They Gave Him a Girl's Name. He Spent 30 Years Making Women Pay For It.

◆Part 1: The Boy

His name was Carroll Edward Cole. His mother named him Carroll because she wanted a girl.

Born May 9, 1938, in Sioux City, Iowa. Second of three children. His father LaVerne found work in a California shipyard after the family relocated west, then shipped out to the Pacific when the war started. While he was gone, his mother Vesta began having affairs. She took Carroll with her to the apartments of soldiers. He would sit in the hallway and wait while she had sex inside. Afterward she would take him home, beat him, and threaten him into silence.

He was 5 years old.

Vesta dressed him in girls clothing and was emotionally abusive throughout his childhood. When he started school his classmates found out his name and the teasing began. At 8, he blacked out in the yard and came back to himself with the family dog dead in his hands. He had strangled it. He had no memory of doing it.

He did not tell anyone.

The two things that defined the next 40 years of his life were already present before he reached the third grade. He was not yet a killer. He was already broken.

◆Part 2: Duane

His first known victim was a boy named Duane Eugene Owen.

In the summer of 1946, Carroll joined his brother and a group of boys for a swim at Richmond yacht harbor in California. Duane was in the group. He had been mocking Carroll's name for years. They had barely reached the water when Duane started again. How does it feel to have a girl's name, Carroll?

The other boys drifted off. Cole tracked Duane into the water. As Duane tried to surface, Cole clamped his legs around the boy's neck, bracing his hands against a nearby log for leverage. He held him under until he knew he was dead.

Authorities ruled it an accidental drowning. It stayed that way for decades. Carroll never corrected them. He went home. He ate dinner. He said nothing.

He was 8 years old. He had just committed his first murder. And the mechanism that would govern the rest of his life had found its form.

◆Part 3: The System Encounters Him

At 22, Carroll Cole walked up to a police officer and told him directly that he was having violent fantasies about strangling women.

He was not making a threat. He was asking for help.

He voluntarily committed himself to Napa State Hospital on February 2, 1961, for 90 days of observation and treatment. He wanted help but could not bring himself to tell anyone about what he had done, and could not discuss his mother's cruelty honestly. Reports from Napa recorded Cole's fantasy of a happy childhood. Staff discussed his case in a formal meeting. The conclusions were recorded: it was felt by some that he was a possible sexual psychopath, potentially dangerous to the community. The staff made a diagnosis of Anti Social Sociopathic Personality Disturbance.

Then they discharged him. The notation read: Not Suitable. Not Mentally Ill.

He had told them he wanted to strangle women. They had written down that he was potentially dangerous. Then they opened the door and put him on a bus.

◆Part 4: The Hospitals

While serving a sentence for auto theft, Cole asked for psychiatric help again. Judge Raymond Coughlin signed the committal order on October 6, 1961. Cole entered Atascadero State Hospital ten days later.

Doctors there found his test results very puzzling and contradictory. He was transferred to Stockton State Hospital for further testing on September 12, 1962. There, Dr. I.I. Weiss wrote something that should have changed everything. He documented that Cole seemed to be afraid of the female figure and could not have intercourse with her first but must kill her before he could do it.

Weiss then approved his release.

Once Cole had been diagnosed with a personality disorder considered untreatable under the clinical standards of the time, the institutional logic took over. Untreatable meant no further intervention. No further intervention meant discharge. The file was closed. The door was opened again.

He had been through three separate psychiatric institutions. Doctors had put in writing exactly what he was and exactly what he would do. The warning existed in medical records. He walked out. Nobody followed him.

◆Part 5: The Drifter

Cole drifted through the 1960s. Menial jobs. Bar stools. Arrests that went nowhere.

In April 1967 a court in Oklahoma City fined him $20 for vagrancy by pimping. A month later he invaded the bedroom of an 11 year old girl in Lake Ozark, Missouri and attempted to strangle her while she slept. Her screams summoned help. Cole was captured moments later. He pled guilty to a reduced charge of assault with intent to kill and received a five year prison term.

