“No,” Jason said. He went quiet for a moment, obviously thinking about something. “The only way I think maybe my fingerprints would be anywhere,” Jason continued, “would be Kelly in his apartment and took something from our house to his house. Otherwise, there should be no reason whatsoever.”
Jason asked about his medical marijuana plants and a few additional “nonrelated” questions pertaining to the amount of plants he could legally have inside his house. Then he asked for a business card. It felt like he was being helpful and wanted to make himself available.
Thirty minutes after they started, Bracket and Belanger were done with Jason.
* * *
LAURA FRIZZO WAS PUZZLED by the interview—if not completely bowled over. She saw so many holes in Jason’s account of his life, she was eager to dig in and pick it all apart.
MSP detective Jean Belanger walked up to Frizzo after Jason and Kelly left. According to Frizzo, the MSP detective said, “I don’t think he’s capable.”
“Huh?” Frizzo was stunned by this conclusion.
“Yeah, I do not think these people are involved,” Belanger added.
“Wait a minute. Are you kidding me right now?” Frizzo said, looking at the detective.
Bracket and Belanger left.
13
THE OTHER MAN
THREE MSP DETECTIVES, JEAN BELANGER, CHRIS BRACKET, AND RUSS Larson, each from a different post in and around Iron County, sat with Kelly Cochran’s most recent lover on the afternoon of October 28. It was Kelly herself who’d given Belanger and Bracket his name.
All he knew about the situation, Tim Huntley (pseudonym) explained after Bracket asked, “was that my ex-supervisor, I guess, Chris Regan, has been filed as a missing person.”
“Okay,” Bracket said.
When Tim Huntley first arrived at Lake Shore to begin work on September 3, 2014, he was excited and thrilled to be employed by one of Iron County’s largest companies. “Assembly,” Tim later said. “Military assembly.” It was an intense and complicated job, but could also be rewarding.
Chris Regan was Tim’s team leader, though they knew each other only from nodding hellos in passing during working hours. They never mingled outside of that professional environment.
During her interview with the MSP, Kelly had given Tim’s name as someone she’d been having an affair with, but had since cut it off. The investigation, in this early stage, was dictated by information. Cops followed names and places.
Tim Huntley was next in line.
“We ended up talking to . . . um, Kelly . . . Kelly . . . Cochran,” Bracket explained to Tim, having trouble finding her surname on his notepad.
“I didn’t know her last name,” Tim said.
Just after his first day on the job, Tim ran into Kelly outside, in a designated smoking area employees frequented on break. Though they worked in different departments, Tim and Kelly happened to be having a cigarette at the same time one morning and started chatting.
“Separated,” Kelly had said. “My husband and I are separated. I’m going to be filing for a divorce soon.”
Single, living with his brother and sister-in-law, Tim liked what he saw. Kelly came across edgy and independent. She spoke her mind. Although he hardly knew her, Tim admired Kelly’s liberated resolve. The strength she had to end what she described as an unstable marriage and start a new life on her own impressed him. He viewed meeting her as the start of a friendship.
Soon they were meeting at the smoking area every day.
“Here’s my cell,” Kelly had said one morning. “Call or text me anytime.”
Tim had a certain edginess about him, too. He liked to wear skullcaps, dark clothing. He was proud of the various tattoos he had gotten over the years.
Kelly could relate.
In his midthirties, Tim and Kelly were close in age. They both liked to party. Worked at the same place. Shared similar tastes in food and music. The one little detail Kelly left out of their early conversations as they got to know each other was that she was still seeing Chris Regan, Tim’s team leader. But it wasn’t long before Tim found out through the workplace grapevine that something was going on between Chris and Kelly. So he asked her.
“Ah, I had a relationship with Chris prior to you starting work here,” Kelly told Tim one day in late September.
“Okay. You still seeing him?”
