Kriti Mehrotra
In any matter concerning strange disappearances or deaths, the investigative complications are usually around concrete evidence; or the lack thereof. However, no matter how long it takes, the officials often continue to follow leads to provide some closure, even if it’s so atrocious that it shakes the entire nation to its core. That’s precisely the case of Christopher Regan’s murder, as examined in ID’s ‘Dead North’ as well as ABC’s ’20/20: Where Monsters Hide,’ especially as it comprises an affair and allegations of serial killings.
How Did Christopher Regan Die?
At the age of 53, Christopher Regan was a happy and hardworking individual who’d built a good life for himself in Iron River, Michigan. The Detroit-raised Air Force veteran was undeniably disciplined, which helped him succeed in not only his professional life but also in his hobbies and relationships, that is, until 2014 rolled around. After all, that’s when Chris lost his life in one of the worst ways conceivable — just a month before he was planning to relocate to Asheville, North Carolina, for a new job in November. In fact, the last anyone ever heard from him was on October 14, when he texted his ex-partner.
Chris and his ex-girlfriend had actually broken up some time prior, yet they remained close friends and even had plans to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together. Thus, she grew worried and reported him missing once she didn’t hear from him for ten days straight after that last message. Unfortunately, though, only Chris’ partial remains were uncovered around two years later, and that too, because one of his perpetrators chose to confess and yield the location of where he’d been carefully disposed of.
Investigators found Chris’s decapitated skull with an apparent bullet hole in the Upper Peninsula woods, alongside a pair of eyeglasses believed to be his and broken parts of a rifle (the murder weapon). There was also a .22 caliber bullet next to him, but no other body parts were ever seen or recovered. He was thus positively identified through dental records, and in the end, reports assert that the Air Force veteran had been shot to death before being dismembered and probably dumped all across the woods.
Who Killed Christopher Regan?
Back in 2014, when Christopher Regan’s ex-partner had called the police to raise the alarms about his disappearance, the first thing they did was search his home, which was uncharacteristically a mess. Both his phone and vehicle were missing as well, and there were absolutely no signs of where he could be. Even his car was found abandoned just outside of town a short while later, but it had a sticky note with directions to an Old Caspian residential home inside it. The address was Kelly and Jason Cochran’s.
While Kelly Cochran was Chris’ co-worker at a local factory that produced parts for Navy ships, Jason was her husband. During the initial questioning in their house, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, yet detectives soon started to hear rumors that Kelly and Chris were having an affair. In their subsequent formal interrogation days later, although Kelly conceded to the extramarital fling by insisting that she and her husband had an open marriage, Jason all but contradicted her by implying that he was upset about her involvement with Chris. Nonetheless, they both claimed innocence in his disappearance.
Sparked by all this, in March 2015, a search warrant was executed on the Cochrans’ home, only for it to yield the rough draft of a book where Jason spoke of going on murder sprees and seeking revenge against someone remarkably similar to Chris. However, no charges were brought upon them at that time because there were no other concrete pieces of evidence, not even blood spatters. Hence, the couple was free to do whatever they wanted, and they chose to return to their home state of Indiana for good.
Jason Cochran Was Killed in a Homicide Incident
On February 20, 2016, a frantic Kelly Cochran dialed 911 to report that she’d found her childhood sweetheart and husband in their home unresponsive. Once deputies rushed to the scene, they remarked that Jason had already died of what looked like a heroin overdose, so they followed protocol and questioned her. Yet, his autopsy revealed that someone else had likely injected him with a lethal dose of the hard drug before smothering him, making his cause of death asphyxiation and his manner of death a homicide.
Kelly then went under the radar after several interrogations in April 2016, but investigators were able to locate her in Kentucky and make an arrest on the 28th. That’s when she confessed she and her husband had made a pact when they’d tied the knot that if either of them ever cheated, they’d kill the third person, and that’s what they did to Chris. Kelly claimed that after she lured him over to their home on that fateful October day, Jason pulled the trigger before dismembering him in the basement, something she helped with. Though because she genuinely liked her lover, Kelly said she soon started to resent Jason and got her payback by killing him. It thus comes as no surprise that today she is being convicted and sentenced for both murders.
Read More: Where is Kelly Cochran Now?
