JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: In a dramatic turn of events in a cold case, a Florida woman named Tiffany Ann Cole learned her fate nearly two decades after the murder of an ailing couple.
The now 41-year-old woman was found guilty of the brutal murder of Reggie and Carol Sumner, according to Law and Crime.
In the long-running case, Cole is now sentenced to life in prison.
Who were Carole and Reggie Sumner?
Carol and Reggie Sumner who lived in Jacksonville were kidnapped and driven to a wooded area in South Georgia.
The couple were bound in duct tape when they were taken to the remote area where they were burned alive.
The co-defendant Cole knew the Sumners as they were friends with her father and once resided in her neighborhood.
The original death sentence in 2007 was overturned 10 years later after Florida began requiring unanimous jury decisions in cases of the death penalty.
Following a second shift in the legal scenario, juries in Florida were allowed to hand down the death sentence by a vote of eight-four. To spare the life of Cole, the jury voted 10-two.
Prosecutors previously asked jurors to hold the 41-year-old woman accountable for the reportedly carefully premeditated "horrible acts."
Attorney Jay Potkin stated that as Cole's three co-defendants dug the pit to bury the couple, she held the flashlight for them two days before the murders.
"While she may not have turned a shovel of dirt from the hole where the Sumners were left to die, she was certainly an instrument — and I would submit the catalyst — of why Reggie and Carol Sumner died."
"Simply stated, these murders would not have happened but for her," said Potkin.
Who are the co-defendants in the Sumner case?
The co-defendants in the Sumner case are Alan Lyndell Wade, Bruce Nixon, and Cole's boyfriend Michael James Jackson who is allegedly known to be the mastermind in the case.
"What evidence is there that she was dragged kicking and screaming into the dark night of crime by Michael Jackson?" asked Potkin.
"The only people dragged into the night of the crime were the people killed in that hole," he added.
Julie Schlax, an attorney for Cole then argued saying she had changed following her arrest. "Tiffany Cole is not ‘the worst of the worst,’" said Schlux.
"I submit how she has lived her life and truly found an ability to overcome those shortcomings that led her to Georgia in the middle of the night."
"She reminded jurors about extensive witness testimony that Cole suffered from low self-esteem, early drug abuse, and had been molested by her father.
"There will not be a day of her life that she spends behind bars [not] thinking about what occurred in 2005, and what led her to be a part of that. But Tiffany Cole is so much more than that. And she actually has the ability to contribute," Schlax noted.
Her then-boyfriend Jackson was resentenced to death in May and Wade was handed a life sentence in 2022. Meanwhile, Nixon was sentenced to 45 years in prison as he cooperated with the investigators.
