After the Cochrans left, Frizzo walked into the living room. She slid the couch back to what appeared to be its natural position in the room.
Bleach spots were on the carpet beneath where the couch had been moved.
“I want those,” Frizzo noted, pointing down.
As forensic investigators walked in and out, the search picked up pace. Jackson Roper joined Frizzo. More eyes. More experience. Frizzo had felt she was in this alone. No one else believed her. It was comforting to share her theories with Jackson and have him at least consider different possibilities.
Roper and Frizzo had a short chat in the kitchen. While they talked, the PI pointed to the ceiling.
“See that?”
Frizzo looked up.
“It was my partner who actually saw this,” Roper said.
MSP lab technicians and forensic investigators spent the better part of eight hours going through every inch of “the west side” of the Cochran house.
As luminol was sprayed around areas of the kitchen, ceiling, and living room, Frizzo recalled, “There was lots of reaction to it.”
Which meant blood, cleaning solution, or a mixture of both had been present at one time in those areas of the house.
Why would there be blood on the ceiling?
Frizzo stood in the kitchen. Put a hand to her chin. Thought to herself what might have transpired in the spot where she stood: Chris walks in. Gets hit with the bat and falls to the floor. He tries to get to the back door to get away. . . .
She had always assumed that before the last night of his life, Chris Regan had never been to the Cochran house. It would have been easy for him to walk in and be blindsided.
Frizzo was outside when one of the technicians called her back in.
“Look.”
They stood and stared at the ceiling where luminol had been sprayed.
It lit up.
“We’re taking those tiles back to the lab for more testing.”
In total, the MSP removed twelve ceiling tiles from the house for further testing and DNA comparison. Positive reaction from luminol was noted on the ceiling in that one area above where the bat was found lying against the wall, on the carpeting in the living and dining rooms, and the entryway door hinges and one screw on the doorknob. They found no traces with luminol tests inside the Cochrans’ truck or inside the garage.
As Frizzo searched the house, she came across various types of ammunition for guns that they were unable to locate in the house.
“The biggest find of that day,” Frizzo recalled later, “would have to be the twenty-two-caliber revolver, because I felt we may at some point be able to link this weapon to another murder, if not Chris’s. The ammunition I found for weapons they didn’t have in the house immediately made me wonder where the guns were. I thought instantly they had disposed of these weapons somewhere along the way.” That is, between Indiana and Michigan, when the Cochrans moved into the area. “So we needed to hang on to those to see if, down the road, we could link them to other homicides where this ammo would have been used.”
The ammo for a .38 was off-brand. Not your typical-caliber bullets, Frizzo noted.
“Interestingly, this unique ammo (same caliber) was used for an unsolved homicide in Merrillville, a neighboring town to Hobart, where the Cochrans had moved from two months before relocating to Michigan. I had my secretary surf the Web for any unsolved murders in Northwest Indiana around the time they moved to Michigan. This murder happened in their hometown. A witness described a white SUV vehicle leaving the area around the time of the homicide. What did the Cochrans drive? A white Ford, extended-cab pickup.”
As the search wrapped up and Frizzo was walking around, she walked over to “two huge rolls of plastic commonly used to insulate windows.” She stood a moment and stared.
“There was so much of it.”
Why would someone need all that plastic?
* * *
NICHOLAS GRABOWSKI, A TWENTY-SIX-YEAR law enforcement veteran, sat with Kelly and Jason inside his cruiser as the search continued into early afternoon. The Cochrans had sat with Grabowski for thirty minutes before taking off. After the Cochrans left, Grabowski found Frizzo. He thought maybe they had gone over to a neighbor’s house, but wasn’t sure. Still, he wanted to share the conversation, brief as it was.
“What’s up?” Frizzo asked.
“So Kelly says to me while we’re talking inside the car, ‘If you guys find blood in the house on the carpeting, it’s from my female dog coming into heat.’”
The chief shook her head in disbelief. A bit of anxiety bubbled up as Frizzo began to think about Kelly and Jason taking off.
“Thanks, Nick.”
The dog, Frizzo knew, because Kelly had told her not long ago, was fourteen years old. A menstrual cycle was highly unlikely.
“Did Jason say anything?” Frizzo wondered.
“Jason didn’t say much, but he did ask me if there was anything interesting that I’ve done, careerwise. Kelly then said, ‘We watch a lot of crime shows and we’re really interested in that kind of stuff.’ I told them, ‘I once worked a serial killer case in Highland Park.’”
“What was their response?”
“They asked me no other questions after that.”
“What was their demeanor?”
“They were real quiet. Didn’t say a word after that comment.”
“Thanks.”
It was close to quarter to six in the evening, the search moving along, Frizzo a bit perplexed as to why the MSP was only focusing on the west side of the house and seemingly uninterested—in her view—with any other section. As Frizzo wandered about the front of the house, a man, angry and excited, who had walked out of a home nearby, stepped into the yard and approached her.
“You people need to clean up this neighborhood! You have no idea half of what goes on here”—he pointed at the Cochran house—“and over there . . .” He pointed at another home down the block.
