Crime Weekly - S3 Ep339: The Case of Megan Trussell | Live at CrimeCon Denver

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Megan Trussell, an 18-year-old University of Colorado Boulder student, was reported missing on February 12, 2025 after last being seen leaving her dorm on February 9. Her body was found just a few days later in remote area near Boulder Canyon, and after an investigation, the Boulder County Coroner’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office ruled her death a suicide. Though Megan's toxicology reports show medications had been in her system at the time of death, the rest of her autopsy tells a chilling story, and her family is fighting to get her case reopened.  Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. All right, first off, I feel pretty naked because I'm not behind a computer screen, and I don't have a table in front of me, and this is awkward. How is everybody doing today? Good, good.

Well, we are Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. I'm Derek Lavasser. Today we're basically filming a Crime Weekly news, which is our shorter segment, because if you watch Crime Weekly, you know that if we were to do an entire Crime Weekly episode, we'd all be sitting here for two and a half hours. Yeah. And part of the reason we're covering the case that we're going to cover today is for a few different

reasons. Obviously, you're all here. You see how great CrimeCon really is. I think a lot of people still are uncertain of what CrimeCon consist of, and I think us spreading this message and showing all the positive things that can come out of it is really important. So when I look around Creator Row

and I see all the families here who are unfortunately been affected by tragedy, being able to come to this one event and be able to talk face-to-face with so many content creators in one space is something that is absolutely necessary. As a former law enforcement officer, I'm the first person to admit,

we don't always get it right. And we're seeing more and more with the advancements in science and technology and also content creators and the platforms that they have and people like you guys were able to solve cases without law enforcement. So we wanted to highlight a case

where the family is here right now and it's going to be Megan Trussell and Joe and Vanessa are in the crowd. Joe and Vanessa, do you want to say hello? Put your hands up. Okay, right there they are. Okay, and unfortunately, Joe and Vanessa are one of the many families

who have gone through something and are trying to get the message out there and get their loved one's story told. So it was that coupled with the fact that this case actually took place right here in Colorado in February of 2025. And a lot of you probably don't know about it. And that's a problem.

So we're going to probably do a crime weekly, full-fledged, deep-dive, maybe multiple episodes, but at minimum we wanted to give you some overall coverage of the case. We're going to give you Joe and Vanessa a chance to talk at the end if you'd like, and then we'll open it up to some Q&A.

So we could go a lot deeper with this. I covered it on Detective Perspective. We're going to cover it here. Stephanie was researching it a little bit. We want to do a lot deeper of a dive, but we at least want to get the story out there today. Yeah, and I think Derek alluded to this or said it straight out because there's an echo and I can't really hear it.

But this is what CrimeCon is about. CrimeCon, it's great to meet people that you see on TV or that you see on YouTube or you hear on your podcast. But walking amongst us right now are family members and loved ones of actual victims who come here to raise awareness for the person that they've lost, whether they're missing or have been taken from us. And that is the most important thing,

and that's what we really wanted to bring it back to here talking about Megan. So I'm going to give you a brief overview, and then we're going to kind of go through the bullet points of what's going on, what happened to Megan. And then at the end of that, we're going to ask you, do you want us to cover this more in-depth on Crime Weekly and do a multi-part series, which is what we do. So this happened on the night of February 9th, 2025.

18-year-old Megan Trussell was last seen leaving her dorm at the University of Colorado Boulder. Six days later, her body was discovered down a steep embankment in Boulder Canyon several miles away. She had bruises, scrapes, head injuries. Her teeth were broken and her phone purse in one of her shoes was gone. Weeks later, her phone did surface at an eco-at-m. The phone had been sold by a stream. Her purse was also found miles away from where her body was found. Its clasp was ripped open. Her missing shoe has never been recovered. Now, despite these troubling details, law enforcement, the authorities,

concluded that no foul play had occurred. Megan's family obviously strongly disagrees. They believe this case was not fully or thoroughly investigated and that the truth about what happened, Megan, is still being overlooked and they are here today, still fighting for answers. still looking for the truth, and that's why we're talking about it. This case really resonated with me when I initially read about it, because for anybody, has anybody seen Breaking Homicide when I covered some cases there, right? Devin Schmidt was a case that I covered where it was similar circumstances, different also, but another case where an ME looks at it and says because there's something in her system

that clearly this wasn't any type of foul play. Clearly she did this to herself. Clearly she stuffed these drugs down her throat, and she did this before, anybody arrived. And I called bullshit on that one. We went out there and essentially proved that that's not what happened. And yet you had this ME who was not willing to change their findings, even though I brought in three other MEs that disagreed with this person. So although I know sometimes in true crime, you want to believe that these experts are always going to be right the first time around, the reality is that's not the case. It's not the case for detectives. It's not

the case for crime scene investigators. It's not the case for MEs. Sometimes they get it wrong. Yes, it's a science, but it's an interpreted science, right? They're going to look at the evidence and come to their own conclusion. So when I read Megan's case and we're going to get into some of the details why this M.E had some problems with it other than the fact that they said there were no signs of, you know, any type of trauma. There definitely was. We're going to go more in detail on that. It was also the fact that there was something found in her esophagus. I don't want to steal the thunder here where there was some reservations about it, which I completely disagree with the law enforcement agency as far as what they believe could have happened.

So a little bit about Megan, she was raised right here in Denver, Colorado, by her parents, Vanessa and Joseph. She's an older sister, Lindsay. She was big into film. She wanted to eventually become a filmmaker, and that's what she was majoring at Boulder. She loved her 90s grunge music. She also played the bass guitar. And, uh, When she started college, she was thriving socially, academically. She even texted her father shortly after arriving, saying college rules seemed to be having a good time. Now, she was last heard from on February 9th, 2025. That was Super Bowl Sunday.

