In a series of bullet points, Jason described his character, the Jason the world see’s [sic], within what is a normal life. His list included: married, no kids, always in pain, halfway to crippled, not quite middle age, angry at life, has own hit list, superhero “shoes.”
Over the door of the house where fictional Jason lived was a wooden sign: if your [sic] not invited your [sic] not welcome—enter at your own risk.
Page three, the second chapter outline, focused on Jason’s family life. His character was argumentative, beats wife, scares children, blows what little money the family has on booze and stupidity.
The third chapter was more of the same. Jason Cochran, Kelly’s husband, talked about how Jason, his fictional alter ego, squanders other people’s money to feed his own narcissistic lifestyle. This Jason was a womanizer who thinks he is god’s gift to humanity.
Chapter four began to paint a picture of a darker Jason (the character), a child molester. This Jason had just been released from prison after a second bid for harming kids in a sexual manner. But jail had not done anything to deter the character from immediately searching for other victims. At some point in the book, Jason Cochran wrote, he wanted to see this character “stumped,” as he termed it, which meant tied to a tree and then covered with honey so fire ants could kill and consume.
Chapter five had one word scrawled on the page: Rapist. No further explanation.
Six ventured into the territory of Jason the character coming from a family of killers. Jason’s kin works the traveling carnival while searching for their victims.
Chapter seven introduced a new, unnamed character, a sex worker, stripper. She was going to be disence infested [sic], meaning “disease infected.” She was a homewrecker, and by the end of the book, she would have two victims under her belt.
The next chapter introduced the politician, with one note attached: monsters come in many shapes.
The Priest was written across the heading of chapter nine. Jason wanted this person to be from the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Church of Latter-day Saints.
Chapter ten was simply The Sadist. The remainder of the page was blank.
Chapter eleven—or a new chapter one, as Jason Cochran had not yet decided if this was the beginning of what he called Part B—had just a title: That Smell.
The smell Jason referred to was a scent all living things [emit] when afraid, as if fear had an odor. This idea would be a major theme throughout the second half of the book. Jason talked about how, within the natural world, the hunted person could smell when the hunter [was] close. He reckoned it to be human instinct in its purest form. He referenced a rabbit smelling the nearby fox, and how the hair stood up on your arms or neck when fear struck. He called it the tingle and the holy spirit feeling.
Chapter twelve began to lay out a few plot points. Jason (the writer) talked about a 14 year old boy who was home alone. It was four days before Easter. His parents were at work. Two missionaries—Jehovah [sic] Witnesses, [but] not really evil—arrived and knocked on the door. He referred to the missionaries as evil behind the ruse of God or religion.
As Jason sat on this day and wrote an outline, it appeared he had smoked some of that weed from the basement. He would write a word, but not have the thought completely drawn out in his mind, before scribbling it out. He did this repeatedly. He’d start a word and trail off, not completing it.
Chapter thirteen was a half-thought-out attempt. He talked about a DUI who would be captured, not mentioning what DUI stood for.
Fourteen: Captured, pays.
Fifteen was blank.
Then came the conclusion: quacks-quacks tingle—monsters know the smell of other monsters. He repeated the sign over the door phrase found on the fictional home.
Then, for the conclusion, Kelly Cochran’s husband wrote, Wife saves the day.
Jason Cochran described the denouement as a family cookout at the house. Everyone was enjoying the day; guests mingled and talked. No one heard the car pull into the driveway, Jason wrote, before warning, in a scribble of words, the hunted can smell, with two additional words crossed out—the hunter.
In the end, quack-quack excuses himself, and the outline ended.
Kelly said Jason had actually written and completed this book, though no one reported finding it. She also called her husband “a typical psychopath.” Jason had a dark side he could hide from the public and those who knew him best.
Although the writing in the outline spoke of a person not very well educated, someone who had trouble maintaining a well-balanced, healthy line of thought, Kelly said her husband was “very smart,” adding, “We were both too smart for our own good.”
Jason’s writing spoke to the contrary, however. What was Kelly getting at by calling Jason “genius-smart”?
“He was, like, mad-science smart. His writing, in a grammatical sense, no way.”
As an example, Kelly explained that Jason was into mixing chemicals. Not, for instance, cooking meth in the house—but actual harmful chemicals.
“He had some major things planned out,” she said, referring to Jason’s obsession with chemicals and mass murder. “Crazy things.”
One was to poison Michigan’s water supply.
No one else around the guy had seen this side. Therefore, not a lot of people had bad things to say about him. Kelly contended that this was indicative of Jason “putting on a good show” for everyone. He was an expert at playing stupid. Being that country bumpkin. The guy who seemed to be a bit slow and passive.
Jason’s back injuries, moreover, were a ruse. Videos the MSP had extracted from Kelly’s cell phone—which Frizzo would find later—show the two of them, in September 2014, out at a waterfall deep in the woods, alone. They came across like two lovers out for a day in nature. They talked respectfully to each other. And what’s more, Jason is seen in the videos at one point jumping from rock to rock and walking around without any difficulty.
“Clearly,” Frizzo said, “when I viewed that, I could see this is not a man in any physical pain that would preclude him from doing. . . well, anything.”
