Small Town, Big Con

Summary

Podcast Summary: 20/20 – "Small Town, Big Con"

Introduction

In the gripping episode titled "Small Town, Big Con" from ABC News' 20/20, released on February 15, 2025, host David Muir delves deep into a chilling true story of deception, trust, and tragedy in the small community of Beckley, West Virginia. The episode unpacks the rise and fall of Michael and Natalie Cochran, exploring how their seemingly perfect life unraveled into a devastating Ponzi scheme and a mysterious murder trial.

1. The Cochran Couple: A Picture of Perfection

Background and Early Life

Michael Brandon Cochran and Natalie Jessup Cochran appeared to epitomize the American dream. Michael, born on December 23, 1980, was a sports enthusiast with a passion for baseball, basketball, and football. Jennifer Davis, Michael's mother, reminisces, "[...] Michael Brandon was always playing baseball, basketball, football. He lifted weights as a hobby..." (02:46).

Natalie, a driven pharmacy student, and Michael met during a high school trip to the mall where Natalie was working. Their love story blossomed swiftly, leading to their engagement in November 1999 and marriage six months later. The couple settled in a beautifully renovated colonial home in Daniels, West Virginia, raising two children and becoming pillars of their community through active involvement in local sports and charitable activities.

2. The Birth of a Scheme: Tactical Solutions Group

Entrepreneurial Ventures Turned Fraudulent

Despite having no background in federal contracting, Michael and Natalie launched Tactical Solutions Group (TSG), positioning themselves as suppliers to the federal government, including high-profile agencies like the Department of Defense, FEMA, Homeland Security, and the CIA. Timothy Bledsoe explains, "Tactical Solutions Group was supposed to be a wholesale goods seller so they could sell health care equipment, masks, firearms and various things like that." (11:54).

To secure sizable contracts, the Cochrans sought significant upfront investments from friends and family, including Chris and Jennifer Davis. Jennifer recounts investing "$245,360.69 [...] [for] their retirement savings" (12:27). The scheme promised impressive returns, often citing fictional successes inspired by the movie War Dogs. Initially, the business seemed to flourish, allowing the Cochrans to live lavishly with multiple vehicles, overseas trips, and community enhancements.

3. The Downfall Begins: Financial Red Flags and Michael's Sudden Death

Unraveling of Trust and the Mystery of Michael’s Collapse

As TSG continued to solicit investments, discrepancies began to surface. The youth sports league managed by Chris Davis noticed missing funds, leading to suspicions about Natalie's financial dealings. Chris voiced his concerns, stating, "You don't have anything. It's all spent." (15:57).

The situation took a sinister turn when Michael collapsed on February 6, 2019. Natalie attributed his sudden comatose state to an overdose of insulin, claiming she needed it for her purportedly diabetic son, Gavin. However, investigation revealed that neither Natalie nor any family member was diabetic, raising immediate suspicions.

4. Investigation and Trial: Uncovering the Truth

Linking the Ponzi Scheme to Michael’s Death

The discovery of an unused vial of insulin in the Cochran household during a search warrant execution intensified suspicions. Jennifer Davis questioned, "What are you doing with the insulin in the refrigerator?" (51:12), highlighting inconsistencies in Natalie's explanations.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Uribe testified, "The cause of death was exogenous insulin administration," suggesting Michael was deliberately poisoned. Prosecutors argued that the impending exposure of the Ponzi scheme provided Natalie with a clear motive to eliminate Michael before he could blow the whistle. Timothy Bledsoe elaborated, "Natalie understood that the Ponzi scheme was about to collapse, and Michael was on the verge of discovering the truth." (53:34).

5. The Verdict and Aftermath: Justice Served

Conviction and Emotional Repercussions

After a thorough trial filled with emotional testimonies from the Davis family and forensic evidence linking insulin overdose to Natalie's actions, the jury convicted Natalie Cochran of first-degree murder. Jennifer Davis expressed profound relief: "We were so happy because we're finally getting justice for Michael after all these years." (76:27).

Natalie faced an 11-year prison sentence for fraud and murder, alongside a mandate to repay $2.5 million to defrauded investors. However, she planned to appeal her conviction, leaving affected families grappling with their losses both emotionally and financially.

6. Emotional Impact and Moving Forward

Healing and Memorializing Michael’s Legacy

The Cochran tragedy left deep scars in the Beckley community. Michael’s parents established a memorial bench in his honor, serving as a place for reflection and remembrance. Jennifer Davis shared, "As far as I'm concerned, justice has been done. She's where she needs to be." (79:33).

Despite the closure provided by the verdict, the communities involved continue to heal from the deceit and loss inflicted by the Cochran's actions. The episode concludes by highlighting the enduring pain and the strength families find in each other amidst profound tragedy.

Notable Quotes

• Chris Davis on Initial Trust: “They were building onto their house and they put up a new fence. Mike got a car. [...] They were doing very well.” (10:20)

• Jennifer Davis on Investment: “We invested $245,360.69. That was our retirement savings.” (12:27)

• Investigation Revelation: “I think it's clear that she poisoned him with insulin.” (51:03)

• Prosecution’s Theory: “Natalie understood that we cannot present a defense that would somehow skirt the issue of the Ponzi scheme or that would hide it from the jury.” (57:29)

• Final Verdict Reaction: “We were so happy because we're finally getting justice for Michael after all these years.” (76:27)

Conclusion

"Small Town, Big Con" serves as a poignant reminder of how trust and community bonds can be manipulated for personal gain, leading to irreversible consequences. Through meticulous storytelling and emotional testimonies, 20/20 offers listeners an in-depth exploration of the Cochran case, highlighting the fragility of trust and the profound impact of deceit within a tight-knit community.

Transcript

[David Muir]

Tonight, the trial so many have been talking about with details you haven't heard until now.

[Chris Davis]

It was just greed. More greed, more greed after that. What is this weird nightmare that's visited upon this couple?

[David Muir]

She's sick and now he's dying. For him to just go from being fine to suddenly comatose.

[Jennifer Davis]

What happened? What happened?

[Chris Davis]

They were a great couple. They loved each other. They always wanted to be together.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Two people with no background in federal contracting, suddenly they're going to be arms.

[David Muir]

Dealers for the federal government.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They were trusted in the community. A lot of the investors were family and close friends.

[David Muir]

Had Michael expressed any doubts about the business?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The Cochran business model seemed to be built on defrauding their friends and family.

[Chris Davis]

Investigators look at you and say, there were never any contracts, there were never any bids. It doesn't exist.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

When people found out, they want answers.

[Jennifer Davis]

I mean, it was all anyone could talk about.

[David Muir]

Your friend, 38 years old, is gone. Behind all the raw beauty in the untamed West Virginia mountainside are deep rooted secrets, lies and betrayal. And a small, close knit community is upended.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I was just calling to see if you knew when everything surrounding the investigation was gonna be over.

[Chris Davis]

I don't understand what you mean by the investigation.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They're asking people very personal questions about me and my husband's relationship. But I just can't keep living this way.

[David Muir]

And at the center of all that unraveling is this couple, the Cochrans.

[Jennifer Davis]

It was on a Tuesday night on December 23, 1980. 10:36pm Michael Brandon Cochran was born into the world.

[David Muir]

Tell me about Michael as a boy.

[Jennifer Davis]

He was a good kid. He always minded me, you know. Eddie came into his life when he was eight years old.

[Chris Davis]

When I met Michael, he had like a rat tail haircut. And with the spiked hair, we just kind of developed a good warmth relationship.

[David Muir]

What about sports though, Ed? He was really into sports.

[Chris Davis]

Oh yeah, yeah. He was playing like the pee wee baseball. You could just tell right then. He just took to it and was just like a natural.

[Jennifer Davis]

Michael Brandon was always playing baseball, basketball, football. He lifted weights as a hobby. He had a weight bench in his room. He got his first sand filled barbell set around 10 or 11 years old. And he would just go in there and turn his music up lo and just start working out. He just loved being healthy. Of course, he loved the muscles, he loved the way it made him feel. In high school they started having like powerlifting competitions. And Michael, he got first place. We were really proud of him.

