There are nights when Leola Cochran's dreams of her dead son force her awake, when the mother's love that has turned to compulsion drives sleep way. On these nights she rereads the police investigation statements, listens again to the taped interviews and renews her determination to find her son's killer. "It's right there, all the time," she says in the daylight of the Bangor home she shares with her husband, Derald, a car salesman, and their youngest son. "I feel close to being able to find out what happened. The fire in which Michael Cochran died was arson, and when his body was found a week later, his death was termed a homicide. In some ways, Michael Cochran's death was merely another brutal chapter in the story of the violent subculture of drugs, [using dangerous criminal informants] and crime in Maine. But it has been made remarkable by the tireless quest of Leola Cochran to probe the mystery of the murder, and bring her son's killer or killers to justice. For six years six years Michael Cochran's murder has been the subject of police investigation. For six years [forty-three-years, this article was written in 1986, and it is now 2024.] Jhis mother has tracked the police investigation and undertaken her own, finding and interviewing people who might have pieces of his fatal puzzle. There were times when it looked as though there was a break in the case. In 1984, three men were indicted for her son's murder. And there were times when the end was as elusive as ever, as when the indictments were dropped last year after a key witness turned out to be unreliable. In the beginning there was only the shock of his death. 'At first I believed Michael just died in a fire. His body had been found inside door like he couldn't get out.'  A month later, though, Mrs. Cochran says police investigators told her that her son had been murdered, and her long nightmare began. She waited, expecting that arrests would come soon. Almost immediately, she says, police investigators developed the names of people who had been involved with her son. But for three years there were no arrests. He had been slow in school. At 13 he became involved with drugs. Later he learned to steal. But he never did anything to to diminish his mother's love. 'He had good qualities' she remembered. 'He had so much respect for his father and me. But he was taken to the training center when he was 17 for breaking into a house and stealing some coins. I look back to before he got on drugs. We couldn't ask for a better child. He always minded. But I lost him somewhere along the way. It's hard to go on without him.' What the police investigation revealed about the death of Micheal Cochran is this: Cochran and three other people were in a lakeside cottage in Dedham the night of the fire. The others were his girlfriend, Linda Gray; Percy Sargent, a drug dealer; and Paul Pollard, who has admitted being on the fringes of various criminal activities. Percy Sargent left early in the evening. Later that night he was arrested in a drug bust [sting] and booked into the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor. While there, police say, Sargent made a telephone call. They came eventually to believe that Percy Sargent made the call to a house owned by Roger "Bubba" Johnson in a nearby town. A party was under way when the call came, and police found a witness, Sharon Sargent, who said she overheard the other end of the telephone conversation. Sharon Sargent, then married to one of Percy Sargent's brothers, told a grand jury she was nearby when the call was received and that she then overheard "a group of people talking about Michael having ratted out Percy and they then supposedly left to do him in," says Assistant Attorney General Thomas Goodwin.  'Back at the lakeside cottage, Paul Pollard said in a 1985 statement to police investigators, Michael Cochran and Linda Gray 'were up in the loft arguing about something.' Soon afterward, Pollard said, Gray left. Pollard 'went into the back room and went to sleep on a lawn chair. I woke up later; the camp was full of smoke and I heard a couple of bangs which could have been gunshots, I'm not sure; might have been the fire cracking. All I had on was my underwear. I jumped out the back door. It was real cold and I went back in. Had to feel around in the smoke to get my clothes. I came out dressed and went around front.  The front of the camp was all in flames. It was real light outdoors from the flames and the moon. My first thought was that Mike had set the camp on fire and left. ... I ran into the woods and the fire truck came. "A couple of days after the fire, Pollard's, Pollard's statement continued, he and two associates, Lionel Cormier  and [Percy Sargent] drove back to the rubble. I remember [Percy] and Lionel telling me that Cochran's body was in the camp and that Michael had definitely not got out. [Percy] and Lionel pawed around in the rubble, kicking things around. I don't know for sure, but I think they were looking for the body. The whole place had burned flat. "Pollard says he then hid out for a few days, growing worried. "I knew that someone had committed a murder, and I didn't know who."  