Cold Case Files: Mother desperate to find her missing daughter after years long search
SUTTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — Becky Cochran hasn't slept through the night for three years.
"How do you get up, and go in there, and go to bed when your child is missing?" she said.
Around her, life has gone on. For her though, it stopped on Aug. 20, 2019 - the last time she saw her daughter, Chandice Cochran, 28.
"I just feel like this is hell right here on earth, that's how I feel. I feel like I am living in hell right here, this is it," she said.
Chandice had a picture-perfect childhood growing up in Braxton County. The athletic and popular teen had a big group of friends and an unbreakable bond with her older brother, Bert.
"Life was a fairytale for them. They said, 'You made our life a fairytale,' and it was. It was perfect," Becky recalled.
Addiction doesn't care about a fairytale. Bert was found dead on Father's Day in 2010. He was 21.
"He always acted as her father. He took care of her; he protected her. When we lost him, she said, 'I just can't imagine life without him, mom. I can't do this. I just can’t do it.’ ”
Bert's death was the beginning of a troubled path for Chandice. She was prescribed pain pills following an emergency surgery shortly after he died, which eventually led to a heroin addiction that stole her away from the mother who never stopped trying to get her back.
"People have no idea unless they live it," Becky said. She can't bring herself to buy the local paper anymore.
"A lot of their friends are gone. They're gone or they are incarcerated. It's so sad. I won't even buy a paper here in the county because that's all you see. Their friends and stuff in the paper and I just can't handle that. It's just so sad," she said.
Two weeks before Chandice disappeared, Becky saw the change for which she had been praying. Chandice was fighting hard to stay clean and turn her life around after nearly 10 painful years of addiction.
"I could see that she had gotten her will back to live and she was doing great. Her friends all said that. They said she was better off than they had seen her since she lost her brother," she said.
On Aug. 20, 2019, Becky came home and found a note. It still sits on her kitchen counter.
“It says, 'Mom, I took off for a little while. I'm in good hands, I promise," she said. "Be back shortly, please don't worry, no need to. Call if you need me. Love you, Chan."
What happens next has put Becky on her own path - to find her daughter.
"I want answers. For Chandice, I need them for Chandice. I'm doing this mainly, yes for myself, but for Chandice. Chandice deserves it. I need to know," she said.
A man named Kristopher Speas, who was from Gilmer County, picked Chandice up that afternoon from her mother's home in Sutton. They went to the Birch River area of Nicholas County. Troopers said they believe they were selling drugs.
Troopers said Chandice knew people in the Birch River area, but Speas didn't have a lot of connections there. He did, however, have outstanding warrants for failing to register as a sex offender. The two ended up at the home of a man named Sam Kelly.
That is where the truth about what happens next falls apart.
“That was around midnight. They were there for a while. They decided it was time to leave," Senior Trooper Caleb Harper said. "The gentlemen (Kelly) went to GoMart to go get some cigarettes with his girlfriend. When they come back, they actually see Mr. Speas and Chandice leaving the residence on foot, headed towards the fire department and that was the last that they saw them. From Mr. Speas' memory, that he can, kind of, put her in a general area."
Since then, there has been no proof Chandice is alive and no proof that she is not. Just the central question remains - what happened once they left Kelly's house?
Around 7 a.m. the following day, Speas was picked up walking along Widen-Dille Road, a few miles from Birch River. It was Kelly who picked him up. Kelly told investigators he had happened to spot Speas as he was on his way to work and offered to give him a ride. Speas was alone. There was no sign of Chandice.
"According to Mr. Speas and what evidence I've been able to gather from her cell phone records, it does appear that her cell phone died sometime around midnight or sometime after and was never powered back on," Harper said.
Since then, Speas has been arrested on charges unrelated to Chandice's disappearance that have landed him at the Huttonsville Correctional Center. He is serving time on convictions out of Braxton, Lewis and Nicholas counties for grand larceny, attempt to commit grand larceny and failure to register as a sex offender.
Eyewitness News Reporter Leslie Rubin wrote to him in July, as the three-year anniversary of Chandice's disappearance was approaching, asking if he had any information that could help find her and bring her family closure.
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Speas wrote back. In a one-page letter, he wrote:
I would love for Chandice to be found so it would clear my name. I've sat down with investigators countless times going over the events of that night. Chandice and I was partying, been up a few days on meth and Xanax so my memory was like one of them picture books that you flip through really fast frame by frame. I didn't do anything to Chandice and I don't know where she is at.
You can read the full letter from Kristopher Speas below:
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Speas has been interviewed several times by West Virginia State Police troopers investigating the case. Becky was even there for one of those talks. She said it's something she said Speas said that haunts her.
"He went through everything, just the same thing that he had told the state," she recalled from the interview. "When he got up to leave the room, I hollered at him, I said, ‘Speas, just tell me, is Chandice with us or not?’ and he said, ‘not.’ That's all he said and just walked away real quick."
Harper said Speas has cooperated with him when they have done interviews together but he is unsure if he is being deceitful or not about what he knows.
"It's a really hard question to answer, whether he's being deceitful or he's trying to hide something, but it's my opinion in talking to him that he does appear to be genuine in trying to help," Harper said.
The trooper said he went back to re-interview him, and "it may have even been his idea to go over there to try and jog his memory. We spent several days together, either talking or me driving him to Birch River to let him look at things and try to jog his memory."
In the days and weeks following Chandice's disappearance, extensive searches were conducted throughout Birch River and into the area that Speas was picked up when he was found walking along the road. Nothing was found.
"He can walk you up until 1, 2 o'clock and he can remember being picked up the next morning. The time in between is something he tells us that he can't recall," Harper said.
Chandice's phone has never been found. A local resident found her change purse with her identification in the woods near Birch River not long after she disappeared.
Becky spent the three-year anniversary of Chandice's disappearance, sitting alongside Route 19 in Birch River. She was trying to spread information about her daughter, solicit information and collect signatures for a petition for the prosecutor and investigators to take more action against Speas.
"I would like to have some answers. That's my whole purpose in being here today if for Chandice to get answers for her. To get Kristopher Speas brought in for questioning to get answers. He was the last person seen with her," she said.
In Speas' letter, he said he knows he is an easy target, but he is adamant her didn't do anything to Chandice.
"I hope and pray they find her," Speas wrote.
Harper said State Police need help to solve the case.
"We're looking for someone to come and tell us information that we don't know about the 1 o'clock morning hours until daylight. There's something that most likely happened in that time period that we can't account for. That we don't have witnesses for and it's my opinion that there's folks out there who are probably sitting on that information who maybe hope that one day someone else comes and tells that story or the information gets out some other way," Harper said. "Without them coming forward and telling us that story, we may never know."
The road to find her daughter has been painful and confusing but Becky said she will continue to travel it for the truth.
"In my heart, yes, I feel she is out there. Maybe I'm just hopeful thinking, but I just don't feel a bad feeling in my heart," she said. "Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a lot of faith too, and I just have faith she is out there."
If you have any information about the disappearance of Chandice Cochran, you can call the West Virginia State Police in Sutton at 304-765-2101.
