Carroll Edward Cole went on a killing spree that spanned four states from 1971 through 1980. How was he able to get away with killing so many women? Why didn’t anyone put it together? Listen to the story of this notorious serial killer. In the end, he got what he wanted.
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Our story begins in Sioux City, Iowa on May 9, 1938, with the birth of Carroll Edward Cole. Sioux City is located in Northwest Iowa and is currently the 4th largest city in Iowa. It is the furthest point upstream that cargo ships can travel along the Missouri River. During prohibition, it gained the nickname of “Little Chicago ” because of its reputation for being able to obtain alcoholic beverages.
Early Life
Carroll Edward Cole was the second of three children born to LaVerne and Vesta Cole. He went by the name Eddie. After the birth of his younger sister, the family packed up and moved to Richmond, California where LaVerne found work with a local shipyard. Unfortunately, this was right before the start of WWII, and LaVerne was drafted into the military.
While LaVerne was off fighting for his country his wife, Vesta wasn’t keeping the home fires burning. She had started to have multiple affairs with a variety of men. Vesta would often take Eddie with her and would threaten him repeatedly and physically abuse him to back up her threats. She did not want him to tell his father about what she had been up to.
On other occasions, Vesta would make Eddie dress up like a girl and parade him around in front of her friends bullying him and taunting him calling him a mama’s little girl. All of these abuses started planting the seeds for Eddie’s lifelong hatred of women. The physical abuse stopped when his father returned from the war. At school, the taunting continued by his peers when they made fun of him for having a girl’s first name. All of this caused Eddie Cole to be a withdrawn and angry young man.
First Victim
In 1947, at the age of nine, Eddie and a classmate, Duane had gone to Richmond’s yacht harbor with a group of boys. It was at the harbor that Duane had started to make fun of Eddie. Eddie was been simmering with rage all day and held Duane underwater after the other boys had left. Eddie was never charged with the murder because authorities thought it was an accidental drowning and the case was closed. It would only come out years later that the boy’s death was anything but an accident.
History of Mental Illness
Carroll Edward Cole dropped out of high school during his junior year and started to drift in and out of menial jobs. He began to drink heavily. He was caught committing petty crimes and would be in and out of jail for various offenses. These offenses included burglary, arson, car theft, and vagrancy.
In February of 1957, Eddie joined the Navy, but that didn’t last long. He was dishonorably discharged in October 1958 for stealing guns. Eddie would shoot at cars along the San Diego highways.
Eddie’s mental state seemed to have started to deteriorate in his early twenties. Eddie had himself committed to various mental health institutions off and on over a three-year period starting in the 1960s. It was in 1960 that Eddie attacked two couples with a hammer who were out parking along a local lover’s lane. Afterward, Cole flagged down a Richmond police officer and told him he had violent fantasies that involved strangling women. Eddie committed himself to the Napa State Hospital for 90 days, but while there he didn’t talk about his traumatic childhood or his dark fantasies. He was released in March 1961.
Psychopath Diagnosis
In October 1961 (age 23), he requested psychiatric help once again. This request was made while he was serving a six-month sentence for auto theft. Eddie was transferred to Atascadero State Hospital. He stayed at Atascadero until he was transferred to Stockton State Hospital in September 1962.
During his hospitalization, Eddie was diagnosed as a psychopath. At Stockton State Hospital a Dr. Weiss wrote of Carroll Edward Cole: “He seems to be afraid of the female figure and cannot have intercourse with her first but must kill her before he can do it.” Eddie was granted release by Dr. Weiss in April 1963 diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder who posed no threat to others. That seemed to be a pattern with Cole’s hospitalizations. Once he was diagnosed with a personality disorder, that was considered untreatable at the time, he was often quickly discharged.
1963
After his release from Stockton State Hospital, Carroll Edward Cole traveled to Texas. His other brother, Richard had already been living there at the time. It was while in Dallas that he met and soon married, Neville “Billie” Whitworth. She worked as a stripper was also an alcoholic.
They were together for two years. In August 1965, Cole convinced himself that Billie was sleeping with the other occupants of the motel they had been living in. He decided to light the motel on fire. Cole was arrested, charged with arson, and sent to jail for two years.