18
FRUSTRATION
LAURA FRIZZO MADE A DECISION TO TAKE CONTROL OF AN INVESTIGATION she believed was heading off the rails. She did not want certain MSP detectives on the team assembled to look into the disappearance of Chris Regan. Frizzo couldn’t see how these particular cops were moving the needle of the investigation any closer to finding Chris Regan. She called the local MSP lieutenant and explained she wanted Jean Belanger, for one, off the case. It was not personal. Frizzo had years of practical experience interviewing witnesses and suspects, digging knee-deep into intricate investigations. She did not want anyone to disturb the momentum she felt was heading in a specific direction: Jason Cochran.
“I’m sorry,” Frizzo explained. “But if someone’s mind is closed already, come on.”
The lieutenant sent another MSP detective the following day.
The guy, Frizzo said, played the dominant male role of trying to take over.
“How many times have you been to [suspect-interview-training school]?” he asked Frizzo (according to her) shortly after coming aboard.
“Never,” Frizzo said.
This was no way to create what should be an optimal environment in order to find Chris Regan. It wasn’t about making friends, being the top cop who solved the case. For Frizzo, bringing a guy home to his family and / or finding the people responsible for making him disappear was what mattered.
One of the last things Jean Belanger did in the case was to call Chris Reagan’s ex-wife, who no longer lived in Michigan.
Chris’s ex explained she and Chris had been married for twenty-eight years. The divorce was finalized in 2010. Since that time, she said, “I’ve had little to no contact with him.”
Three months after their divorce, she added, “Chris remarried.” That marriage didn’t last. She wasn’t sure how long, exactly, but he divorced again, reconnected with Terri O’Donnell,
and moved from Suttons Bay, a small town on the east side of Lake Michigan, to Iron River.
“’Bout all I can tell you,” she concluded.
“Do you know where your ex-husband might be, ma’am?” Jean Belanger asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Do you think Chris is someone who would not want to be found?”
“I’m not sure what he is capable of,” the ex-wife answered. “We grew apart. . . .”
According to Belanger’s reading of Chris’s ex, she seemed “genuinely concerned” about Chris and “his welfare.”
* * *
OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, into early November, Laura Frizzo wrestled leadership of the investigation. She’d developed strong feelings that Jason Cochran was aware of what had happened to Chris Regan. Frizzo could not shake the “jealous husband” theory.
With that, Frizzo took her theories and findings into all MSP meetings, telling the team they were ignoring “every indication” that Jason Cochran was involved.
The room would go quiet. Then, according to Frizzo, she’d be ridiculed and belittled about having “tunnel vision.”
“Me? I am the one with tunnel vision! Are you kidding me right now?” Frizzo snapped one day.
Part of it, Frizzo believed, came from her “being the only woman” at the table. “All these men on one side, me on the other. They cannot be that stupid, I’d think when my Cochran theories were shot down. They had to be ignoring it because the someone bringing it to them—who doesn’t have as much ‘training’ as them and was putting it together—is a woman, and their egos wouldn’t allow it.”
Interviewing suspects and witnesses was not something one could sit in a classroom and learn, Frizzo felt. It came from hands-on experience of doing it and making mistakes. She respected the MSP and understood their role in the hierarchy of police work in the state of Michigan. But nobody knew the people of Iron River better than the local cops—and nobody was going to convince Frizzo that her ideas and instincts were off. She felt certain: Kelly, Jason, or both, knew where Chris Regan was and what had happened to him.
She was not going to let go.
Days like the one spent in that explosive meeting, Frizzo explained, along with the forthcoming holiday season, led to the MSP casually dropping out of the case and leaving a majority of the investigation in the hands of the IRPD.
Just as well, Frizzo thought.
“That should have been done a long time ago,” Melissa Powell, the local prosecutor, told Frizzo, after she and Frizzo initiated frequent meetings and discussions about where to take the case next.
Frizzo wanted to search the Cochran house and sit down for a formal interview with Jason and Kelly Cochran—something she had not yet done. Not inside her cruiser, on the Cochrans’ stoop, casually talking, playing cat and mouse. Rather, a shine-a-lightin-your-face interrogation inside the IRPD’s interview suite, with Frizzo at the helm, cranking up pressure.
Time to find out what they knew.
“Let’s do it,” Melissa Powell encouraged.
19
THE UNEXPECTED
ALOCAL WOMAN CALLED THE IRPD ON NOVEMBER 5, 2014, AFTER A news story broke about Chris Regan’s disappearance.
Betsy Roy (pseudonym) was the nosey next-door neighbor, looking out her windows and doors from behind the blinds, eager for something in town to happen so she could gossip. After giving the officer her name, Betsy said she lived near the park-and-ride in Bates Township, where the missing man’s car had been found.
“My husband and I, we noticed a large amount of crow activity in the woods near the park-and-ride over the past few days. And yesterday, in fact, I saw an eagle in the same area.”
The implication was that the birds had been circling a body.
The officer thanked the woman and turned over the lead to the IRPD. Not thinking it would amount to much, Frizzo asked the MSP to take another look in those woods with the K9s.
