His unlikely political ascent began in 2006 when Cochran, a Republican and Swain County’s maintenance department manager for the previous 13 years, challenged incumbent Swain County Sheriff Bob Ogle, a Democrat who had held the office since 1992. 

During the campaign, Cochran promised fresh leadership, capitalizing on public dissatisfaction with the elusive yet ubiquitous demon ravaging much of the region — meth. He criticized Ogle for not focusing on interagency cooperation and for perceived staffing issues that were out of Ogle’s control.

Ogle stood on his extensive law enforcement experience as sheriff and previously with the Waynesville Police Department and State Highway Patrol, highlighting it with an anecdote about a recent domestic disturbance that had become a complex crime scene after a shooting. Cochran, who had never worked in law enforcement before, wouldn’t know what to do, Ogle said, and would have less training than the greenest deputy on the force.

“The days are gone where you could give someone a badge and a gun and tell them to go to work as a deputy,” Ogle said at the time. “It’s a whole different ballgame.”

Cochran said that prior to becoming the county’s maintenance director, he’d overseen large public works projects across the nation, including supervising 50 workers on a $2.3 billion sewer project in Milwaukee, and that he was capable of running the office. Swain County didn’t have nearly that number of deputies at the time.

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“I have managed far more people under extreme and dangerous and precarious situations,” said Cochran, who would go on to win the race by just 92 votes.

Now a pioneer of sorts, Cochran bucked Democratic dominance with a narrow victory that would make him only the second Republican sheriff in a century and mark the beginning of a 20-year tenure defined by controversy, legal battles, political feuds and, at the end, a criminal indictment.

Cochran, sheriff of Swain County since 2006, has seen plenty of controversy over the past 20 years. File photo

Almost immediately, Cochran became mired in disputes over compensation. At the center was a longstanding “meal deal” whereby Swain County commissioners paid sheriffs to feed inmates and then looked the other way as profits were purportedly pocketed — a blatant conflict of intertest that likely compromised the well-being of detainees.

Before Cochran was even sworn in, commissioners voted to contract with Swain County Hospital instead, which at the behest of Democrats cut Cochran out of the deal over his opposition. The move left Cochran as the lowest-paid sheriff in the state at just $38,000 annually. Commissioners said it wasn’t political and that it was just a good time to end it.

“We are the only county in the state that has this arrangement, and it is an illegal arrangement,” said then-County Manager Kevin King, now Jackson County’s manager, in the Nov. 28, 2006 issue of SMN.

Upon taking office, Cochran claimed the defunct arrangement had been worth more than $100,000 annually and asked for a $42,000 raise.

What followed was a sustained discussion about entrenched patronage and backroom fiscal practices that had long blurred the lines between public service and private graft in Swain County.

Over the next few years, Cochran’s relationship with county leaders grew more adversarial.

In 2009, as vacation home construction lagged during the Great Recession, commissioners targeted Cochran’s department for budget cuts, prompting accusations of politically motivated retaliation during a time when employee furloughs were being discussed as a way to fill budget shortfalls.

Simultaneously, Swain’s new $10 million jail — three times the necessary size and originally billed as a revenue generator — failed to attract outside inmates, resulting in sharp shortfalls and mounting blame between Cochran and the commissioners.

An additional budget controversy erupted over $160,000 in overtime pay, with King blaming Cochran and Cochran blaming King. The county enacted stricter overtime policies in response.

Amid mounting financial pressure and a warning from the county auditor that either massive tax hikes or drastic cuts to the county’s budget were needed, public scrutiny over internal spending reached a new high in late 2009.

Aggravating the situation, that fall, a jailer used a county credit card to purchase a television at Sam’s Club while shopping for jail supplies, saying she planned to reimburse the county (she did) but raising even more questions about oversight.

Around the same time, the county braced for further jail revenue losses when the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians received an $18 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to build a jail of its own. Swain’s gamble on its own oversized facility, which relied on revenue from holding Cherokee prisoners, was starting to look more and more like a bust and threatening the $450,000 annual loan repayments.

As Cochran prepared to defend his seat in 2010, a crowded field of challengers lined up, citing staffing issues, Cochran’s ongoing and eventually unsuccessful lawsuit over his pay  and jail mismanagement — including a murder suspect who’d escaped. Despite the criticism, Cochran easily won his primary  and advanced to the General Election , where the Republican prevailed by 25 points in a county that was still largely voting Democrat.

By the 2014 election, no Republican would bother to challenge  Cochran, who continued to consolidate control just as Republicans were starting to gain a foothold in the region — but not on the Swain county commission. Cochran defeated retired State Highway Patrol Sgt. Chuck McMahan by 17 points, but controversies persisted.

