3. Baby Bird

Investigators and psychologists try to get to the bottom of which Cochran was abusing the other. Chief Frizzo works with the FBI and an unlikely informant to coerce Kelly into confessing. And Kelly hits the road, again.

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Written, researched, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
Music by William Hellfire, Whithe, Sergey Cheremisinov, Radical Face, and Anna Calvi
Sources: Dead North and The Iron County Reporter

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
This is a studio both and production. I've been struck by what appears to
be to me at least, themajor conflict within Kelly is that her testimony
wavers back and forth between her egoand her need to victimize herself so she
can get away with what she's done. So she'll do everything she can to

(00:33):
minimize Jason's weaknesses and make him outto be an abuser and stronger than he
portrayed himself to be, and presenthim as the real aggressor in the crimes
they committed. But then she alsoseems to struggle with the flip side of
that, which is where in doingso, she makes herself out to be
the weak one, the one who'sbeing controlled, And it seemed to me
in her testimony and interviews with police, there was a real internal struggle there.

(00:58):
I would definitely agree. Enlisting andwatching the testimony of her on the
stand, I definitely saw this strugglebetween on the one hand, being self
serving and trying to portray Jason asthis abusive person that she was in fear
of and who was controlling her anddominating her, and at the same time

(01:19):
her ego, I think or hernarcissism or whatever, was kind of having
a hard time with that and kindof wanting to kind of because of that,
She's very inconsistent at times in termsof what she says. So on
the one hand, she's talking abouthow fearful she is and how control she
feels, and then on the otherhand, she's leaving him and going off
and doing all these things on herown. There's no indication that she's not

(01:40):
telling anybody she's afraid of him,and there's nothing that substantiates what she's saying.
And so I think that internal strugglethat she does have, part of
it being Okay, I want tosurvive, I want to get out of
this. I don't really feel remorsewhat I'm doing. Who could I put
this on? Okay, Jason's dead, He's going to be the one I'm
going to lay all this on.And yet at the same time, I
can't bear the thought of anybody seeingme as this weak person who's not in

(02:05):
control, who doesn't take charge,who isn't kind of omnipotent. I think
there is that this ongoing struggle thatshe has, which clearly is illustrated in
the things that she says over andover again. As I've said before,
Kelly Cochrane is a goddamn liar,and perhaps the best key to uncovering her

(02:27):
lies from her truths and her halftruths is the timeline of her contradictory statements,
and that timeline has a very definitivemarker the death of Jason Cochrane.
Once Jason died, Kelly's statements surroundingalmost everything changed, the murder of Chris

(02:51):
Regan, her relationship with Jason,crime she'd previously committed, and of course
the pact itself. Jason Cochrane waspronounced dead in the early morning hours of
February twentieth, twenty sixteen. Paramedicstold investigators that upon arrival at Kelly Cochrane's

(03:15):
mother's home in Hobert, Indiana,that Jason was being held up in a
seated position by Kelly. He waspurple, his skin was warm and sweaty,
and he was both breathless and pulseless. There was vomit on the floor
surrounding Jason, as well as inand around his mouth, a telltale sign

(03:36):
of an overdose. Paramedics also reportedthat while they were on the scene and
trying to resuscitate Jason, Kelly washysterical and would not leave his side,
to the point of being incredibly disruptiveto their intervention, and when they asked
Kelly to leave the room on severaloccasions, she refused. Kelly's repeated obstructions

(03:59):
got so bad that paramedics eventually transportedJason to a nearby hospital, despite agreeing
that he was beyond medical intervention.Jason was pronounced dead on arrival of a
heroin overdose, citing confirmation from Kellythat he'd done heroine that night, along
with the appearance of drug paraphernalia atthe scene and Jason's vomit. A toxicology

(04:23):
report would confirm that Jason did havehigh amounts of heroine in his system.
However, and perhaps fortunately, becausethe Cochranes were already under investigation for the
disappearance of Chris Regan, Hobert Pedeassigned detective Jeremy Ogden to investigate Jason's death,
and so Ogden began working across jurisdictionswith Iron Rivers Chief Frizzo, and