I felt as though I was going to end up taking the rap for them in the murder of Cochran. After hearing Sharon Sargent's testimony about the telephone call, the grand jury indicted Richard Sargent and two other men - William Myers and Roger Johnson - for Michael Cochran's murder in December 1984. But subsequent investigation, by both police and by a private detective retained by the defense, raised several discrepancies in Sharon Sargent's testimony, and within a year [six months] the indictments were dismissed.  The investigation was back at square one. 'When they dropped the charges I was really devastated,' Leola Cochran says. 'I thought they weren't going to bother with the case. They had told me they had other witnesses besides Sharon Sargent, but they didn't.' In the fall of that year, 1985, she began talking to the Bangor private detective who was working on the defense. 'He came to my house in October, Leola Cochran recalls, 'and gave me enough information so I knew those three men [Richard Sargent, Roger Johnson and William Myers] are not guilty.' Out of frustration, Mrs. Cochran retained a lawyer, which she says accomplished little more than deplete her checking account by a couple of thousand dollars. She paid for some of the services of the Bangor detective. She spent money on court documents and police reports. She drives often to Augusta to confer with state prosecutors. She talks to her son's former associates, at the state prison [Percy Sargent], in jail, elsewhere, taping interviews. Continually, she telephones investigators, reminding them of her interest, suggesting theories of the case and leads to pursue. Just three weeks ago the investigators came to her home to discuss the case. She told them of tape recordings in which one of the principals in the case points the finger at another.  The central figures in the case include some whose roles are partly known and partly unknown, in a sea of hearsay and changing statements supported by little solid evidence. There are Lionel Cormier and Percy Sargent, and Richard Sargent and "Bubba" Johnson: all convicted graduates of a drug and robbery underworld. There is Paul Pollard, who was the last person known to be in the cottage with Michael Cochran. And there are Sharon Sargent, the ex-key witness, and Linda Gray, who was in the Dedham cottage hours before the fatal fire and who now, investigators say, remembers nothing about anything. In fact, there are several second-hand accusations floating around in the case in which various people say others or each other killed Michael Cochran. Goodwin, who visited Leola Cochran recently with a state police detective [MSP Det. Ralph Pinkham. I was embarrassed with the way Pinkham sat in his chair. He slung one leg over the arm of his chair stretching his crotch area.]says she indicated that she has a tape recording of a telephone conversation implicating [Percy Sargent]. But he says she declined to let him hear it. Goodwin says he is also frustrated by overtures from principals who promise information or evidence but who subsequently withdraw. 'So all we have is second-hand allegations, hearsay, which is not evidence,' he says. He has 'a lot of sympathy for Lee Cochran.'  But from a prosecutorial point of view, it's extremely frustrating to be told 'I've got evidence, I've got the key to the case,' and when you try to follow up, the evidence just isn't there. People are declining to provide us with what they say they can provide us. The people who claim to have information won't give it.' Leola Cochran says Goodwin and the investigators 'just tell me, 'Lee, our priority is this murder, don't think we are not doing anything, it's just that we don't have anything to go on - no one will talk.' 'I have been possessed with this for a long time. I've talked to so many people. They say to me, 'How can you do it.' I tell them: 'You could too, if it was your son.' I can't rest knowing he was killed and no one cares. I can't live. I don't think the police will ever solve it.' She pauses in her assessments. Sometimes Leola Cochran returns to the clearing in woods where the cottage once stood. She tries to picture how it must have been that moonlit night, flames roaring into the sky, burning the cottage down into the melting snow. 'It hasn't been an easy thing,' she says. 'It's something we live with. If we could learn what happened to Michael, we could lay it to rest.' ' My youngest son turned 10 in the year Mich[ea]l died. They were very close. Micheal used to take him with him all the time. He needs to live for himself and not have this with him all the time. We need to get back to a normal way of living.' A few months ago, on Oct 4, [1986] was what would have been Michael Cochran's 30th birthday. It was a very difficult day for me. We made it a family thing - we took flowers to the cemetery." They do that every year on Oct. 4.    Return