Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Driving through the picturesque countryside of of michigans upper peninsula ,you you cant help to think you´re in the middle of nowhere….and you can´t get much more isolated than the tiny town of Iron River.
Iron Riveer is a small town , lot a crime for a small town.
but if tou love the outdoors and icy cold winters like chris regan iron river is paradise and it also didn´t hurt then an old girlfriend terri O´donnell lived there.
They started dating exclusively and planned a future together planning on living together and moving to an other area.
But terri says there was just one problem.
” he had just two sides of him”
Terri says she discovered other side when she traveled overseas
chris decided that he was going to hook up with other women while terri was in England and told her that it didn´t mean anyting..just sex nothing to do with love or relationship.
Terry claims chri´s roving eye led to their split but says amazingly they still remained friends.
Chris , an Air Force veteran studying for a buisness degree decided to stay in Iron River and applied for a job
at a locak company that makes mining equipment.
He gets a job there and that´s where he meets kelly cochran. A friendly young women who apparently liked to swing both ways
chris wasn´t dasting kelly ,chris and kelly hooked up for sex and that he never went anywhere with her.he was never seen in public with her.
kelly and husband jason
Maybe that´s because chris ´s new girlfriend was already married.
the only place chris and kelly went was to his apartment and she was not to say anything about them hooking up
chris rented a small apartment from terri´s parent´s right above their gorcery store and in the next town over….
kelly lived in this modest house with her husband jason. kellys younger brother colton says they recently moved here from …
Merriville Indiana not far from chicago.
colton think jason and kelly were not a a good match.
” he was a laid – back guy , she was more of a go -getter”
kellys affair with chris wasnt her first rodeo.
But did jason know what kelly and chris got together four or five times a week.
was she a married women sneaking around or did her husband know exactly what she was doing?
” He had said that he prior he had not been aware and that he didnt wanted know about it .jason was suicidal and hwas hawing emotional problems and again seem to be stemming from her extramarital affairs driving him crazy.
chris job at lakershore was taking a toll on his knee ,because he was on his feet all day long at work so he needed a job also that wasn´t so tough on his body.
Chris found a desk job all the way across the country in Ashville north Carolina .
He gave his two weeks notice at the plant. where he and kelly worked
and stared packing
Terri´s dream of moving with chris to another had melted like a spring thaw in michigan.
But did kelly think she was the one who would be moving to Asheville with her lover .
chief Frizzo: she did make it seem like they had this,like lengthy romantic affair and in fact she even mention that he wanted her to move with him out to North Carolina.
so on one of chris´s last nights in Iron River …
…there was a first instead of kelly coming over to his apartment she invited him over to her house.
Terri” she called chris and lured him over there for sex. why would they go to her house if they had never before been t her house for sex”
Apparently kelly made an offer he couldnt refuse .” I´ll cook you italian for dinner and give you my body for dessert.
Chris regan had just given two weeks notice at work , he was about to meet kelly cochran his secret lover from the office for lasagne and maybe little fooling around
chris friend , Terri O´donnell says she never heard from him after that.
Terri spent nearly two excruciating weeks with no word from chris
Frantic and in full panic mode she went to the apartment chris rented from her parents.
Terri: it was a wreck. stuff.scattered everywhere,dirty dishes. all crusted in kitchen sink.red goo in the bottom of its wine glass.The windows was open .the apartment was cool off. his medication was there ,its like he was gone. he vanished .
Vanished but where and how
chris recently had knee surgery so he couldn´t had walked into the wilderness….
somehow his car ended up in a park – and -ride lot four miles east of town.
Terri:i said , he would never leave his car at the parking ride and so i droe out there and sure ,enough there was chris ´s car sitting there and i looked in and his things were in there inside the car was his knee brace ,his watter bottle.
Terri drove to the police departement to report him as a missing person.
The detective that was basically in charged had said over and over again that chris regan disapeared because he wanted to either kill himself or just disapear.
But Chie fFrizzo dogged the dermination convinced the other detectives ,in chris car they found a key clue pointing …
….straight to kelly!
in the front passanger seat was a small piece of paper with directions written on it .directions were to kelly cochran´s house .
Cops and michigan stsate polive converge on the house kelly shared with her husband jason and aren´t exactly greeteds with open arms.
