Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - Carroll Cole

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

He was bullied at school and abused by his mother. As an adult, he had violent fantasies of raping and strangling women. But Carroll Cole's first murder was actually as a child. And once he did it, he couldn't stop fantasizing about doing it again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, sexual assault, and child abuse. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. It was late. A spring night in 1960. 22-year-old Carol Cole was cruising around his hometown of Richmond, California, with no particular destination in mind. As he passed by a park, Cole noticed a car parked right outside the entrance. When he peered through the windshield at the other vehicle, a powerful wave of nausea swept through him.

A couple was kissing passionately in the back seat. They were so consumed with each other that they didn't seem to notice Cole's headlights. Cole parked across a set of train tracks, his queasy feeling giving way to vicious rage. He reached under his seat and retrieved a hammer. Moving slowly and quietly, he crept up to the rear window of the car, raised his weapon and swung. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast.

Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're discussing the vicious crimes of Carol Cole. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. relentlessly bullied at school for his name and abused by his mother. Cole grew up with a deep sense of rage, and he directed it towards women. As an adult, he became obsessed with intricate, violent fantasies.

Before long, he would carry out a horrific, multi-state, decade-long murder spree that claimed at least 14 lives. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify.

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And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Most serial murderers do everything they can to evade law enforcement. Even killers who taunt the police only do so because they're confident they'll never be caught.

What most murderers don't do is preemptively surrender themselves to the cops, then confess to having murderous fantasies years before actually beginning their killing sprees. This keen self-awareness is one of the things that makes Carol Cole such an unusual criminal. Perhaps because his violent impulses started so early in life, he had a long time to become familiar with them. Cole grew up in 1940s Richmond, a suburb less than 20 miles from San Francisco. His father, Laverne, worked at a shipyard, and the family had a comfortable house in the north of the city.

For his first few years, Cole enjoyed an ordinary suburban upbringing and spent most days playing in the front yard with his three siblings. But in 1943, when he was five, everything changed. His father was drafted and sent overseas to fight in World War II. That was upsetting enough for Cole, but it's what happened at home that took him down a dark path. One afternoon, Cole's mom Vesta asked him to accompany her on an errand. They walked to an apartment building on the west side of the city, where Vesta knocked on the door of a second floor unit. Mike Newton, author of Cole's biography, Silent Rage, writes,

As they waited for an answer, she turned to Cole and hissed, Don't you dare tell anyone about this, you understand? Confused, Cole nodded. But he had no idea what he'd agreed to until a man answered the door and Vesta started kissing him. She disappeared into a bedroom with her beau, leaving Cole alone at just five years old. When she reemerged, she reminded him that he had to keep it a secret, especially from his father. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist.

or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Psychological research suggests that treating your child as a confidant isn't just inappropriate. It can be damaging. A child who's expected to keep secrets for their parent may be forced into an adult role they're not ready for. The term for this is parentification. Though research shows positive outcomes as well, a 2012 study published in the Journal of

Family Therapy found that children affect. by parentification early in life are more likely to experience a variety of mental health conditions later on. These include depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. After that first time, Vesta repeatedly took Cole with her when she visited her lovers, forcing her son to bear witness to her affairs. It was part of a broader pattern of cruelty. Over the next few years, Vesta subjected Cole to physical beatings and emotional abuse. He was already self-conscious about his as the kids in the neighborhood loved to remind him, Carol was traditionally a girl's name. Rather than trying to console her son, Vesta exploited that insecurity.

When Cole did something wrong, Vesta sometimes made him wear his sister's dresses. She'd then have him serve coffee to her and her friends, mockingly calling him Mama's Little Girl. In his book Silent Rage Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer, Michael Newton notes that this kind of humiliation has been done documented in the childhoods of at least seven serial murderers, including Cole. Because of this punishment, Cole saw femininity as shameful and repulsive. At that young age, his mother's abuse caused Cole to develop an intense hatred of women, particularly ones who drank alcohol and took multiple lovers, like his mother. But he resented his father, too. When Laverne returned from the front lines in the spring of 1945, seven-year-old Cole couldn't enjoy the celebration.

