She hung up.
When paramedics arrived, family members hovered around a 284-pound man described in first-responder reports as “mildly obese.” He was propped up in a seated position on the floor, his head dangling off to one side, eyes closed. His skin was warm to the touch—but purple. There was vomit on the floor around him, as well as inside his mouth and on his clothes.
The emergency medical technicians (EMTs) administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and placed him on his back, on the floor. The way in which he was situated, in addition to his weight, was going to make it impossible to get him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance in a usual manner. For one, they were on the second floor; second, the narrow walkway down the stairs was going to make it impossible to place him on a stretcher and slide him down the stairs as though on a sled.
“Tarp,” one of the EMTs said. “Get the tarp.”
They placed him inside a tarp—same way biologists might harness a beached dolphin, hammock-like—and carried him down the stairs, a pair of first responders on each side.
He was so big, a report of the incident claimed, that while they were working on him, trying to keep him breathing, the balloon (on the breathing apparatus—which a medic repeatedly squeezes to keep air flowing into the lungs) ripped.
“Damn.”
They got him into the ambulance with a struggle. By now, he was secured to a cot and meds were being pumped into his veins. As the ambulance raced toward the hospital, “Good wave form was present”—meaning he had a heartbeat—“and bilateral lung sounds [were] confirmed.”
Despite whatever trauma he had been through, barely hanging on to life, the man was still somehow alive.
52
UNSURPRISING SHOCKER
FRIZZO SAT IN THE COURTROOM FOR THE FIRST DAY OF TRIAL AND stared at twenty-six-year-old Brittany Russell. Russell had been charged with homicide in the death of a three-month-old girl under her care. Frizzo had been investigating this case longer than Chris Regan’s disappearance.
The trial was going to be emotionally taxing. But also all-consuming. Frizzo would have to focus. Take her mind off Chris Regan, Kelly and Jason Cochran, for the time being and dedicate herself to this trial until it was over.
As the process of picking a jury began, Frizzo felt her hip buzz.
She looked down.
Damn it.
“I have to take this,” Frizzo told prosecutor Melissa Powell. “I’ll be right back.”
Frizzo stepped out into the courthouse hallway. The call was from HPD’s Steve Houck.
“Yeah, Steve, what’s up?”
“Jason Cochran is dead.”
“Jason Cochran is . . . what?”
“Dead. . . . Detective Jeremy Ogden is back to work and is looking into it. He’ll be in touch with you soon.”
Frizzo had heard right. Jason Cochran had not made it. As it turned out, Kelly called 911 after “finding Jason unconscious.” A further, more detailed report of the incident clarified that although Jason’s body was “warm” to the touch and “clammy” from sweat, he had no pulse and was not breathing on his own when medics arrived. Furthermore, once they got him on a machine inside the ambulance, his weak pulse flatlined. No lung sounds could be confirmed. He had stopped breathing on his own.
“I remember saying for months that I just had a feeling that something significant was going to happen in the Regan case while I was in the Brittany Russell trial,” Frizzo commented. “I just knew it. Not a few minutes into picking a jury, there you go.”
The next call Frizzo took was from Special Agent Mark Hoff of the FBI.
“We received a call on the tip line,” Hoff told Frizzo, “from a guy named Walt Ammerman, a friend of Jason’s, telling us Jason was dead and that Walt felt ‘something wasn’t right.’”
Early indication was that Jason had died from a heroin overdose. He would soon test positive for THC, opiates, morphine, and codeine. A test for fentanyl, which was killing scores of heroin addicts lately, was negative. Still, massive (killer) amounts of heroin had been found in his system.
Maybe too much?
“I knew two things,” Frizzo said, referring to the last time she saw and spoke with the Cochrans during that DNA extraction. “That one of them would end up dead, if not both, and something was going to happen while I was in trial that would prevent me from much movement.”
Frizzo went back and sat down next to Melissa Powell, completely stunned by the turn of events. She had a strange feeling. People were talking in the courtroom. A trial was going on before her, but she wasn’t hearing any of it.
