Where Monsters Hide

by M. William Phelps

  Another absolute fact.

  The majority of the forensic case the state built was going to be in the hands of the jury once deliberations began. The technical end of it would come into play with the medical examiner and forensic examiners, but Frizzo’s work involved assembling and presenting that evidence. How the chain of custody was followed by the book—plus, how thorough and constant Frizzo’s persistence had been to prove that Kelly and Jason Cochran had murdered Chris Regan.

  Frizzo closed out the first weekend, February 17, a Friday. Then she took the stand to conclude her testimony on Monday, February 20.

  Frizzo had taken this case on, with Chris Regan guiding her in spirit, and she followed the evidence, making sure not to cloud anything she did with personal feelings. Scholke tried as best he could to poke holes in Frizzo’s work, but the facts were strong, sobering, and unshakable. Frizzo followed the evidence, which repeatedly led back to two people—never anyone else. And when Jason died by Kelly’s hand, one suspect was left—one culprit to keep pursuing.

  Throughout that day, the FBI sent in its representative to break down all of the phone records connected to the case; Hobart PD detective Steve Houck explained his small—but important—role; a forensic specialist explained the blood and trace evidence; and retired MSP detective, Mike Neiger, now a body hunter, spoke of how he helped Frizzo during a tireless search for Chris’s remains. Witness after witness was able to show jurors through his or her work that the case had been driven by Kelly and Jason Cochran’s admissions.

  Nothing more.

  By the time Jeremy Ogden took the oath and sat inside the witness-box on Wednesday, February 22, all of the groundwork for his cat-and-mouse game with Kelly was set.

  After Ogden went through his impressive credentials, Powell asked about his introduction to Kelly.

  “What, if anything, did she say to you regarding ‘other relationships’?”

  Ogden talked about Tim Huntley and Chris Regan. Kelly seemed open to discuss only those subjects she felt comfortable with and where she believed she could manipulate the situation. Early on, she was composed and collected, while being backed into a corner. Ogden had always made her think she had the upper hand.

  He had asked Kelly about her lesbian relationships, adding how Kelly was open about the girl she met at the fast-food restaurant. She’d recruited the girl for Jason, he told jurors, but she had begun a sexual relationship with her separately.

  Kelly was firm, especially when it pertained to talking about Chris’s murder, telling Ogden: “‘You shouldn’t be asking me questions about something I don’t know nothing about.’”

  As Ogden and Powell talked about Kelly’s demeanor, body language, and “tells,” he said, “She smiled at me [at one point], and she told me that if I wanted her to have any respect for her—and she for me—that I would have to tell it like it is.”

  “And was her response important to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the hook. It’s the moment where she changes the table and she’s the one who’s engaging to talk to me. She’s now going to try to seek information from me—and it’s very important.”

  Patience.

  Persistence.

  Rapport.

  All of it was part of Jeremy Ogden’s arsenal of investigative tools to get Kelly to talk about what actually had happened.

  Ogden went through many of the interviews he’d conducted with Kelly, which allowed Powell to introduce a series of body-cam videos into the record, including several recorded inside HPD.

  Ogden’s testimony went into Thursday, February 23. He opened that day discussing how he used Chris’s birthday as a way to rattle Kelly.

  And it worked.

  By then, several months into their cat and mouse, Kelly was talking details of the murder plan. Ogden had caught her in so many lies it was hard for Kelly to keep track. She’d routinely contradict herself without realizing it.

  Powell ended her direct examination by asking Ogden to talk about the suicide letters Kelly had written in Kentucky, which they’d confiscated under search warrant inside her truck. Kelly had admitted to being a psychopath, which she had figured out early in life. Playing a role in Chris’s murder was part of her accepting who she was.

  If jurors read those letters the way he had, Ogden explained, it was not hard to see she had admitted to being the mastermind behind Chris Regan’s murder.

  “To your knowledge,” Powell asked, “is the serial killer—or ‘the list’ [of additional victims Kelly mentioned]—is that a dead issue or closed investigation?”

