The Murder of Michael Cochran (Maine)

On an ordinary winter night in 1981, danger was moving through the Bangor, Maine area in three different directions at once. A barroom dispute was followed by a deadly blaze. A drug sting was underway at a nearby apartment complex. And a few miles away, a lakeside cabin would be reduced to smoldering rubble before sunrise.

None of those events appeared connected as they unfolded. But the first fire would pull investigators away from the second, some of the names in the sting later surfaced in the cabin arson, and before anyone knew what – or rather, who – was lying in the ruins, the course of a homicide case had already irrevocably changed.

If you have information about Michael Cochran’s death or the fire at the cabin, contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit – North at 207-973-3750 or toll-free at 1-800-432-7381. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by texting MESPTIP, followed by your information, to 847411.

The Fires

It all started at 6:35 p.m. on February 17th, 1981 when Bangor Police were called to The Tavern on Main Street. According to A. Jay Higgins’s reporting for the Bangor Daily News, patrons reported that an argument between a man and a woman had become physical. Police cleared the scene only for fire crews to receive a call to the same address later that night. Someone had poured an accelerant in the hallway outside residences above the bar and set it on fire.

Firefighters began battling the blaze at 9:09 p.m. Three people died from smoke inhalation that night: Jesse Eddins, Donald Morrell, and Patricia J. Oakes.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away, 28-year-old Percy Cote walked out the back door of an apartment at Greenwood Gardens in Holden carrying a package containing a pound of pot. The people waiting in the car had arranged to buy ten pounds that night, and shortly before midnight, the remaining nine pounds were delivered.

What Percy apparently did not know was that his customers were undercover narcotics agents with the Division of Special Investigations, and the deal was in fact a sting. The agents arrested Percy Cote and two others: 31-year-old David Dupray and another man also named Percy, Percy Sargent.

Cut to a few hours later at 3:51 a.m. on February 18th and a few miles from the scene of that sting. A woman’s eyes were drawn toward a cabin on Sumac Road in the Lucerne-in-Maine section of Dedham. She dialed the Dedham Fire Department as she watched the flames grow bigger and brighter by the second.

Fire Chief Norman Herrin reached the property by 3:55 a.m. and the log cabin was already fully involved. Flames were coming through the roof, the windows were gone, and the interior was heavily burning.

Chief Herrin had fought other fires in Lucerne’s log cabins, and this one did not behave like the accidental fires he had seen. These structures definitely burned, but they did not ordinarily become consumed this quickly. As Herrin surveyed the property, trying to understand what he was looking at, movement near the woodline caught his attention.

Here is an excerpt from Chief Herrin’s later recorded deposition.

HERRIN: “I caught a view of an individual departing from the rear of the fire structure. Now, that individual—it was impossible to identify the individual accurately because, after all, it was February, it was dark. The only light that was available was that from the burning camp. And I saw him moving away from the fire scene.”

He thought it was a young man with either dark hair or something dark covering his head. The figure was moving quickly and doing something with his hands.

HERRIN: “He seemed to be doing something with his hands as he was moving away from the burning structure. I would liken that to an individual who is washing their hands. But again, that was a very brief view that I had of the person.”

Assistant Fire Chief Elmer Alto, who was also a Hancock County deputy sheriff, arrived at the scene, and Chief Herrin sent him after the figure’s tracks while the rest of the department worked to suppress the fire. Alto followed the mystery man’s trail through the woods until it disappeared near Route 1A.

The whole thing stunk of something suspicious. About 30 feet from the burning cabin, Chief Herrin found two five-gallon gasoline cans. One was nearly full. The other contained approximately one gallon and had no cap.

HERRIN: “Combining the gas cans, the individual leaving the scene, and the rapid extent of the burn of the structure, I immediately arrived at the decision that this is probably an arson fire.”

The probable arson warranted an assessment by State Fire Inspector Wilbur Ricker, but he was already called to the fatal fire in Bangor. He stopped only briefly at the Dedham scene on his way to Bangor, arriving around 5:50 a.m. He viewed the tracks through the woods, steps made by two boots – left and right foot – trailing through the snowy surface.

There was growing concern that this fire was the result of arson, but no one at the scene believed the cabin had been occupied when it burned. With three confirmed deaths in Bangor, that investigation had to take priority. So, Ricker left for Bangor, and Herrin secured the two gasoline cans until Ricker could take custody himself and transport them for potential analysis.

Inspector Ricker did return to the Dedham property after dark that same day but could not conduct a meaningful examination. Days passed before he and another investigator were finally able to go back in daylight and begin working through what remained of the cabin. By then, the fire had been out for nearly a week. What it had left behind was still waiting in the rubble.

Body in the Fire 

On February 24th, 1981, six days after the cabin in Dedham burned, Fire Inspector Wilbur Ricker returned to Sumac Road with Maine State Police Corporal Allan Jamison.

