Larry Wayne Cole pleaded guilty after prosecutors said he tracked his former spouse, stabbed him and later sought another killing from jail.

GALLATIN, Tenn. — A Tennessee man has been sentenced to 42 years in prison after pleading guilty in a case that prosecutors said began with secret electronic tracking and a stabbing outside a Walmart, then grew into a second alleged murder plan formed while he was jailed awaiting trial.

Larry Wayne Cole, 21, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder, solicitation to commit first-degree murder and assaults on two law enforcement officers while he was incarcerated, according to Sumner County District Attorney General Thomas Dean. Judge Jennifer Nichols imposed the 42-year sentence on Aug. 4, and Cole is to serve it in the Tennessee Department of Correction. The guilty pleas closed a case that stretched from a July 2024 attack in Gallatin to Cole’s arrest near the Canadian border in Maine and, later, an investigation into a plan prosecutors said targeted his former spouse and the victim’s family.

The first attack occurred July 30, 2024. Prosecutors said Cole had secretly placed an electronic surveillance device on the victim’s vehicle and used it to follow his movements. The device led Cole to a Walmart on Nashville Pike in Gallatin, about 30 miles northeast of Nashville. Authorities said Cole found the victim in a vehicle in the parking lot, got inside and stabbed him repeatedly before leaving the area. Contemporaneous police reporting identified the victim as Daniel Cole, then described as Larry Cole’s husband. Gallatin police said officers responded to the store shortly after 6 a.m. and that Daniel Cole was taken for medical treatment in stable condition.

Police quickly shifted from the attack scene to a search for Cole. The Gallatin Police Department said he left in a 2023 Volkswagen Jetta with a Tennessee vanity license plate reading “LARRY,” a detail repeated in local alerts as investigators sought him. Authorities at the time said he was wanted on an attempted first-degree murder charge. The public reporting from the first day did not describe a motive for the stabbing, and the later sentencing announcement focused instead on the tracking device, the attack and Cole’s conduct after he was arrested. No motive beyond those documented facts has been publicly established in the sources reviewed for this report.

The search ended several days later and more than 1,000 miles away. U.S. Border Patrol agents encountered Cole in Franklin County, Maine, early Aug. 5, 2024, near a former crossing on the U.S.-Canada boundary. Franklin County Sheriff Scott Nichols said agents had been alerted to a vehicle around 12:39 a.m. and then located the same Jetta associated with the Tennessee case. Cole, who was 19 at the time, was taken to the Franklin County Detention Center as a fugitive from justice. Gallatin police said agents recognized him as authorities believed he was trying to cross into Canada. He was held in Maine pending extradition to Tennessee.

That arrest did not end the danger described by prosecutors. While Cole was awaiting trial in the Sumner County Jail in 2025, the district attorney’s office said, he approached another inmate who was preparing to be released and asked that inmate to kill his former spouse and the victim’s family at their Wilson County home. The other inmate did not carry out the request. Instead, prosecutors said, the inmate alerted authorities, giving the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office and Gallatin Police Department time to investigate before an attack occurred. Officials have not publicly identified the inmate in the reports reviewed for this article.

Investigators said they found physical evidence that supported the solicitation case. According to Dean’s account, authorities recovered maps of the victim’s residence, coded references that identified the location and evidence that Cole had offered payment in exchange for the killings. The district attorney said that material became important to the prosecution. The available public reports do not disclose the amount of money allegedly offered, the precise language of the coded references, when during 2025 the approach to the other inmate occurred or whether any additional person was accused of agreeing to participate. Those details therefore remain outside the verified public account.

The jail investigation also produced a separate part of the criminal case. Prosecutors said Cole assaulted two correctional officers with the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office while he was incarcerated. His guilty pleas included offenses tied to those assaults in addition to attempted first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first-degree murder. The sentencing reports did not provide a detailed account of the encounters with the officers, describe their injuries, or break down how much of the 42-year term was assigned to each offense. The known result is a single 42-year prison sentence announced after the pleas before Nichols.

The case changed substantially between the first police alert and the final sentencing. In July 2024, authorities were focused on locating a suspect after a domestic stabbing and making sure the victim survived. By August, the investigation had become an interstate fugitive case ending near the northern border. Then, while the original attempted-murder prosecution was still pending, investigators said they uncovered a new plan aimed not only at the same victim but also at members of his family. Cole’s eventual pleas meant prosecutors did not have to take either the Walmart attack or the jail solicitation allegations through a jury trial.

Dean credited the inmate who reported the solicitation and the agencies involved in stopping the second plan. He also recognized the victim and the victim’s family for cooperating throughout the prosecution. That cooperation, the district attorney said, helped bring the cases to a conclusion. The public record summarized by the district attorney and local news organizations does not indicate that the planned second attack was ever attempted outside the jail; authorities said it was interrupted before anyone was harmed. It also does not report any criminal charge against the inmate who informed investigators.

Public descriptions of the relationship also changed as the case progressed. Gallatin police and early news reports in 2024 described Daniel Cole as Larry Cole’s husband. By the 2026 sentencing announcement, prosecutors referred to the victim as Cole’s former spouse. That distinction matters because it reflects the status used in the records at different stages rather than a contradiction about the identity of the person attacked. The district attorney’s later account connected the same victim to both the Walmart stabbing and the 2025 solicitation case. The sentencing coverage did not provide a timeline for the end of the marriage, and the available reports do not establish when the relationship formally changed from spouse to former spouse.

The sentencing provides the clearest resolution yet in a case that unfolded over roughly two years. The original victim survived the 2024 stabbing, according to police reports at the time, and the later jail plan was reported before it could be carried out, according to prosecutors. Cole, who had first been sought as a fugitive and later held in Tennessee while awaiting trial, now faces decades in state custody after admitting the offenses. The reports reviewed did not specify parole eligibility, a projected release date or whether Cole has filed any post-sentencing challenge.

The latest verified public development is the 42-year sentence and transfer to the Tennessee Department of Correction. Authorities have not announced additional defendants in the jail plot, and no later proceeding changing Cole’s sentence was identified in the reviewed sources.

Author note: Last updated September 9, 2026.