  “No, it’s open as long as she wants it to be. And whenever she wants it to continue, it will.”

  Scholke began his cross asking Ogden about the emotion Kelly displayed in the beginning of their encounter. How she could be seen and heard crying at times during the recordings, which indicated how upset she was by the conversations and events.

  “During that [first] interview, she was rather emotional?”

  “Or show,” Ogden said, stopping, correcting himself. “She appeared to try to display emotion.”

  Scholke stayed on this, pointing out that Ogden was not a psychiatrist. He couldn’t read people’s minds. Therefore, he was basing his comments on his own personal opinions.

  “You don’t have some special window into Miss Cochran’s soul, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” Ogden smiled, thinking that one cannot look through a window that does not exist.

  As they continued, it became obvious that Scholke could not undo the recorded past: Kelly herself, each day, under her own accord, met with Jeremy Ogden and discussed the case. Ogden’s role and the information he obtained was clear-cut. Fixed. Kelly had thought she was smarter than law enforcement; that she could convince Jeremy she was not involved. When pressure was applied, though, Kelly, who was high on Xanax, weed, and other narcotics, blurted out how Jason had murdered Chris. This declaration, along with other admissions, subsequently opened a new line of questioning.

  Not one of Scholke’s questions—by no fault of his own—did much to bolster Kelly’s contention that she was one more of Jason’s victims. In fact, all it did was dial in the focus more clearly on Kelly’s ego. It proved how far Kelly was willing to go to try and deceive a detective whom, she believed, she could outsmart. She certainly had that arrogant attitude in the first few weeks of toying with Ogden.

  Melissa Powell wrapped up her case and handed the lectern to Mike Scholke.

  Scholke spoke briefly to Kelly. Stood. Faced the judge.

  When it came down to it, there was only one witness Scholke needed to present.

  75

  SIDESTEPPING

  KELLY TRIED BEST SHE COULD TO PRESENT HERSELF AS THE INNOCENT, simpleminded wife, timid, scared, unable to walk away from a violent, abusive, troubled man. To achieve that look, she wore a brown and orange-striped sweater that fell just below her hips, a black skirt. Her hair, black and shiny as oil, was pulled back and tied in a bun. Oddly enough, she had scant eyebrow hair, giving her dark eyes a mysterious, beady quality.

  She sat to the judge’s left, in the witness-box, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded on the bald part of her exposed knees. She wore little makeup. Kelly had bulked up and put on weight. One source close to her said she was eating a “jar of peanut butter a day” during trial to prepare for prison. Kelly Cochran was a tough chick, regardless—but with an extra ten or twenty pounds, she’d be someone to fear.

  Scholke had Kelly go through her vitals: name, age, place of birth, parents, and education. She talked about meeting next-door neighbor Jason when she was a young girl growing up in Indiana.

  It took about three minutes before Scholke walked Kelly into how abusive Jason had become over the years. Scholke was smart to bring in Kelly’s brother, Colton, as a witness to some of it, giving her argument at least one additional source.

  Then came the testimony about animals: Jason had abuse
d their pets and once drowned a cat when they were working on a pool.

  All of this fell in line with the clichéd version of the serial killer: an abusive and violent drug addict who had a penchant for harming animals. Kelly selling this to jurors, however, was another mountain. She came across as stoic, stern, cold, and unsympathetic. Zero emotion. She sat calmly, talking about behaviors that would make most abuse victims tremble, break down, or request repeated time-outs. Yet, Kelly stared directly at her lawyer, undisturbed by the horrible stories she told.

  “Were there times that he held a gun to your head or pointed a gun at you?”

  “Probably about twenty.”

  Kelly stuck to the same script she’d drafted back when the MSP had questioned her in fall 2014. Jason was the authoritative tyrant, growing increasingly jealous and violent, while losing his mind.

  When Kelly crossed paths with Chris Regan, she “fell in love” with him. She kept the relationship on “the down low,” for fear of Jason finding out. As the affair blossomed, “How could I do this to [Jason]?” she asked herself. “Why was I doing this to him?”

