| Kokomo’s Crown Point Cemetery is enormous. It covers sixty-five acres of Kokomo’s northeast side. And it’s old, established in 1867. When I visited Crown Point on the seventh of May of 2017, I first sought out Kokomo’s irrepressible, legendary mayor, Henry C. Cole, who took up permanent residency there in September of 1881. Cole was only 43 when he was killed late one night by a flurry of birdshot fired at him by a posse of his peers at the local flour mill. A larger-than-life, Robin Hood-like hero, Cole was tall, graceful, and handsome with lustrous blue eyes and a long, silky beard. He radiated a charisma that women fawned over and men shunned. On the flip side, he could be an erratic hothead prone to fits of rage, evidenced by one day in 1866, when he dropped in at his neighborhood post office and unexpectedly came face to face with his wife’s lover. |  |
While the stunned adulterer figured Cole wouldn’t do anything in a public place, without a blink, Cole whipped out his revolver and fired three rounds into the chest of his rival, killing him instantly. Cole was inconvenienced a few weeks awaiting his trial in jail, but he got off like the charmed rascal he was.
He was elected Kokomo’s mayor in 1880, after promising voters he would clean up the city’s raging crime wave by mopping up its corrupt police department. To some ears, that sounded like a call to arms. During his nine months as the city’s chief executive, he challenged his political opponents, adhered to his principles, refused to compromise, and generally rubbed Kokomo’s old guard the wrong way.
Nearly 140 years have passed since a gaggle of Kokomo businessmen and officials gunned down their mayor on a starry, autumn night, leaving history buffs scratching their heads. Was Cole’s death the fatal blunder of a bungled burglary as the posse claimed, or was it the calculated outcome of an assassination conspiracy?
Indeed, Cole’s end is the stuff of which legends are made. •
He was elected Kokomo’s mayor in 1880, after promising voters he would clean up the city’s raging crime wave by mopping up its corrupt police department. To some ears, that sounded like a call to arms. During his nine months as the city’s chief executive, he challenged his political opponents, adhered to his principles, refused to compromise, and generally rubbed Kokomo’s old guard the wrong way.
Nearly 140 years have passed since a gaggle of Kokomo businessmen and officials gunned down their mayor on a starry, autumn night, leaving history buffs scratching their heads. Was Cole’s death the fatal blunder of a bungled burglary as the posse claimed, or was it the calculated outcome of an assassination conspiracy?
Indeed, Cole’s end is the stuff of which legends are made. •
* * * *
 Kokomo Mayor Henry C. Cole |  The Spring Mill, situated on the southeast corner of Indiana and Jefferson Streets in Kokomo, was the site of Cole’s mysterious shooting death in 1881. The mill was erected in 1876 and razed in 1913. |
RSS Feed