At first, he felt racked with guilt over the secrets he kept from his dad. As time passed, that guilt turned to anger. Cole lost respect for his father, who seemed oblivious to his wife's cheating. Cole saw how often Laverne cout de Vesta. He said of his father, to me, he just wasn't a man. Deep down, Cole was likely angry with his father for failing to protect him from his mother's abuse, but he tamped down that painful truth and focused instead on what he did. viewed as Laverne's lack of manhood.

Still, his father's return had, at least, put an end to Vestas affairs. But her emotional abuse towards Cole continued, and so did the bullying at school. As he grew older, Cole became more withdrawn, spending much of his time hiding in a crawl space beneath the house. All that time alone in the darkness only made Cole's rage fester, and by the summer of 1946, the eight-year-old was close to a breaking point. One afternoon he ran into a group of neighborhood kids who invited him to come swimming with them at the nearby harbor. On the way, a boy named Dwayne honed in on Cole, asking him how it felt to have a girl's name.

It was a tired insult. One Cole had heard a hundred times before, but this afternoon, something was different. He turned around and punched Dwayne as hard as he could in the stomach. After a scuffle, the other kids pulled Cole and Dwayne apart. outwardly, Cole appeared to calm down. But he was just biting his time. For years, he'd sat quietly and withstood abuse from all sides. Now he was finally fighting back, and it felt incredible. He knew what needed to happen next.

A while later, the group arrived at the harbor and swam for several hours. As the sun began setting, Dwayne and Cole drifted away and were left alone. When Dwayne prepared to make one last dive from the shore, Cole ducked out of sight behind an anchored ship nearby. As soon as Dwayne disappeared beneath the water's surface, Cole sprang into action. He swam over and grabbed onto the dock. As Dwayne prepared to surface, Cole held him down with his legs until he felt Dwayne stopped struggling. When he finally let him go, Dwayne's body sank out of sight. As Cole later recalled, he felt no remorse as he walked home, but he was afraid of getting caught.

As it turned out, he needn't have worried. When the police found Dwayne's body days later, they ruled his death an accident. Even though there had been witnesses to the fight, nobody suspected young Cole. As it became clear to Cole that he wasn't going to face any consequences, his anxiety faded. Killing Dwayne made him feel in control for the first time. Now, all he wanted was to get that feeling back. Coming up, Cole finds a new outlet for his anchor. In a world of deep fake technology, fake news, and revisionist history,

how do we know the difference between what's official and what's just fishy? That's where we come in. Hi, it's Molly and Carter from the Spotify original from Parkast, conspiracy theories. Every Monday and Wednesday, we examine the most controversial events in history, because maybe there's so much more to the truth than we've been led to believe. From the mysteries of outer space to the secrets, lies, and possible cover-ups occurring right under our noses. We explore every angle in search of the actual truth. We're not skeptics or theorists, we're curious, rigorous, and in the end, we let you decide.

Catch new episodes of conspiracy theories each week. Follow and listen for free, only on Spotify. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles.

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He even chose his next target, a younger boy named Jimmy Whitney, who's sometimes played with. with Cole after school. As Cole told author Michael Newton, he considered drowning Jimmy, just like he had Dwayne. But Cole never found the right moment to do it, and his fear of getting caught ultimately outweighed his bloodlust. As he grew older, he found other outlets for his violent impulses. In sixth grade, Cole became a student crossing guard.

