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Off Record: What Remains (with Dr. Paul Uribe) · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
0:06
Speaker 2: It was my opinion that there was nothing else that
0:09
Speaker 2: could have killed him. There is no other explanation that
0:13
Speaker 2: makes even a shred of sense in this case.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Knife.
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Speaker 3: I'm Patia Eton, I'm Hannah Smith, and today we have
0:35
Speaker 3: an interview for you with a forensic pathologist who worked
0:40
Speaker 3: on a murder trial. But before we get into the interview,
0:43
Speaker 3: we're going to give you some information about this case
0:46
Speaker 3: because it's winding and intriguing and we've both been following
0:52
Speaker 3: it for a couple of years now. Yeah, so we're
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Speaker 3: going to start the story. On March eighteenth, twenty twenty one,
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Speaker 3: a woman named Natalie Cochrane from Beckley, West Virginia was
1:02
Speaker 3: sentenced to one hundred and thirty five months in federal prison,
1:05
Speaker 3: which is over eleven years. And the reason that she's
1:09
Speaker 3: sentenced to prison, she's charged with wire of fraud and
1:12
Speaker 3: money laundry. She's been running a Ponzi scheme. She orchestrated
1:17
Speaker 3: this scheme that defrauded victims over two million dollars and
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Speaker 3: she was ordered to pay two point five million dollars
1:25
Speaker 3: in restitution and She would also serve a term of
1:27
Speaker 3: three years of supervis released after the eleven year sentence.
1:31
Speaker 3: You know, but this is actually just the beginning of
1:35
Speaker 3: Natalie's problems, right, Like she sent to prison she was
1:37
Speaker 3: caught for this Ponzi scheme. But once she's already been
1:41
Speaker 3: charged and convicted, other things start to come out. So
1:44
Speaker 3: she was arrested in October of twenty nineteen on this
1:48
Speaker 3: indictment for her Ponzi scheme. But earlier that year, in
1:51
Speaker 3: February of twenty nineteen, her husband Michael died suddenly. He
1:56
Speaker 3: was only thirty eight years old, and his death was
2:00
Speaker 3: very confusing and heartbreaking for his friends and family because
2:03
Speaker 3: he had been this healthy young guy and then he
2:06
Speaker 3: suddenly died.
2:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Natalie and Michael had been married since the
2:10
Speaker 1: early two thousands. They had two children. Natalie worked as
2:14
Speaker 1: a pharmacist, Michael as a computer specialist. I even read
2:17
Speaker 1: that they were actually childhood's sweethearts.
2:19
Speaker 2: Wow.
2:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they'd made this life for themselves in a
2:22
Speaker 1: small town where you truly feel like you know everyone.
2:26
Speaker 1: And when Michael passed, the community really rallied around Natalie
2:30
Speaker 1: because she was suddenly this widow in her thirties, But
2:34
Speaker 1: leading up to Michael's death in February of twenty nineteen,
2:38
Speaker 1: there was a lot going on for Natalie and Michael.
2:40
Speaker 1: Natalie had left her career as a pharmacist. She and
2:43
Speaker 1: Michael had registered a company called Tactical Solutions Group or TSG,
2:48
Speaker 1: and this idea for the company was that it would
2:51
Speaker 1: been on contracts to sell weapons and other goods to
2:54
Speaker 1: the US government. She needed to race capital, so she's
2:57
Speaker 1: bringing on investors. Now, this was a company that they
3:01
Speaker 1: jointly owned, but Natalie had the majority stake and she
3:04
Speaker 1: was definitely the person at the wheel, and Michael trusted
3:09
Speaker 1: her implicitly. So she leaves her career as a pharmacist
3:12
Speaker 1: and she goes all in on TSG. They also opened
3:15
Speaker 1: another company, TMG, which is Technology Management Systems, similarly working
3:22
Speaker 1: with the US government. So both of these companies were fraudulent,
3:26
Speaker 1: and Natalie would later admit in court that she never
3:29
Speaker 1: invested any of the money and she instead spent that
3:33
Speaker 1: investor money on things like, you know, real estate of
3:36
Speaker 1: fancy car, personal items, classic classic. So Michael was totally
3:42
Speaker 1: unaware of this, which I'm going to get into, which
3:46
Speaker 1: was revealed later in text messages.
3:48
Speaker 3: He thought that these companies that they'd started were legitimate
3:51
Speaker 3: and probably thought they were doing really well. Yeah, or
3:54
Speaker 3: he would have never consented to them having their friends
3:57
Speaker 3: and family invest right.
4:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
4:00
Speaker 3: So in the meantime, Natalie's living this high life, buying
4:04
Speaker 3: real estate, jewelry, a sports car. Michael is unaware that
4:09
Speaker 3: all of this is a Ponzi scheme. But in twenty nineteen,
4:12
Speaker 3: the walls are starting to close in. You have to
4:15
Speaker 3: imagine there's probably an investigation starting to happen behind the scenes.
4:19
Speaker 3: And in February of twenty nineteen, Michael collapsed. He had
4:23
Speaker 3: a seizure, and Natalie told a friend who had been
4:27
Speaker 3: present that day that she was going to let Michael
4:29
Speaker 3: sleep it off. So her friend said Michael should go
4:33
Speaker 3: see a doctor, and Natalie and her sister were both there.
4:37
Speaker 3: You know, Michael is unresponsive. He had fallen on the floor,
4:42
Speaker 3: and there's an account that Nataline and her sister changed
4:44
Speaker 3: his clothes because he'd lost muscle control. So hours go by.
4:49
Speaker 3: By the time they took Michael to the hospital, he
4:51
Speaker 3: was unresponsive, and then he died in hospice a few
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Speaker 3: days later, and the first cause of death was quick natural.
