Blayne Alexander joins Andrea Canning to talk about her latest episode, “The Devil’s in the Details.” After the mysterious death of a young dad in West Virginia, his friends and family are left looking for answers until investigators uncover a twisted trail of betrayal. Andrea tells Blayne what she’s learned about poison as a murder weapon, and they discuss the ripple effect of the killer’s crimes. Later, Andrea shares a podcast-exclusive clip from her interview with the victim’s best friend. Then, she and Blayne answer your questions from social media. If you have a question for Talking Dateline, send us an audio message on social @datelinenbc or leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252.Listen to the full episode of “The Devil’s in the Details” on Apple: https://apple.co/4lUaVcOListen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5dA3Q17ZHLtneNIKICckNb
Chapter 1: What happened to Michael Cochran?
In 2019, the sudden death of Michael Cochran, a young dad from West Virginia, left his family and friends reeling. But an investigation pulled back the curtain on their storybook family life to reveal a planned killing and a sinister scheme. For this Talking Dateline episode, we have an extra clip from Andrea's interview with Michael's best friend, Chris Davis.
All right, Andrea, so let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. So, Andrea, I always kind of like rank Dateline episodes by the amount of times that I talk to myself while I'm watching the episode. And this one, I was giving very authentic exclamations throughout the entire episode.
Chapter 2: How did a storybook life turn into betrayal?
Yeah, this one had a lot in it. You know, not usually, obviously, we deal with murder on Dateline, but this had a whole other layer to it. to the betrayal.
Let's kind of go to the beginning and just talk about the storybook life, right? I mean, because that's a really a good way to put it. They were a gorgeous family. She's a pharmacist. I mean, they were very much a successful family. Two cute kids. Yeah.
I mean, they grew up in the area, in the Beckley area. This is, you know, as we open the whole show, you know, it's like where, you know, Friends are like family, and everyone just trusts each other. And yes, they had the two kids, and they went to West Virginia University. She got her pharmacy degree, and he got his degree in IT, and they had all these toys.
You know, they were buying boats and motorcycles and properties and going on lavish adventures. international trips. You know, they really seemed like they were living the high life.
The way that you guys revealed in the episode, the degree of their, I don't know, financial affluence, I guess you could just say, I mean, like, oh, that escalated quickly. You know, I mean, you think that they're a beautiful family, little league, but then when you hear just kind of like about the money and the way they're living this high life, that was a big surprise.
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Chapter 3: What was the Ponzi scheme about?
And I think that it would be even more impactful in a small town, in a smaller community like that.
Yeah, and I think that's part of what drew people in to want to invest was seeing how well they were doing. Well, oh my gosh, I want that. And if they're doing this well with this, then it sounds like a great opportunity. And again, we trust investors. So it's like a win-win, only it wasn't.
Exactly. So let's talk about this Ponzi scheme, because before we get to the crime of murder, the crime that we first deal with in this episode is fraud. So first, I was just really interested in the arms business in the first place. Like, who knew that it was so easy to go from pharmacy to...
to getting into the arms business and allegedly having these government contracts. Well, you know, as we say in the show, it came from the movie War Dogs, which I did see that movie on. Did you see it? No. It was a good movie. It was based on a true story. I don't know how loosely based, but supposedly that's where they got the idea from.
And there's actually a movie poster in their office of War Dogs. Yeah. the sad thing about this whole thing was that everything started out legit. Yeah. You know, she got her whatever accreditation she needed, like, whatever, you know, for signing up with the government. That was all legit. She had done that work, so she was allowed... to be dealing with this stuff.
And Michael was the one who apparently was always searching out the contracts. Oh, this one looks good. Let's try this one. And then if you believe the prosecution, he just didn't realize that she wasn't you know, finishing the job, following through. It's like she sees a movie and she's like, let's do this. And then it, gosh, and then it leads to Ponzi and murder, you know.
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Chapter 4: Did Michael know about the fraudulent activities?
And it's taking money from family, right? Taking from your best friend.
I don't know how anyone could do that because... I mean, first of all, how could you do it at all? But then it's your own parents. It's your husband's parents.
It's your best friends. I think the biggest question in all of this, Andrea, as I was watching, as I'm sure everybody else was watching, did Michael know about this scheme? Right. Like, that's certainly what the defense says, that he was in on this thing from the very beginning. But I'm curious, is there any chance that he actually knew what was going on or was he completely in the dark here?
Well, the defense is saying, you know, how could he not? But the prosecution feels very strongly that he was not aware based on text messages between Natalie and Michael. And the text messages were, you know, where's the money? Why is the bank... you know, not giving us the money, it really does seem like he can't get a grasp on it. He's like, I don't understand what's wrong.
And from what I've heard, and it seems to me that Michael Wouldn't do that to his own parents.
I mean, you have to have a lot of trust, right? Like he trusted her. You have trust when you're in marriage. You have trust when you're in business. So you kind of think, OK, she's handling this. She says she is. I'm moving on to something else. And I know it's handled.
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Chapter 5: What role does poison play in this case?
