Kelly Cochran is now behind bars for killing and dismembering both her lover and her husband — but friends say she’s a serial killer who's left even more bodies in her wake.
When Kelly Cochran’s husband found out about her affair, he asked her a simple question that had unimaginably gruesome consequences: How would she make up for it?
Jason Cochran was satisfied with the answer. He would forgive his wife of 13 years if she lured her lover to their house with the promise of sex — and then allowed her jealous husband to blow the lover’s brains out.
Kelly Cochran’s co-worker and fling, Christopher Regan, was fatally caught off guard. He was mid-coitus when Jason Cochran emerged from the shadows to execute him at point-blank range with a .22 rifle. Moments later, Kelly Cochran was handing her husband a buzz saw with which to dismember him.
Little did Jason know that he would be next.
Graves County JailKelly Cochran murdered her husband of 13 years.
Kelly grew resentful of the 2014 incident and later killed him with a heroin overdose to “even the score” in 2016. When holes in her story led to her arrest, she claimed Regan’s murder was borne out of a lethal marital pact.
This is the grisly story of Kelly Cochran.
Kelly Cochran’s Deadly Marriage To Jason Cochran
Born and raised in Merrillville, Indiana, Kelly and Jason Cochran were high school sweethearts who grew up next door to each other. They were so enamored with each other that they were married after Kelly Cochran graduated from high school in 2002 — and made a lifelong promise to kill anyone who they might cheat with.
FacebookKelly Cochran with her husband Jason.
Jason Cochran worked hard servicing swimming pools until his back gave out after 10 years of physical labor. While his wife tried to pay the bills, the debts kept piling up. The couple left Indiana for Caspian, Michigan, in 2013, also looking forward to legal marijuana, which would help ease Jason’s chronic pain.
Kelly Cochran met Christopher Regan at a factory job manufacturing Naval ship parts. An Air Force veteran and Detroit native, he and Cochran bonded and became lovers despite their 20-year age difference. Through his relationship with Cochran, Regan was also cheating on his girlfriend, Terri O’Donnell. They finally agreed to patch things up — the day that he died.
On Oct. 14, 2014, Chris Regan planned to spend the night with Kelly Cochran — unaware she had spent the previous night arguing with her husband about him. Knowing it meant her lover’s death, Cochran invited him over and had sex with him as her husband shot him in the head. Neighbors heard a shot — then power tools.
O’Donnell reported Regan missing 10 days later, but the Cochrans had already dumped his remains in the woods. While they parked his car on the outskirts of town, they failed to notice a post-it note with directions to their house inside. Police were more observant and found the car, the note inside — and their suspects.
FacebookTerri O’Donnell and Chris Regan.
Police paid Jason and Kelly Cochran a visit, finding the former entirely at ease and the latter uncomfortable. They later questioned them separately. Kelly admitted to having an affair with Regan, but claimed she and her husband had an open marriage. Jason, meanwhile, appeared rather aggravated at her infidelity.
While the Cochrans had managed to remove all evidence of their crimes and the case went cold, an FBI search of their home in March 2015 prompted the terrified couple to leave town for Hobart, Indiana. It was there, on February 20, 2016, that suspicions got the better of the couple — and Cochran murdered her husband.
Kelly Cochran Gets Caught
When EMTs arrived at the Mississippi Street residence, they found Jason Cochran unresponsive, and Kelly was reportedly disruptive as they attempted to revive him. The EMTs declared Cochran’s husband dead of an overdose — unaware that she had deliberately overloaded his heroin fix, then smothered him for good measure.
Cochran held a memorial service days later, claiming it was “the hardest thing I will ever have to deal with” online while pawning off her belongings. She fled Indiana on April 26 without notifying relatives, and when the Hobart Medical Examiner realized Jason died of asphyxiation, she became a fugitive.
FacebookKelly Cochran is serving a life sentence plus 65 years.
With probable cause, authorities charged her with murder, home invasion, conspiracy to commit bodies — disinterment and mutilation, concealing the death of an individual, lying to a police officer, and accessory to murder after the fact. Even though she was on the run, Cochran unwisely kept in touch with investigators via text.
Her messages claimed she was hiding out on the West Coast in an attempt to throw police off-course. However, they simply tracked her phone to Wingo, Kentucky — where U.S. Marshals arrested her on April 29. Finally, Cochran pointed cops to Regan’s remains and the murder weapon.
Kelly Cochran’s trial revealed that “she contemplated killing Jason instead of Chris.” She felt that he had killed “the only good thing I had in my life,” adding, “I still hate him, and yes, it was revenge. I evened the score.” While serving a life sentence for Christopher Regan’s death, she earned another 65 years in April 2018 for killing her husband.
Police said she only told her spouse about Regan when he declined a serious relationship, as the diabolical pact would ensure his death.
Ultimately, the full extent of Kelly Cochran’s crimes only began to reveal themselves while she was in prison. Once news got out that the couple had dismembered Christopher Regan, friends and neighbors came to the stomach-churning revelation that they had very likely eaten Regan’s barbecued remains at a cookout hosted by Cochran.
Prosecutors also claimed that Cochran had boasted in interviews to killing several other people — and that she may well be a serial killer, with up to nine bodies buried across the midwest. Regardless, Kelly Cochran will spend the rest of her life behind bars.
After learning about Kelly Cochran, read about Dalia Dippolito and her murder-for-hire plot gone wrong. Then, learn about the Florida man arrested for attempting to “barbecue” child molesters.
