Biography
Carroll Cole, born in Sioux City, Iowa on May 9th, 1938, had his first kill at the age of nine. Out of the numerous serial killers studied throughout history, two distinctive factors make me focus on him: his status as one of the youngest serial killers ever and his representation of the profound failures within the legal system that affect both society and individuals. Cole harbored a strong animosity towards women, making him a prolific example.
The animosity between Cole and his mother originated from her involving him in her extramarital relationships while his father served in World War II. Even after his father returned, Cole suffered physical abuse and demeaning treatment from his mother. Additionally, she forced him to wear feminine clothing like frilly skirts and petticoats for the amusement of her friends. At the age of nine, he accidentally drowned a friend who mocked him and called him weak. However, authorities deemed it an unintentional occurrence and he escaped punishment. During adolescence, Cole accumulated multiple arrests related to alcohol and minor theft.
He enlisted in the US Navy after leaving high school but was released from duty for stealing pistols, which he used to shoot at vehicles on the highways of San Diego. Returning to Richmond, California in 1960, he assaulted two couples in their car with a hammer while parked in a dimly lit lover’s lane. Eventually, disturbed by persistent violent thoughts, Cole stopped a police car in Richmond and admitted his urges to the authorities. Carroll surrendered willingly and spent the following three years in institutions where he was deemed to “not present a threat to others”.
After being discharged in 1963, he moved to Dallas, Texas, and married a prostitute who struggled with alcoholism. In 1970, he surrendered again, this time in Reno, Nevada, confessing his disturbing desires to rape and strangle women. He was then transferred to a state hospital where Dr. Felix Peebles diagnosed him as having a poor prognosis and noted that his condition upon admission remained unchanged. The recommended treatment was a bus ticket to San Diego, California.
On May 7th, 1971, in San Diego, he committed his first murder as an adult by killing Essie Buck in his car. Just two weeks later, he repeated the crime with another woman referred to as “Wilma.” Another week passed before the third female victim was killed.
In June 1971, Cole was interviewed by San Diego Homicide Detective Robert Ring wherein he confessed to sleeping with Essie Buck. However, Cole claimed that he woke up the next morning to find her dead and in a state of panic, he disposed of her body. Detective Ring accepted his account and no charges were brought against Cole. (Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006. Print.) Moving to the eastern side, Cole claimed another victim in August 1975 in Casper, Wyoming. Subsequently, he resurfaced in Las Vegas in 1977 where he spent enough time to kill a prostitute before being arrested on an auto theft charge, which was later dropped.
A few weeks later, Cole woke up in Oklahoma City to find another woman’s remains in his bathtub, with bloody slices of her buttocks in a skillet on the stove (“Murder in Dallas” truTV. Turner Entertainment Digital, n. d. Web. 7 Aug 2012). After returning to San Diego, Cole got remarried and sought counseling to help him stop drinking. However, this attempt was unsuccessful, and in August 1979, he strangled Bonnie Stewart at his workplace and dumped her naked body in an alley next to the store.
Several weeks later, specifically on September 17, 1979, the husband’s long-standing threats to kill his wife finally came to fruition. Strangely, even though these threats had been reported to a parole officer responsible for overseeing his supervision, the authorities refused to declare her death as a murder. Instead, they attributed her untimely demise to natural causes, presumably due to her own excessive drinking. This decision was made despite the shocking discovery of her body wrapped in a blanket and hidden in a closet within Cole’s residence. Furthermore, Cole himself was arrested while intoxicated and in the process of digging a grave beneath a nearby neighbor’s house.
Cole left San Diego and traveled to Las Vegas, where he targeted another victim. He then went to Dallas, Texas and killed three more victims in 1980. Despite these actions, he managed to avoid capture. During his final murder, he was discovered with the victim lying at his feet, but detectives only considered him a “casual suspect.” At 42 years old, Cole grew tired of his actions and confessed to a series of unsolved homicides without any provocation. Despite clearly exhibiting psychopathic traits, psychologists and psychoanalysts in six different states dismissed him as a harmless lowlife who posed no threat to society. In San Diego, he was caught twice attempting murder, but each time his excuse of a lover’s quarrel was accepted. Investigators even disregarded Cole’s own confession and treated two homicides as accidents caused by drunkenness while dismissing others as the work of angry pimps.
It is highly probable that he would have evaded capture again in Texas if he had not chosen to admit his guilt in a situation where investigators perceived the murders as “accidental deaths”.
Works Cited
- Freed, David. “Nevada Executes Killer of Five: 25 View Death of Carroll E. Cole by Lethal Injection”.
- Los Angeles Times 7 Dec 1985: Web.
- Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006. Print.
- “Murder in Dallas” truTV. Turner Entertainment Digital, n. d. Web. 7 Aug 2012
- Philbin, Michael, and Tom Philbin. The Killer Book of Serial Killers. Naperville: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2009. Print.