“There’s this odd but obvious spiritual happening taking place. Indescribable.”
It was all around her. Frizzo could feel a presence.
Walking out of the courtroom that day, Frizzo got a text from HPD detective Jeremy Ogden. He wanted Frizzo to e-mail him the case reports so he could begin right away.
This one gesture gave Frizzo “a huge sense of relief that this detective everyone spoke so highly of was back to work, and on the case. I knew right away this would be the end for Kelly. Honestly. I just knew this guy, Jeremy Ogden, wasn’t going to let up until it was solved.”
Frizzo collected herself. Took a moment.
For the first time in months, she believed finding Chris Regan was a reality.
Frizzo called Jeremy Ogden that night. Thanked him. Told him she would get him the entire case.
“If there’s anything you need to know, call me, text me, whatever. I am here to help.”
“I won’t stop until that butterfly is put in a cage,” Jeremy said.
53
PINPOINT
JEREMY OGDEN HAD A PARTICULAR LOOK TO HIM. SALT-AND-PEPPER goatee, his hair buzz-cut on the sides, cropped about an inch straight, like a brush, on top. Built solidly, Jeremy had been with the HPD for almost twenty years. Before that, two years with the New Chicago Police Department (NCPD). For HPD, he had started, like most every cop, in patrol, but he was quickly assigned to the K9 Division, where he’d stay for the next eight years. After that, he cut his detective teeth in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and a specialized undercover narcotics group for an additional five years, before heading into Homicide. When the Jason Cochran death dropped into his lap, Jeremy was HPD’s general-assignment detective, having previously been the commander of the Investigations Division. It was clear, as Frizzo began to learn about Jeremy’s career, that she could not have ordered a finer, more gifted investigator to jump aboard and help. Jeremy Ogden was just what this case needed at a time Frizzo needed it.
A godsend.
In more ways than one.
Ogden knew right away something wasn’t right about Jason Cochran’s death. He could tell from the way medics explained to him how at the scene Kelly had tried everything she could to get in the way—most likely out of fear they’d save Jason’s life—to what he was now hearing from the coroner Dr. Chow Wang.
Ogden stood by as Wang sliced and diced, cutting Jason open, weighing his organs, studying his inner-chest cavity, checking his arteries, and weighing it all against the toxicology reports.
“What do you think?”
“Look here,” Wang said. He focused Ogden’s attention on dozens of pinpoint hemorrhages on Jason’s forehead, nose, and sides of his face. The left cheek, in fact, had a “visible mark.” A bruise.
“But look at this,” Wang added, beckoning Ogden in for a closer look. The doctor took Jason’s eyelids and folded them back, inside out. “Look at those eyes.”
Petechial hemorrhage.
“That’s due to pressure, suffocation to the face and neck.”
It was the only answer.
Wang pointed to Jason’s back. The blood (lividity) had settled there, so it was clear he was on his back when death occurred. There could be no disputing it.
“That rules out positional asphyxiation.” (Jason suffocating on his own after overdosing.) “Also, although his coronary arteries were nin
ety percent occluded, he did not have a heart attack, as there is no sign of myocardial infarction.”
That statement was ironic because Jason would have likely had a major heart attack in the near future and probably would have died from it.
“Look at his neck,” Wang said.
Additional petechial hemorrhage.
“That is inconsistent with an injury during CPR.”
Wang said he was going to rule the death homicide.
As Jeremy Ogden was leaving the autopsy suite, someone from the coroner’s office stopped him.
“The wife, Kelly Cochran, Detective. She has been calling here asking if we know of a cause of death yet. This is extremely unusual.”
Ogden thought about it: Jason Cochran had enough dope in his system to drop a hippopotamus, and yet someone had suffocated him. He had been murdered.
Or, actually, Jeremy Ogden now knew, silenced.