4:59
Speaker 3: It was a termine to be a natural death. Natalie
5:02
Speaker 3: cochrane was then arrested for the Ponzi scheme months later
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Speaker 3: in October of twenty nineteen. She pled guilty to the
5:08
Speaker 3: charges against her in September of twenty twenty. She was
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Speaker 3: ready to serve this eleven year sentence, but as the
5:15
Speaker 3: investigation unfolded, Michael's death became more and more suspicious to
5:20
Speaker 3: law enforcement as they started to look at all of
5:22
Speaker 3: the events that led up to his death and that
5:25
Speaker 3: eventually led to her murder trial. One of the things
5:29
Speaker 3: that came out through this investigation is that Michael had
5:32
Speaker 3: been totally unaware that either of these businesses were actually
5:35
Speaker 3: Ponzi's schemes, and this was revealed during the trial and
5:38
Speaker 3: text messages that were exchanged between Natalie and Michael. Natalie
5:43
Speaker 3: was the majority owner, as you said, with the fifty
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Speaker 3: one percent stake in TSG, and she secured the startup
5:49
Speaker 3: capital through mostly friends and family, many of whom made
5:52
Speaker 3: investments repeatedly and then just never saw a return, which
5:57
Speaker 3: is heartbreaking, but not as heartbreaking as his death. Obviously,
6:00
Speaker 3: it just gets worse and worse. So first she got
6:03
Speaker 3: all of the startup capital from friends and family, and
6:05
Speaker 3: then she got it through loans, which were designed to
6:08
Speaker 3: help companies in trouble, so she portrayed her company was
6:11
Speaker 3: in trouble. She secured all of these loans. Michael knew
6:14
Speaker 3: about the investors and about the loans, but Natalie told
6:17
Speaker 3: him that the loans were grants that they wouldn't have
6:20
Speaker 3: to repay. Michael was being extremely generous, thinking that they
6:24
Speaker 3: had been making a lot of money and that their
6:26
Speaker 3: companies were like thriving financially, because that's what Natalie had
6:29
Speaker 3: told him, And so he donated a weight room to
6:32
Speaker 3: a local middle school. He bought a house for a
6:34
Speaker 3: local youth pastor. Like he was just like very generous,
6:37
Speaker 3: which was really sweet.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he truly had no idea. So that
6:41
Speaker 1: changes in August of twenty eighteen when Michael gets into
6:45
Speaker 1: Natalie's phone and reads her text messages and starts to
6:49
Speaker 1: see the extent of the investors and the promises she's
6:53
Speaker 1: making to people about the returns on those investments, and
6:56
Speaker 1: he could tell that something was not right. So Natalie
7:01
Speaker 1: and Michael gets together and they put their heads together
7:04
Speaker 1: about this and try to come up with a way
7:06
Speaker 1: to pay people back. And at this point, the more
7:08
Speaker 1: that they discuss it, the more Michael realizes we will
7:11
Speaker 1: never be able to pay these people back. But Natalie
7:14
Speaker 1: has a solution. She tells Michael that they are just
7:18
Speaker 1: on the cusp of receiving millions of dollars in grants
7:21
Speaker 1: and bonds and government contracts. So Michael's like, okay, well great,
7:25
Speaker 1: let's make sure that happens and let's get these people
7:27
Speaker 1: paid back. And this is becoming very stressful for him
7:31
Speaker 1: because he doesn't want to, you know, have taken money
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Speaker 1: from friends and family fraudulently or even not fraudulently, and
7:40
Speaker 1: then not being able to pay them back. Both options
7:42
Speaker 1: horrible feeling, I imagine horrible feelings. So Natalie comes up
7:46
Speaker 1: with this grand plan and tells him that the money
7:50
Speaker 1: is on the way, but in September of twenty eighteen,
7:53
Speaker 1: so in August he sees the text in her phone.
7:57
Speaker 1: He has this little bit of a reckoning with her
8:00
Speaker 1: in September. Michael's noticing that Natalie's continuing to lie to
8:03
Speaker 1: people and tell them the money's coming in when he's
8:05
Speaker 1: never seen any proof of that. So Natalie then tells him, well,
8:09
Speaker 1: this is actually because of a government audit. So they're
8:11
Speaker 1: auditing the company and it's just going to be a
8:13
Speaker 1: while before they can pay us out. But the amount
8:16
Speaker 1: is huge. Michael believes they're waiting on two hundred and
8:20
Speaker 1: forty eight million dollars.
8:22
Speaker 3: That's wild.
8:24
Speaker 1: It's a lot of money. And so Natalie says, this
8:27
Speaker 1: is all going to be in our account by October
8:30
Speaker 1: twenty ninth. Okay, great things are looking up, thank god.
8:35
Speaker 1: Well then it doesn't happen on October twenty ninth. She
8:38
Speaker 1: has some reason for it. This is super stressful for Michael,
8:42
Speaker 1: and on October thirty first, he actually gets really sick
8:46
Speaker 1: and goes to the hospital. Now that's a hospital. They're
8:49
Speaker 1: not sure what's going on, but he's sick and he
8:53
Speaker 1: gets sent home. Then he goes back to the hospital
8:55
Speaker 1: on November second. Natalie tells the hospital staff that Michael
8:59
Speaker 1: has a history of seizures, but no one else in
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Speaker 1: Michael's life knows this about him, which you know, probably
9:05
Speaker 1: means it's not true. They all now think, in hindsight,
9:09
Speaker 1: this was Natalie laying the groundwork for Michael's murder, because
9:13
Speaker 1: he was starting to ask more and more questions.
9:15
Speaker 3: Trying to create this history of medical problems exactly.
9:19
Speaker 1: So in the fall, in November and into December, more lies,
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Speaker 1: more lies, and then in December there's a federal government
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Speaker 1: shut down. Great, they can't pay us, So sorry, Michael,
9:29
Speaker 1: We're going to have to wait. Michael's really upset and
9:33
Speaker 1: stressed in not acting like himself. He's easily angerd he's irritable.
9:38
Speaker 1: But I think anyone who thinks they're waiting on hundreds
9:40
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars and has investors that want to
9:44
Speaker 1: be paid back, it is nerve wracking and it would
9:46
Speaker 1: be very stressful.
9:47
Speaker 2: Sure.
9:48
Speaker 3: Yeah.
9:49
Speaker 1: And so they get through December and the federal government
9:54
Speaker 1: is going to open back up and release funds the
9:56
Speaker 1: sol according to Natalie, in February. So they're going to
9:59
Speaker 1: get everything in February of twenty nineteen, which we now
10:02
Speaker 1: know is the month that Michael was murdered. So there's
10:05
Speaker 1: an incident at the bank. When Michael believes that the
10:07
Speaker 1: funds are supposed to be released. He goes to the
10:09
Speaker 1: bank where they have their business accounts and he finds
10:12
Speaker 1: out they're closing these accounts because these accounts don't have
10:14
Speaker 1: any money in them, and they don't know what's going on,
10:16
Speaker 1: and they're going to close the accounts. Well, this is
10:19
Speaker 1: very upsetting for Michael because he's like, well, if you
10:21
Speaker 1: close the accounts, where are they going to put all
10:23
Speaker 1: of this money that they're going to pay us. So
10:25
Speaker 1: he actually becomes so distressed by this and so angry
10:29
Speaker 1: about this that he gets really upset and the police
10:32
Speaker 1: are nearly called to sort of subdue him.
10:35
Speaker 2: Wow.
10:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's not like a violent person. He was
10:38
Speaker 1: just extremely stressed out about this and visibly angry that
10:42
Speaker 1: the bank was going to close these accounts. Well, of
10:45
Speaker 1: course that's because there was never any money in the accounts.
