James Cogan (b. 1937; d. 23 April 1980) was the husband of Arla Cogan, the father of Michael Cogan, and a resident of Nederland, Colorado. He worked as a commercial artist for Mountain Outlook Advertising in Denver.
Biography[]
He left his home in Nederland at 6:45 on the morning of 23 April 1980, and reached work in Denver by 8:45am. At 10:15am, he left the office to get coffee and lunch at Starbucks, talking to his co-worker George about an upcoming retirement party for a man named Haverty. George was the last person who remembered seeing Cogan in Colorado. Between five-thirty and six o'clock that evening – roughly five hours after boarding an elevator in Denver – he ordered fish and chips at Jan's Wharfside in Tinnock Village, Maine. At five after six, Cogan boarded the ferry to Moose-Lookit Island, bringing a cup of coffee to pilot Gard Edwick.
On the morning of 24 April, he was found dead on Hammock Beach on Moose-Lookit Island by Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault. His body was then examined by Dr. Chris Robinson, constable George Wournos, and writer Dave Bowie before being taken to the Tinnock Funeral Home. Paul Devane signed the Possession Slip on an evidence bag containing a wedding ring, a pack of Winstons cigarettes, $17 in cash (a $10, a $5, two $1's) and roughly a dollar's worth of change, a Russian ten-ruble chervonetz, a roll of Certs, a nearly empty pack of Big Red gum, and a book of matches. The bag was later logged with the Attorney General's Evidence Storage and Filing Department in Augusta, Maine.
Cogan's body remained unclaimed and unidentified until 30 April, when Abe Carvey embalmed it and interned it in the Funeral Home's crypt at the Seaview Cemetery. When the body remained unclaimed into November 1980, Carvey elected to bury it in its own plot at Seaview. In October 1981, Cogan was identified after the stamp on his pack of cigarettes indicated that he was a Colorado resident. A copy of his "sleeping ID" photograph was printed in seventy-eight newspapers throughout Colorado. Two days later, Cogan's widow called the offices of The Weekly Islander to claim her dead husband.
Appearances[]
- The Colorado Kid
- Haven: "Consumed" (photograph)