  “Did he—”

  “I’m his wife,” she interrupted. “Why am I doing this?”

  “Did he ever threaten you?”

  “All the time.”

  “And what would he say he was going to do?”

  “Said he would kill me.”

  Kelly relayed a few anecdotes of Jason exploding in a rage in front of family. She talked about how she once filled out divorce papers, but Jason burned them. For five minutes, she and Scholke went back and forth, Kelly calling Jason “angry,” “depressed,” “unstable.” She claimed he was constantly screaming at her.

  It was interesting that the one person who could dispute this was dead—and Kelly had killed him.

  Scholke worked his way into October 13 and 14, 2014, and those days following Chris’s murder.

  Kelly told the story of giving Chris directions to her house so he could come over for dinner. She chose October 14, she now claimed, because she was “sick” on October 13. She said Jason left the house. He went to a friend’s to use “the spa” for his back pain. She admitted lying in the past to law enforcement, adding now that Jason had “cooked up” a plan to “lure Chris over to the house” and kill him.

  “You thought Jason was gone [on that day Chris showed up]?”

  “I watched him leave.”

  Same as she told Jeremy Ogden, Kelly said she was “performing oral sex” on Chris while kneeling on the landing just beyond the doorway, before having sex with him on the stairs. As they had intercourse, Kelly testified, “there was a gunshot and we fell down the stairs.”

  As they talked about what happened next, Kelly added a few minor details, explaining how Jason had given her the forceps and threatened her. Then she explained how she made dinner for Jason. Over and over, she blamed Jason for it all, placing herself in the role of the subordinate wife, another one of his victims, terrified for her life, doing what her brutal husband wanted, constantly living under the barrel of a gun pointed at her head.

  “What was going through your mind at the time?”

  “Survive.”

  “So he then grabbed the SAWZALL.”

  “Right.”

  “What happens then?”

  “He uses the SAWZALL to cut him.”

  A few questions later: “So he took Chris’s hand and waved it at you?”

  “Right.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “Sat there.”

  Not once did Kelly shed a tear. She never looked at jurors. She spoke of the most horrific crimes imaginable as if talking about a day spent in knitting class.

  Scholke raised the butterfly issue. He asked Kelly to explain her fascination. “I think we need to talk about [this topic],” he said, encouraging Kelly to tell jurors what butterflies meant to her.

  “Couple things,” she began, referencing her tattoos. “To me, butterflies symbolize . . . I . . . I had said ‘death.’ But it’s . . . I’ve gotten most of these for people I’ve lost.” The “last one” was actually for a cousin. “I mean, they’re beautiful. It’s freedom.... And then, you know, the other reason is there is a lot of [talk about them] in school and in studies and things I’ve seen, you know, they usually say, like, maggots and flies are on dead animals and things like that, and, actually, you see more butterflies than anything.”

  Scholke wanted to know why Kelly never “shouted from the rooftops, calling people up, talking to Detective Ogden, trying to call Chief Frizzo,” after Jason’s death. And why wouldn’t she tell them she “didn’t need protection anymore . . . here’s what happened.”

  Kelly blew that off by saying she had been in a thirteen-year marriage, and even though “he’d done a lot of horrible things,” there were still “some good times in there.”

  Strangely, during a morning break, Kelly changed. She now wore a cream-colored turtleneck shirt, with a blue jacket / sweater, apparently trying to come across as a Sunday-school teacher. It did nothing to alter the facts, all of which were now bolstered by how impassive, detached, and emotionless her testimony sounded.

  “You talked about killing a truck driver in Illinois. Is that true?” Scholke asked, trying best he could to provide a way to explain some of what she’d said about branding herself a serial killer.

  “No,” Kelly said.

  “No? You just made that up?”

  “Yes.”

  She claimed the “list of names” of people she killed was nothing more than fiction to build herself up.

  All this did was illustrate to jurors how many lies Kelly had told, how often, and how easy it was for her to play with the truth.

