6. Mississippi Street

The investigation into Jason and Kelly Cochran's other crimes begins with a look into their time in Indiana; revealing some strange and shocking connections.

This is a Studio BOTH/AND production:
www.pactpodcast.com / www.bothand.fyi
For an ad-free experience or to support the show: www.patreon.com/studiobothand

Written, researched, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
Music by William Hellfire, Whithe, Sergey Cheremisinov, Stacxk, Lee Rosevere, Radical Face, Kevin MacLeod, and Jenny Wilson.

Sources: NAMUS, The Charley Project, Where Monsters Hide: Sex, Murder, and Madness in the Midwest by M. William Phelps, The Iron Mountain Daily News, and The Iron County Reporter.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
This is a studio both and production. One of the first things I wanted
to ask you is, you know, with keys, he was more withholding.
If he lied, it was merelyjust to get them off a topic
he didn't want to talk about.Kelly is just a compulsive liar, and
I wonder how you navigate and extrapolatefrom interviews with someone who lies with the

(00:32):
frequency that Kelly does. Again,and that's why I think, certainly from
an investigative standpoint, and I doa lot of obviously a lot of forensic
work, and one of the thingsthat I always say in teaching students is
that you know, here's the differencein clinical and forensic work. The number
one difference is when somebody comes intoyour office and you're a clinician, they
can tell you whatever they want totell you, and you're aware that it

(00:53):
may or may not be true.But your perspective from a clinician standpoint is
what really does matter to me isyour perspective you being the client. If
you're doing a forensic evaluation or forensicinterview, you have to realize number one,
that that person may or may notbe telling you the truth. And
regardless of whether they are or whetheryou believe them or not. There are

(01:14):
so many agendas going on. Youhave to always talk to other people,
talk to family members, get theirmedical records, get their criminal records,
whatever. You have got to alwaysverify and look for other data to either
confirm or disconfirm what they're saying,just because there's just too much at stake
for that person. Both Kelly andJason Cochrane made a lot of statements about

(01:42):
their time in Indiana and the crimesthey may or may not have committed while
there. Kelly in multiple police interviewsat trial, to journalists from prison and
calls to family and so on.And Jason as Quick Quick in his book
Where Monsters Hide, a book thatKelly confirmed was autobiographical in both her defense

(02:07):
testimony and cross examination during trial,a book she described as Jason writing about
things he'd done in his life,things that were so dark that Kelly claims
they eventually caused her to turn awayfrom religion. Got a long here,
Let's let's talk about this time readthat called Jesus book reading actors outline without

(02:37):
lackness? What what? What wasthat? That was the outline in his
book? Um, those were justoutlines in this book that he's been running
a long time. It's a littleexperts, a little head, outlines and
notes of different situations he's had,just different things that have happened. Yes,

(03:00):
autobiographical or there's a fantasy. Iwould say it was an auto autobiograph
be written by that. You said, I think that there was at the
four Books tomorrow there you shot meon somewhere. Yeah, that is it
was in the basement where no.So yeah, I read the art,

(03:23):
not the entire book, putting enoughof it. Now you know you saw
the outline. That's what we haveas you can find our questions to what
were you thinking? You read thatslide made more sense from a lot of
the stuff I've seen and heard overthe years. When did you four see

(03:45):
its outlive? All the the outline? Yeah? Maybe a year ago,
so that a book lost time rowor now I would have been maybe fourteen
months. But I had seen themboth well before I'd seen out your belief

(04:10):
in higher call our chief result askingabout that. Yes, yeah, I
don't remember exactly what your coms were. You remember what you said? I
do? What did you tell her? I told her there was two patients.
One was with her when was thedetective I and basically to both were
pretty pretty much the same. I'veread the Bible inside out over one hundred

(04:36):
times, if not more, thethings I've seen over the years. When
you've seen a certain hell or acertain a lot of horrible things, you
kind of find it hard to believein anything better than you know what you've
seen. And when she dealt withand a lot of the messages in the

(04:57):
Bible, it's it's hard to seethe good w see only bad person.
Hucs did over the years, andas doctor Joni Johnston said, when dealing
with a convulsive liar, you haveto find evidence to support everything they say,

(05:20):
which takes us back to Mississippi Streetin Merrillville, Indiana, just forty
miles southeast of Chicago. Jason andKelly grew up next door to each other
on the seventy one hundred block ofMississippi Street, and after Kelly finished high

(05:41):
school, they moved to a houseat the end of that same block on
Mississippi Street. And it's in thathouse that they started their pool company,
better backyards and later began raising pigs. Yes, the couple's entire life in
Merrillville over thirty years was spent livingin three different houses, all on the

