“The first time, though,” Elisha explained, “she picked me up at work and brought me back to their house and we did drugs—various pills. I wasn’t even sure what Kelly was giving me. That night, I went out to a bar and I ultimately wound up getting very sick and was throwing up outside the bar. Jason and Kelly were there, too. We were actually supposed to go to a hotel that night, but I was too ill.”
A few days later, however, Kelly texted Elisha and asked her to be exclusive with her, a lesbian affair, and cut Jason out. Kelly wanted Elisha to herself.
Something Kelly had not shared with Ogden.
Kelly had turned her phone over to Ogden during that first interview. He’d read through texts between Kelly and Elisha and it was clear they were carrying on, just the two of them. He then looked through the photos. Among them, Elisha had snapped pics of Kelly lying nude on a hotel bed, a belt around her neck.
“Kelly liked using a belt on Jason and herself during sex,” Elisha told Ogden.
The next time they talked, Ogden asked Kelly if she was having sex in this manner the night Jason died.
“Yes,” she said.
As they talked, Ogden changed tactics. He needed to bring Chris Regan into the conversation and gauge Kelly’s reaction.
“Look, Kelly, Chris Regan deserves to be found, you know. He served his country for twenty years in the U.S. military and his family should be able to have a proper burial [for him]. It’s important to his family to have closure.”
Kelly became nervous. Agitated. A subject that clearly bothered her.
Ogden knew Kelly was responding to him and liked to talk to him. There was a rapport building.
Still, she wanted nothing to do with talking about Chris Regan.
“Things have occurred in your life, Kelly. I know this. Your situation has changed and you have a unique opportunity at this time to come forward and be a witness rather than a suspect.”
Ogden had used this same line (witness / suspect) different ways, a number of times.
“I don’t know anything,” Kelly said.
“Kelly, come on . . . help me out here. This guy’s family is looking for closure.”
“No, I do not know anything.”
“Kelly . . .”
“Let me ask you, do you think Jason killed Chris?” Kelly asked, hoping to deflect focus.
“I think something happened, like maybe spur-of-the-moment type of thing.”
Ogden said it—but it was far from what he believed.
“We commonly talk to people and tell them what they want to hear in order to get them to continue to talk to us,” Ogden later explained. “It’s how we solve investigations.”
They got back to the subject of Elisha. He wanted to know where Kelly and Elisha had hooked up. Kelly had mentioned a “hotel.” He pulled out a map. Asked Kelly to point it out.
She told him.
Kelly said Jason mainly watched. He participated on one occasion.
“Kelly, at some point, you are going to need somebody. I will be there for you. I will be ready to talk to you when you’re ready to talk.”
“I don’t need anybody. I’m pretty self-sufficient.”
“Tell me about Chris Regan’s death?”
“You shouldn’t be asking me questions about something I don’t know nothing about.”
There was a line here Ogden had made a decision not to cross early into the relationship he was building with Kelly. He did not want to push too hard. He needed to find out how far Kelly was willing to take it, hoping it would set the stage for future talks.
“If you push people too hard . . . early on, they generally won’t come back.”
As they talked, Ogden started to “dance around Chris Regan’s murder” and Kelly’s or Jason’s involvement. He was vague, stealthily referring to the theory that Kelly and Jason could have killed Chris together, but only Kelly was alive to talk about it now. So she held the cards. Controlled the narrative.
At one point, Kelly looked at him and smiled. Dropped her head. Looked back up, smirking: “If I am going to have any respect for you, Detective, you might want to just say how it is.”
Silence.
Inside, Jeremy Ogden was pumping his fists.
“It’s the hook. That moment where she changed the table and she is the one now engaging to talk to me. She is now going to try and seek information from me. This was very important.”
The detective mentioned Kelly’s family. What if someone had hurt one of her family members? What would her response be?
“I’d hunt them down and kill them,” Kelly said.
Ogden was reeling her in.
