BECKLEY, WV (WOAY) – “This has been a very long, hard battle.”
It has been a long six years for Donna Bolt. For six years, she has been trying to get to the bottom of the death of her son, Michael Brandon Cochran.
Along with her husband, Eddie Bolt, she has had to contend with delays, rescheduled hearings, dropped indictments and fresh charges, new prosecutors, and two exhumations of Michael Cochran’s body.
She sat through nearly three weeks of a trial that featured graphic photos of her son’s body seven months after his death, testimony from her grandchildren, a picture that Natalie Cochran herself took of Michael Cochran unconscious body on the floor, and expert testimony that went into great detail about Michael Cochran’s medical condition over the five days between his collapse and eventual death.
All of that led to the pivotal moment at around 11:30 this morning, when members of a jury made up of four men and eight women returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder against Michael Cochran’s wife, Natalie Cochran.
The jury began deliberations at 9:34 a.m. It didn’t even need two hours to reach its decision. In the aftermath, the relief is palpable.
“We would just like to say we thank everybody for your prayers. It’s been a long time coming. February the eleventh of 2025 will be six years since Michael Brandon had been murdered,” Donna Bolt said.
Natalie Cochran has now been convicted of murdering her husband. According to the state, she injected him with insulin at some point on Feb. 6, 2019. Throughout the day, Michael Cochran’s condition deteriorated, but he was not taken to the hospital until his friend insisted that Michael Cochran receive help.
That was hours after his collapse. When Michael Cochran was finally admitted to the hospital, his blood sugar was 21.
Throughout the trial, the state said Natalie Cochran’s motive for killing her husband was to prevent him from discovering the Ponzi scheme that she was running without his knowledge. Cochran is already serving a federal prison sentence in connection to that crime.
The jury agreed with the state’s narrative.
It is not the outcome the defense says it expected. In the moments following the reading of the verdict, Natalie Cochran broke down. In a brief, impromptu news conference, her attorneys expressed disbelief at the verdict.
“Quite frankly, I’m in shock. I didn’t think there was a valid basis for finding guilty, but that is what the jury decided upon,” said Stanley Selden, one of Natalie Cochran’s two defense attorneys.
For the prosecution, though, the verdict was exactly as expected, and the jury’s relatively short deliberation period shows how convincing its case was.
Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney Tom Truman said much of that came down to Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Ashley Acord’s closing argument.
“I think it shows how Ashley Acord pulled it together at the end,” he said.
Cochran’s defense team briefly reflected on what they think happened to cause the jury to reach a guilty verdict. One factor is her guilty plea to financial crimes in federal court in 2020.
“I believe it heavily weighed in their decision,” Selden said.
The defense acknowledged Natalie Cochran’s criminal background during the trial. Defense attorney Matthew Victor began opening arguments and ended his closing argument by discussing her guilty plea to financial crimes.
He told the jury that Natalie Cochran’s guilt in other crimes did not make her guilty of murder.
Further, the defense does not feel that the prosecution proved Natalie Cochran’s guilt.
“The prosecution woefully failed to to demonstrate, to show the jury how that happened, when it happened, why it happened and how. We’ll just leave it at that for now,” Victor said.
According to the state, the evidence was overwhelming. During the trial, a neighbor, Jennifer Davis, testified that she gave Natalie Cochran a vial of insulin on the day Michael Cochran collapsed. Natalie Cochran told Davis that she needed the insulin for herself.
Additionally, expert witnesses testified that based on their review of Michael Cochran’s medical records, homicide by injection of insulin is the only explanation that makes sense.
All of those added up to contribute to the state’s case. However, Truman believes that one of the most influential pieces of evidence is one that the state noticed towards the end of the trial: a text that was sent from Michael Cochran’s phone well after Natalie Cochran took a picture of him unconscious on the floor.
“With so many pieces of information, it takes time to sort all that through. And lo and behold, there’s this text. And I think Bob [Robert] Hinzman said, ‘hey, here’s a text,'” Truman said. “And sure enough, it’s got a time stamp on it, when all the evidence showed there was no way Michael Cochran could have said that.”
In the aftermath of the trial, both Truman and Acord said they could not have gotten the guilty verdict of the investigators and everyone else who assisted in the case.
Truman took over the case last fall amid a widespread scandal involving Ben Hatfield, the former prosecuting attorney. This was Acord’s second jury trial.
“Like Tom said, we came in here at the last minute. They had so much put together for us already,” Acord said. “The Bolt family, they have suffered so much. And I believe it is truly amazing that we were able to get justice for them and for Michael.”
Both Donna and Eddie Bolt feel that justice has been done.
“God’s plan has been fulfilled today. Justice is done for Michael Brandon. We just wanted to say that we have remained strong in our faith,” Donna Bolt said.
“Natalie Cochran was held accountable and justice has been served for Mike,” Eddie Bolt said.
Proceedings will resume tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. The jury will consider whether or not to grant Natalie Cochran mercy. If it extends her mercy, she will be eligible for parole in 15 years. If it doesn’t, she will spend the rest of her life in prison.