[David Muir]

At age 17, Michael beats a girl named Natalie Jessup, also 17, during a trip to the mall. It will change his life forever.

[Jennifer Davis]

We had to go out to the sporting goods place place one day, and there she was working behind the counter and she was flirting with him really bad. You could tell that. And then the next thing I know, they were dating.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

She seemed to be a relatively driven student in school. She was passionate about what she did. She loved her family.

[David Muir]

After high school, both Michael and Natalie head off to West Virginia University, where he studies computers and she studies to be a pharmacist. The two freshmen had just started their first semester at WVU when Michael's mom, Donna, gets a call from Natalie.

[Jennifer Davis]

They got engaged in November of 1999. And when Michael got on the phone, I just said, michael, Brandon, what in the world are you doing?

[David Muir]

Were you happy for him to be marrying Natalie?

[Jennifer Davis]

I wanted him to wait. He had just graduated high school like maybe five months before, and I wanted him to just focus on his schooling. And then six months later, they were married.

[David Muir]

The couple are the picture of happiness in their wedding photo after graduation. They later have two children, and after six years of marriage, they settled in Daniels, West Virginia, here in this colonial home.

[Jennifer Davis]

It's a beautiful home on almost four acres of flat land. Michael renovated that house. He just completely gutted it, remodeled it from top to bottom.

[David Muir]

As the years went on. Did they have a happy marriage?

[Jennifer Davis]

As far as I know, they had happy marriage.

[Chris Davis]

You know, they just. They're starting their life now and starting their family. You know, they got good jobs.

[David Muir]

Natalie was working as a pharmacist and Michael was in it.

[Jennifer Davis]

Yes. Information technology. Yeah, it was like running cable wire, coaxial cable and things like that.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Life in West Virginia can kind of be summed up just like here. People really focus on work, family, and their faith.

[Chris Davis]

How was Michael as a dad? He was a proud dad. He doted on his kids and was a good provider, was involved with them, the school activities and stuff.

[David Muir]

The couple gets involved in their community.

[Jennifer Davis]

He was a football coach and he was a baseball coach.

[David Muir]

And wherever Michael was, you'd find Natalie working the sidelines.

[Jennifer Davis]

She was a sports socialite. When Michael was the coach, she was the one you got all the information from. She was the one that ordered the uniforms and got your sizes.

[Chris Davis]

He loved sports, and that was probably our biggest connection. Our family see their family at games and that's really how it got started, is just loving sports and hanging out.

[David Muir]

Are there stories that you remember that when you really do think back to you all as couples? It kind of Warms your heart that you remember.

[Chris Davis]

Oh, yes. Mike and I, we won a lot of championships together coaching our kids.

[David Muir]

Chris and Jennifer Davis bonded with the Cochrans over Little League, their young families and church. They even went on vacations together. Chris, a lawyer, was hired by Michael for a legal matter, and the two became friends. What was it that made them sort of fit into your world?

[Chris Davis]

It was really the family aspect. They were a great couple. They loved each other. They always wanted to be together. We gravitate toward friends who are always together and love their spouses because we're always together.

[David Muir]

So you were really close?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Yes, we were very close.

[David Muir]

So at some point, then you discover that one of your sons has diabetes.

[Chris Davis]

Initially, it's very grim because it's, hey, this is what this is. It's never going to change, and this is what it's going to require.

[David Muir]

Coincidentally, Natalie happened to specialize in diabetes management. How helpful was that for you in the beginning?

[Chris Davis]

Tremendous, tremendous.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

She was amazing. Like, she just gave us all the information we needed because you learn as you go.

[David Muir]

So she understood how insulin could affect the body 1000%. Then, seemingly out of the blue, the Cochrans make a career change and open a new business. So they seem to be doing well?

[Chris Davis]

Oh, absolutely. They're doing very well.

[Jennifer Davis]

I invested and I spent 256,000, and.

[David Muir]

This new venture will lead them straight to the CIA.

[Jennifer Davis]

Everybody is very involved with their kids around here. Into sports, and that's where parents usually hang out at school sporting events.

[David Muir]

Just like his dad, Michael Cochran's son loves sports, especially baseball. And it's a family affair. With Michael coaching local youth sports leagues, Natalie becomes treasurer of the middle school baseball program.

[Chris Davis]

She was heavily involved in that because Mike was a coach. They were involved in tons of leagues and different things.

[David Muir]

So you were all involved as friends in the sports world with your children?

[Chris Davis]

Yes, that's correct.

[Jennifer Davis]

We met the Cochrans because I had put my son into the draft for the Little League Baseball.

[David Muir]

Tony McCall met Michael and Natalie after her husband died of leukemia, leaving her a single mom to three children.

[Jennifer Davis]

Michael very much took on a father figure role, especially for Cash. He was so good to him. He took him everywhere. They went fishing, they went to practices. It was a dream come true to have that father figure when you don't have one for your kids and you want one.

[David Muir]

The Cochrans are a busy couple, both on and off the field. They open a business that is supposed to provide supplies to the federal government. It's called Tactical Solutions Group, or tsg. And they soon begin looking for big investors to help them pay the upfront money that is sometimes needed for government contracts. And to everybody's surprise, Natalie up and quits her job as a pharmacist, jumping into the new business completely.

[Chris Davis]

Great. You know, I mean if you can quit your job as a pharmacist, like oh wow.

[David Muir]

By all accounts, the new business appears to be flourishing.

[Chris Davis]

They were building onto their house and they put up a new fence. Mike got a car.

[David Muir]

So they seem to be doing well?

[Chris Davis]

Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. They're doing very well.

[David Muir]

Natalie tells friends they were inspired by that movie War Dogs, the one about two men with no experience in the defense industry who become arms dealers to the US Military and get in way over their heads.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They call guys like us War Dogs bottom feeders who make money off of war without ever stepping foot on the battlefield.

[Jennifer Davis]

When she told me that we're going to make all of our employees watch War Dogs as like an onboarding video, I said, well, you do realize that the guys went to jail, right?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It might surprise people to know that any civilian can seek a government contract.

[David Muir]

All you have to do is register.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

And then you can start bidding. It can be a small business, an individual, a nonprofit, agreeing to provide goods or services to the government at a specific rate at an agreed upon time. The process is you discover the contract, you bid on the contract, and if you're chosen, suddenly you're in business with the US government.

[David Muir]

The Cochrans website for their business TSG boasts impressive clientele from within the including the Department of Defense, fema, Homeland Security and the CIA.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Tactical Solutions Group was supposed to be a whole goods seller so they could sell health care equipment, masks, firearms and various things like that. Michael Cochran would spend hours sifting through all of these government contracts and he would tell Natalie what he'd found. She'd go to the investors and say Michael found the most incredible investment.

[David Muir]

What did you know about what this business was all about?

[Chris Davis]

They got this niche, a woman owned small business. The idea of the federal government will pay $50 for a $10 hammer. You just got to be able to get in there and get the contracts and fight with the big guys.

[David Muir]

And all the couple needs now is a little startup cash.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Most of their investors were friends, family people that they knew.

[Jennifer Davis]

We invested $245,360.69. That was our retirement savings.

[David Muir]

Michael's mom Donna remembers the first time Natalie approached her about investing in the family business. Do you remember what she said?

[Jennifer Davis]

Yeah. She asked us if we wanted to do the government contract. She said that she wanted to help us out, you know, when we got ready to retire.

[David Muir]

At what point did you decide that maybe this was something you might be interested in getting involved in?

[Jennifer Davis]

About a month later she told me that she was doing it for her parents, that they'd made $60,000 in five months. And so we thought, well, you know, maybe we'll give it a try.

[David Muir]

That's a pretty good return.

[Jennifer Davis]

Yes, ma'am, it sure is.

[David Muir]

Donna Boltz says her daughter in law claims she could get her initial investment back with profit, sometimes in as little as 10 days. So when they come to you for a potential investment, what's your initial thought?

[Chris Davis]

Well, my initial thought was sure.

