20/20 - True Crime Vault: Where Monsters Hide
Episode Date: May 5, 2026The unexplained disappearance of an Air Force veteran spirals into a murder mystery. (OAD 6/16/23) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
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In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.
I wonder which emergency.
We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.
For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible.
A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water.
Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Step into the 2020 True Crime Vault.
Listen to our most gripping stories.
From the outside, it honestly looks like a dark Hansel and Gretel kind of house.
Your dog?
Okay, what I mean?
We're not friendly.
As soon as you walk into the house, the hair stands up on the back of your neck.
It's pretty creepy.
It really was.
I've come to this remote part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
It seems haunting, but maybe that's because this is where the mystery unfolds.
There's more media attention to our missing person, Chris Brighen.
This doesn't look like Chris's apartment at all.
It's all just shuffled.
He was always very neat.
Everything was always put away.
And no signs of forced entry or chaos?
Absolutely not.
Something happened to him.
I knew that.
in my heart and I knew that my gut.
He had another side to him.
So immediately, this
is a lover's triangle.
I actually see in the same time.
My husband, Eric, and Chris.
Not a love triangle,
but a love quadrangle.
Tell me something, you guys.
What happened to Chris Reagan?
That's the stuff of horror movies.
The Upper Peninsula is
kind of its own little
world.
The Upper Peninsula
is also known as the UP.
People are Uper's.
Upers are unique people.
The Upper Peninsula is separated by the Mackinac Bridge
from Lower Michigan.
It's in absolute rural, forested woodland,
and kind of terrifying in its isolation.
We can get wind chill readings 30 below zero
in the wintertime.
It looks like the Arctic sometimes.
And, you know, you can kind of feel lost.
One town in the Upper Peninsula is the small town of Iron River,
which was named because of the local mining.
Iron River, Michigan has population of about 3,000
with one stoplight in their town.
My name is Laura Frizzo, and I'm the former police chief of Iron River.
and also the first female police chief actually to serve in the entire Upper Peninsula.
It was a lot of double-takes when I first started with some of the old-timers who were like,
what's going on here?
The people of Iron River are really good-hearted people accepting.
But I think when someone new comes to the area, they're a little skeptical at first,
and they take their time to make sure that you're worthy of being included into their little circle.
One of those outsiders who came to live in Iron River was 51-year-old Chris Reagan.
We had to actually go up and buy him all new clothes, what he called, his duper clothes,
because he had city clothes.
Terry O'Donnell was an old flame of Chris Regan's, and the two had recently rekindled their romance.
He decided that he was going to move to Iron River so that we could be closer together.
It was a whirlwind.
God, I was so in love with it.
him. Christopher and I used to come down out Apple Blossom Trail and I walk around the river.
We'd sit, listening to the water, just enjoy time together.
So when Chris moved to Iron River, he got a job at a manufacturing company called the Oldenburg Group.
Chris was very meticulous about things. Probably one of our best team leaders that we had.
He was actually holding people accountable.
Chris was former military and had a reputation as a reliable worker.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when he didn't show up for his job.
That was October 14th.
I sent a message to Chris.
You know, we haven't heard from you.
Is everything okay?
Chris had missed two days and one of my team leaders came forward and told me,
Laura, just so you know, Chris had applied for another position
and he's moving to North Carolina.
You know, if he was doing long hours for a pretty demanding company, then maybe he just said enough of that.
After three days, no call, no show is termination.
Remarkably, two whole weeks had gone by and no one had heard from Chris.
That's when Terry decides to go to the police.
By this time, the two had broken up, but they remained close friends and talked regularly.
I saw this vehicle pull up and parked in front of the police department.
And I saw this woman get out of the vehicle, and she was crying.
And she said that her friend was missing.
I was shaking.
I had tears.
What was that interaction like when you first encountered Terry O'Donnell?
She was very upset.
You know, clearly she knew something wasn't right because she knew him very well.
Chief Frizzo sends Sergeant Cindy Barrett to investigate.
First stop, Chris Reagan's apartment.
Terry O'Donnell's parents are landlords to Chris Reagan.
So Terry had access via key from her parents.
This doesn't look like Chris's apartment at all.
It's all dishycle.
He was always very neat.
Everything was always put away.
It was evident that he was in the process of packing up to move to his new job.
There's packing boxes.
And on the bed there were suitcases.
And there was papers there for his new job.
This is his paperwork to accept the position.
It's not even sent yet.
His calendar shows that he was going to resign on the 14th.
We asked the 23rd and the last day of work.
So not a guy who's running away?
Absolutely not.
And no signs of forced entry or chaos?
Not at all.
In fact, he had a list started, you know, things that he wanted.
to get ready for his move.
I said he has everything that he needs to do to move, all of his notes.
And on the dining room table were legal pads with to-do lists like call the power company,
and shut the power up.
It really started to bother me that something was very, very wrong.
Now was this window left open?
The windows were left open.
It appeared that he had left the apartment with full intentions of returning.
The intentions are returning.
Something happened to me.
I knew that in my heart and I knew that my gut.
And I said, we're going to go out and we're going to check the car.
And when we're done with that, I will enter Chris Reagan as a missing person in the national database.
From there, they went to the park and ride where Terry had seen Chris's car abandoned for days.
Christopher's Hyundai Genesis, his vehicle was there, and that was his baby.
He took such good care of it, and so it didn't make sense to me that it was at the park and ride.
When Sergeant Barrett went to take a look at the car, she found, you know, a couple things in the car,
like his knee brace that he should have been wearing.
That is knee brace?
Yep.
Do you normally wear the knee brace?
Yep.
Okay.
And I understand in the car there was an intriguing.
the car there was an intriguing post-it note.
Yeah, she found like a post-it note that was flipped upside down on the passenger side.
We didn't know at first what was written on it and what it would come to mean later.
Christopher always wrote things down on post-its and the post-it note had directions on it.
And I told her that wherever those directions went to, that was the last place he was.
This is believed to be the last known video of Chris Reagan.
He's caught on a surveillance camera at a gas station.
camera at a gas station on the afternoon of October 14th, 2014.
Leading up the investigation into Reagan's disappearance
is a new, inexperienced, Chief of Police, Laura Frizzo.
She is a leader in a profession in the Upper Peninsula
where there aren't a lot of female leaders.
How many people on the force?
Four full time.
She truly cared, and she truly wanted to solve this.
As Chief Frizzo investigates Chris Reagan's disappearance,
She discovers that he had dated multiple women in his short time in Iron River,
and some of those relationships overlapped.
I dated Chris Regan back in 2013,
from around May until the end of October for about six months.
He would always send me a text weekly.
He was very suave, very sweet, charismatic, just kind of knew how to make you feel good.