As he stood there with his whistles, he often fantasized about deliberately directing traffic to plow into a group of children. thought of the danger was thrilling. By the time he got to junior high, his dark urges breached the surface. He often got into fights, and midway through eighth grade, the school administration expelled him for hitting a fellow student. Luckily for Cole, his family was already in the process of moving to a new school district. He saw this as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf, surrounded by students who didn't

know him or his history. his new school, 14-year-old Cole made a concerted effort to reinvent himself. He dropped the name Carol altogether and started going by his middle name, Eddie. He made friends, went to parties, and even went out with girls. Though he still deeply distrusted them, he knew dating was part of fitting in. From the outside, it seemed Cole had finally hit his stride, but being accepted by his peers didn't change who he was at his core. He still harbored a hunger for violence, an urge to break the rules. He made friends with an older kid with a car, and the pair started breaking into a local liquor store to steal beer. Police soon caught them and arrested Cole for the

first time at 16 years old. He spent two weeks in juvenile detention. Far from scaring him straight, it only seemed to accelerate his downward spiral. Over the next couple of years, Cole racked up several more arrests for alcohol and curfew violations. Unsurprisingly, his academic performance plummeted and his social life suffered. Make no mistake, Cole had no trouble getting dates. The problem was he fantasized about killing most women. Witnessing his mother's affairs had made it impossible for him to enjoy sex. To quote Cole, he saw most girls as tramps. In 1956, Cole dropped out of high school on his 18th birthday. Despite this act of defiance, he knew he couldn't simply drift into adult life with no direction, so he joined the Naval Reserve, hoping the structure might set him on a better

path. Nine months later, he signed on for active duty and relocated to a base in San Diego. He shipped off overseas, going everywhere from Australia to Hong Kong. But wherever he went, his reckless impulses followed. At some point during his first year in the service, military officers arrested Cole for stealing guns. After a 90-day stint in the ship's brig, military officials discharged him for his bad conduct, and he found himself back in Richmond.

Throughout the rest of the 1950s, Cole was in and out of jail for low-level offenses, like petty theft and driving without a license. Then, in the summer of 1960, when he just turned 22, Cole's worst impulses erupted again. On the evening of June 1, Cole drove aimlessly around Richmond, On a whim, he headed towards a park next to his old middle school.

As he drove by, he spotted another car parked alone. Through the rear window, he could see the shadowy figures of a couple passionately kissing in the back seat. As he watched, Cole felt a sudden wave of fury. Flashbacks of his mother's affairs consumed him. He retrieved a hammer from under his seat. Then he snuck towards the other vehicle and smashed the rear window. The man in the car was quick to act. He rested the hammer from Cole's grip.

With the tables turned, Cole fled as fast as he could, leaping into his car and speeding away. The very next day, the police showed up at Cole's parents' house and arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon. He was convicted and spent 30 days in prison. After his release, violent fantasies consumed Cole like never before. He'd come so close to killing again. Now, he couldn't stop thinking about how it would feel to rape and strangle women.

But it seems he didn't embrace these thoughts at that point. In fact, he was disturbed by how much more vivid and specific his fantasies were becoming. So in January of 1961, while he walked through Richmond, Cole flagged down a patrol car. He admitted to the officers that he was constantly thinking of harming women and asked for help. The police recommended that he check himself into a psychiatric facility. A couple of weeks later, he arrived at Napa State Hospital just north of Richmond, where a team of doctors assessed him. But in their talks, Cole gave the psychiatrist a heavily edited account of his life. He described his childhood as happy and his parents as loving and attentive. He never brought up his mother's

abuse. Without this context, his violent fantasies about women seem to have come out of nowhere. This altered account may be why a psychiatrist diagnosed Cole with schizophrenic reaction, chronic, undifferentiated type. Schizophrenia is no longer classified in this way, and it's unclear what the diagnosis meant in Cole's case. As far as we know, he didn't experience hallucinations, catatonia, or many of the other classic symptoms of schizophrenia. Lee Ryan, a clinical psychologist at the facility, had a different take.

