1989
 
Linda Gray's deposition
December 18, 1989, Mike’s girlfriend, Linda Gray’s deposition was taken at Marvin Glazier’s firm in Bangor. Attorney Popkin told me that he felt it was a waste of money to do Linda’s deposition because she was saying she knew absolutely nothing. (Giving the Maine Attorney General’s Office the information we had collected for trial was also a waste of my money.) I told him, regardless, I wanted her deposed. She and Mike had gone together for nearly six years and she had lived in my home much of that time. But after Mike’s murder she refused to speak to any of Mike’s family. I saw her at the Penobscot Superior Courthouse in 1989 during one of Richard Sargent’s hearings. She was standing in a corner just outside the courtroom door with Homicide Detectives Shuman and Pinkham talking and laughing like old friends.
     Marvin Glazier also represented Linda and she played loss of memory to the hilt. Why did she need an attorney? I wasn’t suing her. Perhaps she was worried that I might ask about her assisting Mike in his escape from the courthouse and why she left him lying under a pile of burned fire rubble for six days and did not tell anyone—especially me.

     Nevertheless, Mr. Popkin tried to question her. “Did you know the late Micheal Cochran?”
     “Yes.”
     She said she had gone out with Mike since she was 13 years old and that she was 19 when he died. [Good start. Maybe it was going to be better than we expected.]
     Popkin said, “I have marked as Deposition Exhibit Number 1 a statement that bears the signature and remarks of Detective Corporal Herbert B. Shuman. You have had a chance to review it. I am going to show it to you again. I’d like to ask you whether you remember talking to Detective Shuman on the day Michael’s body was found in 1981. 
     “No, I don’t remember.”
     “Do you remember talking to any policeman that day?”
     “Not really, no.”
     “Do you feel prepared to try to remember anything about this?”
     “Well, I try to remember, but back then I was on a lot of drugs and I have read these statements and stuff, I really don’t remember saying them. All of it is blacked out. I don’t know if it was just from the trauma and being on drugs or what, but I tried to remember but there’s nothing there. It’s like black.”
     “So you don’t even remember speaking to Detective Shuman on the 24th of February, 1981?”
     “No, I don’t.”
     “I understand what you have told me, but for the record I’m going to go through the other two statements too. I’m going to show you what’s marked as Deposition Exhibit 2. This is a statement which bears the signature and mark of Trooper Ronald G. Graves of the Maine State Police. It’s dated March 3rd, 1981. Do you remember giving that statement?”
     “No, I don’t.”
     “I’m going to show you what has been marked as Deposition Exhibit Number 3, [I don't have this statement] which is also a statement which bears the signature and mark of Trooper Graves, and this is dated March 5th, 1981. I’d just like to ask you whether you remember giving that statement.”
     “No. Where were these statements taken? I don't know, you know. I don’t even remember.”
     “These statements all say that the place of interview was the Bangor Police Department. Do you remember going to the Bangor Police Department during that week or so after the fire in the camp, week or two?”
     “No, I can’t say that I do.”
     “Let me start with the period just preceding the fire. Do you remember the night of the fire at all, even vaguely?”
     “I think just vaguely, just vaguely.”
     “You do know that there was a fire?”
     “Uh-huh.”
     “Do you have any doubt that Micheal Cochran died in it?”
     “I don’t know. I don’t know.
”   1
     “Have you ever seen Micheal Cochran since that night?”
     “Not that I know of, no.”
     “Did you attend the memorial service for him shortly after that period?”  
     “Yeah.”    2
     “Did you believe and do you believe that he died that night?”
     “All I know is that he died in that fire. That’s what I have heard. ...”
     “Do you remember ever being at that camp with Micheal?”
     “Not really.”
     “Do you remember whether or not there was a small fellow with dark hair [Paul Pollard] who was also there?”
     “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  3
The above paragraph is from Det. Shuman and Bangor PD Lt. Roger Bryce’s interview of Linda Gray on Feb. 24, 1981 at the Bangor Police Department, several hours after Mike was found.  
     “Do you remember the fact that he did escape at some point from the courthouse?”
     “Uh-huh.”    4
     "What happened after that? Where did you go?”
     “I don’t even remember. I don’t even remember. I don’t even know if I was with him or not.”    5
      "Do you remember telling Lee Cochran that you had knowledge that Percy Sargent had been bragging at a party in Winterport that he had Micheal killed?”
     “No.”
     “Do you know who Percy Sargent is?”
     “Trying to think. If he was to walk in here, I don’t think I would recognize him."   6
     “Do you remember anything about him claiming that he had some role in Micheal’s death?”
     “No.”     7
     “Do you know Lee Cochran’s sister, Mavis Long, or did you ever know her?”  
     “Just barely, back a long, long time ago.”
     “Do you remember making a phone call to Lee’s sister, Mavis Long, about the time of the events that we are talking about in which you told her that Micheal had died in the fire?”
     “No.”
     “Do you remember going down to the site of the fire after the building had burned at any point?”
     “I might have. I’m not really sure. I might have. I don’t know. I don’t know because I was doing a lot of drugs back then.”
     “What sort of drugs were you doing back then?”
     “Oh, everything, everything I could get my hands on just to try to make myself feel better and forget about it. My mom didn’t think I was going to make it through. She thought I should see a psychiatrist or something, I took it that bad, you know, took it that hard.”  8
     “Would you have been doing psychedelic drugs at that time?”
     Linda said she was doing LSD, cocaine, and marijuana at that time.   8
     “... I am going to show you what’s been marked as Deposition Exhibit Number 4, now—this is a photograph—and ask if you recognize that. … it’s been represented to me anyway that that’s you in the white sweater there with Leola.” 
 “I don’t know. I can’t tell if that’s me or not.”