As far as Terry O'Donnell knew, she thought that she was in an exclusion.
relationship with Chris, and this behavior came as a real shock to her.
I asked him why, you know, he was doing that, and he said, well, you're going to be gone
to Europe for three weeks.
What happens if I get lonely?
So, sadly to say, I broke it off with him.
When Chief Frizzo digs deeper into Chris's life, she discovers another woman he'd been dating,
a 33-year-old coworker by the name of Kelly Cochran.
Either one of us were all in.
It was never going to be because I was married.
She was an employee at Oldenburg.
Chris was actually involved in her hiring.
Kelly was also new to town, and I think they bonded over that, being two city folk in this
small town.
I would go over to Chris's and usually cooked, and then, I mean, we were intimate, and then usually
I would leave.
Post-it note found inside Chris's car at this park.
could have led to any one of his girlfriend's homes.
Turns out it was Kelly Cochran's.
Chief Friswick had told me to go and interview
Kelly Cochran to see if she had any information
as to the whereabouts of Chris Reagan and man came out.
So I said, I knew Kelly Cochran's husband, and he said, yes.
I said, is Kelly home?
And he says, no, Kelly's not home.
I don't know where she is.
And shortly thereafter, this woman comes out.
I asked her if she was Kelly.
She said, yes, I'm Kelly.
It's not unusual for her husband or her wife to say,
no, he's not here.
That is very common.
I was actually surprised she came out.
So I said, your husband aware of your relationship
with Chris Reagan?
And she says, oh, yes, he's fine with it.
Jason Conkron is standing there
just stoically not saying a word, just like a statue.
like a statue, no emotion.
She says, I figured Chris left for North Carolina
without saying goodbye to me.
So I told her, I said, we were wondering
why the car's at the park and ride,
and Kelly Cochran said, in the past tense,
he loved that car.
And Sergeant Barrett called me afterwards and said,
I found that to be very chilling and odd
that she said, past tense, he loved that car.
that car. Because of her tiny department's limited resources, Chief Frizo asks for help from the
Michigan State Police. They sent two detectives who questioned the Cochran's the very next day.
And I'll tell you guys in advance, I see a therapist for high anxiety.
I'm listening to Jason Cochran's interview with the detective. He immediately, I mean,
there's no questions asked even yet. And he's like, I just want to let you know that I haven't
been doing too well lately. I actually was institutionalized a little bit of a little
every month ago, so, you know, I seem like I'm getting bombed up.
I do see a therapist for it.
Lost a close friend, I'm depressed ever since.
Did you think that's what caused all your issues?
A huge part of it.
Yeah.
And don't get me wrong, knowing that my marriage has fallen apart.
So you were very much aware of what Kelly was doing?
I either had to accept it or to let her go.
So I decided that I could at least accept it for a little while and see if you're
If it's, you know, she really wanted was to not be with me,
then I was going to let her go.
Kelly, you're right?
Yes.
K-K-E-L-L-wife.
When Kelly came in for her interview,
the one thing I noticed about her right out of the gate
was her ability to control her body language.
Tell us everything you know about Chris.
They actually got pretty close in the last four months.
Okay.
Like a best friend.
Did you have an intimate relationship?
Okay.
And obviously your husband knows?
And he knows.
He knows.
She was leaned forward.
She had eye contact and her voice was calm and collected the whole time.
When is the last time you saw Chris?
I would say between the 12th and the 15th was the last time I saw.
Where did you see him?
I seen him at his partner, I think.
Was Jason upset about that?
No.
Kelly, she would be looking at Jason?
Sure.
I don't see why you live.
Well, I'll tell you why, because husbands get jealous.
I understand that.
I'd hurt him.
I would like to know what happened as well.
That's why I'm willing to be here.
I'm a good person.
Despite the love triangle between the Cochran's and Chris Reagan,
there's still no evidence of any crime being committed.
But Chief Frizo still suspects that Reagan's disappearance
might be the result of foul play.
the results of foul play.
Frizzo and her small team continued pressing on,
and they quickly learned that Kelly also had multiple relationships,
including a gentleman who also worked at the Oldenburg Group.
Kelly was dating another employee there by the name of Eric Erickson.
Eric's supervisor was Chris Regan.
So now police are wondering, could Eric have been upset enough
to have harmed Chris?
How would you feel about taking
polygraph test to prove that you didn't have anything to do with Chris as
as scared as Chief Laura Frizzo is investigating the disappearance of Chris
Reagan she discovers evidence of not a love triangle but a love quadrangle even
though Kelly Cochran is married to Jason she is having an affair with Chris and
another co-worker Eric Erickson Eric Erickson was hired as military assembler
Eric was a good employee he showed up
He was dependable.
Eric was a suspect.
Could he have done something to Chris
because he was angry and jealous and outrage?
So it was important to eliminate him.
There was a point with the participation
of the Michigan State Police Detectives
where I think they wanted to take more of a lead
in the case and handle it.
There was no warning.
It was just basically like, hey, Laura said,
they want to talk to you.
And the next thing I know, they're coming at night,
pulling up in my truck.
driveway telling me get in the car.
Thanks for coming.
Did you want to just cut them before?
Yeah.
Yeah.
She wanted me to go out with her a couple times.
Like at night, I think for me it was kind of fun.
You know, at first, whatever, I had moved back here and I didn't know anybody.
And having somebody gave me some attention was, like, I liked it.
Right.
There's too.
I still have the full text message.
the full text miss.
I said, yeah, here, take a look at my phone.
This is our conversations that we've had.
When I looked at his conversations with Kelly,
there was a point in time where he got very irritated with her.
And it was the week before Chris went missing.
There was a time where we went down to the lake
and we were gonna have just a couple beers.
While her phone was going off, right?
And I'm like, you know, somebody's really trying to get a hold of you.
Who is, who is, who is?
is it? And she said that it's Chris, you know.
So maybe he was the jealous lover. Yes. And I did think that it could happen.
The next step for Erickson, a polygraph, or a so-called lie detector test.
How would you feel about taking a polygraph test just to prove that you didn't have anything to do with Chris's despair?
Yep, I told him I would do that too.
I scheduled a polygraph for him. We went over everything.
Yeah, I totally understand that.
I understand.
Also in the door goes click and walks in the officer.
And he goes, you passed.
And I was like, I did.
So.
And because of the alibi that he had did check out,
I was able to put him to the side and focus more
on the Cochran's as the suspects.
So as you're doing your sort of criminal profiles,
what made Jason a potential suspect in your mind?
Jason really had motive.
You know, he was the husband who was being cheated on.
Our marriage has kind of been on rocky roads for a little while.
The story that I had gotten from Kelly was that they were separated,
however still living under the same roof.
What I came to learn about this marriage was that it had been in trouble for a while.
Kelly, you know, was living a life of a single person.
