Six weeks have passed since Cole shot Ormond to death while the ex-service man sat in his Ford car on the main street of Rockingham 60 feet from the office of the mill owner. For six weeks Cole has remained n jail of Richmond county, and for six weeks Ormond’s young body had lain in the sandy loam of the Rockingham cemetery, writes Jonathan Daniels in the News and Observer
For six weeks Miss Elizabeth Cole the sweetheart and the daughter, has lived in silence with the tragedy which grew out of her love affair with the dead man.
The trial has raised throughout North Carolina the question whether or not a rich man can be sent to his death in the State’s prison here. Cole is rich and he will be defended by the ablest lawyers of the state, but wealth relatives of the dead man and members of the American Legion have provided funds for the employment of private prosecution equal in ability to the attorneys who will fight for Cole’s life.
Death Penalty Involved
The electrocution of Cole would be a new spectacle in the history of justice. In North Carolina newspaper men who attend the executions at the State’s prison have seen scores of terrified negroes strapped into the gaunt electric chair. White men who have been thrown into eternity by the lethal current have been ordinary men. Harris, of Black Mountain, who was executed one fair week was perhaps the most prominent who has gone down the bleak row. Yet not since electrocution at the prison was substituted for jailyard hanging, has as prominent a man as Cole taken his final seat in the fatal chair.
And Cole will never go to the chair until after a bitter fight that will end in ultimate proof of his guilt or his innocence. It is going to be one of the historic legal fights in the annals of North Carolina justice.
Cole’s Defense
“Mr. Cole has a perfect defense,” his attorneys have stated. They intimated that the defense would be solely along the lines of self defense. However, it is believed that they will use every available and legitimate means to secure the acquittal of their client. At one time, it was suggested that the defense would present a variation of the unwritten law around Ormond’s relations with Miss Cole. Then it was stated that the defense attorneys will protect Miss Cole’s reputation with the same ardor with which they will fight for Cole’s acquittal.
Recently a report that an insanity pleas would be made has been partially supported by the statement of Dr. J.T.J. Battle, medical director for the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, that “I have been spoken to about testifying.” Dr. Battle stated that he knew of at least one other doctor who was being considered by the defense as an expert witness. There has been insanity in Cole’s family.
The case has attracted particular interest, however, not only because a rich and prominent man shot down an incapacitated ex-service man, but because a distinct love interest is added to the tragedy by the one-time ardor of Ormond and Miss Elizabeth Cole. There are three principals to the tragedy—Cole, Ormond and Miss Cole.
Who Is Cole?
Cole is the son of John W. Cole, lawyer, and Mrs. Kate Cole, daughter of Robert Leak Steele. John cole was comparatively poor and was never a man of robust health. Mrs. Cole inherited land and money from her father. W.B. Cole did not go to college but attended school at the Horner Military Academy. Later he went to Rhode Island, where he completed a textile course. He worked for two years at Concord Cannon Mills. Later R.S. Steel of Rockingham organized the Hannah Pickett Mill and Cole became superintendent of it as well as of Steele’s Mill. He soon became the real genius of the mill, and, although Mr. Steele is president, Cole is completely in charge.
He gradually expanded the Hannah Picket Mill and two or three years ago practically doubled its capacity, giving it 82,000 spindles and 1,800 looms. He is considered one of the leading textile men of the state. His mill has never had to curtail. The mill is non-union and no attempt has been made to organize the workers. There has never been a strike which affected it.
He married Miss Elizabeth Little, daughter of Robert Little, who was raised in Anson county. Mr. Little had moved to Arkansas shortly after the Civil War and had become the state’s biggest farmer and a millionaire. Mr. Cole often visited his uncle, Thomas Steele, in Arkansas, and Mrs. Cole visited relatives in Rockingham before her marriage. Mr. Little left each of Mrs. Cole’s children $100,000, it is stated.
Enemies of Cole and friends of Ormond say that Mr. Cole’s father married Miss Steele for money and that Cole himself married Miss Little for money. This is denied by friends of the Cole family.
A conservative estimate by a Rockingham banker as to Cole’s wealth places it around $300,000 with the other members of his immediate family being worth approximately that much again. Cole’s property listed for taxes on the books of Richmond county is only about $40,000 but the larger part of his wealth is invested in cotton mill stocks, banks, an ice cream factory and other industries.
Miss Elizabeth Cole
Miss Elizabeth Cole is an outdoor girl. She plays tennis well and rides horseback astride. Outdoors she is free and attractive. She dances but little. And is at her best at the bridge table. She is 24 years old and is pretty but she never has been a belle.
She attended college at Converse College in South Carolina.
Miss Cole had never had many sweethearts, but when young Bill Ormond returned from the war covered with glory and incapacitated with wounds on the field of battle an ardent love developed between them. The two were sweethearts until October, 1924, at least, but toward the last Cole’s objections to the match gradually estranged the young people. Finally he forbade Ormond to come to his house but Miss Cole and Ormond corresponded until the early part of this year.
When her father shot down her former sweetheart, she was in Hamlet at a party. She was called back to Rockingham before her father was carried to jail. Conflicting stories have been told about her meeting with her father after the shooting. One was that she cried, “Oh! why did father do it?”
Friends of Ormond’s in Rockingham declared that when Cole broke up the love affair, Miss Cole went to the home of a girl friend and threw herself upon a bed weeping: “I’ve given up bill for father’s sake,” she said between sobs.
From page 3 of the Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, October 1, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-10-01/ed-1/seq-3/
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