Carroll Cole's Final Interview, December 1985

On the eve of Nevada's first lethal injection, Carroll Cole told a Las Vegas reporter he was sorry, tired and ready to die.

Subject

Carroll Edward Cole

Recorded

December 4, 1985

Program

Eyewitness News 8

Broadcaster

KLAS-TV, Las Vegas (CBS affiliate)

Runtime

3:32

*Finished copy for the page, to appear above the transcript area. No em dashes. Headings may be restyled to match the archive.*

The Interview

This is a short television report from Las Vegas station KLAS-TV, built around an interview with Carroll Edward Cole at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. The interview was recorded on Wednesday, December 4, 1985. Cole was executed by lethal injection in the early hours of December 6.

The questions are put by an interviewer, apparently the KLAS reporter who signs off the report, seated across a table from Cole in what appears to be a prison visiting room. In the edited clip, Cole, who went by Ed, answers briefly. The report runs a little over three and a half minutes and closes with the reporter noting that the execution was then less than eight hours away.

Historical Context

Cole had been convicted of five murders: three women strangled in Dallas in November 1980, for which he received a life sentence in Texas, and two women killed in Las Vegas, Kathlyn Blum in 1977 and Marie Cushman in 1979. He pleaded guilty to the Nevada killings in 1984, and a three-judge panel sentenced him to death for the Cushman murder that October. He admitted to more killings than he was ever charged with. Wire reports at the time of his execution said he had admitted killing 13 people besides Marie Cushman, and his later claims ran higher, though many were never confirmed.

Cole refused to appeal. In October 1985 the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that he was competent to waive his appeals and, in the review state law required, upheld the death sentence. A last-minute petition filed by three other death row inmates was rejected on the night of December 5.

Circumstances of the Interview

By December 1985 Cole's fate was settled. He had asked to die, the courts had allowed it, and the date was set. His execution would be Nevada's first by lethal injection and only the state's second since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1976. It was also, by the count reported at the time, the 50th execution in the country since then. That gave the interview its frame: a condemned man who had chosen death, speaking on the eve of a method the state had never used.

What the Interview Covers

The reporter asks how Cole is holding up, whether he has thought about delaying the execution, and why he will not fight for his life. Cole says the last few days have been harder, that time is going by fast, and that he simply does not care to go on fighting. Asked whether he is sorry, he says yes, and when pressed for a particular victim he does not name one of the women he killed. He speaks instead of an 11-year-old girl he attacked in Missouri in 1967, saying the five-year sentence he received was not enough and that he had condemned himself for years over what her life might have been like. He declines to discuss religion, calling it personal. Asked whether he fears pain from an untried execution method, he admits the concern but says it has not changed his decision. Asked whether he deserves to die, he first says he cannot answer, then says that for what he did, he thinks he does.

What Makes the Recording Significant

This footage captures him in the last two days of his life, in his own voice, after he had ended every legal effort to stop the execution. Most accounts of Cole rely on his confessions to police and on later books. This clip preserves his answers on remorse, fear and punishment in his own voice, including his statement that he deserved to die. Because it is an edited package, it shows only part of the interview; a wire report from the time noted that Cole laughed a lot during it.

The interviewer's choice to ask "anyone in particular" produces the most revealing moment. Cole reaches back almost two decades to a child who survived his attack rather than to any of the women he was convicted of killing.

Archival Importance

The footage comes from KLAS-TV's own archive and was published by the station on its YouTube channel in 2013, so its source is not in question. It documents local television coverage of a historically notable execution: Nevada's first lethal injection and an early case of a condemned prisoner volunteering for execution. As a first-person record, it is one of the few places to hear Cole speak about remorse, his victims and his own death.

Important Caveats

The video is an edited news report, not the full interview. The station's YouTube description says Cole was executed "three days later"; the interview was in fact recorded on December 4, 1985, and the execution took place early on December 6. The reporter's name is spoken at the end of the report but could not be confirmed and is not given here.

The girl Cole refers to survived. Court records confirm his Missouri conviction for assault with intent to kill; sources place the attack in 1967 at Lake Ozark. He was paroled in 1970, before the full five years had passed. What Cole says about his remorse is his own account.

Reporter: In an exclusive television interview, condemned killer Ed Cole talked about his life, about his punishment and about the suffering of his victims that led him down this trail to his death.

Interviewer: What about the stress, Ed? Is it changing? Is it getting harder? Is it getting easier? What's it like?

Cole: Well, it's been getting harder. **INTERVIEWER:** Has it? **COLE:** Yeah. Since Friday night, actually. But, uh, really, the last couple days have been real [...] I mean, not mentally drained, not emotionally drained. Just feel tired and everything like that, you know. Exhausting.

Interviewer: Time going by quicker? Slower?

Cole: Fast. Fast.

Interviewer: [Has / Is] that made you change your mind in any way?

Cole: No.

Interviewer: Has it once ever occurred to you to delay this?

Cole: That's always occurred, but, um [...]

Interviewer: Why not fight for your life?

Cole: I just don't care to.

Interviewer: Are you sorry? For the victims?

Cole: Yes. Yes.

Interviewer: Anyone in particular?

Cole: Especially the one that was the, the 11-year-old girl, way back in 1967. And, uh, even that, even doing that five-year sentence, it wasn't, that wasn't enough. But, uh, it affected me, just, uh, also 'cause I, uh, not suffered, but I thought about it and condemned myself for, for many years, 'cause I can just imagine what that, their [...] what her life might have been like.

Interviewer: What was the little girl's name again?

Cole: Uh [...] [name; not transcribed. The girl survived the 1967 attack; her name is not reproduced.]

Interviewer: What about, uh, what about the religious aspect of it, Ed?

Cole: Like I told you before, that's kind of personal. But it's there.

Interviewer: When you think about this execution, are you, are you afraid that there might be some pain involved? After all, we don't really know. This is the first time that the state has carried out this, this type of execution.

Cole: Oh, you know, if I said I wasn't concerned about that, I'd be lying, 'cause everybody wants to go the, you know, easiest, most comfortable way.

Interviewer: Does that enter your mind, though, that you might [...]

Cole: It has entered my mind. They might, you know, something might go wrong, or, you know, be some kind of suffering. But, uh, that has not, uh, altered my decision.

Interviewer: Do you deserve to die?

Cole: I can't answer that question.

Probably the interviewer: No? It's, it's the ultimate question.

Cole: It is. It is the question. For what I did, yes. I, I think I deserve [to] die.

Reporter: Cole's execution is now less than eight hours away. From the Nevada prison in Carson City, Mark [surname unclear], Eyewitness News 8.