(06:02):
same block, which makes it evenmore suspicious when they randomly moved to the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a placethey'd never spent a significant amount of time
one day in twenty fourteen, ButI digress. Several months after moving in
with Jason, Kelly started volunteering withthe Girl Scouts of America as a troop

(06:27):
leader, and the two started workingon their pool installation, construction and service
business Better back Yards. Jason's interestin pools appears to have been inspired and
mentored by one of his best friends, who had his own pool business and
died shortly before Jason and Kelly gotmarried. At first, Jason did the
majority of the labor while Kelly managedthe administrative end of things, and Kelly

(06:54):
actually did a fantastic job getting theirbusiness off the ground, especially at just
twenty one years old. She contributedto local newspapers and magazines features on backyard
and pool maintenance as a pool expert, quickly expanding business out of Hobarton,
Marylville and across northwest Indiana and eveninto the Chicago metro area, and in

(07:18):
two thousand and three, as BetterBackyards hit its stride, the Cochranes decided
to start raising pigs on Mississippi Street, and sure the timing of this decision
doesn't escape me, it was lessthan six months after Robert Picton was publicly
charged for murdering sex workers and feedingtheir remains to his pigs, especially when

(07:43):
you consider that, like Keys,Kelly had an interest in serial killers.
What's interesting, though, is thatwhile she was managing Better Backyards, raising
pigs, and volunteering as a GirlScout troop leader, according to Kelly's resume,

(08:03):
she was also working as a salesand operations manager for a company that
for now we'll call the ABC Group. The ABC Group is, much like
all things attached to Kelly, amystery in and of itself, and that
mystery starts with whether Kelly even workedthere at all. Her resume doesn't list

(08:24):
any contact information, nor does itname the company in its entirety. It's
just the acronym, her job title, her job responsibilities, and the length
of her time there two thousand andtwo to twenty thirteen, which is essentially
her entire adult life in Indiana.Now. Look, people lie on their

(08:48):
resumes all the time, but asfar as I know, it's usually to
enhance job titles or descriptions at companiesthey actually worked for, and not just
making up an entire or work history. But then again, Kelly is a
compulsive liar, a goddamn liar,if you will, and she was incredibly

(09:09):
busy at that time with the poolbusiness, the pigs, the girl Scouts,
and god knows what else. ButI decided to do some digging into
the ABC Group anyway, because thesecond mystery is the ABC Group even a
company. There's only one company withina three hundred mile radius of Merrillville that

(09:31):
shares its acronym with the ABC Group. To be precise, it's two hundred
and seventy five miles from Merrillville.But that company it lines up with what
Kelly claims her roles and responsibilities wereon her resume there, and it's entirely
plausible as a sales manager that Kellycould work remotely. So I kept digging.

(10:03):
The ABC Group has one of thejankiest websites I've ever seen, and
like better Backyards, which by twothousand and four was a pool company that
also installed Christmas decorations, The ABCGroup had a strangely diverse assortment of specialties

(10:24):
mining remember that Oldenburg in Michigan isa mining company, construction and swimming pools.
The phone number on their website goesstraight to a voicemail. I've called
multiple times at different times throughout theweek, and it always goes directly to
voicemail. The address listed on thewebsite leads to what appears to be an

(10:48):
abandoned building. Now. At onepoint the building housed an economic development center
that rented out office space to smallbusinesses. But even that economic development center
has no digital footprint whatsoever other thana presence on Google Maps. The most
interesting part of ABC's website is thepage about its founder, and much to

(11:13):
my surprise, he's a man whoactually exists and has a pretty traceable digital
footprint. He's an immigrant, adevout Christian, and a local philanthropist,
and as far as I can tell, he has no connections to Kelly or
Jason Cochrane, which is why itwas odd that when I reached out to
him on Facebook to inquire if heknew Kelly or had ever worked with her,

(11:37):
he blocked me. In two thousandand six, the ABC Group's founder
opened a second business, a companythat's sold and manufactured lifting and hauling equipment
specifically for long haul trucking companies,and that same year, perhaps coincident,

(12:00):
Better Backyards registered as a long haultrucking company in addition to its pool construction
and Christmas decoration installations. And whilethe ABC Group now is pretty much just
a shell of a website, avoicemail that doesn't return calls, and an
abandoned building, the founder second companyis thriving and by all appearances quite legitimate.

