Man sentenced to 31 years for a 2022 murder and dismemberment of a Phoenix man
Nov 6, 2024, 8:13 AM | Updated: 8:18 am
John Anthony Cole, 48, was sentenced to 31 years in prison for murdering a man in 2022. (Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)
(Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)
PHOENIX – A man was sentenced to 31 years in prison for the murder and dismemberment of a Phoenix man in 2022, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
John Anthony Cole, 48, kidnapped 28-year-old Antoine Smith from his apartment near Grand and 39th avenues in September 2022.
Officers responded after receiving a missing person’s call after Smith sent text messages to friends saying he had been kidnapped by Cole in an attempt to collect a debt. Officers tracked Smith’s phone from Phoenix to Tucson.
RELATED STORIES
How was the murder suspect caught?
Tucson police did a welfare check at Cole’s home and discovered suspicious items including cleaning supplies and a blood-stained shovel, according to MCSO.
Police tracked Cole’s phone and arrested him near the Arizona/California border. Officers found the remains of Smith’s body in the trunk of the vehicle.
Cole told investigators that he strangled Smith to death after Smith attacked him when they stopped to go to the bathroom on the way to Tucson, according to the probable cause statement.
He then allegedly took the body to his home in Tucson and bought cleaning supplies and tools to dismember the victim.
Cole pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder, one count of aggravated assault and one count of abandonment or concealment of a dead body.