He noted that a compulsive need to be seen as masculine and, to prove himself as a, quote, man drove Cole. He also thought Cole had violent tendencies, but testing indicated Cole was consistently feeling guilt. Ultimately, the Napa doctors were baffled. After several weeks, they concluded that he had sadistic, abnormal sexual tendencies and was potentially dangerous. However, despite the earlier diagnosis of schizophrenia, they felt that he wasn't mentally ill, at least not in any way they could treat. It's a bizarre contradiction, but it seems the doctors felt they had nothing further to offer Cole. So on March 25, 1961, just two months after Cole first asked for help, medical professionals

released him back into society. The decision would soon backfire. In the fall of 1963, 25-year-old Cole desperately wanted a change of scenery, so he boarded a bus headed east and got off in Dallas, Texas. Soon after, he was he headed east. Soon after, Afterward, he made an unsuccessful attempt to strangle a woman he'd met in a bar. She fought back, and like with the couple in the car, Cole fled the scene. Afterwards, he was racked by shame, not because of what he tried to do, but because he'd failed for a second time. If you're having trouble making sense of Cole's motivations through all of this, you're not alone. On the one hand, he voluntarily confessed his violent impulses to the police, which suggests he wanted help.

Yet when he actually tried killing someone, it didn't seem like he felt any remorse. While he was getting settled in Dallas, Cole met a single mother named Neville Whitworth, who went by Billy. The couple had a whirlwind romance and married in a matter of months. The relationship wasn't exactly Cole's saving grace. As he put it, Billy was neurotic and unstable just like me. Billy was a sex worker, and she struggled with alcohol addiction. According to Cole, she also abused her young daughter. In other words, she was the living embodiment of the traits Cole hated most in women, traits that reminded him of his mother.

And so, inevitably, his relationship with Billy was toxic and violent. After a year and a half, things came to a head when Cole accused Billy of cheating on him. His life was a mess, and he'd become what he'd always feared most, the mirror image of his father. He felt he had nothing to lose. Following a vicious fight, Cole set fire to the motel where he believed Billy had conducted her affairs. The police arrested Cole for arson, and he spent nine months in prison in Texas. There, his anger continued festering. By the time the authorities released him in January, 1967, he was a powder keg.

He drifted around for a few months before ultimately landing in Missouri. After a night of his head, he was a powder keg. After a night of heavy drinking at a bar, Cole needed a place to crash, so he broke into an apartment, which he hoped was empty. But when he made his way into the bedroom, he saw a figure asleep in the bed. It was an 11-year-old girl. Without hesitating, Cole put his hands around her throat and began strangling her. The girl woke up and screamed. For a third time, Cole fled the scene of an attempted killing.

And just as before, officers soon tracked him down. and arrested him for the attack. Cole ended up taking a plea bargain for assault with intent to kill. In exchange, he received a reduced sentence of just five years, and ended up serving less than half of that. He was paroled in the spring of 1970. For a while, the 32-year-old became a drifter, drinking and gambling his way around the West,

until he ended up in Reno, Nevada. During his time there, he tried strangling at least two women, both of whom escaped. That might have been because Cole was having another crisis of conscience. It was now almost a decade since he'd surrendered to the cops in Richmond. Despite multiple stints in hospitals and jails, Cole wasn't remotely rehabilitated, and he didn't want to go on like that anymore.

So, in September of 1970, Cole threw himself of the authority's mercy again. He walked into a police station in Reno and said that he was obsessed with thoughts of murdering women. Officers detained Cole and committed him to a psychiatric hospital. If he thought he was about to finally get the help he needed, he was mistaken. Psychiatric social worker Richard Watson concluded Cole was a manipulative liar who had intentionally gotten himself committed because he was out of money. Watson didn't deny that Cole had violent impulses, but felt that he didn't pose a threat to the public, because, quote, he does seek assistance when he feels an urge to do harm.

The hospital team concluded that Cole had an antisocial personality disorder that wouldn't benefit from further treatment. So, after a few weeks, they turned him loose yet again. But this time, the authorities put him on a bus headed back to his home state of California. It was a deadly mistake. Coming up, Cole's murder spree begins. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today, for two weeks and see if you feel a difference.

