Bad to the Bone
The gritty story of one of Glenwood Cemetery’s occupants.
Illustration: Chris Cech
To walk among the headstones of Glenwood Cemetery is to step back in time, as the markers reveal stories about the early residents of Park City—how they lived and died. One of the headstones is for Patrick Coughlin. The basic information about his short life is recorded on the stone, but not his sordid tale of becoming an outlaw in the rough-and-tumble American West. Here’s his story:
The Park Record of April 15, 1893, reports that there was “bad blood” between Coughlin and another Park City resident named Patsy Haddigan, “growing out of trouble they had at one of the fast houses.” The article states that Haddigan struck Coughlin in the face. Coughlin told his assailant that if he hit him again, he would kill him. Haddigan, carrying a “small rattan cane in this hand,” struck Coughlin anyway. So Coughlin shot Haddigan, though superficially, and walked away, “threatening to shoot anyone who interfered with him.” He was later arrested by Summit County Sheriff John Harrington and given a hearing. Coughlin pleaded guilty and was placed under bond in the sum of $1,000. The newspaper report concludes with a prophetic warning: “Young Coughlin bears a tough reputation and has been in both reform school and the penitentiary and is in the fair way to one day become a leading candidate for the gallows.”
Three years later, on July 11, 1896, Coughlin, along with Frank Kennedy and Fred George, stole some cases of strawberries from a Park City peddler. Kennedy confessed to the theft. He was arrested, posted $20 bail, and was released pending trial. Sheriff Harrington obtained an arrest warrant for the other two troublemakers and started after them, but Coughlin and George stole two horses and left Park City.
On July 20, Harrington and Deputy Earl Williamson started after the men again; they had learned that Coughlin and George had purchased 200 rounds of ammunition and forced a local blacksmith to shoe their horses. The officers followed the two to Rockport, Peoa, and Crandall Creek before tracking them to a sheep camp. There they found Coughlin and George waiting for them. Sheriff Harrington spotted Coughlin holding a Winchester rifle at his shoulder. Dismounting and looking at Coughlin over his saddle, Harrington ordered him to drop the gun. Coughlin replied with a bullet that struck Harrington’s saddle. George also supposedly opened fire from the cover of some nearby brush, forcing the two law officers to beat a hasty retreat.
Coughlin and George were now no longer petty strawberry thieves; they were outlaws on the run. Posses were formed, and a multicounty search began. Lawmen suspected that the duo was heading to Wyoming, and Utah Marshal Thomas Stagg and Wyoming officers Robert Calverly, William Taylor, and Edward Dawes were on their trail. At 1:30 a.m. on July 30, the four lawmen surrounded a cabin on Duck Creek, about 12 miles from the Wyoming border, and waited for daylight. Shortly after sunrise, the gunfight began. The cabin received a large volume of gunfire from the posse, but it was apparent that Coughlin and George had the better position. Stagg took a mortal wound and died immediately. Coughlin crawled out of a cabin window and shot Dawes in the side. Low on ammunition, Calverly and Taylor pulled out and went for help.
Coughlin and George discovered that Dawes was still alive. At his later trial, Coughlin claimed that he had given Dawes water and moved him to a more comfortable position. Then the two outlaws rounded up their horses and left the wounded officer to die.
Over the next few days, there was another gunfight, another slippery escape, and the theft of two horses that the outlaws planned to ride to California before yet another posse surrounded them on August 5 and started firing. Coughlin and George finally surrendered. Both men were tried on charges of first-degree murder on October 23. Coughlin pleaded self-defense, claiming that the officers had no right to shoot at him while attempting his capture. George pleaded guilty and threw himself on the mercy of the court. Both were found guilty. George was sentenced to life in prison; Coughlin was sentenced to death.
Before his execution, Coughlin made final statements, printed in Utah’s Ogden Standard Examiner and Randolph Round-Up newspapers. He professed, three times, “Fred George is innocent; he never fired a shot.” Coughlin also recounted that officer Dawes, when dying, had said, “I brought two white sheets from my house in Evanston to wrap you and Fred George in. I did not think they would be used in this manner, one for me and the other for my dead partner Thomas Staggs.”
The day before his execution, Coughlin was taken to the town of Randolph and placed in a jail cell, where he spent a relatively calm night in the company of his mother and a Catholic priest. Coughlin was also visited by Frank Kennedy, his original accomplice in the strawberry theft. On the morning of December 15, 1896, Coughlin was taken to a snow-covered field near Woodruff, where a black square was pinned over his heart.
The Randolph Round-Up gave an account of the execution: “Deputy Sheriff Calverly began counting, and as he counted, eight rifles spoke, and the deadly lead crashed through the breast of Coughlin. The body stiffened as the shots struck, the time exactly 10:25 a.m.” The article also reported that Coughlin’s last request was that his body not be photographed. Coughlin was buried in Park City’s Glenwood Cemetery with no mention of his burial in The Park Record.
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