10:48
Speaker 1: Natalie had lied about everything. So Michael goes home and
10:52
Speaker 1: he's very upset, and they have this heated text exchange
10:55
Speaker 1: and Natalie knows he's about to find this out. So
10:58
Speaker 1: in the early days of February, Natalie goes to the doctor.
11:01
Speaker 1: She says she's not feeling well. She thinks she has
11:03
Speaker 1: the flu. The doctor says, you don't have the flu.
11:06
Speaker 1: She picks up her prescription that I believe was an
11:08
Speaker 1: anti histamine, but it was a prescription anti histamine, something
11:13
Speaker 1: that Michael was known to be allergic to. And by
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Speaker 1: February sixth, Michael is unconscious, and Natalie sees that he's
11:22
Speaker 1: unconscious and does not immediately seek medical care for him.
11:26
Speaker 1: She has people move him to the sofa and lets
11:29
Speaker 1: him lay there for six to seven hours until one
11:32
Speaker 1: of his friends says he needs to go to the hospital.
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Speaker 1: So Michael officially passes away February eleventh, twenty nineteen, on hospice.
11:41
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk today to doctor pauli Rebe,
11:44
Speaker 1: a forensic pathologist who did the second autopsy on Michael
11:48
Speaker 1: Cochrane's remains for Natalie Cochrane's murder trial.
11:52
Speaker 3: Let's get into it today. We're speaking with doctor Paul
12:08
Speaker 3: Eurebe about his work as a forensic pathologist and his
12:11
Speaker 3: role in a murder triald that was years in the making,
12:15
Speaker 3: the murder of Michael Cochrane and Beckley West Virginia, back
12:18
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen. Paul, Hi, can you please start by
12:22
Speaker 3: introducing yourself.
12:23
Speaker 2: Hi. My name is doctor Paul Eurebe. I am the
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Speaker 2: current Deputy Chief Medical Examiner at the Fort Benk County
12:32
Speaker 2: Medical Examiner's Office, which is located southwest of Houston. I
12:37
Speaker 2: also work as a locum Tenans forensic pathologist, which is
12:40
Speaker 2: a part time forensic pathologist and a couple of jurisdictions,
12:43
Speaker 2: namely Clark County, Nevada, which incorporates Las Vegas and southern
12:48
Speaker 2: Nevada as well as the state of Mississippi. And as
12:53
Speaker 2: a third part time job, I have my own forensic
12:56
Speaker 2: consulting company PMH Forensics or dead Man's Hand and Forensics WOW.
13:02
Speaker 3: And So for people who might not be familiar, what
13:05
Speaker 3: is the sort of brief explanation of what a forensic
13:09
Speaker 3: pathologist does?
13:11
Speaker 2: So how I explain it in court? For juries is well,
13:14
Speaker 2: pathology is the study of disease. Forensic pathology is the
13:18
Speaker 2: specialization that studies unnatural, unexpected or violent death. So, in
13:25
Speaker 2: a nutshell, we study death and see what we can
13:29
Speaker 2: learn from it, and we do that, namely by performing autopsies.
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Speaker 3: And so we're going to get into Natalie Cochrane's trial,
13:36
Speaker 3: the death of Michael Cochrane. When you were brought onto
13:40
Speaker 3: this case, you know, before we get into your involvement specifically,
13:43
Speaker 3: how that happened, What did you know, like what had
13:46
Speaker 3: happened with the case so far, What was this sort
13:48
Speaker 3: of understanding of yours at that time of what this
13:51
Speaker 3: case was all about.
13:53
Speaker 2: So I was contacted by the Rawleigh County prosecutor who
14:00
Speaker 2: heard of me from my involvement in another high profile
14:04
Speaker 2: insulin case in West Virginia, which was the prosecution of
14:09
Speaker 2: Rita Mays. She was a nursing assistant who was accused
14:13
Speaker 2: of essentially poisoning VA patients at the Clarksburg VA with insulin.
14:21
Speaker 2: And this was a case that I did while active
14:23
Speaker 2: duty in the military with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office,
14:27
Speaker 2: and because of my involvement in that case, which was
14:30
Speaker 2: relatively high profile, they reached out to me because I
14:34
Speaker 2: had done a lot of research and testimony in terms
14:36
Speaker 2: of insulin homicides, and they reached out to me saying, hey,
14:40
Speaker 2: can you help out with this. We think that she
14:44
Speaker 2: may have poisoned her husband with insulin, but we're not
14:48
Speaker 2: sure we can prove it. So I got involved probably
14:52
Speaker 2: two to three years I think it was over three
14:55
Speaker 2: years after Michael's death, and they brought me in to
14:58
Speaker 2: take a look at everything that had been done at
15:01
Speaker 2: that point. The first autopsy was already done and they
15:07
Speaker 2: just wanted me to take a look at it to
15:09
Speaker 2: essentially see what I could see well, can.
15:11
Speaker 3: You tell us about that first autopsy, you know, as
15:14
Speaker 3: you opened it and looked at what had been done,
15:16
Speaker 3: kind of walk us through what you saw there.
15:19
Speaker 2: So the first autopsy was not done by me. And
15:23
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of a backstory here because when
15:27
Speaker 2: Michael died, he was technically on hospice care already, and
15:34
Speaker 2: because he was on hospice care, that did not generate
15:37
Speaker 2: a flag for the West Virginia State Medical Examiner's Office. Now,
15:42
Speaker 2: once again, I know a lot of the docks at
15:44
Speaker 2: West Virginia. I'm not saying this to throw shade at
15:46
Speaker 2: them or anything, but I do think the case was missed.
15:48
Speaker 2: When you have a thirty eight year old male on
15:51
Speaker 2: hospice for reasons that aren't really clear. It's different if
15:55
Speaker 2: someone has like ALS, which is amiotrific lateral loleurosis, the
16:00
Speaker 2: same disease that Stephen Hawking had, or Huntington's disease, or
16:04
Speaker 2: like some progressive neurologic condition that causes someone of relatively
16:09
Speaker 2: young age to die when they're younger. That's a legitimate
16:13
Speaker 2: reason for a younger person to be on hospice. But
16:15
Speaker 2: he didn't really have a great diagnosis. But anyway, regardless
16:19
Speaker 2: of how that was missed. The prosecutors started looking into
16:23
Speaker 2: it in the months after his death, and they found
16:27
Speaker 2: his death really, really suspicious because at that point she
16:30
Speaker 2: was being investigated for the Ponzi scheme and so forth.
