Suit for $150,000 against W.B. Cole, rich Rockingham mill owner and killer of W.W. Ormond, ex-serviceman and former sweetheart of Cole’s daughter, was begun Saturday in the Wake County Superior Court by Rev. A.L. Ormond of Nashville, father and administrator of the slain youth.
Cole was acquitted of the murder of Ormond by a Union county jury in the Richmond County Superior Court three weeks ago. Cole plead insanity and self-defense but the jurors admitted that they freed him because they believed Ormond slandered Cole’s daughter. They declared that they would have done what Cole did. Two days after the verdict Cole was set free following an insanity hearing before Judge T.B. Finley, who tried the case, in North Wilkesboro.
Cole has left the State to take an indefinite rest in Arkansas, where relatives of his wife life.
Summons in the case were issued to Richmond county and is returnable November 12, but if service on Cole cannot be secured there, the plaintiff is expected to proceed by publication and attachment.
Young Ormond’s father asks $75,000 compensatory damages and $75,000 punitive damages for the alleged wrongful death.
Rev. Mr. Ormond qualified on September 3 as administrator to his son’s estate in Wake County, where young Ormond lived. Young Ormond left an estate of around $2,000 made up of insurance. The suit is brought in this county as the home county of the dead man.
The suit is brought by Douglass and Douglass of Raleigh; Larry Moore of New Bern; W.R. Jones of Rockingham; and Harold Cooley of Nashville, all of whom appeared for the prosecution in the criminal action; and also by R.N. Simms of Raleigh. A bond of $200 to Cole for costs is signed by Rev. A.L. Ormond as administrator and his son.
The complaint sets forth the facts regarding the killing on the main streets of Rockingham on August 15, alleging that Cole “stealthily crept up behind him (Ormond) and wantonly, wickedly, cruelly and with malice aforethought, assassinated plaintiff’s intestate by firing three bullets into his body.”
With regard to the alleged “slander letter” which Ormond wrote saying that he had lived as man and wife with Miss Elizabeth Cole for more than a year, the complaint says as follows:
“That the defendant falsely pretended and claimed that he killed the plaintiff’s intestate because, as he alleged, the plaintiff’s intestate had, in February, 1925, and more than six months prior to said killing written to the defendant an alleged letter and it was claimed by the defendant that in the alleged letter, the plaintiff’s intestate had slandered the defendant’s daughter, but the plaintiff avers on information and belief that the defendant killed and murdered his intestate to prevent his marriage to the defendant’s daughter, or for some other reason growing out of the defendant’s anger, hatred, malice and ill-will towards and deceased, and his premeditated and deliberate purpose and this plaintiff alleges that for whatever reason, the defendant’s said action was without justification or excuse.”
--News & Observer
From the front page of The Smithfield Herald, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1925. The plaintiff in this case is the father of the young man killed by Cole. The victim, W.W. Ormond, is referred to in this article as the “plaintiff’s intestate” because W.W. Ormond didn’t leave a will. His belongings will be divided among close relatives as determined by state intestacy laws. This is still true today (2025). If you die without having prepared a proper will, the state will step in and decide how your estate will be divided.
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073982/1925-11-03/ed-1/seq-1/
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