He was paroled on May 1, 1970. He later admitted that if anything, he was worse.

He drifted back to San Diego. Then to Reno, Nevada. Twice he attempted to strangle women he met in bars. Both women escaped. Neither incident led to prosecution.

The system had built a paper record on this man across three hospitals and multiple states. The record said exactly what he would do. Nobody connected the dots.

◆Part 6: The First Adult Murders

Carroll Cole's adult killing spree began on May 7, 1971. He was 33 years old.

He met Essie Louise Buck, a 39 year old tavern owner, in a San Diego bar. He strangled her in his car that night and drove around with her body in the trunk before dumping it outside the city limits.

Two weeks later he killed an unidentified woman and buried her in a wooded area. Her identity has never been established. She remains unidentified in the official record.

He later claimed both women had proven themselves unfaithful to their partners. That was the criteria. That was enough.

San Diego homicide investigated neither death as a homicide. The coroner missed both causes of death. When Cole later confessed, Lt. John Gregory, chief of San Diego homicide, told the press that the coroner had conducted thorough autopsies and the man would have had to be some sort of expert to have strangled these women without leaving any bruise marks.

The women stayed on the books as natural deaths. Cole stayed on the street.

◆Part 7: The Wives

Cole married twice. Both times he found the same woman.

His first wife Billie was a stripper he met in a bar. The marriage lasted two years. It ended when Cole convinced himself she was sleeping with other men at the motel where they lived and set the building on fire. He was convicted of arson and served two years.

His second wife was Diana Faye Younglove Pashal, a barmaid he married in July 1973. Both were alcoholics. They argued frequently and Cole regularly disappeared for days at a time. He committed murders while he was away. He would return home. She would not ask where he had been.

In September 1979 he strangled her in their home.

A suspicious neighbour called police eight days later. Officers found her body wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a closet. They decided she had died from heavy drinking. Cole was released without charge after questioning.

His wife was dead on a closet floor. He had strangled her with his hands. Medical examiners ruled it alcohol. He walked out of the police station and kept going.

◆Part 8: The Geography of Murder

Cole did not have a hunting ground. He had a bar stool.

He moved constantly across California, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. He drank heavily everywhere he went. He sat next to women who were also drinking, women who were alone, women who had nowhere particular to be. He targeted women he perceived as immoral. He believed he was cleansing society of women like his mother.

He strangled them with his hands.

In May 1977 he strangled Kathlyn Blum, a part time prostitute, in Las Vegas and dumped her body in a residential area. In November 1979, Marie Cushman was left dead in the bed she briefly shared with Cole at the Casbah Hotel in Las Vegas. The medical examiner missed the cause of death.

In November 1977 he woke up in a motel room in Oklahoma City to find a woman dead. He later testified in court that evidently he had done some cooking the night before. He left the motel. He could not remember her name. Nobody came looking for him.

Each time the pattern held. A woman died. A medical examiner listed alcohol or natural causes. Cole moved on.

◆Part 9: Dallas

In November 1980, Dallas homicide detective Thomas Robinson was called to an apartment where a woman named Wanda Faye Roberts had been found dead. Carroll Cole was found at the scene. He told police she had invited him home from a bar and collapsed.

The medical examiner was preparing to list the cause of death as natural causes. Cole was about to be released.

Then he started talking.

During a break in questioning, Cole began describing a murder. A records check identified the victim as 52 year old Dorothy King, found dead in her apartment on November 11, 1980. The coroner had blamed alcohol.

Detective Robinson started from scratch. He sat back down across from Cole and said: Now about that girl in the bar. Tell me about her.

Cole talked for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening of December 1, 1980. He claimed he had murdered at least 14 women over the previous nine years, adding that there may have been more. He could not remember exactly. He was usually drunk when he committed his crimes. The number, he said, could be 35.

