Crime Weekly - S3 Ep348: The Case of Megan Trussell | Suspects and Snow Covered Evidence (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 10, 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 ADS: 1. https://www.ZipRecruiter.com/CrimeWeekly - Try ZipRecruiter for FREE today! 2. https://www.TryFUM.com - Try FUM Zero today! 3. https://www.HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeekly10FM - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY10FM for 10 FREE meals and a FREE item for life! 4. https://www.EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% of ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping! 5. https://www.SKIMS.com/CrimeWeekly - Shop our favorites at SKIMS! After you place your order, let them know we sent you! 

Less than an hour from downtown Toronto, you'll feel a world away with Durham Tourism's new discovery guide, open skies, explore day trip destinations, overnight getaways, and 129 must-try experiences in Durham region, from historic sites to starry nights and delicious days to downtown dates. Want to keep your luggage light and your dollars in Canada? Discover Durham region's open skies. To get your guide, visit durhamtourism.ca.ca slash discover. Hello everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Lavasser. Today we're diving into part two and the final part of the Megan Trussle case, which is close to our hearts. Before we do get into that and I give you a recap of what we talked about in part one, Derek. Tell them the good news. Good news. Pumpkin Spice finally here for Criminal Coffee. We just covered Joanne's Moore last week.

We talked about what the mission is behind Criminal Coffee, but we also want to do some fun stuff. You guys have wanted Pumpkin Spice for years. We're dabbling in the flavored coffee market now. We have French Vanilla, Hazelnut, and now Pumpkin Spice. This is going to be seasonal. In conjunction with the seasonal coffee, we're going to have our new Halloween Criminal Coffee merch. If you're on YouTube, you can see everything on the screen right now. the designs are awesome shout out to ashley for that she did a great job with both of them we are

going to have a limited quantity on each of these i know some people say that just to create a sense of urgency but no really we are i think only ordered like 250 pieces so personally i love the front of the merch the little fingerprint bats i think that's pretty cool but if this is your style and you want to get one while your size is in stock head on over to criminal coffee co.com and you can pick up your merch and or your pumpkin spice coffee right now it is absolutely delicious as all of our coffees are. And we would love for you to check it out and try it. And if you do, make sure you tag us, make sure we see the post so we can reshare it

on our personal Instagram page, or I should say, our business Instagram page. We really appreciate it. I don't think there's anything else. That was a quick little announcement there. Why don't to get that out? It's going to be out for October and a little bit of November. Yeah, check out the merch, the new design for the sweatshirt is so cool. I love it.

I can't wait to get it. It's so retro-looking and just really cool, perfect for Halloween. I really love it. I told Derek I won't one immediately. So hopefully he sends that out today. I got you. I got you covered. That's it for us. We'll get into the episode. But yes, criminal coffee co.com. Get yours. Now let's dive into the episode. I'm going to give you a quick recap and summary. On the night of February 9, 2025, 18-year-old CU Boulder student, Megan Trussle, got into an argument with her roommate, which led her boyfriend to end their relationship. After both of them left the dorm, Megan also walked out. She was last seen crossing campus alone. It was cold and she wasn't wearing a heavy coat, leading her family to believe she was maybe

heading out for a Diet Coke or to visit her sister who lived nearby. Megan's phone later pinged miles from campus near the 40-mile marker of Boulder Canyon Drive. This is an area known for drug activity and homeless encampments and not somewhere she would have gone willingly. Six days later on February 15th, Megan's body was found at that same 40-mile. marker, just feet from where volunteers had searched two days earlier. She was lying on snow-covered rocks, dressed in the same clothes she'd worn the night she disappeared, but missing one shoe, her phone, and her signature purse. Beneath her body was a pair of gray sweatpants that weren't

hers. Megan's frozen body was taken in for autopsy, and her parents were told there were no signs of trauma beside a scratch on her leg. But when the full report was released months later, it revealed dozens of injuries from head to toe, and that investigators had ruled her death a suicide. Her parents were left devastated, and as they began piecing together the evidence, they found themselves with far more questions than answers, and that's where we'll pick up today. Megan's family has been instrumental in helping us put this together. We have a lot of information, a lot more information now, right, Derek? We've got body cam footage and things like that. Body cam footage, crime scene photos from the day when she was actually found. We obviously can't

show you guys a lot of these photos out of respect for for not only Megan but her family so we're seeing them because it gives us a better idea of what the scene looked like on the day she was found and we'll be able to describe a lot of it to you but yes there's a lot more information with this case now than we even had a month ago so it's it's an evolving situation and we're going to get more especially with it being classified as a closed investigation we should have access to all this and hopefully it allows a fresh set of eyes to look at at it or for someone to come forward because, as we had said last week, there is a reward now, $11,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.