She was constantly running around with different men.
There were times when she came all about one of one.
She came home about 1.30. Didn't he tell me where she was at, and I didn't really want to know.
I hate to say it.
Do you kind of understand why you're here?
Yeah.
I think so.
You know what I mean?
There's somebody that's missing.
I'm going to guess that I'm probably to jail his husband.
As police start going through Jason's text messages, they seem to reveal how Jason really feels about being cheated on.
He doesn't seem happy at all.
texting her, I cannot take it.
And you promised me you would stop.
Was that a lie also?
It wasn't long before Chris went missing.
Jason found himself down by Chris's apartment
and telling her, don't go to those apartments again.
You're a married woman.
The guy in the cast says I was not the only guy
trying to date you.
Please don't go back to those apartments.
You are married.
Your husband?
Can he confront you about the time?
about the time when he said he was on the rock
and he saw your truck park by Chris's apartment.
Did he mention him?
What did he say?
You had seen my truck there?
Which sounds almost like stalking behavior.
Right.
So I'm thinking, okay, he's now put himself
in a position where he's made contact with Chris Frigin.
I thought, you know, maybe he snapped.
Things had boiled over,
and Jason needed to go and get some help.
Jason's admission to the mental hospital was two days after Mr. Regan went missing.
Chief Frizo now has some serious suspicion that Jason Cochran's got something to do with Chris Reagan's disappearance.
It started to get close to the holidays. Thanksgiving was approaching.
And then out of the blue, Chief Frizo gets a phone call that takes her by complete surprise.
And when I pick up the phone, the voice on the other end said,
Hi, this is Chris Reagan. And I almost dropped the phones. I thought, well, yeah, where have you been?
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Upper Peninsula and Chris Reagan is still missing. The investigation into his disappearance looks like
It's growing cold too.
But Iron River Police Chief Laura Frizzo
remains convinced that Reagan was the victim of foul play.
You thought maybe he's been murdered.
Yeah, I just thought something's wrong.
It seemed like everything was a dead end.
I would stop in and check with Laura
and just ask her how things are going.
And then she'd say, I was thinking about you.
Laura was very dedicated to the case.
She knew that Chris had sons.
who wanted closure and she wanted to be able to get that closure for them.
I was in the office and I got a phone call.
And when I picked up the phone, the voice on the other end said,
Hi, this is Chris Reagan.
And I almost dropped the phone because I thought, well, yeah, where have you been?
And he said, Junior, this is his son.
And it was really sad for me to hear his voice.
And it was even harder for me meeting him in person.
me meeting them in person.
Chris Jr. is on his way to Iron River with his brother to clean out their father's apartment.
The first time I went to Iron River to clean out his apartment and stuff like that was not fun.
I didn't know what to do or like where to start.
It just was heartbreaking.
They were young.
They were lost.
They didn't know what to do, where to go.
She knew that Chris was a veteran and that his military service was something he was really
proud of. So she wanted to make sure that his son got his dog tags, which they recovered from his
apartment. I went to hand him to him and he told me, I think you should just keep them with you.
I carried those dog tags in my pocket every day. This is a complicated case and the Iron River
Police Department is small, just four people. And as a result of that, people offered their help.
So you think these profile questions are pretty good?
Jim McNeil and Molly Barron worked together as private investigators.
And we got together after being introduced by a high school friend of mine,
and was like a mutual friend.
I feel it's a tight community where everybody seems to know each other.
And especially if you have a missing person,
that's concerning to the community.
Because of where we're from, we just don't have missing people like that.
We're not going to not do anything when somebody is
missing. It was at this point where the prosecutor was ready to sign the search warrant for the
Cochran residents. So Molly and Jim show up at my office and I'm like, oh, well, as a matter of fact,
I said, I'm going to be doing a search warrant there tomorrow. On March 16, 2015, Chief Frizzo
goes to the Cochran's house with the long-awaited search warrant, accompanied by those two private
investigators.
Crazy dog.
The dogs were just going crazy in there, like just barking, barking, barking.
Good two dogs?
Okay, what are they mean?
They're not friendly.
We were in the home, and Kelly's home is pretty creepy.
It really was.
What I have Kelly is I have a search warrant.
I think Molly and I brought, you know, a lot of experience there to her to assist her with a search warrant.
I've never worked with a PI like that before.
That was my first experience.
This is a little unorthodox.
It is, and I was kind of concerned about it when it first happened,
because I'm kind of a control freak,
and I didn't want anyone messing around,
but it actually worked out to our advantage.
Hi, Jason.
How you doing?
I'm hanging in there. How are you?
Okay.
One of the first things you want to be very careful of
is weapons.
Do you have any weapons in the home?
I'm not on them, but I wouldn't have weapons out.
I've got a 22 under there.
To be able to reach right in and get it.
And you immediately go to these weapons and secure them.
Central 200 were secure.
And they had all kinds of weapons that were like all over the place.
But that's not illegal, you know.
Jason had a fetish with knives, swords, things like that.
And he had a lot of them that were found and collected during the search warrant.
It was the kind of arsenal you see in a movie.
He had swords, crossbows, everywhere you go and at home,
you can put your hands on something tangible
and use it as a weapon.
That was a very eerie feeling.
Do you want a jacket or something?
Yeah, actually, yeah.
Typically, you don't allow the residents
to stay in the house, they're gonna have to leave.
You guys aren't gonna turn the computer off, are you?
No, okay.
Is there something on there?
You don't want to school.
No, no.
She's working on something?
Okay.
It happened to be one of the coldest mornings of the winter.
It was like zero.
As soon as you walk into the home, there's like a punchhole of some sort through the door,
and the doorframe was awry, it was cracked or something.
At that point, Laura calls the crime lab, hey, let's get the crime lab here,
and we're standing there for quite a while waiting for that crime lab.
So we're just standing there waiting, and I looked up.
The tiles on the stealing.
Is that what she said?
Yeah, in pain of it.
And something caught my eye and I looked it again and I kind of stepped the side and I looked at it again.
The ceiling was white, but there was these certain spots up there.
So I finally said something to Jim and then Jim looked up and looked at it and immediately was like, ooh.
To the private investigators, those spots on the ceiling look suspiciously like painted over blood.
It's like a splatter pattern.
And she'd say, yeah, we've done remodeling and it replaced some ceiling tiles.
That's probably where the cast office.
It could have happened right here.
It's already dark by the time the crime lab unit gets there.
Tell me something, you guys.
Okay, well, I want to step in here.
We got a positive reaction with the luminal on the ceiling here.
They bring in luminal, which is a chemical that detects the presence of blood.
Right here.
And then there was something over here in this channel area.
They did get a positive reaction from that area above the doorway, where it looked like something
happened right under the door and kind of spread as it went back on the ceiling.