At some point, commissioners had increased Cochran’s salary to $72,000, but in June 2015, he requested a $20,000 raise  from the county, which countered with $8,000. The increase would bring Cochran’s salary into line with Haywood and Macon counties, despite Swain having just a fraction of their populations.

A week later, it was revealed that his jail became the subject of a state investigation  into allegations of excessive force.

As his next election approached, questions arose about Cochran’s eligibility for office , centered on his military service. 

Swain County resident Jerry Lowery filed a candidate challenge in February 2018, alleging that some 200 people had told him that Cochran was dishonorably discharged from the Marines. Lowery theorized that a dishonorable discharge was equivalent to a felony charge, which would have made Cochran ineligible to run for sheriff per state law.

Cochran attended a March 5, 2018, hearing at the Swain County Board of Elections where his lawyer, David Sawyer, said Cochran had requested a copy of his DD-214 and asked that it be expedited. Sawyer reserved his rights to argue its relevance to statute and depose Lowery.

The meeting was recessed to allow for discovery, but as Lowery walked out of the building, the first of what would become a series of incidents during which Cochran exercised his power in questionable ways took place.

Swain County deputies arrested Lowery on a decade-old warrant out of Jackson County for obtaining property under false pretenses. Lowery found that suspicious, as he’d lived at the same address in Bryson City for the past 25 years.

“Curtis wants to get the attention off of himself and make me look bad — he’s just trying to weasel his way out of this,” Lowery said at the time.

In a subsequent hearing, Sawyer said that since Cochran had served for less than 90 days, he never received a DD-214.

Lowery attempted to present a witness who was discharged from the military after only a month as an example of how even short-time service members would still receive a DD-214. Lowery’s attempt failed when Sawyer objected to the relevance.

The Smoky Mountain News was able to obtain limited information from Cochran’s military personnel file stating he was discharged after serving just over a month. The information provided did not contain any details about Cochran’s departure from the military, but Cochran claimed he had to return home for a family medical emergency. 

While he was home, Cochran said he received a letter from the military stating they’d release him from duty if he signed a document waiving any rights to VA benefits. Cochran said he signed the waiver but never did receive a DD-214 form, which he chalked up to moving around a lot for jobs. 

The National Personnel Records Center administrator who fulfilled the FOIA request subsequently confirmed that usually, anyone with even one day of service would receive a DD-214 form. Cochran’s circumstances were different.

“He didn’t have one for certain reasons not releasable,” Julie Willi told SMN at the time. 

Eventually, Lowery’s challenge was dismissed  because he failed to prove that Cochran had been convicted of a felony. Indeed, Cochran’s administrative assistant testified during the hearing about a thorough background check she ran on Cochran, revealing he’d never even been charged with a felony, in state or federal court. 

Lowery appealed . Cochran won, but the whole affair added to an environment of distrust and division surrounding Cochran’s ongoing service. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Two months later, after Bryson City police officer and Democrat Rocky Sampson entered the sheriff’s race, Cochran suspended a longstanding mutual aid agreement  with the Bryson City Police Department.

Mutual aid agreements between law enforcement agencies in North Carolina — including tribal, municipal, county, state and federal entities — are common and ensure effective public safety responses across jurisdictional boundaries, allowing agencies to provide assistance to one another during emergencies or when specialized resources are needed.

Sampson said Cochran’s suspension of the mutual aid agreement was politically motivated  and retaliatory.

Not long after Sampson joined the Bryson City Police Department in July 2017, Cochran approached Chief Greg Jones alleging Sampson was being investigated for misconduct or sexual harassment while previously working for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.

“I always do background checks, but seldom do I go talk to a sheriff or police chief,” Jones told SMN at the time. “But I asked the [Clay County] sheriff, straight out, if there had been any type of investigation and his answer was no. I asked him if anything had happened out of the ordinary and he said, ‘No, Rocky has been a valuable deputy and resigned of his own free will and terms.’”

Jones reported back to Cochran, but said he heard nothing further. Cochran told SMN he’d learned the allegations from Davis, but Jones and Sampson confirmed that there was never any investigation and that Sampson was still on good terms with his former department. His resignation letter from Clay County cited a family medical concern that required him to be closer to Bryson City.

Cochran’s letter suspending the agreement gives some credence to Sampson’s allegations of politically motivated retribution.

“After careful consideration concerning a Bryson City Police Officer’s possible actions of an incident that may have happened in a neighboring county, Clay County to be specific, I have made the hard decision to suspend the mutual aid agreement between the Swain County Sheriff’s Office and the Bryson City Police Department,” Cochran wrote. “I regret that this decision has to be made, but for the protection of the citizens of Swain County, the deputies and my office, I feel that this is the right decision at this time.”

