What Happened to Megan Trussell?

Shaun When a young woman goes missing, time matters. A family's concerns and what they know about their missing loved ones matter. If authorities brush off concerns or artificially force a waiting period on a family that is in a panic about finding their loved one, that is all time that they cannot get back.

John Megan Trussell's family knew that she was missing and brought their concerns to Cu-boulder security staff, and were initially brushed back. It's not clear why, but precious days and hours were lost in the search for her. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in the mishandling of this case.

Shaun Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I'm your host, Sean.

John And I'm your co-host, John.

Shaun This week, we're talking about the death and alleged suicide of Megan Trussell. We'll explain why we're using the word alleged there. But as we unpack this one, it will become obvious. Before getting into it, though, we want to take some time to talk about Megan, who is so much more than what happened to her in the final days of her life. She was a vibrant, amazing young woman who was taken too soon, leaving a hole in so many people's hearts. Our friend Hailey Gray, that we've mentioned on the podcast dozens of times, has worked with Megan's family and has become a vocal advocate for them, sharing the story of Megan's death and the unanswered questions with dozens of podcasts. And she's generously offered her research and notes to us. We, of course, wanted to also share the story with our audience so we can keep pushing for answers and justice for Megan. There has been an update as of last month and a sliver of hope for the family, but we'll get to that. This week is one year since Megan first went missing and our thoughts and hearts are with her family. Do you want to get us started?

John Megan Piper Trussell was born on September twelve, two thousand and six. She was just a couple of years older than our son. She was raised in Denver, Colorado, by parents Vanessa Diaz and Joseph Trussell, alongside her older sister, whose name is Lindsay. Megan was very close to her parents and her sister. She was raised by Vanessa and Joe. They later divorced, but they did a good job co-parenting together. They were a really tight knit family. They did things like traveling together and road tripping from Canada all the way to Baja, Mexico in a Volkswagen van. Megan was also very close with her uncle and her cousin Isabella. According to her family, she always stood out from the crowd. Her parents always encouraged her to be unique and be herself, and that's just what she did. She was described as being a sweet, empathetic soul with an innate ability to find humor in any situation. One of the things her dad said about her was that she was a prodigy smartass, which sounds like a really excellent compliment to me. She was also an artist. She filled sketchbooks with illustrations of her life and her friends. She also loved music. She loved nineties grunge music from her dad's collection, and she played the bass guitar. She had wide musical tastes, covering everything from Smashing Pumpkins to TV Girl to Jaco Pastorius, and she was very proud of what she called her vintage CD collection. She was also very compassionate and she understood her loved ones innately, always making them know with her wit, perspective and her love that she was their best friend. And she actually reminds me a lot of Sydney Land, who we just talked about a few weeks ago. Very similar personality type.

Shaun I can't believe how many talents Megan had because she was also bilingual. She spoke both English and Spanish and she loved traveling. She traveled a lot with her mom and her sister, and she was planning to study abroad in Spain. She called herself a virgin pina colada connoisseur. Love it. She was only eighteen, so too young to drink legally. But when she traveled to Panama, she found her favorite pina colada at the Red Frog Beach Resort, and her mom said that she could do accents with an uncanny precision. In seventh grade, she played a Russian character in a school play, and she pulled off the accent and stayed in character so well that people believed that she was actually Russian for the rest of the school year. It's been also mentioned that she had a remarkable vocabulary. She scored in the hundredth percentile on her state tests, and she just loved everything about pop culture and movies, especially mysteries like Knives Out and Clue and Death on the Nile. And she also liked really classic comedies like The Birdcage and So I Married an Axe Murderer.

John One of my favorites.

Shaun I know she had been watching movies with her dad since she was five, and when he found out that she wanted to study film at college, they spent the summer before cramming in all the classics that she had never seen. What everyone says about Megan that I've spoken to about her, including what her parents have to say about her, everyone reaches the same conclusion about Megan. She just sounds like the kind of kid that every parent would dream of. Someone you can relate to, someone you can hang out with. And as your child becomes an adult, they become a friend of yours. She was politically aware and justice oriented. Her dad, Joe, said she had such a strong moral compass, she believed people should be held accountable when they mistreated someone else. She graduated from Northfield High School, and then she went to the University of Colorado in Boulder, CU Boulder to be a film major as she planned. And she loved college, and during her first week, she texted her dad College rules. She loved the classes, and she was making a lot of new friends, and even reconnected with some of her old friends from high school.