Missouri
When Carroll Edward Cole was released from jail in Texas he traveled to Lake Ozark, Missouri. He wasn’t there long before he was arrested in May 1967 (age 29). This time for attempting to strangle an 11-year-old girl, Virginia Rowden. Cole had picked her at random. While she was sleeping Eddie had crept inside her bedroom and tried to strangle her, but her screaming scared him off. He was soon apprehended and charged with attempted murder. He would end up serving five years in prison.
Nevada
After his release from prison, Carroll Edward Cole traveled to Reno, Nevada. Once again he attempted to strangle two more women he picked up in bars. It was after these failed attempts that he signed himself over for psychiatric services. While in treatment in Sparks, Nevada Eddie Cole was identified by a psychiatrist as being a malinger. This is someone who fakes symptoms in order to get out of something, like work or jail.
This psychiatrist, Dr. Felix Peebles diagnosed him with antisocial personality with alcoholism and compulsion to strangle and rape women. Dr. Peelbes felt that Cole used his illness to get out of difficulties he may have been facing at a particular time (i.e. no money, being in jail). He felt Cole was highly intelligent and manipulative. He was released from psychiatric services with a bus ticket back to San Diego, California.
California
Carroll Edward Cole was not back in San Diego more than six months before he started to act upon his dark fantasies. On May 7, 1971 (two days before his 33rd birthday) Cole met Essie Buck in a downtown dive bar. They decided to go somewhere more private, which happened to be Cole’s car. He strangled Essie to death. He then placed her body in the trunk and drove around with her for two days before dumping her body.
On May 23, 1971, a little over two weeks later he picked up another woman, only known as Wilma, in a bar. Once again strangling her and this time burying her body somewhere outside San Ysidro. There would also be a third woman that Cole would pick up on May 30, 1971, have sex with, and strangle.
All of Cole’s victims had similar traits in common according to Cole. They were unfaithful to their husbands or boyfriends. Each woman was the one to approach Cole in a bar. They agreed to accompany him to isolated locations for the purposes of having sex. The women would laugh or make light of their cheating, which reminded him of his adulterous mother.
In July of 1973, Cole married once again. This time to a barmaid by the name of Diana Pashal. She was also an alcoholic. Their relationship was a rocky one from the start with the two often fighting and Cole leaving for days at a time. It was during his time away that Cole would commit murder. It was also during this time that Cole and Pashal moved to Las Vegas Nevada
Pattern of Murder
Over the next nine years, from 1971 to 1980, Carroll Edward Cole would travel to various states and carry out his murderous fantasies. In 1975, Cole got a job transporting coins from the local airport to nearby casinos. That summer Cole decided to steal an entire shipment of coins and took off for Wyoming leaving his wife behind. It was in Wyoming in August 1975 that Cole met Myrlene “Teepee” Hamer at a local dive bar. After a night of drinking, she suggested they have sex so Cole took her up on her offer and afterward strangled her leaving her body dumped on a local hillside. Cole returned to Las Vegas after her body was discovered.
In May 1977, the body of Kathleen Blum is found in a backyard in Las Vegas, Nevada. Blum was known as a local prostitute. She had been strangled. In November 1977, Cole met another woman in a bar in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Cole claims that when he woke up after agreeing to spend the night with her she was dead in the bathtub. Her feet and arms were in the fridge and slices of her buttocks were found in a skillet on the stove. Cole claims that he threw her body out with the trash.
In August 1979, Cole met Bonnie Sue O’Neil back in San Diego at a local bar. After a night of sex, Cole strangled her and dumped her body in a garbage can behind a building.
More Murders
In September 1979 (41 years old) after a little of six years of marriage, Cole strangled Diana to death but apparently did not leave the city. It took eight days for a neighbor to call the police after the neighbor noticed Cole digging a grave in his crawl space. Police would find Diana wrapped in a blanket and stored in a closet. Police decided that Diana died from her heavy drinking (alcohol poisoning) and did not rule her case a homicide. Cole had been detained in Diana’s death but was soon released.
Cole once again returned to Las Vegas and found work as a truck driver for a religious charity. In November 1979 (two months after killing his wife), Cole killed Marie Cushman. He had left her body in a room at the Kasbah Hotel.