(04:49):
his first step in that investigation wasto attend the autopsy of Jason Cochrane.
Meanwhile, all DNA swabs from theCochrane home had come back either inconclusive or
not a match for Chris Reagan,and Chief Frizzo, under mounting pressures from

(05:11):
internal political issues and the death ofJason Cochrane, was desperate for evidence connecting
the Cochrans to Chris's disappearance. Whatshe needed was a confession, and Jason
was dead and Kelly was no longercooperating with her, so Chief Frizzo started
working on a plan to coerce Kellyinto confessing that she and Jason murdered Chris

(05:35):
Reagan, and that plan was centeredaround Jason's death. One of the greatest
mysteries surrounding Jason and Kelly Cochrane isthe actual dynamic of their relationship. The

(05:55):
two were only ever interviewed separately bypolice, and in those separate interviews only
ever agreed on one thing. Jasonwas aware that Kelly was seeing and sleeping
with other people. Jason told investigatorsthat he didn't like that Kelly had opened
the marriage, but felt it washis only way to keep her with him.

(06:18):
Jason was often very emotional when discussingtheir marriage and incredibly open about his
physical and mental health struggles. Kellyon the other hand, painted a very
different picture, not just in herpolice interviews, but in her everyday life.
He said he feel me I everyonein divorce. Many times he wasn't

(06:43):
gout. He had thrown stock,dean, slam doors, broken things.
Yes, that's just old. Ireally drugs a lot um. There wasn't
really one of a certain kind ofre use um at the start. I

(07:08):
just smokeware one of just as ayeah, I guess just once in a
while. When things got bad,I started using phills a lot m.
I was depressed a lot, soI took a lot one hills. I
had experimented with pretty much any kindof dructing thinking, okay, and you
so when things got bad, whatwhat do you mean by that? St

(07:29):
When things got bad in the houseand at home, I started using drugs
a lot more to numbers, feelingto put a tempered relief on what I
was going through. Okay, oneof the things really starts getting to have
people two thousand people in two thousandand one January. What was one on
that Jason had stopped working in twothousand and eleven. His issue was his

(07:54):
back. He had a back issueonce in a while, which is cost
him and not be able to work. He stopped working from that point of
doing work from two thousand and elevenand really until how he and work.
I mean once in a while heto do stuff, but that was it.
You say he hasn't a bad badeemlid? Is he able to still

(08:15):
do things? He was able todo anything. He wasn't nimbleid when he
had he had he was that nosocieticum which would cause pain, you know,
the nervous pinch in his final court, which would go down on the
love side of his like which wouldcause pain. I'm not saying it didn't
hurt. He was still able,papable of doing pretty much anything. Anybody

(08:35):
else Conde give me an example ofsomebody out of products the yard you would
do or something like that that hedidn't need it too much outside it's in
file for disability and didn't want anybodyto see it. However, there were
times where heat I mean he tookour dog them up the ambles hundred pounds
and she liked to drag people throughthe yard. She's being playful and helping.

(08:58):
But he'd care stuff. I mean, he can carry. So after
we started working, did things gotworshiped. He said, can you give
us example or something that we hadhappened after? How things got worse?
Things got worse because I don't wantto, you know, say healthy things

(09:22):
because I went to this day,I still don't know. Um, but
he was angry. He was jealous. I was out, I was leaving
the house summer day, I wasworking sevent days a week. He became
very jealous, very angry. Therewas times where he had threatened me in
the house, outside of the house, throwing stuff out. I mean,

(09:43):
do you want stop stuffings? Yes, there was a time when we were
living in the Mississippi Street. Thiswas two thousand and eight. He was
very angry. Um, he hadat thirty at six. We always anytime
he had guns in the house,they were loaded. Um. We had
a fight. This was another thingof the jealousy. And at this time

(10:03):
I had no other relationships, wasn'tseeing anybody else and put the gun to
my head. We were having Iwas screaming and yelling and yeah, I
was still arguing back with him andhe pulled the triggered in And I don't
know if I was necessarily scared.I'm sure it was, but just the
whole thought that you know, healready had a gun in my hat and