16:34
Speaker 2: So I believe about seven months after Michael's death, the
16:39
Speaker 2: state office in West Virginia went back and they exhumed Michael,
16:43
Speaker 2: and they did an initial autopsy of him, and they
16:48
Speaker 2: found nothing particularly significant. The medical examiner of record who
16:55
Speaker 2: did it there wasn't really good sample to check for
16:59
Speaker 2: insulin or seapeptide. We'll talk about the importance of those
17:03
Speaker 2: two things later, and he didn't really look for insulin
17:07
Speaker 2: injection sites either. Now, whether or not you can find
17:11
Speaker 2: insulin injection sites and someone who's been essentially buried for
17:15
Speaker 2: seven months, it's very tough.
17:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.
17:18
Speaker 1: That actually prompts a question for me, which is, you know,
17:21
Speaker 1: this is all pretty morbid, but after seven months, because
17:26
Speaker 1: the initial autopsy happened after he was buried, so his
17:31
Speaker 1: remains were exhumed, is that correct?
17:36
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay, I don't think he was buried in the ground.
17:39
Speaker 2: I think he was interred in a mausoleum. Oh, Okay,
17:41
Speaker 2: basically above ground.
17:43
Speaker 1: Okay, and so seven months after his death, what state
17:48
Speaker 1: or someone's remains in It depends.
17:51
Speaker 2: It depends on the level of embalming. It depends on
17:53
Speaker 2: the environmental temperatures. It depends on if it's an above
17:57
Speaker 2: ground mausoleum or you know, below ground and under the earth.
18:01
Speaker 2: It depends on the humidity, It depends on the temperature,
18:03
Speaker 2: It depends on lots of things. From my review of
18:06
Speaker 2: the first autopsy, he seemed to be in pretty decent shape.
18:10
Speaker 2: There was some decomposition, which naturally you would expect, but
18:13
Speaker 2: it wasn't terrible. So there was some information that could
18:18
Speaker 2: be obtained from the primary autopsy, which, once again, any
18:22
Speaker 2: information is helpful in a case like this. But once again,
18:26
Speaker 2: if you have a body that's not embalmbed and is
18:29
Speaker 2: in the ground and then you have water that leaks
18:32
Speaker 2: into the casket and everything, that just accelerates decomposition.
18:36
Speaker 1: In this case, for the first autopsy in Michael Cochrane,
18:38
Speaker 1: they had remains that were in a state they felt
18:41
Speaker 1: like they could conduct an autopsy on and get strong
18:45
Speaker 1: results or decent results.
18:47
Speaker 2: Yes, And when it comes to post mortem detection of insulin,
18:52
Speaker 2: that's where things get really really tricky because insulin levels
18:57
Speaker 2: in blood are not stable. Insulin levels, just normally in humans, vary,
19:03
Speaker 2: like you know, it varies on what you eat, it
19:06
Speaker 2: varies with your circadium rhythm. Sometimes you're pancreas secretes insulin.
19:11
Speaker 2: When you wake up in the morning, you have an
19:13
Speaker 2: insulin spike. So there is no like really tight, nice
19:18
Speaker 2: normal range of insulin because if you have a couple
19:21
Speaker 2: donuts in the morning, then guess why your insulin's going
19:24
Speaker 2: to spike after that. If you wake up in the morning,
19:26
Speaker 2: your insulin's going to spike. So there's no real good
19:29
Speaker 2: range for normal.
19:30
Speaker 3: I want to go back actually to something that you
19:32
Speaker 3: talked about before, where he was on hospice. Can you
19:36
Speaker 3: kind of explain what was going on, because when I
19:39
Speaker 3: had read about the case, it seemed like he was healthy,
19:41
Speaker 3: and then there was an incident where he collapsed, he
19:45
Speaker 3: wasn't responding. It took a while for his wife, Natalie
19:49
Speaker 3: to actually call you know, naimon one or to bring
19:52
Speaker 3: him into a hospital, way too late, some would say,
19:55
Speaker 3: and it was suspicious that he was this supposedly overall
19:59
Speaker 3: healthy thirty eight year old who died. So I'm curious
20:03
Speaker 3: if you can explain a little more about what the
20:05
Speaker 3: circumstances were of him being on hospice, as well as
20:09
Speaker 3: how this idea of insulin ever arose in the first place.
20:13
Speaker 2: So how we got on the hospice. So going back
20:17
Speaker 2: to the circumstances that I understood that and once again,
20:20
Speaker 2: these circumstances, when you look at them retrospectively, are incredibly suspicious.
20:27
Speaker 2: Let's put it that way. The history that I received
20:31
Speaker 2: was that Michael was found down around eleven thirty noonish
20:37
Speaker 2: in the morning one day Natalie. She was the only
20:41
Speaker 2: one home at the time. Natalie suspected that he either
20:44
Speaker 2: had a seizure or hid his head on the counter
20:48
Speaker 2: on the way down, and she found him unconscious on
20:52
Speaker 2: the kitchen floor. Then she took pictures of his unconscious
20:58
Speaker 2: body and sent it to friends and family, which is
21:03
Speaker 2: sort of bizarre and strange, very weird. She had some
21:06
Speaker 2: contractors who happened to be doing some work at the house.
21:10
Speaker 2: I'm not sure when the contractors got there, I can't
21:13
Speaker 2: remember that detail, but she had them move him to
21:16
Speaker 2: the couch where he stayed there for approximately seven hours.
21:22
Speaker 2: The only medical intervention that she testified to was she
21:28
Speaker 2: reported checking his blood sugar twice and reported that those
21:34
Speaker 2: levels were normal even though he's unconscious on the couch.
21:38
Speaker 2: She had one family friend who was in healthcare come
21:43
Speaker 2: by and or that friend came by anyway and said,
21:47
Speaker 2: you really need to take him to the hospital. This
21:49
Speaker 2: is not well, and she's like, oh, he'll sleep it off,
21:51
Speaker 2: that's fine. And then apparently one of Michael's friends who
21:55
Speaker 2: couldn't get a hold of him, came by the house,
21:58
Speaker 2: found him unresponsible on the couch. Coach basically ordered, Natalie,
22:02
Speaker 2: you know, we are taking him to the hospital right now.
22:06
Speaker 2: So he loaded him up in the car, got him
22:08
Speaker 2: to the hospital. When he got to the hospital, his
22:11
Speaker 2: blood glucose was under thirty milligrams per desolader. Now, normal
22:17
Speaker 2: blood glucose ranges from like eighty to one hundred. So
22:21
Speaker 2: a blood glucose in someone, especially someone who's not a diabetic,
22:26
Speaker 2: anything below sixty in an otherwise healthy person, there's usually
22:31
Speaker 2: something going on, like you know, hey, there might be
22:34
Speaker 2: septic or something like that, or have an overwhelming bacterial infection.