John It's really important that we tell you up front all of the great things that we learned about Megan, and that Haley was able to learn about Megan by interviewing her family, because we want to make sure it's clear that she is more than what happened to her. She was reported missing on Wednesday, February twelve, twenty twenty five. On that day, Megan's mom, Vanessa, and her sister Lindsay realized that no one had heard from her since the ninth, which was Super Bowl Sunday. We are recording this on Super Bowl Sunday. She hadn't responded to any message, which is very unlike her, and really unlike pretty much any kid of her age. Vanessa reached out to Megan's dad, Joe and asked if he had heard from her. He said he had not, despite having texted her to find out if he could take her to dinner soon. Vanessa then checked her phone and she saw that it hadn't been used since the ninth. At eight forty five p m, Vanessa told Haley that at that point I just knew something bad had happened. Vanessa did something really clever. At this point, she started texting and calling every number from her phone logs, but no one had heard from her. I think that's a really amazingly smart thing she did. Because of course, when you go to college, you're meeting new people, you're getting new phone numbers, you're dialing numbers that may be unfamiliar to your family. So going through her call log and calling the people that she had called was a really great idea. Trying to figure out where she was. Her sister, Lindsay, who lived right near campus, went to Megan's college dorm room, where her roommate confirmed that she hadn't seen her since Sunday either, and her roommate had never alerted anyone that Megan was missing. I don't find that super weird, though, because when you're in college and you have a roommate, you have your own lives. And if you're not necessarily Best friends and you're out exploring the world for the first time. I don't think it would be unusual for your roommate to disappear for a couple of days. Megan had a boyfriend, so it wouldn't be unusual for someone to disappear for a couple of days. I know when I was in college, I certainly had a roommate or two that, you know, was gone for a couple days for a weekend. Maybe she went home. Maybe she didn't tell her. So I don't find it unusual that she didn't report it right away.

Shaun And it was only three days.

John Right?

Shaun I mean, and if the roommate herself was busy with work school, friends, she might. She might have thought they were just passing. Passing each other?

John Yeah. It could entirely not have been on her radar. So I don't find that in any way suspicious. So at that point, Megan's parents drove down to Boulder and went to the dorms to meet with Lindsay. They tried to meet up with the CU Boulder police and security and explained that their daughter was missing, but they insisted that she was just probably couch surfing, and they said they've seen this a million times and that she would show up. So immediately. When I heard about this, I started thinking about the recent case of the disappearance and likely kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie. Right. Yeah. Savannah Guthrie's mom.

Shaun It's all over the news.

John And it just really struck me how, in one case, you have a high profile family with a celebrity daughter. And it seems to me that the full force of the US justice system is being brought to bear on this case. They immediately brought in the FBI, and they have this giant manhunt going on, and even the sitting president of the United States calling the family. But in the case of Megan, her panicked family can't even get the campus police to take her disappearance seriously. So that had to be incredibly frustrating for them. And we hear that over and over, and we're sure our listeners have heard that, too. Approximately seven thousand three hundred missing person reports were filed to Las Vegas Metro in twenty twenty four. And of course, the vast majority of those are resolved within forty eight to seventy two hours. And it's not possible to investigate all of them with equal priority. But on a college campus these should be investigated more vigorously. The authorities went out of their way to say that disappearances at CU Boulder were very rare, though hundreds are reported missing in Colorado every year. But if that's true, why not focus on the few rare cases like Megan's where they happen rather than brushing off the family? They can't really have it both ways either. It's rare and they'd have the resources to investigate, or it's so common that they wouldn't have the resources to investigate. So which is it initially seemed like they just didn't want to investigate and they didn't want to make a fuss. They didn't want the media to focus on them. We have some theories about why that might be that we're going to share in the Swing Shift episode. So if you want to sign up and hear that, please head over to subscribe. But Megan still hadn't shown up, and by the end of the next day, the CU Boulder police began to realize there might be more going on here, and they started to take her disappearance seriously finally.

