Where Monsters Hide

by M. William Phelps

  “Hydrochloric and muriatic acid. We dissolve his body parts instead of dumping them and taking the chance of getting caught.”

  “There’s no way we can get that much acid and do it in this house without killing ourselves from all the horrible vapor.”

  “Get the fucking acid! We do the hands and head so he can never be identified.”

  “Please, Jason. Please. No. We cannot do that. It will never work. Please.”

  Jason thought about it.

  “He eventually decided it would have been too risky and take too much time to complete.”

  Kelly said Jason ended up bagging all of Chris’s body parts in “10–15 bags (black 33–39 gallon approximately),” Kelly wrote. Jason “had to double bag” it all.

  “Go back the truck up to the house.”

  Kelly ran upstairs, grabbed the keys, doing as she was told.

  Jason loaded the bags into the truck.

  Done, Jason hopped into the passenger seat and told Kelly to drive.

  She drove to Lake Emily in Bates Township first, about a twenty-minute ride northeast of Caspian.

  They pulled up to the water.

  It was deserted.

  “Not here. Drive, whore.”

  Kelly found another small lake nearby. But again, Jason did not like it.

  As they continued driving south along Road 639, the Pentoga Trail came into view.

  “There,” Jason said. “Right there.”

  Kelly was satisfied with this location because it was hunting season. She felt Chris’s remains would eventually be found if they dumped him there.

  Jason looked at the area. He became quiet.

  As Kelly drove along Road 639, the Pentoga Trail, they passed trailers and cabins and campers and hunting lodges. This was a heavily populated area of the trail during hunting season. Kelly was surprised Jason was considering dumping Chris’s body parts here.

  “Drive around and let’s see what the best place for this is,” Jason said.

  Kelly drove slowly.

  “Stop here.”

  Jason turned to his wife: “Watch out for me and be a distraction, should someone come by. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Jason jumped out and disposed of the remains by dumping out the bags in various places “good distances” from the road, deep into the woods.

  As Kelly looked out, two cars came by.

  Neither paid attention or stopped.

  “When I saw his body parts from the road,” Kelly explained near the end of her statement, “I knew that the yellow leaves around the parts would and should highlight it and make it more noticeable.”

  They said little during the ride back to the house.

  When they got home, Jason said, “Get your whore ass downstairs and clean up that mess.”

  “He made me stay down there for hours before letting me sleep.”

  During the time she scrubbed and cleaned all the blood, Jason would periodically go down and scream at her.

  “You do not deserve to live. But this, this right here,” he said, pointing around, “this is your chance, whore, to do right by me.”

  66

  BURIED SECRETS

  AS JEREMY OGDEN FINISHED HIS WALKTHROUGH/INTERVIEW WITH Kelly at the house, it occurred to the detective that Kelly was spiraling. Making up parts of the story as she went along. Kelly would stop, think about the available evidence they had against her, then tailor her response to it.

  “How each situation, in other words, was going to fit into her story,” Ogden said later.

  In total, Ogden conducted between “one hundred and 150 hours” of interviews with Kelly. She still wasn’t under arrest. Kelly could refuse to talk at any time. She could stake claim to her Miranda rights and walk away.

  But she kept coming back.

  During many of those interviews, Kelly appeared “carefree” about what happened. She tried to show emotion, but couldn’t dredge up even the most basic form of empathy or sympathy.

  “She carries on with casual conversation,” Ogden recalled, “about things that are horrific . . . and all we see is crocodile tears.” (This lack of so-called normal, expected reactions is the same trait most psychopaths reveal.)

  Interviewing Kelly, Ogden noticed she’d admit to various aspects of the murder and body disposal, jumping around, leaving important details out.

  “Souvenirs,” Kelly said during one conversation.

  “What do you mean?” Ogden asked.

  “From Jason’s kills . . .”

  Kills? Plural?

  “Kills!”

  Kelly refused to elaborate.

  According to Kelly, Jason hid various “souvenirs”—trophies—in one of the Lawrence Street basement cabinets. It was Kelly’s job to bury them out at the Pentoga Trail, where they’d dumped Chris. Pentoga Trail was her idea, she told Ogden.

  “When?”

  “Several weeks before Chris’s murder.”

  The location that Ogden, Frizzo, and the team had first searched with Kelly was not the location where Chris’s remains had been dumped. Kelly admitted this near the end of March.

  Another admission surrounded the simple act of who drove which vehicle to the park-and-ride.

  “I . . . ,” Kelly said, before stumbling and correcting herself, “he told me to drive.”

  As for the trash bags, she maintained that Jason carried the bags and dumped them—this admission happened after first claiming they had put Chris in “rubber bins.”

  Her narrative was evolving.

  “I argued with her about this,” Ogden said. Since Jason had a bad back, why would she allow him to carry all that weight? If he was the dominant—and he made her clean up all the blood and then make him dinner and would scream at her—why would he not make her carry the bags?

  She never wavered on this.

  After concluding the reenactment video at the house, a short visit to the Caspian Pit and a few other locations close to the house, Ogden drove Kelly back to Indiana.