On the same day, an IRPD investigator contacted a coworker of Kelly’s at Lake Shore. The guy’s name had been given to the MSP by Tim Huntley.
After being asked, the man repeated a conversation he’d had with another coworker, who had said something “strange” to him recently, especially in light of Chris Regan’s vanishing act.
“What was it?” the IRPD officer asked.
“He said, ‘Isn’t it strange that Jason Cochran went to Indiana during the time, or shortly after, Chris went missing?’”
“Was there anything else?”
The source hesitated. Then: “This guy knows something about the disappearance—he’s good friends with Kelly.”
The officer took down the name and said someone would contact him for an interview.
Then a woman by the name of Gladys Ryder (pseudonym) came forward. She called into the IRPD and, after saying she wanted to remain anonymous, explained she might have important information about the disappearance mentioned on the local news. Gladys had lived about five miles outside Iron River for the past three years with her former boyfriend, Joe Speck (pseudonym).
“I’m no longer with Joe, but we stay in touch.”
“Did your ex know Chris Regan?”
“He did.” She explained that Joe and Chris had once worked together years ago in a town upstate. Some sort of retail business.
“What is it you’re concerned about?”
“Joe has been saying some rather strange things about Chris I think you need to know.”
“What is it, ma’am?”
“Look, I am a bit reluctant to speak with the police because I don’t really trust you.”
After being reassured that the IRPD was on a mission to collect information and find a missing man, nothing more, Gladys felt more at ease and told a story.
A few months back, she had found out some “things” about her boyfriend.
“He’d been going on those . . . dating sites. I found out he was also meeting up with [certain people] down in that Iron River area. They’d often meet at different locations and then leave together.” She listed several places, one being the Bates park-and-ride. “When I saw on the news that the missing man’s car was left there, it reminded me of some strange behavior on Joe’s part one night when we passed by the same park-and-ride.”
“What was that?”
“He would always stare at the lot as we drove by.”
“When was the last time you drove by the lot with Joe?”
“Oh, about October second or third. It’s just weird,” she continued, “because Joe would make comments regarding how strange it is that a guy he once worked with is missing—he would bring it up at odd times.”
Nervous about coming forward with the information, Gladys said she was done for now and hung up.
A day later, she called back.
“I’ve been talking to Joe recently. He’s been telling me how he’s catching these mice in his house and then explaining in graphic detail how he is torturing and killing them, throwing them against trees and drowning them. He knows I am an animal lover and he is trying to get to me. He smokes a lot of marijuana and is always telling me, ‘Nobody knows the real me.’ Hitler is one of his heroes and he has all sorts of guns, other weapons, and knives, inside his house.” Gladys became overwhelmed by emotion for a moment before continuing, adding how she would often eavesdrop on conversations Joe had with a friend—she gave the IRPD the man’s name—regarding how “easy it would be to kill someone and get rid of the body around here. He likes to burn things, too, and had a burn pit near his house in the woods.”
One specific incident at Joe’s house, not too long ago, Gladys said, had caused her great concern.
“What’s that?”
“The last time I was at his house, I noticed several white bags of lye inside the house. I asked him what they were for and he said, ‘My garden.’”
“Okay . . .”
“Yeah, well, Joe does not have a garden. Never did.”
Lots of people use lye; yet not
many would apply the chemical to garden soil. Lye is generally used for making soap and detergent, or processing natural gas and gasoline, papermaking, neutralizing acids, and perhaps even to process soft drinks and chemically peel fruits and vegetables. Lye can also be used for making grits, bagels, and lutefisk (a fermented Scandinavian delicacy, which most who try it for the first time find repulsive).
Beyond all of that, however, lye has been currently used for what some call “green funerals.” Instead of opting for cremation or regular burial by embalming and casket, the corpse is dissolved in lye and the “resultant slurry,” as it is called, is discarded in a specific location.
The detective asked if there was anything else.
“I found two computers at his house and they contain . . . pornography that includes Joe in the videos. They were recorded inside Joe’s house, for sure. I found them without him knowing.”
That didn’t sound like anything beyond consensual sex between consenting adults. Unless there was something illegal going on within the context of the videos, what was the big deal? Gladys sounded more appalled than concerned.
Then a bombshell: “I spoke to Joe on the phone near the third week of October. It was the last time we talked.”
“What did he say?”
Gladys hesitated. Then: “That he killed a . . . guy.”
PART 2
BUTTERFLIES
20
PINK METAL
NOVEMBER 10, 2014, WAS ONE OF THOSE EARLY WINTER DAYS IN UPPER Michigan holding residents hostage, confining most indoors. The snow fell steadily—wet, heavy, slushy stuff sticking to everything like flour. Chief Laura Frizzo was alone, driving, the wipers slapping loudly back and forth, ice and snow caking up on the corners of the windshield.
Frizzo was frustrated with the MSP and how Jason and Kelly Cochran had been handled during interviews. MSP detectives had investigated and believed Chris wanted to disappear, or he’d committed suicide and his body would—or would not—be found someday.
Where Monsters Hide Page 9