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Shelby was drowned in the bathtub of her neighbors house by their 18 year old son Jeremy Skocz, after she walked in on him.

He said that she was crying and he was just trying to get her to stop.

Skocz was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Sister Says Jeremy Skocz Threatened To Kill Her, Siblings

Angel Lipscomb Saw Shelby Cox Walk Down The Hall And Not Come Back.

August 10, 1996 By Susan Jacobson of The Sentinel Staff

KISSIMMEE — Murder suspect Jeremy Skocz threatened to kill his 11-year-old sister after she saw him carrying a plastic bag in their home the day slaying victim Shelby Cox disappeared, according to court papers made available this week.

''If you tell anybody you saw me in this hallway with this bag, I'll kill you, and I'll kill your brothers and sisters,'' Skocz's father, Eugene ''Bear'' Lipscomb quoted his son as saying to Angel Lipscomb.

Shelby, 4, vanished from outside her Intercession City home Nov. 13.

Skocz's confession led investigators 3 1/2 days later to the girl's body in a plastic bag in Skocz's family's shed, next door to the Coxes' home.

Skocz, 19, has admitted smothering Shelby, who he said wandered into his bathroom while he was taking a shower.

''Angel said she saw that baby (Shelby) walk down the hall and not come back,'' Lipscomb said in a deposition.

Angel didn't tell investigators about the confrontation because she was afraid of what Skocz had said and didn't want to upset her mother, Marie Lipscomb, according to court documents.

The child told her parents the story after returning from Shelby's funeral, records state.

''Marie was hysterical, and she was saying, 'He threatened to kill my baby; he threatened to kill my baby,' '' Bear Lipscomb said.

Marie Lipscomb, Skocz's stepmother, offered her opinion on why her stepson might have committed the crime: to hurt his father, whom he blamed for Skocz's mother's death.

Skocz's parents were heroin addicts, and his mother, a prostitute, died of AIDS about eight years ago, court documents state.

Skocz was adopted at the age of 7 but moved in with the Lipscombs in May 1995.

''Bear had told him straight up; he said, the worst crime you could ever commit would be to hurt a child,'' Marie Lipscomb said in a deposition released Friday. ''And just all that week after everything happened (Shelby's disappearance), the only thing I could think of was him and Bear having that conversation, that Jeremy knew the worst thing in Bear's eyes was to hurt a child.''

Jury selection in Skocz's trial is scheduled to start Aug. 20 in Dixie County.

A judge Thursday moved jury selection to the northwest Florida county because of extensive pretrial publicity in Central Florida. Skocz is also charged with kidnapping and raping Shelby.

A month before he came to Florida last year, Skocz wrote to his grandmother from a juvenile correction center in Virginia.

He has a record of minor crimes and drug and alcohol addiction.

''I've had a lot of time to think and grow, and I know I can make it this time,'' Skocz wrote in a letter released Friday. ''I'm 18 now, and my next mistake will land me in adult jail.

That is definitely not where I want to spend my life.

I've got a lot of support and people who care, so I know I will not be alone.''

Less than seven months later, he was charged with killing Shelby.

Since then, Bear and Marie Lipscomb have not visited him.

Skocz `Flipped Out,' Adoptive Father Testifies

FORT MYERS — Convicted killer Jeremy Skocz's lawyers wrapped up their case Tuesday with an impassioned plea by his adoptive father to spare his life.

Skocz is a ``very loving and lovable child'' who raped and murdered his 4-year-old next-door neighbor because he is emotionally ill, Dennis Skocz testified.

`I am as certain as anybody can be that he flipped out,'' said the Arlington, Va., man who works in the foreign service for the U.S. Department of State.

`The thought that, in this country that I serve, the system could - you could - kill a sick child ... is paralyzing.''

Prosecutors say Jeremy Skocz, 21, deserves the death penalty for smothering Shelby Cox of rural Intercession City in Osceola County.

The defense says he was unable to control himself during the November 1995 killing because of brain damage, mental illness and a history that includes five years with heroin-addicted biological parents and possible sexual abuse.

The state contends no reliable evidence of abuse exists.

Defense psychologist Robert Berland testified Tuesday that Jeremy Skocz suffered brain damage from deliberately sniffing substances such as paint thinner and gasoline and from being smacked in the head with a baseball bat when he was 15.

After the incident with the bat, ``he became more noticeably psychotic,'' Berland said.

Symptoms included getting disproportionately angry over little things, hallucinating and thinking people were looking at him strangely.

Jeremy Skocz told Berland he killed Shelby when she walked in on him while he was taking a shower at the home he shared with his biological father and his family.

Because Shelby refused to leave and resisted his efforts to remove her, Jeremy Skocz feared his half-brother and half-sisters would think he was sexually abusing the girl, Berland testified.

``He responded to a fairly harmless situation with the irrational panic with which a paranoid would respond,'' he said.

Under cross-examination by Assistant State Attorney Ted Culhan, however, the psychologist admitted Jeremy Skocz knew the consequences of his actions.

Those acts included hiding Shelby's body, first in a bathroom closet and then in his family's shed, for several days while hundreds of people searched for her. He eventually confessed.

`Did he understand the criminality of his actions when he killed Shelby Cox?'' Culhan asked.

`I believe he did,'' Berland replied.

A different jury in August 1996 convicted Jeremy Skocz of kidnapping, two counts of rape and first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty.

Circuit Judge Frank Kaney threw out that recommendation and granted a new sentencing hearing after the defense said one of Jeremy Skocz's original lawyers was ill and made significant mistakes at the first hearing.

This time, the case is being heard in Fort Myers because of extensive publicity about Shelby's murder in the Orlando area.

Although Jeremy Skocz's biological father, Eugene

`Bear'' Lipscomb, barely concealed his anger at his son while testifying on Monday, Dennis Skocz and his wife, Mary, are sticking by him.

`There's nobody that I love more than my son Jeremy,'' Dennis Skocz said on the stand.

The couple adopted the boy when he was 7 1/2 after the state of Virginia stripped his biological parents of custody.

His birth mother subsequently died of AIDS.

Although the Skoczes chronicled for the jury the mistakes they think they made in raising him, Assistant State Attorney Dorothy Sedgwick pointed out they did their best to help him turn his life around.

There were family vacations, Boy Scouts, sports and plenty of therapy when he seemed troubled.

Those troubles became especially evident during his teen years, when he repeatedly ran away, stole jewelry and a videocassette recorder from his parents, took the family van to Florida without permission and got kicked out of a drug treatment center for romancing half a dozen girls, including one he impregnated, testimony revealed.

The state plans to call two witnesses today and one on Thursday, when the hearing is expected to end.

Kaney will sentence Jeremy Skocz taking the jury's recommendation into consideration.

The only possible sentence other than death is life in prison without parole.