Hair museum filled with century-old mementos closes its doors, scattering contents around the nation

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Century-old wreaths made from human hair fill the walls of Leila’s Hair Museum, and glass cases overflow with necklaces and watch bands woven from the locks of the dead. There also are tresses purported to come from past presidents, Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe and even Jesus.

For about 30 years, this hair art collection in the Kansas City suburb of Independence attracted an eclectic group of gawkers that included the likes of heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne.

But the museum's namesake, Leila Cohoon, died last November at the age of 92. Now her granddaughter, Lindsay Evans, is busy rehoming the collection of more than 3,000 pieces to museums across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

“Every time I come here, I feel her here,” Evans said Monday while touring with representatives of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston who left with around 30 pieces. “This place is her. And so I feel like this process of rehoming her collection has helped me grieve her in a way that I didn’t even realize I really needed.”

It all started in 1956 when Cohoon, a hair dresser, was shopping for Easter shoes. Inside an antique store she found a gold frame filled with strands of hair twisted into the shape of flowers.

“She said forget the Easter shoes,” Evans said. “My granddad always said that this was the most expensive piece of the museum because look at what it started.”

Evans is keeping that one for herself.

This form of art peaked in popularity in the mid-1800s as women coiled the hair of the dead into jewelry or told their family history by intertwining the curls of loved ones into wreaths.

But hair art had fallen out of favor by the 1940s, as memories were captured in photos, Evans said. Additionally, “this artwork was not celebrated because it was mostly done by women. And so in larger museums, they don’t have a lot of this.”

Her grandmother saved some from being trashed, wrote a book and taught classes on the art form, training a new generation of artists.

Often the hair art was housed in elaborate frames with original glass, so when her grandmother started haggling with antique dealers for the frames, they frequently offered to get rid of the hair.

“And she’d say, ‘No, no, keep that in there,’” Evans said.

Then her grandmother would hand them her business card and tell them to be on the lookout. Soon dealers across the country were calling.

“If it had hair, she got it,” said Evans, who sometimes accompanied her grandmother as she hunted for new additions.

The collection grew to include a wreath containing hair from every woman in the League of Women Voters from Vermont in 1865. A pair of crescent-shaped wreaths contain the tresses of two sisters whose heads were shaved when they entered a convent. A couple pieces even feature taxidermy.

The frames filled the walls of her home and the beauty school she ran with her husband. She shoved them under beds and in closets. Eventually, the couple snatched up this building — a former car dealership — nestled between a fast-food restaurant and car wash.

Celebrities caught wind of the attraction. Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller donated a hair wreath that had been in her family for generations. TV personality Mike Rowe filmed an episode of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” here. There might also be a few strands from Osbourne inside. When he came to visit, Cohoon snipped a lock, although Evans has yet to find it.

Evans said her grandmother was tight-lipped on what she spent over the years, but she anticipates the worth of the art may top $1 million.

As Genevieve Keeney, the head of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, waded through the collection, she eagerly eyed the jewelry that memorialized the dead, including a small pin containing the locks of a 7-year-old girl who died in 1811.

“I always felt it was important to educate people about death,” said Keeney, also a licensed mortician. “Our society does such an injustice on getting people to understand what the true emotions are going to feel like when death happens.”

Evans herself is struggling with a mix of emotions as she slowly rehomes her grandmother's legacy.

“I want people to see all of this because that’s what she wanted," Evans said. "But when this is empty it’ll break my heart a little bit.”

A wreath of human hair encircling a poem about a young girl who died is on display Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, at Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Miss. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)

The first piece of hair art that the Leila Cohoon collected for her museum, Leila’s Hair Museum, is on display Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Independence, Miss. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)

Lindsay Evans gestures to a historic photo of Victorian-era women weaving human hair into art, during a tour of Leila’s Hair Museum on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Independence, Miss. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man who at one time escaped from custody and was on the run for three days after being sentenced to death for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend nearly 27 years ago was scheduled on Wednesday to be the first person executed in the U.S. this year.

Charles Victor Thompson was condemned for the April 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39; and her new boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, 30, at her apartment in the Houston suburb of Tomball.

Thompson, 55, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Prosecutors say Thompson and Hayslip had been romantically involved for a year but split after Thompson “became increasingly possessive, jealous and abusive.”

According to court records, Hayslip and Cain were dating when Thompson came to Hayslip’s apartment and began arguing with Cain around 3 a.m. the night of the killings. Police were called and told Thompson to leave the apartment complex. Thompson returned three hours later and shot both Hayslip and Cain, who died at the scene. Hayslip died in the hospital a week later.

“The Hayslip and Cain families have waited over twenty-five years for justice to occur,” prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said in court filings.

Thompson’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution, arguing Thompson was not allowed to refute or confront the prosecution's evidence that concluded Hayslip died from a gunshot wound to the face. Thompson's attorneys have argued Hayslip actually died from flawed medical care she received after the shooting that resulted in severe brain damage sustained from oxygen deprivation following a failed intubation.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied Thompson’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty.

“If he had been able to raise a reasonable doubt as to the cause of Ms. Hayslip’s death, he would not be guilty of capital murder,” Thompson’s attorneys said in court filings with the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors said a jury has already rejected the claim and, concluded under state law that Thompson is responsible for Hayslip’s death because it “would not have occurred but for his conduct.”

Hayslip’s family had filed a lawsuit against one of her doctors, alleging medical negligence during her treatment left her brain-dead. A jury in 2002 found in favor of the doctor.

Thompson had his death sentence overturned and had a new punishment trial held in November 2005. A jury again ordered him to die by lethal injection.

Shortly after being resentenced, Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail in Houston by walking out the front door virtually unchallenged by deputies. Thompson later told The Associated Press that after meeting with his attorney in a small interview cell, he slipped out of his handcuffs and orange jail jumpsuit and left the room, which was unlocked. Thompson waived an ID badge fashioned out of his prison ID card to get past several deputies.

“I got to smell the trees, feel the wind in my hair, grass under my feet, see the stars at night. It took me straight back to childhood being outside on a summer night,” Thompson said about his three days on the run during a 2005 interview with the AP. He was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, while trying to arrange for wire transfers of money from overseas so he could make it to Canada.

If the execution is carried out, Thompson would be the first person put to death this year in the United States. Texas has historically held more executions than any other state, though Florida had the most executions in 2025, with 19.

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This photo provided by Texas Department of Criminal Justice. shows Texas death row inmate Charles Victor Thompson. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)