* * *
JEREMY OGDEN WAS ONE of those investigators who dug his heels in, buried himself in the available material, and followed the evidence to a place he believed was going to be productive. Frizzo had done so much in the disappearance of Chris Regan. She’d followed her instincts. But questioning Jason and Kelly had become Frizzo’s Achilles’ heel. With Ogden now involved, providing a fresh set of eyes and experienced investigative mind, the case would change course.
Ogden went home and watched all of the videotaped interviews. He listened to the audio interviews. He stayed up through the night, jotting down notes, posing questions, making observations. Within a few hours of absorbing the case, he understood Kelly Cochran had the answers. She knew what happened to Chris Regan.
“I need to get her into an interview room,” Ogden told Frizzo. “That’s what I’m focused on right now.”
Speaking to the EMTs who were on the scene, Ogden found out that as they worked on Jason, Kelly had reported to them, “Jason had died in his sleep.” She said he went in for a nap and never woke up.
“He’s in poor health and has been battling cancer,” Kelly said as EMTs asked about Jason’s overall health.
None of that, Jeremy Ogden knew, was true.
He set out to visit Kelly at her parents’ home. Ogden wanted to see the layout of the house and maybe get a firsthand account from Kelly. The more times she told the story, the more opportunity existed for her to trip over herself.
Kelly came out of the house as Ogden parked in the driveway, got out of his car, and approached the door.
They stood in front of the house.
“Why are you here?” Kelly asked. She was agitated and angry. Wired.
She’s on something. . . .
“I’m Detective Jeremy Ogden from the Hobart PD. I’m here to investigate the death of your husband, ma’am.”
“Are you . . . are you . . . going to be asking me about anything else?”
That’s odd, Jeremy thought.
“What other reason would I have for being here?”
“Look, are you going to be asking me about anything else?”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“Forget it.”
They discussed Ogden’s need to get inside and have a look around, to see where Jason had died. Jason’s parents, Mary and Chester Cochran, were there visiting. Ogden indicated he wanted to talk to them, too.
Kelly balked at first, saying her house was a mess, but eventually she allowed him in.
Ogden asked who was present during the incident.
Mary said the four of them: Jason, Kelly, Mary, and Chester.
“The medical attention given to my husband was horrible,” Kelly said. “The 911 dispatcher hung up on me.”
“I took the phone from Kelly,” Mary explained, “so as to direct the ambulance here. The house isn’t marked well.”
“The medics did not know what they were doing,” Kelly added, butting in.
“Can I see the room you shared with your husband?” Ogden asked. “I’d like to have it photographed.”
“The room is a mess.”
Ogden asked what happened.
“We were both in bed. He was lying there,” Kelly explained as they approached the room. She pointed to the foot of the bed. “I woke up and he was blue in color. I got on top of him. I began smacking his face. I yelled, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ I was straddling him. I then put my arms under his and pulled him into a sitting position and then pulled him off the bed and we both fell on the floor, with him on top of me. He was throwing up.”
Jeremy Ogden listened, noting that as Kelly talked through the incident a few times, she had said in one instance Jason vomited while on the floor and in another while on the bed.
Discrepancy.
Another detective arrived and began photographing the room. Kelly would not “leave the threshold and kept a constant watch on” the photographer as he worked his way around the scene.
As Ogden tried talking to Kelly, she drifted, her focus on what the other detective was doing.
But the biggest tell of all: Kelly showed no emotion. She did not seem one bit broken up about her husband’s untimely, unexpected death.
54
SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
CHIEF FRIZZO CALLED DETECTIVE OGDEN. THEY DISCUSSED THE progress he had made since coming aboard, along with several recent developments. Ogden said he believed Kelly and Jason had murdered Chris Regan—and Kelly had, subsequently, murdered Jason to quiet him, because she was afraid he would talk. Not much new there. Yet, Ogden added, he was certain Kelly would, at some point, tell them where Chris’s body had been dumped. But that was only the beginning.
