All language subtitles for Fatal.Fraud.S01E02.1080p.WEB.h264-CODSWALLOP_track3_[eng]

(Narrator) Every fraud
begins with a promise,

but most don't end in a murder.

(Tom Truman)
They were selling the idea

that you could make a lot of money

if you could secure
government contracts.

(Narrator) A quick fortune,
easy money, or a life torn apart.

(Ashley Acord) We have this
really cool idea for a company,

and we think it could
make you a lot of money.

If you put in $10,000,
you'll get back $60,000.

(Narrator)
But behind these illusions

lie calculated deceptions,
carefully hidden in plain sight.

(Keri Nixon)
In fraud, trust is a weapon.

Without it,
you wouldn't get anywhere.

(Narrator) Sometimes these
criminals are backed into a corner

and feel their only way out
is to kill.

(Tim Bledsoe)
After the initial interview

was when I really knew
in my gut that this was a murder.

(dramatic music)

(Tom) Prosecutors love to
have the stuff you see on TV...

DNA, fingerprints,
videos, confessions.

We had none of them.

(suspenseful music)

(Tim)
My name is Tim Bledsoe.

I'm a retired lieutenant with
the West Virginia State Police.

It's a small community.

Like most communities
in West Virginia,

the majority of the people
either know each other

or know of each other.

It's a fairly quiet community,
low crime rate.

Somewhere, you know,
that you would imagine

would be a good place
to raise a family.

(Narrator) In 2017, Michael and
Natalie Cochran and their children

were well-known
in the local community.

(Micah Leith)
My name is Micah Leith,

and I'm the news director
at WOAY-TV.

The Cochrans lived in the same
community that they grew up in.

Michael and Natalie
were high school sweethearts.

They dated throughout college,
and they were married.

And most of the people
that they became friends with

in the community at least
knew of them their entire lives.

(Tom) I'm Tom Truman.

I'm the prosecuting attorney for
Raleigh County, West Virginia.

The Daniels community
is very tight-knit,

and the Cochrans were heavily
involved, especially youth sports.

(Micah) Michael was seen
as this...very involved

in his kids' lives.
He was really into sports.

He was always body-building
and powerlifting with friends.

(Ashley)
My name is Ashley Acord.

I'm an assistant
prosecuting attorney

for Raleigh County, West Virginia.

Michael Cochran was very
enamoured with his wife, Natalie.

He loved his children.

He was very involved
in their lives

and in all of their activities.

He would coach sports,
hold fundraisers,

do really anything he could
to be involved.

(Micah) Natalie was
kind of seen as the typical mum.

She worked a good job.

She took care of her kids.

In the community,
they had a pretty high profile.

They were involved
in a lot of community events

at church, in youth athletics,
which, in Southern West Virginia,

youth athletics are probably
the biggest thing

that pulls its community together.

(Tom) Natalie went
to West Virginia University,

graduated from pharmacy school.

She was such an accomplished
pharmacist that CVS

paid for her to get an MBA.

She developed
a specialty with diabetes.

(Micah) I can't overemphasise it
enough how trusted Natalie was.

Her neighbour more or less
trusted her

to provide medical guidance
to their child

who was diagnosed with diabetes.

I mean, these are people
that grew up with Natalie.

They knew Natalie
their whole life.

(Ashley)
Michael was definitely

a more domineering figure.

He was a man's man,
very prototypical in that way.

And Natalie was always his rock,
like the person that

supported him and was behind him.

(Narrator) In June 2017, the couple
started a new business venture.

(Tim) Natalie Cochran left
the profession of pharmacy in 2017

to form a business
with her husband called

Tactical Solutions Group, or TSG.

(Tom)
They were selling the idea

that you could make a lot of money

if you could secure
government contracts.

And she would get people
to invest saying, oh,

there's all sorts of money
to be made here.

The government would put out
a solicitation for something

that they needed,
whether that was medical supplies

or weapons or anything like that.

And then these companies would bid
on those contracts and would say,

we can fill them for this price.

So Natalie actually got
the idea for TSG

from watching the movie
"War Dogs."

And in that movie, they had a
company that operated the same way

that TSG was purported to work.

