Talking Dateline: The Devil's in the Details

0:04Hi, everyone. I am Blaine Alexander, and this is Talking Dateline. I'm joined today by Andrea Canning to discuss her latest episode, The Devil's in the Details. Hi, Andrea. Hey, Blaine. Hey. Okay, so if you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it, or stream it on Peacock, and then come right back here. Just a quick recap. In 2019, the sudden death of Michael Cochran, a young dad from West Virginia, left his family and friends reeling. But an investigation pulled back the curtain on their storybook family life to reveal a planned killing and a sinister scheme.

0:40For this Talking Dateline episode, we have an extra clip from Andrea's interview with Michael's best friend, Chris Davis. All right, Andrea, so let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. So Andrea, I always kind of like rank Dateline episodes by the amount of times that I talk to myself while I'm watching the episode. And this one, I was giving very authentic exclamations throughout the entire episode. Yeah, this one had a lot in it. You know, So not usually, obviously, we deal with murder on Dateline, but this had a whole other layer to the betrayal. Let's kind of go to the beginning and just talk about the storybook life, right?

1:13I mean, because that's a really a good way to put it. They were a gorgeous family. She's a pharmacist. I mean, they were very much a successful family, two cute kids. Yeah. I mean, they grew up in the area, in the Beckley area. This is, you know, as we open the whole show, you know, it's like where, you know, friends are like family and everyone just trusts each other. And yes, they had the two kids and they went to West Virginia University. She got her pharmacy degree and he got his degree in IT. And they had all these toys. You know, they had they were buying boats and motorcycles and properties and going on lavish international trips.

1:49You know, they really seemed like they were living the high life. The way that you guys revealed in the episode the degree of their, I don't know, financial affluence, I guess you could just say. I mean, like, oh, that escalated quickly. You know, I mean, you think that they're a beautiful family, little league, but then when you hear just kind of like about the money and the way they're living this high life, that was a big surprise. And I think that it would be even more impactful in a small town, in a smaller community like that. Yeah. And I think that's part of what drew people in to want to invest was seeing how well they were doing.

2:21Well, oh my gosh, I want to, I want that, you know, and if they're doing this well with this, then sounds like a great opportunity. And again, we trust them. So it's like a win-win, only it wasn't. Exactly. So let's talk about this Ponzi scheme, because before we get to the crime of murder, the crime that we first deal with in this episode is fraud. So at first, I was just really interested in the arms business in the first place. Like, who knew that it was so easy to go from pharmacy to getting into the arms business and allegedly having these government contracts? Well, you know, as we say in the show, it came from the movie War Dogs, which I did see that movie on.

3:01Did you see it? No. It was a good movie. It was based on a true story. I don't know how loosely based, but supposedly that's where they got the idea from. And there's actually a movie poster in their office of War Dogs. The sad thing about this whole thing was that everything started out legit. But, you know, she got her whatever accreditation she needed, like whatever, you know, for signing up with the government. That was all legit. She had done that work. So she was allowed to be dealing, you know, with this stuff. And Michael was the one who apparently was always searching out the contracts.

3:38Oh, this one looks good. Let's try this one. And then, you know, if you believe the prosecution, he just didn't realize that she wasn't, you know, finishing the job, following through. And it's like she sees a movie and she's like, let's do this. And then it, gosh, and then it leads to Ponzi and murder, you know. And it's taking money from family, right? Taking from your best friend. I don't know how anyone could do that because, I mean, first of all, how could you do it at all? But then it's your own parents. It's your husband's parents. It's your best friends. I think the biggest question in all of this, Andrea, as I was watching, as I'm sure everybody else was watching, did Michael know about this scheme, right?

4:19Like, that's certainly what the defense says, that he was in on this thing from the very beginning. But I'm curious, is there any chance that he actually knew what was going on or was he completely in the dark here? Well, the defense is saying, you know, how could he not? But the prosecution feels very strongly that he was not aware based on text messages between Natalie and Michael. And the text messages were, you know, where's the money? Why is the bank, you know, not giving us the money? it really does seem like he can't get a grasp on it. He's like, I don't understand what's wrong. And from what I've heard, and it seems to me that Michael wouldn't do that to his own parents.

