At age 8, he retaliated against one of his classmates, a boy of the same age named Duane, by drowning him in a lake in Richmond, California. The death was regarded an accident by authorities, until Cole confessed to it many years later in an autobiography he wrote in prison. During a press interview Cole said of this event, "I was primed, I had made the mental commitment I was going to get even with my mother, and things just built up and built up and became an obsession."