And they said that they got a positive reaction from that.
I'm thrilled.
I'm thrilled.
I'm sorry.
We had finished the search warrant at approximately like 10 o'clock at night, so it's late.
Investigators think that they have uncovered a gold line of evidence against the Cochran's
until something shocking happens the next day.
I got a phone call from one of the neighbors in the morning
and said, I just want to let you know that they totally loaded up their truck
and skipped town.
The Cochran's have disappeared.
Tell me something, you guys.
You found a couple areas.
When investigators get the warrant to search the Cochran's home,
they find a litany of disturbing items,
including battle axes, crossbows, daggers and knives, a shotgun.
gun, a 22 caliber pistol.
But more important than that is what appears to be blood span.
We got a positive reaction with the aluminum.
You're telling me that's blood, right?
We haven't confirmed it yet.
It was looking pretty good that they were going to get some positive results back.
At this point in the investigation, Chief Frizzo feels like she's got a lot of evidence on the
Cochran's.
Until the very next morning, she gets a call from one of the neighbors.
And that neighbor calls in the morning and said, I just want to let you know that they totally loaded up their truck and skipped town.
So I knew this was happening.
What was your reaction?
I was worried a little bit just because I was the one that was kind of the thorn in their side.
And so I wanted to be sure they weren't going to look for me or come over and find me.
Todd and David Saylor, the neighbors who reported that Cochran's missing are brought in for questioning.
They tell police about another very interesting detail.
They say they observed around the time.
of Chris Reagan's disappearance.
According to David, the Cochrane started renovating their house,
but not during the day.
He could hear them in their basement using power tools for multiple nights.
You guys had heard them using these sanding tools and stuff,
and you figured that was when?
You're right in the wrong October.
Sanding away, it's right out and sand and the recidivating.
Recyphicating sides.
Recyphicating inside.
And they were doing it at odd times.
It was not a lot.
You're all right.
And you heard them all night.
One on the long.
And so what went through your mind when you heard that?
The worst thing imaginable.
And I thought, you know, I can't, I can't be.
But at the same time with what they're telling me, it makes sense.
That's the stuff of horror movies.
Yeah.
Also, seemingly out of a horror movie, a chilling discovery,
Chief Frizzo later makes inside of.
the Cochran's basement, a journal written by Jason.
And he had titled it, Where Monsters Hide.
Then he goes on to talking about being a hunter and how the hunter hunts the prey and feels this tingle
through their body.
And it's kind of eerie, almost like he was writing about this situation.
It's almost like a thinly veiled confession.
Yes.
It just again pointed into the direction of definitely the...
This couple had something to do with his disappearance,
and definitely Jason could have snapped.
Chief Rizzo is sure that the lab results
from those blood samples taken from the house
will prove that Chris was brutally murdered there.
But she's in for a bitter disappointment.
When they called me and said, you know,
we didn't get anything, they weren't good samples
or had been treated with chemicals or whatever
the case may be.
And I remember just being so,
so upset about that.
You know, I was mentally drained a lot.
With her main suspects now gone into the wind, the case seems to have hit a dead end.
But then there's a break.
It turns out that on the night before the Cochran's left town, those private investigators
had put a tracking device on the Cochran's truck, which is legal for PIs to do in the state of
Michigan.
What made you put the GPS tracker on?
Well, we were hoping that they would go to where the body was.
That's one of the most dangerous moments in the whole investigation I feel is deploying the GPS unit because of the risk of danger.
What does that danger look like? What does that feel like?
Like somebody coming out with the shotgun and shooting us on the spot.
Okay. You ready?
Yeah.
Right next, that spare tire is the back frame of the vehicle.
And as I get closer, it just sucked it right out of my hand.
And, you know, you hear the loud bang.
It's an exciting moment.
You know, you can feel your heart beating through your chest.
There's a lot of things that could go wrong at that moment in time.
I'd talked to Jim McNeil, and he said,
we put a GPS device on the truck, and I need to tell you that.
I immediately did a search warrant for their GPS information
so that we knew where the Cochran's were and what was going on.
We monitored the GPS movement
all through exiting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,
Michigan through the state of Wisconsin, the top part of Illinois there in Indiana, and then
they ended up nearby within the Hobart area.
And sure enough, you know, we located them.
They were back at Kelly's parents' house in Hobart.
Chief Frizzo wants to get DNA samples from Kelly and Jason Cochran, but they're no longer
in her jurisdiction.
So she contacts the Lake County Sheriff.
Department in Indiana.
When I spoke with her, we made a connection on the phone.
She gave me all the reasons that she believed that this was a criminal case.
And yeah, I believed her.
We told Jason that we had a search warrant for his DNA,
and we needed to transport him to the Hobart Police Department.
He did not say a word the entire time.
He was just sitting in the back of the car,
shaking and sweating, and,
and like wringing his hands together.
He's sitting in a room waiting to give his DNA swab,
and then he gets the surprise of a lifetime.
Looked up at me and his face just started to turn red immediately.
That was a shock to his system, I'm sure.
And my whole plan was to try and give him the opportunity to be the victim
and to tell me what happened to Chris.
You're baby.
I'm actually Kelly is...
just calling.
She knows something's up.
She's calling Jason's phone over and over again.
When Kelly Cochran saw Laura Frizzo,
you could tell that seemed to be her nemesis.
So as I started to leave the room to get to the technicians
to take her DNA, she said, where's my husband?
And I just kind of looked back at her,
because I kind of fed her a line that, you know,
Jason's already told us everything.
We already know what happened.
What Laura effectively does is create distrust between the couple.
And come February of 2016, that distrust is going to implode the Cochran household.
White County 911, operator 17.
The 911 call from Kelly Cochran comes in that could unravel the mystery of what happened to Chris Reagan.
My husband's not breathing.
He's basically like the flow.
He's breathing barely.
I don't know what town.
I need an ambulance right away.
Here we have one of the most sensational murders,
but very few people have actually heard about this case.
Some really heinous and atrocious crimes.
So what made you call the FBI?
I found the flyer on Chris Regan being missing.
On this call, my instincts were just yelling at me
that something's not right with this scene.
What makes the Caspian pit such an excellent place to hide evidence?
A burn barrel was actually found by the divers just off.
offshore here.
And back in these woods, an even more important discovery.
I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to get somebody to tell you a secret that only they know.
I told you before.
You can be a witness.
It's almost like the two of them were having a chess game.
Absolutely, yeah.
I think she wanted to play the game.
You were basically having to convince Kelly that her dead husband was sending a message from beyond the grave.
beyond the grave.
What's up you believe?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure with you.
And the reason this case is so engaging, it's the amount of police video that's available.
It's amazing.
The Kelly Cochran case just, it's the biggest case we've had, maybe ever.
With her, it was like, lie, lie, lie, truth.
