Death Warrant Signed in 1994 Murder

By Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a death warrant for an inmate convicted in the 1994 murder of a Florida State University student who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister.

Loran Cole, 57, is scheduled to be executed Aug. 29 at Florida State Prison, according to documents posted Monday evening on the Florida Supreme Court website. Cole would be the first inmate executed in Florida since October, when Michael Duane Zack was put to death by lethal injection for a 1996 murder in Escambia County.

Cole was sentenced to death in the February 1994 murder of John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records from past Supreme Court appeals show.

Cole and another man, William Paul, joined the brother and sister at their campsite. After they decided to walk to a pond, Cole knocked Edwards’ sister to the ground and ultimately handcuffed her, the records said. The men subdued John Edwards, and Cole went through the victims’ pockets and took their belongings.

Paul took the sister up a trail, and John Edwards died from a slashed throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull, according to the court records. Edwards’ sister was sexually assaulted and was tied to two trees the next morning before freeing herself. (In most cases, The News Service of Florida does not identify sexual-assault victims by name.)

Cole and Paul were arrested in Ocala, and Cole was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery and sexual battery, the court records and Florida Department of Corrections records show. Paul, now 51, pleaded no contest to murder, kidnapping and robbery charges and was sentenced to life in prison. He is an inmate at Cross City Correctional Institution.

The signing of the death warrant Monday likely will touch off a flurry of legal activity. With the scheduled execution a month away, the Florida Supreme Court issued an order that said proceedings would be “expedited.”

Florida has executed 105 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, including six last year, information on the Department of Corrections website shows.

Zack, 54, was executed Oct. 3 in the 1996 murder of Ravonne Smith during a crime spree that also included killing another woman.

The state last year also executed James Phillip Barnes in the 1988 murder of a woman in her Melbourne condominium; Duane Owen in the 1984 murder of a Palm Beach County woman; Darryl Barwick in the 1986 murder of a woman in her Panama City apartment; Louis Gaskin in the 1989 murders of a couple in Flagler County; and Donald David Dillbeck in the 1990 murder of a woman during a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.

Dillbeck was the first person executed since Gary Ray Bowles was put to death by lethal injection in August 2019 for a 1994 murder in Jacksonville.