On the left Linda Gray can be seen standing, in the white jacket, and I am to her left bent down digging with my bare hands in the rubble and ashes where Linda said Mike's body was found to see if I could find anything (watch, necklace or his black pinky onyx ring) that would prove to me that Mike had died there.
     “… the last time you saw Micheal, was there anyone there besides Micheal and Paul Pollard, a short guy with black hair?”
     Glazier: “Objection. She said she doesn’t remember anyone being there.”
     Popkin: “I’m going to show you what has been marked as Deposition Exhibit Number 5 and ask if you can tell me who is that?”

Mike and Linda at Mark Ashe's house a couple of hours before Mike was murdered
     "Yeah, that’s me, and there’s Mike right there.”
     “Do you remember going to Mark Ashe's  house with Micheal the night that the camp burned …?”
     “I’m not sure if we did or not. I don’t know.”
     “Do you recognize where it is?”
     “No.”
     “Do you remember what the sleeping arrangements were in that cabin, who was sleeping where?”
     “No, no.”
     Glazier said he had just a couple of questions and asked Linda, “Did you get those drugs from Micheal Cochran?”  9
     “I could have. I’m not sure.”

 
********
Notes
 
1.    I was embarrassed for Linda. It was one thing to feign loss of memory but to say she didn’t know that Mike had died in the fire caused me to believe that someone had shut her up.
 
2.    It is amazing that she remembered the memorial service but couldn’t remember that Mike had died.
 
3.    According to Linda’s statement Mike lived one day after Paul Pollard arrived at Dupray’s cottage. In Paul 's deposition he also says he was only there one night.
 
4.     She could remember Mike escaped from the courthouse (which obviously was before Mike was murdered) but she couldn’t remember that he was murdered. Mike couldn’t have escaped from the courthouse without her. She used her car to take him away from the courthouse and she hid him out. She aided and abetted in his escape. Popkin didn’t ask her whether she assisted Mike in his escape and I was not allowed to speak.
 
5.     She helped him escape and was with him every day (77 days) afterward. She left the cottage only a couple of hours before Mike was murdered. February 24, 1981, she told Det. Shuman that she was visiting him every day and left Mike after midnight of the day he was murdered.
 
6.    Linda and Mike were staying with Percy Sargent when Mike was murdered.
 
7.    In late 2003, a new detective, Coleman, told me he tried to visit Linda Gray’s residence and found her property enclosed with a secured fence, guard dogs, and security cameras. He said, “What is she afraid of?” She could be afraid of Pollard, Cormier, and Percy Sargent. Or, she could be afraid of Shuman. He could have threatened her with charges as he had done with me, and, according to Sharon Sargent, “Barry Shuman said the State already had one of my children. … you only have two kids left; you don’t want to lose them.” Sharon also said that “she had been in fear of Cpl. Barry Shuman” … who she said had been “leading and suggestive in his questions regarding the alleged murder.”
 
8.    What did she take so hard? She said she didn’t know if Mike died in the fire. These statements sounded like she was staying drugged after Mike’s murder. Ricker had said one evening on his way home from the Bangor fire, he saw a car parked on the side of the road leading to the burned cottage before Mike’s body was found, “and that belonged to a lady friend.” Percy Sargent told his brother, Richard Sargent, that “Cochran’s girlfriend had come down to jail the second day I was in there, the second day or third day I was in there, and asked me if I knew where Micheal was.” Percy Sargent said he told her, “No, I didn’t know if he was in there or not. I suspected it a little bit.”
 
9.   Attorney Marvin Glazier would probably not be called a dirty lawyer in the lawyer community but in my book he is a dirty lawyer. He said during Paul and Owen's depositions that I had used lies and deceit to contact Paul and Owen. I was a mother trying to find out who killed my son and I didn't use lies and deceit. I believe he did what he could to help the authorities cover up Mike's murder. And now he wants to know if Linda got her drugs from Mike. Mike was dead at the time Linda said she was taking LSD, cocaine, and marijuana to help her "forget about it."  But, Glazier wanted to turn it into something against Mike, the murder victim. Mike, the young man whose body was left lying under a pile of six-day-old fire rubble after Glazier’s client, Pollard, and his half-brother, Cormier, murdered him. Was Glazier’s question necessary? Mike was dead; he had paid the ultimate price.
     Fire Inspector Ricker mentioned Linda in his January 1990 deposition. He said that one  “night that I went down by, it was too dark, and I found an automobile down there. I did turn the information between us over to the state police after we found the body, and that belonged to a lady friend, I guess,  and it was a Buick and the plate number—I just turned that over to them—and I can’t remember being down there any other time. I wasn’t there in any daylight where I could do anything, but I was going back and forth by and I could have stopped for something.”  Linda knew Michael was lying under the fire rubble and was going to the arson/murder scene during the time he lay there.  Why did she not come tell me.
 
Linda said that she was taking “everything I could get my hands on just to try to make myself feel better and forget about it. My mom didn’t think I was going to make it through. She thought I should see a psychiatrist or something. I took it that bad, you know, took it that hard.”  I believe Linda was traumatized over Mike’s murder. I never knew this because Linda refused to have contact with me. I have all the sympathy in the world for her if she was traumatized over Mike murder. I know that she had gone with Mike for six-years and that she did care about Mike and was by his side for 77 days after he fled the courthouse. That tells me that she was not as cold as she appeared to me when she refused to speak to me.  I believe someone told Linda not to have contact with me and I believe that same someone was behind her not remembering anything about Mike's murder.