The Ugly Story of a Tea-Party Suicide That Left the Right Reeling — and Pointing Fingers
Kelly told Mary he planned to go to the nursing home on a Sunday after church. He made two failed attempts. “I know we still have time. But I am starting to get antsy when I see Thads bullshit attacks on Chris,” he wrote to Mary. “He just sits there and takes it. But that is the moral high road.”
On Easter, Kelly entered St. Catherine’s Village, a sprawling retirement community set on 160 acres of rolling pasture. A security guard held the door open for him, his attorney Kevin Camp says. Kelly took the elevator to the second floor, entered Rose Cochran’s room, held his cell phone over her bed, and took a short video. A few days later, Kelly posted an anti-Cochran video about the alleged affair to YouTube, including a still frame of Rose Cochran in her bed.
The video was online for less than 90 minutes. Just as it began to attract attention, Kelly removed it from the site. He told his wife, “the big man,” presumably McDaniel, ordered it taken down. On May 16, three weeks after the video was posted, Kelly was arrested and charged with felony exploitation of a vulnerable adult. Six days later, police arrested three more people: Mary, Sager, and Mayfield. One month later, Cochran would beat McDaniel in a runoff. Three days after that, Mark Mayfield would be dead.
New York Magazine
6/16/15