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I just said to hell with it and waited to see what would happen. Well, nothing happened for about six months. Then in the spring of 1971, two days before his 33rd birthday, Cole took a fateful trip to an unfamiliar bar in San Diego. It was a Friday night and the place was packed, but Cole found himself a bar stool and started up a conversation with 39-year-old Essie Buck. After drinking at a few bars in the area for a while, the pair left together. Cole drove them to a secluded spot where they started kissing. But Essie was so drunk she was barely conscious. and all at once Cole felt consumed by a familiar rage.

She was no longer a person to him. She represented everything he hated most, a drunk, promiscuous woman just like his mother. Once that thought entered his mind, violence was inevitable. Cole put his hands around Essie's neck and strangled her to death. Afterward, he felt a sense of relief and a kind of calm. Last, after so many failed attempts, his fantasy had become a reality. But in his dreams, he'd never had to worry about what to do with the body. Realizing he was too drunk to come up with the solution right then, Cole dragged Essie into the trunk of his car. The following day, he drove out to a remote field and left her body there.

A child riding his bike through the area discovered her a day later and called the police. Surprisingly, the coroner couldn't determine Essie's cause of death. It seems she had no visible injuries despite being strangled. While this might seem inconceivable, it's possible that since she was intoxicated, Essie didn't struggle. That meant that Cole might not have left bruises on her neck. Witnesses had seen Essie leave the bar with Cole, but they didn't know his name, and the cops couldn't track him down.

With no clear evidence, Essie's case went cold. Cole was in the clear, and whatever qualms he'd once had about his violent fantasies were now long gone. A couple of weeks after killing Essie, he met another woman in a bar named Wilma. Like Essie, Wilma agreed to leave with Cole. He drove her to a quiet road on the outskirts of town and strangled her to death in his passenger seat. This time, Cole was determined to make sure the police didn't find any remains. He buried Wilma's body in the desert near the Mexican. border. Now that he'd finally given into the impulses he'd been repressing, Cole felt at peace.

Far from being haunted by his actions, he was happier than he'd been in a long time. Now his only priority was to keep the feeling going. So a week later, he murdered a third woman. Cole buried her in the desert, close to Wilma. At age 33, he was now a serial killer, and already gearing up for his fourth murder, until June 19. 1971, when police arrested him for driving under the influence. He went back to prison for a year. Undeterred, Cole got back to killing as soon as he was released. In the spring of 1972, he picked up two women in a bar in San Isidro, just north of the Mexican border.

He took them for a ride, ostensibly to buy more beer and find a quiet spot to drink. But once they were in the clearing of the middle of nowhere, he turned on them. He bludgeoned one of the women to death, then strangled the other. These women have never been identified, and their bodies have never been found. Despite the raging misogyny that had driven him to kill, Cole still passed as a relatively ordinary guy. He had no trouble chatting to women in bars, putting them at ease and getting them into his car. Eventually, he even convinced one to marry him. 28-year-old Diana Pashall met Cole that summer while bartending in San Diego.

Though they quickly moved in together, they were both unfaithful, and their dynamic was reminiscent of Cole's toxic relationship with Billy. He was no longer trying to run from his worst impulses. Instead, he embraced them, so he proposed to Diana, and the couple got married a year after they met. It seems that marriage stopped Cole's killings, perhaps because he worried. he couldn't conceal the truth from Diana. But the relationship was unsurprisingly short-lived.

After several temporary separations, they parted ways in the mid-1970s. Neither formally filed for divorce, though. Cole went back to his old drifter lifestyle, aimlessly driving until he ended up in Wyoming. There, he met 43-year-old Merlene Hamer at a bar. Though it had been three years since he last took a life, his old urges returned to him instantly.

Early in the night, things changed for Cole, when he noticed a wedding ring on her finger. As he stared down at it, images of his mother flashed into his mind. Maybe he saw his wives, Billy and Diana, and felt he'd become like his father. After drinking for hours, the pair drove to a secluded spot and got intimate.