5:02I mean, you have to have a lot of trust, right? Like he trusted her. You have trust when you're in marriage. You have trust when you're in business. So you kind of think, okay, she's handling this. She says she is. I'm moving on to something else and I know it's handled. And I know that if I was in a business like that with my husband, and my husband's a finance guy, if he was like, no, no, I got this side of it, I would not. I'm going to be totally honest right now. Maybe I'm stupid, but I would not be following up. I would totally trust my husband and be like, great. Oh, that's so awesome. I'm so glad that that worked out.

5:33Yes, check. That part's done. Check it off the list. Move on to something else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I buy that. I buy that he maybe wasn't checking up on everything. It also kind of, this is a complete aside, listening to this, it had a lot of echoes of the Alec Murdoch case. Someone else just said that to me. Financial issues and then doing all of these things to keep someone from finding out and then murder at the end, right? Like, it really, really reminded me of that. I mean, this beautiful fairy tale life, everything is perfect, but really it wasn't. And it's, Blaine, it's all about the walls closing in, right?

6:05You know, and we talked about the ticking clock and the, you know, and the walls and like imagine the pressure as this scheme is like, you know, just closing in. Closing in because now the one if the prosecution is right, the one person that like has been a part of this unknowingly is now about to find out. And, you know, their theory is that like he would not be OK with this and that this would all come crashing down, you know, that day when they're supposed to go to this meeting. That's where it all what it all comes down to. You know, I mean, we talked earlier about just the utter betrayal of, you know, scamming the people that are closest to her, right?

6:48I mean, the people that are closest to them in their lives. I'm curious how they're doing in terms of just kind of like recovering from all of this. I mean, those are tremendous amounts of money that they lost. A lot of money. Obviously, you want your money back. But I think the betrayal was almost far worse than the money. for Donna and Ed, you know, I did ask them about that. And, you know, they lost their life savings, right? Their retirement. And they, you know, they stressed in the interview, like, we're okay. You know, we're going to be fine. But like, how sad that you save and you save all that money.

7:22And then like, it's just poof. Like, because, you know, in retirement, that money, that means a lot. Of course, of course. When we get back, we've got a podcast exclusive clip from Andrea's interview with Michael's best friend, Chris Davis.

7:45Let's talk about Michael's death. It was really tragic in so many ways to hear several of his family members talk about how they said goodbye, their last goodbyes to him. And at the time, many of them were like, okay, this is natural causes. This is just something that unfortunately just happened. Yeah, I mean, it just, at the same time, it made no sense. You know, you want answers. Like, even if you think it's a natural death, you still want answers. And they didn't really have any. They knew that he had brain swelling, but the doctors, like, they just couldn't explain what was the source of that.

8:23And so for them, it was not only a heartbreaking time saying goodbye, but confusing. Was there any proof that Michael had been poisoned other times before his death? Was he actually having seizures? Like, kind of what was his medical history up until that point? So he had told one friend, I believe, that he was getting sick. And, you know, he didn't know what was making him sick. And then as far as the seizures go, so Natalie was always the one saying that he was having seizures. It seemed, through the eyes of the police anyway and the prosecutors, that his medical history and then current medical situation was all being narrated by Natalie.

9:04But remember, he was in the hospital for a few days, several months before he died. So he definitely was having issues. And the prosecutors believe, they had no proof, but they believe that when he was in the hospital the first time, that it was either possibly that she had tried to poison him and didn't get the mount right, that it was a dry run of some kind. You know, this was the theory of the prosecution. I think what was interesting to me is that Natalie's a pharmacist, so she understands theoretically how these things work, right? Like if you or I were to try and poison someone, like I'd have to Google, I wouldn't know inherently what one is supposed to do.

9:47But to have an understanding kind of how medicine reacts with the body, I think was certainly an interesting tip as well. And she also was a specialist in diabetes and with insulin. So she had that added knowledge. Let's talk for a second about poison as a murder weapon of choice, right? I mean, I know that it's something that you've talked about a number of times on the True Crime Weekly podcast. I mean, we've seen it. We've seen, right, like eye drops sometimes as different options. I did a story on a cancer doctor who was accused of attempted murder of her lover. She had poisoned him. His kidneys were shutting down.