  Near the end of Scholke’s direct, he asked Kelly about the so-called “murder pact” she and Jason had made.

  She never took it seriously.

  Finally, Scholke asked Kelly why she should be believed today, if all she’d done throughout the investigation was lie.

  “Well, number one, I’m under oath. Number two, I really don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Fair enough. Thank you.”

  * * *

  ON FEBRUARY 27, 2017, PA Melissa Powell wished Kelly a good morning. The look on Kelly’s face, a complete frown, spoke to how much Kelly despised law enforcement and the idea of having to answer questions about all the lies.

  For the state’s cross, Kelly let her hair down; she wore a blue sweater/jacket, a dark blue V-neck button-up shirt, black skirt, and knee-high black boots. This time, she crossed her legs and folded her arms in front of herself on her thighs. Throughout her direct, Kelly did not move. She sat stiffly, only turning her head, side to side, from time to time. Her stoicism, which she maintained throughout her direct, gave the gallery and jurors the impression that she had few ways to express herself.

  Powell began with Kelly’s work ethic, and her parents’ description of her from the witness stand as a “hard worker.”

  Kelly nodded, agreeing. After she and Jason first moved to Caspian, she was working several jobs.

  “Seventy to eighty hours” per week.

  Powell asked for her schedule.

  One job was from five a.m. to three p.m., a second from “anywhere between four p.m. and ten p.m.”

  She’d stopped working at Mr. T’s, the family-style diner/ restaurant in Iron River, “end of June, beginning of July” in 2014.

  When they went back to Indiana after Chris went missing, Kelly testified, she did “some contractor work and mainly sprinkler installation, service and repair.”

  They talked about the pool business Kelly and Jason ran together from 2001 until it was incorporated in 2014. They built and serviced pools, occasionally repairs. Kelly said she did “a little bit of everything” for the company. By 2011, she’d taken over all of the operations because Jason’s sciatic nerve problem became too much. He could only work one day a week, if that.

  Powell’s job was to point out the incons
istencies in Kelly’s stories. Show jurors how much she’d lied by quoting statements from her interviews. Then, using investigative facts, demonstrate that Kelly Cochran was a manipulator and pathological liar, who had toyed with law enforcement for years.

  Kelly gave short answers: “That’s correct”; “no”; “yes, I did”; “I believe that happened”; “I don’t recall.”

  About an hour into the cross, Powell brought up “the book” Jason had written: Where Monsters Hide.

  “Now, in Jason’s book, I think one of the things that he put . . . was monsters know the smell of other monsters the same way the hunted knows the hunter, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  A few questions later, “And in this outline, doesn’t he indicate the wife saves the day?”

  “That’s on the last page or the last chapter, yes.”

  “And doesn’t he also—or I think you testified . . . that, that was an autobiographical book, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know what autobiographical means, right?”

  “Correct.”

  Throughout the day, Powell caught Kelly repeatedly lying, each one destroying any bit of credibility she might have had. She admitted lying to and meddling with Ogden and Frizzo’s joint investigation.

  As Powell confronted Kelly, she’d laugh under her breath, one time to the point where Powell asked if her facial expressions were a “tell.”

  Kelly did not respond.

  Near the end, Powell asked, “Where is the rest of Chris Regan?” “I don’t know.”

  Powell finished her cross and Scholke had a few redirect questions.

  Kelly walked off the stand and sat down.

  Scholke told the judge he was done.

  A recess followed, with a promise of closing arguments.

  76

  JUDGMENT DAY

  CLOSING ARGUMENTS DURING MURDER TRIALS ARE DESIGNED TO put a bow on each case. It’s a crucial moment in any trial, giving context and meaning to the evidence presented. Generally speaking, nothing new is revealed. Facts are, instead, repositioned to stand out, while unexpected and unplanned bombshell moments are either explained or amplified. A powerful closing argument has the potential to sway a juror on the fence. Conversely, a weak argument can undermine the strongest case.