22:37
Speaker 2: There's a couple natural disease processes that cause that, but
22:41
Speaker 2: he wasn't demonstrating any of those. And one of the
22:45
Speaker 2: first imaging studies that they did. When they did do
22:48
Speaker 2: an MRI, they saw no evidence of trauma. But the
22:52
Speaker 2: radiologist called it, and this is a really interesting term,
22:56
Speaker 2: he called it diffuse hypoglycemic encephalopathy, meaning he was having
23:02
Speaker 2: cerebral edema, likely related to the low blood glucose. So
23:07
Speaker 2: when you have blood glucose that's too low for too long,
23:10
Speaker 2: your brain starts to freak out and it starts to swell.
23:13
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what was happening. And when Natalie got
23:17
Speaker 2: to the hospital, I think it was probably within a
23:21
Speaker 2: matter of hours where she wanted him put on hospice care.
23:25
Speaker 2: Oh wow, which once again, your husband comes into the hospital,
23:28
Speaker 2: if you're not entirely sure why he's there, you just
23:31
Speaker 2: walk in and be like, yeah, we want to put
23:33
Speaker 2: him on hospice, even though we don't know exactly what's
23:35
Speaker 2: going on. That whole situation just seems really weird.
23:49
Speaker 3: So I imagine when you're getting this information, you're assessing
23:54
Speaker 3: her behavior, Michael's blood glucose level when he died, the
23:59
Speaker 3: request from now to put her thirty eight year old husband, who,
24:03
Speaker 3: you know whatever, a day two days before was completely healthy.
24:06
Speaker 3: That seems super weird, like you would think you would
24:08
Speaker 3: be like save his life, please, but she requests for
24:11
Speaker 3: him to be put on hospice. And so are you
24:13
Speaker 3: looking at all of these factors plus the medical autopsy
24:16
Speaker 3: when you're looking at the case.
24:18
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, because autopsy is only one part of the equation.
24:23
Speaker 2: There's the scene investigation, there's medical history. All of that
24:29
Speaker 2: goes into it. Like the autopsy is just one part
24:31
Speaker 2: of it. We also have post mortem samples that we
24:34
Speaker 2: can send out, like toxicology. We can look at tissue
24:37
Speaker 2: under the microscope for histology. And it's our job as
24:40
Speaker 2: forensic pathologists to take the autopsy and the scene investigation
24:46
Speaker 2: and the ancillary studies and put it all together to
24:49
Speaker 2: figure out what happened. So I had a lot of
24:53
Speaker 2: that history. Now once again, you have to be careful
24:56
Speaker 2: and not let the history bias you too much. Right,
25:00
Speaker 2: you know, the whole topic of cognitive bias. That's a
25:03
Speaker 2: whole separate thing that I lecture on, but that's outside
25:05
Speaker 2: the scope of this. But you don't want to let
25:08
Speaker 2: the scene investigation bias you too much, if you know
25:12
Speaker 2: what I mean, Because you have to look at the
25:13
Speaker 2: big picture, and you know, like an example of it
25:16
Speaker 2: is relying on someone's confession. If you're rely on someone's
25:19
Speaker 2: confession that they smothered someone, but you have no other
25:22
Speaker 2: findings to go against that, then if they recant their confession,
25:26
Speaker 2: you're left with nothing and you're just like, Okay, what
25:29
Speaker 2: do I do with this? The bottom line is you
25:31
Speaker 2: have to look at the big picture, right So in
25:33
Speaker 2: this one of the things that I suggested to the
25:37
Speaker 2: district attorney was to take a second look at Michael,
25:41
Speaker 2: which meant a second exhamation, because my thought process here
25:47
Speaker 2: is there are some things that they did not look
25:49
Speaker 2: at in the first autopsy, like they didn't do soft
25:52
Speaker 2: tissue dissections of the arms and abdomen and legs to
25:56
Speaker 2: look for possible injection sites. Once again, is it low
25:59
Speaker 2: ye or not? I don't know. I mean my opinion
26:02
Speaker 2: also is you don't know if you don't look. So
26:04
Speaker 2: we had to exhaust all the options there. Yeah, I'm
26:07
Speaker 2: pretty sure that's the point in time when we decided, Okay,
26:10
Speaker 2: I'm going to go out to West Virginia and we're
26:12
Speaker 2: going to do a second autopsy and a second exhamation.
26:16
Speaker 1: So, as you mentioned, the first autopsy was done seven
26:19
Speaker 1: months after Michael died and at that point the cause
26:22
Speaker 1: of death was listed as undetermined. So I was reading
26:26
Speaker 1: about how the case was actually dropped by the Raleigh
26:28
Speaker 1: County DA's office the first time around, because it's really
26:31
Speaker 1: hard to bring homicide charges against someone when you don't
26:34
Speaker 1: have the cause of death listed as a homicide, let
26:37
Speaker 1: alone any cause of death. But then two years later
26:40
Speaker 1: the case was refiled when you were brought in to
26:42
Speaker 1: take a second look. You've explained how difficult it is
26:45
Speaker 1: to get physical evidence of someone being killed by insulin
26:49
Speaker 1: injections during an autopsy. So what were you hoping to
26:53
Speaker 1: find in the second autopsy that might have been missed
26:56
Speaker 1: the first time around.
26:58
Speaker 2: So I don't mean this to like, once again throw
27:02
Speaker 2: shade at the West Virginia office, because post mortem detection
27:05
Speaker 2: of insulin it's been problematic for forensic pathologists ever since
27:09
Speaker 2: the discovery of insulin over sixty years ago. So figuring
27:13
Speaker 2: out post mortem insulin levels and whether or not it's
27:17
Speaker 2: an insulin suicide or homicide, it's such a tricky issue.
27:21
Speaker 2: So one of the things they did not do in
27:23
Speaker 2: the first autopsy was they didn't do a soft tissue dissection,
27:29
Speaker 2: basically cutting into the skin looking for subcutaneous hemorrhage that
27:34
Speaker 2: could be consistent with a insulin injection, because that's how
27:40
Speaker 2: insulin is administered. It's administered subcutaneously. It's not administered orally.
