Journal of the Dead: A Story of Friendship and Murder in the New Mexico Desert

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT STORY--EXCELLENTLY TOLD
Review: I might as well tell you right off the bat. I think the guy murdered his friend and managed to get off with a virtual slap on the wrist. You might come to a different conclusion after reading this rather short book, and that's fine. Just do yourself a favor and read it. The victim, the suspect, the cops, the lawyers, and a collection of friends and family members come across not only as real people, the kind you might meet at a bus stop, but also as interesting people. The description of the desert is brutal. The description of the crime is fascinating. The story moves quickly. You are finished before you know it.
There is one glaring fault. The editing is terrible. All through the book, sentences pop up with a word missing. Even so, what the author meant is clear and the story still glides along.
This is an excellent, true story told excellently.

Rating:
Summary: scary and confusing
Review: I picked this book up having heard vaguely about the case. It is a well written book. It is hard to comprehend how the "crime" occured and the author does a good job in detailing the circumstances and the evidence. what comes across most strongly is that the parents of the victim forgave his killer and as a result the conviction and sentence which would other wise have seemed a travesty of justice, comes across as a fair conclusion. don't read this book if you want all the answers -no one has those but as a story it is very very compelling reading

Rating:
Summary: scary and confusing
Review: I picked this book up having heard vaguely about the case. It is a well written book. It is hard to comprehend how the "crime" occured and the author does a good job in detailing the circumstances and the evidence. what comes across most strongly is that the parents of the victim forgave his killer and as a result the conviction and sentence which would other wise have seemed a travesty of justice, comes across as a fair conclusion. don't read this book if you want all the answers -no one has those but as a story it is very very compelling reading

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing
Review: I read a two sentence blurb about this work of nonfiction and immediately had to read it. Two young friends on a camping trip and one of them winds up dead of a supposed mercy killing by the other. The book does not disappoint. It recounts the tale honestly and fairly of the two men whose overnight camping trip in the Southwest went horribly wrong--and the aftermath that followed. Jason Kersten writes well. The book reads like a compelling magazine article--but the story clearly merits a full-sized book. Kersten stays focussed on the story and thankfully does not take any tangents to fill page space. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing
Review: I read a two sentence blurb about this work of nonfiction and immediately had to read it. Two young friends on a camping trip and one of them winds up dead of a supposed mercy killing by the other. The book does not disappoint. It recounts the tale honestly and fairly of the two men whose overnight camping trip in the Southwest went horribly wrong--and the aftermath that followed. Jason Kersten writes well. The book reads like a compelling magazine article--but the story clearly merits a full-sized book. Kersten stays focussed on the story and thankfully does not take any tangents to fill page space. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: I think a lot of us are fascinated with tales of treks across the desert, about what the desert can do to the unwary and unprepared. We can see those vultures circling and we can feel the chapped lips, the mouth so dry that we can hardly speak, and we can see the shimmer of the heat on the dry rocks and sand and hear the wind whispering, and we can be enveloped by the silence.

In this true crime tale Maxim magazine senior editor Jason Kersten expands on an article he wrote for that magazine and turns it into a modest book. It is a engrossing story about two young men, close friends, who travel west and get lost in Rattlesnake Canyon in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park without any water. As dehydration, fatigue, and hopelessness set in, the two men prepare to die. One of them, David Coughlin, is vomiting violently, hour after hour. He is in such pain that, so the story goes, he asks his friend Raffi Kodikian to kill him, to put him out of his misery.

Some hours later the next day their camp is spotted and the rangers come. They find Kodikian alive in the tent. He tells them where Coughlin's body is and confesses that he stabbed him through the heart as an act of mercy.

What makes this story work, and what makes it worth an entire book, is the uncertainty that still exists about Raffi Kodikian: did he kill his friend, as he claims, because he could not bare to see him suffer anymore, or did he have a more sinister motive? Kersten's narrative clearly leans toward the idea that Kodikian's action was a delusional mercy killing; however most of the law enforcement people mentioned in the book find Kodikian's story unconvincing. Kersten himself allows that in all the literature he could find, there was only one story of a mercy killing in the desert. Apparently it is an extremely rare event. Furthermore, the Rattlesnake Canyon they couldn't find their way out of is not that big. As Kersten terms it, Rattlesnake Canyon "is just a crack--five miles long, seven hundred feet deep..."