“Kelly, did you go out looking for Chris when he first disappeared? I’m just curious.”
“Well, I called him for about two weeks, and I have all those texts. . . .”
“That’s a common tactic people implement,” Ogden explained later. Kelly knew exactly what he meant: During a missing person’s investigation, the responsible party will often text the person who was “already gone or deceased.” They will generate phone calls to try to create an alibi. They will act like they are involved in caring about the person’s whereabouts.
“That’s what you were doing, right?”
Kelly did not respond.
They discussed how common it was for people to go over to the missing person’s residence during those early days after the person went missing and act like they were concerned, looking for the person.
“When you already know what happened to him. I’m going to say it again, Kelly. You can be a witness or a suspect. You decide.... You hold Chris Regan in your hands right at this moment.”
Ogden was curious about Jason being out of the picture for good now. In the scope of what Kelly had told the MSP and Frizzo, Jason was no longer a threat to her.
“You do not have to worry about him anymore, Kelly.”
“He was a loving, great guy,” Kelly said. “Best thing that ever happened to me in my life.”
As Ogden sat and listened to Kelly talk, thinking about all he had learned from videotapes and audio interviews, reading through reports, a theme developed.
Bring him home.
The victim. Ogden’s only goal.
The interview concluded. Ogden did not expect to get anything substantial out of Kelly early in their talks. However, within that one smile Kelly had given him, Jeremy Ogden knew it was far from over. Kelly would be crawling back soon enough, eager to talk.
“They all do.”
55
PERSISTENCE
DETECTIVE OGDEN KNEW KELLY COCHRAN HAD A DEEP DESIRE TO divulge her secrets. There was no question that, for whatever reason (ego, uncontained narcissism, or that she believed she was smarter than law enforcement), at some point Kelly was going to talk about what had happened to Chris Regan. Still, it would have to be on her terms, when and where she decided.
In early March, after those first few initial interviews, Jeremy Ogden met with Kelly. Continuing to build that rapport, which needed to be done casually, he decided on a neutral environment.
“Culver’s in Merrillville?” he suggested. A chain restaurant. Lots of people. Clanking glasses and dishes. Background conversations going on. Sports on television.
Kelly agreed.
Ogden put a three-man plainclothes team in the parking lot. One detective in the restaurant.
“I wasn’t going to meet her anyplace alone.”
Not out of fear, but from common (police) sense.
They sat in a booth and Ogden brought up the idea of Kelly being a suspect or witness. He needed to drill this point into her. Make her believe she had a choice. Force Kelly to play a card.
From there, the detective went back to Chris’s family. Closure. The waiting. Wondering. He asked Kelly to think about what Chris’s family was going through.
“Look, Kelly . . . bottom line here. I am willing, I cannot do it today”—Ogden looked at his watch as if he had somewhere else to be—“I cannot
leave today, but I can leave tomorrow if you’re willing to go up to Michigan. Whenever you want.”
Kelly thought about this. She stopped talking.
Another point he made was how bad Kelly had been treated by Michigan authorities and how she would not have to deal with them any longer because he was now involved.
“Don’t worry about them.”
Kelly stared at the detective. “I know one hundred and fifty percent that that is just not true!” she seethed. Frustration rose on her face. “If we are going to have any type of relationship, Detective, you are . . . you are not going to lie to me—do you understand?”
“I do.”
This, too, had been a preplanned investigatory tactic. Ogden needed Kelly to feel as if she was in control. That aggressive statement about the IRPD gave Kelly that impression.
“I had flipped it right back around to what she did to me during the first interview.”
Ogden talked about the witness / suspect dilemma, making sure this stayed at the forefront of Kelly’s mind. Then he pulled out another tool: “Kelly, look, you can pick and choose your story in this of how it all happened.” The implication was that Jason was gone. Ogden wanted Kelly to latch onto the notion that she was now the only one who knew what had happened to Chris Regan. “Something had to have gone on between Jason and Chris, Kelly. I know this. You guys did whatever it was you had to do in order to go on living. Am I right?”