[David Muir]

The Cochran's close friends Chris and Jennifer Davis say the couple approached them after church saying they needed some major cash to fulfill a contract for dental labs, saying if they didn't get the money right away, they'd lose the entire contract.

[Chris Davis]

But it was more than just, hey, do you want to invest? There were supposed to be dental facilities on military bases. That's why we couldn't see any of the documents because she knew I was going to ask that. I was like, what's the con? You know, well, you can't see it. You don't have authorization. We can't do that because Department of Defense. And so we were like, sure, yeah, man, we'll help out.

[David Muir]

How much were you investing?

[Chris Davis]

$511,000.

[David Muir]

When Chris Davis hears who's investing, he says it seems like a safe opportunity.

[Chris Davis]

I trusted all those names and people in the community, so if they were.

[David Muir]

Involved, it must be sound and good.

[Chris Davis]

Absolutely. The names that were lining up, it fit like, okay, these people aren't going to do anything crazy.

[David Muir]

Toni McCall says the circle of trust was how she too decides to invest.

[Jennifer Davis]

She had pulled someone in that I was close to and had been getting them to do contracts.

[David Muir]

She says that person calls one day with an opportunity for the two of them to go in on a contract, but they've got to do it immediately.

[Jennifer Davis]

It pays out in 45 days, but you have to do it right now, like ebay. She bids at the very last minute so that nobody can go in and bid over top of her. But you have to tell me right now. And so I, I did it. I spent $256,000.

[David Muir]

By all accounts, it seemed to be a safe bet. The Cochrans appear to be doing well.

[Jennifer Davis]

I had seen the money that they were spending.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They had multiple vehicles, they had motorcycles, they were buying trips overseas.

[David Muir]

The Cochrans are living the high life, but then suddenly the youth sports league is broke.

[Chris Davis]

This ain't good. I really felt in my heart that something was going on. You don't have anything. It's all spent.

[David Muir]

Could something be a foul at the little league in the small community of Beckley, West Virginia? After just a year, Natalie and Michael Cochran's business is doing very well. And family and friends noticed the couple seemed to be too.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It appeared that Natalie and Michael were quite wealthy, and they were living like they were. They had multiple vehicles. They had motorcycles. They were buying trips overseas to Paris. They went to Hawaii.

[Jennifer Davis]

You know, we just thought it was wonderful. We just thought they were doing so good that we were so proud of them.

[David Muir]

I mean, they had three homes, a pickup truck, motorcycles, a nice antique car.

[Jennifer Davis]

Him and Natalie drove up in a 1965 Shelby Cobra. It was a kit car. It was just something that they bought, and we were just very happy. We even took a ride in it.

[David Muir]

They were living much higher than the.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Majority of people in Beckley, West Virginia.

[David Muir]

Did you see a difference in how their lives seemed to be changing?

[Chris Davis]

Oh, yeah.

[David Muir]

You were on vacation together. What kind of vacations did you take?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

We did beach vacations, and then we went to New York City a couple times with them. Yeah. And so the typical sightseeing, shopping, everybody got along. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. It was fun.

[Chris Davis]

It was great.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It was a lot of fun.

[Chris Davis]

It was a lot of fun.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

From the outside, it appeared that a lot of the spending was on Michael's side.

[Chris Davis]

This was wealth that he had not experienced before, so he wanted to take advantage of it. Some of the things that Michael Cochran purchased in this period were recreational vehicles, an airplane hangar. He had ambitions and endeavors to open up an aviation branch to this business. He really, really wanted to fly, and he loved that type of stuff. He was working on his pilots now. He wanted to fly helicopters.

[Jennifer Davis]

They were a great couple to get that kind of money. They were doing things for people, and I mean, good things.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Michael, especially was doing a lot of charity work. He donated a weight room to a local middle school. When he found out his youth pastor was going to be homeless for a while, he actually purchased a property for him to live in.

[David Muir]

Natalie even gets involved with local organizations and charities.

[Chris Davis]

She volunteered, wanted to do this and wanted to do that.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

She was helping us with juvenile diabetes research, all the fundraisers for that, and then we did a 5k run. She was good at that. She would organize it, get sponsors, get the word out.

[Jennifer Davis]

One time, she and Mike were at the House. And she told me that they were going to buy a town in Africa because that was going to be their mission. You know, pay for everyone's home and build homes.

[David Muir]

Natalie also helps raise money for the middle school baseball league. Their friend Chris is board president.

[Chris Davis]

We had a fundraiser, and from the fundraiser, we believe we raised a little over 15,000. It was a big deal.

[David Muir]

As treasurer of the Little League, Natalie manages the bank account. But members get suspicious when the money all but disappears. But you knew there was a big chunk of money in there?

[Chris Davis]

Yes. There should have been over $20,000 in there. Absolutely.

[David Muir]

Any idea of how it was drained like that?

[Chris Davis]

Nobody knew it was missing until we were told it's missing.

[David Muir]

The league brings in a private investigator to look into where the money's gone.

[Chris Davis]

I talked to the board, and I explained to them, you don't have anything but $31 in a frozen bank account. There's no records of anything as to where this money went. It's all spent.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

There was an audit that was done. There were purchases made that weren't approved by the league.

[Chris Davis]

There was purchases the TJ Maxx, purchases the Olive Garden. And then when I started adding it up, I'm like, $32,000 in one night. You raise for two sports teams, and it all just disappears. I mean, there's no way to rectify that.

[David Muir]

Questions are now swirling over the missing money, and if Natalie could be involved. And when some investors with the Cochrans business get wind of it, they're getting concerned about the money they've been promised. As time is going on and you're not hearing anything, are you starting to panic at all?

[Jennifer Davis]

We'd ask. We'd say, natalie, we need our money. I said, you know what? Our car's going to break down. We need the money back. She would say, it's coming, I promise. And then she would send me text messages and say, your money is going to be deposited in your bank account within the next 24 hours. And we'd wait, and it was never there.

[David Muir]

You didn't get anything?

[Jennifer Davis]

No.

[David Muir]

Donna says that any communication she had about the couple's business was typically with Natalie, not her son.

[Jennifer Davis]

Every time that I received any kind of message, it was a text message from Natalie. It was she and I that was constantly going back and forth with contracts.

[David Muir]

Meantime, Natalie continues to portray the business as extremely successful.

[Chris Davis]

From the outside looking in, I would have probably been, like, pretty impressed. Thought, man, right here in, you know, Raleigh County, West Virginia, these people are knocking it out of the park.

[David Muir]

One investor says, it's astonishing how much money Natalie says she's pulling in.

[Jennifer Davis]

She did give me a number at the time. You know, this was like, 343 million we're going to have to put in this bank. That was a little hard to believe.

[David Muir]

Natalie and Michael tell a local bank.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Their business is worth more than $500 million when they apply for a $100,000 loan.

[Chris Davis]

Was her business worth $500 million? No. Absolutely not.

[David Muir]

It turns out that Cochran's business is not what it appears to be.

[Chris Davis]

I said in pure West Virginian, this ain't good. I really felt in my heart something was going on.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The fundamental problem is that it was all a lie.

[David Muir]

And when secrets come to light is far worse than anyone could have imagined.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

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[David Muir]

There is nothing wrong with doing well and having a successful business.

[Chris Davis]

The Cochrans and their business, Tactical Solutions Group, put themselves out to be legitimate government contractors who were bidding on legitimate government contracts.

[Jennifer Davis]

She always made all of them look like they were good investments.

[Chris Davis]

The problem is there never was any legitimate income flowing from government contracts. All the money and cash flow is coming from investors. There were no contracts. There were never any contracts. There were never any bids. It doesn't exist.

[David Muir]

The businesses didn't exist at all, really legitimately.

[Chris Davis]

They existed on paper. It was clear that it was a Ponzi scheme.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

When it comes to a Ponzi scheme, there's no real business. There's no money being generated. Early investors get paid by new investor money, like shifting poker chips from one pile to another. And as long as the money's coming in from new investors, The Ponzi scheme can continue if you're just taking one.

[David Muir]

Investor'S money and giving it to another.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Investor as if it's a legitimate return on their investment.

