Murder of John Edwards
On February 18, 1994, a brother–sister pair was attacked by two men at a camping site in Ocala National Forest, Florida, United States. 21-year-old Pam Edwards was raped twice by the attackers, and her 18-year-old brother, John Timothy Edwards, was murdered by the same two perpetrators. During the same month, the two killers, William Christopher Paul and Loran Kenstley Cole, were arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Out of the two, Paul pleaded guilty to the murder, kidnapping, and robbery charges, a decision that ultimately spared him the death sentence, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. On the other hand, Cole, who was deemed to have played a bigger role in the murder, was sentenced to death after a state jury found him guilty of murdering Edwards and other charges that include the rape of Edwards's sister. Cole was executed by lethal injection on August 29, 2024, at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida.
Murder
On February 18, 1994, a brother–sister pair, John Timothy Edwards, and his sister Pam Edwards were attacked at a camping site in Ocala National Forest, Florida.John Edwards, a Florida State University student, and his sister Pam, a Eckerd College student, met in Ocala for a camping trip. John had driven from Tallahassee while Pam arrived from St. Petersburg at their meet-up point, and they both headed to Ocala National Forest. While they were setting up camp in the Hopkins Prairie, the Edwards siblings met a man who stopped by and lent a helping hand to get the siblings settled. The man introduced himself as "Kevin", befriended the siblings, and left the campsite briefly before returning with another man while the siblings ate dinner and introduced his companion as "his brother". Both men sat with the Edwards siblings around the campfire until 10:45 p.m., when the four decided to leave and take a walk to the pond to photograph alligators. The four walked for a while but never found the pond.
At one point during the walk itself, Kevin jumped Pam, handcuffed her, and threw her onto the ground. John retaliated, but both men overpowered him, and he was thrown onto the ground next to Pam. Kevin's brother took Pam up the path while Kevin stayed back with 18-year-old John Edwards, slashing his throat and battering him severely on the head. Edwards died that night as a result of the neck wound and skull fractures he sustained.
Meanwhile, Pam was taken back to the campsite by her captors, and Kevin threatened to kill her if she did not have sexual intercourse with him, and Pam was raped thereafter by Kevin. The next day, Pam was raped a second time before she was gagged and tied to a tree by both Kevin and his brother before they took off in one of the sibling's cars. They also stole the siblings' jewelry, money, checkbooks, and credit cards.
Two days after the attack, Pam was able to free herself by chewing through the rope and tried to search for her brother but failed to find him. She then flagged down a motorist, who helped her to make a police report. Later on that same day, the body of John Edwards was found by law enforcement officers. At the time of his death, Edwards was a chemical engineering major in his first year of college and his parents, who were in the military, were based in Okinawa, Japan. Edwards’ friends and fraternity brothers from Phi Gamma Delta were shocked to hear about his murder as they remembered him as a good-looking, fun person who loved athletics and aspired to be a chemical engineer. Edwards’ father Timothy Edwards also described his son as the best child he could get in the world, and the Edwards family also set up a trust fund in the name of Edwards and hoped to set up a scholarship with the money from the fund.
Investigations and arrest
After the police report was lodged, the police released composite sketches of the two killers and appealed for witnesses to assist in investigations. After receiving a tip-off from a man who saw two men resembling the police sketches of the suspects in the Ocala area, the police were able to arrest the two murderers at Tuscawilla Park. Kevin's real name was Loran Kenstley Cole, a 27-year-old Iowa-born man who resided in Orlando, while Kevin's accomplice was 20-year-old William Christopher Paul, a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, who was actually not Cole's brother and therefore unrelated to him by blood. Furthermore, apart from the motive of robbery, police uncovered that Cole was previously charged and convicted between 1985 and 1991 for various offences, and he was wanted in Cincinnati on a 1990 counterfeiting charge, while Paul had no previous criminal history. Marion Sheriff Ken Ergle condemned the crime in a media statement pertaining to the men's capture, stating that they were "damnable animals" for committing such horrific crimes.Both Cole and Paul were charged with one count of murder, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of armed robbery and two counts of rape. If found guilty of the most serious charge of first-degree murder, both Cole and Paul would either be sentenced to death or life imprisonment under Florida law.
Both Paul and Cole were detained without bail at Marion County Jail in Ocala. The two men allegedly tried to escape from judicial custody in May 1994, and were seen digging at mortar around the cinder blocks in their cells, but they denied doing so.
Perpetrators
William Christopher Paul
Early life
William Christopher Paul was born on April 19, 1973, in Knoxville, Tennessee. An only child, Paul reportedly loved camping and would collect wildflowers for his mother.When Paul attended Gibbs High School, he was originally a good student, but when he was in seventh grade, Paul became addicted to marijuana, and although he stopped doing so at one point after he met his first girlfriend, he fell back into his old habits after they broke up. Paul dropped out of school at 11th grade as a result of his drug addiction. Paul went to work at a nursing home, where his mother also worked, but he spent 18 months on this job and left after he "got into trouble", according to his mother, who believed her son's drug addiction was the main cause of his problems and legal troubles. Paul went to Georgia after this, although he returned to Florida and would commit the murder sometime after.