Kelly said she was not. “We had seen each other for a while, but not anymore. He still contacts me, though.” Tim felt Kelly was annoyed by Chris still contacting her. She made it appear as if it bothered her that Chris was still pursuing a relationship, even though she had told him it was over.
Tim made a point of saying that if she was still seeing Chris, he wanted no part of it. He knew she still lived at home with her husband, with whom she claimed to be divorcing. Having Chris in the picture on top of Jason felt like too much.
“It’s done,” Kelly reassured Tim. “Promise.”
Not believing her, Tim stopped talking to Kelly.
* * *
AS TIM HUNTLEY AND the three MSP detectives sat in Bracket’s vehicle and discussed his relationship with Kelly, Tim said he had never met or seen Kelly’s husband.
“I went over there once,” Tim explained. Meaning the Cochran house. Kelly had painted a solemn portrait of the marriage and had told Tim that Jason was gone, out of the house, staying with friends or family. “She said that, like, for the past how many years it was, that . . . she wanted [the divorce] to be completed. The story I got from her was he didn’t want to tell his folks down in Indiana.... She said the marriage had been done for years.”
The interview had a casual, conversational tone. Tim started out quite nervous, but soon fell into the ebb and flow of the questioning, which indicated a desire to help any way he could.
“Did she ever say anything about seeing anyone else, or whatever?” Bracket asked.
“Yes,” Tim said.
“Who was that?”
“So, um, she kept mentioning a ‘friend’ or ‘friends.’”
It was never black or white with Kelly, Tim went on to note. He called Kelly the “elusive type—I kind of got that vibe.”
One of the places Tim and Kelly met after work was Wildwood Lake, just east of Iron River, off U.S. Highway 2, in Bates Township. As their friendship progressed, Kelly told Tim one day, “Meet me at the park-and-ride. We can go from there.”
According to one report, [Tim] and Kelly would text and then meet up after work for a few beers. They would go several places, including the “spot” near Wildwood Lake. You would get to the spot by turning south at the road just in front of the park and ride in Bates Township.
They’d talk. Hike. Find a secluded area near the lake. Have sex. Then go back to their private lives.
Tim gave the MSP detectives his cell phone, which still had several text threads he and Kelly had exchanged.
“Did you communicate through text and phone calls?”
“She never really talked on the phone,” Tim said. “It was like a couple of texts.” They’d go back and forth for a bit, but then Kelly would up and “disappear for, like, days” without warning.
Tim found this strange.
Chris Regan came up in the discussion. The MSP wanted to know what Tim thought of him. Was there any type of rivalry between him and Chris for Kelly’s affection? On paper, the oldest motive could be placed among Kelly, Chris, and Tim.
“Oh, gosh, no. [Chris and I] liked each other. We got along great at work.”
Tim was asked what he thought had happened to Chris.
“He was here one day . . . then gone. Just me personally, I kind of got the feeling, okay, then, well, he’s not here, um, Kelly’s being elusive. I don’t know who this mysterious ‘friend’ is I’ve heard about lately, so I don’t know.”
Jean Belanger interrupted: “Could she be talking about her husband?” The question was in reference to Tim mentioning Kelly had been referring to a “friend”
in several of her recent texts.
Just the previous week, Tim added, he’d received what became the last text from Kelly. On October 24, after Tim sent her a text asking what was going on, Kelly responded: Can I call you in a few? Just to let you know, I had to help a friend with a huge problem.
Tim was flustered by the timing.
You talk to me and then you’re gone for a few days.
And that was it. He did not hear from her again.
That text was quite a bit more secretive and terse than most from the past, Tim told the MSP. On October 5, 2014, at five thirty-one p.m., Kelly had sent Tim a wink-face emoji. By then, she was not working at Lake Shore any longer—she’d been fired, actually, and walked out of the building by Laura Sartori after not producing the paperwork to support a medical leave she claimed was for a shoulder injury.
I need out for a bit, Kelly texted a few minutes later on that early October evening. By “out,” she meant her house. I’m climbing the walls.
