Deep Dive
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Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I'm gonna tell you about today is one I've wanted to cover on this show for a while. It's the case of two men, best friends, who set out on a hike together in New Mexico, but only one of them returned alive. It's a tale of a violent killing, but it's also a tale of how the criminal justice system in America handles claims of mercy killings.
The geographic area where this all went down in August of 1999 sits inside Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I've personally never been to this part of New Mexico, but I have friends who have, and they all tell me it's truly a one-of-a-kind place. The features of the park have been around for ages, and the park was initially called Carlsbad Cave National Monument. However, in 1930, it got its national park status and was renamed Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
The area is home to more than 100 limestone caves, historic sites associated with Native American culture, and remnants of old mining operations. You can also hike a variety of canyons and trails. A protected section of the Chihuahuan Desert sits within the park's boundary, so depending on the time of year you're there, temperatures can get hot. Some of the more popular hiking trails people use run along Upper and Lower Rattlesnake Canyon.
Most of the folks can hike these trails in a matter of hours, but some visitors opt to take their time and camp in the canyon with a designated permit. The two men in today's story found themselves choosing the latter. They ventured into Rattlesnake Canyon with high hopes of sightseeing and exploring, but quickly found themselves in an undesirable situation.
Almost as fast as a serpent strikes, the brutal New Mexican sun took its toll on them. Well, at least that's according to the man who walked out of the canyon still alive. This is "Park Predators." Around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 8th, 1999, a 28-year-old park ranger named Lance Mattson was patrolling a hill on top of Rattlesnake Canyon inside Carlsbad Caverns National Park when he noticed something in the distance.
He held up his binoculars to get a better look, and when he focused, he saw a small campsite set up inside the 670-foot-deep canyon basin. Spotting the campsite was a relief to Lance because for almost 48 hours, he and other park staff and volunteers had been worried about a pair of overdue hikers who'd entered the park four days earlier on Wednesday, August 4th, and they'd yet to be seen.
The young men were 25-year-old Rafi Khodikian and 26-year-old David Coughlin. The men were visiting from Massachusetts, and when they'd arrived at the park's office around 3 o'clock on August 4th, they'd been issued two one-day backcountry camping permits, which were due to expire by the end of the day on August 6th. However, the 6th had come and gone, and so had the 7th, and there had been no sign of the two men.
The normal routine would have been for Raffi and David to return to the permitting office when they were supposed to and check out of the park. Sometimes, though, visitors would be late by a few hours, or in some cases, a whole day. But two days was really unusual. When Lance descended into the canyon and made his way to the tattered campsite, he quickly found a young man who matched Raffi's description lying beneath a tarp. And he didn't look well.
He was dirty, unshaven, and only wore a pair of green shorts. Nearby, scattered on the ground, were four empty water canteens and some indications that Raffi or David had tried to make at least two fires to signal for help. Inside the smoldering remains were burned remnants of a sleeping bag, which indicated to Lance Raffi or David had tried to make a fire, but it either didn't catch or burned itself out. In a faint, distressed voice, Raffi looked up and said to Lance, quote,
"Please tell me you have water." End quote. Right away, Lance gave him some, but then noticed something else odd. David, the other backcountry permit holder who was overdue and was supposed to be with Raffi, was nowhere in sight. When Lance asked Raffi where David was, Raffi held up his hand and pointed over to a pile of rocks on the ground that was about 30 feet away and said, quote, "Over there. I killed him." End quote.
The Carlsbad Current Argus reported that Lance was kind of stunned by the comet, but cautiously moved toward the rock pile to investigate further. The mound was roughly seven feet long and two and a half feet wide, the perfect size for a makeshift grave. Once Lance was standing over it, he removed a flat rock near the top, and beneath that stone was a piece of blue fabric with the outline of what looked an awful lot like a person's facial features.
Naturally, Lance put two and two together and realized the body buried beneath the pile of rocks was David Coughlin. Raffi told Lance that after hiking for the last three days in the canyon, he and David had become lost. By Saturday, they'd run out of water and were extremely unwell. Eventually, David collapsed, started vomiting, and complained he was in severe pain. Raffi said when it reached a point where David couldn't take it anymore, his friend asked him to put him out of his misery.
Rafi said, quote, my buddy asked me to do it, end quote. When Lance asked Rafi where the weapon was he'd used to kill David, Rafi handed Lance a hunting knife with a four-inch blade that belonged to him. Some source material says the knife was a folding knife, but regardless of its style, it was definitely a knife that was big enough to pierce a person's skin and cause fatal injuries.
