Woman kills boyfriend in pact with husband, then kills husband

In this episode of Crime Watch Daily Updates: The deaths of Chris Regan and Jason Cochran, and the woman in the middle of it all: Kelly Cochran.

Though Iron River might be a small town, it’s unfortunately no stranger to crime. And this gruesome double murder has left a mark on this tiny enclave that no one will forget.

Chris Regan and Kelly Cochran worked together and soon developed a physical relationship. But there was one hiccup: Kelly was married to a man named Jason Cochran.

On October 14, 2014, Kelly invited Chris over to her house, and he was never seen again.

Chris’ ex-girlfriend, Terri, became worried about him and reported him missing to Iron River Police. One detective at the station believed Chris had just up and left. Laura Frizzo, former Iron River Chief of Police, disagreed. She suspected Kelly had something to do with the mysterious disappearance, and her determination kept this case alive.

Kelly and her husband Jason spoke with police, but Kelly’s story wasn’t adding up. Then, Kelly and Jason moved back to Indiana.

Detectives in Iron River kept investigating Chris’ disappearance, and they even called in a psychic medium to go into Kelly and Jason’s home to get answers. But the case ran cold.

On February 20, 2016, Kelly called 911 to report that her husband had overdosed on heroin. Paramedics arrived and transported him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. But his cause of death raised eyebrows. The coroner determined he died from asphyxia due to strangulation complicated by heroin intoxication, and his manner of death was homicide.

The detective investigating Jason’s death spoke with Kelly and started asking her questions about Chris’ murder. Kelly said she and Chris were in the middle of a sexual encounter when Jason shot Chris in the head with a rifle. Then, Jason dismembered his body with a saw and scattered the remains in the woods.

Chris’ death has somewhat of a back story: when Kelly and Jason got married, they made a deal that if either one of them had an affair, they’d kill the person they had an affair with. There are even suspicions that several people fell victim to the hands of Kelly and Jason.

During her interview with the detective, Kelly also said she suffocated her husband to death by covering his mouth when he was vomiting while overdosing.

In 2017, Kelly was convicted in Michigan of killing Chris and sentenced to life in prison. She appealed the conviction in 2019, but lost. Kelly tried to appeal the conviction again, but this time to the Michigan Supreme Court. In 2020, the state’s high court denied her application to hear her arguments.

In 2018, she pleaded guilty in an Indiana court to killing her husband. She was sentenced to 45 to 65 years in prison, which will follow her life sentence in Michigan.

Let’s take a look back at the case involving a man who was innocently killed over a marriage pact gone wrong.