And I guess what had happened is there was a little tension between herself and her roommate. At the time, on February 9th, there was something of an argument. Megan's boyfriend was there at the time. He ended up leaving. He didn't want to be a part of the drama. he went home. Now, his mother confirmed that he arrived home about 15 minutes after he would have left Megan's dorm. We also have Megan leaving the dorm and we capture her on surveillance footage. Yeah, she was leaving the hall. One thing to point out, we're not going to go into all the details

right here, but there was some tension between the roommates, as Stephanie said, and there's one important note to make here, which is that according to what we have, the boyfriend broke up with Megan before leaving said he didn't want any involvement with it. And the reason I bring this up is because this is where people, there are a lot of people out there that believe this was a suicide as we're going to go through this. I've said it right on my episode. I don't think this is a suicide or a homicide. I think it's a homicide or an accident. I don't think suicides in play here, but one of the things they would point to for the people who believe this was a suicide is that this argument happens or this disagreement happens between Megan and her boyfriend. She

breaks up with him and then decides, oh, I'm going to kill myself within a matter of minutes. And that's what Stephanie is referring to here, where you see her leaving the dorm room, the dorm room. She's not dressed for the weather. And we're supposed to believe that she's just going to walk off about an hour away and kill herself. And it just doesn't make sense. So that's one thing that if you hear people say, oh, this could have been a suicide. This is one of the pieces of information they'll point to that the motive behind it might have been that her boyfriend broke up with her, and she decided to take her own life. Which, I don't believe that.

No, we don't believe that. We don't believe it. Absolutely not. He isn't that great. It's not that great. Yeah. So around 9 o'clock is when the argument with the roommate happened. Megan's boyfriend is present. He leaves around 9.17 p.m. to go home. And at 9.36 p.m., Megan is seen exiting Hall at Hall alone. As Derek said, she's not really dressed for the weather, right? She's wearing white platform shoes, red pants, black, black,

t-shirt and yes a jacket but like a denim style jacket a light spring jacket not something you would wear on a February night where the temps are going to fall into you know the low 20 degrees what's also important is she was carrying a blue and pink cross-body purse with a star this was handmade by her mother very important to Megan so it's one of a kind really cute purse Megan's mother has made other purses like this she has one with her right there you see right there that's the exact purse, right? That's the exact dimensions. That's the look. There's only a couple of them in existence. Obviously, Vanessa has the other one. So this was a very important purse to her, and this is going to come to play. It had reinforced stitching on it, where the handle

and everything kind of clasps into the body of the purse. So the last time that Megan was seen on security footage was 9.52 p.m. This was near at Champion's Center. Now, there are phone pings from Megan's phone. 10.45 p.m. by E. Eben G. Karp, which is at the start of the Boulder Canyon. And then again, at 11.55 p.m. near the 40-mile marker of Boulder Canyon drive. And then after that, the phone either died her or was shut off. When Derek said an hour walk, it's actually, I think it was a 90-minute walk. I think the M-N-G was 52 minutes.

About that. So I had said, is it possible she could make the walk based on the time stamps? Yes, it is possible. She could have made that walk. If she had gotten to that location within 15 minutes, no doubt she was driven there, right? But you have to take into all the circumstances as far as accounting, is it possible? Yes, it's possible, but we're talking about 20-degree weather. I wish we had visuals here, obviously in the episode we would,

but she's in a very thin sweater or whatever it is. It's not the weather you'd go to the jacket. You'd want to be in if you're going to make an hour walk. So I'll put it out there just to be honest. Yes, it's possible. She could have made the walk. to me, it leaves some questions. If she was in a bad headspace,

maybe the argument had her in a place where she's like, you know what, I don't care, I just want to go for the walk. I can see that. But there's also a possibility that she was driven out to this location and then when you had that ping, she may have been at that park

for an extended period of time. So it's still possible that she got out there in 15 minutes and then when you get to ping, that's at the park. So a lot of questions, not a lot of answers, but this is why, to me, this case is so fascinating. So Megan leaves her dorm on February 9th. It's not until February 12th where her mother and her sister Lindsay realized,

hey, we haven't heard from Megan in a few days. And this is not uncommon. I have a 23-year-old daughter. She's moved out on her own now. Sometimes I don't talk to her for several days because she's got a boyfriend and work and she's got things going on. And I'm not trying to be that mother that's texting her every day. I will be that guy.

I'm sorry, TEP. I'm not an helicopter. And if they don't answer, we will be setting out search and rescue. So at that point, Vanessa, her mother, checked phone records and confirmed, okay, no, Megan's phone hasn't been used since February 9th at 8.45 p.m. So then Megan's sister, Lindsay, goes to Megan's roommate, and the roommate confirms, yes, the last time I saw her was Super Bowl Sunday February 9th. So the parents tried to report her missing to the campus police. That's right. And they said, no, she's probably couch surfing. You know, we see this all the time.

We hate it. We cannot stand to see this. Every time a person goes missing, if they're over the age of 18 and the police or the authorities hear about it, well, they're an adult. You know, they could be shacking up with someone or they could be just hanging out. They have their own lives. They don't need to be in contact with you. They'll be fine. They'll turn up in a few days.

And in the meantime, valuable time is passing to be conducting an investigation and looking for this person. But by the end of a few days, the case was taken seriously. the FBI was brought in. They started a search. Multiple agencies searched with drones, dogs, dive team. They didn't find anything. Now, it wasn't until February 15th

when Park Rangers, not law enforcement, Park Rangers, spotted Megan's body below the slope in Boulder Canyon. She was found lying on her back, down a steep embankment near a culvert where there was a homeless encampment. There was a lot of things

going on at this scene, and I'm going to try to to say it all without being jumbled. But there was a broken stick near Megan's right side. There was dirt, debris under her fingernails. As we talked about, her right, she was missing. And on that foot, there was a torn sock. She also had her jacket, that denim jacket that she was wearing,

which was kind of long. It was all bunched up and had a ripped sleeve. Now, near her, on her right hand, there was an inside-out fingerless glove. As far as Megan's parents know, this is not her glove. she was also lying on top of a pair of dark pants which she was not seen wearing in any of the surveillance footage these don't appear to be her pants

