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By Becky Jacobs, Post-Tribune, Chicago Tribune
A woman already serving a life sentence for her boyfriend's killing in Michigan was sentenced Wednesday in Lake County, Ind., to 65 years in prison for her husband's murder.
Kelly Marie Cochran, 35, pleaded guilty last month after entering a plea agreement stemming from the death of her husband, Jason Cochran, 37, two years ago in Hobart, Ind.
Cochran gave her husband a fatal overdose of heroin Feb. 20, 2016, and put her hands on his neck, nose and mouth until he died, according to the plea deal.
His death was ruled a homicide caused by asphyxia by strangulation, complicated by heroin intoxication, according to attorneys.
Cochran was sentenced to life in prison without parole after an Iron County, Mich., jury convicted her in May of the murder of Christopher Regan, her boyfriend and co-worker, according to court records.
During her trial in Michigan, Cochran testified that she and her husband were soulmates during their honeymoon and "finished each other's sentences." But the relationship devolved into verbal abuse and physical threats, she testified, adding that her husband threatened "he'd kill me if I ever wanted a divorce."
The couple moved to Michigan in January 2015, and "things were getting rough at home," Kelly Cochran said on the stand in her Michigan trial. Jealousy between them was worse, and she had affairs with other men, including Regan, she testified.
Prosecutors alleged Kelly and Jason Cochran had made a pact on their wedding night that if one of them were unfaithful, they'd have to kill their lover. Cochran, however, claimed during her trial in Michigan that there was no definite pact, and she "didn't take it seriously."
"I thought it was a joke," she said.
Nevertheless, in 2014, Kelly Cochran lured Regan to her home in Michigan with the offer of sex when Jason Cochran interrupted them and shot Regan, according to court records.
Kelly Cochran said she got the cord for an electric saw so her husband could dismember Regan's body, put it in garbage bags and dump it in the woods in northern Michigan, court documents state.
Cochran is currently appealing her Michigan conviction, court records show.
Jason Cochran died two years ago in Hobart, and a recording of a 911 call Kelly Cochran made the day of her husband's death, which the Post-Tribune obtained in a response to a public records request, included her pleas for help.
"I don't know what's wrong. He's throwing up. He's sweating. I need an ambulance right away," Kelly Cochran said in the recording.
Medics said Cochran was disruptive and wouldn't leave the room when they arrived, despite requests to do so, as they attempted to revive her husband, court documents state.
Cochran became a suspect in her husband's death after there were inconsistencies in her stories, and she was charged in Lake County with murder in August 2016, court records show.
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