2011 - 2012
 
My struggle continues
 
 On April 24, 2011, I called the Federal Prison in Missouri and was told that Cormier had died on April 28, 2009, two years previous. 
     On June 16, 2011, I called to speak with the AG Victim Advocate.  I was told that she no longer worked at the Attorney General’s office. I was told that there was a new Victim Advocate and I spoke with her. She said she would talk with Stokes and call me on Monday. She never called.
      On August 27, 2015, I emailed Coleman: “Just to say hello! Are you still with the Maine Governor’s office?” He responded immediately, saying: “Hello Lee, I hope you and Derald [Derry] are doing well. Yes, I am still with the Executive Protection Unit.” I responded later that afternoon:
“Thanks for responding. I live in Indiana now. I will never forget you for taking Cormier off the streets and bringing out that he murdered Mike. You did get some indirect justice for Mike. Thank you so much for that. But I need before I die to tell my story of the hell I have been through for thirty-four years. I will be eighty years old next July. My life as I knew it ended on February 25, 1981. I was forty-four when Mike was so violently murdered and I’ve lived it every day since. I thank you—a kind & decent MSP detective. Lee.”
I received no further response.
 
In August 2011, Derry called the Attorney General’s office and a meeting was scheduled for August 9 at the Maine State Police barracks in Bangor. Derry contacted police informant, David Harriman, and had him come to my home to speak with us just before the MSP meeting. David didn’t want to be recorded. But, he did answer some questions.

Mike denigrated by detectives

I asked Harriman about something Det. Pinkham had written in a Feb. 26, 1981 statement he took from Robert Elrick that said "Elrick stated that the night that Percy Sargent was arrested on drug charges and brought to the Penobscot County Jail that he had overheard an inmate by the name of David Harriman ... and Percy Sargent talking." Harriman told Sargent that he was "upset at Cochran because he thought that a few days before [Percy] Sargent's arrest that Cochran had ripped him (Harriman) off for $3,500."  Harriman said he had never met Mike and he did not say that to Percy Sargent. 
     David Dupray, in a February 24, 1981 statement, told Shuman “that he feels it was Percy [Sargent] that ripped off $3,800 that was in the trunk of his car.” Pinkham used Dupray’s Feb. 24 information about Percy Sargent ripping him off to denigrate Mike in Elrick's Feb. 26 statement.
     At Dupray’s sentencing, his attorney asked the judge to allow him to correct part of the Probation Officer’s comments. The attorney said the officer said “[David] was attacked by a Mr. Cochran … at a parking lot. That is not what my client says. He said he was attacked by Mr. Sargent, just a factual statement that we wanted to make sure was correct.” Who changed the information Dupray gave the probation officer from Percy Sargent to Mike, attacking Dupray?
     When Richard Sargent was arrested on December 5, 1984, Shuman and Pinkham interviewed him in a cell at the Hancock jail. Shuman told Richard Sargent that “Percy and Cochran were going to make a hit on Charlie Dolan.” A little later in the interview, he said, “Cochran welshed on a $20,000 coke deal to Bubbie Johnson. He also said, “Cochran was going to snitch to the cops and that “Cochran was going to be taught a lesson. Cochran was going to snitch… on your brother.”
     According to Shuman and Pinkham, Mike was a pretty bad guy. He stole $3,500 from Harriman, he attacked Dupray, he was going to make a hit on Dolan, and he welshed on a $20,000 coke deal with Johnson. All of the detectives accusations against Mike were acts that Percy Sargent committed. Percy Sargent stole the money from Dupray; Percy Sargent attacked Dupray; and Percy Sargent made a hit on Dolan for $20,000 on November 27, 1980.
     Then, on October 2, 1986, Assistant AG Goodwin told the news that Mike “may have been involved in some plans to steal quantities of cash and drugs from other narcotics dealers.”
     Why did the Maine State Police and the Maine Attorney General’s office feel that it was necessary to cover for Percy Sargent and smear Mike, the victim? I believe they wanted to show the public that Mike was so worthless, that no one would care if his murder was ever taken care of. A nurse at a health care facility, where I was training, did tell me that Mike got what he deserved.
     Just to show how Shuman bent the truth, I refer to two false statements he made against Richard argent. In an Oct. 16 1984 interview Shuman had with Harriman, Shuman told Harriman, “a week after the fire at the camp, Dickie Sargent and this other guy, I’ll think of his name in a minute, showed up while the Fire Marshal was there.” In Shuman's Feb. 24, 1981 MSP investigation report it states that "Inspector Ricker advised that while Det. Jamison went to make the phone call two people arrived on the property, Lionel Cormier of Bangor and Percy Sargent of Monroe." And in Ricker’s fire report he stated that it was Percy Sargent and Lionel Cormier who showed up at the murder scene. Ricker told me in 1981 that he had turned the information over to Shuman and Pinkham and told them that the two men need to be looked at, along with the man Herrin saw fleeing into the woods. Shuman accused Richard Sargent and claimed he couldn’t remember Cormier’s name, which was unlikely.
     In January of 1987, Shuman told an FBI investigating agent that Sharon Sargent advised that she was afraid of Richard Sargent. In Sharon‘s July 24, 1984 interview, she told Shuman that as far as Percy [Sargent], she was “more scared of him than I am any of the rest of them.” She did not say that she was afraid of Richard Sargent. Both of Shuman’s statements against Richard Sargent were complete falsehoods.
     This was the detective who the State of Maine allowed to control Mike’s murder investigation until he retired in 1997, 16 long years! I wrote MSP Captain LaMontagne asking for someone new on Mike’s case after Shuman was accused of perjury during Cormier’s trial in 1986. I received no response. I was completely ignored by the State of Maine. Shuman was allowed to cover for Percy Sargent and Paul Pollard while he denigrated my son whom they had murdered.

