00:00:03
[music playing] In the woods of
Michigan's upper peninsula, Terri O'Donnell is searching
for signs of her ex-boyfriend,
00:00:23
Chris Regan, who suddenly
disappeared one day back in 2014 after
Terri offered to help
00:00:28
him move into a new house. What's going on? I kept texting, messaging
him, and I got no response.
00:00:38
And a week went by, and I
still hadn't heard from him. LAURA FRIZZO: On
October 27 of 2014,
00:00:46
I met Terri O'Donnell, who
came to the police department as I was leaving for the day.
00:00:51
She was shook up. She was crying. That's when she told me
that something was wrong.
00:00:57
Her friend was missing. She came into the office
and explained to me what she had-- what she had found.
00:01:03
She hadn't heard from
him since October 14. And then I got panicky,
and then he told me that he
00:01:13
saw Christopher's car at the-- at the Park and Ride in Bates. And so I drove out that
evening to the Park and Ride,
00:01:23
and his car was there. I couldn't get in the
car and I was afraid that he was in the trunk.
00:01:28
I knew something
happened to him. I knew he wasn't coming back. LAURA FRIZZO: Terri had told me
where Chris had been working,
00:01:36
and I happen to know the human
resource director there very well and told me that
there was a woman
00:01:42
that he was allegedly
having an affair with that also worked there. So I asked her who
that woman was.
00:01:48
This woman was, you
know, Kelly Cochran. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
Within days of hearing that Chris
Regan was missing,
00:01:55
Detective Frizzo strongly
suspected he had been murdered. This woman, Kelly Cochran, was
someone she needed to speak to,
00:02:05
a woman who police
would one day also want to talk about the death of
her husband, Jason Cochran.
00:02:14
This is "Meet, Marry,
Murder" with a difference. Not one mystery death, but two.
00:02:22
[music playing] Kelly Gaboyan grew up
in Maryville, Indiana. By the late '90s, the small
town her family lived in
00:02:54
had kind of been gobbled up
by Hobert south of Chicago. Kelly was the oldest
of three sisters,
00:03:05
and life was about rearing
and tending to animals. But not for Kelly. She's known as an out
and out hellraiser.
00:03:17
LAURA FRIZZO: I know that Kelly
had gotten into, you know, trouble, and this
is, you know, based
00:03:20
on what her mother reported. As a juvenile, she
had a lot of troubles. You know, they couldn't
keep her under control.
00:03:27
She ended up in a
juvenile facility. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): At the age of 18,
00:03:32
Kelly's mom threatens
to throw her out. She's using serious
drugs, like heroin, and so is her boyfriend.
00:03:41
Kelly and Jason started dating
shortly after high school. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER):
00:03:45
Jason Cochran is his name. LAURA FRIZZO: Kelly indicated
that they were neighbors.
00:03:49
You know, she referred to
him as the boy next door. You know, from people that knew
them, went to school with them,
00:03:55
it sounds like Jason
was kind of a quiet guy. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): The year
00:04:00
2000 is a big one for Kelly. Graduation is right
around the corner. And it's a big year for Kelly
and Jason's relationship
00:04:08
as well. Walt Ammerman has
the dubious honor of knowing the couple well. High school sweethearts,
and-- and married
00:04:19
since she got out of school,
and, you know, sounded like-- sounded like any
happy couple, you
00:04:29
know, is what it looked
like on the outside and-- and what I felt I
was dealing with.
00:04:34
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): But from the start it's one of those romances that
could blow up at any minute.
00:04:42
CAROLYN CANVILLE: Were
they a good match? Kelly's brother,
Colton, didn't think so.
00:04:46
He thought they were
like oil and water. They just were so
opposites and never should
00:04:51
have gotten together, and he
really told them that they just never should have done it.
00:04:56
LAURA FRIZZO: They
ended up marrying. Her mother says,
you know, they had a nice church wedding for them,
and everything seemed normal.
00:05:01
But I think a lot
of times, her mother tried to see her as normal
or make her seem normal
00:05:06
and she always knew
there was something not-- not right. Looking at the relationship,
did not seem to be
00:05:11
the strongest relationship. There were phone calls and
texts that went back and forth.
00:05:16
Some were rather demeaning
from Jason to Kelly. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER):
00:05:20
Detective Laura
Frizzo working out of the upper
peninsula of Michigan knows there is two
sides to this story.
00:05:28
She's spent years trying to wrap
your head around this bizarre, kind of twisted marriage.
00:05:34
It sounds like Jason
was kind of a quiet guy, and Kelly was more always a
dominant, strong, you know,
00:05:41
female. He would have
dinner ready for her and waiting, begging
her to come home.
00:05:47
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Kelly makes out
Jason as controlling, passive aggressive,
sometimes even violent,
00:05:54
but friends who know them in
the first few years of marriage when they're living in
Hobart tell a different tale.