She would tell her friends
and family,

hey, you know, Michael and I just
watched this really great movie,

and we have this really
cool idea for a company,

and we think it could
make you a lot of money.

And so she would promise them,
you know, if you put in $10,000,

you'll get back $60,000.

And people were,
you know, more than willing

to buy into that
because they trusted her.

They would get the contract,
make the purchases,

and provide them
to the government.

The government
would pay them for it.

That's how it was supposed
to work,

but in reality,
it didn't work like that.

(Narrator) The couple operated
under two company names:

Technology Management Solutions,
TMS,

and Tactical Solutions Group, TSG.

They had an office
nearby in Beckley.

(Ashley) Michael Cochran
was purported to be the one

that was actually
looking for contracts.

And Natalie specifically targeted
people that she knew trusted her.

She went to Michael's family.

She went to her own family.

She specifically would
go to people that she knew

had money to spare, like
businessmen, lawyers, dentists.

(Keri)
In fraud, trust is a weapon.

Trust is crucial.

If a family member or a friend
that you trusted

and you thought were capable...

they were a professional person,

and they were known
in the community...

that would mean that
you would trust them.

(Tim)
The Cochrans gave the appearance

they did a tremendous volume
of firearms sales

and provided a tremendous amount
of firearms contracts

to the federal government.

Natalie was offering
for these weapons

with sometimes 75% less than
what you would pay for retail.

(suspenseful music)

She claimed that the investment
opportunities

into the Tactical Solutions Group
were very lucrative,

and they would be very lucrative
for the potential investor,

but in reality,
there was no investment.

It was just...
it was a Ponzi scheme.

(Fiona Hotston Moore)
My name is Fiona Hotston Moore,

and I'm a forensic accountant
and expert witness.

Ponzi schemes are named
after one of the very early cases,

a very large case
which was perpetrated by Mr Ponzi.

Typically, the way that it works
is that the fraudster will

approach friends and family,

they will take small amounts
of investments.

They will promise high returns,
and they will make high returns

to those initial investors.

But those returns are actually
coming from other investors.

It is artificial.
There is no business.

It grows very quickly
and then tends

to collapse very quickly with,
typically, no money

being available
to repay the victims.

(Narrator) As the scheme grew,
Natalie persuaded

more investors to buy in.

One person in North Carolina
invested over $500,000.

A later investor
would bring their money in.

Natalie would take a chunk of it
and give it to an earlier investor

and say, hey, here's part of
your return on your investment.

But we have this other
big contract coming up,

and I think you should reinvest it

because it will really
double the return

that you're going to get,
or triple or quadruple it.

So that was one way that
she kind of kept the scheme going.

But over time, it's not...
a Ponzi scheme is not sustainable

because the investments dry up.

And that was exactly
what was happening here.

(Narrator) In late 2018,
Michael and Natalie Cochran

had gotten investments
of almost $2.5 million

for contracts
to the US government.

(Ashley) When that money
from the investments,

from friends and family,
was in Natalie's pocket,

she and Michael were
really living large.

They were buying new properties.

They bought a boat.
They bought a motorcycle.

They bought new cars.

They went on lavish vacations.

(Micah) They were making
extravagant purchases,

going on trips, bringing friends
and family with them,

and paying for all of it,

living a lifestyle
that was pretty foreign

to a lot of people
that are in this town.

It certainly seemed that
their business was thriving.

There was no indication that

there was anything bad
under the surface.

It just seemed like they
had built a business

that was performing
extremely well.

My name is Dr Keri Nixon,

and I'm a consultant
forensic psychologist.

Their spending habits,
their presentation,

their standing in the community...
all of these things

are part of the same motivator
to generate trust,

generate confidence.

(Ashley) Natalie was
spending a lot of the money

from investors on personal items.

She would buy luxury handbags.

She bought a pair
of bulldog puppies.

She was really just willing
to show off all of the money

that she had suddenly come into.

(Tim) The Cochrans
made some very large purchases,

you know, but also, in that,
demonstrates a lot about who

Michael Cochran was as well.

He not only spent money
for himself or for his family,

but he spent money for others.

He did acts of philanthropy
for the local school,

for the local youth sports.

There was a local widow.
Her husband had passed.

He purchased her a home.