The race became a referendum on Cochran’s leadership, but he again won  by a wide margin, defeating Sampson by nearly 30 points to earn his fourth term in a county that was finally and dependably sending Republicans to the White House, to Congress and to the North Carolina General Assembly.

In 2019, as Swain County deputies happened to be in the process of arresting a 22-year-old convicted felon, he volunteered information that the owner of a trout farm just outside Bryson City had hundreds of pounds of explosives and would pay him to kill Cochran and other law enforcement personnel.

The State Bureau of Investigation raided the trout farm, seizing firearms, electronic devices and potential evidence that could be tied to explosives, conspiracy or solicitation to commit felony first-degree murder.

After questioning the trout farm owner, Gerald Laschober, for several hours, the SBI let him go.

Laschober is the witness Lowery brought to the 2018 candidate challenge hearing — the one who was prohibited from testifying about his DD-214 to refute Sawyer’s claims about Cochran’s DD-214.

No charges were ever filed against Laschober, who sued Cochran and Deputy Charles Robinson over the raid in December 2021 and claimed in a court filing that he received a letter of exoneration from the district attorney. Laschober’s suit was finally dismissed in September 2024.

The following year, Cochran was named in a lawsuit challenging curfew enforcement during the Coronavirus Pandemic, drawing scrutiny from civil liberties advocates. The plaintiff, pulled over and cited on an April 10, 2020, grocery run, filed suit in federal court three days later. County commissioners repealed the curfew ordinance on May 4, 2020, and the lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed the next day.

By 2022, Cochran announced a bid for a fifth term, emphasizing his record on drug enforcement. Despite growing concerns about morale, he again won reelection, this time against Democrat Doug “Tank” Anthony, with more than 70% of the vote.

The long arc of Cochran’s career would come crashing down in the summer of 2025.

On June 27, the 72-year-old Cochran was arrested and suspended from office  following four state charges — sexual battery, assault, solicitation of prostitution and felonious restraint involving two women he picked up along the side of the road.

Cochran’s mug shot is a far cry from official portraits taken in years past. File photoCochran’s mug shot is a far cry from official portraits taken in years past. File photo

The alleged incidents occurred in a county vehicle, but on Cherokee land, spurring tribal prosecutors to file three charges of their own — two counts of oppression in office and one count of abusive sexual contact.

The reason tribal authorities were able to bring charges against Cochran was due to the Violence Against Women Act, which expanded the power to prosecute non-tribal defendants who would normally end up in federal court.

In 2022, a further expansion of VAWA granted tribes broader authority to prosecute non-tribal offenders for crimes related to domestic violence, hailed as a long-overdue shift in the fight to bring greater awareness to the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, both on the Qualla Boundary and throughout the United States.

Michell Hicks, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, issued a statement on June 29 emphasizing that the investigation into Cochran was ongoing and also credited VAWA with giving the Eastern Band the opportunity to provide justice for all parties locally, instead of in the Asheville Federal Building.

“The reinvestment of our inherent sovereign jurisdiction via VAWA 2022 was exercised in charging every crime alleged,” Hicks wrote. “We will continue to use all sovereign authority and power to protect the due process rights of the EBCI and the people within its lands.”

Two days later, Cochran retired, avoiding a removal hearing. At the time, his salary had finally grown to just over $100,000. As a longtime local government employee, his pension eligibility is determined through the Local Government Employees’ Retirement System. It’s unclear whether it can be revoked if a legal determination unfavorable to Cochran is made.

But the unplanned retirement wasn’t nearly the end of Cochran’s legal troubles.

Three weeks after his resignation, Cochran was indicted by a grand jury for second-degree rape involving a new victim, the third woman to come forward to date. He was released on bond but barred from contacting the accuser and is expected to appear in court Sept. 24. In North Carolina, second-degree rape is a class C felony, punishable by 44-182 months in prison.

The charge capped a stunning fall for one of Western North Carolina’s most controversial and enduring political figures. Even if he’s acquitted on all charges, his life’s work will be forever tarnished.

Once the outsider looking in, Cochran now stands as an insider looking out from the wrong side of the system he’d sworn to uphold.

His exit, hastened not by voters but by charges too grave to ignore, leaves behind a divided county, a shaken sheriff’s office, a legacy defined less by reform than by retribution and ruination.

For Swain County, Cochran’s story may finally be nearing its conclusion — but the consequences of his long tenure will take years to unfold.