Tom Cole dead at age 50, key accuser in the WWE/WWF Ring Boy scandal

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

Tom Cole took his own life on Friday at age 50. Cole’s brother Lee shared the news along with scathing comments regarding Vince McMahon and Linda McMahon (Tweets available below). Cole worked as a ring boy for WWE (then known as the WWF/Titan Sports) and accused employee Terry Garvin and ring announcer Mel Phillips of misconduct.

Cole stated in multiple interviews that he rejected the sexual advances of the Garvin (Terry Joyal), who was fired by the company following the ring boy scandal. In a 1999 WrestlingPerspective.com interview, Cole recalled Garvin offering him a WWE warehouse job when he was 19. He claimed that Garvin drove him to his home where he claimed his wife and kids would be. Upon arrival, Garvin claimed to have forgotten that his family was in Florida. Cole alleged that Garvin played a pornographic video and offered to perform oral sex on him. Cole said he rejected Garvin’s offer and spent the night sleeping in a van during a snowstorm. The next morning, Garvin dropped him off at the warehouse, and then former WWE ring announcer Mel Phillips Jr. informed him later that day that Garvin no longer wanted him to work at the warehouse. Garvin, who resigned from the WWF following multiple sexual misconduct accusations, died on August 17, 1998 at age 61.

Cole accused Phillips of having an unhealthy fascination with children’s feet. Cole alleged that Phillips wrestled with him and grabbed his feet when he was 12 or 13 years-old. Cole stated in the 1999 WrestlingPerspective.com interview that he questioned the behavior as he grew older and once kicked Phillips to make him stop. “That’s how it stopped,” Cole said. “He never tried anything else. I guess he knew. When you started getting older, he started calling less. Once that happened, he started calling less, but l still went to the shows at the Garden. I’d just show up. But he was like trying to get rid of you. He liked the younger kids who couldn’t give him a problem about it or didn’t realize that there was something wrong with it.” Phillips was fired following the ring boy scandal.

Cole also accused the late Pat Patterson of grabbing his buttocks. “He used to, when I was younger, I can’t be specific, but l was in the 15-year-old range, 16-year-old, he’d look at you when he was talking to you, he’d look right at your crotch and he’d like lick his lips and shit,” Cole told WrestlingPerspective.com in 1999. “He’d make sexual gestures by looking at you like that. He put his hand on your ass and squeeze your ass and stuff like that. He’d check you out like you were a chick. That’s pretty much all that he did.” Cole told Mike Mooneyham in a 2011 Charleston Post and Courier interview that Patterson was openly gay and “didn’t have anything to do with kids.” Patterson died on December 2, 2020 at age 79.

Cole reached an out of court settlement with WWE, which he described in the WrestlingPerspective.com interview. “I got my job back, two years back pay, they could never like try to say, try to go against me what they agreed with the understanding of everything that happened to me,” he said. “They weren’t going to try to fight that issue and Terry Garvin and Mel Phillips would never, ever again be employed by Titan Sports or the World Wrestling Federation or any parent company thereof. They had a clause in there about Pat Patterson, but it wasn’t pertaining to him never working for the company again. So they knew from the beginning, which I didn’t realize being young and not looking at the document. I was young. Pat Patterson wound up coming back a couple of weeks later.”

Cole’s settlement included the company paying for his education. “But I didn’t do good in college because it was very hard concentrating,” Cole told WrestlingPerspective.com. “Going through all that stuff, I could not concentrate on anything and I failed.” Cole also recalled telling Linda McMahon that he was having a hard time concentrating in school and wanted to return to work for the company, but she told him to focus on school. When he failed to improve his grades, the company dismissed him, and Linda wrote him a letter. Cole recalled her writing that he had the opportunity of a lifetime and let it slip through his fingers. Cole went on unemployment and said the company challenged it on five or six occasions, but he won each appeal, including once when Linda actually attended the hearing and took issue with him sharing details of being molested and sexually harassed.

Cole was asked in the WrestlingPerspective.com interview to characterize Vince McMahon and Linda McMahon. “Vince McMahon I would sum up as manipulative and conniving, ruthless,” he said. “Not a very nice guy. Linda McMahon, I wish I could say she was a nice person. Sometimes she gave me that feeling and sometimes she didn’t. I don’t even think there’s a word how I feel. I don’t know what I feel about Linda McMahon. Disappointed. Disappointed in everything that she had promised they would do. When it came down to it, they didn’t.”

Powell’s POV: My condolences to the Cole family on their tragic loss. David Bixenspan wrote about the ring boy scandal in October 2020 in a piece that can be read at BusinessInsider.com. Bixenspan’s story includes a statement from WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt, who described allegations that the McMahons were aware of the accusations against Phillips and continued to employ him as being “outlandish” and “classic libel.”

My brother Tom Committed suicide a couple of hours ago. Vince Mc Mahon and his wife Linda let child molesters into their companies years ago and did everything possible to cover up what they did to my brother. I hope you can sleep good at night Vince. Our family suffers. Thank U

— leecole3 (@leeroycole) February 13, 2021

Local Interview with Tom Cole Protest Outside WWF https://t.co/Z9Y0MX17a2 via @YouTube

please pass this on, my brother is gone because of the guilt and shame that the WWE caused him. He asked Jerry McDevitt COUNSOL FOR WWE to help him with therapy . He said no. Shame ON YOU!

— leecole3 (@leeroycole) February 13, 2021

We are talking about grown men that molested children for a long period of time in the WWE. Did other men like my Brother Tom, kill themselves because of the pain. The McMahons covered for Patterson, Garvin and Phillips, who else did they cover for.

— leecole3 (@leeroycole) February 13, 2021

This is my brother Tom when he was 14 years old wearing a WWF cap. This is when the WWE starting grooming him. Mel Phillips would find good looking kids and groom them with lies about working for WWE. VINCE STOOD BYE AND LET IT HAPPEN. He seen these kids everyday. As did Linda! pic.twitter.com/CJSWfSDG2j

— leecole3 (@leeroycole) February 13, 2021

My brother was a good man, a good father until the pain was to much to bear. Remember this company WWE would take underage children across state lines. He was a perfect victim, father not around and alcoholic mother. These men knew what to look for.

— leecole3 (@leeroycole) February 13, 2021