27:45
Speaker 2: It's not administered by IV generally, but when you inject insulin,
27:51
Speaker 2: you inject it under the skin and then it creates
27:54
Speaker 2: a little pocketive insulin that acts as a depot and
27:56
Speaker 2: it's sort of released over time and usually works for
27:59
Speaker 2: like four to six So there are ways where you
28:02
Speaker 2: can do soft tissue dissection to look for that, and
28:07
Speaker 2: if you see a possible injection site, then you can
28:12
Speaker 2: take that tissue, look at it under a microscope and
28:16
Speaker 2: do a process called aminohistochemistry where you can stain the
28:20
Speaker 2: slide for insulin. Now, this is the technique that we
28:24
Speaker 2: did in the Rida May's investigation, and we actually had
28:29
Speaker 2: some success with it, even in patients who were exhumed
28:34
Speaker 2: a year and a half after the fact. So that
28:39
Speaker 2: is a pretty decent way to do it if you
28:41
Speaker 2: can find a suspected insulin injection site. But that was
28:44
Speaker 2: not done in the first autopsy, and they also did
28:47
Speaker 2: not send out special testing for insulin or cepeptide, just
28:51
Speaker 2: because I don't think the West Virginia office, and actually
28:53
Speaker 2: most medical examiner offices just don't have access to that.
28:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, the second autopsy that you end up doing, you
29:00
Speaker 1: have to exhume his remains. I'm curious if you heard
29:04
Speaker 1: anything about how has family felt about a second autopsy.
29:09
Speaker 1: How did they feel about it?
29:10
Speaker 2: Did you ever hear They were absolutely on board with it,
29:14
Speaker 2: and they suspected pretty much from the beginning that she
29:17
Speaker 2: did something to Michael and they wanted to prove it.
29:21
Speaker 2: So could we have done it without the family consent? Yes,
29:25
Speaker 2: but generally when you do exhamations, it's usually good to
29:28
Speaker 2: have the family permission and consent on board. Yeah. I
29:33
Speaker 2: really like providing reasonable expectations to family members too, because
29:37
Speaker 2: exhumations are incredibly traumatic, and I want them to be like, look,
29:41
Speaker 2: this is why we're doing this, this is what I
29:44
Speaker 2: hope to gain from this, this is what we're specifically
29:47
Speaker 2: looking for, just so they are on the same page
29:51
Speaker 2: with what we're doing and why. But they were absolutely
29:55
Speaker 2: on board with this.
29:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really good to know. So Michael, the that
30:00
Speaker 1: he actually passed, and you mentioned he was on hospice
30:02
Speaker 1: was February eleventh, twenty nineteen, and you performed your autopsy
30:06
Speaker 1: in July of twenty twenty three, so you know, there's
30:10
Speaker 1: a pretty significant passage of time between his death and
30:13
Speaker 1: the second autopsy. You told us a little bit about
30:17
Speaker 1: what the state of their remains were for the first autopsy.
30:21
Speaker 1: What was the state of his remains by the time
30:23
Speaker 1: you did your autopsy.
30:26
Speaker 2: There were significant amounts of decomposition, and really the only
30:33
Speaker 2: soft tissue left was in a form that we call
30:37
Speaker 2: it adipis here, which is when skin and soft tissue
30:42
Speaker 2: turn into like a white, waxy soap like substance, And
30:47
Speaker 2: there wasn't much to be gained from it. There wasn't
30:50
Speaker 2: much to analyze. It was largely skeletonized remains with some
30:54
Speaker 2: adipis here type soft tissue, so was not able to
30:58
Speaker 2: get that much information from it. But once again, if
31:02
Speaker 2: we're looking for something that wasn't done in the first autopsy,
31:05
Speaker 2: I'm generally of the opinion if you're going to exhaust
31:08
Speaker 2: all options, exhaust all options if you don't know, if
31:11
Speaker 2: you don't look right.
31:12
Speaker 1: And so you did look, you did test the remains
31:15
Speaker 1: for insulin, and what did you find?
31:19
Speaker 2: I did not test the remains for insult. You did
31:21
Speaker 2: not test the remains, did not that there was there
31:23
Speaker 2: was there was nothing useful to.
31:25
Speaker 3: Test, Okay.
31:26
Speaker 1: So then in that case, because the prosecutor had called
31:29
Speaker 1: you and said we suspect that you know, he was
31:32
Speaker 1: given insulin and that led to his death. So what
31:34
Speaker 1: do you do with the remains then? Since you couldn't
31:38
Speaker 1: test for insulin at that point.
31:39
Speaker 2: So the remains got sent, they got reintered, and you know,
31:44
Speaker 2: at some point the prosecutor changed, so we had a
31:48
Speaker 2: different prosecutor. So once again I worked on this case
31:51
Speaker 2: with both prosecutors and just to make sure we're on
31:55
Speaker 2: the same page. And the question that we had to
31:58
Speaker 2: answer was, well, we have a lot of circumstantial evidence,
32:03
Speaker 2: but do we have enough to get a conviction because
32:06
Speaker 2: we don't have the proverbial smoking gun, we don't have
32:10
Speaker 2: evidence of an insulin injection site. But we have really
32:14
Speaker 2: good medical history where you have someone who's thirty eight
32:18
Speaker 2: year old male, otherwise healthy, not taking insulin, who comes
32:24
Speaker 2: in after being unconscious for seven hours, coming into the
32:29
Speaker 2: hospital with the blood glucose level of less than thirty.
32:33
Speaker 2: There is not a whole lot of other things that
32:36
Speaker 2: can do that, and unfortunately, there was no samples that
32:42
Speaker 2: we could retrospectively send out for testing. All of the
32:45
Speaker 2: stuff that was collected from the West Virginia Medical Examiner
32:49
Speaker 2: Office from the first autopsy that was already destroyed because
32:53
Speaker 2: we were already a couple of years out. So we
32:56
Speaker 2: realize this is a circumstantial case. Question is do you
33:01
Speaker 2: have enough circumstantial evidence to even try for a conviction
33:05
Speaker 2: in this case?
33:06
Speaker 1: Yeah? And so given that, how did that impact what
33:10
Speaker 1: you were able to testify about as a forensic pathologist
33:14
Speaker 1: that looked at his remains.
33:17
Speaker 2: So going back a step in the Rita May's case,
33:21
Speaker 2: we consulted with a clinical endocrinologist, doctor Dian Krieger, who
33:27
Speaker 2: specializes in the treatment of diabetic patients. Her help in
33:32
Speaker 2: that case and this case as well was absolutely essential
33:36
Speaker 2: because she understands the clinical aspects of treating diabetics, the
33:41
Speaker 2: clinical aspects of hypoglycemia and what causes this profound hypoglycemia
33:47
Speaker 2: in someone which I don't necessarily see as a forensic
33:51
Speaker 2: pathologist because all my patients are dead. So we recruited
33:56
Speaker 2: her on this case too and got her opinion, and
33:59
Speaker 2: she was of opinion that yeah, this is likely insulin related, right,
34:05
Speaker 2: And going back another step, because one of the questions
34:08
Speaker 2: that you asked is, well, how was insulin brought up
34:12
Speaker 2: to begin with? In talking with one of the main
34:15
Speaker 2: investigators about this, the first time insulin was even put
34:20
Speaker 2: on his radar was in one of his interviews with Natalie.