Lie, lie, lie, lie, truth.
You got to figure it out.
The end of 2014, there was a missing man in the Iron River area.
He wasn't found.
Chris Reagan is missing, and it is a mystery.
Police Chief Laura Frizo discovers that Reagan is romantically tied to a married co-worker, Kelly Cochran.
She and her husband, Jason, are brought in for questioning.
Jason really had motive.
You know, he was the husband who was being cheated on.
But as soon as he's in front of police, he falls apart.
He's shaking, he's fumbling over his words.
I actually was institutionalized
from over a month ago where I get
I just really flustered in that
so... Okay.
When Laura and her team
search the Cochran's Home, they find
a litany of weapons from battle axes
to shotguns. They find this blood spatter
and they find a manuscript
written by Jason called Where Monsters Hide.
The manuscript is this
essentially fantasy-driven tale
of a overlooked man,
and it has various accounts of him and his wife
killing people, and includes one that almost perfectly mirrors
what happened with Chris Regan.
So at this point, investigators think
that they have uncovered a gold mine of evidence
against the Cochran's, until something shocking
happens the next day.
The Cochran's have now disappeared.
When Jason and Kelly Cochran fled their home
in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,
back in March of 2015, private investigators were already tracking their movements using a hidden GPS device.
The final destination, their hometown of Hobart, Indiana.
Kelly and Jason were neighbors.
They lived next door to each other all their lives.
I was trying to do what I thought was the right thing.
You go to school, you go to college, you get married.
Kelly wore the pants in the family, so whatever she wanted, Jason did.
I got bored.
from getting married.
It was okay in the start, but like all I did was work.
She was wanting to help get their business,
you know, up and running and make more money.
Even though the Cochran's are now out of her jurisdiction,
Chief Frizzo continues to investigate
Chris Reagan's disappearance.
She's now focused on a place known as the Caspian Pit.
She enlists the help of a former police investigator, Michael Niger.
What makes the Caspian Pit such an excellent place
to hide evidence?
Well, it's deep.
And also, it's within a couple hundred meters
of where the Cochranes lived and be very easy to get to
in the dark and drop something.
Were you able to dredge up a burn barrel?
Was that here?
Yes, a burn barrel was actually found by the divers
just offshore here.
There was a clothesline attached to this burn barrel
with a cement block to it to weight it down.
We found cement blocks in the backyard of Cochran's
and the actual clothes line, which was missing.
I think the implication was that perhaps Kelly and Jason were burning Chris's body, or parts of it at least.
I was out in my garage, and what in the heck is that smell?
And I walked across the street here, and she came running out of her yard and met me in the middle of the street, and I said, what the hell are you burning?
And she's there, I'm burning some brush out there.
I said, look, I lived up here my whole life, and I never smelled nothing like that.
The Cochrane's had a fire pit and there was a burn barrel that had been there.
Once we sifted through that fire pit ash, we found a saw blade.
We found the components to a pair of jeans, which was quite significant.
We felt confident that this was likely there burn barrel.
However, there was nothing in it, obviously.
I mean, it was open in the pit and anything that was in it would have washed out.
Why did you need to get rid of it?
So that was my validation.
any way that we were on the right track.
But then, in February of 2016, back in Hobart, Indiana,
there's a truly shocking development
that's about to upend the entire case,
a 911 call coming from the house
where the Cochran's are living.
White County 911, Operator 17.
My husband, his business is like, well,
he's bleeding barely.
I don't know what's wrong, he's throwing off these sweat.
I need an ambulance right away.
Kelly calls 911, Kelly calls 911.
Kelly calls 911 and says, you know, I need the ambulance here.
My husband's barely breathing.
You said he's difficulty breathing?
Really?
On this call, my instincts were just yelling at me that something's not right with this scene.
She seemed to kind of conveniently get in our way a lot,
and she just didn't seem to have the proper reaction to finding her husband, you know, in cardiac arrest.
I'm panicking, like I'm trying to, you know, be of some use as much as I didn't want him in my life.
I didn't want him dead.
Jason Cochran unfortunately was pronounced dead in the emergency room at St. Mary's.
After Jason died, Kelly reached out to his friend Walt to let him know that Jason had passed.
And Walt was immediately concerned.
Kelly's tone was very strange.
Everything about it felt abrupt and staged.
And with encouragement from his wife,
Well, called the FBI.
So what made you call the FBI?
I found the flyer on Chris Regan being missing,
and it had two numbers on there, the Iron River Police and the FBI.
So I figured somebody should know that Jason's dead.
Do you remember what you told the FBI?
I told them that I have some friends that lived in the UP.
They told me their suspects, and one of them died Saturday.
The FBI routes the call to the proper jurisdiction,
and it lands on the desk of Hobart Detective Sergeant Jeremy Ogden.
Jeremy Ogden had a reputation as an amazing investigator.
Jeremy was known as a master interviewer.
I've never received a call like that before.
I knew that I needed to make sure that Jason wasn't being taken to a funeral home
rather than going for an autopsy.
It's not every day that a detective attends an autopsy.
And so what did you learn in that particular one?
I learned that, you know, Jason had particular hemorrhaging around his eyes within the whites of his pupils.
And what does that point to?
Pressure and suffocation.
The autopsy results lead Ogden to take a deep dive into Kelly Cochran's background and Chris Reagan's disappearance.
So he connects with Chief Laura Frizo from Iron River.
And then ultimately, Laura sent me
all of the documents and the videos.
Immediately I knew that this was going to work out well
because he was on the same page, his thoughts, his words.
It was like, oh my gosh, somebody else gets it.
He gets it.
He's thinking like I do, and that's rare.
What follows is a cat-mouse game
between Detective Ogden and Kelly Cochran.
As Ogden hatches a truly bizarre situation,
As Ogden hatches a truly bizarre scheme to get Kelly to open up
about what really happened to Chris Reagan.
He decides to make a carving on the tree
that will really freak her out when she sees it.
I thought maybe she would see it as a sign from the dead
or maybe even something supernatural.
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At this point, Jeremy Ogden is now leading the investigation into the Cochran's.
I'm running the case and I'm doing all the things that I think are necessary.
Detective Ogden has what will be the first of many interrogations with Kelly Cochran
at the Hobart Police Station following her husband Jason's death.
It's an easy thing to go through.
Kelly has a lot to say about what happened to Jason,
but when the conversation turns to Chris Reagan, not so much.
I'm not trying to push you.
I'm not at all.
I just don't pick a while.
I just...
I didn't say you did anything.
I said by the time this is done,
you'll tell me what happened to Chris.
I sat here and drank a whole ice-tee before you got here.
Detective Ogden starts talking with Kelly
and building a relationship with her.
That relationship building involves several conversations
that Jeremy recorded undercover, including at a local restaurant.