(10:26):
I was going to pull the trigger. Gun wasn't loaded at that time.
The only time I was never loaded, thank you said this happened in two
thousands. Were there other times?So he probably gun to your here pointing
the gun probably about twenty times.None of these claims could be verified,

(10:48):
and there are no accounts of Kellytelling people about Jason's alleged abuse until late
twenty fourteen, in the months leadingup to Chris Reagan's death, when she
told co workers at both of herjobs, reported Jason's alleged attempted murder suicide
to h R at Oldenburg, andtold Eric Ericsson and reportedly Chris Regan that

(11:11):
Jason was and had been abusive theirentire marriage. Eric Ericson went so far
as to tell investigators that Jason wasa very bad man. Yet almost everyone
who described Jason in police interviews andeventually under oath described him as weak and

(11:33):
kind, and even Kelly, whenjustifying her trysts, cited Jason's physical decline
as the reason she opened the marriage, But even her claims to police escalated
following Jason's death, when he wasalive, she reported manipulation and verbal abuse.
After he died. She said itwas threats with guns, physical violence,

(11:56):
and most notably the Pact, thingsshe never mentioned until Jason was no
longer around to corroborate it, andI'll admit I was feeling conflicted about this.
I believe you should always err onthe side of the victim when it
comes to accusations of abuse and assault. But Kelly is a known liar,

(12:20):
has a genius level IQ, andhas proved herself to be a pretty savvy
manipulator. So I asked doctor JoniJohnston what she thought about Kelly's claims,
the Pact and the general dynamic betweenKelly and Jason. You touched on three
questions that I had that I thinkwere really important to understanding Kelly and her

(12:43):
crimes and her potential crimes. Whichis is the Pact real? And I
tend to believe it's not because wedon't hear about the Pact for the first
time until after Jason is dead,so he can't corroborate it, Which to
me has been Kelly's biggest tell iswhat changed after his death and the way
she was talking and what she wasdescribing about her relationships. The second is

(13:05):
who was actually driving this if sheis to be believed and she or they
murdered multiple people. Is Jason theaggressor? Is she? And I have
never questioned And I hate this becauseI always say believe women. But I
don't believe that she was an abusevictim. I don't believe that she was
forced to do anything she didn't wantto do. And I think if anyone

(13:26):
was the aggressor in the relationship,it was Kelly. I agree with that.
And there was a really interesting interviewright after Chris Reagan disappeared, and
she's talking about the fact that she'sin this open marriage and that yes,
her husband knows about this, andshe implies at some point that Jason had

(13:50):
had cancer, and this is kindof there's some implication of, see,
don't she feel sorry for me?This is why I have an open marriage
because my husband had cancer maybe couldn'tfunction. There that they show the video
of the interrogation with Jason, whois crying and is talking about the fact
that yes, he is aware thathis wife has been seeing other people and

(14:11):
he doesn't like it, but hefeels like it's either he goes along with
it or he is going to loseher, and the discrepancy between those two
is just amazing. What you see, at least what I saw, is
just this incredible power imbalance in thatrelationship. It's a dynamic that's really fascinating.
And one of the reasons I chosethis case for the third season is

(14:31):
we don't often see two people cometogether to kill, and usually when that
happens, there is a power imbalance. You know. The only notable exception
I can think of her Leonard Lakeand Charles Zing, and even those two
we don't have a full view ofthe dynamic between them. But most serial
killers, at least within media orportrayed as lone wolves. And the dynamic

(14:54):
between Kelly and Jason is the mostfascinating component of play here. And I
wonder what your opinion is on howthis couple came together, because if Jason
is not a psychopath, if Jasonis not the aggressor here, how does
she convince him to participate in,at minimum the killing of Chris Regan?