Now, Lance, who'd been a park ranger in Carlsbad Caverns National Park for seven years, was immediately suspicious of Raffi's story. The entire thing was just kind of bizarre, but it was mostly the logic of it that just didn't make sense. For one, the campsite David and Raffi had set up was roughly two miles from the park's visitor center.
which according to reporting by the Associated Press and the Boston Globe, also happened to be the location where the men had parked their red 1994 Mazda Protégé. However, articles by the Carlsbad Current Argus, Daily News, and Los Angeles Times all say David and Raffi's car was parked on the side of Desert Loop Drive, a main road not far from where you'd get on to Rattlesnake Canyon Trailhead.
So I'm not sure which is true, but either way, I think the point is where Raffi and David were camping was not way out on the fringes of the park, far away from help or nearby access to their vehicle. The campsite was only a mile and a half away from the designated trailhead they'd initially taken to get into the canyon, and it was roughly between 230 to 250 feet off the trail itself.
Second, the temperatures in the canyon when David and Raffi were supposedly lost were recorded as only being in the low 60s and upper 90s. That's on the Fahrenheit scale. So Lance immediately had a hard time understanding how David and Raffi had gotten so unwell while wandering around in those conditions. I did read articles, though, from the Los Angeles Times and Maxim Magazine that said the temperatures got over 100 degrees while David and Raffi were in the park.
So maybe it was scorching enough to make a healthy person severely sick. I don't know. The source material isn't super clear about that. The specific area where the two men had set up their camp was considered to be a part of the canyon that tended to hold a lot of heat as compared to other camping areas. So maybe it truly was hotter where they were in comparison to everywhere else.
But even aside from that, the other thing that kind of stood out to Lance was the fact that there at the men's campsite was an uneaten can of beans, some bread, and a first aid kit. Those things going unused seem kind of odd, if not downright bizarre.
Shortly after finding Raffi and unearthing David's grave, Lance alerted a fellow ranger named Mark Messia, who showed up about 40 minutes later and took Raffi's blood pressure, hooked him up to an IV bag filled with saline, and checked his breathing. And based on everything Mark saw, Raffi wasn't in the best shape, but he also wasn't knocking on death's door either. He was surprisingly lucid and talkative.
While waiting for a medevac helicopter to arrive, Raffi even cracked a joke about how long it was taking for the aircraft to get to the canyon. While they waited with Raffi, Mark and Lance called homicide investigators from Eddy County Sheriff's Office to tell them what was going on. According to the source material, it appears that the sheriff's department was the main agency leading the investigation. However, the FBI and the National Park Service were also involved since David had been killed on federal land.
Around 4.30 p.m., Raffi was transported in the medevac helicopter to a hospital in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Medical staff there determined he'd been suffering from dehydration, a slight fever, and exposure, but he was going to make a full recovery. While Raffi was being treated, Eddy County detectives and an FBI agent met him at the hospital. And as soon as Raffi saw those guys, he clammed up. He would not answer any of their questions.
The next morning, Monday, August 9th, a group of people from the chief medical investigator's office in Albuquerque met with sheriff detectives in the canyon to exhume David from his shallow grave. He was transported for an official autopsy, but those results weren't expected to come back for hours. Meanwhile, Raffi was discharged from the hospital and right away investigators arrested him and took him to the Eddy County Detention Center. He was arraigned for murder and pleaded not guilty.
The presiding judge set his bond at $50,000. Then on Tuesday, August 10th, Raffi's father paid the money on his behalf, and by mid-morning, Raffi was released from custody. He couldn't go home to Massachusetts, though. The conditions of his release required him to stay put in Eddy County. He hired a well-known defense attorney in New Mexico named Gary Mitchell, and he did not speak publicly about what had happened between him and David.
What's interesting, though, is that when authorities first arrested Raffi, they didn't specify which degree of murder they were charging the 25-year-old with. At that point, all investigators had was considered an open count, which meant until detectives could determine the severity of the situation, they weren't going to say whether they thought Raffi had committed first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or any other kind of homicide.
The district attorney at the time told the Carlsbad Courant Argus that New Mexico law considered assisted suicide to be illegal. So regardless of whatever Good Samaritan defense Raffi planned to claim for killing his friend, the DA was still planning to prosecute him for murder. And to make sure they had all their ducks in a row, investigators obtained search warrants and got samples of Raffi's blood and saliva. They wanted to compare that to traces of blood Rangers said they'd seen at the men's campsite.