Another factor that makes this story interesting is the law itself and the defense chosen by famed New Mexico lawyer Gary Mitchell and his assistant Shawn Boyne. Since New Mexican law defines a mercy killing as a murder, period, and is not a complete defense to the crime, the lawyers had to come up with something better. Boyne made an argument for "involuntary intoxication" and it seemed to fit. Only problem was, according to the legal definition of that defense an agent of intoxication was required. Instead what they had was lack of water. Curiously, they might have argued that the juice of the prickly pear cactus fruit was the agent, but for some reason they did not. Kersten reports that eating prickly pear cactus fruit was probably part of the reason Coughlin vomited so violently.

Finally I have to say that Kersten does an excellent job with limited resources. He was not able to interview Kodikian, who refused his entreaties, so he had to reconstruct the story from the trial transcript and from interviews with other people, none of whom, of course, was in the canyon with the two men. Kersten also does a fine job of placing the story within the historical context of the New Mexican desert and deserts everywhere while making it clear how people die of thirst and how the law works in cases like this.

However, as I finished the book, I was left somewhat dissatisfied as other readers were, not so much because I found Kodikian's story unbelievable or even because I doubted it, but because I felt that I did not really know Kodikian. We can see that "he appears to be," as Kersten reports, "quite a well-adjusted young man" who "had good friends" and appeared to enjoy life. Kersten adds, "He could be me or fifty people I know." (p. x) In fact the only negative thing anybody said about Kodikian was that he could be stubborn.

I wondered as I finished the book if a stubborn person may be more likely to believe in his own judgment against the laws of men and be more willing to do something forbidden than the average person. I wonder, but I don't think that fully explains it. I really believe that the desert can do crazy things to our minds, especially when we are tired and thirsty and the implacable terrain shimmers and dances into a confusing mosaic as we become more and more removed from conventional reality and from hope. At such times in such circumstances we may very well become confused about what is right and what is wrong. At least I think that is what happened to David Coughlin and Raffi Kodikian.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: I think a lot of us are fascinated with tales of treks across the desert, about what the desert can do to the unwary and unprepared. We can see those vultures circling and we can feel the chapped lips, the mouth so dry that we can hardly speak, and we can see the shimmer of the heat on the dry rocks and sand and hear the wind whispering, and we can be enveloped by the silence.

In this true crime tale Maxim magazine senior editor Jason Kersten expands on an article he wrote for that magazine and turns it into a modest book. It is a engrossing story about two young men, close friends, who travel west and get lost in Rattlesnake Canyon in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park without any water. As dehydration, fatigue, and hopelessness set in, the two men prepare to die. One of them, David Coughlin, is vomiting violently, hour after hour. He is in such pain that, so the story goes, he asks his friend Raffi Kodikian to kill him, to put him out of his misery.

Some hours later the next day their camp is spotted and the rangers come. They find Kodikian alive in the tent. He tells them where Coughlin's body is and confesses that he stabbed him through the heart as an act of mercy.

What makes this story work, and what makes it worth an entire book, is the uncertainty that still exists about Raffi Kodikian: did he kill his friend, as he claims, because he could not bare to see him suffer anymore, or did he have a more sinister motive? Kersten's narrative clearly leans toward the idea that Kodikian's action was a delusional mercy killing; however most of the law enforcement people mentioned in the book find Kodikian's story unconvincing. Kersten himself allows that in all the literature he could find, there was only one story of a mercy killing in the desert. Apparently it is an extremely rare event. Furthermore, the Rattlesnake Canyon they couldn't find their way out of is not that big. As Kersten terms it, Rattlesnake Canyon "is just a crack--five miles long, seven hundred feet deep..."

Another factor that makes this story interesting is the law itself and the defense chosen by famed New Mexico lawyer Gary Mitchell and his assistant Shawn Boyne. Since New Mexican law defines a mercy killing as a murder, period, and is not a complete defense to the crime, the lawyers had to come up with something better. Boyne made an argument for "involuntary intoxication" and it seemed to fit. Only problem was, according to the legal definition of that defense an agent of intoxication was required. Instead what they had was lack of water. Curiously, they might have argued that the juice of the prickly pear cactus fruit was the agent, but for some reason they did not. Kersten reports that eating prickly pear cactus fruit was probably part of the reason Coughlin vomited so violently.