(15:16):
You know, I wish I hada better answer for that. I mean,
these are two people who grew uptogether, so it would be interesting
to go back and get more informationabout their early romance, and my sense
would be that from the very beginningthat Kelly has been the driver of this
relationship. One of the things wedo know when we're talking about women with
psychopathy is that it's not uncommon forthem to manipulate other people to do their

(15:39):
dirty work. So there are plentyof instances of women who have convinced you
know, a child, their child, or a spouse, or a boyfriend
or a girlfriend, typically by portrayingthemselves as victim in some way to knock

(16:02):
off somebody or to get rid ofsomebody for them. So that dynamic is
really interesting and disturbing, but it'snot one that It's not one that I
haven't come across before, for sure. You know, one of the hard
things I think, Josh, isthat sometimes when you have these team killers,
which is kind of I think moreof what you're talking about when you're
talking about like the late case andyou know, some of the other ones,

(16:26):
some of the cases out in England, there have been a couple of
couples who have been team killers,and it was very clear that at least
at the beginning, the man drovethat whole train. I mean, he
was the one who had these fantasiesand would talk about these fantasies and kind
of groomed in a way his girlfriendand then spouse to participate in this.

(16:48):
But I do think it's possible.And this is where I think there's a
huge question mark with Jason and Kelly. I definitely think that Kelly was in
the driver's seat for most of this. But it is possible also, I
think for the dynamics in terms ofhow much enjoyment the other partner gets over
time. And I think that ispossible for somebody to start out killing for

(17:11):
somebody or to keep that relationship orto protect that other person, and then
to somewhat evolve and begin to enjoythat as well. I agree, And
I think, you know, Ithink it also goes back to power.
And I think it's very evident intheir interviews that Jason would have done anything
to keep Kelly in his life.I would agree. And that's a whole

(17:32):
other question, right. You kindof wonder who would be somebody who would
do anything for somebody. That's ascary thought as well. Yeah, it
truly is, you know, Ithink Kelly is obviously the biggest personality in
the story, and it's easy tooverlook, you know, the psychology behind
Jason and how he ended up inthis position. Yeah, in addition to

(17:56):
the emotional dependence, which clearly Jasonseems very invested in his relationship with Kelly,
there's almost a role reversal in thesense that he is also financially depended
upon her. I mean, sheis wearing the pants in this family in
all different kinds of ways and turnyou including being the one who's bringing all
the money in. He's almost entirelydependent upon her, which is terrifying and

(18:21):
I'm sure just fuel to the firethat is Kelly Cochrane. So the great
debate in the case of Kelly Cochraneis was she being abused by Jason?
And unfortunately we'll probably never know becausethe only person who could ever corroborate her
claims is dead. But if Kellywas making up the abuse, why why

(18:48):
in the months leading up to Chris'sdeath, would Kelly start telling people,
including the other two men in herlife, that Jason was abusive. Well,
I have some ideas. Within twohours of Jason's death, Kelly logged

(19:08):
on to Facebook and changed her profilepicture to one of her and Jason,
no one commented. An hour later, she changed her profile picture again to
one of just Jason, and thistime people began to ask what was going
on, so in the comments shemade the following announcement, my husband passed

(19:36):
away this morning and I'm not sureabout okay, but maybe one day I
might be. Who knows. Thisis a nightmare and I'm hoping I'll wake
up from it and he will stillbe here. And the sympathy quickly poured
in and as Kelly and Jason's familybegan planning his memorial. Jason's autopsy was

(20:02):
conducted on February twenty third. Doctorzul Wang conducted an autopsy on Jason Cochrane
with Hobert Police Detective Jeremy Ogden present. The final autopsy report listed the manner
of death as homicide and the causeof death was not a heroine overdose but

(20:26):
asphyxia due to strangulation. According tothe report, the anatomical findings indicated several
clinical observations. These included peticial hemorrhagesinvolving the conductive forehead, head and nose
hemorrhages of the bilateral patronal sinus intramuscularhemorrhage of the left sternoclido mastoid muscle and

(20:52):
hemorrhages of the peritrarcheal soft tissue.In addition to heroine, Jason also had
morphine in his system, but againthe cause of death was strangulation, and
so Detective Ogden decided to visit Kelly. He wanted an official statement from her
regarding the night of Jason's death,and that statement was wildly inconsistent from the