On Tuesday, deputies collected all of David and Raffi's belongings from Rattlesnake Canyon, which according to Thomas Ferringer's reporting for the Boston Globe, included a poncho, a plastic cover with a red stain on it, a rock, a blue t-shirt, a sock, and a bedroll. Investigators believe the red stain on the plastic cover was blood. And even though the source material isn't super clear, I think the plastic cover is the tarp Raffi was lying beneath when Lance Mattson found him.
The Carlsbad Current Argus reported that David and Rafi's tent had been blown away from their campsite and was found in a tree somewhere else inside the canyon, a good ways away from where they'd been camping. Later in the day on Tuesday, investigators held a press conference in Rattlesnake Canyon to update the media about the case.
At that point, David's autopsy results had come back, and according to reporting by Kyle Marksteiner for the Carlsbad Current Argus, his official cause of death was determined to be two stab wounds to the left side of his chest, one of which had punctured his heart. Most of the source material states that nothing else in David's autopsy findings indicated he'd been in a fight or any kind of physical altercation prior to his death.
However, one article I read by Jason Kirsten for Maxim Magazine reported that the doctor who did the autopsy did find, quote, 20 blunt force injuries, including two to the head. There was also a one-inch deep cut in the right wrist, end quote. But I guess those wounds weren't significant enough to raise any serious red flags. It's my assumption that the examiner thought these injuries must have just come from David's harrowing trek through the desert before his death.
Anyway, in addition to doing the autopsy, the medical investigator's office also tested David's internal fluids to measure the level of electrolytes in his body. That information was going to be crucial to proving whether David was actually severely dehydrated or dying of thirst when Raffi said he stabbed him. The Boston Globe reported that when David was found, he had urine in his bladder, which on its face seemed to contradict Raffi's claim that David was severely dehydrated.
However, the medical investigator's office stated the real proof about what the urine meant in a forensic sense would rest in the concentration levels of David's urine. Another medical expert interviewed by the Boston Globe said that if David's urine was diluted, that meant he wasn't dehydrated right before his death. If it was concentrated, then that would support Rafi's version of events. Unfortunately, the urine test results weren't available immediately, though.
Again, authorities were forced to wait. A park security manager told reporter Kyle Marksteiner that David's death was the first known case of homicide in Carlsbad Caverns National Park history. Prior to that, some human remains had been unearthed in roughly the same area of Rattlesnake Canyon in 1991. But whether those remains were even connected to a homicide is not known, or at least the source material doesn't say.
Anyway, on Wednesday, August 11th, three full days after David's body was found, investigators with the sheriff's office went public with their doubts about Raffi's version of events. They straight up said they did not think this was a mercy killing. The chief of detectives told reporters his team had found a spiral notebook at the crime scene with two different types of handwriting in it. One font was presumably David's and the other belonged to Raffi.
The last few entries leading up to August 8th were only in Raffi's handwriting, and they chronicled the dire situation he and David allegedly found themselves in. The Guardian reported that one of these notes said, quote, we couldn't find the entrance leading to the car, end quote. Another entry that Raffi penned on August 8th read, quote, I killed and buried my best friend today. Dave had been in pain all night. At around five or six, he turned to me and begged,
He struggled, but died. I buried him with love, God and his family and mine. Please forgive me." The details in the journal, though disturbing, just did not convince investigators that David's health had deteriorated so badly that he asked his best friend to put him out of his misery. Instead, authorities saw Raffi's diary entries as more of a confession than an accurate timeline of events. The chief of detectives told reporters, quote,
End quote.
Something else that raised doubt about Raffi's story, that he and David were dying of thirst and extremely weak, was the fact that in the middle of their campsite, like right next to where he buried David's body, there was a bunch of big rocks that were used to partially spell out the letters SOS. According to reporting by the Carlsbad Current Argus and Fritz Thompson for the Albuquerque Journal, the message was the men's way of trying to signal for help in the event an airplane or helicopter flew over them.
But what was more striking to authorities was that the letters were noticeably large and comprised of a lot of heavy rocks. So once again, detectives were baffled as to how Raffi and David, or just Raffi, would have had enough strength to move all those stones and form them into letters if they were so dehydrated and run down as Raffi claimed.
