The Colorado Kid

A feature writer named Hanratty from the Boston Globe visits Moose-Lookit Island, a small community off the coast of Maine, to interview the two-man staff of The Weekly Islander for a series on unexplained New England mysteries. Over lunch, Vince Teague, the paper's 90-year-old founder and editor, and Dave Bowie, its 65-year-old managing editor, offer only well-worn tales: a fishing boat found with one dead crewman and five missing, mysterious lights over a Little League game in 1951, and an unsolved poisoning at a church picnic. Hanratty leaves disappointed, barely noticing the young woman between them.

That woman is Stephanie McCann, a 22-year-old postgraduate intern from Cincinnati serving a four-month placement with the paper. After Hanratty departs, Vince demonstrates a small act of local generosity: He pockets the $100 tip the reporter left and redistributes most of it as discreet cash to their waitress, bypassing the restaurant's shared-tip policy. The maneuver is an informal lesson in island economics, and Stephanie impresses both men by reasoning through the logic.

Back at the office, Stephanie asks whether the two men have truly never encountered a genuine mystery in over 50 years. They admit they fed Hanratty recycled stories, then close the office and invite her onto the deck. Vince explains what makes popular mysteries appealing: Each involves a single unknown and a plausible theory, a "musta-been." The Colorado Kid story is different; it is nothing but unknowns. Dave adds that the story is theirs and an outsider would only distort it. They tell Stephanie because she has proven herself to be "one of us."

Dave begins. In April 1980, two high school sweethearts, Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault, discovered a dead man half-slumped against a litter basket on Hammock Beach during their early-morning run. He wore gray slacks, a white shirt, and black loafers but no coat despite the cold. His face was waxy white, his lips and eyelids blue-tinged. When Johnny shook the body, it was stiff with rigor mortis. The teenagers called George Wournos, the island's constable.

Wournos arrived with Doc Robinson, a local physician. Robinson confirmed the man had been dead since at least midnight and estimated his age at around 40. He found grease on the dead man's right palm, suggesting the hand had held food, and a chunk of meat lodged in the throat. He concluded the man choked to death while eating on the beach.

The autopsy was delayed because the County Medical Examiner, Dr. Cathcart, was handling a double murder in nearby Tinnock. That case brought two Attorney General's detectives to the area along with Paul Devane, a forensic science graduate student on a field assignment whom they treated as a gofer. Dave befriended Devane at a local bakery. Before leaving, Devane signed for the evidence bag containing the dead man's effects and, against orders, examined its contents.

Cathcart confirmed the cause of death as asphyxiation from choking on a piece of steak. He also discovered a massive stroke, though he believed the choking triggered it. The stomach revealed two food layers: a recent steak snack and an earlier supper of fish and chips consumed several hours before death. Vince showed a photograph of the dead man at local restaurants, and a worker at Jan's Wharfside in Tinnock recognized him, having served him around 5:30 PM the previous afternoon. The photograph ran in regional papers but yielded no identification, and the body was buried months later, unclaimed.

Sixteen months later, Devane, now studying law, noticed that tax stamps on cigarettes vary by state: Maine uses ink stamps while other states use stick-on stamps. He called Dave, who checked the evidence bag. The dead man's Winstons bore a stick-on stamp reading COLORADO. Dave and Vince sent the death photograph to all 78 Colorado newspapers, and every one published it. Two days after the Boulder Daily Camera ran the photo, Arla Cogan of Nederland, a small town west of Boulder, called Dave. Her husband James had disappeared in April 1980, leaving her with their six-month-old son. Dental records and fingerprints confirmed the match: James Cogan, age 42, a commercial artist.

Vince met Arla in Bangor, where she identified the photograph and signed an exhumation order. Over breakfast, she deepened the mystery. Her husband had been contented, devoted to his family and his career at a Denver advertising agency. Arla found no evidence of an affair, financial trouble, addiction, or desire to flee. On April 23, 1980, Cogan left for work in a gray suit, white shirt, red tie, overcoat, and black loafers. Around 10:15 AM Mountain Time, a colleague saw him heading for the elevator. They chatted, Cogan waved, and the doors closed. No one in Colorado was ever confirmed to have seen him again.

Stephanie seizes on the timing. At 10:15 AM Mountain Time, it was already past noon Eastern, yet the restaurant worker saw Cogan at 5:30 PM Eastern. Vince eliminates commercial flights: The best connection would have landed in Bangor at 6:45 PM, after the last ferry departed at 6:00 PM. His theory: Cogan raced to Stapleton Airport and boarded a charter jet capable of reaching Bangor in about three hours, where a driver waited. Despite years of research, Vince found no records of such a flight. The ferryman for that evening's last crossing vaguely recalls a man murmuring something like "This has been a long time coming," but his alcohol addiction makes his memory unreliable. After arriving on the island, Cogan's movements are a complete blank.

The remaining details resist explanation. Cogan's wallet, overcoat, suit jacket, and tie were never found. A Russian coin, a chervonetz or 10-ruble piece, turned up among his pocket change. Cogan was not a smoker: His wife confirmed it, and his lungs were healthy. Yet he carried a full pack of Winstons with only one cigarette removed and a matchbook with a single strike. Vince believes Cogan bought the cigarettes as a deliberate breadcrumb to his Colorado origins in case he died without identification. Stephanie asks whether Cogan was murdered. Cathcart found the lodged steak too well-chewed for external manipulation, and toxicology tests came back negative. Neither man can answer the central question: Why did a contented family man orchestrate an elaborate, secret journey to a small Maine island, where he ended up dead on a beach in the middle of the night?

Vince explains why they withheld the story: A paper like the Globe needs resolutions. Hanratty would have emphasized one speculative angle while omitting the lack of evidence, hanging "a lie around the neck of a man who ain't alive to refute it." Real life rarely offers tidy endings, and the Colorado Kid cannot be made into a proper story without falsifying it. Vince tells Stephanie she has been a pleasure and offers her a permanent position. She indicates she will likely accept. After the men leave, Stephanie lingers. Her eye catches an old front page on the bulletin board: the Islander's 1952 coverage of the Coast Lights. In the photograph, spectators gaze at bright circles in the sky, and on the pitcher's mound a small boy holds his glove toward the lights, as if reaching to touch the mystery and know its story.