“E-mail me a photo of Chris Regan,” Ogden said.
“On its way.”
Hanging up, Ogden sat back in his chair. He noticed something between him and Frizzo besides this case. A connection.
“I knew there was something there, before even meeting Laura,” he recalled. “She’s an incredible person, with such a beautiful heart. I was so taken aback by her struggles and determination to get answers. I’d never met a woman like her before. And she’s beautiful, on top of that. What a bonus.”
As he stared at the phone, a thought occurred to him: Somehow, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.
Beyond that personal connection, there was something profound and compassionate in Frizzo’s voice.
“It was so clear to me how much Laura cared for Chris Regan’s two boys. We’d talk about the Regan family for hours. Laura wanted nothing more than to give them the answers they deserved. As for me, I was strongly attached to the case from the beginning because Chris Regan had served his country for twenty years. He deserved someone going the extra mile to find him—and tell his story of death. And those responsible, clichéd as it sounds, they needed to pay the price for what they had taken from Chris Regan and his family.”
Back on February 29, 2016, Ogden explained to Frizzo, Jason’s parents came into HPD to sit and talk with detectives. Before even sitting down, Mary Cochran said, “I sure hope Kelly didn’t have anything to do with Jason’s death.”
Why would she even mention this?
“I made contact with Kelly’s girlfriend,” Ogden told Frizzo.
“With whom?”
Jeremy proceeded to tell quite the tale—all of which had come directly from Kelly and, after he caught up to her, Kelly’s girlfriend.
* * *
AFTER SPEAKING TO KELLY at the house, Ogden was able to convince her to stop at HPD and sit for a proper interview. A few days later, she showed up.
Ogden asked, “Have you had any relationships with females?”
“I have,” Kelly said.
Kelly explained how she was picking up chicken one afternoon at a popular local fast-food chain near Hobart. She flirted with one of the girls behind the counter as she picked up the order. When the girl went on break, she and Kelly continued talking in the parking lot. Her goal at that time, Kelly claimed, was to find a female sexual companion for Jason. Some
one with whom the two of them could have a ménage à trois, an idea Kelly had hatched about two weeks prior to Jason’s death.
“Because of the things I have done in my life,” Kelly told Ogden, “I felt I owed it to him. This woman was kind of like [me] paying him back for all the things I had done.”
After exchanging numbers with the girl, Jason, Kelly, and the girl met on three occasions, Kelly explained. In a hotel, another time at Kelly’s sister’s house while Kelly and Jason were babysitting, and a final time inside Kelly’s mother and father’s house, in their bedroom. Jason and Kelly’s sexual life had become unusual, violent, and complicated.
* * *
IN A LATER STATEMENT, Kelly talked about the day before Jason’s death. Between eight and eleven that night, Kelly claimed, she and Jason “spent time in foreplay.” They “attempted sex, and did some role-playing.” Jason tied Kelly up and took photos of her. “I spent a lot of time and effort getting him to go through the entire sex process and come, but he had some problems performing.” She said his “daily meds” prevented Jason from being stimulated and sustaining an erection. “He enjoyed tying me up and choking me to where I’d lose temporary consciousness.... He was never one to want to choke me during sex until we went to the motel / hotel with [the fast-food girl]”—a total contradiction to what Kelly would later tell me in an interview.
“The [fast-food girl] asked him to choke her, and he looked thrilled by it.” He did it “maybe seven or eight times” that first night. Kelly said she “also allowed the two of them to do the same to” her. The entire sex game scared Kelly, she said. She agreed to it to please Jason. There were times, she added, when she’d black out and come to, with Jason having sex with her lifeless body. This was after they’d invited a belt into the situation, using it to choke one another out.
“He also liked to whip me.”
* * *
AFTER INTERVIEWING KELLY THAT day, Jeremy Ogden found the fast-food girl, Elisha Horton (pseudonym), hoping to verify what Kelly had told him.
For the most part, Elisha backed up Kelly’s version.
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