Another detective assigned Mike’s case

 On September 29, 2011, I sent an email to Troy Gardner, the detective we had met with at the August 9, 2011 meeting.
Hi, Wondering how you are coming on the funds needed to visit Paul Pollard. I think when we met on August 9 (2 months ago) you were going to request the funds and if refused then it would be up to Derry and I to seek help in getting the funds. Am I right in that? Please let me know. Lee Cochran.
     On October 7, 2011, I received a response from Gardner with copies sent to Christopher Coleman [brother to Gerald Coleman] and Carlton Small:
Hi Lee, We have presented our investigative plan to our Lt. He is in the process of reviewing it along with other open case investigative plans that he will need to review. As you know, we have other open cases that we work on as well. [During the 30 years since Mike’s murder, I had been told that many times.] At this point, Det. Small is making plans to travel out of state to interview Karen. [Karen Murray was Pollard’s girlfriend and it was to her residence in Rhode Island that Pollard fed after he and Cormier killed Mike in 1981.] You know from our last meeting that Karen has never been interviewed. [I knew it long before our last meeting.] It is important to interview her in case she has information that may be helpful to the investigation. Once that is complete we will assess the option or need to re-interview Paul. I understand that you want us to re-interview Paul. When we met last time, you asked that we re-interview Paul or close the case. Again, we will discuss re-interviewing Paul once we have completed our interview with Karen. Thanks and take care. Sgt. Gardner.
I responded the same day to Gardner’s email:
Thank you for the information. I am happy to see that Det. Small is planning to interview Karen. Please stay in touch. Lee Cochran.
The October 7, 2011 email from Gardner was the last contact I’ve had with the Maine State Police. (Gardner must still be working on those “other open cases” that he wrote about.) It is now eleven years since Gardner sent his 2011 email and I never heard from him again—no follow-up to Small’s plan to interview Karen Murray or to re-interview Paul Pollard. I never contacted him again either, because after 41 years of the Maine State Police and the Attorney General’s office feeding me information to just pacify me, but never following through, I am sick of begging and I can’t take any more of their lies.
     Stokes continually says that the investigation of Mike’s murder is “open, active and ongoing.” That is not a true statement. The only truthful thing in Stokes’s statement is that it is ongoing. In 41 years, I have not heard one word from the Maine State Police or the Attorney General’s office, unless I initiated the contact, except for Coleman.  I will always thank him for the work he did on Mike case.

I had a dream

 Feb. 28, 2012—I had a dream last night. It is jumbled in my mind. I was at a prison. Lionel Cormier was there. I knew he had killed Mike. He is seated on a bench between me and a couple other people. I have to sit there and not let on that I know he killed Mike and that I am scared to death of him. A feeling of something vile surrounds me as I sit on the bench so close to him. I am then in a house and Cormier is holding me and my family members hostage. There is a room with a bunk bed. We have it up against a door. We are going to try to escape, but I am afraid he will hear the small child. Somehow, I get away and leave the rest of the family with Cormier. I know he has the family in a car chasing me. I stop at a place like a gas station. Outside the building, I find a small door to a small crawl space under the building and hide in there. An employee of the station opens the door and questions me. I tell the man about Cormier killing Mike and that he has my family. He tells me he is not scared of Cormier. I tell him that he will shoot him and he says he has been shot before and is not scared. I am terrified and want him to close the door before Cormier finds me. As we are talking, Cormier drives up with my family in the car. The man shoots Cormier in the head with the family still in the car. I then wake. It is 4:20 a.m. I lie in my bed and think of how this man has controlled my life for 31 years, now nearly 43 years. When Cormier killed my son, Mike, he also killed part of me. Cormier is dead now, but the pain inside me of how he took my son’s life will be with me until the day I die.2023-2012-

I Contact Maine Senator Olympia Snowe

June 13, 2012, eight months after not hearing a word from Gardner, I sent a letter by FedEx to Maine Senator Olympia Snowe in Washington, DC.  In my letter I said that I had received a letter from her husband [Maine Governor John McKernan] on March 9, 1987 that said “members of staff informed me that you have been unsatisfied with investigations conducted by the FBI Office in Bangor and with the efforts by the State Attorney General’s Office on this case. (This was erroneous information because the FBI never conducted an investigation of my son’s murder.) Your husband suggested that I contact either Senator William S. Cohen, Senator George J. Mitchell, you, or Attorney General James E. Tierney. The following letters will show that I did contact Senator William Cohen and Senator George Mitchell.”
     I asked Senator Snowe to ask the FBI to get involved in Mike's case. The reason I asked her this was because Mike lost his life as a result of a DEA undercover drug sting. I told Snowe that the DEA used a convict to help with an undercover drug sting the night Mike was murdered and the drug traffickers didn't suspect him. They believed my son, Mike, informed on them.
Snowe never answered my letter and it is now nearly 13 years since I sent my letter and it arrived at her office because it was signed for at Snowe's office in Washington DC. 
 
2017