Larry Wayne Cole’s capture in rural Maine became one chapter in a case that later included a jail-based plot against his former spouse’s family.
GALLATIN, Tenn. — When U.S. Border Patrol agents found Larry Wayne Cole near a former Maine-Canada crossing in August 2024, authorities were ending a dayslong search for a Tennessee attempted-murder suspect. They were not yet at the end of the case that would eventually send him to prison for 42 years.
Cole, then 19, was detained in Franklin County, Maine, early Aug. 5, 2024, after agents were alerted to a vehicle near Lowelltown. Sheriff Scott Nichols said agents identified both Cole and the car as linked to an attempted-murder investigation in Gallatin, Tennessee. The vehicle was a 2023 Volkswagen Jetta with a Tennessee vanity plate reading “LARRY,” the same car Gallatin police said Cole drove away after stabbing his husband outside a Walmart on July 30. He was booked as a fugitive from justice and held for return to Tennessee. Two years later, after another investigation that began behind jail walls, Cole pleaded guilty and received a 42-year state prison sentence.
The distance between Gallatin and the northern Maine border gave the early case an interstate dimension almost immediately. Gallatin officers had responded just after 6 a.m. July 30 to the Walmart at 1112 Nashville Pike after a reported domestic dispute involving a stabbing. Police identified the wounded man as Daniel Cole, Larry Cole’s husband at the time, and said he was in stable condition. Larry Cole had left before officers could take him into custody. Authorities issued an alert describing the Jetta and the unusual vanity plate while seeking him on an attempted first-degree murder charge.
Later information from the Sumner County District Attorney’s Office filled in a detail that was not central to the first public alerts: prosecutors said Cole had not simply encountered the victim at the store. District Attorney General Thomas Dean said Cole secretly placed an electronic surveillance device on the victim’s vehicle and used it to track his movements. That surveillance led him to the Gallatin Walmart parking lot, where prosecutors said he located the victim in a vehicle, got inside and stabbed him repeatedly before fleeing. By the time of sentencing, officials described Daniel Cole as Larry Cole’s former spouse.
The search for Cole then moved far beyond Middle Tennessee. Maine officials said Border Patrol agents were alerted at about 12:39 a.m. Aug. 5 to a vehicle at the former international crossing in the Lowelltown area. They found the car and determined the driver was the Tennessee fugitive. Gallatin police later said Cole had been attempting to cross into Canada. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office took custody of him and held him without bail as a fugitive while extradition was pending. Contemporary reporting said the car recovered in Maine was the same one seen leaving the Walmart after the stabbing.
Had the case ended there, the prosecution would have centered on the tracking device, the Walmart attack and the flight north. Instead, prosecutors say a second attempted path to the same victim emerged in 2025, after Cole was returned to Tennessee and confined in the Sumner County Jail. The district attorney’s office said Cole approached another inmate who was preparing to be released and asked that inmate to kill his former spouse and the victim’s entire family at their home in neighboring Wilson County.
The inmate’s response altered the course of that plan. Rather than leave jail and carry it out, the inmate notified authorities, according to Dean. The Sumner County Sheriff’s Office and Gallatin Police Department then investigated. Officials said they recovered maps of the victim’s residence, coded references that identified the home’s location and evidence that Cole had offered payment in exchange for the killings. Prosecutors said the information allowed authorities to stop the planned attack before anyone at the residence was harmed.
The available public accounts reveal the existence of the evidence but not all of its details. They do not state how much money Cole offered, where the maps and coded references were found, how long the solicitation had been discussed or whether investigators used recordings, messages or other surveillance during the inquiry. They also do not identify the inmate who reported Cole. No additional defendant has been named in the public reports reviewed for this article, and authorities have not said that anyone outside the jail made an attempt on the family.
Cole’s conduct in custody also produced allegations separate from the murder solicitation. Prosecutors said he assaulted two correctional officers employed by the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office. The sentencing coverage does not provide the dates or circumstances of those assaults or describe any injuries. What is clear from the final disposition is that Cole pleaded guilty to offenses involving the assaults in addition to attempted first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
Judge Jennifer Nichols sentenced Cole on Aug. 4, 2026, to a total of 42 years in prison. Sumner County reporting said he will serve the term in the Tennessee Department of Correction. The public accounts do not break the sentence into separate terms for each count, specify whether any portions run consecutively or concurrently, or report a projected release date. They also do not set out the full terms of any plea agreement that led to the guilty pleas. Those omissions limit what can be said about the mechanics of the sentence beyond the total announced by prosecutors.
The result changes how the earlier police reports should now be read. In July and August 2024, Cole was a suspect wanted for an alleged stabbing, and the facts were framed as accusations while authorities searched for him. The 2026 guilty pleas mean he later admitted the criminal offenses included in the disposition. That does not make every claim in every early account a judicial finding, but it resolves the central charges reported by the district attorney: attempted first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder and the jail assaults.
The victim’s status also developed across the public record. Gallatin police said in 2024 that Daniel Cole was stable after the stabbing. The later sentencing announcement referred to him as the former spouse and described him and his family as participants in the prosecution who endured the case through its conclusion. Prosecutors credited their cooperation, while also recognizing the inmate whose report led authorities to the second plan. No source reviewed for this article disclosed a more recent medical update for Daniel Cole, and no report indicated that the 2025 plot caused physical harm to the family.
Seen from the point of arrest, the case moved in an unexpected direction. Border Patrol agents stopped a wanted man at the edge of the country, but the eventual sentence reflected conduct spanning both sides of that arrest: the original tracking and stabbing before Cole was caught, and the solicitation and officer assaults after he was jailed. The 42-year term therefore rests on a broader course of criminal conduct than the attempted-murder allegation that first put his name into public police alerts.
Sentencing remains the latest verified public development located in the case. Cole is to serve his term in Tennessee state custody. The reviewed reports do not identify a later appeal, sentence modification or additional prosecution tied to the planned Wilson County attack.
Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.