In December 1979 Cole married for the third time, this time to one of his female co-workers. While on their honeymoon they are pulled over for a traffic offense. When police run Cole’s license they find that he didn’t have a valid one and there were warrants out for various parole violations. For seven years Cole had continued to rack up other offenses such as drunk driving, passing bad checks, mail theft, and jumping bail.
Cole was jailed until October 1980 and upon his release, he was bused to Dallas, Texas. Not one month later on November 12, 1980, Cole murders 32-year-old Wanda Fay Roberts after picking her up at a Bryant Street Bar. Wanda’s body would be found naked from the waist down behind a clump of trees. She had been strangled to death. Postmortem results would show that Wanda had not been sexually assaulted.
Captured
On November 30th, after murdering Wanda and another unknown woman, Carroll Edward Cole was found at the scene of his third murder victim of the month, 43-year-old Sally Thompson. Her sons had come to visit their mother. When they knocked on her front door they were met by a disoriented Eddie Cole who was wreaking of whiskey. They found their mom lying on the couch face down naked from the waist down. When police arrived Cole was taken into custody.
Cole told police that Sally had invited him over for sex. According to police, there were no signs of Sally being sexually assaulted. Police let Cole go believing Sally had died of alcohol poisoning. It was the next day when a detective noted that the address Cole had given was to a half-way house for convicted felons. After being picked up at his job at a Toys R US warehouse, Cole confessed. He admitted not only to Sally’s murder but to his entire history of murders telling police he had killed up to 35 women.
Trials
In April 1981 Carroll Edward Cole was sentenced to 25 years to life imprisonment after being convicted of three counts of 1st-degree murder. Cole had taken the stand in his own defense. In fact, he was the only defense witness. He told the jury about his sadistic upbringing and his hatred of women that all started with his mother. Cole also told them that when he killed it was like he was killing his mother. He also talked about the killings of other women in California and Oklahoma.
It was in January 1984 that Cole got the news that his mother had died. This seemed to have a positive effect on him and he agreed to face additional murder charges back in Nevada waiving extradition on March 30, 1984. Nevada had the death penalty at the time. Authorities in Texas didn’t know that Cole had been planning an escape from prison. He knew that he would most likely be killed trying to escape and was okay with that. He did not want to be kept behind bars.
On August 16, 1984, Cole appeared in court and plead guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. He did have a court-appointed attorney who argued that Cole was committing legal suicide by not mounting a defense. Cole didn’t see it that way stating that he believed in capital punishment and that there were no mitigating circumstances for what he had done as there was nothing good about him.
Penalty Phase
Eddie Cole went before a three-judge panel in October 1984 for the penalty phase. Cole was sentenced to die for the murder of Marie Cushman. Kathlyn Blum’s death could not be counted towards the death penalty. Nevada didn’t have the death penalty in May 1977 when she was murdered.
On November 6, 1984, Cole was transferred to Carson City to await lethal injection. His execution date was scheduled for December 6, 1985. While awaiting his execution date, Cole resisted any outside attempts to appeal his conviction because he wanted to die.
On December 6, 1985, at 2:05 am Carroll Edward Cole was strapped down to a table. Needles were inserted into both of his arms. By 2:07 am he was pronounced dead at the age of 47. This was Nevada’s first use of lethal injection. After being pronounced dead, Cole’s brain was removed. It was to be studied for scientific research by Psychologist Jan Bruener. The purpose was to see if Cole’s brain had any small cuts or lesions that might point to a reason for his criminal behavior.
All total, Cole admitted to 14 killings but said there might be upwards of 35. He wasn’t sure due to his heavy drinking.
If Interested
There is a book on serial killer Carroll Edward Cole entitled Silent Rage. Author Michael Newton conducted 8 weeks of interviews with Cole prior to his execution.
Resources
- Sioux City, Iowa
- Carroll Cole
- Born to Kill? – Eddie Cole
- CONFESSED MURDERER OF 13 IS EXECUTED IN NEVADA
- Carroll Cole Serial Killer – The Youngest Killer
- Murder in Dallas
- Carroll Edward Cole: American Serial Killer
- Carroll Cole, admitted killer of 13 people, says he…