(12:28):
Now, I don't generally operate oncoincidence, particularly when the only evidence
linking Kelly to the ABC Group isher resume, thing most people generally lie
about, never mind a compulsive liarlike Kelly. And then even furthermore,
considering the founder of the ABC Groupis a highly respected, married philanthropist and

(12:52):
devout Christian and Kelly is a serialkiller. But it's an awful out of
parallels and coincidences, including this strangeone. Kelly can be placed in the
small town that the ABC Group supposedlyoperates on the exact same night that the

(13:13):
founder got a dui in that townon a strip known locally for drugs and
prostitution while driving a rental car.A year later, Jason began writing his
book About Quack Quack, a bookallegedly autobiographical, largely about quack Quack's murder
spree, focusing on people he andhis wife had sex with. In one

(13:37):
chapter, quack Quack seeks to capturea man with a dui. And while
I remain open but skeptical about linksbetween Kelly and the ABC group, I'm
also fascinated by them. And ifthere's anything I've learned from Israel Keys,
it's that every path needs to beblored, and its sometimes the least likely

(14:03):
ones that lead somewhere interesting. Andwith Kelly Cochrane, this wouldn't be the
first time she could be linked todubious characters. It's also not a stretch
to believe Kelly could be involved insome fake business, as records indicate around
this same time she was running afake charity. Now, as far as

(14:28):
Jason and Kelly's long haul trucking business, this is all I know. They
registered it on multiple trucking websites andwith the US Department of Transportation as being
a single truck, single operator business. As of yet, I have no
records on what type of truck wasregistered to the Cochrans, although those files

(14:50):
are allegedly en route now, andone very plausible explanation would be that they
were moving livestock, specifically pigs.Either way, long haul truckers, construction
workers, and pig farmers are allfairly caricatured professions for serial killers, and

(15:13):
Kelly cochrane was doing all three atthe same time while in Indiana, studying
psychology, forensics and serial killers,and if she worked for the ABC group
like she claimed, she at aminimum had a lot of information about mining,

(15:33):
which makes it interesting that when shemoved to the Upper Peninsula she bought
a house that backed up to anabandoned mine and then got a job working
for a mining company, so sheknows where abandoned mines are and potentially has
access to them. She's excavating privatebackyards and putting in concrete pools, she's

(15:56):
traveling across state lines with a truckcompany and possibly as a regional sales rep.
And she's feeding between six and tenpigs on her property while both she
and Jason separately claimed to have killedmultiple people. Speaking of Jason's claims,

(16:19):
I started digging into the activities ofquack Quack included in Where Monsters Hide,
and one of those claims stood outto me the most because it didn't line
up with what we know about theCochranes. We know for certain that Kelly
had at minimum two victims, Jasonand Chris, both adult men who Kelly

(16:44):
had intimate relationships with. According toKelly, at varying times, every man
she's slept with is now dead,although we know that's not entirely true,
with Eric Ericson being very much alive. Also, according to Kelly, she
and Jason, or sometimes just Jason, killed multiple people and fed them to

(17:07):
their pigs. But what her manymany stories never include is children, And
in Where Monsters Hide, quack Quackis a pedophile who even writes about abducting
a fourteen year old boy. It'sa part of the book which leans heavily
into crazy that I initially wrote off. Then when I found out that Kelly

(17:33):
was a girl Scout troop leader,my stomach churned a bit. But then
I found something else, something darker. In February of two thousand and eleven,
a man named David Miller moved intothe Cochrane's house on Mississippi Street,

(17:56):
I know this because David Miller hadto register or his residency there with the
Indiana Sex and Violent Offender's Registry,because David Miller is a convicted child molester.
According to court records, Miller,who has a litany of aliases including

(18:18):
Big d was arrested in Florida formolesting and eventually impregnating a girl under the
age of sixteen. David was thirtyfour at the time. He was sentenced
to five years in prison, butfour reasons unclear, served less than one
before being released on probation. Howand why Miller ended up in Indiana with

(18:45):
the Cochranes is a mystery, buthe lived with them for their final three
years in Indiana before they abruptly leftfor Michigan in January of twenty fourteen,
and those three years were hectic,to say the least. When Miller moved

(19:06):
in, the Cochranes had a lotgoing on. Jason was being treated for
cancer, treatment that ultimately put theCochranes deep into debt and landed Kelly in
court multiple times. At the sametime, Kelly was studying forensics and psychology
at Purdue University Calumet while also singlehandedly running better backyards, their pool,

(19:33):
slash trucking slash Christmas decorating company,possibly working for the ABC group, setting
up her fake charity and raising,slaughtering and selling their grass fed pigs,
oh and engaging in at least twodifferent extramarital affairs. The first these known