When they arrived there the sergeant´s said that they pulled up out front and one of the troopers made mantion to her that he saw someone standing in an upstairs window loocking out.
when they went to the door they were greted by a man asked if kelly was home ,the man said ” no she´s not here” she hasn´t done anythin wrong.”
Red flag number one – jason lied .
kelly was there.she was the shadowy figure in the upstairs window
chief frizzo :shortly thereafter kelly came down to the door kelly said she hadn´t seen chris for a couple days ,she had no idea where he could be.
Red flag number 2 .just a couple of days at this point it´s been more than two weeks since anyone has seen or heard from chris .
kelly admit they had a romantic relationship going on.
Then what happens…
chief frizzo : seargeant called me and said there´s something wrong ,she asked kelly would it be unusual for chris to have left his vehicle at this parking lot ride. kellys respons was ” yeas , that would be unusual ,he LOVED that car. past tense.
red flag number 3. he loved that car.apposing to saying he loves that car .
Those red flags were waving in the winds of suspicion
Cops asked kelly and her husband jason to come down to the station for an interview.
Jason is in the hot seat first and instead of talking about chris he oddly tells, detectives if he sneezes he cant walk.
” i have like back issues. we used to call them slipped discs. now they call them bulging or deteriorating discs,so if i sneeze or move wrong…a lot of times i can´t walk or can´t stand up s traight for monts at a time.”
you have a person missing , why are you telling me about your back pain……?
chief frizzo :He´s trying to kind of change direction on what the focus is .so maybe they wont look at him as a possible suspect.
Then it´s kellys turn and it´s probably a good thing jason wasn´t in the room she descibes in graphic detail the animal passion in her secret love life
and then kelly say something that raised everyone´s eyebrows chris didn´t come over for dinner.even though cops found the directons to her house in his car.
Interrogation
chief frizzo: on that last day you went , brought dinner?
kelly: mhm.
chief frizzo : and you brought what?
kelly: lasagna.
chief frizzo : so you brought a pan of lasagna?
kelly: i had plates.
chief frizzo : you brought okates with pieces of lasagna?
kelly: yes.
chief frizzo : you brought a plate of lasagna and you made garlic bread…and then cooked it in the oven?
kelly: on the… i think it was a skillet .
chief frizzo : her phone records and the communication with chris regan indicate that she wasn´t at his apartment at that time because they were communicating after that
and this surveillance video shows kelly was at chris´s apartment two days after he seemingly vanished.
Did laura frizzo ever see her with the lasagna?
chief frizzo : no. and actullay that was the first thing i looked for when we did get the search warrant to go in there was no remnants of lasagna.
No lasagna , no chris and no evidence to connect kelly and jason to his disappearance
soon the couple moves back to Indiana
chief frizzo thinks they´ve killed chris.
and she wonders could there be hidden clues still lurking in the house where they once lived.
chris stops at a gas station to fill his tank on the way to his lower kelly cochran´s house, this surveillance video the last last known image of him alive
And police laura frizzo says she knows what happened to him. Kelly and her husband jason killed him .
chief frizzo : my theory was that these two people were responsible for chris regan´s disapppearance ,definitely believe that they murded him and that they were gonna try and get away with it.
Get away they did , quickly moving out of the house. leaving most everything behind and heading back to Indiana.
and chief frizzo says either of them had a motive doe murder .after all ,chris was kellys secret lover but the chied doesn´t have the proof to make a murder charge stick,not just yet ….
chief frizzo : when we first went in i thought that we hit the jackpot……
what she says looks like blood .
chief frizzo : you cold see some patterns on the ceiling above the the door where you entered the front of the house. identical to what it would look like if someone had assaulted someone with a weapon and in the spray .. onto the ceiling.
chief frizzo : we find a loaded 22 pistol under the TV in the livingroom. but without a body it´s imposible to determine if that 22 used to kill chris.
chief Frizzo was stretched to the limit because her small force was investigating two unrelated homicides .
Retired michigan state police sergeant michael neiger volunteered his help
And what neiger found would shift the investigation from a missing person into a murder case.
Neiger conducted a fresh search of chris´s car that was abandoned in the park – and -ride lot .