He was not bargaining. He was not trying to seem important. He had carried this alone for 30 years and he was done.

Under oath at trial, he told the jury: I think I have been killing her through them.

◆Part 10: The Convictions

On April 9, 1981, Carroll Cole was convicted of three murders in Texas. Sally Thompson, Dorothy King, and Wanda Faye Roberts. All three had been strangled with his hands. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at Huntsville Prison.

In January 1984, his mother Vesta died. His attitude reportedly changed immediately. He consented to extradition to Nevada to face charges that could result in the death penalty for the murders of Kathlyn Blum and Marie Cushman.

In October 1984, a three judge panel in Nevada sentenced him to death. When the sentence was handed down he said: Thanks, Judge.

He did not appeal. He actively refused to let others appeal on his behalf. When anti death penalty campaigners including the American Civil Liberties Union and fellow death row inmates tried to have his sentence commuted in the days before his execution, Cole protested against the effort.

For his last meal he ordered jumbo fried shrimp, french fries, salad with French dressing, and Boston clam chowder.

On December 6, 1985, Carroll Edward Cole was executed by lethal injection at Nevada State Prison. He was 47 years old. The execution was carried out at 2:10 a.m.

◆Part 11: The Confirmed Dead

The victims confirmed by conviction were Kathlyn Blum, Marie Cushman, Sally Thompson, Dorothy King, and Wanda Faye Roberts.

Essie Louise Buck, 39, strangled in San Diego, May 1971. Bonnie Sue O'Neil, strangled in San Diego, August 1979. Diana Faye Younglove Pashal, his wife, strangled in their home, September 1979. Myrlene Hamer, known as Teepee, killed in Wyoming. An unidentified woman buried near San Diego, May 1971. An unidentified woman killed in Oklahoma City, Thanksgiving 1977.

Authorities ultimately confirmed at least 16 murders. Cole claimed the number could be 35. He was usually too drunk during the killings to be certain. Most of the women he targeted were alcoholics, sex workers, or transient. Many of the deaths were initially ruled natural causes or attributed to alcohol. Medical examiners in multiple cities missed the cause of death entirely.

The system encountered Carroll Cole at 22 years old. A doctor wrote in his file that he must kill women before he could be intimate with them. That file existed in a state psychiatric institution. The signature on the discharge form was placed beside it the same day.

14 years of documented warnings. Voluntary admissions. Explicit confessions of violent fantasy. Written clinical assessments predicting exactly what he would become.

The signature was placed. The door was opened. The women died.

◆Part 12: The Institutional Failure

The Carroll Cole case is not a story about a monster who slipped through the cracks.

It is a story about what happens when institutions treat a warning as a filing problem.

At 22 he walked into a police station and told an officer he fantasised about strangling women. He was not threatening anyone. He was asking for help.

At Napa State Hospital staff wrote that he was potentially dangerous to the community. They discharged him anyway, noting that his personality disorder was considered untreatable.

At Atascadero State Hospital doctors found his results very puzzling and contradictory. They transferred him.

At Stockton State Hospital Dr. Weiss wrote that Cole must kill women before he could be intimate with them. Weiss approved his release.

Each institution passed him to the next. Each institution built the file a little thicker. Each institution used the thickness of the file as a reason to discharge him rather than a reason to act.

The word untreatable functioned as an institutional exit ramp. Once a man was diagnosed with something untreatable the question of what to do with him became someone else's problem. The file went into a cabinet. The door went open. The next institution started building its own file.

Between his first voluntary admission in 1961 and his first confirmed adult murder in 1971, Carroll Cole passed through at least three psychiatric institutions across two states. Each encounter was documented. Each document described the same man. None of them were ever read in the same room at the same time before someone opened a door and let him out.

The women he killed after that were not failed by bad luck. They were failed by a system that treated its own written warnings as completed work.

The record existed. The warnings existed. The signature existed.

35 women. One name he could never escape. One signature on a discharge form.

That is the whole story.