In addition to finding the rocks and the journal, detectives also developed two rolls of film they'd found at the campsite, which proved the pair had been hiking together at different spots in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The source material doesn't say whether the images of David and Raffi on that film showed them in good health or not, but based on what I read, it doesn't appear the film showed them in severe stress either. I think the pictures were just pictures, not proof of what had happened leading up to David's death.
On Thursday, August 12th, skeptical investigators had to face a hard truth, though, because the results from David's electrolyte tests had come in from the medical investigator's office. And the findings concluded that David had, in fact, been suffering from moderate to severe dehydration when Raffi stabbed him. The doctor who conducted the tests told Boston Globe reporters that it was possible both David and Raffi had impaired judgment or were delusional when the stabbing occurred. The physician said, quote,
"He very well could have believed that in the heat and everything else that he was close to death. And the person who committed the act could also have believed that. Carlsbad is like a furnace in the summer." The results of the tests on David's urine weren't much more help either, because they were even more inconclusive than the electrolyte tests. Meanwhile, David's family and friends, and Raffi's too for that matter, were grappling with the news of what had happened.
On Friday, August 13th, David's parents, brother, and sister held a memorial service for him at St. James the Great Church in their hometown of Wellesley, Massachusetts. Around 400 people attended the service, and many of them were torn about whether to believe Raffi's story, despite the evidence that had come out the day before, which seemed to support the 25-year-old's claim that David had been severely dehydrated and in misery prior to his death.
Many people who personally knew David just couldn't comprehend a scenario in which he would have stopped having the will to live. The Wellesley deputy police chief told Boston Globe reporter Yvonne Abraham, quote, He was bright and resourceful and strong, and he worked out religiously. He was physically fit. David was not a quitter, end quote.
Other folks at the service told reporters the lack of evidence pointing to a fight between the men seemed to indicate there wasn't an altercation that spurred Raffi to kill David. Even if that had been the case, though, people who knew both young men didn't see what Raffi would have gained from David dying. That was actually a question the police in New Mexico had, too, which was, what was the motive here? Raffi didn't attend David's funeral in Massachusetts due to a court order that barred him from contacting David's friends and family.
His name was brought up once though during the memorial service. Michael, David's brother, said during his comments, "If David were here now, he would tell us all to pray for Raffi."
And Raffi was going to need all the prayers he could get because not only were prosecutors in New Mexico setting their sights on him for murder, Boston police were also taking a closer look at him for another violent death that had literally happened right in Raffi's own backyard. Bocas del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
According to Yvonne Abraham's reporting for the Boston Globe, in 1996, so three years before David died, a Swedish woman named Carina Holmer, who was working as a nanny in a town about 40 minutes outside of Boston, was brutally strangled to death and dismembered. Her torso showed up in a dumpster behind a Boston apartment complex, a complex that Rafi Kurikian just happened to be a tenant in at the time.
My colleagues Ashley Flowers and Britt Prewatt actually did an episode about Karina's case for Crime Junkie. I highly recommend you go over to their feed and give it a listen. It's got all the details I'm sure you're curious about. But in 1996, Raffi was interviewed by police just like everyone else who lived in his apartment building. However, he wasn't considered a person of interest or even a suspect. And eventually that case stalled. It's still unsolved today.
By the time Raffi was arrested for David's murder in 1999, the Boston Police Department decided it might be a good time for them to take a harder look at him in relation to Karina's case. But they were going to have to get in line though, because the case in New Mexico took precedence. An article by the Carlsbad Current Argus reported that eventually suspicion against Raffi for Karina's murder went away because there just wasn't anything concrete tying him to that crime.
The source material doesn't explain exactly why, but essentially Raffi was just one of many people who were interviewed back in 1996. And since he'd killed his friend in kind of a brutal way not too many years later, Boston PD just thought, hey, what a coincidence. Maybe we should be looking at him. But like I said, it's not like Raffi was their prime suspect or anything.
As you can imagine, though, with all these rumors and suspicions surrounding him both in New Mexico and back home in New England, Raffi's reputation began to look worse and worse. The story of what he'd done to David was covered by dozens of local and national media outlets to the point where you couldn't go anywhere or turn on your TV without seeing something about Raffi and the murder of his best friend.
Investigators in New Mexico continued to proclaim to the press that they believed Raffi was just a heartless killer and an even worse friend who'd lied about whatever happened between him and David in the desert. The Eddy County Sheriff told the Los Angeles Times, quote, I don't know too many people who would do away with their best friend, even under adverse circumstances, end quote.
