Cole and longtime best friend Henry Rollins were assaulted by armed robbers in December 1991 outside their shared Venice Beach, California, home at 809 Brooks Avenue in the Oakwood district.

[3] They had attended a Hole concert at the Whisky a Go Go and were returning home after having stopped at an all-night grocery store.

However, Cole was killed outside after being shot in the face at close range while Rollins escaped out the back door and alerted the police.

[7] In a 1992 interview with The Los Angeles Times, Rollins revealed he kept a plastic container full of soil soaked with Cole's blood.

Rollins said, "I dug up all the earth where his head fell – he was shot in the face – and I've got all the dirt here, and so Joe Cole's in the house.

According to Rolling Stone, after Cole's death, hundreds of hours of interviews Cole had taped with "flamboyant street characters" in Venice Beach were edited into an hour of "primo footage" that the magazine described as "an unflinching look at the American dream gone amok".