SHARE Beatrice Marie Cole was born on Jan. 31, 1956, in West Memphis, Arkansas. She was a student at West Memphis High School, where this yearbook image was shot in 1972. Cole would eventually move to Florida to pursue a nursing career. But, in 1993, relatives brought Cole back to West Memphis after she suffered from a nervous breakdown. Two weeks prior to her death, Cole was committed to the Memphis Mental Health Institute. However, Cole checked herself out and was found dead on May 28, 1999, at the National Bank of Commerce, located at 40 S. Main St. After Memphis police hit some dead ends during the investigation, Cole's case had gone cold. Her killer wouldn't be caught for another 13 years. (Handout) Beatrice Marie Cole's body was found outside the National Bank of Commerce building, located on 40 S. Main St., on May 28, 1999. Her murderer covered her body with a yellow blanket. Cole's sandals and a half eaten cookie were found near her feet. After Memphis police hit some dead ends during the investigation, Cole's case had gone cold. Her killer wouldn't be caught for another 13 years. (Courtesy Memphis Police Department) Beatrice Marie Cole's body was found outside the National Bank of Commerce building, located on 40 S. Main St., on May 28, 1999. After Memphis police hit some dead ends during the investigation, Cole's case had gone cold. Her killer wouldn't be caught for another 13 years. (Courtesy Memphis Police Department) May 2, 2016 - Officer Ernestine Davison, Retired Reserve, Memphis Police Department, was one of the investigators working on Beatrice Marie Cole's case after she was found murdered in Downtown Memphis on May 28, 1999. "I remember it was early morning that we received the phone call to meet the officers out in the field," said Davison, who would photograph and diagram the scene. "As we started our scene investigation and canvassing the areas, it was brought out that someone heard a scream, a lady scream over in the night, but from their vantage point they couldn't see what had happened or what was happening." After Memphis police hit some dead ends during the investigation, Cole's case had gone cold. Her killer wouldn't be caught for another 13 years. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) Related Coverage UNCOVERED: 'It was a very brutal murder'

'She’s alive': 79-year-old Knoxville woman barely survived attack

By Jody Callahan, USA TODAY NETWORK — Tennessee

About this series

For more than 13 years, a serial killer targeted women living in the margins in Memphis and one in Knoxville, yet for much of that time, no one knew he even existed.

He killed one woman in Memphis in 1999, then brutally assaulted another in Knoxville in 2008. He murdered another woman in Memphis in 2011, then killed his fourth known victim in 2012. He bashed each of them in the head, raped them, left them partially nude, then covered them with a blanket and fled as they lay dead or dying.

For years, no one knew that one man was responsible for the attacks. Detectives doggedly pursued each case, but ultimately, those first three went cold. But a fortuitous turn of luck, strong detective work and one officer's amazing memory combined to link the cases, and, ultimately, solve them.

In a five-part series, reporter Jody Callahan and photographer Yalonda James will tell the stories of Marie Cole, Jessie Lee Maples, Valerie Ector and Gwen Jackson. They also will tell the story of the man who murdered them and how he was caught — not with modern forensic methods such as DNA, but with a technology more than a century old.

The stories are based on a rare look at the voluminous case file on the killer and his victims as well as dozens of interviews with family and friends, police and prosecutors, and even the killer's own chilling words.

Follow along each day as a new piece of this case is revealed in this modern murder mystery.

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Part 1: Beatrice Marie Cole

After he smashed a brick into her head, after he raped her, after he left her naked from the waist down, the killer covered Marie Cole with a blanket from her chest to her feet. An odd gesture for such a brutal attack, but it helped disguise what he'd done. When janitor Maurice Dorsey found Cole outside the former National Bank of Commerce building on May 28, 1999, he at first thought she was asleep. After all, it wasn't yet 7 a.m. on that spring day, and finding a homeless person sleeping in one of Downtown's nooks and crannies was far from uncommon.

So Dorsey and another man tried to wake her, with no luck. They finally pulled a covering back from her head and were startled by what they saw: the woman had a hole in her forehead. Blood was smeared everywhere. The woman's skull and face were fractured — the blows had been so strong they bruised her swollen brain. Cole was dead, and had been for some hours. She was 43 years old.

That shocking discovery began a disturbing case, the story of a Memphis serial killer who eventually would murder three women here and try to kill another in Knoxville before he was finally caught, 13 years after his first known murder.

The discovery of Cole's body began an investigation that unspooled in fits, with intense periods of investigation followed by dormancy. It was an investigation that would feature numerous detectives and even more suspects through the years. One that would eventually be solved, not with today's newfangled technology but with a crime-fighting method dating back more than a century. It was an investigation that would have missed Cole entirely if not for the terrific memory of a sergeant that other police officers sometimes called "The Old Man of Homicide."

But that was all more than a decade in the future. On that morning in Downtown Memphis, police officers got to work.