And here's the thing, 25-year-old Raffi, whose life and appearance stood in stark contrast to David's, was a fledgling writer and part-time drummer in a local Boston band. He'd grown up in a suburb outside of Philadelphia and met David during college in 1994, even though they attended different universities at the time. In 1997, Raffi graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in journalism and took a job as an editorial assistant at the Boston Globe.
David had graduated a year earlier in 1996 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and worked as a community planning liaison for his hometown city of Wellesley. For most of Raffi's adult life, he donned a long black ponytail. David was a clean-cut and sort of unassuming-looking guy. Here and there, Raffi had pumped out a few freelance articles as a budding reporter, one of which seemed particularly ominous after news of David's murder broke.
According to multiple news reports, in 1997, Raffi wrote a long-form piece that detailed his own solo experience taking a 10-week road trip across the country. Most of his material had come from a handwritten diary he kept throughout that journey. Some of his former co-workers described him as energetic, sweet-natured, and happy. Everyone who knew him knew he loved traveling and was a big fan of Jack Kerouac's writings.
A guy who'd worked with Raffi at the Boston Globe divulged that Raffi, though nice, had a bit of an unpredictable side to him too. He explained that the 25-year-old tended to "fly off the handle" whenever things didn't pan out the way he wanted. However, Raffi was always very quick to mend things with whoever he'd offended and was said to be "the consummate sidekick." David was described as a super nice guy too: smart, funny, responsible, ambitious.
Leading up to August 1999, he'd resigned from his position in Wellesley to pursue a master's degree in environmental science at a university thousands of miles away in Santa Barbara, California. He and Raffi's visit to Carlsbad Caverns had been one of a few stops along a larger cross-country trip to move David to California from New England so he could begin his studies that fall.
And here's what's so interesting to me. Multiple newspapers reported that David had pushed off the start date of his trip for a few days and waited to get going until July 30th so that Raffi could square things up with his job at a Boston investment firm and join him. Prior to arriving in New Mexico, the pair had stopped in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas. They'd visited with relatives, seen friends, drank beer at some bars, and just hung out.
One of David's friends told Carlsbad Current Argus reporter Kyle Marksteiner, quote, they were best friends for ages. They were very close. We were thrilled Raffi was going to go with him so he wouldn't have to drive alone, end quote. On Friday, August 13th, one week after David was killed, the judge presiding over Raffi's case lifted the no travel condition of his bond and allowed him to return to Boston until his trial began.
Prosecutors didn't protest this ruling, but before the proceeding was over, the judge warned Raffi not to get into any trouble and to steer clear of David's friends and family. Raffi, however, replied that he would like to talk to one of his ex-girlfriends, who was also close with David, and another guy who'd been David's roommate in Massachusetts.
The chief of detectives asked the judge to prohibit Raffi from having those conversations though, because both the ex-girlfriend and David's roommate could be considered potential witnesses who might need to be introduced at trial later down the road. The judge agreed with this and denied Raffi's request to talk with those folks while he was out.
As time went on, more and more information came to light that really got people talking and seemed to make Raffi's previous request to talk to his ex-girlfriend a lot more significant. According to multiple news articles, investigators learned that David and Raffi had both been close with a mutual female friend from Boston named Kirsten Swann. Now, what's interesting is that Raffi had previously dated Kirsten, and when they'd broken up, they remained friends.
At some point after their breakup, though, she'd started hanging out with David. And according to Jason Kirsten's reporting, even traveled with David to California for a trip in May of 1999, three months before the murder. However, by the time Raffi and David set out on their road trip in July, David was dating another girl named Sonnet Frost.
According to Fritz Thompson's article for the Albuquerque Journal, Sonnet had given David the spiral notebook that he and Raffi wrote in during their travels. In the diary's inside cover was a note from her to David that said, quote, while you're away from me, you'll be in God's hands, end quote.
What was also super interesting is that according to reporting by Paul Duggan for the Washington Post and author Jason Kirsten, one of the handwritten entries in the diary that David supposedly wrote as a farewell message to Sonnet said, quote, "'Sonnet, baby, I write this with a shaking hand. "'That was not intentional, I swear. "'I do not know what to do right now, "'but I am in utter agony, and I know you would understand. "'I love you so much. "'I have barely eaten and drank since Wednesday evening.'