10:27she put antifreeze, ethyl glycol, in his coffee, which has some parallels to this story. Sure. With the insulin, his body was shutting down and it was mostly attacking his kidneys. He appeared almost drunk and he showed up finally later that night at the ER and he basically collapsed in the ER. Wow. A nurse had noticed that his urine was crystallized, and the nurse said that is a sign of ethylene glycol. And so while they never found the ethylene glycol in him, just like they never found the insulin in Michael, the belief was that he was poisoned with ethylene glycol. And also colchicine recently has become more common as well, and now they're starting to put colchicine on standard tox screens.

11:25And what is colchicine commonly found in? Colchicine is a gout medication. Okay. And in high concentration, it will make someone violently ill and their organs start to shut down. Wow. So that was another dateline that I did with colchicine. It comes from autumn crocus. It's a flower. I know they do synthetic and all that now, but it originates from the autumn crocus plant. Wow. Or flower, whatever that is. Andrea, I've got to say, next time you update your resume, you need to put poison expert because you know a lot about a lot of these things, my dear. Well, the defendant in that Pulcha scene one, she told the police at one point and it was on camera.

12:10She's like, poison is a lady's weapon. Fascinating. You know, I have to say that sometimes, I mean, by the time, typically when we watch these episodes, by the time we get to, you know, towards the end when we're kind of dissecting the trial, you kind of get a sense of which way it's going to go, right? This one, both sides had me. Like if I was a juror, I would have had a very hard time trying to kind of bring a verdict in this one. Only it was an extremely quick verdict. Yes, it was. I think one of the biggest problems for her was that she told these two different stories, you know, about why she had the insulin.

12:46And, you know, she's getting it from Jennifer for her, you know, nausea for her cancer that apparently didn't exist. And then there's the story to the police that she had it on hand for Chris and Jennifer's son. But, I mean, and we say this in the show, there's that text trail, right, of her asking for the insulin that morning from Jennifer. You know, that's hard to get around. So it was Jennifer and Chris who gave Natalie that insulin. Like, how do they do they wrestle with that? So they absolutely do. Jennifer. Struggles with that so much to this day. You know, she was she was obviously duped, but.

13:29Yeah. Yeah. Like, would he be here? And I and I told Jennifer, I said it would never hinge on you. You know, and what someone who wants to carry out murder is going to carry out murder. And Andrea, I know that you have some extra sound from Chris and Jennifer about the moment they realized what had happened. Let's listen to that. She tells you she needs it for cancer, and then she tells investigators she needs it for your son. Right. What's your reaction to this news from the investigators? That's when we started realizing that things were bad and that she had been lying. When Jennifer's having this conversation with investigators and they're saying, hey, did you ever leave insulin over there for your son?

14:13No. Never. You never left it over? No, there was no reason to. Was there ever a reason you gave her insulin? Oh, yeah. The time she got sick and she needed it because of her blood sugar and because of her cancer. When was that? Well, let's look. Oh, my goodness. That's the day Mike fell out. So absolutely. Yeah, that's the day Michael got sick. And so because of all those facts now come together that were unknown, and that piggybacked with the fact that she had just been raided. And so that's why when I said for us, it all really came together at really kind of one moment. Imagine having that realization.

15:02No, when you realize that's the day. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that Chris was so, oh my goodness, he was just such a strong, compelling interview in this. His grief over losing his friend is still so raw. You don't even, like, we don't even show all the times Chris cried in that interview. I mean, at one point you hear me in the show and I'm like, oh, everyone needs a friend like you. because I was like, look, I truly believe my friends would be sad if something happened to me. I don't know, you know, that they would break down like that. So maybe they would, I don't know. But I was like, this is proof to me that Chris, you are an incredible friend.

15:42I mean, my goodness. He, gosh, he loved Michael so much. That was really one of the most powerful interviews that I have ever done, especially with a friend. And I'll just say really quickly, that was their anniversary. They did the day they did that interview. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh, this was so emotional. We've ruined your anniversary. I'm like, please, you know, go enjoy, go have dinner and enjoy yourself and like, you know, try to have a good evening. Because when they told me that I was like, oh my gosh, I feel so bad. It was so heavy. Yeah. They're so amazing for doing that.

16:16I also think that speaks just to how much they thought of their friend, that they would do something like that and really kind of dredge up those feelings and do that interview for him. Up next, we are taking your questions from social media.