It didn't take long before Cole saw red, strangled Merlin to death and left her body on a hillside. By the time she was found, he was preparing to skip town, back to California. Cole spent much of the next two years behind bars on minor charges in California and Nevada. In between, he murdered his seventh victim, a Las Vegas sex worker named Kathleen Blum. He left her body in an unfenced backyard, where the police founded on May 14, 1977. But since Cole was a drifter, They didn't come up with any leads.

Cole knew better than to stay in any one place for too long. From Nevada, he drove east again, eventually landing in Oklahoma City. There, everything spiraled out of control. Coal drank more heavily than ever before, sometimes blacking out entirely. On November 23, 1977, the night before Thanksgiving, he headed to a local watering hole. He met a woman there and took her home. According to Cole's retelling, he lost consciousness while in bed with her. The next thing he knew, he was waking up on his bathroom floor the following morning.

Even before he opened his eyes, he knew what he'd done. The woman was dead in his bathtub, and that wasn't the worst of it. Several parts of her body were missing. In his kitchen, Cole found the severed body parts divided between a skillet on the stove and the refrigerator. This was a significant escalation. As far as we know, Cole had never dismembered anyone before. He'd always disposed of his victims' bodies as swiftly as possible. According to a 2020 study published in the Journal of Sexual Aggression,

dismemberment is usually a sign of sexual deviance. In criminology, this typically means that the perpetrator gets some sexual gratification from the crime. It's unclear whether this was the case for Cole, and in this instance, even he was mystified by what he'd done. He was ultimately less disturbed by the dismemberment than the fact that he had no memory of doing it. But he composed himself and started packing his victim's remains into garbage bags. He drove them to various dumpsters across the city. Yet again, Cole got away with murder.

Still, he was spooked enough by this latest incident that, as far as we know, he didn't kill again for over a year. Thanks to another run-in with the law, a short time later, he moved back west to his home state of California. His next known murder was in August of 1979, but he strangled 39-year-old sex worker Bonnie Sue O'Neill in San Diego. Like his sixth victim, Merlin, Bonnie made Cole particularly angry because she was married.

In his warped mind, she became a stand-in for his mother and his unfaithful wives. Cole left Bonnie's body in an alleyway behind an appliance store. though she was dead, his rage wasn't sated. The reminder of his failed marriage had given him an idea. Though he and Diana had been separated for years, they were still legally married, and it seems they briefly reconnected that summer in San Diego. But Cole had no interest in trying to make things work with Diana. All he wanted was revenge. And on September 19th, he got it. After sleeping with Diana, Cole strangled her to death as she lay next to him in bed. He wrapped her body in blankets and started temporarily inside a closet in her apartment.

Within a few days, her body was found. But yet again, Cole managed to skip town before the investigation really began. In any case, the coroner ruled that her death had been caused by alcohol poisoning. This is yet another unbelievable moment in an investigation that's hard to make sense of. Diana had been strangled to death, then stuffed into a closet, and still somehow, the authorities concluded there had been no foul play. As with all of his victims, Cole's only concern was making sure he wasn't caught. Even after killing his wife, he had no remorse at all. By this point, it seems 41-year-old Cole was on a kind of monstrous autopilot. He bounced from state to state, in a haze of alcohol and unquenchable rage.

Back in Las Vegas, he killed 51-year-old Marie Cushman after picking her up at a bar. He left her body in a hotel room where a maid discovered it the next day. Yet again, investigators had no solid leads to go on. Somehow, they ended up with two suspect profiles that didn't match Cole at all. His dumb luck seemed limitless, but he couldn't keep going forever. A year later in November of 1980, Cole returned to Dallas, Texas. He killed two women there within a week, 52-year-old Dorothy King and 32-year-old Wanda Faye Roberts, both of whom he met in local bars.

His body count now stood at 13. His MO hadn't changed. He strangled both women to death. But his disposal methods had, he no longer made any real effort to hide the bodies. He left Dorothy inside her apartment and dumped Wanda in a parking lot near the bar. He'd gotten away with his spree for close to a decade, thanks to law enforcement's apparent apathy and incompetence. He no longer had any real fear of getting caught. At a downtown Dallas bar on the evening of November 30th, he started talking to Sally Thompson, a 43-year-old legal secretary.