Nobody is coming to help. You will always be in my heart, and you will now always have an angel standing by. Eternally yours, David Andrew. P.S. I'm trying so hard to be strong right now. It's not working." An FBI special agent who worked the case told writer Jason Kirsten that when Sonnet was shown that journal entry from David, she said none of it sounded like stuff her boyfriend would say.
For example, when David wrote that comment about him being an angel, that he would be eternally hers, well, Sonnet told authorities that David wasn't religious and didn't believe in life after death, so him referring to eternity and celestial beings didn't make sense to her.
The Eddy County Sheriff told author Jason Kirsten that he did not believe the elaborate journal entries, Raffi feigning illness when he was found by rangers, and his story of wanting to spare his best friend, Torment. He thought it was all fiction. The sheriff said he believed there was some kind of motive for the death. They just hadn't figured it out yet.
Up until that point, no one had publicly come forward suggesting Raffi had killed David because David had been too close at one point with Kirsten Swan, Raffi's ex. But when the FBI pressed Kirsten for more information about her relationship with Raffi and David, she lawyered up right away and wouldn't cooperate. As far as I can tell, she's never spoken publicly about her relationship with either man.
Something else that was kind of sketchy that happened leading up to trial was that law enforcement investigators became aware Raffi had a strong preference for fiction that predominantly focused on surviving the wiles of the great outdoors. According to Christopher Reed's reporting for The Guardian, authorities read books they believed Raffi had read, which coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, told stories of friends who ventured into rugged landscapes and barely survived by dying of thirst.
The eerie similarities to what had actually happened to David just felt extremely suspicious to investigators. The piece of evidence, though, that both detectives and the prosecutor felt was the linchpin of the entire case against Raffi was the spiral notebook diary. Both the state and the defense knew that those pages were going to be critical when it came to convincing a jury of Raffi's intent to kill David.
Another thing that was going to be very important was a topographical map of Carlsbad Caverns that authorities seized from Raffi and David's belongings. CBS News reported that before going into Rattlesnake Canyon, Raffi and David had purchased that map at the park's visitor center. Because it was found at the campsite after the killing, detectives were curious as to why Raffi didn't use it to try and help navigate a path out of the canyon, if in fact he and David were as lost as he claimed they were.
Raffi's response to that question was that he didn't remember purchasing the map, and he remembered him and David burning the better map that he'd purchased before their hike. And just to provide some context here, according to a neuropsychologist expert who spoke with CBS News, the topographical map the cops were referencing was not something Raffi would have been able to read or interpret. Apparently, this map didn't look like a normal trail map.
It had much more detailed information about the landscape and topography, and its markings would have been too advanced for Raffi to understand. Almost two weeks after David was killed, the case officially landed in state district court. Before that, there was some discussion about whether the US Attorney's Office in New Mexico was gonna take over and prosecute Raffi in federal court, but that ended up not happening.
Meanwhile, back in New England, David's family held a formal funeral for him on August 21st. The memorial service they'd had before in Wellesley had just been to celebrate David's memory and life. The funeral on the 21st was to physically say goodbye to him. He was later scheduled to be cremated. In early September, about a month after the killing, Raffi's trial was set for early January 2000.
Kyle Marksteiner reported that the open murder charge remained in place throughout the proceedings, and only after Raffi's trial wrapped up would the judge in the case determine what degree of murder he was facing. I know that's kind of odd, but basically the judge would decide whether it would be first degree, second degree, manslaughter, or whatever. Then the jury would decide Raffi's fate as it related to guilt or innocence. The one thing that for sure had been taken off the table, though, was whether Raffi would face the death penalty.
The state had declared early on that they did not intend to try Rafi for capital murder. But a formal trial would never happen. Bocas del Toro, Panama. Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple.
I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts. According to coverage by CBS News and an article by Jim Hughes for the Denver Post, in May 2000, almost a year after David's death, Raffi pleaded no contest to second-degree murder.
That move made him eligible to receive a maximum 20-year prison sentence. But it was up to the judge to decide exactly how long he'd go to prison for. During his sentencing hearing, Raffi detailed for the court more of what happened on the day he killed David. He said they'd made camp the first night they were in Rattlesnake Canyon, which was Wednesday, August 4th. But when they got up to hike out the next morning, Thursday, August 5th, they'd been unable to find the trail.
