Jimmy Cole - Police search for man missing 18 years

Jimmy Cole, shown here at 21, of Severna Park, was last seen in the early morning of April 11, 1994. On Monday, county police searched wooded areas along the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail, in between his home and where he was last seen.

By BEN WEATHERS, Staff Writer
Published 04/17/12

When Jimmy Cole disappeared in April 1994, police searched the woods near his Severna Park home, where friends said he would frequently camp out over night.

They found nothing.
In the 18 years since, no trace of Cole has been found, Detective John Gajda of the county police homicide unit’s cold case squad said.

Now, armed with a DNA sample, police are continuing their search for Cole. On Monday, 25 volunteers of some nine dog teams from across the region assisted county police in searching roughly one mile of woods in between Cole’s former home on Hodges Lane and the bar where he was last seen.

In 2010, police were able to get a DNA sample from Cole’s biological mother, who lives out of state. Cole’s family had adopted him, Gajda said.

“There wasn’t much we could do until we had his DNA,” Gajda said. “If we do a search and we recover something, we don’t know it’s him.”

Teams searched Monday along the Baltimore Annapolis Trail stretching south from McKinsey Road to Whites Road. Police broke the area up into a dozen sub-areas, including the camp near the Severna Park Library and a fishing pond near the intersection of Whites Road and Ritchie Highway.

Cole was known to be a fisherman and enjoyed the outdoors, said Detective Jay Schline of the department’s Missing Persons Unit.

Police recovered some remains in Monday’s search that will be taken to the state Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore for further testing to see if it’s human or animal, Gajda said.

Cole was last seen on the morning of April 11, 1994, at the now defunct Shangri’La Restaurant at Park Plaza.

Cole was a regular at the Shangri’La. Bar employees were closing up for the night around 1:30 a.m. when they went to the back of the restaurant, leaving Cole by himself at the bar. When the staff returned, Cole was gone, Gajda said.

The staff assumed that, Cole, whom they said was intoxicated, had walked home. That wouldn’t have been unusual for the 21-year-old, Gajda said.

Prior to coming to the Shangri’La, Cole had been at the nearby Gingerbread Man restaurant, now Bill Bateman’s Bistro. Cole’s brother, Jeff, had offered to drive his brother home, but he declined.

Before disappearing, Cole had mentioned going to Ocean City to see family and friends, but police doubt he would have just picked up and left without telling his family.

“He would have never left without telling them,” Gajda said. “He didn’t have any history of disappearing.”

Cole had little money on him and no change of clothes. He left behind a paycheck at the landscaping company he was working for at the time.

He didn’t own a car or have a bank account, and nothing was missing from his room.

He appeared to have no enemies, Gajda said.

“He had some people he didn’t like and some people who didn’t like him, but nothing that we think would have led to his death,” Gajda said.

Cole’s family moved to Texas in the mid-1990s.

“We thought perhaps it would be therapeutic and I guess it has been,” Cole’s mother, Dorothy Cole told The Capital in 1996. “You can’t stick 10 daggers in your heart every day.”

Detectives traveled to Texas to re-interview the family two years ago, Gajda said.

Gajda said that out of all the cases in his 23-year career, Cole’s may be the only one where someone disappeared with absolutely no trace.

“His parents are getting older. I would love to get some sort of closure for them before they pass away,” Gajda said.

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