Michael Poche, 29, was a father of two from California trying to find stable work and housing in San Antonio. His body was found wrapped in plastic in the closet of a West Side home on July 26.
Courtesy of Angela Long
Michael Poche, 29, shown with his dog, Smokey, moved to San Antonio to find a stable job and housing. His body was found wrapped in plastic in the closet of a West Side home on July 26.
Courtesy of Angela Long
Michael Anthony “Mikey” Poche, 29, moved to San Antonio this summer seeking a fresh start.
He had relocated from Oregon at the recommendation of a junior high school friend from his hometown of Tehachapi, Calif. Margaret “Maggy” Brown, 30, found Poche a room at a friend’s house on the far West Side.
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“He was just looking for any work he could get,” said Poche’s mother, Angela Long.
Long still lives in Tehachapi, a town in the Tehachapi Mountains 115 miles north of Los Angeles. To close the distance, Poche called her every week to let her know how he was doing and catch up on family news.
On Sunday morning, July 26, Long’s phone rang, but it wasn’t Mikey. It was Brown, calling to tell Long her son had disappeared.
Later that day, Bexar County sheriff’s deputies found Poche’s body wrapped in plastic in a closet in the house where he was living. This week, the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide and said Poche died of “sharp force” injuries — the kind caused by a knife or blade — to the head, neck, chest and arms. Brown and her husband are charged with tampering with evidence from the scene.
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No one has been charged — yet — with causing Poche’s death.
Long, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of the devastating news, and wondering why anyone would do such a thing to her son.
‘Blood everywhere’
Poche loved skateboarding, video games, bike riding, tattooing and animals, family members said. His beloved dog Smokey was by his side constantly when he lived in Oregon. He had two daughters, ages 7 and 11, who live in California with relatives.
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In San Antonio, Poche rented a room in a house in the 700 block of Fort Leonard, in the Weston Oaks subdivision near the intersection of Potranco and Talley roads. The owner of the home, who also lived there, was a friend of Brown’s.
Long, in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News, detailed how news of her son’s fate reached her from 1,400 miles away. It began with what she described as a bizarre early morning call from Brown, who she said she has known since Brown and Poche were teenagers.
According to Long, Brown told her during that July 26 phone conversation that the owner of the house where Poche was living had knocked on his bedroom door around 2 a.m. that morning to check on him.
By Long’s account, Brown said Poche had refused to open the door, insisting that he wanted to “clean up first.” The homeowner then called Brown and asked her to come to the house in hopes that she could reason with Poche.
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Brown told Long that Poche had “hurt himself,” and that he left the house with a backpack, several shirts and his keys. Brown said he left behind his vape pen and tattoo gun, which Long said would have been uncharacteristic of him.
“Then (Brown) sent me some disturbing pictures of his room with blood everywhere,” Long said.
The photos, reviewed by the Express-News, show blood stains on the mattress and bedroom carpet. The mattress has a large stain on one side and what appears to be spattered blood in the middle.
‘He did not do that himself’
Peggy Rowan, Poche’s grandmother, who was on the phone call that morning, said Brown told her and Long that she was going to clean up the blood.
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“We told her, ‘You can’t,'” Rowan said. “‘You cannot clean it up until the cops see it.'”
Long urged Brown to call 911 and file a missing person report. The sheriff’s office said Brown called around 4:30 p.m. that day and deputies were dispatched to the house.
Brown and the homeowner told deputies Poche had left the house that morning after experiencing what they described as a “night terror,” the sheriff’s office said.
Long said that made no sense to her.
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“The amount of blood in that room — no, he did not do that himself,” she said.
When deputies began looking around the house for signs of Poche, they opened a closet door in a vacant room and found his remains wrapped in plastic. The body was covered with lacerations, Sheriff Javier Salazar said.
When a deputy called Long to tell her the news, she “lost it,” she recalled.
Christopher Boyd Henson, left, and his wife, Margaret Kaye Brown, both 30, are charged with tampering with evidence from the West Side house where Michael Poche’s body was found wrapped in plastic in a closet on July 26.
Bexar County jail
‘The sweetest person’
Brown and her husband, Christopher Henson, 30, were arrested and charged with tampering with physical evidence. Investigators allege the couple attempted to clean up the scene before deputies arrived. Both are free on bond.
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Brown married Henson in 2017, and the couple have several children, according to his Facebook page. In 2018, they moved from California to San Antonio for Henson’s job after he graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a degree in computer science.
The death of Poche and the arrest of Brown have been a body blow for Long.
“She was a little on the shy side, but she was always the sweetest person around me,” she said of Brown.
Family members are raising money to bring Poche’s remains home to California and hold a funeral. They hope the funds will also help support his two daughters.
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Poche did not deserve what happened to him, his mother said.
“He was the sweetest person to his friends and people he cared about,” Long said.