(Narrator) Natalie was spending
enormous amounts of money

on personal and luxury purchases.

On loan applications, they inflated
the value of their business

as having assets
of over $500 million.

Some of the people that
Natalie got to invest

were able to come up
with a couple thousand dollars

to put into the company.

But there were some who were
very wealthy individuals

in high-paying jobs
or maybe, you know,

had family money or something.

And those people would invest
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Over time, convincing those same
people to reinvest in the company,

she was able to come up
with at least

a good couple million dollars.

(Fiona) I think the
Cochran Ponzi scheme started

with the intention to defraud.

There appeared to be no evidence
that it ever was

a proper trading business,
that it had any contracts

with the governments that
it said it was going to do.

(Tim) I think there were
approximately 12 known

victim investors
of the Ponzi scheme.

With the exception of maybe one
investor who made one lump sum

of about $500,000 at one time,
most of the investors

came in in smaller increments.

(Fiona) Red flags that
might indicate a Ponzi scheme

is the very rapid growth
of a business,

the lack of financial reports,

the lack of evidence that there
is, actually, external customers,

and perhaps the observation

that those that are
running the business

actually appear to be making
quite a lot of money themselves.

(Tim) It was becoming unsustainable
because the money was running out,

and there were
no new investors coming in.

So I think,
at some point, you know,

it was going to come to a head.

(suspenseful music)

(Narrator) By early 2019,
investors were becoming anxious

about receiving returns
on their investment.

(Tim) Natalie gave a number
of different excuses.

A fictitious government audit
was one.

At one point, the US government

had a legitimate
government shutdown.

You know,
so that provided her some time.

That one, she just got lucky.

Some of the excuses
were the government

not being able to pay on time
or not being able to complete

a wire transfer or something.

There was a problem at the bank.

There was always
some kind of an excuse.

(Tom) One of Natalie's many excuses
for not making payments was,

she's been diagnosed with cancer.

Well, then she claimed

she had been sick all night,
spiked temperature,

and she needed
to be taking insulin

to counteract her chemotherapy.

There is a connection between some
chemotherapy and taking insulin,

so that was
a plausible explanation.

(Narrator) In early 2019,
Natalie, a qualified pharmacist,

asked her neighbour, Jennifer,
if she could borrow

some of her supply of the medicine.

(Tom) Natalie tells Jennifer that
she was so sick from her chemo

and needed to take insulin, but if
she could just borrow a bottle,

she would pay it back later.

So Jennifer, being the good
neighbour and loyal friend

that she is, sends her husband
to the Cochran house

with a bottle of insulin
and some other things in a bag.

(Narrator)
Other people in the community

also rallied to support Natalie.

Natalie was the treasurer
of a local Little League.

And when she was telling people
that she had cancer,

a friend of theirs stepped in and
was helping with those accounts.

And as he's looking
at those accounts,

he sees there's thousands
of dollars missing.

And there are also purchases
on there for clothing boutiques,

for fancy dinners,
for things that are not

related to Little League,
that are not purchases

the League should be making.

(Micah) A lot of money went
missing from the Little League.

When they went
and looked at the account,

they had hardly any money
in there,

and there was supposed to be
several thousands of dollars

and all kinds
of transactions made,

likely by Natalie Cochran,
for dinners and shopping trips

and all kinds of things.

(Narrator) In early February,
Michael became concerned

about investors' feedback
on the business.

So he and Natalie arranged
a meeting at their bank,

hoping to resolve
the payment delays.

(Micah) The Cochrans were supposed
to fly to Virginia

to meet with a representative
of the bank to discuss an issue

they were having with their
account that was supposed to be

getting the money
from the federal government.

(Tim) Natalie took the kids
to school that morning.

Michael had also been out
and about that morning.

He had gone to get coffee
and returned home.

(Micah) The morning
they were supposed to fly,

Natalie cancelled the flight.

(Tim) Michael was very upset
because they were not able

to go to the Bank of America.

She had had to cancel the flight.

And that he was so upset
that she had given him

two of her blood pressure pills,
and he had taken those

and had been sleeping ever since.

(Ashley)
Around 12:30 in the afternoon,

Natalie sends a text message
to a pair of contractors

that worked for her and Michael,

and she tells them that
Michael is unconscious

in the floor of their kitchen,
and she needs them

to help her get him to the couch.

