Sunday, March 8: The A.D.D. Detective
CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE
by Leigh Lundin
French kissing I like (a lot).
British kissing, well…
A trial is proceeding in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. Tracy Davies of Gateshead is accused of deliberately enticing her boyfriend, Mark Coghill, to kiss her and then biting off his tongue. She’s being compared to Mike Tyson, but to me, she makes Mikey look all warm and fuzzy.
Criminal Brief spares no expense (and I mean no expense) to go any depth, er, length to bring you crime stories. After contacting our court correspondent, Jeremy Coles in London, we sent Coles to Newcastle to bring you the latest proceedings in Crown Court.
It was Mr. Coghill’s 45th birthday. Miss Davies was feeling sad, though. She’d received word from her doctor that Coghill had failed again to make her pregnant. Mr. Coghill tried to comfort her. He reports:
[Davies said] "You haven’t given me a proper, nice, smoochie, tongue in, sort of kiss for a few days."
I had wanted to anyway but she asked me to do that. She was nice and beautiful and passive then within a few seconds she turned into the likes of Mike Tyson.
Within a few seconds, she was biting hard on my tongue. She was a nice and beautiful and lovely woman, and in seconds she had turned into a psychopath.
I screamed, thinking it was some kind of joke for a few seconds, then I screamed more and more and more and tried to tap her on the head.
I couldn’t kick her off or push her off or anything like that. I was just hoping and praying she would stop, but she didn’t.
She had my tongue in her mouth and she went "mmmm" as though she was satisfied.
She looked at me straight in the eyes, she made sure I saw half of my tongue was actually in her mouth, and she spat it out on the carpet.
My immediate reaction was: has this really happened, have I had some sort of nightmare? So I checked and my tongue had gone, she had actually done it.
After Davies spat his tongue onto the floor, Mr. Coghill passed out or, as Davies put it, "He went to sleep." Coghill awoke with Davies biting his elbow.
Davies phoned police. When they arrived at Mr Coghill’s home, Davies handed officers the severed flesh in a small plastic bag and said: "We had a domestic and I bit his tongue off, here it is."
When arrested, Davies told officers, "You’re joking, right?"
Coghill was rushed to Newcastle’s General Hospital by ambulance, but doctors were unable to stitch his tongue back on.
Davies denied in court causing grievous bodily harm with intent and claimed she does not know how the injury was caused. She claims Coghill bit off his own tongue. Her defense theory is to argue she was very drunk and because she didn’t remember not biting off his flesh, Coghill was able to persuade her she’d actually bitten his tongue away.
Coghill, a former customer service advisor, said he could no longer work, struggled to speak, and had lost many of his taste buds.
"I can’t distinguish between certain foods, like the difference between cheese and toast, and just toast. I can’t use my tongue for eating. Those are things you take for granted.
"I will never be able to talk fluently again. My tongue still hurts today."
We attempted to reach Mr. Coghill by telephone. Unfortunately, we were told, "Nggaaaah, ujudeephhh lraaangh meh thumggidud."
I just had one of those chilling experiences. I was preparing a note about the upcoming anthology, Mystery Writers of America Presents: The Prosecution Rests, listing a few of the authors, when the name of Barbara Parker popped up on the screen from the Orlando Sentinel– Barbara died a few hours ago in Lauderdale.
Other than skipping to the end of the anthology to read Angela Zeman’s story, I’ve been reading them in order and haven’t reached Barbara’s yet. I’ll do that tonight.
Her family prefers donations to help writers, which can be sent to:
received by eMail from Oline Cogdill
Not sure it was the Orlando Sentinel that reported Barbara Parker’s passing but the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. Here is a link to the obit I wrote.
Oline H. Cogdill
Tongue — The Other Pink Meat.
(laughing) You’re as seriously twisted as the rest of us.
For this one case the British should restore capital punishment.
I laughed at the opening hook and the last paragraph. The rest was revoltingly amusing.
Yech. Poor guy. And maybe it’s a girl thing but I couldn’t help but wonder what Mr no-tongue looked like!
Sorry about your friend.
This crime was quite a mouthful and a tad too yucky to swallow. Just goes to show you we can’t make this stuff up.
Also, my condolences at the loss of another great writer. The bell tolls…