  As the road and landscape passed them by, he began a “casual conversation.” Kelly was more than willing to talk. They discussed “schooling”; Kelly said she “took forensic training and psychology.”

  He thought about this. Then: “You’re a cheater.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Kelly said.

  “I don’t mean because of men.”

  Kelly looked at him.

  “I mean, because you went to school to learn all these things and you didn’t go to school to learn these things for the greater good of mankind. You went to school to use them to be able to get away with things.”

  Later, Ogden added: “She didn’t educate herself to become a productive member of society. She went to learn how to effectively get away with killing. It was never for the greater good.”

  Kelly laughed.

  “Joke it all away,” Ogden said.

  There was a quiet moment. Then he said, “So, Kelly, when you going to take credit for your work?”

  Kelly stared at him, but held back.

  “Come on, talk to me here.”

  Kelly lit a cigarette and stared out the window.

  * * *

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN HOBART, Ogden sat down with Kelly inside HPD. It was March 31, 2016.

  “Deep River Park,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I can show you the location of where Jason disposed of a body.”

  Deep River County Park, out on the Old Lincoln Highway in Hobart, is a gorgeously landscaped, historical park, with a playground for kids and an old gristmill transformed into a visitor’s center. The tranquil Deep River runs through the property.

  Ogden told Kelly she needed to meet him there.

  Along with another detective, he drove to the park and met Kelly.

  “Kelly will get you close,” Ogden explained, “but still wants you to have to pick for it.” That is the power and control characteristic of her psychopathic, serial killer personality. “I
always had it in the back of my mind that she was setting something up. I briefed everyone to keep their eyes open. We were walking into the woods or another location with a killer who, I knew, could hide a weapon anywhere out there.... I mean, she really wanted us in those woods. I wondered if she was going to put me in a position to have to kill her in defense of myself or others.”

  Kelly brought them to a specific area along the shoreline of Deep River, a place just beyond the gristmill heading toward a wooded area. Secluded. No one around.

  “He put a body in the water,” she said, pointing.

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah, right here.”

  The water level was high at the time they stood looking around.

  “The level was down a bit when he did it. There was, like, a sandbar over there,” Kelly said, motioning toward the middle of the waterway.

  They stood for a time. Moved some brush around.

  Ogden wasn’t biting. He could tell this bothered Kelly.

  “Because I wasn’t, for example, calling a bunch of people out there to start checking the area and digging and excavating.”

  “You’re not going to say anything?” Kelly asked.

  “Well, look, I’m going to need more proof than your word, Kelly. Like who is this person. Then I can confirm a missing person.”

  Ogden felt like she was leading “us on a wild-goose chase in order to divert the investigation from her role in the Chris Regan murder.”

  They eventually left. Ogden never tried locating a body near Deep River Park.

  Some days later, after a barrage of texts and calls, Kelly never letting up, she claimed to know where a second body was dumped, on the other side of the park.

  They went back out. With shovels this time.

  “He buried the murder weapon over there.”

  They dug for a while.

  Found nothing.

  “You can go, Kelly.”

  * * *

  OGDEN SAT AT HIS desk inside HPD working on another case. He had no doubt Kelly was devising another plot to play cat and mouse. It was a matter of time.

  Ping.

  I found a body. Bones. You need to come here right now. The Park.

  Eye roll.

  “I’m not functioning on her time schedule, you know,” Ogden said later. “She’s going to do things on mine, and it’s going to be safe for me and my team.”

  I’m not coming to the park, Kelly.

  Come on.

  You’re telling me you found human remains. You can take a picture and you can send it to me.

  My camera is broken.

  Well, OK. We’ll meet another time.

  Not long after, Ogden met Kelly out there. When he arrived, Kelly greeted him with one of her mocking smirks.

  “Hey, Kelly, can I see your phone a minute?”

  “Sure.” She handed it to him.

  He took a picture of her and handed the phone back.

  “There’s no bones out here, Kelly. Quit wasting my time.”

  67

  READY AND WILLING

  JEREMY OGDEN MET WITH KELLY AT THAT SAME RESTAURANT IN Hobart where, while sitting in her truck that night, she admitted Jason had killed Chris Regan.

  It was April Fools’ Day, 2016. Kelly wanted to talk.

  Ogden agreed, though he was growing tired of the runaround. Tired of playing games. Tired of the lies.

  He sat down.

  Kelly sat across from him.

  Ogden recorded the entire conversation on his body cam.

  Meanwhile, back in Iron River, Laura Frizzo got busy coordinating a team to search for Chris’s remains along the Pentoga Trail. The location Kelly had brought everyone out to was a ruse. Another way for her to delay the inevitable. They were prepared for Ogden to get a new location out of her.

  Kelly and Ogden spoke for a time at the restaurant and then drove separately back to HPD. Ogden needed to contain the conversation. Get her in a space he could control. Intimidate her a bit. Ratchet up the pressure.

  “I have more information about Chris I want to tell you,” Kelly said.

  “Okay, good, start,” Ogden said, walking in.

  They sat down.