Around that same time,
she has taken a photograph

of Michael laying
in the foetal position

in the floor of their kitchen.

(Tim)
Natalie also texted a...

another friend of the family,
who was also in law enforcement

and asked him to come to the house
as well to help with Michael.

They moved Michael
to the couch in the home.

And these contractors
described seeing Natalie

checking Michael's vital signs

and, too,
including his blood glucose.

(sirens wailing)

(Narrator) Later that day, Michael
was transported to the hospital.

(Tim) When Michael arrived
at the hospital, initially,

they found that his blood glucose
level was critically low,

and there was no way to know
how long it had been that low,

other than to see
that he was in great distress.

The decision was made
to immediately intubate him.

He was deteriorating rapidly.

And the facility he was at
did not have

the trauma capabilities necessary
to treat him

to the level that he needed.

And the decision was made
to transfer him

to Charleston Area Medical Centre.

(Narrator)
Natalie reported to medical staff

that Michael had taken 25 times
his usual amount

of a body-building supplement
purchased from Mexico.

(Tim) She told them
that he had overdosed

on this Mexican supplement.

Michael was treated
for a few days there,

and Natalie made the decision
to have care removed.

And he passed within just
a few hours of his arrival.

(Tom) The death of Michael Cochran
made no sense.

He was a perfectly healthy,
38-year-old, fit man.

And then all of a sudden,
he was unconscious,

and days later, he was dead.

(pensive music)

(Narrator) On February 11, 2019,

Michael Cochran
was pronounced dead.

News of his death spread
quickly through the community.

(Ashley) Michael died in hospice
after he fell unconscious at home.

This, to everyone,
was very jarring, I think,

and very shocking because

Michael was a very healthy
38-year-old man.

(Tom) The death of
Michael Cochran made no sense.

That made no sense
to a lot of people,

including the investigators
that took this case.

(Ashley) I think,
following Michael's death,

people started to get a little
suspicious about the Ponzi scheme.

I know that there was one
particular investor who

was owed several thousand dollars.

He had told Natalie,
you know, get me my money,

or I'm going to the police.

And he did.

(Narrator) It was at this point
the state police

began to look into
the Cochrans' business,

suspecting some sort of fraud.

(Tim) We were made aware
of this potential financial crime.

The gentleman, who was a business
owner in the Beckley area,

had approached
one of our state troopers

who he was acquainted with

and informed him
that he had invested money

into Natalie's company,

and he had been unable to get any
satisfaction on his investment.

And as time had moved forward,

she had become
increasingly disengaged with him,

trying to provide
different excuses

as to why she was unable to fulfil
the agreement they had reached.

(Fiona) You can hide
a Ponzi scheme,

I think, short-term.

So you can be giving
verbal reports back

to your family and the investors.

I think it becomes more and more
difficult the longer things go on.

Because as time goes on,
people will be expecting

to see financial accounts.

They will be expecting
to see audit reports and so on.

And those will not exist.

(Tim) I saw the text messages
between them.

You know, originally,
she was very sweet and very kind

with this gentleman.

And as he pressed her more
to try to get some satisfaction

over this deal, she became
increasingly belligerent

in her texts.

In that conversation,
he had also informed the trooper

that Michael Cochran
had recently died

and that the circumstances
surrounding his death

were somewhat suspicious.

There was no investigation
into his death.

There was no autopsy.

At that point,
we decided pretty early on

that we wanted
to just offer Natalie

an opportunity to speak with us.

I contacted her by phone.

We had no reason, really,
to believe

that Natalie had done
anything intentional

to Michael to cause his death.

But it certainly needed to be
answered, one way or the other.

Her position was that
Michael had taken

an overdose of
a body-building supplement

that he was using as part
of his body-building workout.

Natalie had told us
that she had given

this Mexican supplement
to the doctors

at Charleston Area Medical Centre.

But when we investigated that,
that was not true.

She said that the clomiphene
citrate was a supplement

that Michael ordered from Mexico,
when, in fact,

her emails showed that
she was the one ordering it

and that it came from Florida.

The second interview I had
with her, she goes full in on,

Michael was using insulin,
injecting himself with insulin.