Hah, yeah, I bet, Tim texted back.
Meet me somewhere?
Where at?
Name it.
Well, we could meet at the spot and go from there.
Ok, see ya soon.
Nothing too late though. I’ve enjoyed catching up on my sleep.
Whatever, old man :P
Yep.
Later that night, early into the next morning, after they’d met and had sex, Kelly was texting by eighteen minutes after midnight: And I think I’m ok getting hurt for a chance at knowing you. Just being real. Guess it takes a twelve-pack.
Tim didn’t answer right away. At five in the morning, he finally sent Kelly a response: Wow . . . I should have gone to bed earlier.
Hope your day goes quick and painless, Kelly answered at eight-ten in the morning. Then, with nothing said for about twelve hours, she texted at eight forty-two p.m.: Hope all is ok with u.
Tim did not respond. The following morning, October 7, 2014, at eleven-twenty, How’s that shoulder? Tim texted.
Kelly had told Tim she’d injured her shoulder long ago in a car accident and needed an operation to right it.
Sore, but better, thanks. Just no arm wrestling.
No surgery? Lol.
He recommended it. I just don’t want to do the surgery again now.
After a few additional pleasantries, Kelly asked Tim if he had plans that night. To which Tim said nothing currently.
I need a smile, she texted.
:)
Not exactly what I meant, Kelly came back with.
Oh oh . . . :) Well, what were you thinking?
Anything to get me out of this house.
Kelly explained that she was “cooped up” in the house all the time now since being out of work. Tim said it didn’t sound half bad, being holed up in a house, adding that “Netflix and wine” made a “good combo.”
Well, if you decide to go out and play, text me :) Kelly wrote.
OK. See, I’m tired . . . I feel like we went out last night.
Kelly waited almost an hour before answering: Oh boy. I was hoping to wear u out tonight.
One of these days we rent a room in town and just have fun.
A half hour went by. No response.
Guess you don’t like that idea, Tim texted.
I do! Kelly responded fifteen minutes later.
For a girl who wants to get out of the house you sure are busy, Tim texted. Nope?????
They wound up meeting and getting hammered. The following morning, Tim texted at six-ten, saying he slept through his alarm. By eleven, Kelly still had not yet responded. But sometime later, she asked if he was on break. She wanted to know if he’d had any problems after waking up late.
A little, Tim texted.
Kelly wanted to know what.
Tim said he should know better; it was all his fault for getting drunk and staying out too late.
Kelly said it was her fault: Since I kidnapped you. ;)
Tim said he hit a deer on the way into work that morning and his sister-in-law, with whom he lived, was “bitching to me about dirt on the floor.”
After a few unimportant questions, Tim said he was home alone and resting up from a long night and even longer day.
Kelly texted back: U left a lot of bruises on my back :) must have been a good night.
:)
Hope ur night is awesome, Kelly texted.
I’m still tired so hopefully sleep soon, Tim texted back.
For the next several days and throughout the weekend of October 11 and 12, Kelly and Tim texted occasionally. Kelly asked Tim to grab her tool bag from work and meet her somewhere with it. She’d left it behind when she was walked out of the building. By late in the day on Sunday, October 12, Kelly was talking about taking a walk together near the lake. She wanted to meet “at the carpool lot by the spot”—Wildwood Lake. It was four-ten when she wondered if maybe it was too late in the day. To which, Tim said it wasn’t, but he needed to shower first.
By seven-seventeen p.m., they were done, both back home, and texting again.
The next day, October 13, Kelly waited until four thirty-three p.m. before asking Tim how his day had been.
Tim mentioned he had laundry to do. He needed something to eat. How tired he was.
Kelly responded: poor thing.
That was the end of their conversation. The night passed. Tuesday, October 14, came. Tim woke up, checked his phone.
He had not heard from Kelly.