[David Muir]

That's a fraud.

[Jennifer Davis]

I said, no, these are friends of mine. I've seen what they've done in the community.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Successful Ponzi schemes almost always rely on trust, and you often find that people start very close to home. The Cochrane business model seemed to be built on defrauding their friends and family. Many of them knew them their entire lives and they had no reason to not trust them.

[Jennifer Davis]

It would hurt a lot less for this to have been someone that I didn't know, that had scammed me out of money. It would hurt a lot less. I was already wounded from my husband passing away and my kids the same.

[David Muir]

These were friends, neighbors, and family members who were defrauded. And the question is whether Michael knew about it.

[Jennifer Davis]

Michael was not the brains of the couple. He was a great guy, but Natalie was the brains of the operation. And Michael would look for contracts on the government website and then he would give them to Natalie and she would make the bid.

[David Muir]

Had Michael expressed any concerns, any doubts about the business to you?

[Chris Davis]

Not about the business. He was stressed about the government. He did not understand why the government will not give them their money, and he just couldn't figure it out. How can they do this?

[David Muir]

But of course, the federal government didn't owe the Cochrans any money because they'd never conducted any business with them.

[Chris Davis]

Michael Cochran was asking her questions very similar to the questions being asked by the investors who were trying to get their money back.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

She was giving the same excuses to Michael that she was giving to the investors.

[Jennifer Davis]

Natalie would tell me, we're being audited. There's a government shutdown. There was always some excuse with her.

[Chris Davis]

The lives and paychecks of some 800,000 federal workers hanging in the balance.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Around Christmas time in 2018, there was a government shutdown. And it lasted until January 25th of the following year. Day 32 of the government shutdown now.

[David Muir]

Beginning at second month.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

We have never seen this. Natalie used this whole government shutdown to her advantage. Her investors were coming and saying, we want our money, we'd like to pull it out. And she would say, well, I can't. The government is shut down. There's no way to get access to your money. They're not paying anybody. She had a never ending list of reasons that they were not seeing their returns. When she could no longer blame the federal government for. For the delays, she turned To, I guess, more of the emotional side of, you know, saying that she had cancer.

[Jennifer Davis]

We're feeling bad for her. You know, she even told us that she had cancer, that she wasn't going to do anything about it. She was going to let God take care of it, and if he took her on, then that would be fine. And I just got so distraught and emotional and I kept telling her she needed to fight, not to give up.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

She said she was in stage three. Her and Mike were talking about not going through chemo and radiation and just living what life she has left.

[David Muir]

Was that devastating?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Oh, completely.

[Chris Davis]

We were all pretty devastated to the point we all get the paperwork to go get our bone marrow tested to see if there was any way we could help her.

[David Muir]

Remember, Tony McCall had lost her husband to leukemia. She was skeptical about Natalie's claim of having cancer.

[Jennifer Davis]

I believe that Natalie used the leukemia to stall on having any payments. I knew she didn't have stage three leukemia because it's not in stages, it's in types. Everything pointed to the fact that she did not have it. She had told us that she was losing her hair from the chemo she was taking. And she flips her hair over and she has the perfect dime sized circle where she has shaved a spot in her hair. And if you lose your hair from chemo, you don't see five o'clock shadow. What woman would shave a spot on their head to say, look, I'm losing my hair? And so I absolutely knew at that point that she would do anything to cover up and to lie.

[David Muir]

Then early one morning, Michael and Natalie are set to take a private plane to Virginia for a scheduled bank meeting. But they never make that flight.

[Jennifer Davis]

I just kept asking her what happened, what happened.

[Chris Davis]

On the morning of February 6th? The plan was that the Cochrans, Michael and Natalie, were going to fly to Virginia to visit the bank of America there. She had text messages going with me and Jennifer.

[David Muir]

So the morning of February 6th, they were going to go take a flight.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

She said she was too sick to fly. She had the flu and the norovirus and it hit her so hard because of her cancer. She had gone to the doctor and they put her on such a high dose of steroids that her blood sugar was elevated. She had asked to borrow a bottle of insulin.

[David Muir]

So she needed a bottle of your son's insulin?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Yes. And I told her that Chris was getting ready to leave the house, that he could drop it off for her. Chris drops the insulin. Around 10:30 that morning, Jennifer and Chris receive a photo about two hours later, around 12:30, of Michael laying unconscious in the Cochran's kitchen floor.

[Jennifer Davis]

Michael was laying in the fetal position in the floor in his kitchen.

[David Muir]

So she sends a photo out of him on the floor.

[Chris Davis]

Yeah. And my reaction in the text was, is he okay? What's going on? He's fine. The contractors are here putting him on the couch. Okay.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Michael is moved from the floor to the couch. People start coming into the home saying, hey, you should probably take him to the hospital.

[David Muir]

Throughout the day, some of the couple's friends come to the house while others text. Natalie worried about Michael.

[Chris Davis]

Every time we would check on him, we would get, he's fine.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

He's going to sleep it off.

[Chris Davis]

He's going to sleep. He's sleeping it off.

[Jennifer Davis]

She said that he was sleeping it off on the couch.

[Chris Davis]

The wording of the messages were as if she was communicating with him. He won't go to the hospital.

[David Muir]

He won't go to the hospital.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Yes.

[Chris Davis]

When she says he won't go to the hospital, in my mind I'm thinking that he's told her, I'm not going to go to the hospital.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Almost unilaterally. All of Natalie's friends were urging her to take Michael to the hospital. And Michael needed medical attention.

[Chris Davis]

And so you're looking at close to eight hours that this man, that he was incapacitated, he was unconscious, he was on the couch and pretty much unresponsive. I get a message at around 6:30, I'm at Gavin's basketball game and the message says, can you come by after the game?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Chris Davis shows up and insists that they take Michael to the hospital. And they load Michael in the car.

[Chris Davis]

I knew something was wrong. He's just totally unresponsive. I was like, well, he's got to go. He's got to go to the hospital.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

He's been unconscious for seven, eight hours. Like we're getting him to the hospital.

[Chris Davis]

Michael got to the ER at Raleigh General Hospital. His blood glucose was at 21, he was critical, and he was intubated.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

A blood glucose level of 21 would be extremely low, dangerously low, and basically result likely in some sort of massive cognitive dysfunction, coma, seizure, even death.

[David Muir]

Michael's parents are at home that night with no idea of their son's condition.

[Jennifer Davis]

We came home from church, watched a little tv. I was in the bed. Eddie brought me my phone. He said, you got a text message from Natalie. It's 10:30 at night.

[David Muir]

Concerned by such a late night text, Michael's mom, Donna, checks Natalie's message.

[Jennifer Davis]

She Sent me a picture. There's Michael Brandon in the bed and he's on the ventilator, unconscious, unresponsive.

[David Muir]

The Davises also received texts from Natalie showing Michael in the hospital.

[Jennifer Davis]

I just kept asking her on text message, what happened, what happened?

[David Muir]

Doctors determine that Michael is suffering from cerebral edema.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Cerebral edema is the medical term for swelling in the brain. We usually think about cerebral edema in the setting of a big bleed or a traumatic event.

[Jennifer Davis]

Michael Brandon, he was fighting, fighting to breathe. He was trying his best to live.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Michael spends at least four and a half days in a hospital in Charleston.

[Chris Davis]

She makes this decision, you know, she's going to take him off the ventilator and everything.

[David Muir]

What are you thinking at that point, Jennifer?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I think there's total shock. I just remember thinking, this isn't happening. This is. This can't be real. Yeah, this was so tragic.

[Chris Davis]

What is this weird nightmare that just. My goodness.

[David Muir]

That's visited upon this couple? Yeah, she's sick and now he's dying.

[Chris Davis]

Like those poor kids. My goodness. Like, this is awful. It was awful. For five days he received medical treatment. He was in a coma, never regained consciousness and passed away on February 11th at the Hospice House in Beckley.

[David Muir]

Your friend, 38 years old, within days is gone.

[Chris Davis]

It was awful. It was tragic. It's just sad. You know, we went to the funeral. It just all seems surreal. Everything's just kind of like you're like in this fog, you know, just, just unimaginable.