(20:00):
affairs began one night when Kelly wentout to pick up some fried chicken and
returned home with a woman. Accordingto Kelly, while ordering fried chicken from
a nearby fast food restaurant, shebegan flirting with one of the girls behind
the counter, and before Kelly couldleave with that chicken, the woman took

(20:22):
her break and the two made outin the parking lot before exchanging phone numbers
and agreeing to have a threesome withJason. The trio hooked up on three
different occasions, once in a motel, once at Kelly's parents house, and
a third time while Kelly was babysittingher sister's kids. Yes, Kelly and

(20:45):
Jason had a drug fueled threesome witha fast food worker at Kelly's sister's house
while they were taking care of herchildren. After the third encounter, Kelly
began and texting the woman separately andthe two developed an intimate relationship, one

(21:07):
that didn't include Jason, and whenJason eventually found out, he reportedly became
enraged. Now, of course,Kelly lies all the time, and so
it's hard to put stock in anythingshe says that can't be corroborated, But
there are some parallels included in Jason'sbook. In chapter seven, Quack Quack

(21:33):
discusses a female sex worker and stripperwho is a homewrecker. Perhaps Jason took
some artistic license and made the fastfood worker a sex worker. At first,
that was the most corroboration investigators couldfind for Kelly's story. That is

(21:53):
until the Michigan State Police actually trackeddown the fast food worker, and when
they did, she was very muchalive and well. In multiple police interviews,
the woman was able to corroborate Kelly'sclaims almost exactly. But beyond that,

(22:18):
she gave the police quite a bitof new information about her encounters with
the Cochranes. She noted that thefirst time she hung out with both of
them, they drugged her. Theywere supposed to have sex that night,
but whatever drugs they gave her andshe still doesn't know, caused her to
get violently ill. She said thatall of her encounters with the Cochranes involved

(22:44):
heavy drug use, but most notablyand disturbingly, she told investigators that both
Jason and Kelly used a black beltto strangle her during sex. During intercourse,
they would strangle her to the pointof passing out, and she would
wake up to find the cochrans stillengaging in intercourse with her. She went

(23:11):
on to say that on several occasions, Kelly did the same thing to Jason,
that the two got off on stranglingher and one another. When Jason
found out about Kelly's extracurricular activities withthe fast food worker, Kelly ended the

(23:33):
affair. However, her other knownaffair ended quite differently. As I mentioned
in the previous episode. The Cochrane'sfriend and neighbor, David Sailor, testified
at trial that Jason told him onseveral occasions about a drug dealer that Kelly

(23:59):
was having an affairwith while in Indiana, and according to Sailor's testimony, Jason
threatened to kill the man, andshortly thereafter the pair moved to the up
Sailor also told the court that theseconversations always happened in conjunction with Jason discussing

(24:19):
the different ways in which you couldkill someone and hide their body, including
feeding them to your pigs, andin police interviews, Jason confirmed that he
found out about this affair in lateJuly of twenty thirteen, and that he
confronted the man shortly thereafter, andaccording to Kelly, when she found out

(24:45):
about the confrontation in early August,she threatened to Jason with a divorce,
and five months later they fled Indiana. So I did some searching. It
turns out a meth dealer, Kelly'sdrug of choice, went missing in an

(25:10):
area Kelly can be placed in multipletimes over a seven year period, in
mid August of twenty thirteen, justtwo weeks after Jason confronted Kelly's drug dealing
boyfriend and less than a week afterKelly threatened Jason with divorce over it.

(25:30):
And that disappearance is one local lawenforcement believed fairly early on was likely a
homicide. But perhaps most bone chillingis that in the week after this man
disappeared, the Cochranes started shilling grassfed organic pork to their friends and neighbors,

(25:56):
and a week later, hello yougot a new butterfly tattoo, And
I'm scared. I cannot regret whatI felt for you. Can I ever

(26:18):
see you while you're Time back tolove? When I'm scared, I cannot
regret what I thought for you.Can I ever see what it's about?
My love? Yes, I'm scared. I cannot regret what I felt for

(26:49):
you. Can I ever see whyyou? Time back to love? When
I'm scared, I cannot regret whatI felt for you. Can I ever
see why it's so bad? It'sbad? And I'm scared, I cannot

(27:21):
regret what I fat for you?Can I ever see why you? Tme
back to when I'm scared, Icannot regret it's what I fat for you.

(27:41):
Can I ever see sohy? It'sso bad? It's not it's not

(28:11):
and it sweet? I canno?Can I ever scan y back? It's
I'm scared? I canno. CanI ever see why to I'm scared?

(28:45):
I cannot be for you? CanI ever see why it's so bad?
It's it's each of the house thenme th