Where Monsters Hide

by M. William Phelps

  “A tracker?”

  Neiger said his services were free. He sent Frizzo references. What a considerate gesture, especially when Frizzo could clearly use any help she could get.

  Skeptical at first, based mostly on her fractured relationship with the MSP, Frizzo called a few of those referrals, and Neiger was given high marks all around.

  It was November 13, 2014. Frizzo went to have a look at Chris Regan’s Hyundai Genesis. Neiger’s expertise could help in that regard.

  Neiger had a comforting, fatherly look about him. The beard was gone. A receding hairline might have made him appear to be getting on in years, but he was actually in better shape than most men thirty years younger, spending six days a week training, as he put it, “muscularly and aerobically.”

  Chris Regan’s leased vehicle was scheduled to be returned to the car company soon, Frizzo found out. She needed to get into it and have a look. The MSP had already done a once-over, but at this point in the investigation, Frizzo double-checked everything, if for no other reason than to get a feel for the evidence herself. She’d found a report where the car had been swabbed, yet the steering wheel had been missed.

  The only item of importance they were able to find inside Chris Regan’s car was a knitted hat. Frizzo hoped she would someday need a DNA sample from Chris Regan and the hat proved to be loaded with hairs.

  The other important task at hand was a second search of Chris’s apartment. Frizzo touched base with Chris Regan Jr. and found out he was on his way into town to clean out his father’s apartment. She needed to get in there beforehand. The MSP and IRPD had done a cursory check of Chris’s residence, but Frizzo knew an investigator with Mike Neiger’s experience and expertise could give her a closer forensic look. There was an answer there, Frizzo felt. She just had to find it.

  The search warrant came in on November 24, 2014.

  “The purpose, really, for me going in there, again, was to try and collect some type of items that might contain DNA for down-the-road comparison purposes.”

  They bagged and tagged “a flossing device, a toothbrush, a bicycle helmet, gloves, another knitted hat.”

  Mike Neiger walked around the apartment carefully. He studied each of the rooms with an eagle’s eye for detail. He advised Frizzo to take the drain trap from the bathroom and the kitchen sink, common areas for DNA from blood and hairs to congregate.

  “I identified some prints of interest, too,” Neiger said.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, come in here.”

  They walked into the bedroom. “Look at that.” Neiger pointed to the bedsheets. “That spot could be blood.”

  Frizzo could feel the case moving somewhere.

  Momentum—that was all she’d ever wanted.

  * * *

  AS FRIZZO WAITED, FOCUSING on what stone to overturn next, the phone company came through in locating text messages between Chris Regan and Kelly Cochran on October 13, 2014. This find had the potential to be big. It had taken a while, but they were able to go back into computer records and extract the actual messages. Most cellphone users think they can delete texts completely. However, the cellular phone companies, for no particular reason, save and file them. Most of the time, the texts are deleted after a few weeks, but these particular days in question were available.

  Sitting at home, Frizzo opened the file and read. It gave her a great overview of the casual banter between Kelly and Chris in those days just before Chris was last heard from.

  Sure wish I knew if you were okay or not? Please let me know, OK? I hope you are, Chris texted one day near his disappearance. He had not heard from Kelly in twenty-four hours. He was wondering what was going on. They had made tentative plans to hang out in an earlier exchange, but Kelly was AWOL.

  OMG, don’t hate me. Lost contacts. I did get you a gift on my trip.

  Kelly told Chris she had been away. Frizzo had learned through investigative work that it was Kelly who had actually gone to Indiana on October 9. It was not Jason, as Jason’s mother had reported to the chief. Neighbors in Indiana would later confirm this.

  “Kelly told Chris Regan she had gotten him a gift in Indiana while she was gone,” Frizzo explained. “She told him on October thirteenth (when he asked her to stop by) that she couldn’t give him the gift until the next day, the fourteenth.... I believe one hundred percent that Kelly went to Indiana to retrieve the gun [that would be used] to kill Chris Regan.”

  Kelly told Chris she’d had trouble with her phone—the reason for her silence.