And she had introduced insulin
into the conversation.

That was the turning point
right there

in the death investigation,
for sure.

(Ashley)
There was no evidence that Michael

had ever injected insulin.

In fact, we knew Michael
was afraid of needles.

(Narrator) Insulin is used by
diabetics to regulate blood sugar,

but if used by someone
who doesn't have diabetes,

it can be very dangerous.

I think it's fascinating
that Natalie,

who was a pharmacist by trade,
in the police interviews,

almost points the finger
on herself, inadvertently,

by bringing up
the factor of insulin.

She's thinking she's being clever
when, actually,

by giving too much information,

she led the police
directly back to her.

(Tim) After a month, I think,
after the initial interview

was when...
when I really knew in my gut

that this was a murder.

Because she had called to complain
to our state police headquarters

about what she described as an
investigation of her

and wanting it stopped.

No spouse is going to ask
that an investigation

into another human being's
death be stopped

unless you have something to hide.

So that's the way
we presented it to her,

was like, look, ma'am,
we're just trying to find out

why your husband's dead.
We're not investigating you.

I don't know...
and that's what we told her.

I said, we don't know
why you're describing this

as an investigation of you.

We're not investigating you.

In reality, we were
investigating the Ponzi scheme.

We just didn't want her
to know that.

(suspenseful music)

(Narrator)
West Virginia State Police

had been investigating Natalie
and Michael Cochran's business,

looking for proof of fraud.

Now they suspected she may
have also killed her husband.

Late March 2019 and June of 2019,
we were accumulating

a massive amount of financial
records, bank statements,

bank transactions,
anything that we could get

to further the Ponzi scheme
investigation, to, hopefully,

arrive at enough probable cause
to obtain a search warrant.

(tense music)

(Tom) Investigators had
developed a case sufficient

where they got a search warrant,

and they searched
the Cochran home that day.

(Tim) We were able to seize
her cell phone, and then,

through that search warrant,
obtaining,

obviously, digital evidence
from her phone,

we were able to pull out
just the text messages

between Michael and Natalie.

And there were thousands of pages

that was extremely revealing,
to say the least.

(Fiona)
If I was looking to give evidence

as to whether Michael knew
that Natalie's business

or their business was legitimate,

I would be looking
at the communications

that Michael was involved in
to see whether he actually

was looking
at the bank statements.

Was he seeing the flow of funds?

Is there an email suggesting that

he actually knew
what was going on?

Or was his involvement
fairly peripheral?

It presented the dynamic
of the relationship pretty fast,

you know, especially
when it related to how

the TSG business
was being operated.

Michael was, I guess,
more of the mouthpiece.

He believed that when
he sent her these contracts,

that she was doing exactly what
he said, and then she was not.

You could see, just from the
financial documents that we were

reviewing early on,
that the problems with

the Little League account
were just a drop in the bucket,

compared to what was really
going on with this TSG company.

(Ashley)
She had these doctored headings

for financial institutions, banks,

lending agencies,
things like that.

She made up Federal Reserve
employees and email addresses

and would give those fake
email addresses to Michael

so that he thought
he was communicating with someone,

only for his emails to bounce back
because they weren't real.

(Tom) They seized a number
of electronic devices.

And they also found
a bottle of insulin,

which was consistent
with a bottle of insulin

that had been loaned to Natalie

by a neighbour whose son
had diabetes.

(Ashley) That was significant
for a couple of reasons...

one, because, at that point,

we did not know
what had killed Michael.

Two, no one in the house
was diabetic

or had any need for insulin.

And three, the day that
Michael fell unconscious,

February 6th, Natalie had
specifically requested

a bottle of insulin
be brought to her.

(Tim) The bottle of insulin
was concealed

inside the refrigerator in the
kitchen behind some other items

on one of the shelves
inside the door.

(Narrator) Natalie had claimed
Michael was using insulin

for body-building,
but the police couldn't

prove a link to his death.

In September of 2019,
an exhumation was conducted

so that an autopsy
could be performed

on Michael Cochran's remains.

(Narrator) The autopsy results
were inconclusive.

Unaware she was suspected
of murdering Michael,

Natalie continued
running the business.