[Jennifer Davis]

After Mike had passed, Natalie called me one day and said that I've created this scholarship in his memory.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Natalie starts a scholarship called the Coach Michael Cochran Legacy Scholarship. It appeared that Natalie was selecting people who were family members. There were also people that Michael coached.

[David Muir]

Tony McCall's son is one of those high school students that Natalie had offered a four year college scholarship to.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

These scholarships, they're the kind that kids dream of.

[David Muir]

Natalie, newly widowed, continues running her businesses. But then four months after her husband's death, she suddenly decides to sell nearly half of Tactical Solutions Group for $4 million.

[Chris Davis]

She had negotiated to sell that business.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

With a buyer offering to buy a.

[Chris Davis]

49% interest of her business. So this buyer had wired her $50,000 as an earnest deposit on his buy in to this business.

[David Muir]

But before the deal can go through, police show up at the Cochran home with a search warrant.

[Jennifer Davis]

She said, oh, they came here and they took everything. When they raided her house that day in June, that was huge. I mean, it was all anyone could talk about.

[David Muir]

When police search the Cochran Home, they find something unexpected that could explain Michael's sudden death.

[Chris Davis]

A man, you know, 38 years old, what a fitness guru he was to suddenly die in the midst of financial crimes occurring. I mean, that's pretty suspicious.

[David Muir]

So they decide to exhume Michael Cochran's body. Does the big con turn into an even bigger crime?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

At first, this was just a Ponzi scheme investigation.

[David Muir]

Tonight, all eyes on the headline making court case that just wrapped.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The interest in this case was huge. Police are investigating the death of Michael Cochran.

[Chris Davis]

To suddenly die in the midst of allegations of financial crimes was pretty suspicious.

[David Muir]

So you think he was duped as well?

[Chris Davis]

100%.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I believe that the defense counsel made it clear they were living this lavish lifestyle. So how couldn't he have known that this was a Ponzi scheme?

[Jennifer Davis]

Natalie weaved such a web of lies, keeping us all drinking the kool aid.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They open the fridge, they find the vial of insulin.

[Chris Davis]

That was huge.

[David Muir]

Did anybody take insulin in the house?

[Jennifer Davis]

No. I said insulin. What are you doing with the insulin in the refrigerator?

[David Muir]

Prosecution called that the murder weapon.

[Chris Davis]

What keeps Gavin alive.

[Jennifer Davis]

She used take life.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Just in shock. I was still in shock.

[David Muir]

The defense can say maybe he died of something else.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I know that he took steroids and he took many other supplements. He was a kicking bomb.

[David Muir]

Your daughter in law is being accused of killing your son.

[Jennifer Davis]

We have. How do you kill somebody that you're supposed to love?

[David Muir]

It's been seven months since 38 year old Michael Cochran's death. And private eye James Quesenberry sends an employee on an undercover mission to Michael's wife Natalie's garage.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I just seen a sign. Figured I'd come out this way.

[Chris Davis]

Oh, she was selling a bunch of things and items at her house.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

This is security camera cable and then this is ethernet cable.

[David Muir]

He's there to secretly get a closer look.

[Chris Davis]

The question was still out there of whether she was sitting on a pile of money. All these different questions. You don't want to sell the rest of anything else?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Not really. I'm going to keep those for my son. And my husband passed away, so my dad helped me go through it. And we kept things that my son might use when he grows up. Okay.

[Chris Davis]

Had there been something there that shouldn't have been there, would have turned it over to law enforcement. She's all smiles and looking at him and trying to be polite. And as soon as he turns his back, she changes her look. Like her whole demeanor changes.

[David Muir]

In the months since Michael Cochran's death, authorities have started to take a hard look at the Cochrans so called businesses.

[Chris Davis]

I received a phone call from a trooper who had spoke with a local business person who had purchased some firearms from the Cochrans. And he had a problem with getting his firearms delivered or the money returned. And he was looking for help in resolving that matter. He had been solicited to be an investor in contracts. He never did it because the information he was receiving from Natalie Cochran on these investment solicitations didn't make sense to him. I was like, yes, we definitely need to take a look at this.

[David Muir]

So that disgruntled customer then connected investigators with someone who said he had investigated with Natalie Cochran.

[Chris Davis]

The problem that he was encountering was he kept getting excuse after excuse after excuse with getting his money returned. Bob was going through the records as they were coming in and so, you know, there's a ton of information there to go through. And Bob's looking at it. We're sitting there one day and he goes, I'll be damned. He said, it's a damn Ponzi scheme.

[David Muir]

As they dig in, they take notice of the investigation into that Little League account. Remember, board members had been suspicious of Natalie after money had gone missing.

[Chris Davis]

The shady Spring Little League bank account is one of the many accounts she used to facilitate her Ponzi scheme. Natalie would deposit from their company and then sift it back out in various different ways.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Natalie called the alleged financial crimes bogus and ultimately authorities decided not to charge her with anything related to the Little League.

[Chris Davis]

The league never recouped any money. It was all just lost.

[David Muir]

It's late into the summer. And those generous Michael Cochran legacy scholarships which Natalie had promised students are now supposed to be paid out.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

There were eight people in total. They are full ride scholarships for up to eight years.

[David Muir]

Tony McCall's son was given one of those college scholarships.

[Jennifer Davis]

There was no money. It was a fake scholarship. Natalie weaved such a web of lies. They were bizarre like that. It was still keeping us all in the flock.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Natalie Cochran has insisted the scholarships would have been paid if her assets had hadn't eventually been frozen by the government. But investigators had a different view.

[Chris Davis]

When she created these, we saw that as an attempt to dispel rumors. Rumors were circulating that her business was being looked at, that she didn't have this wealth or this money. We had pretty clearly identified at least, and I may be under at least 10 known victims of the Ponzi scheme. The most obvious red flag at the time was the that nobody was getting any money back. We had more than enough evidence and documentation to proceed with indictment.

[David Muir]

So she's arrested?

[Jennifer Davis]

Yes.

[David Muir]

What did you think of that?

[Jennifer Davis]

We were glad when she was arrested, she was wearing the tailgate socialite T shirt. That was the true Natalie right there.

[David Muir]

Natalie Cochran faces 26 charges related to the fraud. She pleads not guilty, but her investors are deeply distraught over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost money.

[Jennifer Davis]

I spent $256,511,000, almost a quarter of a million dollars over the course of two and a half years. We loved her, and we believed her. Everything she told us, we believed everything she said to us.

[David Muir]

Chris Davis says he, too, was taken in by his trust in Natalie and by the impressive paperwork she supplied. It looks legitimate. I mean, there are a lot of companies and there are a lot of entities here. Why would she do this?

[Chris Davis]

I don't know if it was the greed or the position or status.

[David Muir]

Reaching a deal with prosecutors, Natalie pled guilty to two counts, an unlawful monetary transaction and wire fraud. And then she went off to prison for 11 years for fraud.

[Jennifer Davis]

She did May 1 of 2021 is when she finally went into the prison at Hazelton.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The court also ordered her to pay.

[David Muir]

Back $2.5 million to the investors she fleeced.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

But with little income coming in, it.

[David Muir]

Will likely be a very long process. Did you feel that was fair? That was right?

[Chris Davis]

The judge said, if I can give you more, I would. He acknowledged the fact that the lawyers had reached this plea agreement and had capped what he could have done to her. So, no, at that moment, I didn't believe it was fair. And just as I told the judge, there's 2.5 million reasons why it wasn't fair.

[David Muir]

But this isn't over yet. A search warrant in the fraud case had led investigators into the Cochran home and brought an unexpected surprise.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They open the fridge. They find the vial of insulin. It's suspicious that it shouldn't be there. Nobody in the family is diabetic.

[David Muir]

Does that insulin have anything to do with Michael Cochran's death? We'll hear from his wife, Natalie for the first time as investigators hit her with some tough questions.

[Chris Davis]

Having a conversation with Natalie Cochran.

[David Muir]

This investigation is just getting started.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

At first, this was just a Ponzi scheme investigation.