  I was going to stop by your place but figured you wouldn’t hear me knock, Kelly texted.

  Come over tonight, Chris texted. Got some juicy gossip to share. He ended the text with a smiley face.

  Kelly said she couldn’t give him his gift until the following day, October 14, asking, Is tomorrow better?

  I thought you fell off the earth. I would not have heard. I sleep sound now. OK, how come? Chris texted.

  I have been a bit sick and crabby. That’s why.

  So? I am sick too. You could use a hug and some kind words. See you at 5.

  I feel like my head is in a vise.

  Poor girl. Maybe you will feel a little better tomorrow. Sound better? Chris texted.

  I’m hoping. This sucks. You OK? Kelly replied.

  I’ll survive. Glad to get the cold thing over. You better? Lucky you. Mine dragged on for a week almost.

  As they continued texting, Chris advised Kelly: Drink liquids, take a multivitamin, eat food, and bundle up and watch television.

  Kelly responded that when she was ill, she always drank her fluids, especially water. She added that TV made her “lazy,” so she wasn’t going to lounge around, zoning out.

  That’s the idea, dork. Rest.

  I’m trying. That’s not easy for me.

  Good night, Chris texted.

  Sleep well. See you tomorrow.

  I can’t wait. I’ve missed you. Sorry to be so cheezy [sic].

  31

  LISTEN AND LEARN

  IRPD POLICE CHIEF LAURA FRIZZO NEEDED TO GET INTO THE COCHRAN house under a search warrant. Besides the comforting feeling of knocking on the door, slapping that piece of paper against Kelly’s chest and telling her to get out of the way, Frizzo wanted answers. If she could go through each room, turn over every piece of furniture and look behind every picture, dig in the garbage, sift through every square inch of that house, the chief was certain she’d uncover a clue to the whereabouts of Chris Regan. Without telling anyone, Frizzo felt she’d connected on a spiritual level with Chris Regan. She believed his presence was driving and guiding her. It was hard to explain. But he was there. Pushing her in different directions. Not voices in her head, or some sort of spiritual apparition, but a pull, an instinctual grip. It was indicating that something bigger than just the chief was involved.

  “It would be almost two years, you have to understand,” Frizzo explained. “I imagined what my reaction might be when, or even if, I ever found him. It was always such a roller-coaster ride. One day, I’d have no doubt whatsoever that I would find Chris Regan. The next, well, I’d feel hopeless.”

  This day was an in-between one. Frizzo knew she had enough for a warrant, she just needed to lay it all out, present it to the prosecutor and get it signed off.

  The more Frizzo looked into the minor details Kelly had given her and the MSP during interviews, the clearer it was that Kelly was manipulating the truth. As she went through the interviews the MSP had conducted with Tim Huntley, Frizzo saw that the park-and-ride in Bates Township was the place where Tim and Kelly often met before a sexual rendezvous. Tim was certain of this, so Frizzo went back through her last interview with Kelly. Kelly claimed to have no idea where the park-and-ride was located.

  This detail could not have been a simple, overlooked fact. In other words, it was not something that one would forget. Unless it was significant.

  Even more compelling were the phone records and texts coming in unde
r warrants the IRPD and the MSP’s technical investigations unit had filed weeks ago. The deeper Frizzo looked into communication among the three parties’ phones—Chris and Kelly, Jason and Kelly, Jason and Chris—it was clear that a search warrant for the house was needed fast.

  Between May 15, 2014, through October 13, 2014, a 151-day period, Kelly Cochran’s phone sent and received a total of 5,434 text messages, an average of 35.9 per day. Voice calls from and to Kelly’s phone number during that same period came in at 3,604, a daily average of 23.8.

  Just numbers, really. Yet Frizzo was astonished by the data after comparing the numbers to those of Jason and Chris’s phones.

  The second significant date range was October 10, 2014, through October 25, 2014. Focused on Kelly’s phone, there had been 506 total text messages sent and received, or 31.6 per day. Voice calls came in a bit less, 19.8 for a daily average.