(Ashley) And she's continuing
to solicit money from investors.

And at one point, she actually
tries to sell the company

to a local businessman.

She entered
into a contract with him.

He puts a down payment
on the contract.

And luckily, that's about the time
that the police stepped in.

(Narrator) On July 24, 2019,

Natalie Cochran
filed for bankruptcy.

Two weeks later,
she talked with the media,

stating the money laundering
and spending

were primarily done by Michael.

(Ashley)
She repeatedly claimed

that Michael knew
about the Ponzi scheme

because he would sign cheques.

She repeatedly said that he
was up to his eyeballs in this.

(Narrator)
On September 24, 2019,

Natalie was indicted
by a federal grand jury

for the $2.5 million fraud
related to the Ponzi scheme.

(Micah) She was arrested
on the federal wire fraud

and money laundering charges,
and she ultimately pled guilty.

It didn't ever go to trial.

They reached an agreement.

And she was sentenced to,
I believe,

11 years in federal prison.

(Narrator) No charges were
brought against Natalie Cochran

for the Little League theft.

But now,
police and public prosecutors

were building a case against her

for the murder of her husband,
Michael.

(Tom)
The Natalie Cochran case

arose out of the federal
prosecution of a Ponzi scheme.

Our theory of the case was that
she killed her husband

because she was about
to be uncovered,

and she couldn't have that happen.

In our very first meeting,
Ashley and me

and the Ponzi scheme investigator,
he said something that

really turned out to be prophetic.

He said, the one thing you can
always count on with people

that run a Ponzi scheme,
they will do anything

to keep the Ponzi scheme going.

That didn't really
sink in at the time,

but boy, later on, that proved
to be absolutely spot-on.

(tense music)

(Narrator) In January 2024,
Natalie Cochran, already imprisoned

for the $2.5 million fraud,
pled not guilty

for the murder of her husband,
Michael.

(Tom) I think a murder case
that is 100% circumstantial

is going to be a little bit
tougher case

because you don't have anything
to point to.

You don't have the fingerprints.

You don't have the DNA.

You don't have the video.

You don't have the confession.

None of those things that would go
with many murder cases.

I think that that made the case
more of a challenge.

(Ashley)
We tapered our witness list down

from around 80 witnesses
to about 17.

We also really treated this like
a circumstantial case that it is.

We knew that we weren't working
with eyewitnesses

or DNA evidence
or anything like that.

So we really had to build a story,
and that's how we tried the case.

(Narrator) The prosecution claimed
that Natalie's motive

to murder her husband was to stop
the Ponzi scheme being uncovered.

The role of the Ponzi scheme
in the murder

was to prove that Natalie
had a motive to kill Michael.

And the reason that
that's important is because,

according to all
the evidence that we have,

Michael had no idea that TSG
was not a legitimate company.

If he were to find out
that that was happening,

the Ponzi scheme would be over,

and Natalie couldn't
let that happen.

(Narrator)
Natalie's defence was that

Michael knew about
the Ponzi scheme,

so why would she kill him
to hide it?

They repeatedly claimed that

Michael knew about
the Ponzi scheme

because he would sign cheques,

which doesn't indicate to me
in any way

that he was aware
of fraud going on.

He was trying
to pay out investors.

(Tom) Michael Cochran
was not involved in the fraud.

And I base that primarily on about
1,900 pages of text messages

between Michael and Natalie,
where he clearly

had no idea what was going on.

And when you compare those 1,900
pages of communications

between the two Cochrans
with what Natalie was telling

the other investors in the
company, the lies were identical.

And so there is zero evidence
to show

that Michael Cochran was involved
in any fraudulent activity.

(Narrator) In February 2019,
everything changed

when Michael challenged Natalie

about the delays in payments
from the government contracts.

(Tom) Michael Cochran,
who was fed up with all the delays

Natalie was telling Michael
were caused

by banks, by government issues.

He was saying, I'm not
putting up with this any more.

So they chartered a flight to fly
down and talk to Bank of America

to see why this money
that he believed was in the,

really, hundreds of
millions of dollars,

was not being paid out
to the investors.

We have a situation here where
a husband is being controlled.

He's being lied to.

He's being manipulated.

She is involving him in criminal
activity without his knowledge.