00:06:01
I would say that
their marriage was controlled by Kelly,
their lives together were controlled by her.
00:06:08
She did all the cooking,
the financing, the-- everything, the
grocery shopping. He didn't really do
much of anything.
00:06:16
He just did what he
could to keep her happy. MICHAEL SCHOLKE: It was
really hard to say who
00:06:20
the dominant figure
was in the relationship between Kelly and Jason. Certainly, it can be
inferred that Kelly
00:06:25
was the dominant figure. That was something the
jury certainly believed. But when you look
at the evidence,
00:06:31
and looking at the texts and
the tenor of some of these texts that were sent back and
forth and some the messages,
00:06:36
it doesn't necessarily
lead me to the conclusion that Kelly was a
dominant person.
00:06:43
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Is anyone else feeling
confused right now? It seems like no one can really
agree who rules the roost
00:06:51
in the Cochran household. Walt Ammerman gets to know
Jason first, then Kelly through playing
video games online.
00:06:59
WALT AMMERMAN: I
think I could use the examples of
their relationship like, we would be
playing the game,
00:07:04
and if I was playing the
game and somebody came over, my wife or anybody
came home, I would--
00:07:12
I would say, hey,
somebody's home. I'm gonna have to
go in a little bit. But with him, it was,
Kelly's home, I gotta go,
00:07:19
and he was gone. And you might not talk
to him till the next day. It was like, he
didn't wanna be--
00:07:26
it was almost like
he didn't wanna be doing anything fun without her. It would be OK if she
wanted to play the game
00:07:32
and get online later, he
would be back, but, you know, he didn't really-- I don't feel he ever
really wanted to cross her.
00:07:40
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): In 2013, the Cochrans
up and leave Hobart. It's 13 years into
their marriage,
00:07:47
but there is no sign of babies. They wind up in the upper
peninsula where they no one,
00:07:53
no friends, no family, nothing. No one can figure out
why they make the move. Kelly and Jason Cochran
weren't from Iron River.
00:08:03
They were some of those
people that just showed up. All of a sudden one
day, they were here.
00:08:09
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): They do give people a reason for
the move, but, honestly, am I
00:08:14
the only one who
finds it rather fishy? LAURA FRIZZO: Through my
discussions with Kelly
00:08:19
and Jason Cochran early on, I
inquired as to why they moved to upper Michigan from
Indiana, and Kelly's response
00:08:27
was, you know, Jason's
got medical issues, and Michigan has the medical
marijuana law now so that, you
00:08:36
know, he can smoke
marijuana in Michigan legally for his medical
issues, and that--
00:08:41
that too was a red flag for
me, being that, you know, where they resided in
Indiana was-- was only,
00:08:48
you know, 40 miles or so
from the Michigan border in lower Michigan. So why would you move,
you know, 6 and 1/2 hours
00:08:57
into Michigan from Indiana? It didn't really make sense. To me, they were
running from something.
00:09:09
I was having dinner
with Jason and Kelly at-- at a restaurant there in
their town, and, oddly,
00:09:20
she asked him, did you
show Walt our friend? I had no idea what
she was talking about.
00:09:29
And he showed me a
picture of a half-naked woman on his phone and-- and Kelly said, yeah, I found
a friend for Jason and I
00:09:36
because I love him so much that
I wanted to keep him happy. And I just-- I just--
00:09:45
that threw me for a loop. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): That's right, folks, the
Cochrans are having threesomes.
00:09:53
Kelly starts picking
out these women she thinks Jason will like
and bringing on home for sex.
00:10:00
And alarm bells aren't
ringing for you too? Sounds like a
recipe for disaster, especially when Kelly
decides she also
00:10:09
has a license to play away. Kelly talked about the
affair she was having with Chris and how
Jason was aware of it
00:10:18
and he was OK with it, that
they had an open marriage. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG:
So Kelly's sleeping
00:10:23
with this guy, Chris Regan. Kelly and Jason's marriage
starts as a teenage romance,
00:10:29
but seems to have been
nothing but twists and turns and drama ever since. I wonder if the next twist
is going to be deadly?
00:10:40
[music playing] This is Kelly and
Jason Cochran's home in the upper peninsula. In 2013, Kelly's
working as a gardener
00:11:06
and maintaining
people's swimming pools. Jason's bad back means
he's barely working at all.
00:11:13
It's around this
time the couple tell friends about a bizarre pact
they made on their wedding day.
00:11:20
Brace yourselves. If either of them
cheats, the other one will kill their lover.
00:11:27
She says that, her and her
husband entered into this pact on their marriage night.
00:11:35
And so she tells me
about the marriage pact, about killing each other's
lovers or killing the lover.