And I know that if it was if I was in a business like that with my husband and, you know, my husband's a finance guy. Like if he was like, no, no, I got I got this side of it. Like I would not. I'm going to be totally honest right now. Maybe I'm stupid, but like I would not be following up. I'd be I would totally trust my husband and be like, great. Oh, that's so awesome.
I'm so glad that that worked out. You know, check that part's done. Check it off the list. Move on to something else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I buy that. I buy that he maybe wasn't checking up on everything.
It also kind of this is a complete aside. Listening to this, it had a lot of echoes of the Alec Murdoch case. Someone else just said that to me. Financial issues and then doing all of these things to keep someone from finding out and then murder at the end, right? It really, really reminded me of that. I mean, this beautiful fairy tale life, everything is perfect, but really it wasn't.
And Blaine, it's all about the walls closing in, right? And we talked about the ticking clock and the walls and imagine the pressure as... This scheme is like, you know, just closing in because now if the prosecution's right, the one person that has been a part of this unknowingly is now about to find out.
And, you know, their theory is that he would not be okay with this and that this would all come crashing down. You know, that day when they're supposed to go to this meeting, that's what it all comes down to. Yeah.
You know, I mean, we talked earlier about just the utter betrayal of, you know, scamming the people that are closest to her. Right. I mean, the people that are closest to them in their lives. I'm curious how they're doing in terms of just kind of like recovering from all of this. I mean, those are tremendous amounts of money that they lost.
A lot of money. Obviously, you want your money back. But I think the betrayal was almost far worse than the money loss. For Donna and Ed, you know, I did ask them about that. And, you know, they lost their life savings, right, their retirement. And, you know, they stressed in the interview, like, we're okay. You know, we're going to be fine.
But, like, how sad that you save and you save all that money and then, like, it's just poof. Because, you know, in retirement, that money, that means a lot. Of course.
Of course. Yeah. When we get back, we've got a podcast exclusive clip from Andrea's interview with Michael's best friend, Chris Davis. Let's talk about Michael's death. It was really tragic in so many ways to hear several of his family members talk about how they said goodbye, their last goodbyes to him. And at the time, many of them were like, OK, this is natural causes.
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Chapter 6: How did the family cope with the betrayal?
This is just something that unfortunately just happened.
Yeah, I mean, it just, at the same time, it made no sense. You know, you want answers. Like, even if you think it's a natural death, you still want answers, and they didn't really have any. They knew that he had brain swelling, but the doctors, like, they just couldn't explain what was the source of that. And so for them, it was not only a heartbreaking time saying goodbye, but confusing, because
Was there any proof that Michael had been poisoned other times before his death? Was he actually having seizures? Like, kind of what was his medical history up until that point?
So he had told one friend, I believe, that he was getting sick. And, you know, he didn't know what was making him sick. And then as far as the seizures go, so Natalie was always the one saying... That he was having seizures. It seemed through the eyes of the police anyway and the prosecutors that his medical history and then current medical situation was all being narrated by Natalie.
But remember, he was in the hospital for a few days, several months before he died. So he definitely was having issues and the prosecutors believe they had no proof, but they believe that when he was in the hospital the first time that it was either possibly that she had tried to poison him and didn't get the amount right. that it was a dry run of some kind.
You know, this was the theory of the prosecution.
I think what was interesting to me is that Natalie's a pharmacist, so she understands, theoretically, how these things work, right? Like, if you or I were to try and poison someone, like... I'd have to Google. I wouldn't know inherently what one is supposed to do. But to have an understanding kind of how medicine reacts with the body, I think, was certainly an interesting tidbit as well.
And she also was a specialist in diabetes and with insulin. So she had that added knowledge.
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Chapter 7: What can we learn from Andrea's exclusive interview?
Let's talk for a second about poison as a murder weapon of choice, right? I mean, I know that it's something that you've talked about a number of times on the True Crime Weekly podcast. Mm-hmm. I mean, we've seen it. We've seen, right, like eye drops sometimes as different options.
I did a story on a cancer doctor who was accused of attempted murder of her lover. She had poisoned him. His kidneys were shutting down. She put... antifreeze, ethylene glycol in his coffee, which has some parallels to this story. Sure. With the insulin, his body was shutting down and it was mostly attacking his kidneys. He appeared almost drunk.
And he showed up finally later that night at the ER, and he basically collapsed in the ER. A nurse had noticed that his urine was crystallized, and the nurse said that is a sign of ethylene glycol. And so while they never found the ethylene glycol in him, just like they never found the insulin in Michael, the belief was that he was poisoned with ethylene glycol.
And also colchicine recently has become more common as well. And now they're starting to put colchicine on standard talk screens.
And what is colchicine commonly found in?
Colchicine is a gout medication. Okay. And in high concentration, it will make someone violently ill and their organs start to shut down. Wow. So that was another dateline that I did with colchicine. It comes from autumn crocus. It's a flower. I know they do synthetic and all that now, but it originates from the autumn crocus plant.
Wow.
Or flower, whatever that is.
Andrea, I've got to say, next time you update your resume, you need to put poison expert because you know a lot about a lot of these things, my dear.
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