M. Neiger: we found a lot of fibers a lot of hair and and we found stocking cap and there was a discussion about some leaves being seen trapped in the trunk lid in other words the trunk lid was closed on leaves and i´d heard that and i said well that´s important for what i do because we can decide find out what kind of leaves those are what kind of trees and then we might know where potentially where the body was disposed of because it´s unusual to have leaves trapped in the trunk.
Unusual because there are no trees outside chris´s apartment.
But there are plenty of leafy trees outside kelly´s house.
In fact neiger says he and chief frizzo found. that the GPS device in chris´s car proves he was at her house The day he went missing,
M. Neiger: the car had been therem yes.
and neiger says he found something even more incriminating in kellys digital footprint .
M. Neiger: sometimes people when they´re going to commit a crime they will go and search stuff on Google like how to dispose of a body ,evidence i found on the computers were Google images satellite imagery of the caspian pit.
The caspian pit an abandoned mine pit outside of town filled with deep and murky water
divers didn´t find chris but they found something else.
a burn barrel.
so when they locate this burn barrel in the pit they note there´s like what appears to be a like a landury cable wrapped around it or tied to it as well as a cement block.
The cochran´s had a burn pit in their backyard and that burn barrel was missing.
with no evidence that the barrel belonged to kelly and jason and no DNA evidence…. cheif frizzo throws a hail mary .
in an unconventional move chief frizzo calls upon the spirit world to help. the chief hired a psychic medium where she says she receive visions of violance
But a psychic premonition isn´t proof beyond a reasonable doubt now the case cgrows ice- cold.
With kelly and jason in Indiana would cops ever find the answers they want .and what did kelly and her husband jason say when they all of a sudden showed up in indiana…?
colton: they say that they had enough of being harassed by law enforcement over the death of chris, them investigating them for it.
But kelly was still up to her old ways.
chief frizzo says she was sheating on jason but this time with a women.
she had actually asked this women that to be in a serious relationship with her. more meaningful relationship and the girl said she would.
Kelly was still married but not for long …..
911 call
operator : lake county 911.
kelly: he´s breathing barely.i don´t know what´s wrong ,he´s throwiing up ,he´s sweating”
she about to be become a widow.
the peramedic arrived and jason is not breathing he´s dead . and kelly getting in their way acting distraught and overacting
kelly claims her deeply depressed husband overdosed on heroin.
but is this habitual liar just talkin smack.
is kelly cochran the bisexuel black widow , she sensationally claims her husband died from a heroin,overdose.
but is she telling the truth?
why did kelly killed her husband?
maybe because it was probably a liability for her , she was concerned that she was gonna end up talking about things and she was gonna get in trouble. , things like the unsolved disappeaance of her lover chris. in iron river .michigan.
Now the suspecious death of kellys husband gives chief frizzo a fresh oppurtunity to get kelly to talk about chris .
the chief asked hobart indiana police detective jeremy ogden to spreak to her.( kelly)
right from the get-go there was some kind of very strange attraction or connection that she had to to him .whatever it was she singled him out.
That atraction seemed to surface in this chat -and -mouse game of text messages between kelly and detective ogden.
that attraction seemed to surface in this cat – and mouse game of text between and detective ogden.
she was able to lead her to believe that he was sympathetic towards and he believed her and he won her over .
but ogden hasn´t been able to nab her yet. kelly had fled to kentucky
US marshals picked her up and while in the local jail
she fashioned these shanks out of eyeglasses.
whos was she gonna kill?
She made a comment that she she was gonna stab a femal corrections officer .but changed her mind.
In the interrogation room kelly says let´s make a deal.I´ll talk for a price immunity from prosecution
kelly: today i´m her to cooperate ,however i will not cooperate if there´s any charges brougt to me.I´ve seen how easy it is for you to get a search warrant . i see how it is for your …pretty much go through anything of people, so, um , i think you can arrange …something like that for me.
No way would cops evert cut a deal like that !
so kelly shuts her mouth
now chief frizzo uses her new tool to pry it wide open.
she was so a ttached to him , he actually was able to do to her what she does to everyone else and that is kind of trick her , and manipulate her
So ogden sets an almost unbelievable trap.