The cabin itself was gone. Its walls had fallen outward, leaving behind a flattened field of burned logs, metal, ash, and debris. The stone and block fireplace is the only part that remains upright while everything else around it is black and charred, in total ruin.

While examining the area near the front entrance, Ricker saw something. Here’s an excerpt from Ricker’s later recorded deposition.

RICKER: “I went down there right in that corner, looking for those hinges, when I found what I thought first was a dog in the fire. And I said to Allen, ‘Do we have any reports of a dog in this house?’ And he turned to me and says, ‘Well, if it’s a dog, he’s got a human head or a skull on this end.’”

The remains were lying face down near the front entrance, close to where the door would have swung. There was ash and metal debris over the body. He noticed that beneath the body, light-colored flooring remained clean and unburned, along with pieces of broken glass. In Ricker’s opinion, the unburned floor beneath the remains indicated that the person had been lying there before the fire began.

The condition of the body raised several concerns. Ricker had investigated fatal fires for decades, and he believed the remains were far more severely burned than he would ordinarily expect in a one-story building where the body was exposed to open air rather than buried in a deep bed of burning debris.

Considering the extent of the burns, the gasoline found nearby on the night of the fire, and the way the cabin had burned, he believed it was more likely than not that an accelerant had been applied directly to the body.

But to clarify, that was Ricker’s expert interpretation of the fire damage, not a laboratory finding.

Ricker remained at the property, standing guard while Jamison was away making calls to the medical examiner. That’s when Ricker heard the telltale sounds of tires on gravel and turned to see a green car coming up the road. Two men stepped out of the vehicle and began walking toward the ruins, but Ricker stepped into view and stopped them before they got too close.

According to the note he made at the time, they identified themselves as Percy Sargent and Lionel Cormier. Both men said they knew David Dupray, whose family owned the cabin. Lionel said he had attended parties there and left a pair of skis behind. Percy said he had done some work at the property and had been to parties there as well.

Ricker later described both men as appearing startled when he emerged in uniform. He did not tell them what had just been found. He only said he was investigating the fire and that they could not approach the ruins.

Six days had passed since the cabin burned, and as Ricker put it, their sudden appearance “just didn’t look right.” Unfortunately, when they left, the driver backed the green car all the way down the road, preventing Ricker from recording its license plate.

He passed their names and the details of the encounter to the investigators who arrived afterward.

By late that afternoon, investigators were working from the possibility that the remains were those of 24-year old Michael Cochran.

What first led them to his name isn’t entirely clear. A Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department document referenced in the book A Maine Murder written by Michael’s mother, Leola Cochran, indicates the District Attorney’s Office had reported Michael dead by about 4 p.m. Then, at 4:30, DEA Agent Herb Saucier contacted investigators with another lead: He’d received a call from an individual named Richard Sargent, who had told him the body in the cabin was Michael Cochran.

A surgical scar on the body apparently supported the initial identification, so investigators operated on the assumption that the remains belonged to Michael. However, according to records later obtained by Leola Cochran, final dental confirmation was not completed until June 15th, almost four months after the fire.

Medical Examiner Dr. Ronald Roy ultimately determined that Michael died from inhaling carbon monoxide and other products of combustion. Testing found a carbon monoxide saturation level of 46 percent in Michael’s blood, supporting the conclusion that he was alive during the fire. Cocaine was also detected in his system.

So, Michael had died in the fire, according to the medical examiner’s findings, but Michael’s initial death certificate listed the investigation as pending. For a time, Leola was led to believe her son’s death had been accidental. It would be months before the official record reflected what investigators had already begun to suspect: Michael’s death was a homicide.

The condition of the cabin and evidence at the scene suggested this was much more than someone who was simply trapped in an accidental blaze.

During a full investigation at the cabin, Fire Inspector Wilbur Ricker found clean window glass outside the cabin and noted that the walls had fallen outward. Because the glass had not accumulated soot before breaking, he believed the windows had been blown out early in the fire. Taken together, those conditions were consistent with a vapor explosion rather than a slow fire spreading from one point of origin.

The front entrance offered another clue. The closing apparatus on the exterior door was locked in the open position, and the hinges from the interior door were also found open. Corporal Jamison believed that the open door would have created a draft, pulling more air into the cabin and feeding the fire.

There were also those two gas cans found at the scene. Ricker later found a third five-gallon can near the elevated back door. It all suggested arson. That the fire was intentionally set.

The arson finding and homicide ruling opened the floodgates to questions. Why was the fire set? Did whoever started it know Michael was inside? Was he the intended target? The deeper investigators looked into the circumstances of Michael’s life, the more danger they found.

Michael Cochran’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.

NOTE: In much of the reporting of this case through the years, his name is spelled Mich-E-A-L. Michael unofficially changed the spelling in some contexts and his mother chose to honor that for many years. Legally, his name is spelled Mich-A-E-L, and that’s how she wishes to spell his name for this story.