You can begin the next chapter of your life.
There's only one way for you to do this, though.
And that's 100% honest.
I think she wanted to see whether or not I was going to be a worthy adversary.
And I think she wanted to play the game.
And I don't want to make a permanent decision on that temporary thought, feeling.
But the way I feel now, because that's not fair to me or whoever else would have passed.
It's almost like the two of them were having a chess game.
Absolutely, yeah.
I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to get somebody to tell you a secret that only they know.
And I come up with this idea about a fake letter.
Detective Ogden calls Jason's friend, Walt Ammerman, and tells him he wants him to be part of this plan to catch Kelly Cockerick.
What he wanted Walt to do was become an actor. They were going to have him call Kelly.
from a parked car to talk about this letter.
It is March 12th, 2016 at 4.38 p.m.
He's going to be calling Kelly Cochran.
He wanted me to call her and tell her that I had a letter that Jason had mailed me.
But it's not true. There is no letter. This is all made up, made up for one purpose,
to see what Kelly Cochran's reaction would be.
I got a letter like January 4th or 5th or something like that.
from him.
You were basically having to convince Kelly
that her dead husband was sending a message from beyond the grave.
That he felt or knew that she likely was going
to do something to him.
The note says, if something were to happen to me,
please send this in a few weeks to the Iron River Police
Department.
It's like I'm supposed to mail this, but I just wanted to tell you,
Please don't.
Please don't.
She says, please don't mail it.
I don't know.
Yeah, do it, she has you.
And right then, I knew, like, he got her.
Yeah, hook, line, and sinker.
And what did that tell you?
Told me I did the right thing.
But that wasn't your only chest mood.
You had another trick up your sleeve, which was a tree and a carving?
Yeah.
The tree's over there?
Yeah, the tree's right over there.
And I had watched her several times there.
He's actually been following Kelly Cochran.
She doesn't know this.
And Detective Ogden knows that Kelly goes to this one park all the time
and is by a certain tree.
She would just come and she would sit on that log.
And there was a couple times where I thought she was even,
crying. So he decides to make a carving on the tree that will really freak her out when she sees it.
And what he carves into the tree is Chris is here.
I thought maybe she would see it as a sign from the dead or maybe even something supernatural
and just generate her to talk to me even more.
It's not exactly the way they teach it at the police academy.
No.
All I saw were her running through the woods, and then all of a sudden the truck backed out and she took off.
That's the night that she decides to tell me everything.
You watched him die, right?
Where did he shoot him in his body?
You don't know?
You caught Chris in your arms?
This is huge.
For the first time, Kelly is admitting Chris was murdered.
Chris is lying in your house shot.
You told me this.
And that he died quickly.
Correct?
She says that Jason shot Chris.
Her portion is being forced to help clean up.
I'm the victim.
My husband was abusive.
I had no choice.
I couldn't tell anybody or he'd kill me too.
What happened?
What did he do you do with him?
What?
What do you mean by downsize?
What did he do with Chris?
Cut him up.
I remember her words being he downsized him,
and it just made my stomach turn.
That was the first time she admitted not only had Chris been murdered,
but that he'd been dismembered.
Correct.
And she goes on to give a very specific detail that will come into play later,
She claims that Jason forced her to pull the bullet out of Chris's body with a pair of forcips.
Why not arrest her?
You have to understand.
I put her in a position to play the victim.
She had to do all of these things under duress.
And that's how she's going to be able to disclose other information so that we can recover Chris Reagan.
But you know where you put peace in this?
Yes.
You're going to go with me, okay?
We're going to go.
He says we're going to Michigan.
You're going to show us where the body is.
Detective Ogden and Kelly drive all night.
He is counting on her to help him.
But will she?
With her, it was like, lie, lie, lie, lie, truth.
Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, truth.
It's the middle of the night.
Kelly Cochran is driving with Detective Jeremy Ogden
back to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
to show him where she and her husband.
husband Jason buried Chris's remains.
Driving up there with her, it was interesting.
I mean, she did what most people do after they tell you
their deepest, darkest secret.
She slept.
They drive all night.
They leave at like midnight.
They get to Iron River, you know, at like seven in the morning.
It's just miles and miles of trees and rolling hills.
You could literally go to a place here where nobody else
had ever been.
Pretty easy to hide a body.
Yeah.
It's weird how beautiful it is and at the same time, Erie.
So as I'm following them, they go down to this one particular area.
We're just like on a flat, straight spot in the road.
And she's like, it's right here.
And there are other police officers there to search the area.
But they find nothing.
So the question is, did Kelly get the spot wrong,
or is Kelly lying?
Detective Ogden then asked Kelly to show him around her house where the murder happened.
I wanted her to explain to me what happened to Chris and how he died.
And then we'll go upstairs and we're on a way down.
And it for all beyond film.
She started to take me upstairs.
This was your room, Kelly?
Yes.
She told you basically that they had had.
Sex upstairs.
Right, there was some kind of sex involved.
You and him end up up here in this room.
That's right?
On the 14th you did?
Mm-mm.
You know, it's like you can see her mind working.
Whatever story she was going to tell me,
it was going to have to match the physical evidence
that we may or may not discover.
She takes him back downstairs and says,
you know, actually it happened out here in the hallway
in this back hallway.
You were having sex right here.
Okay?
So she says that once there's
done, Chris starts to walk up the stairs into the kitchen and Jason, unbeknowns to her, shoots
him from the basement.
You're telling me that Jason shot him from behind?
And that Chris falls back on her and that they both tumble down the stairs.
Is he still on top of you when you get to the bottom?
Is he, are you actually under him?
Yeah.
Okay.
With her, it was like, lie, lie, lie, lie truth.
Lie truth.
Lie, lie, lie, lie.
You got to figure it out.
What's Jason say to you?
Awesome.
Awesome.
It's so terrible.
As incriminating as all this is, Detective Ogden is sure she isn't telling the whole truth.
You continue that conversation back in Indiana.
Yeah.
Hours and hours of conversation.
Yeah.
There's over 100 hours.
What don't he believe?
Again, it's all recorded under cover.
What don't I believe?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure with you.
His communication with her really really.
really picked up speed back in Indiana,
because he's now determined.
I'll meet her at a park.
I've sat down at a restaurant with her.
I only have one goal.
It's to bring Chris home.
Detective Ogden believes that the more they talk,
the more likely Kelly is to slip up.
And if she slips up,
she may just lead them to Chris Regan's body.
I understand care if you believe you're not,
he's not at the ground.
He's not at the ground.
Give you my word.
It seems like Kelly kind of wanted to be playing with Detective Ogden,
the sort of cat and mouse game.
You have to understand that there are things that you've said throughout this
that would cause concern, okay, and changes in variations of your story.
