The Story of Kelly Cochran: The Devil Woman of Michigan

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In this article: 

• While you’ve probably heard of a suicide pact, the pact that Kelly Cochran made with her husband was far more sinister. The two agreed that, if either were ever to have an affair, the cheater would have to kill their illegitimate lover. 
• Unfortunately, the two followed up on that pact over a decade later when they killed Kelly Cochran’s lover Chris Regan and dumped his body in the woods. Not long after, Kelly turned on her husband and killed him as well. 
• On top of all that, it’s very possible that Cochran has killed several more people. Here’s the story of Kelly Cochran, the Devil Woman of Michigan.

You’ve probably heard of a suicide pact before, whether from Jodi Picoult’s novel The Pact or from the 2021 film On the Count of Three. Either way, you get the idea: two lovers agree to commit suicide together because they can’t bear the thought of living without one another. Well, Kelly Cochran, now commonly known as the “Devil Woman of Michigan,” made a different kind of pact with her husband Jason Cochran. Their pact said that, if either of them were ever to have an affair, the adulterer would have to lure their lover into their home and murder them. 

It’s hard to fathom how two people could come up with such a horrific pact. And it’s even harder to fathom how they could’ve followed through with it. Yes, according to Kelly Cochran’s account, her lover Chris Regan was murdered by her husband Jason Cochran, at which point Kelly helped her husband dismember Chris’s body and scatter him throughout the woods. However, whether or not that’s true has never been corroborated because, by the time the police arrested Kelly for the murder of Chris Regan, her husband Jason was also dead. 

On top of all the atrocities that I previously described, Kelly Cochran may have been responsible for as many as seven other murders. It’s pretty clear that Kelly Cochran must have been suffering from some sort of psychosis. But, still, the heartlessness it takes to kill two of the people closest to you (and possibly many more) is hard to comprehend. Let’s look at the story of Kelly Cochran, the Devil Woman of Michigan. 

The Pact

Kelly Cochran and her husband Jason were both born and raised in the small town of Merrillville, Indiana. The two grew in next to each other and became high school sweethearts. In fact, just after kelly graduated high school in 2002, the two of them got married. However, while they may have seemed to be just younger lovers to an outside observer, they had a dark secret: a vicious pact. 

Kelly and Jason vowed on their wedding night that, if either one of them were caught cheating, the cheater would have to murder the lover that got between them. After that, for a while, they lived a normal life in Merrillville. Jason had a job servicing swimming pools until his back gave out. That’s when things started to change. 

Kelly and Jason moved to Caspian, Michigan, as Kelly was searching for a job and Jason was searching for legal marijuana to ease his back pain. When they got there, Kelly got a job at a factory manufacturing ship parts where she met a coworker named Chris Regan. Despite their 20-year age difference, the two became lovers. Chris and Kelly would meet behind their significant others’ backs for months before Jason Cochran finally found out. 

Suddenly, the pact that they made on their wedding night became all the more relevant. So, the husband and wife formed a plan. On October 14, 2014, Kelly Cochran invited Chris Regan over to her house, telling him that Jason was out. When Chris made it to the house, he and Kelly began having sex. Mid-coitus, Jason Cochran emerged and shot Chris Regan in the head. 

The Double-Cross

After killing Chris, kelly and Jason used power tools to dismember his body. They then scattered his remains around a local forest. Finally, they parked his car on the outskirts of town, far away from their home. However, the couple overlooked one very major detail. The car contained a handwritten note with directions to the Cochran household on it. 

With this discovery, the police decided to question Kelly and Jason about Chris’s disappearance. Kelly freely admitted to having been in an adulterous relationship with Chris but denied knowing anything about his death. Jason seemed a bit aggravated when the police mentioned kelly’s infidelity; however, there was nothing in the house to tie the two of them to the murder. After that, the case went cold. 

Fearing backlash from the community and the police in Caspian, the couple relocated to Hobart, Indiana. Things began to cool down until the Caspian police received a call that Jason Cochran was in critical condition. When the EMTs arrived at the Cochran household, they found Jason dead of a heroin overdose. What they didn’t realize, though, was that Kelly had intentionally given Jason a lethal dose of heroin and then smothered him with a pillow to make sure he was dead. 

The true cause of death was revealed when Jason’s body was taken to a medical examiner who reported that the cause of death had been asphyxiation. At that point, Kelly became a fugitive on the run. However, it didn’t take long for the authorities to track her phone to Wingo, Kentucky, where she was apprehended by the U.S. Marshals on April 29. 

The Aftermath

Once in police custody, Kelly Cochran informed the authorities about the whereabouts of Chris Regan’s body as well as the murder weapon. She also claimed that she had never wanted Chris to die and that she had considered murdering Jason instead of Chris. Then, after Chris had been taken away from her by her husband, she killed Jason out of revenge. Of Jason, she’s quoted saying, “I still hate him, and yes, it was revenge. I evened the score.” 

It wasn’t until Kelly Cochran was behind bars, though, that the true extent of her evil was revealed. In interviews with Investigation Discovery, some of the Cochrans’ neighbors reported attending a barbecue shortly after Chris Regan’s death. One neighbor reported that he ate a strange-tasting burger, which he retrospectively conceded was most likely made of human meat. 

On top of that, Kelly Cochran has also claimed in interviews that she has committed other murders. Whether or not that’s true is difficult to say as Cochran is undoubtedly a compulsive liar. But, Kelly’s brother Colton Gaboyan has claimed that he believes she is responsible for as many as nine total murders. 

Luckily, Kelly Cochran will never walk free again. She received a life sentence for the murder of Chris Regan and another 65 years for the murder of her husband Jason Cochran. Still, no punishment will ever feel severe enough for the horrible acts committed by this very sick, very evil woman.

Other nefarious true crime cases remain unsolved to this day. If you’re interested, check out our 2022 update on the horrific unsolved cases we wished were solved…back in 2021.