involved his grandmother when he was fairly young," Stahley said.
Investigators tracked down old witnesses, including one of the EMTs who responded to the scene in 1976.
"One of them in particular did recall Mrs. Meabon saying that her grandson had stabbed her," Nutt said.
They found her death certificate, which shows she was stabbed in her heart.
The crime occurred on Cain Road in Brant, where there was a mobile home park back in 1976. That's where Fox's grandmother lived.
Thomas Piegzik, who has lived on Cain Road for more than 60 years, was shocked by the news.
"I just can't imagine...anything happening like that," Piegzik said.
Fox confessed to the crime during questioning.
"He just is kind of built up with this rage and hatred, and he experienced it that night and from what he confessed to, he ended up stabbing his grandmother and then leaving the residence," Stahley said.
With Fox now tied to a fourth murder, investigators say they know there could be more.
"It always leaves us as investigators, anyone in law enforcement to think, are we missing something? Is there something else that is not being looked at or overlooked?" Stahley said.
"We can never undo what's happened," Nutt said. "But to the best we can, we at least want people to know the truth. We want people to know what did happen just as some sense of. I don't even know if closure is the right word, but just to help them deal with a loss. We feel that people have a right to know what happened."
Fox is currently being held in the Elmira Correctional Facility. He is awaiting trial for the murder of Curthoys.
