At Last, Closure for a Mother

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Out of the blue one December day, Blanche Coogan finally got the news she had longed for: Her missing son’s remains apparently had been found.

The Seltzer, Pa., woman had wondered if she’d ever be able to bury her son, Joseph Coogan, who died after a wave swept him off seaside rocks in California 22 years earlier. “That was the reason God let me live so long, so I could get this phone call,” Marin County coroner’s investigator Darrell Harris recalled the 86-year-old woman saying when he contacted her.

Joseph Coogan, a stocky 6-footer, was a month shy of his 28th birthday when he and a fellow auditor from Pennsylvania, Michael Kardibin, decided to take a scenic drive up the California coast. They had been in Los Angeles to examine books at Teledyne Inc.

Coogan and Kardibin pulled over at a spectacular spot above Pebble Beach on Jan. 23, 1983. Coogan had never liked water -- friends said he feared it -- but he handed his camera to Kardibin, pocketed the lens cap and clambered down the rocks.

Kardibin got off one shot. Then, to his horror, a big wave rose out of what appeared to be a calm Pacific and knocked Coogan down. Kardibin never saw his friend again.

A month later, badly decomposed remains -- a lower torso and legs, still clad in Calvin Klein jeans and entwined in fishing line -- washed up at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, 125 miles to the north.

Coroner’s investigators in Marin made inquiries, but could not identify the remains.

Fast-forward to December 2004.

Mark Friedman, a coroner’s office volunteer who organized files on unidentified bodies, was examining the folder of John Doe #3 when he saw an envelope with rusty staples. Curious, he opened it, and out popped two sets of keys. One set had a red rubber key holder advertising Shades Auto Sales in Erie, Pa.

Friedman noticed it had the dealer’s phone number, so he suggested that Harris make a call. The second set, held together by a large paper clip, had a key with the name “Bundy” on it. Harris’ interest was piqued.

A coroner’s investigator in Marin County for two years, and in Alameda County for three years before that, Harris prides himself on his ability to track down people and attach names to John Does.

After learning that the dealership no longer existed, he called Erie police to inquire about a Pennsylvania man who went missing in the early 1980s. That went nowhere (and turned out to be someone other than Joseph Coogan).

That’s when Jim Skindell, the deputy police chief in Erie, hit upon the idea of pitching the story to the media. Harris sent photos of the keys, found in the pockets of the dead man’s jeans.

A Dec. 8 article in the Erie Times-News prompted two calls -- one from a man who had a friend who may have known the dead man. Skindell asked the man to have his friend call.

“I hooked Mr. Harris up with the fellow, and everything kind of fell in place,” Skindell recalled. Dan Veith of Edinboro, Pa., told Harris he had a college roommate who had gone to California on a business trip and drowned near Pebble Beach, and whose body had never been recovered.

“He gave me the name, Joe Coogan,” Harris said.

Harris obtained a report on the case from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department. It listed Coogan’s mother’s name but no address, and he was unable to track her down in a nationwide database. He also couldn’t find Kardibin, the companion, whose name was misspelled in the sheriff’s report.

He assumed Blanche Coogan might be dead by this time, so he began looking in the Social Security death index for a Coogan of an appropriate age to have been Joseph Coogan’s father.

He made several calls to a Francis Coogan; to his surprise, Blanche Coogan answered. Her husband had been dead since 1995 and, yes, she had a son named Joseph.

Harris said he proceeded cautiously, not wanting to get the mother’s hopes up when he still had other facts to confirm.

“By the end of our conversation, she was giddy” with excitement, Harris said of his Dec. 10 call.

That month, Blanche Coogan and one of her daughters, Kathy Moffitt, placed a Christmas wreath by her husband’s grave, which is part of a family plot. Moffitt recalled her mother saying, “You better move, Chub [her nickname for her short, stout husband], I’m bringing Joe home.”

Harris traced one of the keys to Bundy’s Lock and Key in Los Angeles, which explained why “Bundy” was stamped on it. He linked another American Tourister key to Coogan’s briefcase, kept by Moffitt since her brother’s death. Harris said he also tracked down Kardibin. Blanche Coogan had his address because he sent her a Christmas card every year.

When Kardibin told him about their trip and that they were sent to the Teledyne office on Bundy Avenue, Harris realized he probably had the office key.

Kardibin remembered that Joseph Coogan had been wearing jeans the day he died. And Moffitt, at Harris’ urging, finally brought herself to look at the last photo of her brother alive, shot just before he was overtaken by the wave, to confirm that he was wearing jeans.

Moffitt also told Harris she had her brother’s camera, minus a lens cap. After her brother’s death, she had sold back his Mazda RX7 to the now-defunct Erie car dealer.

The body was exhumed for DNA analysis, but no match was made. The grave at Valley Memorial Park in Novato had partly filled with water, hastening decomposition.

“Here’s a guy who lives his life frightened of the water. He dies in the water and here in his grave, he’s in the water,” Harris said.

When the body was retrieved, there were still remnants of jeans and nylon fishing line, Harris said. He believes the body was snagged by a commercial fisherman and dragged north instead of going south with the current.

Although lab tests could not make a positive DNA match, Blanche Coogan could not be ruled out as the mother. That, and other evidence, prompted assistant coroner Gary Tindel to notify the family in March that Joseph Coogan had indeed been identified.

The family held a funeral Mass for Joseph Coogan last month at a cemetery chapel in Pottsville, Pa. It was attended by 60 to 70 people. The following week, Moffitt visited the cemetery with her mother.

“I could feel the excitement in her body. We’re standing there at the grave. I said, ‘Mom, what do you think?’ ” she recalled.

“She kind of held her face up to the sky. She said, ‘Home at last, Joe,’ little tears streaming down her face,” Moffitt said.