[David Muir]

But as authorities investigate the fraud case, they also begin questioning Michael Cochran's unexpected death.

[Chris Davis]

Michael Cochran, who was 38 years old, seemingly a fit, healthy man. He took care of himself. He did work out, worked out all the time. To suddenly die in the midst of allegations of financial crimes, that's pretty suspicious.

[David Muir]

No autopsy had been done on Michael Cochran.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The death certificate issued by the hospice.

[David Muir]

Where he died listed natural causes.

[Chris Davis]

There was no medical examiner involvement. Natalie Cochran gave different versions of what happened with Michael on February 6th to multiple people.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

So authorities arrange a meeting with Natalie.

[Chris Davis]

Today's date is April 8, 2019. I can explain to her. We were looking into Michael's death. Allie, just tell me how things progressed with Michael.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Every mistake, whatever Davies were going to be, somebody started hanging up in this thing. And I heard him hit his head. And then I went in there and he had fallen. And so I didn't know what to do because Michael was very adamant after he got out of hospital. He said, if you ever took me to the hospital, damn, he's going to get it.

[David Muir]

Turns out Michael had been hospitalized for several days back in November for potential exposure to black mold. Natalie says she thought one of his training supplements could have been making him sick.

[Chris Davis]

It was her belief that Michael had taken an overdose of this supplement that she alleged was coming from Mexico.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I'd always been on that. The stuff's not safe. It even came in a bottle that said for animal use only, not for human ingestion. It was, like, serious. Right. We've taken it to getting mats and to keep its belt cut up.

[Chris Davis]

Gotcha.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

And it also had an insulin containment in it, which bodybuilders can manipulate insulin to cut muscles.

[Chris Davis]

She introduces insulin in the discussion as part of why Michael Cochran's weightlifting regimen.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Mike was all about. He was just very into body.

[Chris Davis]

Is there any chance that he would have purposely taken too much of that?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

He did purposely take too much, but he was trying to super load.

[Chris Davis]

There was always this effort to make sure that there was an explanation for insulin being somehow involved in Michael's death. In the third conversation, she brought up that Michael was injecting with insulin. She had done a complete pivot from where it was all this supplement. Now Michael's injecting insulin. The insulin he was doing through injection.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Correct. He would inject it before meals so that it would cover any carbs that he ate. Insulin is used primarily by diabetics to essentially help us regulate the blood sugar in our body.

[Chris Davis]

He wasn't diabetic? Obviously.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

No.

[David Muir]

And remember, the fraud investigation is still ongoing.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

In June of 2019, federal and state authorities conduct a search of the Cochran house. Natalie is there.

[Chris Davis]

She was in the garage. The search warrant was done based off the financial crime information investigation only. We anticipated finding additional evidence regarding this.

[David Muir]

Ponzi scheme, But they found something else they didn't expect.

[Chris Davis]

Sometimes things Happen in investigations that you call it fake. I started rummaging through the refrigerator and there's this bottle of insulin sitting right there.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It shouldn't be there. Nobody in the family is diabetic.

[Chris Davis]

That was huge. Where did it come from? Whose is it?

[David Muir]

Natalie's got the same answer for authorities and for Michael's mother.

[Jennifer Davis]

She said, oh, they came here and they took everything. And she said, they even took the insulin out of the refrigerator.

[David Muir]

Now, what did you make of that? Did anybody take insulin in the house?

[Jennifer Davis]

No. I said, insulin? What are you doing with the insulin in the refrigerator? I keep that here. She said, for Gavin when he came over, if he needed a shock because he's a diabetic, you believed it. We did.

[David Muir]

Remember, Gavin is Chris and Jennifer Davis son. They tell authorities they never stored his insulin at the Cochran house. But then they recalled the bag they left for Natalie the morning Michael collapsed.

[Chris Davis]

The investigators said, did she ever borrow insulin from you? And that's when Jennifer was like, yeah, she needed it. She had cancer and she got sick. And that's when they were like, you know when. And I felt like at that moment we both were like, oh, my goodness. Because now we know that she's a thief and a fraud. When we started seeing the text messages with Jennifer Davis about insulin, it was very revealing if you believe the previous things that Natalie has said. She should have already had insulin readily available in the home. So it made no sense to go through all this effort. I think it's clear that she poisoned him with insulin.

[David Muir]

Authorities develop a theory of how Natalie may have used insulin to kill Michael.

[Chris Davis]

When he's finally taken to the emergency room, he presented with a blood sugar level of 21. He's not diabetic.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

You get low blood sugar by receiving too much insulin. Natalie had access to insulin. She had the means to inject it. She knew exactly what insulin would do.

[David Muir]

Investigators believe there's enough circumstantial evidence to tie Natalie to Michael's death.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

39 year old Natalie Cochran is now accused of the February 2019 murder of her husband Michael.

[David Muir]

Natalie Cochran pleads not guilty. Was that hard for you to accept that your daughter in law is being accused of killing your son?

[Jennifer Davis]

Yeah, it was really hard to believe because, I mean, how do you kill somebody that, that you're supposed to love and they're your children's father?

[David Muir]

But why would Natalie want to kill her husband?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The investigators thought the text messages looked suspicious. Michael didn't know about the Ponzi scheme, but he was learning.

[Chris Davis]

Michael was about to discover he didn't have millions, perhaps a billion dollars of legitimately earned income inbound from the federal government. And that was a problem for Natalie. Here is exactly the motive of why she felt like she had to kill Michael.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Opening arguments began today in the Natalie Cochran trial.

[David Muir]

In January, more than three years after she was indicted for the first degree murder of her husband Michael, Natalie Cochran's trial is finally underway.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

There were media outlets from all over the country here. The interest in this case was huge.

[David Muir]

You may be seen, for Michael's family and friends, the three year wait for justice has been agonizing. How tough was that for you all to just have this thing drag on before it's going to be resolved?

[Chris Davis]

It was hard, yes, Very hard.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Spent lots of time praying.

[David Muir]

What was it like for you to see Natalie in that courtroom?

[Jennifer Davis]

I can't say that I really even thought about her. We just had to get justice for Michael.

[David Muir]

Natalie Cochran is a young woman. An 11 year sentence with good times served for the Ponzi scheme is relatively short versus a life sentence sentence for murder. Those stakes are incredibly high.

[Chris Davis]

All right now, Mr. Truman, you may proceed. Thank you. On February 5th of 2019, Michael Cochran was a 200 pound, healthy, 38 year old man. By midday of February 6th of 2019, he had lost consciousness and he would never regain consciousness. The state needs to get ahead of the fact that it's an entirely circumstantial case. You gotta tell the jury you're not gonna get the stuff you get on tv. There's no DNA, there's no fingerprints.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

This is it.

[Chris Davis]

But that's enough to convict.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

This is a complex case, lady chairman of the jury, but it's built by the state of West Virginia on conjectures and innuendos and glaringly lacking in motive and the evidence necessary to prove that my client killed her husband. Natalie understood that we cannot present a defense that would somehow skirt the issue of the Ponzi scheme or that would hide it from the jury. We admitted to the jury what was well known to everybody. The fact that she is perhaps a fraud and perhaps a cheat, and that you wouldn't perhaps want to invite her home for Sunday dinner, that you wouldn't like her, does not translate into being a murderer. We absolutely believe that the imminent failure of the Ponzi scheme was Natalie's motive to kill Michael. That was going to happen, and it was going to happen very, very quickly if she didn't act.

[Chris Davis]

What Michael Cochran didn't know is certainly one of the most important questions here. But to to me, what's more important is what he was about to know, the consequences that would come when he found out that information.

[David Muir]

And at the heart of the case, a vial of insulin. Prosecutors called that the murder weapon.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Davis]

What keeps Gavin alive, she used keto. She used to take life.