Shaun Which is unbelievable to me because at the point her parents and her sister showed up, she had already been missing for three days. It wasn't five hours, it wasn't one night. It had already been three days. But once they started taking it seriously, the FBI was brought in. They used security cameras, cell phone records, the dorm hall, keycard access logs, as well as witness statements to determine Megan's movements on the evening of February ninth. So taking all of that into account, you can hear that they had a lot of tools at their disposal that they could have used a lot sooner, but they just chose not to. But here's basically what they were able to determine. Megan had her boyfriend over at her dorm room that the evening of February ninth. While her roommate was at work around nine o'clock, her roommate took a break and came back to the dorm room, which wasn't something she did very often, and she discovered that the boyfriend was there, and for whatever reason, the two of them had an argument about that because the roommate didn't want the boyfriend in the room. That had been part of the disagreement between Megan and her roommate, that they didn't want to allow other people to stay in their dorm rooms. So after that argument, her roommate went back to work, and Megan's boyfriend said he didn't want to be involved in a relationship that had all that drama, and he asked that they take a break. This was a newer relationship for both of them. Megan and her boyfriend had just started dating in the fall. But things got more serious in January after they came back from winter break.

John And we also want to talk about the very well developed and known timeline of her whereabouts, based on all the information that was uncovered. So her boyfriend, whose name we're not mentioning here, um, left at nine seventeen p m and according to his mom, he made it home within Fifteen minutes, Megan left her dorm. Howlett Hall at nine thirty six p m and was seen walking alone on campus. If you're wondering, he did have a good alibi. And of course, his mom was his witness, so he was never really considered a suspect in her disappearance.

Shaun And he wasn't with Megan on the security footage that they saw of her?

John Absolutely not. So at the time, she was wearing white platform tennis shoes that were about three inches tall, red pants, a black short sleeved t shirt, and a light denim jacket. She also had her purse with her. It was a round blue and pink crossbody round purse with a star on it. It was custom made by her mom and it was one of her most prized possessions in the world, and she described it as her security blanket. She loved it so much. She used it all the time, even when she was sitting on the couch at home. It was modeled after the purse that a character in Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, Ramona Flowers, has. The security footage on campus last showed her on camera at nine fifty two p m, where she was north of Howlett Hall, near the Champion Centre on campus, and that is the last known sighting of her. She didn't tell anyone where she was going, but her parents believed she was headed somewhere familiar, either north toward Arapahoe Avenue where her sister lived, or to the gas station circle K at seventeenth and Arapahoe, just two blocks from Lindsay's house. But the temperature that night had dropped into the twenties, and Megan wasn't wearing a coat. So in their minds, it couldn't have been true that she was planning to be out for long, that she was probably just going out for a short walk. People who live in Colorado know not to walk around at night when it's twenty degrees without a jacket on. But unfortunately, despite checking with businesses in the area and homes along the route, there has been no other footage found showing Megan after that point, which is shocking given how many people have ring cameras on their homes.

Shaun Yeah, This wasn't a long time ago. This was just a year ago.

John Right. Everyone has security cameras on their homes. The way we have our ring cameras set up is that if you don't walk in our yard, we wouldn't pick you up. But it's not uncommon for people to be monitoring sort of the whole street. So if someone does walk by, you'd be able to see them. So it really did surprise me that there was no other footage found during that time.

Shaun And you and I have looked at maps of the Boulder area and the campus and I myself, when I looked at the map and I saw where her dorm room was and how far that circle K was from the from the dorm, I, I was like, why would she walk all the way over there? But I did search. And that is the only type of convenience store place because the campus is so large. So it like it feels to me. It felt to me that she took a really long walk. So you're right, like it was a long walk and she really should have brought a coat. But I was like, why would she go all that way just to get snacks? It's actually the only place, the closest place in walking distance.

John It kind of does make sense. We happen to have a teenager who's about the same age, and we know for sure that they do things like leave at two in the morning to go out for snacks at a convenience store three quarters of a mile away. So taking all that into account and knowing what life is like in college, it's not weird to me that that sort of thing happened. Maybe she wanted to go get snacks or who knows what.

Shaun Yeah, but the FBI tried to fill in where she went after she was last seen at that Champion Center, and they used Stingray technology to analyze her phone's location data. And they discovered that around ten forty five p m, her phone pinged near the Eben G. Fine Park, which is located off of Boulder Canyon Drive. And this is at the start of the canyon so far west of campus. Almost kind of like heading out of town. And that would have been a fifty two minute walk from her dorm, and that would have been much further west than the circle K. Then at eleven fifty five p m, her phone pinged again near the forty mile marker of Boulder Canyon Drive, which is even further west into the canyon. And after that, her phone either died or was shut off completely.

