A photo of Matthew Butler with his son, Matthew Butler Jr., is photographed next to his jacket and guitar in Dallas, Monday, April 27, 2026. Butler and Stephen Swan were killed outside of the Zion Gate Records in Garland on June 19, 2008.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
Seventeen years have passed since James Broadnax was convicted in her husband’s death, and Jamie Cole finds herself feeling sorry. Sorry that he’s 37 and staring down the last days of his life. Sorry that he didn’t make better choices, that he could have been so much more.
Cole had been married to Matthew Butler for less than three years when gunfire erupted outside his Garland music studio on June 19, 2008, killing not only him, but his best friend, Stephen Swan. On the day of their joint funeral, held at First Baptist Dallas, Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, confessed in taped interviews to a robbery gone wrong.
Article continues below this ad
Then 19, Broadnax told reporters he killed Butler, 28, and Swan, 26, without hesitation. Having endured a childhood rife with abuse, he said he had nothing and no one to live for. He asked the state to kill him.
Matthew Butler, right, and Stephen Swan, left, pictured at Zion Gate Records.
Courtesy of the Butler family
In August 2009, a Dallas County jury gave Broadnax what he thought he wanted, sentencing him to death. Cummings, who was tried as his cousin’s accomplice, got life without parole.
After addressing Broadnax in court with a victim impact statement, Cole said she felt she had made her peace. Hate was too heavy to carry. She had children to raise; their whole lives ahead of them.
Article continues below this ad
Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.
Add Preferred Source
“We all have to deal with the natural consequences of our choices, but my hope is that for their eternal life, that they can find peace and reconciliation with the maker,” Cole said last week in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.
Jamie Butler, center, strokes her daughter’s hair as Matthew Butler, Jr., 2, left, and McKayla Butler, 1, play with an organ at Zion Gate Recording Studio in Garland Thursday August 28, 2008. It was only the second time that the children had visited the studio since their father, Jamie’s husband, was killed with his friend and the studio’s engineer at the time, Steve Swan.
Courtney Perry/DMN
McKayla Butler and Matthew Butler Jr. were both under 3 when their father died, and they’ve reconciled with the loss in their own ways. Cole recalled a phone call earlier this year, when McKayla, now 19, revealed she had spoken with Broadnax’s wife, whom he married on April 14 in a brief prison ceremony.
Article continues below this ad
A photo of Matthew Butler with his son, Matthew Butler Jr., is photographed next to his jacket and guitar in Dallas, Monday, April 27, 2026. Butler and Stephen Swan were killed outside of the Zion Gate Records in Garland on June 19, 2008.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
“Don’t be mad at me,” McKayla said.
“You’re not spreading hate and condemnation,” Cole told her daughter. “You’re sharing the love of Christ. If that’s what your spirit needs to grieve, then do it.”
Cole remembers Matthew as a playful man, known to approach life with a joke or game within reach. She said they met at a Garland church when she was 19, their days spent having fun and singing worship songs together.
Article continues below this ad
Matthew was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his teens, and Cole said his dayslong depressive episodes made it hard for him to hold down a job. He’d always loved music and figured owning a recording studio would give him the flexibility to fall apart. But for the last two years of his life, Cole said he didn’t even need his medication.
It was the music, she reasoned. It gave him purpose.
Matthew Butler’s business card photographed on his guitar in Dallas, Monday, April 27, 2026. Butler and Stephen Swan were killed outside of the Zion Gate Records in Garland on June 19, 2008.
Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News
Now remarried with six children, Cole said she harbors no hurt or resentment.
Article continues below this ad
Sometimes, she wonders if this tragedy happened to her family for a reason: “To share a message of forgiveness and redemption with the world.” She wants Broadnax to find both, with God and within himself.
Those closest to Broadnax believe he has changed for the better. In his appeals, he’s described as a leader on death row, where he teaches classes on peacekeeping, studies the Bible and works to steer kids off the path to incarceration. He has learned what it means to belong.
Cummings, for his part, has cleared his conscience. In a written confession he signed in March, Cummings said the reason only his DNA was found on the murder weapon was because he was the shooter. Given Broadnax had only a drug charge on his record, Cummings persuaded him to take the blame, believing he’d be spared from the fate he faces now.
Cole knows she feels differently about Broadnax than most. Both Matthew’s mother and aunt, she said, favor the April 30 execution. In a letter from Oct. 25, 2023, Stephen’s mother, Jean Swan, asked the court to set a date. She wrote that her family had already waited too long for the justice they’d been promised, and that many of her relatives had passed before they could see it for themselves.
Article continues below this ad
By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy.
“Help us to find some closure in this very painful loss,” she said.
In a video he recorded to petition for clemency, one of his final pleas for mercy, Broadnax said he knows there are no excuses for the pain his past has caused. He said he would change it if he could.
And, just as Cole had hoped, he said that he’s prayed for forgiveness.