  “Look, Kelly, one bone. That’s all I ask for. I don’t care if it’s a rib bone, a piece of backbone, whatever. But there’s not one bone out there where we’ve been—and that doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to you—but it makes sense to me. I was there.”

  * * *

  AS THEY CONTINUED WORKING together, romantic sparks flew between Ogden and Frizzo.

  “We texted daily about the case,” Frizzo said later. “And, yes, I am immediately in love with this man’s mind. In all of my years of working in law enforcement, I have never worked with anyone who thought the way I did—or, especially, the way Jeremy did.” The respect she had for his skills was beyond her feelings for him personally. “He saw things exactly how I did, and when I couldn’t figure something out, he did. It’s like, as clichéd as it sounds, he was the end of all my unfinished sentences.... I was completely in love with him. In March, when he came up to see the area to better help him in his investigation, that first time I ever saw him, it was like I had known him forever and I fell even further in love. He didn’t know how deep I fell, but I think he could certainly sense it. It was, seriously, like the chemistry was so strong between us, even just on the phone.”

  There was one day in April 2016 when Ogden and Frizzo conversed nonstop about the case. After one particular exchange, Frizzo said: “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to kiss me?”

  Jeremy paused.

  Frizzo got nervous. Had she crossed a line?

  “Yes,” Jeremy said.

  Frizzo smiled.

  “And our relationship took a very hard turn. And our work together became even better. We had to be careful, though, because there is no way we could allow anything at all to hinder this investigation. We had to always be completely professional, so this was going to be complicated.”

  * * *

  FRIZZO AND HER TEAM searched the Pentoga Trail, around April 3, looking for anything that could lead them to finding and identifying Chris and then charging Kelly. Frizzo was up a ways, ahead of the team, walking along a ravine. The water off to her right glistened and sparkled, reminding the chief of the immense beauty she had lived around for most of her life. Save for the fact they were searching for a dismembered body, the landscape was magnificent. It was a sobering moment, the juxtaposition of darkness and light.

  As she walked, studying the water and shoreline, Frizzo stopped. There was something in the water.

  An arm?

  The sight startled her.

  “Took my breath away.”

  Taking a knee, Frizzo went in for a closer look.

  “Then I realized it was a branch with small branches at the end of it that looked like fingers.”

  Deep breath. Her heart in her throat.

  The mind and how it could trick you.

  “That was one of those points during the investigation,” Frizzo later remembered, “when I realized God was trying to prepare me for finding Chris Regan. I knew it would happen.”

  So certain of what she’d experienced that day, as Frizzo started searching again, she felt something. As she focused on the ground, and scanned the leaves and brush and water, she heard a voice. “Without a doubt, I heard it. A very clear voice.”

  “Are you ready?”

  68

  “GAME ON”

  JEREMY OGDEN SAT WITH KELLY COCHRAN AT HPD. HE WANTED ANSWERS. She knew damn well where Chris Regan was buried, because she’d admitted the dump location was her idea.

  “Kelly, come on . . . just sit down and tell me one time. Just tell me the truth from beginning to end. Just lay it all out here for me.”

  Kelly rubbed her face. Took a breath.

  “Okay.”

  Kelly broke into what
would later become a more thorough, formal statement. She was still telling lies, still shirking the blame, still trying to avoid responsibility and escape justice.

  Ogden listened, knowing the story was full of mistruths. Yet he understood that every time Kelly opened her mouth, the truth was that much closer. So he allowed Kelly her narcissistic rants and self-aggrandized digressions. Sooner or later, Kelly would divulge. Why? Because she could not stop herself. She needed people to know who she was and what she was capable of doing.

  “All these stories are coming together,” Ogden explained. “But you have to pick out the pieces of truth.”

  The one fact glaring at Jeremy Ogden was that the day Chris Regan was murdered—October 14, 2014—had been “chosen by them.” Chris wasn’t brought there for sex, as Kelly had tried to claim. He wasn’t lured over to the house for lasagna. Or to spend quality time with Kelly. The obvious evidence supporting this theory was the notion that Jason waited for them to have sex before pulling the trigger, which Kelly had said took about thirty-five minutes.

  “That was odd,” Ogden continued. “He wouldn’t do that if he was the jealous husband looking to kill the boyfriend.”

  He would have blindsided the guy the moment he walked through the door—before he had sex with his wife in front of him.

  The other problem Ogden had, which he explained to Kelly at HPD in mid-April, was the idea that Jason was the bullish husband, telling her what to do, when to do it.

  Not a chance.

  Kelly balked.

  “Look,” Ogden said, “I’ve read some of your texts to your husband.” He tossed a few on the table.

  Fuck me.

  Cook me eggs and fuck me when I get home!

  Many of the others Ogden had read were similar: Kelly was in charge.

  “And that was the day after the murder.”

  Ogden stared at Kelly.

  “Pull your hair back for me.”

  Kelly did it.

  “No scar. No marks whatsoever.”

  She’d never hit her head falling down the stairs, because she had not tumbled with Chris down those stairs.

  Kelly looked down. She drew an invisible circle on the table with her index finger.

  “Your entire face would have been black and blue for a week, had you slammed your head and cut it open.”