00:11:41
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): This is where things get
hairy because, of course,
00:11:47
Kelly has this lover,
Chris Regan, who's drawn to the upper peninsula. It's beautiful.
00:11:54
Lots of rivers and lakes. And, actually, that's one thing
Christopher liked about Iron
00:11:59
River, is he loved nature. He loved the woods. And so that part is beautiful. And the people are nice.
00:12:06
The people I work
with are very kind. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Chris first
00:12:11
meets Terri O'Donnell in 1980. They're just friends back then. They both marry, and they
both end up divorced.
00:12:18
Terri stays in the
upper Peninsula. Chris moves away. We got back together
through the internet
00:12:26
and we started chatting,
and he was divorced and I was divorced, and so
we decided to meet up again.
00:12:34
And so we met up
and wined and dined and just had a wonderful time
and just started dating again.
00:12:43
It was-- it was awesome. It was wonderful. When he looked at me, I-- when Chris would
look at me, I just--
00:12:51
just melt. I mean, he
just had that charis-- was charismatic,
and he just made you feel like you were
everything, you know,
00:13:01
that you were the only person in
the room when he looked at you. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Chris moves back,
00:13:07
and he and Terri get together. The relationship
hits the rocks when Terri finds out her charming
guy is hiding a dirty secret.
00:13:17
Christopher had an
issue with pornography that I found out afterwards
when him and I started talking
00:13:25
more about, you know, why
he needed a little bit more alone time. He was hooked on
things on the internet,
00:13:35
and I didn't agree with that. And that's why we broke up. I still loved him. And maybe that's why, you
know, we stayed friends.
00:13:44
We kept-- I kept
in touch with him. He would still call and text. But we couldn't date.
00:13:51
We couldn't be a couple because
it just wasn't right, at least, for me, that wasn't right.
00:13:58
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Chris is on the
rebound from Terri when, a few weeks
later, he starts
00:14:03
getting close to Kelly Cochran. TERRI O'CONNELL: That's when
him and Kelly hooked up.
00:14:08
CAROLYN CANVILLE: She winds up
meeting Chris Regan on this job at a mine equipment company.
00:14:15
TERRI O'CONNELL: I
think she gave him that part of his life, whatever
he wanted to satisfy that need.
00:14:23
Because it wasn't
love, but it was sex. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Kelly wasn't
exactly loyal to her husband.
00:14:31
She cheated on him. She'd had a number of
affairs over the course of the marriage, and this
was an issue for Jason.
00:14:40
Jason would get really
depressed when she was having these affairs, and even,
you know, to the point
00:14:44
where he thought about
committing suicide. It bothered him, but he was
afraid of losing his wife,
00:14:51
so he tried to allow her
to basically live her life and not interfere with it. But it was clearly
driving him crazy.
00:14:58
WALT AMMERMAN: When
they were in the UP, I was of aware that Jason
had went to a mental hospital
00:15:04
for a few weeks. I want to say it was probably
mentioned that there was a possible affair with
somebody or the marriage
00:15:11
wasn't going well. CAROLYN CANVILLE: So
Kelly's really liking this relationship with Chris.
00:15:17
She's having a good time. But Chris isn't liking the
job, and he's got a bad knee,
00:15:22
and he's not gonna able to
continue this job for long. So he applies for this
office job in Asheville,
00:15:28
North Carolina, and he gets it. And he's really excited,
and Kelly is not. For his new job, he
had to have a physical,
00:15:38
and, actually, that's the
last day I spoke to him, was October 14, 2014. That morning, it was about
6:00 AM in the morning.
00:15:48
Called me and told
me that he was gonna be going to Marshfield
the next day, and as long as everything
came back OK with his--
00:15:58
with his physical, that
he would have the job, and he would call
me when he got back.
00:16:06
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): So let's do a head count. You've got Kelly, Jason, those
women Kelly sometimes brings
00:16:13
home, and now, Chris Regan. This marriage is
sure getting crowded. A little too crowded,
in Jason's opinion.
00:16:23
He isn't happy about
Chris, and let's not forget that wedding day pact. Technically, Jason now has the
right to kill Kelly's lover.
00:16:33
Oh, my. But Chris is leaving, right? Ahead of the move
to North Carolina, he asks Terri to help him out.
00:16:43
We were gonna make
plans to go for-- and eat, and then, I was gonna
help him pack and move things
00:16:49
and source-- and store
some of his things for him while he was
in North Carolina.
00:16:55
[music playing] CAROLYN CANVILLE: So
Chris Regan's really excited about his new job.
00:17:05
The day before he's supposed
to leave Iron River to go to the Carolinas and
take this new job,
00:17:10
Kelly invites him
over for dinner. Come on over. Have some lasagna. There might be something
else in it for you, too.