They wandered for a few days, still unable to find their way back to their car. And when David's health worsened after going so long without food and water, he started asking Rafi to take his life and put him out of his misery. Rafi told the court that at one point he'd attempted to filter his own urine through a baseball hat so he and David could try and drink that, but it didn't work. Eventually, he said David got violently sick, puked several times, and writhed in pain.
They also feared running into mortal threats like rattlesnakes. There was even a moment where they both considered death by suicide together. Raffi said he held out hope someone would come to rescue them, but when no one did, David continued to plead with him to stop his suffering. Finally, Raffi said David physically grabbed him, pulled him close, and told him to put the hunting knife deep into his chest.
Raffi admitted he desperately wanted to spare his friend from any more agonizing pain, so he plunged the blade into David's chest twice. As David was dying, Raffi said he saw a smile and relief wash over his friend's face. He said he held onto David's hand until he stopped breathing and finally passed away. When Raffi's defense attorney pressed him to talk about the rumor that he'd killed David because of some love tryst between him, Kirsten Swan, and David, Raffi straight up denied it.
He said, "It was never the case. Dave and her never dated. When Kirsten and I broke up, she and David hung out frequently because they were friends, and I never had a problem with that. The three of us hung out on occasion after we broke up. Our friendship, the three of us, remained very close." Kirsten assured the court of the same thing when she testified on the stand as a character witness. She told the judge that she'd never known there to be any bad blood between Rafi and David.
At the end of the sentencing hearing, the judge ruled that Raffae would receive 15 years in prison, but he would only have to serve two of those years. The judge suspended most of the jail time, which was disappointing to some folks who'd worked on the case, but not the Coughlin family. They were okay with the ruling. David's parents and siblings didn't show up in person to Raffae's sentencing, but in a letter they gave to the prosecutor, they said, quote,
End quote.
The prosecutor understood the judge's reasoning for handing Raffi such a light sentence, but remained adamant that what Raffi had done was, in the state's opinion, extremely uncalled for. He told reporters, quote, End quote.
The court back in 2000 decided that Raffi was telling the truth about what happened between him and David that fateful day in the desert. I'm not going to pick apart or delve too deep into the possible fallacies with his tale, because at this point, it's irrelevant. Today, he's a free man. Midland Daily News reported that he served 19 months of his 24-month sentence before getting released in 2002.
However, I should mention there's some discrepancy on that because according to reporting by the New York Times and information posted to Murderpedia, Raffi only served 16 months of his two-year sentence and was released in November 2001. It's important to note that one year after Raffi went to prison, a Boston-based assistant U.S. attorney hiking alone in Rattlesnake Canyon got lost, and she was rescued after two days wandering around by herself and running dangerously low on water.
So, is what Raffi claimed about how easy it is to get lost in the canyon's treacherous terrain possible? I think this woman's story proves that it is. All I'll say to wrap up this episode is that repeatedly while reading source material for this episode, I saw medical experts take issue with Raffi's claim that David was in severe pain while battling dehydration.
In Jason Kirsten's piece for Maxim Magazine and his book, The Journal of the Dead, he interviewed several medical doctors and sort of broke down what happens to a person when they go long periods of time without water. The conclusions were this. If you don't consume water for 12 hours, you'll start to get weak and your extremities will begin to feel heavier. If you go 24 hours without water, your body stops having the ability to create sweat and cool you down. Your skin will also begin to dry up too.
At 48 hours, things get even worse. You'll have lost 6% of your body weight, be severely fatigued, experience muscle cramping, and even begin hallucinating. At 72 hours, you're essentially on death's door. Your brain will start to be impaired, your motor function deteriorates, and your heart is at risk of giving out. But no one who was credited as a medical expert said that a person experiencing moderate to severe dehydration would be writhing in pain or complaining of severe pain.
When David died, he'd likely been without water for, at the most, close to 48 hours. So some people still think from a medical standpoint he was savable. I personally believe what the prosecutor voiced, that David might still be alive today if Raffi hadn't stabbed him. But then again, we'll never know.
Which brings me to my next point. If you or anyone you know is thinking about suicide, emotional support can be reached by calling or texting the 988-SUICIDE-AND-CRISIS lifeline at 988 or by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. Before Raffi went to prison, he told the court something that's truly interesting. He said, quote,
This is something I'm going to live with for the rest of my life. This isn't a two-year sentence for me. This is a life sentence, end quote. And maybe for him, it did feel that way. However, for his best friend, David Coughlin, their trip to New Mexico certainly was a life sentence. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original show. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No.
Bocas del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.