Where Monsters Hide

by M. William Phelps

  Ogden said, “You’re a unicorn.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “A unicorn.”

  Kelly asked for an explanation.

  “You are about one percent of the population. Actually, about point-zero-seven of the population, to be exact.” Ogden was tossing numbers out. The female serial killer—which he had a strong inclination Kelly Cochran was—is rare among serials, less than 10 percent. “You know, Kelly, I’ve worked my whole career for meaning and purpose. I want to do something good for people. You also have meaning and purpose.”

  “A godlike purpose. To give and take.”

  “You’ve taken a lot.”

  They talked about the Bible.

  “Hundreds of times I’ve read it,” Kelly said.

  “Favorite chapter?”

  “Romans.”

  “What do you think about the Bible?”

  “It’s fucked-up shit.... I don’t understand why people have it or believe in it.”

  After she was arrested, investigators found a copy of the DSM Manual in Kelly’s truck. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is an analytic tool psychologists use to diagnose people with personality disorders. As a professional, educational text, it is updated annually.

  Kelly had dog-eared various pages describing different disorders. She was both self-diagnosing and searching for weaknesses in those around her to easily exploit.

  Ogden found this interesting.

  The subject stimulated Kelly.

  He asked about the dismemberment. Jason did it, Kelly insisted. As Jason began, she stood by and watched.

  “I loved him,” Kelly supposedly said to Jason, looking on as he prepared to cut Chris Regan into pieces.

  Jason looked down at Chris’s body, the SAWZALL in his hands. “What piece?” Kelly claimed her husband asked.

  Ogden contained his disgust.

  From inside the cab of her truck, investigators recovered several suicide letters addressed to different people. Ogden focused on one in particular, which was addressed to Kelly’s mother and father. In it, Kelly spoke of the reason she could never be honest: to protect you. She was facing her own “fate” now. Kelly wrote, “[Most people] only knew a small piece of the bigger picture.” Concluding, she wrote: [I know] how crazy this sounds . . . but I really did love Jason, too.... I know that sounds pathetic and slutty . . . Please forgive me for becoming a monster.

  She admitted killing Jason, claiming she saw it as a way to give closure to Chris’s family without Jason [ending up] in jail for the rest of his life.

  Kelly surprisingly gave law enforcement props, writing how she had told everyone in her life that cops were “tearing up” their lives during the investigation, but [I know] they were just doing their jobs.

  Finally Kelly wrote she was surprised and “happy” that some of what took place hurt her feelings: Because I didn’t want to think of myself as a heartless monster. But, in actuality, I was the monster.

  70

  HELA

  ON MAY 16, 2017, LAURA FRIZZO TOOK A CALL FROM A POLICE OFFICER she had been working with since searching for Chris’s remains. Frizzo had used Alyssa Palmer, with the Madison (Wisconsin) Police Department, and her K9, Hela, on several different occasions, along with several additional K9s and handlers.

  “Laura, it’s Alyssa.”

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “I’m in the area until tomorrow if you need Hela and [me] for any reason.”

  Frizzo hadn’t yet thought about calling in a K9. Palmer was the closest dog handler to Iron River—a seven-hour drive away. For Frizzo, this call was more of Chris Regan speaking to her: “Are you ready?”

  Frizzo told Palmer she’d get back to her. Next, she called Kelly Cochran, who was being held in Iron County after being extradited from Kentucky.

  Hanging up with the jail, Frizzo drove over to see Kelly in person.

  “I’ll never forget Kelly walking into the courtroom all arrogant in her shackles to be arraigned. She told the judge how she’d just spent the last few days in a ‘box’ while in transport and was really pissed off,” Frizzo recalled.

  The chief and Kelly shared “girl talk” that afternoon. Frizzo stood on one side of the bars, Kelly inside her new box.

  “Kelly agreed to come with me the next morning and show me various locations. I called Alyssa back to set it up.”

  “Sure. See you soon. But I have to leave by nightfall to get back to work.” Palmer was a full-time Madison police officer.