00:17:16
So she figures some
farewell sex, you know, that'll lure him over. BRIAN HARRIS: So off he went
to Kelly Cochran's house.
00:17:26
When he arrived, they
had their dinner, and they had their embrace. And while embraced
in each other's arms,
00:17:36
their bodies intertwined,
Kelly's husband sneaks up onto Chris while Chris is
still in the arms of Kelly,
00:17:49
and Kelly's husband
pulls the trigger. A single shotgun
blast to his head. And Kelly was in on it.
00:18:00
She knew. How she held him there, she
could see that shotgun being raised up and put to
the head of Chris,
00:18:09
and a single loud explosion. There would have been blood. There would have been
brains everywhere,
00:18:18
including on Kelly herself. She would have been covered
in brain matter and blood
00:18:24
from somebody that she was
just sexually intertwined with. So now, Chris is dead.
00:18:32
What do they do? They take Chris's body, they
bring it down to the basement, they lie it on a
sheet of plastic,
00:18:40
and they take an
electric buzz saw and they start carving
up Chris Regan's body.
00:18:46
And they're using
this electric handsaw. In fact, Kelly later admits
that she had to go out and buy
00:18:52
a cord for this handsaw. And they're cutting his body. They're sawing it into
pieces and they're dumping
00:18:58
the parts into garbage bags. They take the garbage bags,
then they get the electric saw,
00:19:06
they take the plastic,
they take it out, they have a burn pit
in their backyard, all
00:19:10
of the evidence there, and
they burn it in the burn pit in their backyard. Then they take this burn
barrel and they load it
00:19:18
in their vehicle and
they take it to a place called the Caspian Pit. It's this-- this
big mining area.
00:19:28
And that's where they
bury the burn barrel, the evidence of their crime. Then they take the body
parts to a remote field
00:19:38
and they just dump
it in the woods. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Once Terri catches
00:19:43
on to the illicit relationship
Chris is having with Kelly, she starts thinking Kelly
might know something
00:19:49
about his disappearance. The Caspian Pit is
a couple of minutes' walk from the Cochrans' home.
00:19:57
As Terri searches the area day
after day for signs of Chris, she has no idea she's
passing the spot
00:20:05
where his body has been dumped. I kept looking and
searching for Christopher. I would walk back
behind Cochran's
00:20:14
home, trying to find something. I was afraid if Kelly ever
found out that I was the one who
00:20:21
reported him missing, I was
afraid her or her husband might come looking for me.
00:20:27
LAURA FRIZZO: So it would
be, you know, not long after that my sergeant makes contact
with Chris Regan's, you know,
00:20:32
vehicle in the Park and
Ride and gain entry to it, just to be sure that, you
know, there's not someone
00:20:39
in the trunk or whatever,
and notices, you know, on the front seat
flipped upside down
00:20:46
is a piece of paper
with directions. And I just remember her saying,
I can't make heads or tails
00:20:50
of these directions,
but this is what's lying on the front seat of his car. And as she reads
me the directions,
00:20:55
it matches the directions
to Kelly Cochran's house. So immediately, I've
got some red flags.
00:21:03
Detective Frizzo is convinced
that Chris died the night he went to Kelly's,
but she can't prove it,
00:21:09
and they aren't
admitting a thing. So with the irritation in
their marriage dealt with,
00:21:15
they get back to being
Mister and Mrs. Cochran. But how long will
they be left in peace?
00:21:22
They are the prime suspects
in what's about to become a murder investigation. [music playing]
00:21:45
Chris Regan is missing. Married couple Kelly
and Jason Cochran are top of the list of
suspects in this disappearance.
00:21:54
So they get a surprise
visit at home one day from state troopers. LAURA FRIZZO: They were
met by Jason Cochran,
00:22:02
and Kelly presents herself. They talk to her outside. She admits that she's been
having an affair with Chris.
00:22:09
She admits that she
knew he was supposed to have shown up for
a medical appointment
00:22:13
for his new job, that-- but she claims that
she hadn't seen him since, you know, around
the 12th, 13th of October.
00:22:23
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Now, this is pretty interesting. What leads detectives
to the Cochrans' home
00:22:30
is a clue that they find
in Chris Regan's car, which was left at the Park and
Ride just outside of Iron
00:22:37
River, a yellow Post-it
note with directions to Kelly's home on it. I asked Kelly if
she thought it was odd
00:22:46
that Chris's car would be
parked in the Park and Ride, and her response, Kelly's
response to the sergeant was,
00:22:54
yeah, I'd find that very odd. He loved that car. Past tense. And she found that to
be very odd as well.
00:23:02
TERRI O'CONNELL: I knew that
Christopher wasn't alive anymore. I knew he was-- something's happened
to him, that somebody
00:23:09
did something to him. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Terri and the detectives
are on the same page.