He asked a friend of jason´s to make up a s tory that will freak kelly out.
chief Frizzo:He´s idea was ” want you to make this p hone call to kelly and i want you to tell her that you received a mail this letter from jason and in this letter there´s a not that says “if something should happen to me, pleas mail this letter today to the police departement . she fel for it and her initial respoinses to were huges . she broke down ans started crying.”please dont mail it.”
The setup worked !
and that enabled him detective ogden ro move into the hundreds of interviews he did with her .
now kelly is back for a second round.emotional holding hands with the detective kelly finally comes clean about what happened to jason .
kelly said she had shot him up with a large dose of heroin ro kins of subdue him a little and she just put her hands over his nose and mouth and suffocated him.
Then comes the moment shief frizzo has been waiting nearly two years to hear.
Kelly describes how she lured chris to her house and jason ambushed chris while he was naked.
kelly says as she and chris were still in a sexual embrace at the top of the stairs ,jason was lying and wait.his 22 rifle aimed straight at chris ´s head, the bullet tears through hiis skull.
Death came in an instant and it happened almost as the psycich said.it did.
psychic medium :He got hit with something in the had . i felt they he had tried to get out the door or had fallen out the door ,something like that .
kelly then reveals the horrible way they disposed of chris´s body .
Interrogation.
detective ogden : how did he cut h in into pieces ?
kelly : with a chisel
detective ogden : a what?
kelly: A chisel.like a big chisel.you know what i mean?
detective ogden: a big chisel . a big wood chisel? well ,that doesn´t make any sense though.
kelly shifts her story and says jason used an electrick hand saw to shop him into pieces.
kelly says thy cut chris up on plastic wrapping
they burned the plasticand the saw blade in a burn barrel and dumped the barrel in tthe mine pit.
then jason drove chris ´s car to the parking -and -ride.
and they scattered his mutilated body in the woods.
with The confession complete kelly asked to smoke a last cigarett before she´s taken to a cell and and while detective Ogden is out of the room ,she bizarrely falls out of her chair.is she high or just tired.cops aren´t sure.
Later the admitted killer is put into handcuffs facing two counts of murder in two different states.
kelly´s dungeon of death.
This is where they took his body apart with a saw and then put him in garbage bags.
The fact that you never found his blood in here …well , the plastic
impervious barrier and that would prevent any surface in the basement from gtting blood on it.
no one still knows where the remains of chris Regan are. but one person does.-kelly cochran.
kelly cochran says she killed chris regan for love and killed her husband jason for revenge.
In a strange way , kelly and jason´s diabolical plot to kill chris was hatched 12 years earlier in a pact,made in blood
when they got married, they made this pact that if one of them were to have an affair that they had to kill the person that they had the affair with.
there ´s no dispute kelly is a serial cheater but is she also a serial killer.
In a recorted jailhouse phone call with her mother ,kelly hints there are bodies out there just waiting to be found.
cops dont know if kelly is even telling the truth and they´ve never found the so -called trinket bag that many serial killers keep
now kelly caged in a windowed cell almost like hannibal lecter is about to do one final good deed.
A deed that hardly makes up for a life of deadly decisions
kelly tells cops she wants to give chris a proper burial.
so she takes cops on a wild field trip back to the scene of the crime.
they arrived at the spot in the woods where kelly remembers dumping chris´s remains
kelly takes advantage of her day in the sun.stopping frequently to smoke
.after a morning search kelly places her order for lunch
Pizza.
The women hwo used lasagna to lure her prey scarces a slice and washes it with a big gulp.
Amazingly the murder house is exactly the way kelly and jason left it after bolting for Indiana.
In the cluttered kitchen cops find a pair of forceps
kelly says she used them to try and remove the bullet from chris skull.
kellys memories of her evil act were accurate in the fields cops glasses .
and then…..
there it is …
with a big bullet hole.
At her murder trial kelly pins the horrific crime on jason describing in gory details what happened.
kelly: when he cut him up, he had on of his hands and said that was the last time he´d be wawing at med.he was waving goodb ye to me.”
And then then prosecutor melissa powel painted a powerful and chilling image for the jury
inside this bag- chris´s skull.
it was enough to convict kelly o f a first -degree murder .
She was sentence to life in prison.