we don't know whose pants they are to this day they have not been identified but as I said there's a homeless encampment nearby so there's going to be has lots of stuff in this area that we really can't identify yeah and I really wish we had the photo here if you have a chance after this you can go watch detective perspective you'll see all the visuals in there the best way to describe this in Bankman and Joe and Vanessa you can correct me at the end if I'm wrong

here, but just looking at Google Maps, I studied it for hours. To me, yes, it's an embankment. Yes, you could definitely get hurt if you fell down it, but if you're going to pick a place where you're going to attempt to kill yourself, not to be crass, there's a better spot. This would not be the place that's going to get the job done. It's very rocky. It almost, to me, looks like you would see it near a beach or something like that. There's this culvert that's right next to it. And from my, in my, where I'm sitting, it would look. like something that if you were to end up where she ended up, you would have fallen or been pushed. I don't even know physically how she would have jumped and landed in this location.

Again, it's always tough without the visuals, which is, it sucks. We're going to do our best to describe it. But when we're saying this, this embankment, as we're describing people having to repel down to get to her, you could definitely walk down it if you had to. And that's important here because, again, to go back to the whole suicide theory, these are the factors you have to consider. Yeah, I think what's Eric's saying is if you're trying to kill yourself, It's not a sure thing, that this would do the trick, which is concerning.

So we talked about how this one of her socks or one of her shoes was never found, but there's two other things that weren't found with Megan's body, and that was her purse and her cell phone. All right, so let's start with the initial autopsy, the Emmy's initial findings. At first, the Emmy had called Megan's parents and said, there's no signs of trauma. Megan's body has no signs of trauma. When Megan's parents got the autopsy report, that turned out to not be true.

She did have actual injuries, including bruises and abrasions across her hands, her arms, her legs, her back, her chest, her face. She had large contusions on her arms. She also had a dark hip bruise, multiple abrasions on her back, lacerations and abrasions on her face and head. And what I think to be very important and the most concerning, broken teeth on the left side of her mouth. Now, they did toxicology, obviously, and they found pills. They found several undigested pills in her esophagus and her stomach. And this turned out to be Adderall. Now, Megan did have a prescription for Adderall.

As far as I can tell, they said the level of the Adderall in her system was toxic, but not typically fatal. But the cause of death ended up being ruled suicide due to the toxic effects of the Adderall plus cold exposure. Let's go back to what Derek said. And you said this in your detective perspective episode. If you're going to take your own life, and I say, I'm on Adderall. If you're going to take your own life, you're not going to do it with Adderall. That would be a very silly thing to do. I don't even, I don't know if anybody's ever done that, how it would happen.

I feel like that would be a very scary, anxiety-ridden way to go. So Derek says, and a lot of these pills are not digested, right? So Derek says, why would you sit in this area, pop a bunch of pills in your mouth, wait a few seconds or a few minutes and say, oh, you know what? I'm actually going to throw myself down into this ravine where there's not even an absolute certainty that this will take my life either. This is, it's just, it doesn't make any sense. And quickly, it was, I believe the exact description was a ball of pill-like material, right? That was the exact description from the inner esophagus.

So it didn't even say exactly what that material was. So all this, they deduced that she killed herself. She basically threw herself down eight feet of rock after taking these pills. That was this, after walking an hour out into the middle of nowhere. So the phone ended up being found, well, actually, I think the purse was found first, correct? Well, the phone was what you guys started looking into. That's the Eco-AtM. That was, I believe that was first.

The Eco-ATM was what happened first, where they actually did the work, not law enforcement. Yeah, the parents actually ended up. Law enforcement couldn't find it, so Vanessa had to step up and find it. Detective. They went to, I believe they went to the homeless encampment. Yeah, that's a round of applause, for sure. For sure. All her years of experience, who would have thought?

They went to the homeless camp in, and I guess they started asking around, like, if a phone was found or stolen, what would you do with it? And they were told, well, we would probably go to an eco-itm. And for anybody who doesn't know, an eco-at-m is, it's an ATM. machine basically for electronics and you can put the electronics in and then the system reads it and gives you a quote for how much you will get paid for that. And they actually, Vanessa did call EcoATM reported Megan's phone missing two days later. They're like, yeah, we found it. Okay. Let me ask you something. I hate to be critical here. You think that's something you might

want to do? Go visit the homeless area where these people might have seen something and say, hey, what would you do if you found something or did you see anything? And like, I'm pro-cop. You guys know that. But these are the areas where I get frustrated because, although I commend you for what you did, you shouldn't have to. It should have already been done. So it's frustrating for me, but glad you did it because otherwise we may not have found the phone.

So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And this is the, I always like to spoil these, and Stephanie always gets mad at me, but this leads somewhere. This is important. Stephanie's like, shut up. Just let me keep going. I'm in my group. I know what I mean?

Yeah. So I think what's interesting is the parents had never been told that Megan's phone and purse were even missing. It was until later, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't until later. The 25th, February 25th. 10 days, yep. Which is, that's insane, right? And once they have that information, they're the ones that track the phone down.

So the police have this information for 10 days, and they don't follow this lead to bring them to the eco-ATM. Now, the interesting thing about the phone is, and I want to ask Megan's parents, it was traded into the EcoATM. It was wiped before it was fed into the machine. And I'm just not sure what type of phone can be wiped without having an Apple ID password, a cloud password, even a Google email address password. I think all phones have certain, right, yeah, yeah, she's nodding. She knows what I mean.

All phones have these certain, basically, anti-theft measures. That way, if somebody takes your phone, they can't just wipe all of your information out of it and sell it. So would you guys be willing to let us know whether it was an iPhone, a Samsung, a Samsung? Probably easier to wipe. So they factory reset it, basically. Yeah. And it was a different SIM card, too. Different SIM card.