00:23:15
They're sure Chris
has been murdered, and they're pretty damn sure
the Cochrans were involved,
00:23:20
but there's no body and
not a shred of proof. That is where a former cop
Michael Neiger comes in.
00:23:30
He and his team volunteer their
help with unsolved homicides and missing person cases.
00:23:37
MICHAEL NEIGER: I got
involved about three weeks after Chris went missing
and say that, you know,
00:23:40
they hadn't found him. And it may be that he wasn't
around the Park and Ride, his body wasn't out there
and they hadn't missed him.
00:23:46
But I-- so I do a lot of
double checking on stuff and looking at stuff. By that time, you know,
the chief, Chief Frizzo
00:23:52
had a good handle
on the case, and I became like a foot
soldier for her, doing what she needed to get done.
00:23:59
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Neiger doesn't turn up anything new. It's only three weeks
since Chris disappeared,
00:24:05
and the trail's gone cold. Jason Cochran is
feeling the heat. LAURA FRIZZO: I remember during
the interview of Jason Cochran
00:24:13
how he immediately
entered the interview room and immediately, you
know, broke down, began
00:24:18
to cry about his health
issues and his life, and it was just my
opinion at that time
00:24:26
that people don't generally
act that way, that that, to me, was a sign of guilt or
nervousness or anxiety
00:24:33
or whatever it was. But to me, it wasn't normal. And to me, it was
a huge red flag.
00:24:38
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Jason's a mess, but Kelly has nerves of steel.
00:24:44
Kelly was so-- just so calm and cool and
relaxed that anyone that would have met her for the first
time would have thought,
00:24:53
there's no way she
can hold it together this well if she had
been-- you know, taken
00:24:56
part in something like this. The body language she
was able to control. Jason was completely
the opposite.
00:25:03
You know, Kelly said, oh, I
stopped by and he wasn't home. I didn't know where
he was, and, you know,
00:25:09
just like it was
just another day. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): What is it going
to take for cops
00:25:20
to catch a break on this case? After five months, all
they have is a Post-it note
00:25:25
and a grubby affair. There's no body,
no proof of guilt. Iron River Police are
running short on options.
00:25:36
It was the first
week of March, and there was still snow on
the ground and, you know--
00:25:41
and we decide we're
gonna go-- go ahead and do this first
search warrant, that I finally have
enough probable cause
00:25:46
where I just need to do it. We conduct the search warrant. The Michigan State
Police lab personnel
00:25:52
comes down from Marquette,
collects evidence, and based on their findings,
we really, you
00:25:57
know, felt positive that we
were gonna have something, we were gonna have enough.
00:26:02
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): The search turns up a big fat nothing. They set up more searches
of the upper peninsula.
00:26:10
Can Chris Regan's body
just have vanished? MICHAEL NEIGER: Iron County
is a very rugged area
00:26:15
and it's a historic area
with a lot of old mining. So we have a lot of old
mines and mining relics.
00:26:23
And we have a lot
of caving grounds where old mine shafts
and stuff have caved in,
00:26:28
and then they fill
them with water. So you have a-- a lot of those types of
areas which are common,
00:26:35
often, you know, very
easy to conceal evidence, to dispose of evidence,
to hide evidence,
00:26:41
and a lot of places for
potential clandestine burial sites. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER):
00:26:47
Chris and Kelly must have
known that all of this was going on, right? OK, the investigation's
turning up nothing,
00:26:54
but would you
stick around if you were in the frame for murder? Kelly and Jason pack up
and head back to Hobart.
00:27:01
And there's nothing Frizzo and
her team can do to stop them. The following morning, Kelly
and Jason Cochran take off.
00:27:11
They completely leave,
taking just what they could fit in
their truck, and would
00:27:16
never return to Michigan. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Homeward bound, but not home safe.
00:27:21
Jason started getting jumpy. LAURA FRIZZO: [inaudible],, and
it was very apparent that he
00:27:25
had become somewhat suicidal
at times and was falling apart, and she, I think, noticed
that was happening,
00:27:33
and I think she became
fearful that he may say things to get her in trouble. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER):
00:27:42
Don't you think their
buddies must be finding all of this a bit bizarre? WALT AMMERMAN: I didn't hear
from them for close to a month.
00:27:49
And I guess it always bugged me
that as soon as he called me, he told me that they just got
their phones and computers back
00:27:57
because the police
had took them, and they think they're
responsible for a person who's
00:28:02
missing. Now, he could have called me and
told me that his internet was shut off and he didn't
pay his electric bill
00:28:09
or anything for a month and
I would have believed that. I knew they had
some money problems.
00:28:16
But that seemed really
odd to me that that would be the first thing
he would tell me,
00:28:20
openly told me that
they're being-- being investigated for
a person that's missing.