(21:18):
statements from paramedics who had been onthe scene and the autopsy report. A
few nights later, Kelly returned toFacebook to make a more official announcement regarding
Jason's death. I want to givea warm thank you to all who came
out to support me and our familyfor Jason's passing in funeral services. It

(21:40):
means so much to all of us. This is the hardest thing I will
ever have to deal with. Jasonwas my heart and my best friend,
and I am hoping he is watchingover me and his family. He always
knew how to light up a roomwith his smile and his kind words and
laughter. He will be missed byso many. I'm not sure how to
move forward without him. But Iknow that he would want us all to

(22:02):
move forward and know he is holdingour hand through this all. If anyone
needs to talk or to get ahold of me, please let me know
again. Thank you for all thebeautiful plants and flowers, the monetary gifts,
the food, and the love andsupport. Jason loved his family and
his many friends he grew up with. He told me some crazy stories of

(22:22):
the times he had with his friendsgrowing up and thought of you guys all
the time. Thanks again to allof you, Love you all. Detective
Ogden and Kelly would talk thirty eightmore times following that initial interview, and
April sixteenth, Ogden also put ina call to Chief Frizzo. Once Frizzo's

(22:48):
suspicions about Kelly's involvement and Jason's deathwere confirmed, she decided to move forward
with the plan she devised with theFBI to coerce a confession from Kelly in
the death of Chris Regan. Yousee, shortly after Jason's death, his
best friend Walt, contacted the FBIto report that he was suspicious of Kelly.

(23:12):
He told investigators that it was Kellywho is the abusive one and that
the abuse had escalated in the weeksprior to Jason's death. He told agents
that he was aware that Kelly andJason were under investigation for the murder of
Chris Regan and was confident that Kellywas involved. And then Walt agreed to

(23:36):
be a confidential informant for the FBI, and so Detective Ogden worked in conjunction
with Chief Frizzo and the FBI touse Walt to scare Kelly into a confession.
Walt was going to call Kelly andHobert and tell her that in January
he received a letter from Jason,and in that letter was a sealed envelope

(24:02):
and a note that read, ifsomething happens to me, send the enclosed
envelope to the Iron River Police Department. And on March twenty seventh, when
that call took place, Kelly wasclearly distressed. She begged Walt not to
send the letter. He agreed,The call ended, and two days later

(24:27):
Kelly called Detective Ogden and told himshe was ready to talk. On March
twenty ninth, twenty sixteen, Kellyentered the Hobert Police Department ready to share
her story. A year and ahalf after his disappearance, Kelly finally confessed

(24:48):
that Chris Reagan was dead and thatJason Cochrane was his killer. According to
Kelly, on the night of Chris'smurder, she thought Jason was gone,
so she invited Chris over to theirhome at sixty six Lawrence Street. He

(25:11):
met her at the house's side entranceand on a landing that separated the kitchen
from their basement. The two beganto have sex. She's told this story
many times, and it changes alot. Sometimes they're just making out when
it happens. Sometimes she's performing fallatio. Sometimes they're made intercourse, but by

(25:37):
all of her varying accounts, duringwhatever degree of sex they were having,
Jason snuck out from the basement andshot Chris Regan in the head. Jason
then proceeded to dismember Chris in thebasement and forced Kelly to clean up the
mess. Three things should be notedabout this one. Chris was murdered directly

(26:00):
in front of a hand painted muralwith the Mark Twain quote Dance like no
one is watching, Sing like noone's listening, Love like you've never been
hurt, and live like it's heavenon Earth two Chris was dismembered directly below
a painting of Christ that hung inthe couple's basement. And three, when

(26:27):
the FBI searched the basement, therewas not even a single spot of blood.
Now, it takes a lot todismember a body, and dismembering a
body creates a very big mess.Israel Keys grew up butchering animals. He

(26:47):
had a reputation as an excellent andconcise butcher, and even he took an
entire night and left a ton ofblood and bone evidence for the FBI to
find weeks lay, As Chief Frizzoput it, there is no way that
this was the first time the Cochraneshad butchered someone and cleaned up a murder

(27:08):
scene. After this initial confession fromKelly, Detective Ogden asked her if she
would take him to Chris's remains.She agreed to, but also warned that
they probably wouldn't be able to recoverhis entire body, and at one am

(27:30):
that night, the pair drove oversix hours from Hobert, Indiana, to
Iron River, Michigan. Kelly firsttook Ogden to six thirty nine Pentoga Trail,
a heavily forested lot, where sheclaimed she and Jason discarded Chris's remains.

