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