That is abusive behaviour.

(Narrator) It was on the day
of the flight, February 6,

that Michael fell ill.

(Ashley)
The morning of February 6,

Natalie reports that
she believes she has the flu.

She's texting a couple
of different people about that.

She actually goes
to the doctor that morning

and gets a steroid prescription.

She texts Michael and says that

she is getting meds
for both of them.

Michael was out that morning
getting coffee for Natalie

because she wasn't feeling well
and was returning home.

But it was odd because Natalie
texted the pilot

and said, you know, I can't go.

I'm not feeling well.

And Michael said, well,
don't worry about it.

We'll still go.
This needs to happen.

And then, ultimately,
the flight is cancelled.

And then, of course,
we know from that point on,

Michael's not able
to make the flight again.

(Tom) When Michael
collapsed on the floor,

instead of calling 911,
Natalie takes his picture of him

on the floor and sends it
to roughly 17 people.

She then proceeds to...

summons people at different times
during the day

that would provide
a great cover story.

She brought in
a physician's assistant,

who has clear medical knowledge.

And that person also suggested,

we need to take him
to the hospital.

He needs to go now.

Natalie said, no, I'm going to...

I'm going to let him sleep it off.

Well, there was
nothing to sleep off.

He was clearly incapacitated,

and he never recovered
from that at all.

(Narrator) On January 15, 2025,

almost six years
after Michael's death,

Natalie Cochran
faced murder charges.

The prosecution needed to prove
it was an insulin overdose

that had killed Michael.

Michael was exhumed for a second
time by court order in 2023

by a doctor from Texas.

And he had actually worked on
a set of insulin murder cases

that had taken place in
West Virginia several years ago.

So he had Michael's
medical records.

He was able to create
a timetable that showed

all of Michael's
blood glucose levels

throughout his stay
in the hospital.

He was able to determine
that Michael was suffering

from what he called
refractory hypoglycaemia,

which meant he had
low blood sugar.

He would receive treatment for it,
and then it would drop back down.

It wouldn't stabilise as you would
expect it to in a healthy person.

The reason that was significant
was because that indicated

that Michael had been
given insulin.

And that's how we knew that
we had our murder weapon.

At that point,
he ruled the death a homicide

via exogenous
insulin administration.

We used Michael and Natalie's
best friends and neighbours.

There were some very
key pieces of testimony,

I think, between the two of them.

Chris was very emotional and very
raw on the stand and very upfront

about how he felt
about the whole thing.

He was actually the one
who made the decision

to get Michael to the hospital
and get him medical treatment.

Natalie had refused to get
Michael treatment all day.

And Chris came in,
and he testified on the stand

that the words he said were,
"He is going to the hospital,

and I am going to take him."

(suspenseful music)

His wife, Jennifer,
she was actually the one

that Natalie had
tricked into bringing

the insulin over to the home,

which is ultimately
what killed Michael.

And I know that was
very hard for Jennifer

because that was
never her intention.

She never would have wanted
something like that to happen.

(Keri) Something that
I've seen in many murder cases

is when people have inadvertently

either not stopped something
happening

or provided something
or, in some way, been involved

with no knowledge of
what was about to happen,

the guilt that
they experience is huge.

(Ashley) Jennifer had another
very powerful piece of testimony,

I think, because she was
actually with Natalie

when Michael was in hospice
for those couple of hours

before he passed away.

And I remember one of the last
things Jennifer said on the stand

was that she asked Natalie
if there was anything

that she could do for her
while, you know,

Michael was laying
on his deathbed.

And she says, help me hold
this pillow over his face.

And I think the whole courtroom
was just kind of floored.

Natalie Cochran was extremely
difficult to get a read on.

And her demeanour
is really interesting to me

because she never really
showed a lot of negative emotion.

And certain members
of the community

maybe held that against her.

And for me...because I saw every...
everything that happened,

basically, in the courtroom
during that trial.

And a lot of it seemed to me she
was really happy to see her kids.

Because remember,
she's been serving

a federal prison sentence
all this time.

Like, she has not been free.

This was her first chance
to see her family

every single day, in person,
all day, in a very long time.