16:34Hi. Okay, we are back and we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. Andrea, you ready? I'm ready. Some interesting ones. Okay, so Stacey, at Stacey Delilah on X, says, she's a pharmacist and let him take a sketchy supplement from Mexico. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about the word let. You know, I don't know if anyone lets anyone do anything. But yeah, it is a little strange that that is her expertise. She might want to really warn her husband against something like that. But, you know, people do what they do. So and we weren't there. So who knows? OK, Cheryl Haley Rodriguez on Facebook wrote, was her leukemia diagnosis ever investigated?

17:18I mean, investigated, you know, I guess in what sense does, you know, Cheryl mean? Like, investigated by law enforcement? Yeah, exactly. You know, I don't think it was officially investigated necessarily. I think that they just figured out that according to prosecutors that she did not have cancer, it really seemed to come and go so quickly. And also these triple chemo, triple radiation. Right. The prosecutors told us that's not a real thing. But everyone in town seemed to know that the cancer was fake. As far as properly investigated, I honestly don't know. Here's a question from Julie Waters Hamrick, who wrote on Facebook, why wasn't there an autopsy done?

18:00Because he went into hospice. You know, it's for terminally ill patients. And I think that at that point, it was believed to be natural causes and autopsies just aren't a normal thing in hospice. You know, usually it's elderly people, people, you know, end of life with cancer or whatever it may be, that it's kind of known, you know, what they have and what's wrong in this case. So I did say to the detective at one point, I said something like, so this kind of fell through the cracks. Then he agreed. That's super interesting. Okay, here's one from Randy Giamarco at Randy Tony G3 on X. So Randy writes, Michael must have wanted receipts and she didn't have any, so she killed him.

18:49I mean, yes, I think it comes down to that type of, you know, what is happening? Why is this bank to bank not going through this transaction? And, you know, all of that surrounding the money, according to prosecutors, Michael just wasn't getting like what he needed from Natalie, you know, to put his mind at ease. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's a fair assessment, simplified. Yeah. You know, I have I have a question along those lines. This is coming from my own viewer at home. Jay had this question. OK, well, this is this is importante coming from Jay. I need to hear this. A question that needs answering.

19:28So we're talking about this and he says, you know, if he was buying these cars, is like talked about the fact that he had the cars, like he had to have had some transparency into what the bank account was looking like. How could he not have known if he was making big ticket purchases too? Again, I just keep putting everything on prosecutors because according to them and their theory, because it is a theory, is that she was handling the money. Michael is finding the contracts and Natalie is really executing them. And she's the one getting the money from the investors. She's the one supposedly getting the money from the government.

20:07And so their theory is that he just, the money just kept coming in. Natalie's handling it. And I think Michael really trusted Natalie, you know? And so when she told him that the money, you know, was coming in from the government, he believed her. Jay will be very happy that we addressed this question. So thank you. Thank you, Jay, for watching. Thank you for watching. He definitely does. Okay, here's one. We actually asked our listeners a question. Why do you think Natalie sent around that photo of Michael, the photo of him on the floor? Here's a response from Ella at Twisted Fairy Tale on X.

20:45Ella writes, in her warped mind, it was a sort of an alibi or she's sick and proud? Ella, that is another excellent question. I side with the, again, this is, I don't, you know, don't know these people, obviously. I don't know Natalie. But I think it was sort of an, personally, I think it was sort of an alibi that she was saying, look, oh my gosh, he fell. Here he is on the floor. You know, he's sick. He's this, he's that. The prosecution, though, just like they said she kept the insulin, the murder weapon, they also believe that it was some sort of like, you know, a twisted trophy, just like the insulin.

21:22that she was sort of in her sick mind was like, look what happened to him. And it's like, she's like, look what I did, even though she didn't say that out loud. That was what the prosecution thought. I think she was just trying to show people like, oh my gosh, look what happened. You know, almost like calling all the friends over. I feel like that was all part of like a larger alibi. Absolutely. Wow. A lot of great questions that we had from our viewers, as always. Excellent bag of questions today. Yes, yes. And this was an excellent episode. Andrea, thank you so much for talking Dateline with me.

21:54Thank you. And that's it for Talking Dateline this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can always reach us 24-7 on social media at Dateline NBC. And if you have a question for Talking Dateline, you can record a message and send it to us on social media, or you can leave a voicemail. Here's that phone number, 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured on a future Dateline episode. Also this Friday at 9, 8 central, I've got an all new two hour Dateline for you. So please be sure to check it out. See you then on Dateline on NBC. And as always, thanks so much for listening.