Tim went about his business. Thought nothing of Kelly not responding to his texts. She’d done it before. She’d go a “couple of days” without communicating, and then “she’d come back and then text me and then I wouldn’t hear from her again,” he said. But this day felt different. Something was going on with her. She had been hot and heavy and wanting to meet up and have sex, texting frequently over the past two weeks.
Then, suddenly, on October 14, silence.
14
TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES
AS TIM HUNTLEY SAT AND SPOKE TO THREE MSP DETECTIVES ABOUT Kelly Cochran on October 28, 2014, he painted a vague image of a woman prone to, at best, exaggerating the truth—at worst, pathological lying. Tim explained how people would ask Kelly questions about how she’d hurt her shoulder, and if five people asked, each would get a different answer.
Detectives wanted to know if Tim could add any insight into Kelly’s marriage. Like had she ever discussed what went on behind closed doors?
“Yeah,” Tim said. Kelly once referred to her marriage “for the past three years as being like she’s been wanting out.” She claimed Jason was “in need of treatment and that he refuses.... She said she got to a certain point where she [could] not sit around and watch somebody die, that [Jason] was aggressive with her and would push her around . . . and that he was threatening her.”
Quite a different scenario than Kelly had portrayed with the same set of detectives earlier that day.
The topic of money came up. Detective Bracket floated a hypothetical: Was Kelly perhaps broke and using Tim as someone to hang around with because he had money to spend on her?
Not a chance, Tim said. For one, he was not basking in the sun rays of financial freedom by any means. Second, Kelly claimed to have a brother in Indiana whom she’d helped with a business and they were making upward of six thousand dollars per week.
“According to her.”
Bracket asked Tim if he could save those texts from Kelly, screenshot and e-mail to the MSP.
Tim asked, when did Chris’s disappearance become a missing person’s case?
“Look, we have no reason not to believe you,” Bracket said, “but we tell everyone, if there is something on your mind, there’s something she might have said, and it’s kind of back here [in your mind]”—he pointed at himself, gesturing an overlooked thought—“and you’re not sure if you want to say something, just make sure you get it out now. Because if we find out something down the road, you don’t want to be part of—”
That comment made Tim anxious. Interrupting, he said, “No, and, well, okay, then . . .”
“And I’m saying that if you’re holding anything back . . .”
“Yeah, okay . . . she has seemed kind of different.”
“From a certain date, did she seem different? Or was she always?”
“I don’t know. From, like, day one, she was kind of, like, well, she kept to herself and didn’t want to say too much about what’s going on.”
Tim shared a story of a night they spent together in early October. Kelly talked about how she’d gotten “into a wreck—that she went down to Indiana randomly, like, on . . . like, kind of on a whim, on a weekend, since she’d been out of work. She said she’d gotten into a car wreck and her ‘friend’ was in pretty bad shape. They had driven down there, and it almost seemed like they were driving back in the middle of the night [when the accident happened].”
“When was this?” Bracket wondered. However cryptic the story sounded to Tim, it had the potential to provide answers. “Roughly? Do you remember when that would have happened?”
Tim could not think of the exact date, but was certain it was after she had been fired.
“Did she ever say who this ‘friend’ was?”
“She never told me who the friend was.”
“It would always be ‘a friend’?” Bracket asked.
Tim looked through his texts to see if he could recall when, precisely, she had brought up this so-called “friend.” He thought it started out as a text conversation and they finished talking about it in person.
Searching through his phone, Tim guessed the conversation started just before October 5.
MSP detective Jean Belanger, quiet and nearly invisible throughout most of the interview, piped in: “I have to ask a question, and it’s probably going to be kind of embarrassing, but, um, was there anything unusual, strange, or did you have any unusual sexual encounters with her?”
Tim paused. “Um . . . I wouldn’t say that it’s . . . I mean—nothing, like, out of the ordinary. She had talked about, like . . .”
“Was she wanting multiple partners?” Belanger wondered.
“I knew that she was, like, what you would call, like, the kinkier type . . . whatever, that’s what she alluded to. But it was never . . .”
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