(Ashley) In court,
Natalie took an approach

that a lot of women who are
on trial for murder tend to take,

and that was that
she adopted a much more

conservative look than she had
before she was incarcerated.

So she cut all her hair off.

She wore glasses every day.

She did not wear bright colours.

She really toned herself down
quite a lot.

It doesn't surprise me at all
that Natalie significantly

changed her appearance for court.

Often, people going into court
will make themselves

look more vulnerable, not as rich,

hoping to gain sympathy
from the jury.

(Ashley) As far as her behaviour,

she constantly had a smirk
on her face.

She was very smug, did not seem
to believe that anyone

would ever convict her of murder.

(Micah) The overall atmosphere
in the courtroom was tense.

Michael's family
was there on one side,

and her family was
there on the other.

Her family continues
to stand by her.

They don't feel
she did anything wrong,

even though court documents show
that she stole

an insane amount of money
from her parents.

So it was a really interesting
and heartbreaking dynamic

in the courtroom.

(Tim) It was really hard
to sit there and stomach at trial,

you know, as the defence stood
there time and time again,

trying to come up
with this fairy tale

that Michael Cochran was somehow
involved in this Ponzi scheme.

Because that was not
the case whatsoever.

You know, Michael Cochran
was a victim.

I can't imagine how hard
it was for Michael's family

to sit there
and listen to that crap.

(Narrator)
After almost three weeks in court,

the jury were ready
to consider their verdict.

(Micah)
The prosecution's case was,

I would imagine,
quite difficult to put together

because they had no smoking gun.

They had to take
the evidence they had

and kind of bring the narrative
together for the jury.

Well, we had
a number of challenges.

You know, prosecutors love to have
the stuff you see on TV...

DNA, fingerprints,
videos, confessions.

All of those things make for
a good life for a prosecutor.

We had none of them.

(Narrator) On January 29, 2025,

Natalie Cochran was found guilty
of first-degree murder.

Michael's parents,
who have been fighting for justice

for their son for so long, finally
getting some semblance of closure,

that they know that Michael's
death wasn't for nothing

and that his murderer
has been held accountable.

It was the most heartbreaking part
of the entire proceedings

when her kids were up
in the stand,

basically begging the jury
for mercy, so that

they could get a chance to see
their mum again in 20 years

and maybe rebuild a relationship.

And ultimately, the jury decided
that she didn't deserve mercy.

As a forensic psychologist,
not many things shock me,

but occasionally,
I come across cases where

there is an element of shock.

And in this case, we've got
a woman who was a professional,

who seemed to have it all.

She has a lovely husband,
a family.

She had the ability
to make a great income

and live a great life.

But she wanted more.

(Narrator) Natalie Cochran was
sentenced to life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

(Micah)
They know they'll probably never

get to hug their daughter again.

Their kids, they don't really
have a mother in their life

any more because of this.

It was a very tragic outcome.

(Ashley)
On a personal level, it was...

sort of the rush of a lifetime
to hear the judge come back

and say that the jury
had found Natalie Cochran

guilty of first-degree murder.

And that's not only, you know,
for me,

because this is a huge trial win,
but really, it was more

for Michael and for his mum
and for his friends.

When the guilty verdict
was read in the court,

it almost seemed like
Natalie didn't believe it.

She shed a single tear.

No visceral reaction, you know,
like you would maybe expect.

(Tom) We have what's called
our 20/80 list.

And this goes back decades ago
to an FBI presentation

that 20% of the people
commit 80% of the crime.

Natalie Cochran's
kind of odd because

she'd never been
in trouble before.

In her case, she made
a series of bad decisions

and got a life sentence out of it
in a short period of time.

(Keri)
They were childhood sweethearts.

According to everybody
in the community,

they were deeply in love.

They'd been together
since they were 16.

And she was willing to take his
life in order for her Ponzi scheme

to remain ongoing.

(Ashley)
Natalie and her family

continue to deny that
she is a murderer.

I understand that
this is your family member.

But look at what
she's done to people.

(Tim) In my opinion,
when you see people

who are willing to go to those
lengths to protect their lie,

there's only one word
that comes to mind, dangerous.

They don't come at you with
a mask and a gun or a knife.

You don't see these
kind of criminals coming.

And that's why
they're so dangerous.

(dramatic music)

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