Also, you swapped up the SIM card as well. One other note with the February 25th that I thought was important, it was you guys who decided to do the flyers or put the posters out of the purse and the phone was it as well again that was then that went to this area where she was last seen and said hey has anybody seen this very detailed purse that you can't go buy in a store

they went out there and did that and also as of late you guys went or tried to go back out to that area with bags was a bags where they went out to the to this homeless and cammon area where people obviously are looking for food and they went out there to try to provide that for him and put Megan's

information on the bag genius and I hope they go every Sunday and I hope I'm not getting this wrong but you actually had some pushback on this yes Boulder County they would let us do it on their property during their hours

Boulder County would not let these parents go out there and just put this information out there for their daughter because it was an inconvenience or you needed like a permit for it they said you're on the like their ongoing dispute with the county. They're ongoing dispute with the county because they didn't agree with their findings. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And Haley Gray is a big part of this. She's someone who writes for me on Detective Perspective. She's an angel. I don't know if she's here. Is she here right now, Haley? She doesn't like to be seen. She doesn't like to be seen. Haley's great. All right. So they find the phone and they end up finding out that it was fed into this eco ATM by a man named Elliot

Beaufort. Now, he was a homeless man. He had ties to that area. They talked to Elliot Beaufort, and he claimed he found it, and he said he got it from a guy named Travis, and Travis had given it to Elliot to sell, because out of their little group, Elliot was the only one who had an ID, and you need an ID to do this eco-ATM thing. So Travis ends up being a guy named Alexander Conner. Now, I believe Alexander Conner was in prison at the time of Megan's disappearance. That day, the ninth, but he was out shortly after, yeah. When the police talked to him, he said he did take the purse, but he later abandoned it on a bike trail, and the only thing he took from the purse was Megan's vape.

Now, that purse would be found by a woman. I think she was biking? Yes. She found the purse, and there were credit cards inside and an empty, Adderall bottle. Okay, so this is interesting because once again, I had questions for Megan's parents. Do we know when the last time Megan's Adderall prescription was filled? A week before. So there was cash taken out of her purse, a vape, things like that, but no credit cards because they can be tracked in the Adderall bottle, but it's empty. And there was Adderall pills found in Megan's stomach and esophagus. Correct. So is it possible?

that there was foul play, that somebody did something to Megan in order to steal her purse, get what they could out of it, cash, maybe even some of that Adderall, her cell phone and sell it, and they fed her some of those pills to make it appear as if she had taken them, and then they took the rest. Because if her Adderall prescription had been filled a week before, that's an entire month's prescription. And I don't know many people who are going to find a bottle of Adderall when they're stealing things from a purse and leave that Adderall there. Once again, I also don't know anybody

who's going to pop a bunch of Adderall to take their own lives. It's insane. So she had some, and they were undigested, right? And that was just a pill-like material that was found. I have no information about that. But we're going to let you, you're definitely going to be telling us at the end of this.

Yeah, to me, when you look at it and you look at the possible scenarios, just based on what you've heard so far, we've only been going for 25 minutes. A lot of part-time detectives out there. We find her purse, her phone, found by these unidentified individuals at the time, nowhere near where she was found, and yet we're to believe that it's more likely she walked out there, didn't encounter these guys, and it just so happens that her purse strap breaks,

which was sewn by the person right here who would know how well it was done. When the purse was found, there was a broken clasp. Yep. Megan's mother is like, no, I reinforced stitched that. I made sure that that wouldn't happen, you know, because, you know, people run by, try to snatch your purse, things like. that, you're going to reinforce it. The clasp was found broken. On top of that, all the injuries that Megan did suffer, the abrasions, the broken teeth, and you've got the weird pills, and then her Adderall's gone, her phone's gone, it's being sold. That's right. How many people are leaning suicide at this point? Yeah, does it sound like a suicide? If you put your hand up,

get out. That's a trick question. No, I mean, common sense, right? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is a duck, right? It doesn't take a detective to figure out there's something more going on here. And you have two individuals you just identified that are clearly lying. So the question is why? Why are they lying? And also my question is what's being done now? Also, before I forget, the entire investigative report has been released because of the classification of this case. So it's available. I'll let you say that it's on my site as well, but also I'm sure you have a website. Go read the entire thing.

It's in depth, but I strongly urge you to do so because there's even more information in there than we're discussing here. Yeah, and they never test... Is it true that they never tested the pill material found? Oh, they did. They did. Okay.

And was there blood and other things, fingernail clippings and things? They didn't test me about... They didn't test the blood or the fingernail clippings. Vanessa, if you want to come up to the mic. They did a raise-up. You're more knowledge about this than us. Give a hand for Vanessa, everybody.

Yeah. So when they first released the autopsy results, right? First of all, I kept calling the coroner's office asking when they're going to have the autopsy released. They said they were awaiting the toxicology. waiting for toxicology. I later warned that they didn't release the autopsy until late 27th a week after school bed offers mid semester in school. They had the toxicology since March 7. So the very reason we didn't want any of that to turn out of why people were still there from school. So on March 27 came back with the quantum assistant DA obviously

people and they're like, no big suicide. So I have a lot of technical questions about the autopsy itself. And they said, well, we can't answer those questions. We have to talk to a forensic pathologist. So on June 4th, we got to talk to the forensic pathologist. And we were like, how is this, it's not a lethal level of animal. And she's been taking it for four years. She would know that that wouldn't kill her, it would make her psychotic movie, and that's not a sure wouldn't kill yourself. She had $3,000 a thing count. She was good to say, where she's such a joyful. And I said, no history or suicidal evasion, no self-injured, nothing like that.

So I was really pushing. Well, how would you say this is a suicide when you have no hurt? And the friends of pharmacologists said, well, it was the sheer volume of pill material in her stomach and esophagus. It was so much that the lumen in her esophagus was distended that she'd never seen anything at large before. before. And I said, okay, who has that much other? And they said, well, she had four empty bottles in her dorm and I said, she has ADHD. She's just throwing a thing away. Did you see all that the touch? It's so true.