She continues to maintain throughout all these hundreds of hours that she's the victim.
It's always my husband forced me to do this.
That you're the victim when it comes to Chris.
that you were put in this bad position, right?
Yes.
At one point, you put your foot down
and say, stop lying.
No more this crap lying to me.
No more, all the I've been back and forth with you.
All the .
What brought that on?
Frustration, probably.
Ogden thinks Kelly realizes he is losing his patience
and might finally just arrest her.
It was all about to come.
come to a head. Soon after, Detective Ogden gets a misspelled text from Kelly. Ever been to the
West Coast? I was driving last night. Sure enough, she skipped town. Except she didn't head
west after all. The police tracked her as she fled south to Kentucky. 33-year-old Kelly Cochran
was arrested in Graves County, Kentucky after a tip to the U.S. Marshals, Cochran was wanted in
Michigan. And so when you interview her in Kentucky, in many ways, it was a breakthrough confession.
Yes.
James are different. Why are they different?
I'm here. I interviewed her all day that day, and then I interviewed her for a portion of the
day the next day. Now Kelly drops another bombshell.
If I shoot it be my responsibility, regardless of he helped or not.
Her new story, she now claims she knew in advance that Jason was going to kill Chris Reagan the night she invited him to their home.
You took part in the planning of it. You allow it to occur when you didn't have to allow it to occur.
And she tells Ogden she knew this because they had an agreement.
When does that agreement occur?
Right.
And your agreement from the time you were married was that you had the affair.
It's your responsibility to kill off that person.
Or he would kill you, vice versa.
Right.
If either spouse were to cheat during the course of the marriage,
the cheating spouse would have to either kill their lover or be killed by this other spouse.
You heard that right, and yet that bizarre alleged wedding day pact
is just the start of what she reveals.
I'm going to get emotional.
I wait one second because it still gets me every time.
Now in jail in Michigan, charged with murder, Kelly Cochran is taken out of herself to go on what cops are calling a field trip.
Kelly had agreed that she would take me to Chris's remains where she left them.
She wanted to do the right thing.
Yeah.
Excuse me if I do.
See where it starts to curb to the left side park there.
She takes her a little further.
east than she took us on the first day.
What would the biggest piece of bone be that you,
I mean, the torso and that was here?
So then we should find ribs, and I think that generally...
The skull should be the biggest, though.
As she's talking, she has no guilt at all.
So carefree, like, no big deal.
This was not exactly a somber day for her.
I'm going to smoke dinner.
She had a lot of cigarettes.
cigarettes, and then she asked for a cheese pizza for lunch.
How do you cheese people?
Just cheese?
Maybe a soda.
Can you bring pizza?
While the searching continues, Chief Frizzo takes her to the house.
You say that, you know, he, Jason pulled him into here, and that's where he cut him out.
And she's eating a piece of pizza, of course, when we're doing this.
And then Kelly also is just nonchalantly walking past the kitchen, see.
kitchen sink and says, oh, there's the forceps.
You said something about four steps?
Yeah.
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah.
You're saying you use those?
Yep.
It had been sitting there the whole time.
And I said, are you saying you use those to try and get the bullet out of Chris's head?
And she said, yep.
Just like that.
It was critical evidence matching what Kelly had said in that early interrogation when she first
admitted that Chris had been murdered.
But back in these woods, and even more important,
important discovery.
Chris Regan's skull itself.
I'm going to get emotional.
I wait one second, because it still gets me every time.
I just said to myself, I finally found you.
I just literally, like, said that to myself, you know?
So.
That was a very sobering moment.
And the only bright spot on that is they could link
Kelly Cochran into his.
murder and that got things going so that she would go to trial.
The Kelly Cochran case just is the biggest case we've had locally, maybe ever.
Kelly's life was riding on the trial.
Despite all that she's admitted in those interrogations, Kelly Conkron pleads not guilty.
I was definitely afraid that she was going to get off.
You never know how a jury's going to go.
Ladies and gentlemen, Kelly and Jason Cochran were bonded in blood.
The case was prosecuted by Iron County prosecutor Melissa Powell.
We were pretty confident going into trial that we could convict her of being an aider and abettor.
Kelly Cochran was a willing participant, and because of that, she's just as guilty as he is.
Michael Shulke was the defense attorney for Kelly Cochran.
We want the evidence that the people have to get to their burden is the word of Ms. Cochran.
What's your word worth?
She's a liar.
We believe that Jason acted alone because he was not into this open marriage and was jealous and angry that Kelly was involved with another man.
Please be seated.
The trial would last almost three weeks.
She has already admitted that she knew what was going to happen.
And though there were some 60 witnesses, the case pretty much boiled down to just one.
Kelly Cochran herself.
Kelly testified about the abuse that she claims she suffered in her marriage.
There was a lot of times where you would grab me and pushed me,
he became very jealous, very angry.
There was times where he had threatened me in the house, outside of the house, throwing stuff that
me.
Kelly Gakran testified for several days.
I don't think she helped herself at all.
You never told people that he was abusive until this case came about to do.
Until after.
And you never told people that he threatened you
until this case came about, right?
Until after.
When I saw Kelly in person,
I couldn't believe Christopher
would have had a sexual relationship with her.
She looked like the devil.
Her eyes were blank.
I don't know if I would have been capable
to shoot him or even do anything about it.
There's nothing that comes out of her mouth
that I would ever believe.
I think the jury wanted to hear from her
and how she was going to explain away
hundreds of hours of previous statements.
Remember, her story changed in all those recorded interrogations,
from I Know Nothing to Jason forced me to help kill Chris.
When does that agreement occur?
A wedding night?
To we had a wedding pact and I was part of the murder.
I was my mind.
Because every time I had an interview or an interview
or interrogation with him.
Everything I said was wrong.
What do you mean?
I don't think he would question me until I said
what was supposed to be said.
What was it like watching Kelly on the stand?
Excruciating.
So it's your testimony today
that you've had no plans to kill Chris at all, correct?
I've never wanted him dead.
And you lied to detective agony.
You said there was a plan, correct?
Correct.
She swears this testimony is no lie.
Today, you're telling the truth to least 12 or 14 strangers.
Yes, ma'am.
With Kelly admitting so many lies, the defense asked the jury,
how can they believe one story versus any other?
Why is she truthful when she says she was acting with Jason versus times that she said he acted alone?
What makes her more truthful then?
I think at that point in time, she's overwhelmed, she's made so many statements,
she's told so many lies, it's time to tell the truth.
People disclose the truth and bits and pieces
when they're ready and when they're caught.
The defendants in this matter were bonded in blood.
Chris Reagan was bathed in it.
And at this time, I'm asking you to wash away the blood.
I'm fine the defendant guilty of all counts.
There is reasonable doubt here.