00:28:24
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Walt Ammerman knows
the couple well enough to see that
Kelly has really
00:28:30
started controlling Jason. WALT AMMERMAN: I felt like
he never really wanted to make Kelly mad at anything.
00:28:35
I felt like he was,
at times, maybe, I don't want to
say afraid of her, but I think that there
was some apprehension
00:28:46
there of some sort. On the other hand, Kelly
was very controlling, very wanting to control everything.
00:28:53
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): It's hardly a recipe
for a happy marriage. February, 2016, Kelly and
Jason are still using heroin.
00:29:04
One night, she makes a
phone call from her home. Kelly calls 911. He's not breathing.
00:29:10
There's-- his mouth
is like-- he's not-- he's-- I don't know
what's going on. I don't-- it might
be an overdose.
00:29:15
I don't know what's wrong. She's like, panicking. BRIAN HARRIS: The
police arrive, and
00:29:19
from all apparent
appearances, it looks as though Jason
is a heroin user and Jason has
overdosed on heroin.
00:29:28
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): It's not uncommon. So at first, cops
conclude this is
00:29:32
another heroin user
who has accidentally taken their own life. Hours later, Kelly calls Walt.
00:29:40
So there was a phone
call on February 20. Kelly contacted me to say that
Jason had died that night.
00:29:47
And immediately, my wife
told me, well, she did it. So I contacted the
FBI, and I said
00:29:57
I knew Jason and
Kelly very good, and they had told me that
they were being looked
00:30:03
at for this person missing. They have not told me anything
about the fact that they did it
00:30:08
or-- or anything like that,
but my-- my wife really feels that I needed to let
you know that one of them
00:30:16
died on Saturday,
and this is Monday. And right away, the guy
said, how did Jason die?
00:30:22
Said, I didn't even
tell you it was Jason. He said, if one of them
died, it was Jason,
00:30:27
and we need to-- we
need to get on that. LAURA FRIZZO: I get a call
from two the FBI agents
00:30:34
that I've been working
with who tell me they got a call
on their tip line saying that, you know,
something was not right,
00:30:42
that they feel like Kelly was
involved in Jason's death. They feel that there's something
more to this Michigan case
00:30:50
with the missing man. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): While Frizzo reopens
her cold case,
00:30:55
another detective is
about to get involved nine hours away in Indiana. This is Jeremy
Ogden of Hobart PD.
00:31:04
I answered a phone call
from the FBI tip line, and they said that they had
received an anonymous call.
00:31:11
We needed to take a closer
look at Jason Cochran's death. And at that time, I didn't
even know that he had died.
00:31:18
They said that it
was a possibility that Jason Cochran
and Kelly Cochran had been involved in a--
00:31:23
a missing persons case
up in the UP, and that, you know, they fled to,
you know, Hobart, Indiana.
00:31:32
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): The list of people
who don't believe Jason died of an overdose
is getting longer.
00:31:39
We've got Walt Ammerman,
his wife, Laura Frizzo, Jeremy Ogden, then there
are all of the suspicions
00:31:47
about Chris Regan. There's no way law
enforcement is letting Kelly slip away this time.
00:31:54
Jeremy Ogden drops in
on Jason's funeral. I had been standing in the
back of the room watching her
00:32:01
before I ever walked up there. And she had sat
there pretty silent, and I hadn't seen
her shed a tear.
00:32:08
You know, she was just
sitting there very quiet and she looked angry, almost. And-- so after I paid my
respects, I walked up to her
00:32:18
and I gave her a hug. And I think it shocked her. She, you know, acted as though
she was crying at that point.
00:32:26
She seemed like she was upset. And I just went on my way and
I sat in the back of the room
00:32:31
and I sat there. There's a cousin to the
family who knew me from my law enforcement career, and
he followed me outside
00:32:40
and he said, what
are you doing here? And I said, I'm looking
into Jason's death.
00:32:48
And he said, well, you're
gonna wanna pay attention. I said, OK. Ogden's tip off tells him to
dig deeper into Jason's death.
00:33:00
Will he discover
that Kelly Cochran is the killer twice over? To get there, Ogden's
going to need a plan.
00:33:09
I promise you,
you're gonna love it. I said, I need you
to do something for me. I want you to be my
confidential informant.
00:33:18
Walt looked at me and he said,
am I-- am I gonna be in danger? [music playing] Detectives Laura
Frizzo and Jeremy Ogden
00:33:43
come to a conclusion. The key to getting Kelly
Cochran to admit what she did to her husband, Jason,
is to find out once
00:33:50
and for all what happened
to her lover, Chris Regan. I had to find out
where Christopher
00:33:57
Regan was disposed
of in order for Kelly to confess to killing Jason. I knew this from
the very beginning.
