Albert P. Cochran, serving a life sentence at Maine State Prison for the rape and murder of Oakland nurse Janet Baxter in 1976, died on Tuesday at a Rockport hospital, according to a news release from the Maine Department of Corrections.
Cochran, 79, who also had served 9 years in an Illinois prison for murdering his first wife, had served about 18 years of his life sentence for the Baxter murder.
He was charged but never convicted of stabbing his three children to death in Illinois. At the time, he claimed his wife killed them.
While Baxter was killed in 1976, Cochran’s connection to her murder was discovered 23 years later through DNA testing. He was convicted in 1999. She had driven from her Oakland home Nov. 23, 1976, to the A&P in JFK Mall on Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville to buy cold medicine and never returned home.
Police later found Baxter’s body in the truck of a car that had gone into the Kennebec River in Norridgewock. She had been shot in the head and chest.
Two weeks after Baxter’s death, Cochran’s live-in girlfriend, Pauline Rourke, disappeared and was never found. Cochran was not charged in her death. The couple lived in Fairfield Center at the time.
He was married and living in Stuart, Florida, in 1998 when police charged him with Baxter’s murder.
Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said Wednesday afternoon that Cochran had been hospitalized in recent days and had been in poor health, though he did not know the exact cause of his death. Cochran died at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday at Pen Bay Medical Center.
“He had a number of ailments that he was dealing with,” McCausland said.
This story will be updated.
Amy Calder — 861-9247
Twitter: @AmyCalder17