John And we should make it clear that Boulder Canyon Drive, as you head west out of the campus, really goes into a heavily wooded, forested area. Like it's not just another area of Boulder. You enter the forest. So mile marker forty is in the forest.

Shaun And it's about three miles from her dorm. So even walking, walking at a brisk pace, I don't know, an hour and fifteen minutes maybe to walk that far. And we'll share a link to to the map that shows these locations so you can see for yourself. But Colorado University. Boulder's campus is kind of on the west part of Boulder anyway. But yeah, this is, like John said, heading out into the woods, the road that heads out of town. It quickly becomes a highway and goes into the canyon, and there is a bike path next to the road. But it's not the kind of place you'd expect someone to walk at night. And according to her family, that's not something Megan would do. She wasn't comfortable in the dark. She was kind of afraid of the dark. And as we mentioned, she wasn't dressed to go out in the cold weather and also wearing three inch platform sneakers. It wasn't like she was wearing running shoes. And according to her parents, she never would have walked that way because that part, that Boulder Canyon area, is known to have a large unhoused population and a reputation for folks using substances. And students are warned to kind of stay away from that area, especially women walking alone at night. So it just didn't seem very typical or usual or something that she would do to go into this dark area in the middle of the night with for no, no reason. There's no reason why she would be walking that way. And according to channel nine news, after learning that Megan's phone had last pinged near that forty mile marker on the night of February ninth, Boulder County Sheriff's Office was brought into the investigation. So multiple agencies, including park rangers, worked together to search that area using drones, search and rescue dogs, and even a dive team. And Megan was not found during those initial searches.

John It wasn't until five days after she was last seen. So February fourteenth, near the forty mile marker that officers found a backpack and a prescription pill bottle. That pill bottle actually did belong to Megan. It was her Adderall prescription, but the officer that found it misread the label and thought that it belonged to someone else. The name of the prescribing doctor, which was also on the label. And that's important because they knew that Megan kept her pills with her in her purse because she didn't want them stolen out of her dorm room. On the fifteenth. The next day, they returned to that same area to follow up, and once the Rangers got there, they looked down the steep slope that led to the creek, and they saw Megan's body on snow covered rocks. There's no flat ground anywhere near where she was laying. She was completely covered in snow about two to three inches deep. She was lying on her back and her arm was outstretched and her right arm was pulled up into her jacket. She was about ten yards from a culvert that runs beneath Boulder Canyon Drive, and that culvert is large enough for someone to crouch down and walk through it to reach sort of the rocky bank on the other side, and there was a well-known homeless encampment inside the culvert, as well as on the far side near the water. The only way they could reach her was by rappelling down the slope, and when they got to her, they noted she was wearing the same clothes she had been last seen in, but her right shoe was missing. And on that foot her sock was torn. And this is important. Her jacket was buttoned, but the left side was bunched up over her upper torso, but her left arm was outside the sleeve, which had been ripped, and she was wearing a black fingerless glove which was inside out on her right hand. And her parents said that they have no idea whose glove that was, and her gloves were found inside the dorm room, and she didn't wear gloves inside out. She was also lying on top of a pair of gray pants, which didn't match anything she had been seen wearing in the surveillance footage. And as of this recording, no one knows where those came from. There was some question as to whether she had been found wrapped in something. One of the responding deputies wrote in his report that he saw what looked like a tarp or a blanket covering her body. But the sheriff's office later denied this, saying that while one deputy may have believed he saw something, detectives in the coroner staff didn't recover anything wrapped around her. So that's really confusing and inconsistent and sort of tells you what kind of investigation is going on here. And because Megan was found in Boulder County, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, BCSo took the lead on the investigation. There are so many questions about this investigation. Her family wondered, had her body been there the whole time? They find it really hard to believe that searchers were there in the area in that exact same spot, but that nobody would have spotted her in her bright red hair and red pants until the fifteenth. At one point, they said that the people searching were just a few feet from where she was found, looking down on the culvert. A one who lived in the area, told police that she didn't see anything suspicious, but she was surprised Meghan hadn't been found before that since people had been searching in that exact same spot. According to the police records, the neighbor told the police her surveillance system died the month before. She gave them names of other neighbors who might have had surveillance and ring cameras, but police never followed up with them. So Meghan's body was transported for the autopsy. The coroner's office later contacted Joe and Vanessa to share his preliminary findings. They were told that there were no signs of physical trauma, only a single scratch on her leg that appeared consistent with a branch. But when Meghan's parents received the final autopsy report, they learned that that wasn't the case at all. She had extensive contusions, abrasions and scrapes on her body, especially on the left side of her body where she would have held her purse. They also tested her for sexual assault. And as we mentioned later, they never sent out any of the swabs for testing. And there was one additional very strange thing that we will come back to later in the autopsy report that stood out to them. It said that abundant pill or capsule material filling had been found in her esophagus and stomach. Megan's parents had no idea where that could have come from. And toxicology testing was ordered, but those results wouldn't be ready for several weeks.

