Carroll Cole Confessions: Why He Confessed to 14 Murders
Dallas police were about to release Carroll Cole when he confessed to the murder in front of them and at least 13 more. Without those confessions, there was no case.
Case record · Verified against court records and 1985 press archives · Updated July 2026
The Carroll Cole confessions began on November 30, 1980, in a Dallas interview room, after police concluded that Sally Thompson had probably died of natural causes. Cole, hours from release, told detectives he had strangled Thompson and at least 13 other women since 1971. The confessions supplied the only connected account of murders in California, Nevada, and Texas, and every conviction that followed rested on them.
What Carroll Cole Confessed To
Cole confessed to a minimum of 14 murders committed between May 1971 and November 1980, and estimated the true number at up to 35. The confessed cases included Essie Louise Buck in San Diego (May 7, 1971), an unidentified woman buried near San Diego 2 weeks later, Kathlyn Blum in Las Vegas (1977), Marie Cushman in Las Vegas (1979), his wife Diana Pashal in San Diego (September 1979), and Dorothy King, Wanda Roberts, and Sally Thompson in Dallas (November 1980). Each named case is recorded on Carroll Cole Victims: The 5 Convictions and the 14 Confessions.
Cole told detectives he was drunk during most of the killings and could not fix an exact count. That admitted uncertainty is why sources cite between 14 and 35 victims, and why courts prosecuted only the 5 strongest cases.
Why Carroll Cole Confessed
Cole confessed because he wanted the killing to stop and said so in interviews, in court, and in writing until his death. He had told authorities about his violent fantasies as early as 1960, when he called Richmond police to report an urge to strangle women, and psychiatric hospitals released him anyway. In 1984 he waived extradition to Nevada specifically because Nevada could impose the death penalty, telling the court he would kill again if ever freed.
The pattern separates Cole from serial killers who confessed under interrogation pressure. Cole volunteered his confession while police were preparing to rule him out, repeated it under oath, and spent his final years reinforcing it in a handwritten autobiography of roughly 100,000 words.
The Death Row Autobiography
Cole's autobiography, written at Nevada State Prison between 1984 and 1985, ran to roughly 100,000 handwritten words. The manuscript contained his admission that he drowned classmate Duane Eugene Owen near Richmond, California, in 1947, at age 8, a death that had stood as an accident for almost 40 years. He described the drowning as revenge rehearsal, saying he had "made the mental commitment" to get even with his mother.
The autobiography also mapped his method: bars, alcohol, women he judged unfaithful, then strangulation. Psychiatrists at his trials connected the pattern to his mother Vesta's affairs and abuse, documented on the Carroll Cole case overview.
What the Confessions Changed
The confessions produced 3 direct legal outcomes: the Texas convictions of April 9, 1981, the Nevada death sentence of October 12, 1984, and the closure of case files on deaths that had been wrongly recorded as natural or accidental, including Diana Pashal's. They also forced a review of how police in 3 states had missed a connected series, because no investigator had linked the deaths before Cole explained them himself. The dates of every confession, trial, and sentence are listed on the Carroll Cole Timeline: 1938 to 1985, Every Verified Date.
Were the Confessions Reliable?
Courts in Texas and Nevada tested the confessions and accepted them: physical evidence, witness sightings, and Cole's presence at the Thompson scene corroborated the cases that went to trial. His Texas defense argued diminished capacity from alcoholism rather than innocence, and the jury rejected it. The question of what his brain showed was answered only after his execution, examined on Carroll Cole Execution: Nevada's First Lethal Injection.