With that, Ogden made Kelly believe he’d lessened her culpability, making her believe there was a way out of this.
With no response, he went back to the witness / suspect theory, explaining it in more detail, telling Kelly that, if she chose, she could play the passive victim in it all. But she had to come to the table with information.
“A suspect will play this game with us back and forth, trying to convince us that they’re not really involved,” Ogden said later. “That’s all this was. I knew if I waited long enough and stayed patient, she would crack.”
Kelly left the restaurant with the door wide open, as the detective put it. Just as he’d planned. He had her. She was slowly crawling to him on her hands and knees, considering giving it up. He needed to get her there and be ready once she was willing.
Like any long investigation, however, the tables continued turning. In Jeremy Ogden’s case, a huge break fell from the sky and landed in the detective’s lap.
56
THE LETTER
FRIZZO CALLED OGDEN ON MARCH 12, 2016. SHE HAD SOMETHING. A friend of Jason’s from Michigan had called the FBI and stated he had a suspicious feeling about Jason’s death and wanted to talk to someone.
Forty-nine-year-old Walt Ammerman, a technician for a machine service, spent his days traveling, making repairs. Walt liked the work. It got him out of the office and meeting new people all the time.
“He’s a really personable guy,” Ogden said. “He had spent time with the Cochrans and invited them up to his lake property. He’d communicated with Jason quite often. Kelly knew him well. He has a really successful business. I thought, ‘This is the guy to do what I have planned—as long as he’s willing.’”
In early 2013, Walt met Jason while playing the game Battle Pirates on Facebook. They’d meet up online, talk, and play for hours and hours. It wasn’t long after, while passing through the area one day, Walt stopped by the Cochrans’ Caspian home to introduce himself in person. Walt said later he’d visited about five times, with Kelly and Jason dropping by his house a few times, too. He’d been down to Indiana also to visit them, after they took off from Michigan. But the main relationship had been online: Walt and Jason speaking nearly every night while playing the game.
Walt had called the FBI a few days after hearing Jason had died. He thought Jason’s untimely death “was somewhat odd.” Walt had known there “was someone missing since 2014 . . . and they, the Cochrans, were being blamed for it. . . .” He had talked about it with Jason and Kelly numerous times. What he found particularly odd was that the same person accused of being responsible for a missing person was dead now. It didn’t add up. Acting on instinct, a concerned friend had made a Good Samaritan call to the FBI. If there was nothing to it, so be it.
“I got your number from the FBI,” Ogden said when he got hold of Walt on March 14, 2016. “I’d like you to come down to Indiana. I need your help. I have a plan in the works.”
Walt was willing, he said, but curious about the detective’s plan.
“I want you to call Kelly and tell her that Jason had mailed you a letter back in December and told you that if anything ever happened to him, he wanted you to send this letter to the . . . Iron River Police Department. We’ll record this call. You’ll do it from here. We’ll be with you. You’ll have protection afterward.”
Quite a task. Walt was nervous. He wanted to help.
“Okay,” Walt said.
“Listen,” Ogden added, “if you feel like you shouldn’t do this for any reason, I can get a lawyer or somebody else from Indiana to do it. It’s just that it would mean so much more coming from you.”
The call would have more validity in Kelly’s eyes coming from Walt. She was both street- and book-smart. Kelly was not easily fooled. She was running on adrenaline and paranoia; any mistake could send her into hiding, on the run, or lawyered up.
“I’ll do it,” Walt said.
They met a few days later in the parking lot of a movie theater in Merrillville, Indiana, not too far from where Kelly lived. Several detectives, including Ogden, stood around Walt as he dialed Kelly.
Walt came up with the idea that the fictitious note accompanying the letter would have to be signed Quack-Quack, Jason’s nickname. This would seal the deal with Kelly.
Walt paced as the phone rang.
“Hey, hey . . . ?” Kelly said.
