Dark-Cases.com

Unveiling the Truth Behind Notorious Crimes

Subscribe

Kelly Cochran Case: The Deadly Pact Behind Michigan’s Double Murder Mystery

·

by

Sally

Kelly Cochran, a seemingly ordinary woman from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, became one of the state’s most notorious killers when her tangled love life lead to murder. Featured in our Serial Killers series, this article examines the 2014 disappearance of Chris Regan, the 2016 death of her husband Jason, and the chilling “pact” that allegedly bound the couple in crime. As of September 2025, Cochran’s case—marked by confessions, cannibalism allegations, and a cross-state investigation.

Early Life: A Small-Town Upbringing

Kelly Marie Cochran was born in 1980 in Iron River, Michigan, a remote mining town in the Upper Peninsula with a population of around 3,000 and just one stoplight. Growing up in the 1980s amid dense forests and harsh winters, Kelly lived next door to Jason Cochran, her future husband, in a close-knit community where everyone knew each other’s business. The pair, inseparable as children, shared a childhood in a town with economic struggles—once a thriving copper mining hub, Iron River had declined, leaving residents reliant on factory work and small businesses.

Kelly attended local schools, where she was outgoing and sociable, often the life of the party. After high school, she pursued a nursing degree at a community college, a practical choice in a region short on opportunities. By her early 20s, she married Jason in 2002, a quiet, reserved man who struggled with chronic pain from a work injury and later battled opioid addiction. The couple settled into a modest life, moving to Indiana in 2013 for Jason’s medical marijuana access and better jobs. Kelly worked at a factory making naval ship parts, while Jason’s mental health deteriorated by a 2015’s hospitalization for severe anxiety. Friends described her as charismatic and manipulative, with a penchant for drama, but no one suspected the darkness.

The Affair and the Pact: A Love Triangle Turns Deadly

By 2014, Kelly’s marriage to Jason was crumbling under financial strain and his opioid dependency, exacerbated by his chronic pain from a factory accident. Seeking excitement, she began an affair with coworker Chris Regan, a 53-year-old divorced Air Force veteran and father of two. Chris, reliable and kind-hearted, grew up in Detroit but had returned to Iron River for a fresh start after his military service, working at the same factory and dating Terri O’Donnell intermittently. Kelly, now 34 and restless, confided in Jason about the affair, claiming their open marriage allowed it. However, Jason’s jealousy festered; recovered texts revealed his desperate pleas for Kelly to end it, met with cold dismissals like, “You’ll get over it.” These messages, uncovered during the investigation, highlighted the escalating tension, as Jason expressed his pain over Kelly’s infidelity, only to be brushed off, fueling suspicions of his role in what followed.

On their wedding night in 2002, Kelly and Jason allegedly forged a macabre “pact”: if either cheated, they must kill the lover to avoid betrayal, a vow prosecutors later called a twisted covenant of loyalty. Kelly later denied this in court, but evidence suggested otherwise. On October 14, 2014, Kelly lured Chris to their Iron River home under the pretense of intimacy. Video footage from a neighbor’s security camera captured Chris arriving at 9:47 p.m. Jason, hiding in the basement with a .22-caliber pistol, emerged as Chris and Kelly finished having sex on the landing by the back door—a narrow space atop basement stairs. Without warning, Jason fired, the bullet piercing Chris’s skull just above the right eye, shattering bone and spraying blood and brain matter across the walls and ceiling. Chris collapsed, his body twitching as blood pooled, soaking Kelly’s clothes.

As Chris lay dying, Kelly and Jason sprang into action. They dragged his 180-pound frame down the basement stairs, the thud of his head against each step. Using a reciprocating saw—its high-pitched whine audible to neighbors—Jason began dismembering the body, the blade slicing through flesh, muscle, and bone with a sickening crunch. Kelly assisted, her hands slick with blood as she steadied limbs, the saw’s teeth catching on tendons. They used forceps to extract the bullet from Chris’s shattered skull, the metal clinking as it hit the concrete floor. The process took hours, the air thick with the metallic stench of blood and the acrid smoke of a backyard fire pit where they burned flesh and organs. Neighbors reported a foul odor, describing it as “like rotting meat,” and later claimed the couple served $150–$200 worth of “chewy, translucent” meat at a barbecue—allegedly Chris’s remains—tasting oddly like lobster, a detail that haunts them to this day.

