Michael Poche had recently moved to San Antonio when a missing-person report ended with deputies finding his body inside a closet.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Michael Anthony Poche came to San Antonio during the summer looking for work and a more stable place to live. The 29-year-old father of two instead became the subject of a homicide investigation after deputies found his body wrapped in plastic inside a closet at the house where he had rented a room.
The identification of Poche and the medical examiner’s later ruling changed the public understanding of a case that began with uncertainty over even the identity of the dead man. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Poche’s death a homicide caused by multiple sharp-force injuries. Two people who knew him, Margaret Kaye Brown and her husband, Christopher Boyd Henson, both 30, have been charged with tampering with physical evidence over an alleged effort to clean the scene. No homicide charge against either has been publicly reported in the sources reviewed through Aug. 28.
Poche’s mother, Angela Long, said her son had moved to Texas from Oregon after Brown, a friend he had known since junior high school in their California hometown, helped him find a room. Poche was trying to get steady work and housing, Long told the San Antonio Express-News. He had left behind a family network that included two daughters, ages 7 and 11, who live with relatives in California, but his mother said he kept in touch with weekly calls while trying to establish himself in San Antonio.
Those calls made the morning of July 26 unusual. Instead of hearing from her son, Long said, she received a call from Brown saying Poche had disappeared. According to Long’s account, Brown said the homeowner had checked on Poche at about 2 a.m. and later asked Brown to come to the house. Long said Brown told her Poche had hurt himself and eventually left carrying a backpack, some shirts and his keys. But Long said he supposedly left behind belongings she believed he would normally take with him, adding to her concern about the explanation.
Brown also sent Long photographs of Poche’s bedroom, according to the family’s account. Long described seeing extensive blood in the images. The Express-News said photographs it reviewed showed blood stains on a mattress and on the bedroom carpet, including a large stain on one side of the mattress and what appeared to be additional blood elsewhere. Poche’s grandmother, Peggy Rowan, said she was involved in the family’s conversations that morning and recalled hearing that Brown intended to clean the blood. Rowan said the family told her not to clean anything before police saw it.
Long said she pressed for law enforcement to be called. At about 4:30 p.m., Brown reported Poche missing to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. Brown and the woman who lived at the residence gave deputies an account that Poche had left after experiencing what they called a “night terror,” authorities said. A deputy began searching the home in the 700 block of Fort Leonard, on San Antonio’s far West Side. That search did not produce evidence that Poche had simply walked away. Instead, it revealed indications that something serious had happened inside the house.
The deputy noticed blood while moving through the residence, Sheriff Javier Salazar said. The search eventually reached a vacant bedroom and its closet. There, deputies discovered a man’s body wrapped tightly inside clear plastic. The body had numerous visible injuries, according to the sheriff’s office. Salazar said the circumstances immediately appeared highly suspicious because the physical condition in which the man was found did not fit the idea that he had harmed himself and then left. The missing-person inquiry effectively gave way to a death investigation at the same address where Poche had supposedly last been seen.
Investigators also reported signs that the scene had been altered before deputies arrived. The sheriff’s office said evidence indicated Brown and Henson had tried to clean areas connected to the apparent crime scene. Henson came to the home while deputies were conducting their investigation. Authorities arrested the couple and charged each with tampering with physical evidence. Investigators also said they had located evidence at another nearby residence that appeared connected to the death and planned additional searches as they worked to determine what happened.
At first, officials stopped short of identifying the body as Poche’s or formally calling the death a homicide. Salazar said during the initial response that a medical examination would be needed to establish both identity and the cause and manner of death. Those questions were answered in the days that followed. Authorities confirmed that the dead man was Poche, the same person who had been reported missing, and the medical examiner determined that he died from sharp-force injuries affecting multiple areas of his body. The manner of death was homicide.
That medical ruling is significant but does not name a killer. In death investigations, “homicide” describes a death caused by another person; deciding whether available evidence supports criminal charges against a particular suspect is a separate investigative and prosecutorial matter. Public reporting has tied Brown and Henson to alleged evidence tampering, not to a filed homicide charge. Both are entitled to the presumption of innocence on the charges they do face, and the publicly available reports do not establish who inflicted Poche’s fatal injuries.
The emerging case left Poche’s relatives confronting two sharply different stories about the same morning. The first was that he had hurt himself, experienced unusual behavior and left the residence. The second emerged after deputies entered the home and found blood, signs of an alleged cleanup and Poche’s body hidden in a closet. Long told the Express-News that the blood visible in photographs never made sense to her as evidence of a minor self-inflicted injury. Investigators have not publicly released a complete reconstruction of the hours before Poche was reported missing, leaving crucial gaps between those accounts.
For Long, those unanswered questions exist alongside memories of her son that have little to do with a police file. Family members said Poche enjoyed skateboarding, bike riding, playing video games, tattooing and spending time with animals. His dog, Smokey, had been a regular companion while Poche lived in Oregon. Long described her son as caring toward the people close to him. The move to San Antonio, she said, had been intended as an effort to build something more secure rather than the start of the circumstances that would lead to his death.
Poche’s relationship with Brown also adds a difficult personal dimension for his family. Long said Brown had known him since they were teenagers in Tehachapi, California, and helped him secure the San Antonio room. She told the Express-News that she previously knew Brown as quiet and kind. Brown later declined to comment to the newspaper about the case. The contrast between that history and Brown’s current evidence-tampering charge has added to the family’s struggle to understand the events surrounding Poche’s final day without providing an answer as to who killed him.
The charges against Brown and Henson focus on what investigators allege happened to physical evidence after a violent event. Authorities have said they found blood and indications of cleaning. Each initially had a $100,000 bond, according to reports, and later coverage said both were free on bond. The investigation into Poche’s death has broader unanswered questions, including who was present when he was fatally injured, what happened before the early-morning account of his disappearance and how evidence found at the second residence relates to the killing.
Relatives have been raising money to return Poche’s remains to California and help his daughters as the criminal investigation continues. The medical examiner has provided a definitive classification of his death, and authorities have confirmed that the man deputies were called to find was inside the house all along. What remains publicly unresolved is responsibility for the homicide. As of Aug. 28, the known criminal charges concern alleged evidence tampering, while no publicly reported charge identifies the person responsible for Poche’s death.
Author note: Last updated August 28, 2026.