“Sir . . . sir . . . ,” Frizzo said. “Calm down, please.”
“Well, you need to clean this place up.”
“Sir, has a detective been over to your residence to speak with you?”
“No one.”
“Can I talk to you then, right now?”
“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’ve been drinking.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He walked away.
37
NEIGHBORS
WHEN TODD SAYLOR WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR OF HIS GRANDMOTHER’S Lawrence Street house on the night of March 5, 2015, Jason and Kelly were inside, sitting, talking to Todd’s grandmother and nephew, David Saylor. There had been quite the stir in the neighborhood throughout that day and night. The idea of cops trekking in and out of the Cochran house, MSP lab techs and crime scene investigators (CSIs) milling about, tagging brown paper and plastic bags of household items, was alarming for this quiet community.
“Hey,” Todd said. “What’s up?”
Kelly was in the middle of a conversation with David.
“If anything happens, call my mother,” Kelly was saying as Todd sat down. She handed David a phone number.
Todd looked at Jason, who didn’t say much. His face turned rose red as he started to sweat.
Staring at Jason, it was clear to Todd that his neighbor and friend was agitated and nervous and confounded by the day’s events.
“He got really quiet,” Todd later said. “He is a quiet guy, anyway. But he likes to talk. He likes to laugh and stuff like that. But not that night.”
Paranoid was the way to describe how Jason Cochran was feeling.
“They’re coming back,” Jason finally said.
“What? Who?”
“The cops.”
* * *
THE ERRATIC AND ADMITTEDLY alcohol-fueled neighbor from the previous night called Frizzo the next day. He apologized for his behavior. He now wanted to talk about his neighbors, t
he Cochrans.
“I’m sorry about last night. I’m just frustrated.”
“I understand,” Frizzo responded.
“We’re all tired of the activity around that house,” he explained, mentioning another house in the neighborhood, too. “There’s always people coming and going.”
“Has anyone talked to you about whether or not you’ve seen particular vehicles around the Cochrans’ house back in October, last year?”
“Never been asked about that or anything.”
“Can you tell me anything about the Cochrans?”
“Well, I can say that she injured or broke her arm in early October—I was speaking with another neighbor about it and we just assumed the husband had broken her arm.”
“What makes you say that?”
“This other neighbor, name’s Gary Wernholm, said he also suspected it based on his observations of the relationship.”
“You ever see an SUV-type vehicle over there?”
“Not that I can recall.”
Before they hung up, the man mentioned that the Cochrans had a fire pit in the back of the house. He said something about a “burn barrel,” as he described it.
“A what?”
“Like a fifty-five-gallon drum they burned things in.”
Frizzo said she’d be back in touch.
Hanging up, Frizzo went to her list of items retrieved under the warrant.
No burn barrel.
* * *
RETIRED, GARY WERNHOLM HAD LIVED on Lawrence Street in Caspian for thirty years; his house located across the street from the Cochrans’ home, kitty-cornered. When Frizzo caught up to him that same week, Wernholm explained he had not much associated with the Cochrans, but he did have a conversation with Kelly the previous October. It was an incident he could recall vividly.
It was mid-October, to be exact. A particularly warm fall day in Upper Michigan. Wernholm had opened the windows in his house because it was such a nice day. “You know, air things out a bit.” But as he sat in his living room, the wind blowing in, a putrid, dreadfully foul odor wafted across the street and filled his house.
“What in the name of . . .”
Wernholm looked out his front door.
“Smoke?”
The Cochrans had a fire going inside that barrel.
“Like something I never smelled before,” Wernholm said. “Just awful.”
Wernholm walked out of his house, across the street. He could now see smoke billowing in ribbons from the Cochrans’ backyard. A thick, heavy smoke.
As he thought about it while crossing the street, getting closer to the smell, Wernholm recalled how he had burned items in the past: garbage, household debris, building materials. But this smoke smelled different. It was potent. Burning rubber? Like a synthetic, dangerous smell of melting plastic, coupled with an odor defying description of any kind Wernholm could conjure.
Approaching the Cochrans’ front yard, Wernholm was certain the burning was coming from near the garage.
Kelly walked up and stopped her neighbor from going any closer. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“What’s going on there, out back—what are you burning?”
Kelly didn’t respond with anything Wernholm could later recall.
Wernholm told Kelly how foul the smell was and decided to go back to his house. Close the windows. Hopefully, they would finish whatever they were doing.
Just then, as Wernholm turned to leave and walk across the street, Jason came out from around the back.
Jason watched his neighbor walk away, but did not say anything.
Frizzo caught up to Wernholm in the days after the Cochran home search. He had a second story.
“When you left that night after the search of the house, it was late. I was looking across the street. I saw something.”
“And?”
“A flashlight out in the yard, you know, the rays of light.” Projecting downward, like a kid out on his lawn searching for night crawlers. “It was Kelly. She was out in the yard searching for something.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all, really. I do not know what she was looking for, but it seemed important.”
“Thank you.”
