A fellow inmate’s warning exposed a second planned attack before Larry Wayne Cole pleaded guilty and received a 42-year prison term.
GALLATIN, Tenn. — The case against Larry Wayne Cole had already crossed state lines by the time prosecutors say it took a second turn inside the Sumner County Jail, where another inmate told authorities Cole was trying to arrange the killings of his former spouse and the victim’s family.
That report from the inmate became the center of a new investigation while Cole was awaiting trial for a 2024 stabbing outside a Gallatin Walmart. Prosecutors said Cole asked the inmate, who was preparing to leave custody, to carry out the killings at a home in Wilson County. Investigators later recovered maps of the residence, coded references to its location and evidence that payment had been offered. The planned attack never occurred. On Aug. 4, 2026, Judge Jennifer Nichols sentenced Cole to 42 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder and offenses involving assaults on two correctional officers.
The 2025 jail episode changed the scope of the prosecution. Instead of a case focused only on one violent encounter, authorities were now examining an effort to reach the same victim again from inside a secure facility. Sumner County District Attorney General Thomas Dean said the inmate immediately alerted law enforcement rather than act on Cole’s request. That notification brought the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office and the Gallatin Police Department into a joint effort to stop the plan. The public reports do not name the inmate, state the amount allegedly offered or disclose the exact wording of the coded material investigators said they found.
By then, Cole had been in custody because of an attack that began with surveillance, according to prosecutors. Dean said Cole secretly attached an electronic tracking device to his former spouse’s vehicle and used it to follow the victim’s movements on July 30, 2024. The tracking led him to the Walmart at 1112 Nashville Pike in Gallatin. Prosecutors said Cole located the victim in a vehicle in the parking lot, entered it and stabbed him repeatedly before fleeing. Early Gallatin police reports identified the victim as Daniel Cole and described him at that point as Larry Cole’s husband.
The first emergency response happened shortly after 6 a.m. Gallatin officers were called to the Walmart for a reported domestic dispute involving a stabbing. Daniel Cole was taken for medical treatment and was reported in stable condition. Authorities did not release a fuller medical update in the reports reviewed for this article, but the later prosecution confirms that he survived. The early police coverage also did not explain why Larry Cole attacked his husband, and the sentencing announcement did not supply a motive. What prosecutors later emphasized was the method of locating the victim: a surveillance device placed on the vehicle without the victim’s knowledge.
Police had a distinctive lead as they searched for Cole. Investigators said he left in a 2023 Volkswagen Jetta carrying a Tennessee vanity license plate that read “LARRY.” The Gallatin Police Department circulated his name, vehicle information and a photograph while identifying him as wanted for attempted first-degree murder. The car then became part of a much larger search as Cole traveled north. The later sentencing account said authorities tracked him across the country. Contemporaneous Maine reporting placed the end of that search in Franklin County, near a former crossing along the Canadian border.
At about 12:39 a.m. on Aug. 5, 2024, U.S. Border Patrol agents were alerted to a vehicle in the Lowelltown area of Maine, according to Franklin County Sheriff Scott Nichols. Agents located the Jetta and identified its driver as Cole, then 19 and listed as being from Liberty, Tennessee. Maine authorities said he was wanted in Gallatin for criminal attempted first-degree murder. He was taken to the Franklin County Detention Center as a fugitive from justice and held pending extradition. Gallatin police said the agents had recognized him as he was attempting to cross into Canada.
That border arrest appears, in hindsight, as the midpoint rather than the end of the case. Once Cole was returned to Tennessee and held while the original charge moved forward, prosecutors said he tried to create another route to the victim by using an inmate who was about to be released. The second plan also widened the intended target group, according to the district attorney’s account. Authorities said Cole sought the deaths of the former spouse and the victim’s entire family at the Wilson County residence. No attack followed because the inmate contacted law enforcement instead.
Investigators then looked for evidence beyond the inmate’s account. Dean said they recovered maps of the residence, coded references that identified the home and evidence of an offered payment. The sentencing announcement characterized those materials as important to the prosecution. The available public record, however, does not specify where the maps or notes were found, whether they were handwritten, how investigators interpreted the coded references or whether any money changed hands. The reports also do not identify any other person as a participant in the plan. Those gaps are significant because the guilty plea establishes Cole’s legal responsibility without making every investigative detail public.
There was still another strand to the case. While jailed, prosecutors said, Cole assaulted two correctional officers with the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office. The later sentencing reports did not provide a detailed narrative of those incidents, identify the officers, state whether either was injured or list separate sentence lengths attached to the assault-related offenses. Cole nevertheless pleaded guilty to offenses covering those attacks along with the attempted-murder and solicitation counts. The combined result was the 42-year term Nichols ordered him to serve in the Tennessee Department of Correction.
The guilty pleas also marked a legal shift from accusation to adjudication. In 2024, police reports properly described Cole as wanted or accused in connection with the Walmart stabbing. By the 2026 sentencing, he had admitted criminal responsibility through his pleas. That distinction is important in recounting the case because some details come from police statements made before trial while others come from the district attorney after the case was resolved through guilty pleas. The public reports reviewed do not explain the full terms of any plea agreement, identify charges that may have been dismissed or give a count-by-count breakdown of the sentence.
Dean’s office credited both the reporting inmate and the victim’s family for helping authorities bring the case to a conclusion. The inmate’s decision to notify investigators is the key reason the 2025 plan appears in the record as a solicitation case rather than another completed attack. The victim and family, meanwhile, were recognized by prosecutors for their cooperation and perseverance during the prosecution. No public account reviewed for this report suggests the second plan progressed to an attack at the Wilson County home.
The known sequence now stretches from secret tracking to a parking-lot stabbing, a multi-state flight, a border arrest, a new plot discovered in jail and assaults on correctional officers. Yet several details remain undisclosed, including the exact timing of the 2025 solicitation, the proposed payment, the circumstances of the officer assaults and how the 42-year sentence is apportioned. No later court action changing the sentence was identified in the reviewed material.
Cole is now set to serve the 42-year sentence in Tennessee state custody. The latest public reports describe the former spouse as having survived the 2024 attack and the second plan as stopped before anyone was harmed at the family residence. The sentencing closes the principal criminal prosecution reported by Sumner County authorities, although the available coverage does not specify parole eligibility or a projected release date.
Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.