00:34:05
And I knew that she would
never confess to killing Jason unless I somehow
got her to admit
00:34:12
what happened to Chris Regan. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): The upper peninsula has hundreds
of square miles of forests,
00:34:19
swamps, and rocky hills. Law enforcement could search
for half of a lifetime and still never stumble across
the body of Chris Regan.
00:34:30
But in early 2017, Mike
Neiger and his team hit on a breakthrough. By tracing where
Kelly's phone had been,
00:34:40
a new technique at
the time, detectives prove that she was at the
same Iron River Park and Ride
00:34:47
where Chris's car was abandoned. Next, they search
her computer and they find an intriguing picture.
00:34:56
It's a satellite image
of a particular place in upper Michigan, a
place Kelly and Jason
00:35:02
would have known well. We ended up finding a
satellite image, Google satellite imagery that
zoomed right in several times
00:35:11
focused in on the Caspian
Pit, on a specific piece of the bank of the Caspian Pit.
00:35:17
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): The pit is just a few hundred
yards from the Cochran house.
00:35:22
And there are more revelations
from the computer's hard drive. In the end, we were able
to establish that by looking
00:35:29
at the date when that was
downloaded from Google, it was prior to-- in the end, we
learned it was prior
00:35:36
to when Chris was murdered. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Detectives descend on the Caspian Pit.
00:35:41
They need more evidence, and
boy, are they not disappointed. They find a large burn barrel,
big enough for a body of parts.
00:35:51
It matches the size
and shape of a space in the Cochran's garden. Chief Frizzo uses
state police divers
00:35:59
and found the barrel
for the weapon that was used to kill Chris. And so-- and that was relatively
near the Cochrans' house.
00:36:10
It was just a couple
of roads away. I mean, you could
basically see that, you know, from their house, almost,
if it wasn't for some trees.
00:36:18
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Back in Indiana, Jeremy Ogden's throwing all
of these discoveries at Kelly.
00:36:24
Why has her burn barrel
shown up at the Caspian Pit? Why was her car in
the same parking lot
00:36:30
as Chris Regan's the
day he disappeared? But still, she's
confessing to nothing.
00:36:37
It's time for Ogden to set
this up as his sting operation. JEREMY OGDEN: I sat down
with Walt and his wife.
00:36:44
I talked to Walt for all of
about five minutes, and I said, you are the kind of man
that every detective
00:36:51
hopes walks into his case. And I need you to
do something for me. I want you to be my
confidential informant.
00:37:00
And I said I'd do
whatever I could, but I don't know what I can do. And he said, I have an idea.
00:37:06
And I want you to call
her on a recorded call, and I'd like you to tell
her that Jason mailed you
00:37:12
a letter a while back and wanted
you to hold onto it in case something ever happened to him.
00:37:17
If, in the event something
occurs to me, if I were to die, please forward this
letter to the Iron
00:37:22
River Police Department
attention Chief Laura Frizzo. Do not open the letter that's
contained within this manila
00:37:30
envelope, please. And I signed it
Jason or whatever. And he said, OK, well, we
have to make some changes.
00:37:39
And I said, OK, well,
what do we need to change? And he said, well, he would
never sign Jason to me.
00:37:43
He would sign quack quack. He goes, it's what he
always called himself to me. I said, OK, so we
make it quack quack.
00:37:51
So, you know, we kind
of fine-tune the letter, and Walt added his
two cents into it,
00:37:55
made it very authentic. And, honestly, my
first thought was, this is never gonna work.
00:38:01
You know, she is too smart. She knows everyone's
looking at her closely right now, especially
with her husband dying.
00:38:07
There is no way she's
gonna fall for this. But I-- you know, I was
willing to try anything.
00:38:15
WALT AMMERMAN: I was
very apprehensive. I didn't really think
she was gonna believe it.
00:38:19
He'd assured me that he
could probably get a lawyer to do it in town, a local one,
and say Jason contacted him,
00:38:26
but he really felt
that it would be more believable coming from me. JEREMY OGDEN: The
letter brought things
00:38:34
along quickly, because Walt
Ammerman, he was so convincing. I mean, you know, when Steve and
I met with Walt and set him up
00:38:43
and said, OK, we're
gonna do this call, Walt's sitting in the truck,
and he's shaken, and he's--
00:38:47
he's like, Jeremy, I
don't know, you know. And I said, Walt, be yourself. Take a breath.
00:38:54
You know, your friend's dead. He was your friend no
matter what he did. He was your friend.
00:39:00
I called her, and it
was kind of convenient that she was kind of busy so
it was gonna be a short call.
00:39:05
I found out later she was
at his parent's house. I-- I just said I had this
letter that Jason mailed
00:39:12
me and told me to hold
onto another letter and said if anything
ever happened to him,
00:39:16
I needed to send this on to the
police in the upper peninsula, and her sigh and her cry
and her please don't are
00:39:23
three things I'll never forget. It was incredible. I was sitting in the passenger
seat, and I was listening,
00:39:29
and as soon as he said Jason
had sent him this letter, there's this huge
gasp for air by her.