Walt said hello, what’s going on, how are things. Then: “Kelly, um . . . listen.... This has really been bugging me. You know how we (Walt and Jason) met up a few times in December?”
“Yeah? Yeah?” Kelly sounded flustered. Restless. Concerned about where the conversation was heading.
“Jason asked me for my address. Okay?”
“Yeah? Okay . . .”
“I got a letter, like January fourth or fifth, something like that.” Walt came across as sincere, convincing. “And inside is a note from him. I don’t know how to . . . The note says, ‘Drock,’”—“Drock” was Walt’s nickname—“ ‘if something were to happen to me, please send this in a week. Do not open it. Thanks, Quack- Quack.’ There’s an envelope in there, with no return address, addressed to the Iron River Police Department. I mean, it’s been three weeks. It’s been bugging me and I haven’t been talking about it.”
Kelly took a breath. Then: “Oh . . . shit.”
“I’m supposed to mail this and I just wanted to tell you.”
“Oh . . .”
“Well . . . ,” Walt said.
“Please don’t,” Kelly pleaded.
“I don’t know how not to,” Walt responded. “I mean, all I can picture is his mom saying, ‘You were his best friend . . . how could he do this to him.’”
“Oh?” Kelly sighed.
“So, look, I just wanted to tell you . . .”
“Um, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Kelly said. She laughed. Then started weeping. “You’re serious? You’re not fucking with me?”
“I am not [screwing] with you.”
Kelly wailed.
“I really gotta go. I don’t know what to do,” Walt said.
“Do whatever you have to do.”
* * *
THIS LETTER, ACCORDING TO KELLY, was a ruse she saw through clearly. Explaining herself, she added: “First off, Jason would never write a letter. Because why would he own up, for one?” She paused. Threw up a hand in a gesture toward me as we Skyped: “We’ll leave it at that.... I also knew that he would never write just Walt a letter. He would write me a letter.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get it.”
> “In his actions against Chris, he was hurting me. That was against me; it had nothing to do with Chris.”
* * *
A DAY AFTER THE CALL, Kelly texted Jeremy Ogden.
He did not respond.
So she called.
“Things might be coming out really soon . . . ,” Kelly explained, her voice beset by nerves. “There is some letter being sent . . . it’s a letter from Jason written to the Iron River PD.”
“A letter?”
“Yeah. It’s on its way to Iron River now.”
Ogden listened to Kelly stumble through words, trying to articulate what was happening, while revealing as little as possible.
“She’s struggling.... She’s worried,” Ogden observed later.
He had her.
After Ogden asked Kelly what was in the letter, she said the letter was going to answer all of the questions he had asked about Chris Regan.
A major discloser: This was the first time Kelly had admitted she had actual knowledge of Chris Regan and perhaps even where his body had been buried. Walt had said nothing about Chris Regan. This information had come directly from Kelly.
“You see, she knows that Jason can disclose information about Chris Regan through this letter—that is what she is thinking,” Ogden explained. “This tells me that she knows what happened.”
“Do you think this letter will disclose Chris Regan’s location?” the detective asked.
Kelly spoke in a deep, raspy voice. “I don’t think Jason knows,” she said.
How interesting.
Ogden asked Kelly if she was willing to go up to Michigan and show him where Chris Regan’s body was located. “You know where he’s at, Kelly. Let’s get into the car. Let’s go. Right now. I’ll come and get you.”
“I think you think I know more than I do.”
57
STALKED
JEREMY OGDEN SAT IN HIS BLACK DODGE PICKUP, PARKED IN HIS DRIVEWAY. It was early morning, March 21, 2016. Throughout the night, he had developed a feeling. Something was happening. The letter had worked. Kelly was on the move. She was going to react to this letter in some way. Ogden put surveillance on Walt, in case Kelly decided to hurt him for sending the letter. Since that call Walt had made, Kelly started calling and texting Walt every day, each time more desperate to get any additional information she could out of him.
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