Shaun I just want to take a second and mention here as well, that Megan had two broken teeth in her mouth on the left side of her mouth. So on February eighteenth, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office said based on the investigation so far, we do not believe that there is or was a threat to the community. And they also said, we are still interested in hearing from anyone who may have additional information about Megan's movements. On Sunday, February ninth, the last day she was seen alive or any relevant information. And you can imagine for Megan's family, it felt like right away that the police were saying that Megan had died by suicide, and her parents believed that it really was confirmation bias by the officers. They did the bare minimum to investigate. They collected evidence but didn't test most of it, and they just weren't asking questions. And on February twenty fifth, ten days after Megan had been found, the sheriff's office called Vanessa and told her that Megan's phone and purse had not been recovered. No one had told the family this previously, and the police asked for permission to share photos of those missing items. And of course, Vanessa said yes. And then Vanessa and her friends began trying to find those items themselves. A friend of Vanessa's spent weeks walking around Boulder, speaking to people in the unhoused community, asking, what would you do if you found a cell phone? And finally, a person mentioned that they might try and sell it at an eco ATM, which is a kiosk that accepts used cell phones and other devices. Vanessa filed a claim about a missing phone with the eco ATM people, and two days later she got a response saying that the phone had been located after she'd informed detectives about the phone. They were able to obtain it, but unfortunately it had been wiped before it was sold. That meant that investigators and Megan's family couldn't recover any data that might have shed light on her final movements or communications. We also want to note here that before the phone was located, the FBI did find records from between February twelve and February sixteenth that showed that Megan's phone had what they described as data sessions. Only two of those sessions included GPS coordinates. One was on February thirteenth, northeast of Longmont, which is about fifteen miles away from Boulder, and the other occurred during the night of the thirteenth into the early morning hours of the fourteenth near the mouth of Boulder Canyon. The police determined that the phone had been sold by a man named Elliott, who was in the unhoused community and was known to be part around that culvert encampment where Megan's body was ultimately found. The police interviewed him, and he said he'd never seen Megan before. He didn't know who she was, and he said he found the phone on a trail. Then he said that it came from someone named Travis, and Travis had him sell it at the Ecoatm because Elliott was the only one with an ID. So I've never used one of these ecoatm, but I guess when you go there to bring a phone and sell it, they collect your identification. I guess just to make sure it wasn't stolen and that you actually were the owner of it. This man named Travis turned out to be another man in the unhoused community whose real name was Alexander, and police found that he had actually been in jail during the time that Megan went missing. So he was not a suspect right away. And when they spoke to him, he said that sometime after his release, between February thirteen and February twenty second, he went back to that Boulder Canyon encampment to gather up his stuff. He wasn't sure of the exact date that was, but while he was there, he found Megan's purse. So, according to Alexander, Megan's purse was just lying out in the open, and he took it with him when he left, and he later dumped it on a bike trail off of highway thirty six. He claimed he didn't know anything about Megan's phone. The only thing he stole from the purse was her vape. Elliott was arrested and charged with theft and a false declaration to a pawnbroker, and he was then released on bond.