Chris’s body parts were scattered: his skull, with the bullet hole, was buried in a wooded area off St. Paul’s Lake Road, his eyeglasses nearby; denim rivets and a zipper from his jeans were found in the fire pit ashes; and a severed leg turned up months later near the carpool lot. His Honda Civic, torched on North 29th Street at 7:32 a.m. on October 15, was discovered hours before his missing report, its interior charred and windows shattered. Kelly and Jason cleaned the scene meticulously, sanding blood-stained floors and painting ceilings to conceal spatter, working late nights with power tools that neighbors mistook for remodeling.

Investigation: A Small-Town Mystery Unravels

Chris Regan is shown kneeling in an undated photo.

Chris’s absence from his Pizza Shuttle shift on October 15 raised immediate alarms; his manager noted his impeccable record, and friends like Terri O’Donnell, unaware of the affair, grew worried after days of silence. On October 24, Terri filed a missing persons report, describing Chris’s excitement for a new job in Asheville, North Carolina, and his knee brace found in his car at a carpool lot. Police, led by Iron River Chief Laura Frizzo—the town’s first female chief—traced his phone via Life360, revealing it lingered at the Cochran home from 10:00 p.m. on October 13 to 2:00 a.m. on October 14, then pinged at a wooded area where a severed leg was later found.

Frizzo’s under-resourced team, serving a town of 3,000, called Michigan State Police for aid. On October 25, they questioned Kelly and Jason, noting Kelly’s calm demeanor—offering coffee as if hosting a social call—and Jason’s anxiety, his hands trembling and eyes darting. Kelly admitted the affair but claimed an open marriage; Jason’s texts begged her to stop, including one reading, “I can’t take this anymore.” A search warrant in March 2015 uncovered a fire pit barrel missing, a saw blade caked with dried blood, denim scraps, and Jason’s journal “Quack Quack’s Revenge”—a story where the protagonist, matching Chris’s description, was shot and dismembered for revenge. Luminol tests on ceiling tiles revealed blood spatter, but degraded samples yielded no viable DNA due to the Cochrans’ thorough cleanup.

The couple fled to Hobart, Indiana, Kelly’s parents’ home, prompting Frizzo’s team, with private investigators, to track them via a GPS device on their truck. Jason’s “overdose” on February 20, 2016, was a turning point: Kelly called 911, hysterical but obstructive, blocking paramedics as Jason’s face turned blue from strangulation. An autopsy revealed ligature marks on his neck and petechial hemorrhaging in his eyes, confirming asphyxiation—not heroin overdose as Kelly claimed. Frizzo’s tip to Indiana’s Jeremy Ogden led to Jason’s exhumation and Kelly’s interrogation, where she confessed the pact and her role in Chris’s dismemberment, leading police to his skull buried under pine needles.

Kelly Cochran is seen during questioning with Det. Jeremy Ogden in Hobart, Indiana.

Arrested April 29, 2016, in Wingo, Kentucky, after taunting texts exposed her location, Kelly faced five counts: first-degree murder as an aider/abettor, conspiracy to mutilate a corpse, concealing death, larceny (stealing Chris’s camera with explicit photos and her wedding ring), and lying to police. In Indiana, she pleaded guilty to Jason’s murder on May 16, 2018, admitting she smothered him with a pillow to “even the score” for Chris’s death, her hands pressing down as he gasped. Her brother Connor alleged nine more victims, including a “trophy bag” of teeth, but no charges followed due to lack of evidence.

Trial and Conviction: A Twisted Pact Exposed

Kelly’s Michigan trial began February 14, 2017 lasting three weeks. Prosecutors portrayed her as a manipulator who lured Chris with sex, enabling Jason’s shot, then dismembered him with a saw, burning parts in the fire pit. The pact emerged as key evidence: wedding vows to kill cheaters, recorded in Kelly’s own words during interrogations. She took the stand, claiming Jason’s abuse—pointing to the punched door as proof—and denying the pact, admitting only to helping hide the body after he “forced” her. Her defense highlighted her lies and addiction, arguing unreliability, with her attorney stating, “She’s a liar, and her stories are a maze.”

After three hours, the jury convicted her on all counts May 17, 2017, sentencing her to life without parole. Chief Frizzo, fired amid controversy—allegedly for gender bias and publicity—called it justice for Chris, later winning a $150,000 wrongful termination settlement. In Indiana, Kelly’s May 16, 2018, guilty plea to Jason’s murder added 65 years, ensuring no further charges there. Her 2019 appeal failed, upholding the life sentence at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility.

Sources

🤞 Subscribe for more!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Comments

Leave a Reply