Men Who Shared Heart, Wife Both Commit Suicide

POSTED: 7:17 pm EDT April 6, 2008
UPDATED: 10:05 am EDT April 7, 2008


HILTON HEAD, SC -- Terry Cottle and Sonny Graham never met, but the two men shared two very important things -- a heart and a wife.

They also died the same way: Cottle, 12 years ago from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the Summerville home he shared with his wife, Cheryl; the 69-year-old Graham died the same way last week outside his Vidalia, Georgia, home that he shared with his wife, Cheryl.

When Cottle died at age 33, his organs were donated. Graham got Cottle's heart and nine years later, he married Cottle's widow.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent Greg Harvey told The (Hilton Head) Island Packet that Graham was found Tuesday in a utility building in his back yard with a single gunshot wound to the throat.

Harvey says the former golf tournament director had used a shotgun and no foul play was suspected in his death.

Graham, who was director of the Heritage golf tournament at Sea Pines from 1979 to 1983, was on the verge of congestive heart failure in 1995 when he got a call that a heart was available in Charleston.

That heart was from Terry Cottle, who had been put on life support after shooting himself so his organs could be donated, Berkeley County Coroner Glenn Rhoad said.

Grateful for his new heart, Graham began writing letters to the donor's family to thank them. In January 1997, Graham and Cheryl Cottle, then 28, met in Charleston.

In 2001, Graham bought a home for Cottle and her four children in Vidalia. Three years later, they were married after Graham retired from his job as a plant manager for Hargray Communications in Hilton Head.

Wow, very strange.

neat.

There are alot of people who take on 'strange' habbits after receiving an organ thru transplant.

Very interesting indeed

Or maybe she just drove two different men to suicide.

SCNDLS said:

That's what I am thinking.... she drove them both to kill themselves.

Damn...

paintedlady said:

Sounds like it. Black widow.....at work?

SCNDLS said:

OR...

Wow