(27:52):
From there, they went to theCochrane's house on Lawrence Street so Kelly
could reenact the murder. To callher reenactant sloppy would be generous. On
most of her attempts to re enactthe murder, Kelly placed herself directly in
the line of fire between Chris andwhere Jason was allegedly shooting from. She

(28:14):
also couldn't seem to land on whatsex act was being performed, or if
they both fell down the stairs afterthe shot, or if it was just
Chris. Needless to say, thiswas not a well rehearsed reenactment. But
because there was no DNA evidence connectingKelly to the murder, and she only

(28:34):
confessed to being a witness to it, she wasn't arrested. Detective Ogden asked
if she was willing to work withhim, not as a suspect, but
as a witness, and she agreedat first. The next day, Detective
Ogden received a text from Kelly thatsimply said the West Coast looks good this

(29:00):
time of year, and with that, Kelly was gone again. Like keys.
Kelly Cochrane turned off her phone whileshe was on her little vacation.
Unlike Keys, Kelly didn't have theself control to keep her phone off.

(29:26):
After her phone records were yet againpulled, it became clear that she was
turning her phone on briefly once perday to check for voicemails and text messages,
and that was enough to track hervia cell towers to Wingo, Kentucky,
and while Kelly was traveling, IronRiver, PDE finally filed charges against

(29:52):
her lots of charges. On Apriltwenty eighth, twenty sixteen, Kelly was
arrested in Wingo, Kentucky and chargedwith six felonies the murder of Jason Cochrane
and the following felonies related to thedisappearance and death of Chris Regan, home

(30:18):
invasion, conspiracy to commit dead bodies, disinterment and mutilation, concealing the death
of an individual, lying to apolice officer, and accessory after the fact
to a murder. When confronted forthe first time with the autopsy report for
Jason Cochrane, Kelly confessed to hismurder. The reason behind the murder would

(30:45):
change over time. Sometimes it wasto put Jason out of his misery.
Others it was revenge for the murderof Chris Regan, but mostly it was
to put an end to his abuse, and she would go on to tell
officers it was a murder she hadbeen thinking about for years. She told

(31:06):
police that she shot Jason up witha heroine and then when he was incapacitated,
she smothered him with a pillow.After murdering him, she forced herself
to throw up into his mouth tomake it look like he odeed. Yes,
she intentionally vomited into her dead husband'smouth to make it look like he

(31:30):
o'deed and choked on his own vomit. And when it came to Chris Regan,
Kelly once again had a new storyfor the police. After close to
sixty different interviews and conversations with police, it was only after her arrest that
she told them about the pact.She said that Jason wanted her to kill

(31:53):
Chris Regan, but she couldn't becauseshe loved him too much, so instead
she agreed to were Chris to thehouse so chastened could kill him. Sounds
like love to me, and thatbegs the question again. Was Kelly an
abused woman who was forced into amurder pact or, was Kelly a murderous

(32:15):
mastermind? And had Kelly been tryingto manipulate Chris and then Eric to kill
Jason all along? In that samefirst interview after her arrest, Kelly had
one more bombshell for Detective Ogden.Chris and Jason were her nineteenth and twenty

(32:37):
first victims, and she was readyto talk about her twentieth. This episode

(32:57):
was written, produced, and researchedby ME host Josh Hallmark, with research
assistants by Stephanie Saban. Special thanksto Joni Johnston for providing her expertise on
female psychopaths and Sarah Stapleton for herportrayal of Kelly Cochrane. Research sources include
Dead North and The Iron County Reporter. This episode featured music by William Halfire,

(33:21):
wife Saragei Chera, Missanov Radical Face, and Anna Calvie Peace Time,
Time Bye. I wanted to Sivive