That's like Stephanie's house. And so you just, you don't want to see my house, no. No. She's not stocked at all. Yeah. Like she needs it. You need it. So, I said, even that, even if she took the whole kill bottle that she had, that is not that.

That is not that amount thing. So I found out it was 200-year-liters of virtually architect said it was a softball size. 10-year-old liters is less than any adults, like a can of feet, it's glad to see it. I asked, did you test it? You're so sure it's palmerit, did you test it? Because what else is it?

It can be out of it. And they all look to each other. No, you didn't. So Joe had to leave, actually, he went to watch an Lister game. Wow. Wow, Joe. I'm a kid really going to be talking to this. Okay. In its defense.

So Joe actually demanded, you need to get that tested. So they sent him and got me testing. The results came back in and were like, yes, it died at all. And they put this ridiculous number out there to live public, 1.7 million nanographs per million. But that's undigested in her stuff. A friend of mine is a statistician, and so, you know, we sat down and read the numbers. In that quantity, in that percentage, that's 5% to 7% of the 200 millerers.

So what else is in your stomach? And I asked that question originally, and then I was like, I don't care what's in her stomach. Like, I don't care what the rest of me is. The bottom line is, you said it was all pillaterio, and that's why it's so exciting, that it was of all of the fact that she intended to end her lightning on this post. Well, the rest of that, 90% of what I'll see for something, is not anything that came up on the NMS last month's psychology. So it's 97% nothing. It's in our, whatever it is, it's food, I don't know what it is, salt. They kind to say that it's inflating, but it's

pill material of like animal means. By the way, there's no pill casings, no evidence of any event, I asked the coroner to have it quantified by NMS that is because they still have a sample. By the way, they would keep the whole sample. And I wondered that that right there is a good step. They should have kept it a whole with want to do because how did they know that it was consistent throughout? They took 35 million or something and had that in a list. So if the whole thing was consistent in that 35 millioners, it would be 5% of the entire content of So moral of the story, she didn't die from overdosed on Adderall. That's the moral of the story.

And it's one of the many reasons that we're covering the case today because, and I don't know if I'm stepping on you, there's other things you wanted to hit. What's my opinion on what happened? Again, it's just an opinion. I think there's enough here between the autopsy report to show that there was clearly a struggle, at minimum, a struggle. You have multiple individuals who, in my opinion, attempted to disperse the evidence in different locations away from where the crime occurred to try to avoid any type of

detection that they were involved with it. And unfortunately, they were so stupid that they brought it to an eco-ATM where their names would be tracked and now they're starting to reverse engineer it. Boulder's more than likely not going to reopen it on their own. So why are we covering it? Well, we have seen over time, as I said at the top of this episode, that we can make a difference. If there's enough public pressure, things can change. Because overall, politicians need to be reelected, right? And they're reelected by votes, people like yourself. There's probably a lot of people that are from that area right in this very room.

So if enough people complain and enough people bring it to the attention of those decision makers, I promise you they'll reopen it. And from that point, I don't want the same investigators looking at it. They've already came to their own conclusion here. We need a fresh perspective. We need a new set of eyes. Personally, I'd like someone from an outside party, independent investigators, to come in and look at it and see what they figure out.

As I said at the top of the show, my opinion, more than likely this is a homicide. Is it possible that it was an accident? Yes, I can't completely discredit that. Based on where she was found, is it possible she went out there? And unfortunately she, and I can't even get to this point, but she fell into this area and due to her injuries in the weather and not being found right away, she expired from those injuries and the climate. maybe. I think it's much more likely based on the condition of the purse that there was

definitely a struggle there. She was fighting back because someone wanted what was in that purse and during that struggle that strap was broken. Makes a lot more sense to me. The question is who was it? Is it Elliot? Is this guy Alexander or is there somebody else? Or both of them? Or both of them? Yes. Well, we know Alexander was in prison at the time, but that doesn't mean that It could have been a collaborative effort. And so there's a lot more here that needs to be looked into. This case is far from over. And the fact that they closed it is a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is we have all the information. So as we're wrapping this up, we still have more to go here. But as we're talking about it, if you take anything from this, if you're from this area and you know of people or you can share this message, make sure you tell Megan's story. Because at the end of the day, right now the way it stands, they're not going to reopen this case. and we need to bring attention to it not only in the Denver area but also the state I want to ask you you dealt

with campus police correct? Yes and the sheriff's department in Boulder and it was I'm not going to put words in your mouth it's your impression that they kind of decided what it was pretty early on and do you think that has anything to do with I don't know maybe that being a college town

maybe not wanting not good for parents to feel not safe to send their children there. Absolutely. Wrenshaw was missing. We were putting up, well, first of all, they made our own posters, and we put them up all in their way. They were taking them all done because there were tours. This was February, so they had this in perspective, but he was floating. They didn't want us to go public with it, and a person put it all in their Facebook. I'm really good friend of ours on the text with the media, so channel my view is

actually released out, calling me and myself home, and I was like, let me. And they cannot interview It was such an awkward thing. They had to sit in this conference room while they would be, and, you know, they're the acting sheep, and they're the comedian person, which had to figure out what they're trying to do with us. So after like an hour of sitting there awkwardly, they need us still outside.

And it's the middle heaven. It's the cold. It was freezing old. And they put us in front of this nondescript. barrage so you couldn't see kids walk me through this you couldn't see any of the

of the noticeable you know very soon they didn't want to have the misfits of you starting at that time specifically they did they tried to bury and they immediately said

no fall into any and then they wait to release the object results until after school is out like that feels very attentional to me I agree I definitely agree that is very intentional so what so what can we do we first have some call to actions and it's your

you know your regular things but i also want to kind of go a little rogue here too i'll talk about that in a second all right so there's a tip line you can call or text 678 636 9771 you can also email trussle tips at vigilante dash prr.com there's a $1,000 reward being offered currently They'll match it. I will match it. He'll match it. That is true. We'll match it.

