LOGAN – Local attorney and historian Brian Craig uncovered a true crime story mostly unknown to the public about a Utah bandit named Patrick Coughlin whose life story rivals Billy the Kid and other notorious gunslingers of the Old West.
The title of the book is: Utah Outlaw Patrick Coughlin: The Crime Spree of a Forgotten Desperado.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s crew began their crime spree robbing banks in 1896 and for the next three years they robbed trains and banks from Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado.
Patrick Coughlin began his crime spree by stealing strawberries from a street peddler in Park City when Utah was a Territory in 1895. By the time he was done he stole some horses and killed two lawmen.
“I like history. I was working on a book about historic courthouses in Utah and reached out to a publisher about my idea,” he said. “He suggested a crime biography, so I started digging and found this story about Patrick Coughlin.”
The Utah outlaw Patrick Coughlin is Craig’s fourth book. He has written about Cyber Law: The law of Internet and Information technology, Stringfellow Acid Pits: The Toxic and Legal Legacy.
“This last book took about a year to write,” he said. “I’m a lawyer and professor so I wanted the book to be accurate, so I went through a lot of newspaper archives.”
Inmates at the Utah State Prison digitized newspapers in the state and that made it easier for him to find the material he wanted. He said anyone can access those archives.
“I dug up some really interesting things, including from the board of pardons,” he said. “I talked to Barbara Martz, a member of the Park City Historical Society. She thinks Coughlin got a bad rap.”
Martz read the accounts of Coughlin and his history and expressed some doubts about his guilt and had some good evidence to back her claim.
Craig said Coughlin was in Rich County not far from Evanston when he and his partner were cornered and shot the lawmen. The manhunt went for some 200 miles for taking some strawberries and horses before the shootout.
“I think he was guilty. They bought a bunch of ammunition before the confrontation. I dug up some interesting stuff about the guy from the archives of the Utah Sate Board of Pardons,” he said. “The judge, George Washington Bartch, sentenced Coughlin to death for killing two peace officers. The supreme court rejected Coughlin’s appeal, and he was taken before a firing squad.”
Craig has given a lecture in Park City and a radio interview about his book. The Coughlin story is of the first person executed by a firing squad and it was a turning point while Utah was a territory.
A portion of the book sales will benefit the Utah Law Enforcement Memorial, a nonprofit organization that preserves and honors the memories of Utah police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty.
Constable Thomas Stagg and Deputy Sheriff Edward Dawes were shot and killed while attempting to arrest the horse thieves. They appear on the Utah Law Enforcement Memorial at the Utah Capitol.