On a spring day in San Diego, May 7, 1971, the life of 39-year-old Essie Louise Buck came to a tragic and violent end. A mother and a resident of La Mesa, her nude body was discovered by a child in a field in Poway. Initially, the circumstances surrounding her death were unclear to investigators. The coroner's report noted an unusually high level of alcohol in her blood but did not determine a definitive cause of death at the time. For years, the case remained without a clear resolution, leaving her family and community with unanswered questions about what truly happened to her.
The break in the case came from a seemingly unrelated series of events that began to unravel the sinister actions of a serial killer. Carroll Edward Cole, a man with a deeply troubled past that included a history of violence against women, was arrested in Dallas in November 1980 for the murder of three women there. Following his arrest, Cole began to confess to a string of other killings spanning multiple states and years. Among his confessions was the murder of Essie Louise Buck. Cole admitted to meeting Essie in a tavern in San Diego, strangling her in his car, and then driving around with her body in the trunk before abandoning her in the Poway field. His confession provided a chilling narrative of her final hours.
Despite Carroll Edward Cole's detailed confession to the murder of Essie Louise Buck, the San Diego police maintained their original assessment of her death. Citing their initial investigation and the coroner's findings, they continued to rule out foul play, attributing her death to alcohol abuse. This left Essie's case in a state of official ambiguity, a solved murder in the eyes of the man who claimed responsibility, but not in the official records of the local authorities. Carroll Edward Cole was ultimately convicted of five murders in Texas and Nevada and confessed to at least 13 in total. He was executed by lethal injection in Nevada on December 6, 1985, taking the full story of his violent crusade, and the final, officially recognized truth of Essie Louise Buck's death, with him to the grave.