Marie Cole was born in West Memphis on Jan. 31, 1956. She attended schools there, including West Memphis High, where she was a cheerleader. A yearbook photo taken in 1972 shows a serious and focused young woman. "Every time I saw her, I was happy to see her. She'd always take me shopping, all over in Memphis," said her niece, Sharon Milon, who would visit from Minnesota as a child. "I was young back then. I wouldn't come around for years and all of a sudden I'd pop up, and she'd say, 'I'm gonna take you shopping.' "

As a young woman, Cole moved to Florida, where she had family. She enrolled in nursing programs with hopes of becoming a medical professional, her brother Gerald Cole said. On May 28, 1976, at age 20, Cole married Robert Dennard in Palm Beach. She eventually began working in a hospital there and soon had two children, Eupherina and Robert.

But at some point, and no one in the family can say exactly when, Cole wasn't Cole anymore. Something happened. Some in the family called it a nervous breakdown, others said it sounded like schizophrenia.

She started getting arrested in Florida for crimes such as trespassing, resisting arrest and battery. In 1993, the family got a call: Cole was in an institution. Come and get her.

Gerald Cole and another brother brought her back to West Memphis, where she lived with their father until he passed. James Cole, the eldest brother, looked after her then.

"She had a mental problem," Gerald Cole said. "You hadn't seen your sister in two or three years, and you see her again, and she talks to herself. Says things off the wall. It (messes) you up."

Two weeks before Cole's death, James Cole had her committed to the Memphis Mental Health Institute. Unbeknownst to him, however, Cole checked herself out and made her way Downtown. It's unknown how long she stayed there, but she spent $1.61 on a bottle of milk at the Downtown Walgreens two days before she was killed.

"From what my dad said, they were supposed to notify him when she was released, but they never notified him," said Regina Ford, James' daughter and Cole's niece. On June 5, 1999, Cole's family held a small funeral for her, then buried her in the neighboring Marion Memorial Cemetery.

"James didn't go into detail into what happened, but he didn't want anybody to see her body," said Pairlee Green, Ford's mother. "I think he mostly wanted to keep that to himself. He and her were real close."

James Cole was inconsolable, his daughter said, blaming himself for sending Cole to Memphis.

"He couldn't have an open casket because her head was so bad. We had to have a closed casket," his daughter said. "He was so hurt. He was the oldest of the brothers. That was his baby sister. He was very hurt about it."

After James Cole died in 2013, the family fractured and grew apart, Gerald Cole said. They haven't spoken to Marie Cole's children in years, and efforts to find them were unsuccessful.

A few years before James Cole died, a fire swept through his West Memphis home, destroying everything, including most of the family photos. Family members couldn't find a single picture of Marie Cole for this story.

"He was so hurt. He was the oldest of the brothers. That was his baby sister."

On the concrete walkway that runs along the south side of the NBC building on Main Street, police found bloody footprints all around Cole's body. On Cole, they found a West Memphis library card, a few receipts and, tucked inside her second bra, $151.11 in cash. She was still wearing her rings. Police never found the murder weapon. Officers began to canvas the area, talking to anyone who might have known Cole. At first, most everyone they found mistook her for a homeless woman in the area who walked with a silver-topped cane. Police initially thought Cole was homeless, too, until they reached James Cole.

A witness told police that he was in his nearby apartment around 1:30 that morning when he heard a woman screaming; he thought it was typical revelers getting a head start on the weekend.

"She was a female, and she was at her most vulnerable, asleep behind a building," said Ernestine Davison, the former homicide detective in charge of Cole's case. "You could tell that someone had sneaked up on her. You could tell."

In the days after the murder, police looked for anyone who might be involved. They interviewed a man with a bloody jaw, but he'd just fallen off a park bench.

On June 8, a woman with the street name "KeKe" gave police what seemed like a promising lead. According to KeKe, four men lured Cole away to rob her. She also told police that Cole had been sexually assaulted and hit with a pipe, facts that seemed to fit with the crime scene.

KeKe told police that a man called "Mike" knew those responsible. For weeks, officers poked into just about every Downtown hideaway they could find looking for Mike, with no luck.

"We canvassed the Downtown area. We did come up with the name of Mike, but nobody knew who Mike was. We chased him for months," Davison said.

Turns out, KeKe's story was utter nonsense, but police didn't learn that until later. Mike wasn't even named Mike: he was actually Billy.

Then, on June 17, another promising tip came in. Two officers found a man named Gregory Wassinger, who had a history of violence and sexual assaults. Wassinger also had spent time in West Memphis. Police became more and more certain that Wassinger was their man, particularly since he'd been around the crime scene the morning of Cole's death. Those two officers said Wassinger was known for trying to lure women to secluded spots, and even attempted it on an undercover female officer.

On June 21, police swabbed Wassinger for DNA. They also swabbed the elusive Mike. They heard a story that a man who called himself "Ooga Booga" claimed to have killed Cole. Another man known as "Chicken Larry" became a suspect.

In all, police identified at least eight suspects in Cole's death, but each one was cleared. It was now November 1999, more than five months after Cole was killed, and police had nothing. Another suspect popped up in November 2002, but it was also a dead end.

Police recovered semen from Cole's body, but submitting it for DNA testing wasn't standard procedure at the time, so it was left with the other evidence.

Cole's case had gone cold.