"It seems as if every county in North Carolina has its own legendary murder"
-E. P. Holmes (1959)
When you think about it, this statement may very well be true.....Wilkes County has the Laura Foster / Tom Dula affair, Randolph County has Naomi Wise, Pasquotank has poor Nell Cropsey, Moore County just to the north of us has 'Pinehurst Princess' Elva Statler Davidson.....The Cole Murder of Richmond County has all the usual characteristics: Well-to-do, beautiful and virginal female, her ne'erdowell suitor, spectacular trial....but the Cole Murder differs in that this time the MALE was killed.....in broad daylight.....by perhaps the richest, most powerful, and most respected man in town.....
Our State magazine told the story well in its December, 2011, article on Rockingham:
Rebirth is the only way to describe how a murder case from 1925 led a man to give millions of dollars of his own money to make Rockingham a better place today.
W.B. Cole had his office in the white-brick, two-story Manufacturers Building, which still sits today on East Washington Street. Cole had the corner office. His daughter, Elizabeth, had been dating the son of a Methodist minister, a young World War I veteran named William Ormond. They broke up. Afterward, Ormond started writing letters to W.B. Cole. Ormond claimed he and Elizabeth, who were unmarried, had been “living together as man and wife” for more than a year. That’s how they put it back then.
“I must have fainted when I read the — the — slander part,” Cole later said on the witness stand. “I lost consciousness, and when I came to, I awoke in a clammy sweat.” He thought his daughter and Ormond must be married if it was true. He decided it was not. He wrote back to Ormond, calling him a “damnable, contemptible cur.”
One day, Ormond showed up at W.B. Cole’s office, demanding that he and Elizabeth be married. Cole said no. The young man walked out and stepped into the Ford convertible parked in the street. Cole followed him, pistol in hand. “I shot three times,” he said on the witness stand. “I later learned they all took effect.”
W.B. Cole said he fired in self-defense, although none of the four witnesses saw a gun in Ormond’s hand. Cole pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Jurors had to be brought in from Union County. It took 22 hours to acquit.
The drama led to a Broadway play called Coquette, which made New York audiences weep. It later became a movie. Mary Pickford, in her first speaking role, won an Oscar. Some people are still furious with the trial’s outcome. A few years ago, the historical society wanted to reenact the shooting. The locals responded with a resounding no.
Robert Cole took over the textile mill after his father’s death in 1954. Robert was quiet and shy. “If you met him on the street, he would look down,” says City Councilman Steve Morris. “He wouldn’t look at you.” Quietly, he started making donations to Richmond Memorial Hospital. Cole eventually sold his family’s mill to Hanes, and the company started making L’eggs pantyhose.
An attorney in town got a call late one night. Robert Cole was on the line and said he needed to set up a foundation by the morning. The next day, Cole took more than $14 million from the sale and set it aside. The money built a plaza next to city hall. It paid for the auditorium down the road at Richmond Community College. It’s helping fund the Discovery Place KIDS-Rockingham that will open next year in downtown Rockingham, in the old McKenzie Furniture store on East Washington, just across the way from the Manufacturers Building.
Why did Robert Cole do this? Atonement, says Neal Cadieu. Cadieu is a Cole Foundation trustee and the former publisher of the Richmond County Daily Journal, the kind of guy who knows everybody in town. He knows the score here. “None of the rural areas can attract new industry,” he says. “But we can be a better place to live.”