People have failed to do their burden.
And if you believe that, you have to quit.
Kelly had made the comment before trial.
Before trial, you don't think I can turn just one juror.
I was concerned that there might be one juror that buys her story.
And as those jurors start to deliberate, there is something else.
What is it that they haven't heard?
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The jury deliberated for about three hours, which considering it was a two and a half week-long
trial wasn't very long at all.
The jury comes back in and as they're standing in the jury box, I felt confident because
you know, a couple of them did look over and smile, just kind of give a look.
Count number one, open murder, guilty of first degree.
premeditated murder eating and abetting.
Everybody just cried and Chris's family was sitting right behind me and the first thing I did is just
turn around and hug them.
Kelly was just straight-faced during the reading of the verdict.
I didn't notice any changes in her at all.
Unfortunately, the jury bought the story that the prosecution put forth.
35-year-old Kelly Cochran will never again walk free.
Guilty of five total felony counts.
Kelly was convicted on first-degree premeditated murder,
which carries a mandatory life sentence in Michigan
and without the possibility of parole.
For me, it's not going to change anything.
You know, Chris is gone.
And what she did is just horrible.
I hope she rats in hell.
Kelly Cochran is convicted and sentenced,
but there's much more to her case
than what was presented in court.
Dark and twisted allegations that the
The jurors never heard.
These are some really disturbing allegations
that were brought forth by the neighbors of the Cochran's
who said they heard these weird construction noises
coming from Kelly and Jason's house late at night.
It's grand, I'm saying, and the syphican,
the one with the real long blade goes back and forth
and cut through wood and nails and everything
at the same time with it.
Kelly and Jason asked me if I want to come over for dinner one night.
I was like, yeah, sure.
And this was like two days after Chris was missing.
It's like mind-boggling how much meat they had.
So we were always wondering about that,
what if they were that kind of people,
and actually did kill a guy, and then bouchered them up,
and had us over for dinner.
I think they hacked them up.
I think they hacked them up and they do it to us.
Don't even say that.
I'm like, oh, God. Oh, God.
Like, no.
When I realized that I might have ate the dude,
I didn't want to believe it.
It changed me.
It changed me 100%.
It was a theory that they came to a conclusion on their own.
That wasn't something that we ever even brought into the case investigation.
It's not that I didn't.
It's not that I didn't think it could happen, but it wasn't significant at the time.
But one thing investigators took very seriously was the allegation that there could be other murder victims out there.
Kelly's own brother told Detective Ogden that Kelly said herself that there were more victims.
And the more has come.
And how many more bodies did she tell you?
Mostly there's nine total.
Police were recording all of Kelly Cochran's phone conversations while she was behind bars.
And you can hear her own mother asking her, is it true? Are there other murder victims?
Hi, Cuff.
What's going on, Kelly? What the hell is wrong?
I mean, where did all this come from?
You didn't see this coming?
I see this coming after it all happened, but I didn't know that you guys killed people before all this.
Do you have a conscience?
Is this like, I mean, have you always felt this way?
I've always been like this, huh?
Kelly actually told me that she was born the way she is.
She's never had emotions. She's never had sympathy.
There is no evidence that has been brought forth
that would indicate that any stories that were told by Kelly
of being involved in murders of other people are true.
There are no bodies coming out of the woodwork that are tied.
to Kelly Cochran.
But what does Kelly Cochran herself now say about the allegations that she's a serial killer?
You had told police that you had killed others in the past.
Is there truth to that?
And in a case where they uncovered so much darkness and evil,
there would be a surprising light at the end of the tunnel for the two lead investigators.
Following the guilty verdict, Kelly is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Chris Reagan.
Eleven months later, Kelly pleads guilty to murdering her husband, Jason Cochran, in Indiana,
and is sentenced to an additional 65 years in prison.
I believe that the idea behind this evil and her, I mean, it's the purest form of evil that you're going to get.
I spoke to Kelly Cochran from her prison in Michigan, where she's serving out her life sentence.
You told police that you had killed others in the past.
Is there truth to that?
No, I've never killed anybody.
Then why would you tell investigators you had?
And lead them on wild goose chases?
I don't know.
They said they spoke to neighbors who lived down the street from you,
who were convinced that they had a barbecue that consisted of human remains.
I heard about that.
Here's the thing.
I never had a barbecue with anybody.
Nobody was ever cooked.
Nobody was barbecued.
I've spoken to investigators' conversations.
to investigators, Kelly, who said that when they talked to you and heard your story, that
it made them believe in pure evil.
What would you say to that?
I believe that's .
I was raised by good people.
I've never harmed anybody.
And so in your view, what did happen that night when Chris died?
What?
My husband disabled the man and cut him up in front of me.
And you just stood there doing nothing?
What are you talking about?
You didn't call the police.
You didn't...
I was tied up.
This is the first I'm hearing of her ever saying she'd been tied up.
This is a game.
She's going to continue this game as long as she can.
And she's not done with it yet.
There probably is not a punishment on this earth.
That could match what she did to Christopher.
I could feel Christopher with me when I'm around Apple Blossom Trail.
Feel a warm and joy and happiness because it was a good place for us.
For Laura Frizzo, the case had a bittersweet outcome.
outcome. Although she was able to help bring justice for Chris Reagan's murder, she was
fired from her job as police chief after Kelly's arrest. I started to have some
issues with my boss at work and those issues kind of got heated. But while Laura
may have lost her job, she found romance in an unlikely place. I felt immediately
connected to him just because of the person he was. And so you kind of made the first move.
What happened?
One day, text him and I said, do you want to kiss me?
I was like, why did I send that?
Because there was like dead air, just no response for a long time.
You know, the answer was yes right out of the gate as soon as I read it.
So you asked for the first kiss, who asked for whose hand in marriage?
I did.
How'd that go, big guy?
It went well.
She accepted right away.
What's the future for both of you?
We own a piece of land that Laura picked in the UP right on a lake.
And one day I'm going to build her a dream house there.
And of course we wish them the best as they now plan their next chapter together away from their work.
That is our program for tonight.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'm David Yor.
And from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.
Good night.
Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.
We hope you'll join us Friday nights at 9 on ABC for all new broadcast episode.
See you then.
There was only one, Richard Simmons.
It's sweating time.
Megastar, adored by millions.
Then one day, he disappeared for a decade.
Where in the world is Richard Simmons?
Now, his closest alien friends speak out for the first time to Diane Sawyer.
He had to be in a lot of pain.
It had to be in a lot of pain.
And what does Richards live in housekeeper?
The last person to see him alive now say happened behind closed doors.
This is the first time I'm talking about this.
The mystery of Richard Simmons, a Diane Sawyer special.
Premiers Tuesday, May 12th on ABC and stream on Disney Plus and Hulu.