That's it. In fact, in fact, in fact, if we have information that leads to the rest, $5,000, I'll put towards it. So, hopefully we get someone to come forward. But have you been working with any lawmakers in the area? Yes, so Senator Janice Marchton. He's the representative bullion of the state.

she's been very helpful she's actually done to the medical for the DAs trying to put pressure on him to at least investigate the estimation because anybody could I mean

it's basic right like they did it for this poor job it's it's embarrassing to me actually absolutely I know I work I work public education and if I did a job that bad I would

be fired it they just they didn't do their job at all and they still probably get like We're just this sweet greeting mother who just can't come to terms of what the daughter did, but it just doesn't add up. Like,

I'm educated in a total person, and none of it went up, and they didn't do anything. It really doesn't add up, and even as Derek said, yeah, could it have been an accident? Potentially, I suppose, yeah, you know, theoretically, it could have been an accident. That's more likely. But if it's an accident, why walk so far?

Why not put a jacket on for the weather. Why would you take all of those pills? She just talked to the story about something more practical. I mean, NyQuil, even, Benadryl, something, yeah. And there's no destination there. Where she was

walking, let's say it was an accident, she was walking somewhere. There's nowhere to go out there. There's nowhere where we can look in the distance and say, I know where she was going. And not only that, not only was it dark, not only was a cold. Megan was not the type of girl who was like, oh, I'm going to journey off into the dark cold. She's afraid of the dark.

Afraid of the dark. She's freight of the dark. 20-degree weather, afraid of the dark. No, this is a case that definitely needs to be looked into. The only other time we've ever done a podcast episode was for Praveen

Variegis. Same thing. Same thing. College town. College town is Carbendale, Illinois. College town, and I've seen this happen in a lot of cases when it's a college town, when there's a university involved.

They depend, and that area in general depends so heavily on enrollment. and the tax benefits they're getting from being a university town, it's like a tourism industry almost. You know, if something happens on a resort or a cruise ship like Amy Bradley, the cruise ship's not trying to announce it to everybody. People are on vacation. The week after they found her body,

they announced, Sundance announced that Boulder was one of planning. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So we need to have an appearance that this is a safe place. This is not a place where college girls get attacked for the phone in their purse. Anyway, that's the other reason they're trying to know. So, Sunnance has come into Boulder.

The government pitched in a bunch of money, like a third. See Boulder pitched in a third, and then the city of Boulder, he pitched in a third. What millions of dollars actually came in with what developed, I don't believe, on figures, but there's a lot of money invested in that in bringing Sunnance to Boulder, it's a safe, you know. Yeah, having a murder at that point would not have been ideal for them. Oh. Yeah.

Is there anywhere else where people can go, any, the website, anything that, other than the phone number we gave where they want to learn more information about Megan's case they can go to. We do have a Facebook page. It's called Megan Trussle Official, something like that. Justice for Megan. We'll put on our social media. We'll put on our social. It's on the detective perspective. I actually stole all your photos when I was doing my episode. What about the CBI? We're working on that. We're discouraged. So the Boulder D.A. has said that you will not have the best of you. This is the coroner's. case is so strong.

The process is right? I'm like, have you got it? He's running for Attorney General by doing, so... Something to think about. Okay, that's him. So... The person, Judge Gizold, he's running for

Attorney General. She actually wants to turn it out. She's already said, we're looking at me next week. So we know what we're voting for for Attorney General, right? Um... The petition that we, that my case may is to re-open the case and that is going to

the current attorney general who's running for governor he said to email him to Janice March of yesterday say he's not going to in-depthly open the case or as he see he got you to investigate.

So we'd have one more last try with the governor and the governor once so Senator Michael Bennett I think she's running what does he's waiting for? Got me. He's getting

forgot it so much. And so he did a big to make a successor and current governor wants to be a senator. So all these people are in together and nobody wants anything to do with this. And nobody wants to say that we need that for them. But we, actually, some of them are watching and said, well, you know, he's the government who's not going to take things. He's the one that he directs the guy to the open in the case. She was like, we're not going to do it because we would have to ask you And it's like, but you're not going to reopen it. I'm going to know with the media and no, no, no, no, no.

You can talk to her where they see. When was this yesterday? So I got the, you know, I was going to say yesterday from the attorney, current attorney general. I heard about the meeting with the, with the current other words, lawyer on the other side. So when did they tell you not to go to the media? Thursday.

How'd that work out for them? How'd that work out? Listen, I just wanted to say, as both as parents, it inspires me what you're able to do to get up here and stand in this room and talk about your daughter and talk about her case. It takes a lot of courage, a lot of respect. And we're here with you. We'll see we can go. Absolutely.

Absolutely, Vanessa. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're gonna, we got about, hey, this right here is so on brand for us. So on brand, it wouldn't be an episode if it wasn't.

On brand for me. Listen, we got about 15 minutes left. We got microphones. We want to end on a little bit of a lighter note. If anybody has questions, they can be related to this case or something else. Please feel free to come up, ask them, more than willing to answer the questions with the last 15 minutes that we have. we have somebody already will go left or right fire away

so I noticed a trend while we met with him in this with this case also with the Ellen Greenberg case you mentioned at the beginning. I'm talking about that. Devin Schmidt, yeah. Making these wild assumptions about suicide is there any consequence to that? Is there anything

I mean that can be done when they're making these rulings that are so clearly wrong? I don't know if there's a consequence, but what I would like to see is at the end of the day, these are opinions. Yes, they're based on science, but they're open to interpretation, and you could have three different people look at it and come to a different conclusion. I would like to see a situation where if there's an appeal, there's a process in place that in all, someone outside of that, another Emmy, whether

it's from another state or another jurisdiction, would come in and they would be forced to give that opinion. Now, if you have three other people, confirm what they said, you might be in a tough spot, but the fact that they are judge and jury, essentially, and you have to go back to that same ME in order to get anything done, well, what is the likelihood if that person came to a conclusion that they're going to change their mind after the fact and admit that they're wrong? Some may be willing to do that, but I think it's fair to say human instinct, most of them are not going to, and there's really no way to dispute them without it. So I think there should be some type of board, some type of appeal process where if there's a family and there's some evidence that's a

that what they're saying could be not what they have concluded, there should be an outside party who comes in and looks at what they did. Checks and balances. There shouldn't be one person making that determination. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just referring if there's any to any testing with the evidence that's found around her or any of her nails or is that a lot? No. As far as I remember, no. Right, Vanessa, nothing, nothing. Problem. They have that anyone is in order to test, do we know? They should still have her fingernail clippings.