  Until she took into consideration why the daily average was different, slight as it was, Frizzo could have never known that such a small (percentage) number would be so significant to her investigation. When the chief looked at October 15, 2014, specifically, an anomaly jumped out: zero text messages on that day were sent or received, with only one phone call made from Kelly’s phone, at ten-fourteen p.m. The previous day, October 14, Chris Regan had texted Kelly’s phone at three fifty-seven p.m., but she did not respond. Yet, Jason’s phone texted Chris Regan’s phone at four-eleven p.m., and Chris’s phone texted Jason’s phone back. Just after that, Chris’s phone made a seven-minute voice call to Jason’s phone. The last text logged on that day took place at five twenty-five p.m.

  Chris’s phone to Jason’s phone.

  An incredible find lurked within the muck of all that data. Frizzo realized at eight fifty-seven p.m., Kelly’s phone called Chris Regan’s phone—something that had not happened all day—for a duration of one second.

  “I would never have even caught this call without a thorough phone records investigation,” Frizzo later remarked. “This call didn’t show up on Chris’s cell records—only Kelly’s. Which was explained to me by the tech person from Verizon that because of the short duration, one second, it didn’t register on his incoming records. Thankfully, though, it was caught on her outgoing calls.”

  Why a one-second phone call from Kelly’s phone to Chris’s phone on that day?

  Frizzo believed Kelly was scrambling around her house trying to find Chris’s phone.

  “I knew when I found this in the phone records that it meant Chris was dead by this time, and most likely shortly before she had made the call to his phone. She was desperate to find it before he was reported missing and someone was able to ping the location of his phone.”

  There was more.

  On the following day, October 15, a few text messages flowed to and from Kelly’s phone, Kelly and Jason’s phone, and a third, unknown, number. With this information, Frizzo knew for certain Kelly’s phone had been working fine. There had been nothing wrong with it, as Kelly had claimed during her interviews. Why would she give the excuse that her phone was broken for why she used Jason’s phone to contact Chris Regan’s phone, when it was clearly working? Why lie about such a seemingly insignificant fact?

  Because it was important.

  In addition to the information about Kelly’s phone, Jason’s phone unraveled another thread, which proved to be even more compelling. Jason’s phone came in, on average, during a period between October 10 through October 31, with 19.6 text messages per day. Voice calls during that same span of time were eight per day. For October 15, in particular, same as Kelly’s phone, that number dropped significantly to four total communications: two incoming voice calls, two outgoing text messages.

  During the twenty-two-day period in October, when Frizzo had a chance to look closely at the communications per day for Jason and Kelly, they averaged 4.7 per day, eight days with zero communications. Between October 15 and 16, there were no communications; and between October 26 through 31, zero again. On October 12, however, nine communications were exchanged between Kelly and Jason. The next day, October 13, thirty. On October 14, the first five communications of the day were between Jason’s and Kelly’s phones. During this same period of time, October 14 and 15, four communications passed between Chris Regan’s phone and Jason’s phone, texts and voice calls. The final contact of that day came in at five twenty-six p.m., a text, initiated by Chris’s phone to Jason’s. The following morning, at eight twenty-one, one outgoing text went from Jason’s phone to Chris Regan’s phone.

  Then an entire day passed without any communication—that is, before a text message at five thirty-two p.m. was sent from Jason’s to Chris’s phone.

  Interesting data. But what had it actually proved to the chief?

  One had to go backward in time in order to see how important this data was within the scope of Frizzo’s investigation. Jason’s phone records from May 2014 to October 2014 proved that silence between the phones meant only one thing: the end of Chris Regan’s life.

  First, during that period of time, May 1, 2014, through October 13, 2014, 918 voice calls were placed to and from Jason’s phone. Yet not one of them had been made to or from Chris Regan’s number.

  Additionally, 1,490 text messages were sent to and from Jason’s phone. But again, not one of them to or from Chris Regan’s number.

  Even more alarming: All of these communications had bounced off cell towers near the Cochrans’ house in Caspian. Every last one of them—including Chris Regan’s phone.

  Why was Chris Regan’s phone bouncing off cell towers near the Cochran house on a night Kelly had said she spent with him at his apartment—the last time anyone had seen or heard from the guy?