00:39:36
And at that moment, I'm
like, OK, OK, hang on, hang on, what's coming next? And she-- and the next words
are, like, don't send it.
00:39:44
Don't do that. Throw it away, whatever
it is that she uses. But it's to get rid of it.
00:39:50
Distance yourself from it. Distance me from it. Don't do this to me. And for those 30
seconds, it was like I--
00:39:59
I had the biggest
fish of a lifetime on because I knew that she
had taken it all the way.
00:40:05
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Ogden's plan works like a charm. Kelly thinks the letter
is the real deal.
00:40:11
JEREMY OGDEN: They don't want to
tell you until you catch them. Once you catch a
person like this,
00:40:17
then they want to tell you. They don't want to tell anybody
because they still have that
00:40:23
survival mode in
their mind where they're-- they're
protecting themselves, and they don't want
to go to jail and they
00:40:30
don't want to be discovered. I think after you
catch them, then they want to tell you
because they want everyone
00:40:37
to know what they really are. [music playing] LAURA FRIZZO: He just
sent me an email, and I,
00:40:44
of course, right away
opened the email, and there's a copy of
the recording in my email
00:40:49
from this phone call. And I thought, obviously,
it didn't go well because he would have called and told me.
00:40:55
So I'm sitting in my,
you know, office, and I opened this recording,
and when I listened to it,
00:41:01
I just about fell off my chair. And I thought, you
know, you got her. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER):
00:41:09
Cochran admits that Chris
was killed near her home in the upper peninsula. She's taken to the Pentoga
Trail to show the cops
00:41:16
where his remains are hidden. LAURA FRIZZO: End of the day,
we go back to that marked area,
00:41:21
and it was myself and the
cadaver dog and the dog handler, and within 10
minutes of being there,
00:41:28
locate Chris Regan's skull. You know, another thing she
showed us that day was where
00:41:33
she threw the gun,
which the Michigan State Police Dive Team did recover. MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER):
00:41:40
Even now, she is not
giving it all up. She tells detectives that this
was all Jason, that she was
00:41:48
just making out with Chris at
the top of the basement stairs when Jason came
upon them and killed
00:41:54
Chris with a single
rifle shot to the head. She later tells the court
she was furious with Jason
00:42:02
for shooting Chris, and that's
why she killed her husband. WALT AMMERMAN: Her story
is she sat on Jason's chest
00:42:10
and held her hands
over his nose and mouth as he was trying to throw
up from the heroin overdose
00:42:15
that she gave him. And she wanted him
to see her and know that she did that, I think.
00:42:25
And I can't wrap my
head around that. I don't think any
normal person can. [music playing]
00:42:36
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): One of the jurors at Kelly
Cochran's trial remembers being
00:42:40
horrified about the cold,
callous way Chris Regan had been drawn to his death. The hardest part, I
think, was when they
00:42:49
brought his skull as evidence. Just listening to
how things went down, luring him into their
house, in my mind,
00:43:01
how could anybody do that? It's all like, kind
of out of my mind. How could somebody
be so ruthless?
00:43:09
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(VOICEOVER): Let's not forget the Cochrans
made a pact on their wedding
00:43:13
day that, to them,
justified what they did. Their marriage pact
was that if one of them
00:43:21
had an affair with somebody,
they would kill that person, whether it be her or Jason.
00:43:28
So if Jason had an affair, the
person Jason had an affair with would get killed and vice versa.
00:43:35
[music playing] TERRI O'CONNELL: These are the
woods where Kelly and Jason had brought Christopher's remains.
00:43:50
The marks that are
on the ground right now is where they
were searching. I got shivers, not
because of the cold,
00:44:01
just because of
where I am right now. When I came out here on
October 14 for Christmas,
00:44:07
five-year anniversary of his
death, I just got chills, and I could-- I could feel him, and it was
just real eerie, eerie feeling.
00:44:16
And knowing that he's still-- parts of him are
still not found. Only his skull has been found.
00:44:24
[music playing] Kelly and Jason Cochran found
common ground when they met as two troubled kids in Hobart.
00:44:33
For a while, they even
seemed like the answer to each other's troubles. But their complicated
relationship
00:44:40
and twisted sex life was only
fueled by their addiction to drugs. It was a combination that
made for a volatile marriage.
00:44:50
In the end, two men lost
their lives at Kelly's hands. In May, 2017, Kelly was
sentenced to life in prison
00:44:59
without parole. It's a reminder to
all of us, the person most likely to kill you may
well be the person you marry.
00:45:10
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg,
and I'll see you next time on "Meet, Marry, Murder." [music playing]