Sally invited him back to her house, where he laced his fingers around her neck. and took her life. But before he could dispose of the body, there was a knock at the front door. And for some reason, Cole answered it. This bizarre decision shows how out of touch he was. Cole was undoubtedly drunk, but he may also have been high in the power of evading justice for so long. He believed he could talk his way out of any situation. So he opened the door to two young men, Sally's sons who'd arrived for a visit, After letting them in, he staggered back to the couch. He made no effort to hide their mother's body, which was right next to him.

Horrified, Sally's sons ran to a neighbor's house and called the police. When officers arrived at the scene, Cole claimed that Sally had suddenly collapsed and that he'd been trying to revive her when her sons showed up. Rightfully suspicious of the story, the police took Cole into custody, while they sent Sally's body to the morgue. He was questioned but maintained the same story. He'd met Sally at a bar, gone home with her, and then she'd suddenly collapsed. The medical examiner ruled Sally's cause of death as indeterminate,

noting that there were no apparent signs of trauma on her body. His best guess was that she'd died from an alcohol overdose. Even Cole couldn't believe his luck as he walked out of the police station that evening. He'd been caught red-handed, and yet here he was. a free man. But the following day, a Dallas detective took a second look at the case file. He quickly realized that Cole lived very close to Wanda Roberts, a victim the police had found earlier that month. He also discovered Cole had moved to the area very recently. It wasn't much to go on,

but enough for the detective to reach out to the FBI for more information. As soon as he started reading through Cole's criminal files, he knew that this was their man. When the police brought 42-year-old Cole back in for questioning, he quickly folded. He confessed not only to the three murders in Dallas, but to almost the entire spree, nine women in total. Since his killing spanned so many states, a lot of different jurisdictions wanted a swing at Cole. Ultimately, he was found guilty of all three murders in Dallas and sentenced to life in prison there. But by now, the authorities in Las Vegas had all of also linked him to the deaths of Kathleen Blum and Marie Cushman.

After being convicted in Texas, he was extradited to Nevada to face those charges. In October, a jury found Cole guilty and sentenced him to death. It was a somewhat controversial decision in Nevada, where nobody had been executed for five years. The state offered Cole numerous opportunities to appeal, but he vehemently refused. He even wrote an essay published in the Reno Gazette Journal in which he argued in favor of his execution. He pointed out that he'd acted as judge, jury, and executioner to his victims without regard for their rights. Why, he asked, did he deserve better? Ultimately, the authorities agreed. Prison officials executed 47-year-old Cole by lethal

injection on December 7, 1985. It might seem tempting to see Cole's guilt as somewhat redemptive. Advocating for his own execution, just like surrendering himself to the police, makes him stand out compared to most serial killers. But that's giving Cole credit he doesn't deserve. Once he actually acted on his violent fantasies and started killing women, he made no attempt to turn himself in. He had ample opportunities to confess throughout his life,

which might have saved the lives of at least four. 14 victims. Though even if he had, there's no guarantee it would have prevented anything. Time and time again throughout Cole's story, institutions and authorities failed to intervene. And that negligence allowed him to get away with murder for years. In the end, Cole's assessment of himself is probably the most accurate. In an interview with the Associated Press shortly before his execution, he said, there is absolutely nothing good about me.

It's too late for me and for the many victims. I just want to get it over with. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with another episode. For more information on Carol Cole, amongst the many sources we used, we found Michael Newton's book, Silent Rage, Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer,

extremely helpful in our research. You can find all episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Stay safe out there. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive produced by Max Cutler,

our head of programming is Julian Boireau. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production and quality control by Spencer Howard. Stacey Meek is our supervising editor and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of serial killers was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Robert Tyler Walker and Terrell Wells, fact-checked by Kevin Johnson, researched by Sapphire Williams and Chelsea Wood, produced by Bruce Kitovich, and sound design by Anthony Valsick.

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