38
JUST RUNNING SCARED
ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 9, 2015, CHIEF FRIZZO CHECKED HER e-mail. Jackson Roper had been staying in touch throughout the past few weeks. Careful with what she shared, Frizzo was grateful for the blending of investigatory minds. As for who had hired Roper and his partner, it wasn’t important. One source gave an indication that a concerned citizen was behind hiring Roper’s firm. After all, there were certain investigatory tactics a private investigator could engage in that law enforcement could not. Whoever was footing the bill for Roper and his partner, to a certain legal extent, it did not concern Frizzo. She welcomed the help in an atmosphere where she felt (beyond her own department) she had little support.
During the course of my investigation, Roper wrote that morning, I placed a GPS tracker on the Cochrans’ vehicle.
Smart.
It was Friday, March 6, 2015, the day after the search, when the Cochrans fled. They’d packed what they could, told no one, and took off without alerting the IRPD they were leaving.
Roper encouraged Frizzo to file a warrant so he “could share this information” with her.
According to Roper, he had spoken to Jason on March 5 and had warned him: “Someone is going to come forward and show me where Chris Regan’s body is located.” Roper stood at the Cochrans’ front door.
Jason shut the door in his face.
“That was a great move,” Frizzo later said.
A bluff, obviously. The smart PI was stirring up the waters to see what type of reaction he’d get out of them. He was also hoping they would panic and head out to where the body was dumped, leading him to it.
Instead, the Cochrans did something else.
They booked.
When they left the area, they stopped their vehicle, Roper explained to Frizzo in that same e-mail, at the intersection of US2 / Honeybee Lane in Florence County, [Wisconsin], for a duration of eight minutes.
This was important to Frizzo.
* * *
FRIZZO WAS CONCERNED ABOUT what she believed had been a “limited search” conducted by the MSP at the Cochran house on March 5.
“It had taken almost eight hours to process the west side of the house,” she explained. “But only the west side.”
As she considered it: What about the upstairs? The basement?
No one had gone into those areas of the property and searched with any type of detail.
So Frizzo called the lab director. “I’d like you to go back into the house.”
Immediately she could tell, “He was annoyed with me.”
“Laura,” he said (according to Frizzo), “what do you want us to do? What will make you happy?”
“He said this arrogantly,” Frizzo remembered, “and it was obvious he had been talking to the MSP detective who told him that I was wasting time and money.”
“What I want”—Frizzo responded—“is for you to process the rest of the house!”3
PART 3
THE CHASE
39
A LONG ROAD
THE DRIVE TOOK UNDERAN HOUR. THE ROAD WAS DESOLATE AND REP etitious in places. Trees and shrubs and brush, a dotted or solid yellow line in the middle of the pavement, the open sky and the radio.
Laura Frizzo came upon Ridgetop, Commonwealth, and Florence, traveling on Route 2, southwest of Iron River. Reaching the outskirts of Spread Eagle, Wisconsin, a town straddling the border between Michigan and Wisconsin, she pulled over. It had recently snowed, so a thick coating of the white stuff covered the ground. If the Cochrans had stopped here, which Jackson Roper’s GPS device had indicated, as they fled town, maybe there was something to find. The fresh snow would help. Footprints? Tire tracks?
Getting out of her car, Frizzo felt confused. It was a busy
road, especially the intersection of Honeybee and Route 2, where the GPS tracker indicated they’d stopped.
Did they toss something out here? Maybe put a piece of evidence here long ago and came back to check on it?
Frizzo found no footprints leading anywhere. No tire tracks. Not a sign anyone had stopped.
Walking around, Frizzo noticed a “two track,” or a double railway track, running east to west from the highway, but it was clear no one had driven or walked near it.
The chief spent quite a bit of time searching the area, yet came up empty. Back in her cruiser, she took out her iPhone as a thought occurred to her: They could have stopped because they were on the phone.
“This area has very sketchy reception, so sometimes people will pull over to finish their phone call before they lose reception,” Frizzo explained. “Or they could have stopped there because they were arguing and didn’t know what they should do. They could have been discussing what to tell their family when they arrived in Indiana.”
Frizzo drove down the road to get a better visual.
“I looked for anything that stood out. It’s a heavily wooded area. A couple of campsites. A house off to the south about a quarter mile away. There was nothing I could do at that time. All I knew was they had stopped there for almost eight minutes.”
40
SUSPICION
THE PHONE CALL WAS NOT AT ALL SURPRISING. OVER THE PAST SEV eral weeks, Maria Lumbar (pseudonym) had spoken to Kelly Cochran about several household items Kelly had promised Maria. Weeks ago, Kelly had told Maria she and Jason were planning on leaving the area. The two knew each other from the Citgo station in Caspian where Kelly would stop to gas up the truck, grab cigarettes and coffee. Over a few months, Maria and Kelly had become acquainted.
“Can I get those things from you, Kelly?” Maria asked. Kelly had called the Citgo a few days after the search warrant. By then, she and Jason were long gone. On their way to Indiana.
“I’ll eventually get those things to you,” Kelly said.
“How are you?” Maria asked.
“We’re okay. I found this GPS tracker underneath our truck!” Kelly said out of the blue.
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