SEP 3, 2022
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
wchstv.com
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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“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."
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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.
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Kristopher Speas wrote in a letter from the Huttonsville Correctional Center that he doesn't know what happened to Chandice Cochran. Cochran, 28, has been missing since Aug. 2019 and was last seen in the Birch River area of Nicholas County with Speas, who is incarcerated on unrelated charges.
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"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."
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"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.
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