[David Muir]

On the morning of February 6, Jennifer Davis remembers getting a text from Natalie asking to borrow that insulin. She testifies about that exchange.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Can you just explain to me what's going on in this conversation? She said that her and Mike, they were both sick and she had to start taking small insulin shots. Did you provide that insulin to her? I put the insulin in a bag and gave it to my husband, and he dropped it off on the porch on the way to work. Several hours later, Natalie sends Jennifer a picture of Michael unconscious on the kitchen floor. What did this picture mean to you when you received it? Just that. It was just shocking that he was laying there. Natalie contacts two construction workers that had worked for the family. Says, Michael's on the floor. I'm going to need help picking him up from the floor and taking him into the living room. So after Chris Davis drops off the bag of insulin, Natalie sends out a text. She invites several friends over throughout the day to check on his condition and essentially make sure he's okay, but not take him to the hospital.

[David Muir]

In a statement to ABC News, Natalie Cochran says that, quote, mike hated the hospital. He threatened several people that we better not take him back. Stephanie Hamilton, a physician's assistant, came over.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

To check Michael out and found him non responsive. What did you specifically ask that he needed to be checked? I said, even people with the history of seizures, anytime they have one, they need to be checked. I kept offering, like I would go with her. She said she was going to let him sleep it off. You also heard from her later death.

[Chris Davis]

Take a look at that 21.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

What does that mean? No one should ever have a blood sugar of 21.

[Chris Davis]

What's gonna happen if they do?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

They're in a coma, probably near death.

[David Muir]

At some point you go over.

[Chris Davis]

Yes. And I walk in the living room. He's laying on the couch like he's sleeping. What did you do? So I go over to him. I just remember saying, man, hey, buddy, I'm gonna take you to the hospital. And that's exactly what I did.

[David Muir]

But by this time, it's too late.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Michael gets to the hospital, but the damage has been done.

[Chris Davis]

Take a moment. You're okay.

[David Muir]

Chris. It was very tough for you in court when they showed you the photo that you had Already seen of Mike?

[Chris Davis]

Yeah.

[David Muir]

Why did it hit you so hard?

[Chris Davis]

I wished I could have got to him first.

[David Muir]

Over two days, prosecutors have meticulously laid out the timeline of the day Michael Cochran died. The question now will they be able to prove that it was his wife Natalie who killed him?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. It's Brad Milkey, host of ABC's Daily News podcast.

[Chris Davis]

Start here.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

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[Jennifer Davis]

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[Timothy Bledsoe]

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[Chris Davis]

Mr. Truman, you may call your first witness.

[David Muir]

As prosecutors lay out their case against Natalie Cochran, they intend to show that she not only had the means, but the motive and the opportunity to kill her husband Michael back in February of 2019.

[Chris Davis]

Thank you, Honor.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The state calls Robert Heinsman.

[Chris Davis]

Raise your right hand.

[David Muir]

Thanks, sir.

[Chris Davis]

Bob Heinzman was the primary investigator of the defendant's Ponzi scheme and he explained there was really no evidence that Michael knew what was going on. Now the defenses has floated the theory that Michael Cochran was up to his eyeballs in this pontification. From your investigation, do you have any evidence that would support that he believed that they had obtained contracts and that they would be receiving money for these contracts. Do you have any evidence that he knew that this was a fraud being carried out? No.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It was important to hammer home that Michael Cochran was at least cognizant of the scheme because it would destroy the state's theory of why it happened. Have you in your thorough investigation of this case talked to the children of Mr. And Mrs. Cochran?

[Chris Davis]

No.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Would it surprise you if I told you that they observed their parents work on the federal contracts and you telling them this jury that he had not no knowledge of these contracts?

[Chris Davis]

I'm not telling the jury that I said that he knew about the Contracts that he was led to believe were bid on by their business.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The investigation had revealed that Michael was beginning to ask some really tough questions of Natalie about where the money was going.

[Chris Davis]

The day before February 5th of 2019, it was arranged by the Cochrans to charter a flight from Beckley down to Lynchburg, Virginia, to meet with the bank of America banker. And of course, that was a meeting that Natalie could never allow to happen, because if it did happen, then Michael would know, and that would have been the end of her Ponce scheme.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Court Nixon was an employee of bank of America. He tested, testified via zoom in this trial because he's not local.

[Chris Davis]

And that was to take place February 6th of 2019, correct?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Correct. Looks like they said they were going to fly in, and so we were.

[Chris Davis]

Basically responding to their schedule and extending.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Things up as best we could.

[Chris Davis]

Did that meeting take place? Never took place.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Natalie was becoming desperate. At this point.

[David Muir]

Prosecutors argue that if Michael was in the dark, Natalie's deception was about to come to light.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Putting Jennifer Davis on the stand explains how Natalie got the insulin that she needed to kill Michael. Jennifer, at this point, you were offering to help out a friend in need. Is that fair to say? Yes. Did she accept your offer of help? Yes, she did. She asked if she could borrow a vial of insulin. According to Dr. Uribe, who was one of our forensic pathologists, the only way that Michael's blood sugar could have plummeted to 21 was if someone else had given him insulin.

[Chris Davis]

There was profound hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia is low blood glucose. Once he was treated for the hypoglycemia, the blood sugar went up, and then it went back down again. To me, that is a significant pattern.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

And why is that pattern significant to you?

[Chris Davis]

Because there are only a few things that can do that. One of the big things is insulin administration.

[David Muir]

But the defense poses an important question. Could Michael have injected himself as part of a bodybuilding regimen? Dr. Uribe pushes back against that suggestion.

[Chris Davis]

To my knowledge, bodybuilders don't use insulin.

[David Muir]

During the murder investigation, Michael's remains were exhumed, and Dr. Uribe conducted an autopsy.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

And what did you determine were Michael Cochran's cause and manner of death?

[Chris Davis]

I came to the conclusion that the cause of death was exogenous insulin administration.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The honor of the state calls Timothy Bledsoe to the stand. Tim was able to draw all of the parallels and connect all of the pieces. He was able to explain for the jury how and why the Ponte scheme was and the Failure of the Ponzi scheme led to the murder of Michael Cochran.

[Chris Davis]

It was about telling that story, you know, another piece to the puzzle. And I think, overall, I think we were successful.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

And we previously heard Jennifer Davis testify that she had insulin sent to the defendant's home. Is that your understanding?

[Chris Davis]

Yes.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Do you recall why the defendant needed the insulin that morning?

[Chris Davis]

I believe it was something related to cancer treatment.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

And throughout the entire course of your investigation, did you ever uncover any evidence that the defendant had cancer?

[Chris Davis]

No.

[David Muir]

Did you waver at all? Did you wonder maybe the prosecutors had this wrong, that it was just a horrible set of circumstances?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Not once they talked to us. And then I started going back there through, you know, my text and, you know, Chris and I started talking, and then I was just in shock. Disbelieve. I'm still in shock. It just doesn't seem real at all. But it was hard.

[David Muir]

Prosecutors have rested their case. Now it's the defense's turn to persuade the jury that Natalie Cochrane. And to do that, they bring in their own star witnesses. Michael and Natalie's children.

[Chris Davis]

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Yes, you, Honor.

[David Muir]

The state has wrapped its case of circumstances evidence. Now it's the defense's turn.

[Chris Davis]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Good morning.

[David Muir]

They believe there's not enough evidence to prove that Natalie Cochran killed her husband Michael.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

The answer in the courtroom was, what's the defense gonna bring? You could sense some anxiety there of what the defense was gonna say about Michael to try and explain away Natalie's actions.

[David Muir]

The defense has always already told the jury that Michael Cochran was, quote, a ticking bomb because of his alleged medical problems and health history. Their game plan is to discredit the prosecution's case and Michael Cochran himself.

[Chris Davis]

There was no forensic evidence to tie.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Her to a murder.

[David Muir]

Zero forensic evidence. They called two surprising witnesses to the standard Natalie and Michael's children.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Would you state your name for the record? Nicole Cochran. What type of medication was he taking? I know that he took steroids and he took many other supplements. Did he do it daily? Yes, every morning.

[David Muir]

Was he into supplements and vitamins and all of that stuff?