  Frizzo hung up. She felt something. How it all came together.

  Tomorrow is going to be the day.

  Still, how many times had she told herself that over the past year and a half?

  * * *

  FIRST THING THE NEXT morning, May 17, after Jeremy Ogden sent Laura Frizzo additional intel he had obtained from his conversations with Kelly, they had a new area of focus.

  Palmer and Hela met Frizzo, Kelly, and several law enforcement officers out along the Pentoga Trail, specifically in an area where Kelly was certain they’d dumped Chris’s remains.

  Hela, a female Belgian Malinois, was trained to detect the odor of actively decomposing and decomposed human remains. Hela’s “indication” sign was to sit when she sniffed remains. She’d taken part in ten searches throughout Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. She had recovered three sets of human remains while accumulating two hundred hours of field training.

  It was fifty-four degrees when they got going, with sunlight beaming through thick, dark clouds. Kelly pointed Frizzo to an area just south of the actual trail, 1 2/3 miles southwest of U.S. Route 2, in Crystal Falls Township, Iron County. The area itself consisted of “thick woods, some open areas, and an all-terrain vehicle trail.” It was several miles north of that original area where Kelly had brought them.

  Helping Frizzo was Officer Roy D’Antonio, along with several Iron River County deputies.

  Kelly said, “I don’t want the dog handler or anyone else to follow us to the location until I find it. Then we’re ready to call them in.”

  Frizzo could imagine Ogden whispering in her ear: “She’s always up to something. Be cautious and careful. Never trust Kelly.”

  After some discussion with her colleagues, Frizzo had Palmer and Hela hang out at the intersection of U.S. 2 and the Pentoga Trail.

  Kelly, Frizzo, and several deputies headed into the woods.

  As they walked, Kelly talked. She seemed different. She had a defeated aura about her, riddled with that entitled sense of hubris she could not hide. Had she turned a corner? Was she now falling into the role of the serial killer who wants to show the world her work—the psychopath who believes she is invincible? Not all serials go down this road. Some clam up and refuse to talk to anyone; while others are far too narcissistic to contain their need for attention and the spotlight. They crave the recognition that comes with being branded one of the most rare creatures on earth.

  “Over there,” Kelly said. She pointed.

  They walked. Kelly identified a location not too far into the woods from where they’d left their vehicles. About thirty yards.

  “I discreetly marked the location she gave me with a black glove,” Frizzo said later.

  Frizzo called Palmer.

  “Come out here and start,” Frizzo said. She explained the glove.

  Kelly and Frizzo stood about one hundred feet away and looked on.

  Hela immediately sniffed upward, her nose in the air. Then, tail wagging, the dog took off directly south toward a tree Kelly had identified.

  The K9 circled the tree a few times and sat back, indicating a possible “source.”

  Commanded to continue, Hela bolted east and headed for an area approximately twenty-five feet from the tree.

  She circled.

  Then focused on a leaf pile.

  Frizzo and Palmer walked over.

  A black garbage bag, somewhat embedded into the ground by the elements, was the first indication they were
getting close.

  There was nothing inside the bag.

  Frizzo pointed it out to forensics.

  For a few hours, they combed the entire area Hela had picked up on, doing what Frizzo called “a cursory search.”

  Hela was active and excited. Locking onto something.

  Not finding any remains, they decided to move on to other locations.

  Palmer drove Hela, with the team following behind, to 66 Lawrence Street, the Cochran house. She wanted the dog to sniff around. Pick up a scent of some sort. Hela had locked onto something back at the trail. To further build upon that, knowing that Chris was murdered inside the house, it seemed logical to bring the K9 to the original crime scene.

  Hela sniffed around the garage out back and followed a scent into the house itself. As she entered, Hela stopped, pointed her nose in the air, sniffed.

  From there, Hela ran out to the shed on the property, specifically focused on one wall.

  At approximately 3:30 p.m., Palmer wrote in her report, Hela provided a formal indication that she detected the odor of human remains.