Plea of guilt and sentencing
On June 30, 1995, Paul pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder, two armed robbery charges and two kidnapping charges. With his plea of guilt and correspondence between the prosecution and defence, the death penalty was taken off the table in Paul's case and he was given five concurrent life sentences for all the charges he was convicted of. The family of Edwards accepted this plea deal, since it prevented his sister from having to testify in two separate trials about how she was raped. The prosecution also agreed that Paul did not directly kill Edwards despite being an accomplice to murder.During his sentencing, it was decreed that Paul would not be eligible for parole until he completed a minimum period of 25 years behind bars, based on the plea bargain. As of 2024, Paul remains incarcerated at Cross City Correctional Institution.
Loran Kenstley Cole
Early life
Loran Kenstley Cole was born in Iowa on November 11, 1966. Cole reportedly had an unhappy childhood full of both physical and emotional abuse, and his parents Don and Ann Cole reportedly suffered from alcoholism and substance abuse, neglecting him and his sisters. According to Cole's two stepsisters, Ann Marie Powers and Andrea Jane Headlee, Cole was sent to foster care more than once in his childhood and his mother had gone to prison, and that Cole's father would get violent whenever he became intoxicated with alcohol and would have physical altercations with his wife during arguments. At the time of his arrest, Cole was divorced with one son, who resided in Ohio.In 1984, when Cole was 17, he went to live at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, where he reportedly underwent severe physical and sexual abuse by the staff during his six-month stay. Regularly, Cole was beaten at least twice a week and on one occasion, he was raped by a guard, and on another occasion, Cole had both of his legs broken by staff after trying to escape the school.
Prior to the murder of John Edwards in 1994, Cole had a criminal record of offences from 1985 to 1991 and arrested for a total of 13 times. Among these antecedents, Cole was involved in three cases of theft and burglary in 1986 and jailed for these above offences. Cole was given a -year jail term for grand theft in 1991 but he was released on parole after serving only one year out of his sentence, partly due to prison overcrowding and Cole being assessed for having a low risk of re-offending. This decision was controversial given the violent nature of the murder, which Cole committed just three years after his release and it was realized that without Cole's early release, the murder of Edwards would never have happened in the first place. Since then, there were public calls against releasing dangerous offenders too early before they complete their sentences.
Trial and sentencing
On September 18, 1995, a jury selection commenced before the trial of Loran Cole, which was scheduled to begin in the following week. A motion from Cole's lawyer Don Gleason to hold separate trials for the murder charge and lesser charges of rape, abduction and robbery was denied. Cole's trial began on September 26, 1995. The prosecution had earlier confirmed they would be seeking the death penalty for Cole.During the trial, which was presided by a 12-member jury, the prosecution argued that both Cole and his accomplice William Paul had deliberately approached the Edwards siblings, planning to rob them under the pretext of befriending the siblings, before Cole used a wood and brass folding knife to slit the throat of John Edwards and later raped his sister. Edwards's sister, Pam Edwards, testified in court that she grew suspicious as she heard Paul and Cole using new names with each other and behaved differently on the trail from before at the campsite. She testified that she tried to leave by taking a different path before Cole grabbed her from behind and slammed her down the ground, and her brother was also down moments later after he hit Paul. Pam said she saw the men tying up her brother and while Paul was leading her away, she heard her brother grunting as though he was being assaulted, with Cole screaming why did Edwards hit his "brother". A serologist, Karen Barnes, testified that she found bloodstains on the knife, which matched Edwards's DNA, but Cole's lawyers attempted to argue that the knife was found on Paul when the arrest of both men was made, meaning that Cole did not slit the throat of Edwards.
Mary Gamble, another prosecution witness who had a one-night stand with Cole and lived with him in the past, testified that Cole admitted to her about raping a woman and murdering a man, who was none other than Edwards. She recalled that Cole and Paul drove a car to her house, and while Cole claimed it belonged to his new boss, she found a receipt with Edwards's name on it inside the car, and subsequently put two and two together when she saw the murder of Edwards hitting the news. Gamble stated that in order to find out the truth, she visited Cole several times and after doing so, she learnt from Cole that he raped Edwards's sister and he also slit Edwards's throat, but he was uncertain on how Edwards died.
On September 29, 1995, a 12-member jury found Cole guilty of all seven charges, mainly one count of murder, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of rape and two counts of armed robbery. The day after Cole's conviction, the same jury unanimously recommended that Cole should be given the death penalty for the murder of John Edwards.
On December 21, 1995, Circuit Judge William T. Swigert formally sentenced Cole to death for murdering Edwards. Cole was simultaneously sentenced to life in prison for the other offences he committed. Cole's defence counsel reportedly urged the judge to consider Cole's troubled childhood during sentencing, but Justice Swigert aligned with the stance of the prosecution, who all described Cole as a "cold and indifferent killer".
Cole was one of the three convicted murderers from Marion County sent to death row by Justice Swigert during his time on the bench from 1974 to 2004. Justice Swigert died at the age of 77 in 2014.