They should still have all that. That's the point. Now, imagine if a second pathologist came in to look at that. I don't know. We actually just, DNA's so critical these days. We can't say too much. I did want to announce it, criminal coffee. We've now, we funded our first case through you guys.

We were able to solve it, Albert Frost. We had another case that we funded, a case out of Houston. We're not allowed to say any details, but we are happy to announce that the case was solved. And we're going to be, should I tell him? All right, so I got in a little trouble because I emailed everybody, including the Houston Police Department, and basically was threatened that if I said anything,

I'd have some legal problems. So Stephanie was like, don't do it, Derek. Don't do it. I just see that. Well, you were like, don't lean into it. Let's not go there. Let's not go there, which is fine. But they got a couple more weeks,

and we might say it anyways. As far as I'm concerned. I think you did say, we're going to say it anyways. Yeah, the letter was pretty legit that they said me. They were like, don't you do it? And he was like, we're going to do it. We'll go over here. I just have one question about the teeth.

The teeth, yeah, sure. It was an accident. The teeth would be with her writing. You would expect that, wouldn't you? Now, they were broken. I don't know if there was pieces, chunks off. They were just broken. But that is a good question.

That is a good question. We don't know. What was an accident would it not be doing about? or around her, yeah. You would think that, yeah. I would think that there'd be more evidence of the other injuries that she had being sustained at that location, maybe some blood or something. From what I understand, there was nothing.

Also, you think there'd be marks where she fell down, right? Like slid down? Do you believe that it's possible she was killed somewhere else? And then her body was transported there. You just nailed it. I'm not even certain this is the primary crime scene. This could be a secondary crime scene. She could have been dumped there.

For all we know, whatever happened happened. to Ebbingy Park. Yeah. So that's my problem. That's my concern. So, but great question. It's a great question. Hi, guys.

Hi. So I start my day today, listening to Mr. Ramsey, mixed issues with forward police. Yeah, seems like they have some issues. Maybe I'm hearing about maybe I've had the problems with the border police over the course of the 30-year period. What seems to be the problem? With these three boys, there's religiousness, and criticalists, all the above? No, do you want to go first?

I'm talking a lot. In my opinion, what do I think is wrong with them? I think when we talked about the Ramsey case, we said this was a police department that at that time had not seen that level of violence, had not seen that level of crime, especially not in a neighborhood like that. Now, if you ask me, what is their problem now? Decades later? Yeah, I would say just incompetence. I would say wanting to create an illusion that Boulder is a safer place than it really is. And you see this in a lot of cities, right? You see this in a lot of cities where they downplay the crime rate. You want to encourage people to move there. You want to encourage people to send their kids to school there. You want to encourage people to go to events like Sundance there. Well, they're not going to want to do that if it doesn't feel like a safe place, if they feel like they could be mugged or robbed or murdered or, you know, sexually assaulted. There's going to be less tourism. That means.

the last money for the town, the city, the state. That's my opinion. I don't think it's just isolated to Boulder. I think it's a, I look at it on a more macro level. I think what happens in a lot of investigations, not a lie, I shouldn't say that, but these investigations where we have issues, what happens is the police officer, the detective determines initially what they think happened, and then they find the evidence to support that theory. Instead of just letting the breadcrumbs take them wherever it's going to lead them. And unfortunately, if they're saying it's incompetence? I would say hubris. I would say hubris. I would say. they get an ego about it, they think, oh, they walk into it, they get the preliminary

investigation, the details, they immediately rule it something, they find the evidence to support it, and if anybody comes in to dissent that opinion, now it's a competition. Now it's about who's right and who's wrong instead of what it should be about, which is the truth. That's the problem, on a bigger macro level. He said earlier that one of her shoes is sitting and that she's wearing their white platform shoes. They're almost looked like Spice Girl shoes if I had to describe them. Not that I listen to Spice Girls or anything, but I've heard they would look like that.

Yes. And she walked 52 minutes? Yep. Any shoes. They're like this thing. We've never found that second shoe. Now, to your point, I didn't get your name. I apologize.

We talk about teeth. If it happened at that location, wouldn't the second shoe be there? Yeah. Yeah. They're like sneakers, like kind of like my sneakers, but they have like a base on them that's like three inches thick. It's all foam. Yeah, you guys, they're popular.

They're not athletic shoes, they're not walking shoes, they're fashion not function. But to your point to walk an hour in them, not likely. Hi, this one really hit me because I think you're going to be something. One of my best friends is suicide, but we all know who did it. And we put me, that's her husband. We're trying to get a case reopened. It was close immediately. And she cremated like that.

You know, we'll find one of the enemies that they could be making me. She'd strangled. Then they brought her with the mother and was like, no, suicide. What I'm going to know, we're trying to have to say. time it's taste of the word like the starting bottom. I'm very, but you would say, what can you do you do? Because we don't have the family involved. It's just a bunch of friends, like you've never been 20 years.

You go, she wouldn't have filled herself. What can you do when the cops are, there is the same thing. It's almost unhanding how much this is the same thing. It's the same thing, though. I don't know who turned to it to where it's starting. I mean, well, you could get a PI to start building the preliminary case, but ultimately, if you really want to see action, you have to get the legislators involved.

