Investigators Doubt Mercy Killing
06:44 PM ET 08/18/99
By LESLIE MILLER, AP
BOSTON (AP), David Coughlin went camping in the New Mexico desert with his best
friend and never made it out alive. Raffi Kodikian stabbed the Massachusetts man
twice in the chest, claiming later that the two got lost and ran out of water and that a
dehydrated, panicky Coughlin begged to be put out of his misery. Investigators won't say
exactly what they think happened in Carlsbad Caverns National Park on Aug. 7, but one
thing is clear: They don't buy Kodikian's story.
Kodikian, who met Coughlin while attending school in Boston, is charged with
murder. He returned to his family's home Sunday in Doylestown, Pa., after posting $50,000
bail but must return to New Mexico for trial. His attorney did not return calls for
comment. Gary McCandless, chief of detectives for the Eddy County Sheriff's
Department, said this is as unusual and puzzling as any case he's seen.
Kodikian, 25, and Coughlin, 26, had arrived at the park Aug. 4 and got a two-day
camping permit. Four days later, rescuers found a dehydrated Kodikian in a lean-to. When a
ranger asked where his companion was, Kodikian said he had killed him to end his suffering
and buried him in a shallow grave nearby. For one thing, McCandless questions
whether Kodikian and Coughlin were hopelessly lost.
Their campsite was only 250 feet from the trail and a mile away from Coughlin's
Mazda. Had they climbed to the top of the canyon they would have seen the park's visitors
center. ``People actually have gotten lost there, but it didn't take them long to
find their way out,'' McCandless said. Investigators also question Kodikian's claim
that Coughlin suffered so much he begged to die.
An autopsy showed that Coughlin was moderately to severely dehydrated, which
could have impaired his judgment, but Kodikian felt fine an hour after he was found and
given food and water, McCandless said. Also, Kodikian was coherent when park rangers found
him, and had enough strength to bury Coughlin. ``They were real, real thirsty and
they hurt, but they weren't close to death,'' McCandless said.
The detective also said he considers the fact that Coughlin was stabbed twice as
evidence that there was a struggle. The mystery has sent local, state and federal
investigators in search of whether something happened on the young men's cross-country
road trip to cause its tragic ending.
During the trek, Coughlin kept a journal in a spiral-bound notebook given to him
by his girlfriend. With that journal in hand, the FBI is retracing the young men's steps,
questioning people they may have met, analyzing handwriting and fingerprints, even working
with the behavioral science unit to figure out what made them tick.
Coughlin initiated the journey. He had quit his job as a management analyst with
the town of Wellesley, Mass., and was heading to the University of California at Santa
Barbara. He planned to get a master's degree in environmental science. Kodikian, who
had traveled cross-country alone after graduating from Northeastern University two years
ago, agreed to accompany him.
Both men were described as bright, articulate and engaging, and each had a
streak of the romantic outdoorsman in him. In a two-part free-lance series in The
Boston Globe, Kodikian portrayed his earlier trip, a sometimes dangerous, sometimes
ecstatic series of encounters, as an attempt to emulate Beat writer Jack Kerouac.
Coughlin, too, loved the outdoors, although his chosen medium of expression was
photography.
The two men met in the 1990s when a friend introduced them while Kodikian
attended Northeastern University and Coughlin went to the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, 75 miles away. They became so close they talked to each other on the phone
every day, according to Sandy Hobson, Coughlin's co-worker. Kodikian lived in Boston
and Coughlin lived 20 miles away in Millis, but they spent a lot of time together, at
movies, bars, skiing, biking and snowboarding.
Coughlin's girlfriend of six months, Sonnet Frost, recalled recently for the
Milford Daily News how, before he left for the West Coast, she gave him the notebook with
the inscription: ``While you're away from me, you'll be in God's hands.'' Coughlin's
family believes Kodikian's story. At a memorial service last week in Wellesley for
Coughlin, his brother Michael asked mourners to pray for Kodikian.