  They did not find anything.

  Inside the house, Kelly leaned against her old countertop in the kitchen. Frizzo stood nearby.

  “Have some pizza,” Frizzo said.

  Kelly took a slice and began eating. Wiping her hands, she pointed to the counter.

  “There you go.”

  “Excuse me,” Frizzo said.

  The forceps she had used to dig into Chris’s skull in front of Jason sat on the counter.

  As they kept looking around the house, Frizzo and her team found the magazine tube for the rifle Jason used to shoot Chris.

  Kelly pointed that out, too.

  “It was where she said it would be,” Frizzo said later. “Two days later, divers would recover the gun used to kill Chris in the Caspian Pit, exactly where she said it would be.”

  Kelly was telling the truth.

  Frizzo met with her team and decided, because time was running short with Hela and Palmer, to go back out to the trail.

  By five p.m., everyone was tired and drained.

  Palmer had marked all the areas they’d searched earlier with a GPS tracking device.

  “I have to get going back to Madison,” Palmer said to Frizzo.

  Frizzo was frustrated and certain this was the place.

  Kelly was taken back to the jail.

  “Alyssa, can you please go with me to one more location? It’s not too far. It’s along the trail. Give me one more hour with Hela?”

  Palmer agreed.

  “When we got out of our cars, Hela ran back to the tree area the bag had been found. Then she started to work eastward.”

  Frizzo and Palmer followed.

  They came to a clearing.

  Hela bolted east. Started barking.

  Frizzo and Palmer looked at each other.

  “Alyssa was a few steps ahead of me as I was texting Mike Neiger, asking if he was available the following day to come and assist me in searching the area more thoroughly.”

  When Frizzo looked in the direction Hela was barking, Palmer turned and looked at Frizzo.

  Palmer put her hand over her mouth.

  Frizzo ran toward them.

  Arriving at the scene, she looked beyond where Palmer stood, Hela nearby.

  There was a large rock. Hela sat by it, staring at them, waiting for her next command.

  Palmer and Frizzo walked around the rock.

  A skull, partially embedded in the ground, stared up at them.

  Frizzo immediately went over to it and knelt down in a prayer position. She took a moment.

  “I was in shock and speechless. The tears didn’t even come like I expected. For almost two years, I had imagined my reaction when or even if I ever found Chris Regan. It was always such a roller coaster.... I just knelt there and played the entire investigation over through my mind and prayed. I thanked Chris for being by my side and directing me to him. He was with me throughout the entire investigation. And even after.”

  Later that night, Frizzo stopped at the jail to thank Kelly for validating herself.

  “I now knew that most likely other things she showed me that day were accurate—and, as it turned out, they were. It was a good day for Kelly. And I firmly believe that my hours of ‘girl talk,’ as Kelly called it, allowed her to be honest that day. Telling me she was born the way she is, [and] has no remorse or sympathy. It’s nothing that happened to her during her life to cause her to be this way—it’s just who she is. This is the same day she told me she lied when she said Jason kept a ‘trinket bag,’ the first I’d heard trophies from victims called that. Still, I knew then it was her bag, not his.”

  “I believe in evil,” Kelly said at one point while they talked. “It took less than a minute to suffocate [Jason].”

  “What made you choose a victim?” Frizzo asked.

  “Opportunity.”

  71

  SEARCHING

  ON MAY 23, 2017, JEREMY OGDEN SPOKE WITH KELLY. SHE WAS CLEANED up. A bit more pep in her step, and still that unbridled cockiness.

  “How many?”

  “Several others,” Kelly said. She didn’t want to say exactly. She handed Ogden a list, adding, “Multiple people.”

  The list contained the names of several people Kelly claimed to have killed.

  Ogden concluded the conversation. He handed the list to the prosecutor. They would need to investigate each name to see if she was telling the truth, or building herself into some kind of diabolical female serial killer.

  * * *

  AT THE TIME, KELLY had thirteen butterfly tattoos of various sizes, shapes, and types up one arm and down the other.