Finally I have to say that Kersten does an excellent job with limited resources. He was not able to interview Kodikian, who refused his entreaties, so he had to reconstruct the story from the trial transcript and from interviews with other people, none of whom, of course, was in the canyon with the two men. Kersten also does a fine job of placing the story within the historical context of the New Mexican desert and deserts everywhere while making it clear how people die of thirst and how the law works in cases like this.

However, as I finished the book, I was left somewhat dissatisfied as other readers were, not so much because I found Kodikian's story unbelievable or even because I doubted it, but because I felt that I did not really know Kodikian. We can see that "he appears to be," as Kersten reports, "quite a well-adjusted young man" who "had good friends" and appeared to enjoy life. Kersten adds, "He could be me or fifty people I know." (p. x) In fact the only negative thing anybody said about Kodikian was that he could be stubborn.

I wondered as I finished the book if a stubborn person may be more likely to believe in his own judgment against the laws of men and be more willing to do something forbidden than the average person. I wonder, but I don't think that fully explains it. I really believe that the desert can do crazy things to our minds, especially when we are tired and thirsty and the implacable terrain shimmers and dances into a confusing mosaic as we become more and more removed from conventional reality and from hope. At such times in such circumstances we may very well become confused about what is right and what is wrong. At least I think that is what happened to David Coughlin and Raffi Kodikian.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: I thought that this book was excellent and, as they say, could not put it down. I thought that it was very well written AND researched and that the author was meticulously fair, giving plenty of ammunition to both those who feel that Kodikian is a stone-cold killer and those who believe that there were extreme mitigating circumstances. As for those who criticized the author for not interviewing Kodikian, I found that criticism silly--if the guy is not going to give an interview, what can you do? I'm sure he tried. I did find some sloppiness in the editing. Take for example, the issue of dates. At various times, we are told that the killing occurred on Sunday, August 8. However, page 113 tells us that Friday was August 4 and Saturday was August 5. This of course impossible if Sunday was the 8th. Then, on page 197, we are given a third possibility (albeit through a witness) that Thursday was August 6. Obviously 2 of these 3 scenarios are wrong. How did the editors miss this? Finally, I have always been somewhat puzzled about the concept of a "suspended sentence". It sounds me me like a completely meaningless concept because the sentence always seems "suspended" into perpituity and is never actually served. So what is the point of a suspended sentence at all? Why not just give the actual sentence?

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: I thought that this book was excellent and, as they say, could not put it down. I thought that it was very well written AND researched and that the author was meticulously fair, giving plenty of ammunition to both those who feel that Kodikian is a stone-cold killer and those who believe that there were extreme mitigating circumstances. As for those who criticized the author for not interviewing Kodikian, I found that criticism silly--if the guy is not going to give an interview, what can you do? I'm sure he tried. I did find some sloppiness in the editing. Take for example, the issue of dates. At various times, we are told that the killing occurred on Sunday, August 8. However, page 113 tells us that Friday was August 4 and Saturday was August 5. This of course impossible if Sunday was the 8th. Then, on page 197, we are given a third possibility (albeit through a witness) that Thursday was August 6. Obviously 2 of these 3 scenarios are wrong. How did the editors miss this? Finally, I have always been somewhat puzzled about the concept of a "suspended sentence". It sounds me me like a completely meaningless concept because the sentence always seems "suspended" into perpituity and is never actually served. So what is the point of a suspended sentence at all? Why not just give the actual sentence?

Rating:
Summary: Journal of the Dead
Review: I wish I understood what "Reader from Cairo" was rambling on about. What harrassment? how does someone in the USA harrass an Egyptian?
Anyway, I found this a fascinating read. I read it in 5 hours at one sitting as I couldn't put it down. It is a pity that the author didn't interview the family of the victim or Raffi - it surely would have added to it. The end of the book also left me with many questions that were not addressed such as how did Raffi manage to lift his friend's body, bury it and move very heavy rocks to cover the body when he was seemingly so dehydrated. Why did David give up so fast - he was stronger and bigger than his friend and surely could have survived.
It's a fascinating tale, and I would definitely recommend it to all true crime fans. Anyone know where Raffi is now and what he's been up to? That would be interesting....