  Frizzo sat back. Thought about it: Someone lured the guy over to the Cochran house. He showed up. Never left the place alive.

  Then this: During that time period before October 14, 2014, most of the text messages between Jason and Kelly were abrasive and even sometimes degrading on Kelly’s part, with Jason coming across desperate to spend time with his wife and win her love. Then, suddenly, after that October 14 date (which Frizzo now believed was the last day of Chris Regan’s life), Kelly and Jason were exchanging gushy texts like new lovers, with Kelly referring to Jason as “handsome” and begging him to “fuck me” all the time.

  32

  SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED

  FRIZZO SAT DOWN WITH IRON COUNTY PROSECUTING ATTORNEY, UNI versity of Tulsa College of Law graduate, Melissa Powell, on February 27, 2015. Since October 2014, although she had been involved in other cases, Frizzo put her focus on finding Chris Regan and arresting those responsible for his death. Over the past two months, the chief had utilized every resource she could. The next step in that sequence was for Frizzo to get inside the Cochran house and—maybe more important—onto the Cochran property and commence a meticulous search. By this time, Frizzo knew Kelly and Chris were likely never inside his apartment together on that last night he had been heard from. All the evidence pointed to the contrary: Chris Regan had driven to the Cochran house, was murdered there, with his car being later dropped off at the park-and-ride in Bates Township. The Post-it note with directions to Kelly’s house, which was found on the front seat of Chris Regan’s car, was one of the most important factors that convinced the chief. Whoever had dumped his car had failed to dispose of this clue.

  The chief sat with PA Melissa Powell and talked through what information she had for a search warrant. Frizzo couldn’t help but think that this stage of the cat-and-mouse game she’d been playing with Kelly Cochran was going to end at 66 Lawrence Street. One needed probable cause, Frizzo understood, before a magistrate would consider a warrant. Proving probable cause in a murder investigation where law enforcement did not have a body was challenging, to say the least. The MSP contended all along that without a body, Chris Regan was an adult missing person who had likely disappeared on his own.

  Frizzo, of course, had never believed that—all of the evidence she’d
discovered supported the contrary.

  “Let’s hear it,” Powell said. She sat back at her desk. Took out a yellow legal pad.

  Melissa Powell was an attractive woman with aqua-blue eyes, sandy-blond hair, and an unforced smile. She had a reassuring air about her, especially how she operated inside a courtroom. Yet, behind her subtle charm, Powell was a tough prosecutor, who delivered justice within her county in the old-fashioned way. She made sure she didn’t take on prosecutions to assuage a cop’s ego, for a personal vendetta, or for political gain. She simply wanted scum off the street. And you did that as a prosecutor by presenting evidence that a jury could not overlook. If Powell prosecuted Kelly and Jason Cochran for the murder of Chris Regan, the PA was going to present the most ironclad case she could build. No corners would be cut; no endless rabbit holes or suspects overlooked because a local cop had blinders on.

  Frizzo laid out a long list of investigatory facts she’d compiled since October 27, 2014, when Terri O’Donnell parked in front of the IRPD and reported Chris missing. The chief believed all of it was strong evidence that established the validity of a search warrant.

  One by one, she rattled off her most promising leads: the affair between Kelly and Chris, Kelly skipping out of work with her injured shoulder as an excuse, the wellness check on Kelly after she’d reported her husband wanted to kill her, and Jason Cochran’s anger about the affair and how he had discovered text messages between Kelly and Chris and other men.

  She further listed how Kelly explained in all of her interviews that she’d spent the better part of the evening of October 14 at Chris’s apartment, but phone records proved otherwise. The chief emphasized how Kelly had been unable to explain with any logical reasoning why she would be texting with Chris from her husband’s phone at times when she was supposed to be there, inside Chris’s apartment, sitting across from him on the couch.

  Additionally, Frizzo had recently recovered a video of the Cochrans’ white truck. It showed the truck traveling eastbound first, then westbound, away from Chris’s apartment. This occurred during a time frame when Kelly claimed to be inside the apartment with Chris.