Delia D'Ambra

Host Ashley Flowers focuses on cold cases featured on official law enforcement playing cards.

Each episode brings renewed focus to someone who hasn't received justice.

yet.

You can listen to The Deck wherever you get your podcasts.

In March 1974, 25 years before the attack on the two park rangers in Oregon, Larry Jean Cole had been at the center of a violent and shocking kidnapping all the way in Virginia and West Virginia.

According to the news coverage I found about that incident, Larry, who was 27 years old at the time, and his then wife, 23-year-old Bonnie Ann Cole, had set up a ruse to abduct the wife of Larry's former employer.

The crime went down like this.

Larry had previously worked for a man named Frank Van Balen, who was the president of a fiberglass company in Virginia and was apparently financially well off.

Frank's wife, Betty Ann, worked as a real estate agent in Virginia.

And on Monday, March 4th, 1974, she'd received a call from a woman who stated she wanted to make an appointment to see a house that was for sale near Smith Mountain Lake.

The caller explained she was interested in the property as a retirement home for her dad.

The women spoke one more time the following evening, March 5th, and then again the next morning, Wednesday, March 6th, when Betty Ann arranged to meet the potential buyer at a hotel coffee shop close to Smith Mountain Lake.

The pair left the coffee shop together in Betty Ann's car, and when they arrived at a parking area further up the road, it was raining heavily.

The circumstances began to make Betty Ann feel uneasy, so she tried to leave.

But that's when another vehicle pulled behind her car and blocked her in.

Fearful of the situation, Betty Ann locked her doors and instructed the woman riding with her to do the same.

But instead of complying, her passenger pulled out a handgun and threatened her if she didn't unlock the car.

After that, a man who Betty Ann later identified as Larry Cole emerged from the other vehicle holding a rifle.

From there, the couple taped Betty Ann's mouth shut, bound her ankles and hands with tape, and discarded her real estate agent signs and spare tire and a body of water.

Then they forced her into the trunk of her own car and drove her to where they'd parked another vehicle.