John On March fifth, Megan's purse was found by a woman riding her bike near the thirty nine point six mile marker of highway thirty six along the bike path. And just to be clear, that discovery site was miles away from where Megan's body had been located. It wasn't anywhere near Boulder Canyon. In fact, this area is southeast of the campus, while the canyon is due west of the campus. The woman looked inside and found an empty prescription bottle, again for Adderall with Megan's name on it. Her credit cards were still inside. Strange and her earbuds and any cash that might have been in there were missing. She contacted the sheriff's office and they came to the scene to pick it up. Her mom, Vanessa, told Nine news that the woman who found the purse noted that the investigators didn't spend much time inspecting the area where the purse was found. Vanessa told Denver7 News that the purse was torn at the clasp. So Vanessa had made the purse and the clasp was double reinforced. So that fact was very concerning to her. And the family said that she would not just leave the purse. As we talked about before, it was her favorite thing in the world. Vanessa said that she also had to buy a very specific sewing machine in order to reinforce that clasp. That's how well it put together it was, but BCSo didn't really seem concerned with that. And an important note here that Megan always wore her purse on her left side, which is where the majority of her injuries were. Once the sheriff's office had the purse, they issued a news release saying that they knew how it ended up in that location, and claimed that the person who moved it had no contact with Megan. They said the same thing about Elliott, the man who had sold her phone. According to investigators, he had no connection to Megan, but it is completely unclear how they know that Megan s other shoe was never found. Her family's not sure if police investigators ever even looked for the shoe, because the reports only state that they looked for the phone in the purse, but they didnt say anything about the shoe. Then on March tenth, Vanessa and Joe sat down with the sheriff, who said, quote, based on the evidence I've seen, I don't believe a crime was committed, which is absolutely outrageous. And when asked about the purse and the shoe, the sheriff responded, sometimes weird things happen in an investigation and we never find out why. Which again is an absolute outrage and I can't believe that that was said to her family. On March twelfth, Boulder County Sheriff's Office released a statement saying they were actively and thoroughly investigating Megan's death, but they did not believe that foul play was involved and they didn't release any further details.

Shaun As the weeks went by, Megan's parents kept asking about the results of Megan's toxicology testing. They were repeatedly told that the results were not ready. Then, on May fourth, which was the end of the spring semester at CU Boulder, they said the results were in. And when Vanessa and Joe looked at the results, they noticed that in actuality, the report was finished two months earlier. The report showed the presence of amphetamine, which is what Adderall is, at a concentration of one thousand nine hundred nanograms per milliliter, as well as phenylpropranolamine at twenty two nanograms per milliliter, and a presumptive positive for cotinine, which is a nicotine metabolite. We already mentioned that Megan had a vape, so one thousand nine hundred is a high concentration of amphetamine. But it's not necessarily fate, but it's not necessarily fatal. The report notes that reported blood concentrations in amphetamine related fatalities ranged from five hundred to forty one thousand nanograms per milliliter, and the average would be about nine thousand nanograms per milliliter, so one thousand nine hundred is below the mean fatal level and is consistent with a large acute dose or chronic use, but not necessarily an intentional overdose. And despite the fact that amphetamine was not at a fatal level, the coroner's office ruled Megan's death a suicide. According to their report, she died from the toxic effects of amphetamine, with exposure to a cold environment listed as a contributing factor. Joe and Vanessa were shocked. They couldn't understand how investigators could come to that conclusion. Aside from all the evidence pointing to a struggle. Those injuries, the broken teeth, the missing shoe. Megan also had no history of being suicidal. She loved college. She seemed genuinely happy. The autopsy report itself even stated no previous suicidal ideations or attempts were known, and no suicide note was ever found.