34:27
Speaker 2: She just brought up insulin sort of out of the blue, really,
34:32
Speaker 2: and it kind of struck him as really odd because
34:37
Speaker 2: he wasn't thinking about that beforehand.
34:40
Speaker 1: Do you know what she said about it?
34:41
Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly.
34:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So that's interesting. So the first time investigators
34:46
Speaker 1: ever even took note of insulin was just from an
34:51
Speaker 1: interview with Natalie Cochrane that she had brought it up, okay,
34:54
Speaker 1: and then that is what got on their radar.
34:56
Speaker 3: Is like a potential cause of death?
34:58
Speaker 2: Potentially, yes, And I believe it was a couple months
35:04
Speaker 2: after Michael's death they finally got a search warrant for
35:08
Speaker 2: the house. Now, once again you can argue, you know, well,
35:12
Speaker 2: how useful is the search warrant a couple months after
35:14
Speaker 2: the fact, and if that is what it is. But
35:17
Speaker 2: in the search of the house, in the refrigerator, ironically
35:23
Speaker 2: under a candy bar. They found a vial of insulin Wow,
35:29
Speaker 2: with one hole punched in the top of it, and
35:34
Speaker 2: you could tell It's hard to tell exactly how much
35:37
Speaker 2: was missing, but it was not a full bump.
35:41
Speaker 3: And was Natalie taking insulin.
35:44
Speaker 2: So the story how this goes is her her testimony.
35:49
Speaker 2: In her statements, she said that she got the insulin
35:53
Speaker 2: vile from her neighbor. Her neighbor had a child who
35:58
Speaker 2: was a Type one diabetic and was prescribed insulin. She
36:01
Speaker 2: had asked the neighbor, Hey, do you have any insulin?
36:05
Speaker 2: I ran out because I need the insulin for side
36:10
Speaker 2: effects of my chemotherapy for my treatment of breast cancer.
36:15
Speaker 2: Her neighbor says, oh, yeah, of course she can borrow
36:18
Speaker 2: one of these. That was I believe the day before
36:21
Speaker 2: Michael died.
36:22
Speaker 3: Wow.
36:23
Speaker 2: And it turns out she was not on chemotherapy for
36:27
Speaker 2: breast cancer, she was not prescribed insulin, and she did
36:30
Speaker 2: not have breast cancer. So once again, just red flags
36:35
Speaker 2: all over the place. And it's circumstantial evidence, But circumstantial
36:39
Speaker 2: evidence in the right context can be incredibly powerful.
36:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know something that in the child the
36:47
Speaker 1: defense was really at least from my perspective leaning on
36:51
Speaker 1: is that Michael cochrane was really into fitness and bodybuilding,
36:57
Speaker 1: and he took a lot of supplements and also supposedly
37:01
Speaker 1: took steroids. Did you take that into account when you
37:06
Speaker 1: were conducting the autopsy or speaking with the endocinologist you mentioned.
37:12
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And the substances that Michael was taking, they were tested,
37:20
Speaker 2: you know, by the FBI. It turns out they were
37:23
Speaker 2: other medications, not what he was supposedly taking. But I
37:27
Speaker 2: don't know. I think it was more inert substances than
37:31
Speaker 2: when he was prescribed, but I did take that into consideration. Now,
37:34
Speaker 2: one of the things that I have learned since the
37:36
Speaker 2: trial is that if you are on heavy anabolic steroids
37:44
Speaker 2: and actively bodybuilding, like actively building muscle bodybuilders who are
37:50
Speaker 2: in that sort of cycling phase, they consume enormous amounts
37:57
Speaker 2: of calibers, like we're talking eight to ten thousand plus
38:00
Speaker 2: calories a day. And those higher end bodybuilders can take
38:06
Speaker 2: insulin to help with their insulin spikes or things like that,
38:10
Speaker 2: because you know, when you're eating like three full plates
38:13
Speaker 2: aposta at a time to get the calories that you
38:16
Speaker 2: need to build the type of mass that you're talking
38:18
Speaker 2: about that is a consideration. Michael, it doesn't seem like
38:22
Speaker 2: he was that type. He was never prescribed insulin, he
38:24
Speaker 2: wasn't doing heavy anabolic steroids. I believe he was on
38:28
Speaker 2: testosterine supplementation and got some other supplements from Mexico. One
38:32
Speaker 2: of them, I believe was something called enclomaphene or clomid,
38:37
Speaker 2: which you know bodybuilders do use, but they use that
38:41
Speaker 2: to sort of kick in natural testoster and production. But
38:44
Speaker 2: to my knowledge, he was not a heavy anabolic steroid user.
38:48
Speaker 2: There was no evidence that he had used insulin before,
38:51
Speaker 2: and this sort of played into I guess one of
38:55
Speaker 2: the games that the defense was playing was that, oh, yeah,
38:58
Speaker 2: well Michael was you know, now sick and had a
39:01
Speaker 2: bad heart and was very ill. But then on the
39:06
Speaker 2: other hand, he was actively health conscious and taking lots
39:10
Speaker 2: of supplements to take care of himself in actively bodybuilding.
39:13
Speaker 2: So it's like, Okay, which one is it? Is he
39:16
Speaker 2: on the sick side and could have died at any time,
39:19
Speaker 2: or is he actively health conscious and doing what he
39:23
Speaker 2: can to take care of himself and actively health not bodybuilder,
39:26
Speaker 2: So it's like which one? And I remember during the trial,
39:30
Speaker 2: the defense couldn't really make up their mind in terms
39:32
Speaker 2: of which way they wanted to go with that, so
39:35
Speaker 2: they were trying to play both of those cards at
39:36
Speaker 2: the same time.
39:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's probably a more elegant way for me
39:41
Speaker 1: to ask this question. But given that you were not
39:44
Speaker 1: able to test for insulin because of the state of
39:46
Speaker 1: his remains and your role here as you're a forensic pathologist,
39:51
Speaker 1: why does the state then still bring you in to
39:53
Speaker 1: testify if you essentially couldn't come to a definitive like, hey,
39:58
Speaker 1: I tested for this, it's here.
40:01
Speaker 2: Because there was enough circumstantial evidence to go forward with it,
40:08
Speaker 2: even though you did not have the proverbial smoking gun,
40:12
Speaker 2: which is, you know, obviously the best smoking gun would
40:14
Speaker 2: be video of her injecting him. I mean, of course
40:17
Speaker 2: we're not going to have that. The next one would be, well,
40:20
Speaker 2: if there were samples that were taken and we can
40:23
Speaker 2: test for that and they would show evidence of insulin
40:27
Speaker 2: poisoning something like that. In that case, we didn't have
40:30
Speaker 2: that either. So my testimony was, well, this is what
40:35
Speaker 2: they could have done to look into it, namely on
40:39
Speaker 2: the clinical side, which is it is very tricky to
40:42
Speaker 2: pick up insulin intoxication or insulin overdose on the clinical side,
40:48
Speaker 2: because you have to suspect it immediately. You have to
40:51
Speaker 2: suspect it, like right when the person walks in to
40:55
Speaker 2: the emergency room and they're crashing in front of you.
