Carroll Edward Cole (May 9, 1938 – December 6, 1985) was an American serial killer who was executed in 1985 for killing at least fifteen women and one boy by strangulation between 1947-1980.
Coles early life was troubled, He was born in Sioux City, Iowa, the second son of LaVerne and Vesta Cole.
His younger sister was born in 1939 and soon afterwards, his family moved to California, where LaVerne found work in a shipyard. Not long after that, LaVerne went to fight in World War II.
While his father was away, his mother had several affairs and sometimes took Cole along to her rendezvous, threatening to beat him if he told his father.
Vesta was emotionally abusive to Cole and dressed him as a girl.
At school, he was teased about his "girl's name" by his peers.
At age 8, he retaliated against one of his classmates, a boy of the same age named Duane, by drowning him in a lake in Richmond, California.
The death was regarded an accident by authorities, until Cole confessed to it many years later in an autobiography he wrote in prison.
As a teen, Cole committed several petty crimes and was frequently arrested for drunkenness and minor thefts.
In 1960, Cole attacked two couples parked in cars on a lover's lane.
Soon afterwards, he called the police in Richmond, California, where he was living, and told them that he was plagued by violent fantasies involving strangling women.
Cole spent time in various mental hospitals over the next three years. At the last of them, Stockton State Hospital.
Cole's first victim as an adult was Essie L. Buck, whom he had picked up in a San Diego tavern on May 7, 1971. Just two weeks later, he killed an unidentified woman and buried her in a wooded area.
He later claimed that they had proven themselves unfaithful to their husbands, and so reminded him of his adulterous mother. As the killing continued from State to state, He finally apprehended but even then, he could have walked free, but he decided to tell all about his crimes and was arrested.
