COUGHLIN’S WILD TALK IN JAIL (09-08-1908)

COUGHLIN’S WILD TALK IN JAIL. (09-08-1908)

Tells of Long Wanderings in Search of the President.

MINEOLA, L. I., Sept. 7. — John Coughlin, who was arrested by the President’s Secret Service guard at Oyster Bay and who was committed to the Nassau County prison here on a charge of carrying concealed weapons, was brought down and lodged in the jail about 5 o’clock this afternoon.  Coughlin declares he comes from Walpole, Mass., and strenuously denies that he intended any harm to President Roosevelt.

The jail officials could not determine from his wild talk whether he was in the vicinity of the President’s home of Saturday when the shot is reported to have been fired at the President.

“I wanted to see the President in order to get justice in a case where the law has been grossly violated,” is what the prison keepers say the man says.  “I want to lay the case before him, for it is one demanding his attention.  On July 23 a great crime was committed at Forest Hills, in the State of Massachusetts.  On that day Mother Eve was taken out and lynched by a bold gang of yeggmen.  This woman was one of eminent respectability, for she was the mother of the great State of New York.  Justice should be done, and I hope to see the law vindicated.  It was for this reason that I went to Oyster Bay.  I intended harm to no one.  I have a lot of evidence in this case, and I want to present it to the Prsident.”

At the county jail here this evening Coughlin, who is a handsome man, with clear-cut features and a Van Dyck beard, attributes his arrest, apparently to one Jack Brennan, for he says he always knew Brennan was not straight.

Coughlin says he is 35 years old, and is a detective for the “Unelected Congress of Massachusetts.”  He says he is not paid because the unelected congress has no money, while the elected congress has lots of money with which to pay detectives.

He says he has been gathering the evidence of the lynching of “Mother Eve” ever since July 23, and two weeks ago reached Washington only to find the President was not thee.  He hung around Washington a few days, and then started to walk to find the President.  He walked till he came to York, Penn.  Finding he had still far to go he boarded a train which took him to Elmira, N. Y.  There he heard the President was at Saratoga, so he went there.  At the Saratoga Springs he found he had been misled, so he took a train and reached New York, and finally reached Oyster Bay this morning.

He easily found out where the President lived.  He says he walked in the general direction of the house he could see through the trees, and came upon a man sitting on a wall and went over to him.  He asked if that was the President’s house over there, and was told it was.  He said he started on his way, but the man made him open his bag, and not only that but searched it, and then told him he guessed it would be all right, but to wait a few minutes.  Pretty soon another man in an automobile came up, and he was brought here.

Efforts will be made to identify “Coughlin” by communicating with the Boston police.
Originally published in The New York Times on Tuesday, September 8, 1908