  Frizzo asked her about it. To mostly everyone involved, those butterflies were another trinket (trophy): representing victims she’d killed, a majority of whom she fed to her and Jason’s pigs.

  “She described that night what the butterfly symbolizes to her,” Frizzo recalled.

  “To me, Kelly, the butterfly is a symbol of new life,” Frizzo told her.

  Kelly chuckled. “The butterfly, Detective, is a symbol of death. You see, when there is a corpse, butterflies will be all over it.”

  Frizzo had no response.

  When Ogden asked Kelly about the tattoos, she said, “They symbolize dead family members.”

  “Which family members?”

  She couldn’t name them.

  “It was apparent from the beginning,” Ogden concluded, “that she had this fascination with butterflies. I asked her where it began. She said that while she was in college she went on a trip to the Body Farm in Tennessee.” This is a well-respected research facility on the grounds of the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. Decomposition of cadavers is studied there in a variety of settings. Each body is viewed in a differing state of decomposition. Anthropologist and mystery novelist Dr. William Bass runs the Body Farm. “She said that butterflies were all over the cadavers while she was there, and she thought it was ‘cool.’ ”

  Later, Kelly would add to this, according to Ogden: “She claimed her butterfly tattoos were for fallen loved ones . . . but I think they have to do with her victims. Just like her drawings of large trees with the all-seeing eyes. They are significant also.”

  Kelly Cochran did nothing without reason or purpose.

  “It’s fascinating because you will find more butterflies on a decaying body than you’ll ever find flies or maggots.” Regarding this observation, Kelly laughed, adding: “That’s not something normal people see, but . . . it’s the idea of beauty (butterfly) and death (decaying body). I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s life and death. It’s life from death.”

  Kelly told me in 2018 that she no longer had thirteen butterfly tattoos.

  “Nineteen now,” she said with a smile.

  “The reason why we did not find much blood anywhere in the house,” Ogden said, “was because I believe she and Jason set up a Dexter room in the basement.” Me
aning, they tacked plastic everywhere downstairs, creating a clever, contained room, much like a cocoon, where they could cut up a body and then remove the plastic, thus discarding all of the blood and forensic and trace evidence.

  “Downstairs, as I looked around,” Ogden concluded, “I found staples in the joists and ceiling and all over the walls, left over, I think, from the plastic. And that smell the night of the burning barrel [that] neighbors reported? That wasn’t flesh burning. It was the blood-soaked plastic.”

  PART 5

  A JUST CAUSE

  72

  SEXUAL DIGRESSION

  HE GOT RIGHT INTO IT. HENRY (PSEUDONYM) HAD THE HOTS FOR Kelly Cochran—and was not shy about sharing his feelings.

  After a series of articles about Kelly—one in Rolling Stone magazine, which posed the question of Kelly Cochran possibly being a notorious female serial killer—appeared, Henry began writing. “Beautiful” was how he generally addressed Kelly in his letters from the prison cell he occupied to the prison cell she occupied while awaiting trial. Kelly had sent Henry a butterfly picture she’d drawn. He thought it was “cute.” Early into this letter, Henry said he hoped his support was comforting. Kelly was facing serious charges: Worse than mine, sweetheart. He told Kelly she was “full of love” and did not “deserve” what she was “going through.”

  Henry was either confused or Kelly had lied to him. He believed she had once lived in Kentucky and, because of that, had a “cute Southern accent.”

  Describing himself as Greek, with dark complexion and dark hair, Henry had lived back east before heading west, settling in a Michigan prison for a violent felony involving guns not long after relocating. He’d left his home, he said, to look after his ill aunt and a sick family member living in Michigan, but, instead, wound up in prison.

  In another letter, Henry talked about his life behind bars: He slept until noon, ate, worked out from three to five p.m., played cards until eight-thirty, on most nights worked out again, then retired back to his cell for bedtime, where he read and wrote. Then got up at noon the following day to do it all over again.

  Institutionalized Groundhog Day.