[Chris Davis]

Oh, absolutely. He took his supplements, his pre workouts and those things. He tried to take care of his body.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

He would lay all of his pills out on the counter, and there would be so many of them that they would just sit in a whole circle, and it looked like the size of a dinner plate. And then he would scoop them handfuls at a time into his mouth. The theory by the defense counsel is that Michael Cochran was not a healthy individual. Did you start noticing changes in your father's health? He was very agitated and angry, more so than not. And he was having a lot of headaches. The defense asked the same line of questioning to the Cochran son, whose face is concealed on the witness stand because he's a minor. Did he ever inject anything?

[Chris Davis]

Definitely steroids.

[David Muir]

He took supplements and things like that. Did he take steroids?

[Jennifer Davis]

He never took any steroids. If you would see him, everything that he has, all the muscles he has, is natural hard work.

[Chris Davis]

Mike wasn't a bodybuilder. He ate too much pizza to be a bodybuilder. Was he fit? He was. Was he in shape? He was. Did he work hard for that shape? He did.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

He was taking things from Mexico. They were saying things that were not approved by the fda. What did he get from Mexico, do you know?

[Chris Davis]

I don't know the name of the steroid, but it was definitely an anabolic.

[David Muir]

What was that like to see them testifying on their mother's behalf?

[Jennifer Davis]

You know, they love their mother. Of course they're going to defend their mother. But the things they said about their father was really heartbreaking.

[David Muir]

Defense lawyers argued that Michael Cochran was not exactly a healthy 38 year old and that his lifestyle led to four hospital visits between 2017 and the time of his death. In 2019, he got sick.

[Chris Davis]

And I feel like around that time is when you could just notice that he started to change a little bit, Just forgetting stuff all the time. And he was more aggressive.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Towards whom? Aggressive towards everybody.

[David Muir]

Natalie had told friends and family that her husband also suffered from seizures, plus symptoms of black mold poisoning from renovations he did on their house. Had you heard of him having seizures?

[Chris Davis]

We were told that he had seizures and he was exposed to black mold.

[David Muir]

The defense also tries to handle hammer.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Away at the state's motive, the Ponzi scheme. They claim Natalie Cochran wasn't the only one involved. They say Michael was too. I always saw him working on his computer and he would say that that's what he was doing. Say that he was doing what? That he was filling out contracts. Did your mother do that? No. Who was working on the contracts?

[Chris Davis]

My dad.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

We had heard that Natalie Cochran was going to take the stand. She had informed the judge that she was going to testify on her own behalf, and at the last minute, she decided that she wasn't going to testify. The jury was extremely attentive, but the jury was never more Invested in what was being said than in the closing arguments.

[Chris Davis]

All right, are you folks ready to do deliver your closing remarks?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Natalie was a diabetic counselor and a pharmacist. She knew that injecting insulin into a non diabetic would cause harm. Is that the action of a planning cold blooded killer? She would get that insulin ahead of.

[David Muir]

Time, not on the day of the.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Murder, and involve two witnesses against her right there. And then she chose over and over, after repeated pleas from friends and loved ones, to leave Michael on the couch. It's a horrible tragedy, but a tragedy, not a murder. The state failed to answer a couple of questions. And that is when did it happen? Where did it happen? How did it happen?

[Chris Davis]

There was no deductive reasoning where you would say, well, it was Professor Plumb with the candlestick in the study.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Well, it was actually the pharmacist in the kitchen. According to the prosecution's theory, she had a clear motive. And you saw that leading up to this date, Michael was about to find out what she was doing to people. Do we know what he was going to do with that information? We never will because he won't have the chance to tell us. Ms. Cochran has committed crimes of fraud, but that doesn't make her a murderer. We're asking you to find her not guilty.

[Chris Davis]

21 was such a crucial number because nobody's blood glucose should be at that level unless you've had an injection of insulin.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

A normal blood glucose level would be anywhere from 70 to around 130.

[Chris Davis]

21. That's the number we're going to rely on to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant killed Michael Cochran. Find this defendant guilty of first degree murder, because that's exactly what she did.

[David Muir]

The case is now in the hands of the jury. Were prosecutors able to convince them that Natalie Cochran killed her husband? Or did the defense poke enough holes to sow reasonable doubt?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

People yell out there's a verdict, and then people start scurrying to get a seat inside the courtroom.

[Chris Davis]

Has the jury reached a verdict?

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Yes, you, Honor. When that verdict comes back. They were shocked.

[David Muir]

The verdict handed down just weeks ago came quickly. The jury deliberated for less than two hours.

[Jennifer Davis]

Would the defendant please rise?

[Chris Davis]

The jury verdict is as follows. The defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree.

[David Muir]

What was it like when you heard guilty?

[Jennifer Davis]

We were so happy because we're finally getting justice for Michael after all these years.

[Chris Davis]

You know, I could just feel my spear and everything just going, you know, this is what it's supposed to be.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It Was exhilarating to hear the word guilty. And all I can think is we did it, we got her.

[David Muir]

And the jury's not finished. They've got another decision to make. What's known as the mercy phase.

[Chris Davis]

Good morning, members of the jury.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Good morning.

[Chris Davis]

You are back Mercy, which means the defendant gets parole eligibility after serving 15 years or no mercy, which means there's no eligibility for parole.

[Jennifer Davis]

You'll raise your right hand, please.

[David Muir]

A slew of Natalie Cochran's family, including her mom, tearfully take the stand.

[Jennifer Davis]

I beg.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I don't know what else I can say except please give mercy to her.

[David Muir]

For a second time. Natalie's 19 year old daughter faces the jury that's already convicted her mom in her father's murder.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I missed her at my high school graduation and I missed her on the day I moved into college. I'm begging you to give her mercy so that I don't have to miss more. Natalie Cochran's family ended up leaving when the family of Michael Cochran, when they were up there.

[Chris Davis]

Raise your right hand, please, ma'am.

[Jennifer Davis]

We, along with our family and friends, have sat quietly and graciously and painfully watched and listened as Michael's good name has been murdered time and time, time again.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

It was one of the most intense pieces of testimony in the entire trial.

[Jennifer Davis]

This spoiled, evil, narcissistic murderer had seldom if ever been denied this which she wanted. She will try to blame my precious son Michael for her evilness and deceit.

[David Muir]

Do you remember what you said that you felt the strongest about when I said that?

[Jennifer Davis]

Please, please don't give her any mercy. We ask that you please, please, no mercy. She never gave Michael any mercy.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I think it was extremely riveting for the jury to see.

[Chris Davis]

We, the jury unanimously do not recommend mercy.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

Natalie Cochran will spend the rest of her life in prison.

[David Muir]

But the pain lives on for Michael's friends, Jennifer and Chris, whose son's insulin may be very well have been used to end their friend's life.

[Timothy Bledsoe]

I trusted her and that's the exact same thing. She used and borrowed from me and that's hard and that's something I'll have to live with.

[Jennifer Davis]

As far as I'm concerned, justice has been done. She's where she needs to be.

[David Muir]

You've lost your son, you've lost financially. You've lost a lot.

[Jennifer Davis]

Yes, we have. But we have each other and we're strong for each other. That's the only way we can get by.

[David Muir]

And because of God, what about your grandchildren? Do you hope to have a relationship at some point with them right now.

[Jennifer Davis]

I think it's best the way that it is. I don't see them coming around and we have to accept it and just go on.

[David Muir]

Just days after the verdict, I visited with Michael's parents. His stepfather Ed took me to a special place they've created to honor their son's memory. This is your memorial to Michael?

[Chris Davis]

Yeah. Not able to get up there to his grave site. So I said, well, you know, keep it, you know, right here close. Anytime want to go, we can just come right here.

[David Muir]

What do you think about when you come out here and sit on that bench?

[Chris Davis]

When Donna and I sometimes we kind of sit around down here, there'll be like a butterfly that'll come around. And I told Donna, I said, well, I said, there's little Michael. So we've got a little cut out flower over there that he's always down here.

[David Muir]

Such an emotional story to report on, David. Those heartbroken parents placing a memorial bench where they can always remember their son, Michael. We should note tonight that Natalie Cochran does plan to appeal her murder conviction. In the meantime, that is our program for tonight. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at 2020 and ABC News, good night.