40:58
Speaker 2: That's when you have to test for it. I see,
41:00
Speaker 2: and that didn't happen, which is not terribly surprising. At
41:05
Speaker 2: autopsy from when he collapsed to when he died was
41:09
Speaker 2: several days, so post mortem insulin testing three to five
41:16
Speaker 2: days after the hypoglycemic event, so after your blood sugar tanks.
41:21
Speaker 2: It's very very low yield. With that, your best option
41:24
Speaker 2: would probably be to try and find an insulin injection site.
41:28
Speaker 2: That wasn't done either. But even though you don't have
41:32
Speaker 2: the smoking gun. My testimony was, well, there's nothing else
41:38
Speaker 2: that really explains this, because when you have a blood
41:42
Speaker 2: glucose level of less than thirty in an otherwise healthy person,
41:48
Speaker 2: there's only a couple things that can do that, and
41:51
Speaker 2: some of them were able to rule out, like he
41:54
Speaker 2: was not rampagingly septic, he didn't have a huge bacterial infection.
41:58
Speaker 2: That was overwhelming as there was no evidence that he
42:02
Speaker 2: was taking other drugs like you know, some of the
42:06
Speaker 2: oral hypoglycemic agents. There was no history of that. But
42:10
Speaker 2: we have this weird history of insulin and how Natalie
42:13
Speaker 2: got it, and there was a used insulin vile in
42:17
Speaker 2: the house even though no one was using insulin, And
42:20
Speaker 2: you have no other viable explanation for why a healthy
42:26
Speaker 2: male comes in with a blood glucose of less than
42:29
Speaker 2: thirty And based on that circumstantial evidence, I want to
42:33
Speaker 2: say that circumstantial evidence alone, because we didn't have the
42:36
Speaker 2: smoking gun evidence from autopsy. It was my opinion that
42:40
Speaker 2: there was nothing else that could have killed him. There
42:43
Speaker 2: is no other explanation that makes even a shred of
42:46
Speaker 2: sense in this case.
42:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a pretty strong assessment. And I imagine that
42:51
Speaker 3: was impactful in the courtroom. And do you recall how
42:54
Speaker 3: long the jury deliberated and what was the outcome.
42:58
Speaker 2: I don't recall how long they deliberated, but they found
43:01
Speaker 2: her guilty.
43:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she was found guilty of first degree murder
43:06
Speaker 1: from the murder of her husband, Michael cochrane, and she
43:08
Speaker 1: was sentenced to life in prison without pearl.
43:12
Speaker 2: Yep. That sounds about right.
43:14
Speaker 3: Was there anything else about the case that stood out
43:16
Speaker 3: to you as strange, unusual or notable from a forensic
43:19
Speaker 3: pathologists standpoint.
43:21
Speaker 2: I think the most significant thing about this case in particular,
43:26
Speaker 2: and how it differs from the riad A Maze investigation,
43:30
Speaker 2: is we got a successful prosecution for murder using insulin
43:39
Speaker 2: on just circumstantial information. Now, circumstantial evidence can be just
43:45
Speaker 2: as powerful as objective autopsy evidence if it's in the
43:49
Speaker 2: right context, and in this particular case, there was literally
43:54
Speaker 2: mountains of circumstantial evidence, like literally so many things that
43:59
Speaker 2: didn't make sense, Like, you know, you find your husband
44:01
Speaker 2: down in the kitchen. You know, what do you do?
44:03
Speaker 2: Oh well, let's just leave him there. It's like, wait, no,
44:05
Speaker 2: that's not a normal reaction. You go to the hospital
44:09
Speaker 2: and be like, yeah, we don't know what's wrong, but
44:11
Speaker 2: we just want to put on hospice and you know,
44:14
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I got this insulin vile from the neighbor
44:17
Speaker 2: for the chemotherapy and breast cancer that I don't have.
44:21
Speaker 2: And ironically, the thing that astounds me the most is
44:25
Speaker 2: even months after Michael's death, when they searched the house,
44:29
Speaker 2: the insulin vile was still there.
44:32
Speaker 3: That is bananas.
44:33
Speaker 1: That is like someone who is so confident that they
44:36
Speaker 1: are just so smart that they can get away with anything.
44:39
Speaker 3: Or like dumb like why don't know? Right, Yeah, what
44:42
Speaker 3: in what world would you not get rid of that?
44:45
Speaker 2: I don't know, I really don't. But that's one of
44:48
Speaker 2: the little factoids about this case that just it blows
44:52
Speaker 2: me away.
44:53
Speaker 3: She was not careful to like cover her track. She
44:56
Speaker 3: really wasn't texting, going to the neighbors. And I guess fortunately,
45:00
Speaker 3: right that all of that happened so that she was
45:02
Speaker 3: able to be found guilty for killing her husband.
45:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I'm sure Michael Cochrane's family was just like
45:09
Speaker 1: so relieved by that verdict.
45:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I've not spoken with the Cochran family,
45:15
Speaker 2: but I can imagine it's relief on all fronts from them.
45:19
Speaker 2: Once again, it's not going to bring Michael back, but
45:22
Speaker 2: at least it provides some type of closure.
45:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
45:26
Speaker 3: Well, this has been really interesting. We really appreciate you
45:28
Speaker 3: joining us and walking us through all the technical aspects
45:32
Speaker 3: of this case and your involvement in the trial.
45:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much.
45:37
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me.
45:40
Speaker 1: If you have a story for us, we would love
45:42
Speaker 1: to hear it. Our email is the Knife at exactly
45:45
Speaker 1: rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
45:47
Speaker 1: at the Knife Podcast or a Blue Sky at the
45:50
Speaker 1: Knife Podcast.
45:51
Speaker 3: This has been an exactly right production, hosted and produced
45:54
Speaker 3: by me Hannah Smith.
45:55
Speaker 1: And me Patia Eating. Our producers are Tom Bria Bogel
45:58
Speaker 1: and Alexis Amorosi.
46:00
Speaker 3: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
46:03
Speaker 3: is Christina Chamberlain. Our theme music is by Birds in
46:06
Speaker 3: the Airport, artwork.
46:07
Speaker 1: By Vanessa Lilac.
46:09
Speaker 3: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.