Because even though it's not a matter of writing a new law, it's a matter of, again, politics, them go into the local mayor, whoever it might be, them going to the police chief, and it kind of trickling down to the detectives and saying, hey, guess what, wink and a nod, you need to relook at this. But overall, and I wish I had a better answer, you just need power in numbers, right? just to be realistic, it's not going to be 20 people that building a strong case, whether it's through the private sector, presenting that to a legislator,

politely letting them know that elections are, you know, they're reoccurring and maybe start a petition, a change.org type thing to show that there's a lot of people that want to see it re-looked into. That's really the only chance you have, especially without family involvement. Yes, I would say utilize social media. Social media? Yeah. Look what we're doing here today. Look what crime become. Can I just ask, how much

when you legally do without like like some, I think it's sort of worry, whatever? It's a closed case. They ruled it a suicide, right? So it's just like when in there's start, how she had, before justice for her? Justice for her is fine. I would, I would avoid putting out the person you think by name because they're not a public figure unless they are. Yes, don't do that. That could be defamatory. Yeah, got to be careful with that. I think you can put out the information without putting out the name.

Good luck. Good luck. Yep. We'll take one more, and then we're going to wrap it up. We have six and a half minutes. We can take two more. Two more? You're the boss.

So I have a couple of thoughts. Since it's not considered the crime, what has happened with the evidence? They still have it, correct? Yeah, they still have it. So they don't have to keep it because... How long 10 years? Should have a pink status for 10 years? Sheriff keeps it for 10 years.

coroner keeps it for two years. Okay, then said, what about having, like, a third-termine autopsie-seat? Well, you couldn't ask for that. Well, at this point, she's buried, correct? You cremated her. So, there's your...

I think the initial... What's that? The initial autops, you showed injuries. You didn't think there was anything to see. But they would still have the fingernail clippings and all that stuff. So that's really what you would need. And so, Dan, what about...

having another Emmy Agreed. Even to just look up with a report. Yeah. To bring this back quick with Devin Schmidt,

and this was after the show happened, for anybody who watched that case, they ruled it as a suicide. I found out who went there. We had him arrested. We charged him with murder. Now, unfortunately,

it went to trial, and they ended up dismissing the murder charge. He ended up admitting to the assault. But initially, when the breaking the homicide episode aired, he said he was never there. He hadn't talked to her that evening, went there to get his money, and he left. By the time we were done, this, you know, independent, you know, show doing their thing, he admitted to being there, he admitted to getting into an altercation

with her. And unfortunately, due to a moronic judge, he beat it. And he had multiple offenses before this. But we got to that point where it went from a suicide because she had a large amount of cocaine in her body. I believe he stuffed it down her throat. He was a drug dealer. But it went from a suicide, similar case, to someone be in charge with murder. So it can be done. We just got to keep fighting. So why did we get to the evidence? They keep it for this type of reason, because if someone comes forward,

they have to keep it. Now we have it. Now we have it. If they didn't keep it, that would be more suspicious. Yeah. I'm just so, I'm going to my sister, my sister in Denver. I know, I know, so the older that he gives the lobby, you know, make a sound of it. be happy about to do it for you.

There we go. A lot of people in this community. That's exactly. I'm like, what building are we chaining ourselves to tomorrow, you know? What's happening? Last one. Do anything, I don't hear from any of the other colleges about me if there were other ground or assaults or something in the area around that time?

Anything. Okay, here we go. Come on up to the mic. So the C.P.D. report, which I have been asked before, we've found us since they just came out, like, to use them. And I learned that there were additional texts that came in after Boulder County took it over. Boulder County never followed this. I don't know why I see what he did, but there are some reports of such characters one day and said he said he thought he saw him in and a suspicion. person, like they were having some kind of mental crisis was screaming, and the standing people walked by when he looked at it, and the guy came walking. So I've tried to investigate this and try to look at the nursing, but they did you do anything like that.

So there were additional... Leads to follow. And in between hours, we gave additional tips, and has pretty concerned when it's RTIs. He has been starting to investigate that because we're working through the reports right now. trying to put together everything that he's got a list of all the people he wants to have to. But the thing I have to add is that coming here to Climbled, which I never thought of you. I would speak to this. And, yeah, I apologize.

I mean, I've watched every single mate-life episode and all of his class. So I feel like in some way I've been preparing for this. Nobody ever wants to prepare for anything. But like this, but Paul over here, he's a, he's a project pathologist. I brought the autopsy and the toxicology and I stood it as a day. He went through it and he saw a lot of glaring contributions and things that didn't make sense. And he told me he looking at a great charge. Great, great. CrimeCon, it's what makes it great.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think a little bit of hope to, like, empowered, or given a voice that you had been, you know, shown, giving a story on your phone or from your show. 56,000 views, that's a lot. That's on video and then another 100,000 on audio. Yeah, we get to. And to bring it back to Stephanie's question, should we do a deep dive on Crime Weekly? Yeah.

I think we know what the answer is going to be. You can't touch you. Give me what you have and recover it. In true crime weekly fashion. We'll go all in. Every detail. Final word for me, just to see everybody here. This is more on a personal note. And I think I speak for Stephanie because we were talking about it earlier. The first crime con we attended was four years ago or five.

Austin. It was Austin. I don't know if it was four or five years ago. But we had a little table. And candidly, maybe 30 or 40 people came up. Like 25 people. Maybe 25. I'll give us,

can we have 40 at least? I know you're increasing our numbers. I know. And I think half of them were like, hey, you were on Big Brother. I don't think they knew our podcast. And then the other half are like, who the hell are you guys? Yeah. We're bored.

Let's just talk to these people in the hallway. It was to be here today and over these last two days and to see the line that came out to meet us and to see this room. I was joking with a lot of you. And trust me, I made notes. I was threatening half of you to show up tonight. But to see this room filled like this, to see that we've done this in a little over four years

is incredible and it inspires me as a creator, especially you Vanessa and the other families out there to continue to do these cases, continue to grow because the bigger we get, the more people we reach and we can't do it without you. So for me, I just want to say thank you for sure. I'll give you the final word. Stephanie's like, shut up, Derek.

I also say thank you. Thank you very much, guys. Be safe and have a good night and we'll keep it rolling. Thank you.