John Then, on May twenty seventh, the sheriff and the coroner released a joint statement at the conclusion of their investigation into her death, ruling it a suicide. Jeff Martin, the coroner, said the office of the Boulder County Coroner, based on the examination and investigative findings available at this time, has issued an opinion that Megan Trussell died as a result of the toxic effects of amphetamine and exposure to a cold environment, hypothermia contributing to her death. It is a further opinion that the manner of death is suicide. Our opinion was based on several factors, including but not limited to, toxicology results and the presence of undigested prescription medication found during the examination. In their joint statement to the public, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office added based on the comprehensive investigation and forensic findings from the coroner's office, the sheriff's office, as well as a review from the District Attorney's office, we have found no evidence to suggest that Megan was physically harmed or killed by another person. The same day, Megan's parents sat down with investigators to discuss their findings. It was during that meeting that they were told for the first time about the apparently softball sized mass of undigested pill material in Megan's stomach, and that is what led them to conclude that Megan had taken her own life. When Megan's parents asked what type of pills had been found in that mass, they were told that the contents had never been tested, which of course left them completely flabbergasted. How could investigators determine that Megan had taken her own life if they didn't even know what pills she had supposedly ingested? Also, how could she die of an overdose of medication that had not been digested yet? So to them, the circumstances didn't point to suicide. Instead, they thought she might have been attacked and that someone had forced the pills down her throat. The bruising on her head only made that theory seem more realistic to them. Her parents, of course, demanded that the pill material be tested, and the coroner assured them that it would be. But as of now, a full year later, the results have not come back and Megan's death is still ruled a suicide and the case is closed. Of course, her family made it clear to the media and online everywhere that they did not agree with this finding. They told Nine news that she had no history of being suicidal. Her father said never once did she ever self-harm, self medicate or contemplate anything like that. She was a resilient young woman and she was absolutely loved college. Because the case is closed, her family was able to obtain all the investigative reports based on what they found. Megan's family believed that a thorough investigation really never occurred. And not only did they not test the pill material before coming to their conclusion, other key evidence hasn't been tested either. Blood found in the culvert near where Megan was discovered hadn't been analyzed, and neither had her fingernail clippings or any of the swabs collected during the autopsy. They had no expert do a forensic analysis of the injury patterns spread across the left side of her body, to the pathologist told detectives that Megan's injuries were consistent with the terrain, but she did not actually go to the scene, so she could not tell Megan's parents definitively how that pattern of injuries might have occurred. There are so many unanswered questions in this case. They don't know where the shoe is. They don't know what was up with those gray pants that Megan was lying on. They don't know how Elliott and Alexander came to be in possession of Megan's belongings, and they don't know how Megan made it to the forty mile marker. The questions are endless. According to local news channel nine news, her parents believed that police thought it was a suicide from the beginning and as a result, there was a lack of investigation and that does seem to be the case. Joe told nine News we just got the impression that maybe they were either in over their heads or too busy with other cases to give this case the attention it deserves. Her parents said there was a lot of finger pointing between campus police and the sheriff, each blaming the other side for a lack of progress or hold up getting information. Vanessa posted on Facebook at the very start of this investigation, they made it clear that they were not open to the possibility that a CU student, a vibrant, beautiful freshman, was murdered in their county on their watch. Her family felt that CU Boulder wanted to distance themselves from the case since the beginning, and they didn't want it to seem like anything bad could have happened to one of their students near the campus. When a reporter came to the campus to interview the family, the CU staff made them move to an area that was near a parking garage rather than inside, with the CU logo behind them. Vanessa said this has been very painful and I feel like the sheriff's office has been extremely dismissive and disrespectful. I feel powerless.

Shaun We do have one update. So in January last month, January twenty twenty six, it was announced that the Colorado Bureau of Investigations is reviewing Megan's case, which could possibly be a glimmer of hope. But the family has stated in their GoFundMe that the review has no enforcement power and that the CBI can offer guidance, but they can't compel any actions. So it's so, they wrote. Whether any recommendations are followed is left to the same agencies whose decisions are already in question. Based on our experience, it's difficult to believe that the Boulder County Sheriff's Office will set aside defensiveness or ego to act on outside advice. The reality is why our investigation continues. If you want to help the family, you can definitely contribute to that GoFundMe. They're looking to raise funds to continue to have independent experts analyze the evidence and any legal guidance that they need to move forward. And that doesn't stop just because the Bureau of Investigations is going to undertake this review of the case. But we do hope that something comes of it, because there are so many unanswered questions, and Megan deserves justice. If you have any information about this case, you can text or call six seven eight six three six nine seven seven one, or you can email TrussellTips@Vigilante-PR.com And there are multiple thousand dollar rewards available for information that leads to answers.

John The family had an original GoFundMe that was raising money for the case, but that one is closed. But we will share a link to the one that's still open. We know we don't really cover cases outside of Nevada that often, but this one was very important. And we thank Haley Gray for the research and all of the effort she's put into this case. We sincerely appreciate it and her sharing this information with us. If there are any updates to the case, we will keep you informed because what happens here happens everywhere.

John Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.co/subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and threads at Sins and survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at Survivors Comm.

Shaun If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or need support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website. sinsandsurvivors.com . Sins and Survivors a Las Vegas true crime podcast is researched, written and produced by your host, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website. sinsandsurvivors.com

John The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.