So this is just another piece of the puzzle to maybe try to get closure for Megan and her family. I will also say if you're an audio listener, that's great. Thank you. We love you. But when the episode posts on Sunday on YouTube, I would head over there and check it out again because we're going to place photos on screen to give you a better indication of where she was found, the area, the culvert, the size of the culvert, things like that. So if you really kind of can't get a mental picture in your head and you want something more specific and factual, head over and watch this video on Sunday when it goes live on YouTube.

So you can see for yourself some of these pictures and where they are and where everything kind of is located. And it'll give you a better indication of what happened here, hopefully. Yeah. Before we get into what was found in Megan's autopsy, I do want to go back and talk more about where she was found, where she was located. So this case continues to evolve, and just in the time between our last recording in this one, Megan's family obtained hundreds of photos and videos from the scene along with additional police reports. That new information provides a much clearer picture of the area where she was found, and it's going to help us understand the physical challenges of that location in a way that earlier reports didn't really capture. So according to these new records, Megan was found about eight feet below the culvert that runs under Boulder Canyon Drive. If you remember from part one, the culvert itself is large enough to walk in, like you can walk through it if you crouch down.

And then inside it, inside that culvert, there was a homeless encampant. The photo we're showing on screen right now is the culvert entrance near the bike path. So the opposite side of where Megan was found. I want to also throw up the photo. I don't know if that's the photo that's on the screen right now. I'm scanning through the photos, but you actually have a palette inside the culvert, which gives you good idea of the size. Most people out there have seen a pallet by this point, you know, shipping pallet. And it's basically vertical inside the culvert.

And it's almost completely vertical. It's a little bit on its side. But it gives you a good indication maybe I would say four, four and a half feet tall. Yeah, to show you how much room is in there. You could definitely walk through there. You wouldn't get stuck in there, but you would have to crouch. So now we're going to put up a picture that shows the culvert in Canyon slope where Megan was found. This is the view as if you're standing down by the creek looking toward Boulder Canyon Road.

You can see the culvert opening built into the slope, a few feet below the roadway, and then about eight feet below that point is where Megan's body was discovered. Now, that photo isn't particularly helpful for understanding the scale of the area. So next, let's look at a closer up photo of the culvert area without any snow. Now, according to the crime scene photos, Megan's body was found directly in front of this huge, Boulder near where the crime scene tape is. Do you have that picture up? Yeah, I can see it here.

And I could see how with that flat boulder from the top of the road, it would have been difficult to see her because it almost acts as like a like a roof over her. Yeah. So it makes it a little bit more clearer to me why maybe someone wouldn't see her from the road. Yes. Even though she, you know, listen, her hair was brightly colored. She had brightly colored clothes on, things like that. You'd still think that maybe somebody would have caught a glimpse,

but it's possible that they wouldn't, especially if they're not looking down there, if they're just walking from the road, yeah. And most people wouldn't be walking if we remember, just a refresher. The path to walk and ride your bike is on the opposite side of the road. So the only people that would see her on this side would be if you were to come through that culver.

I'll also say, I don't know exactly what photos are going to make the final cut of this episode, but on this particular day when they found her, as you can see from some of these photos, the ground is completely covered in snow. And I'm looking at the photo of her before it was disturbed, before anybody moved anything. And take my word for it, it took me a good three or four minutes to find her in this photo. And the only thing you can really see with this snow covering her is her arm. And it looks like a, it looks like a rock or it looks like a, or it looks like a, a stick. Yes. And you located it because you were looking for something. Looking for something. And I had to go through to the photos where they actually zoomed in on her. So it kind of cut like when I was

looking at the overview, couldn't find her. Yeah. I agree. And then when they did the zoom in photos, I'm like, oh, wait, no, there's her hand. And the only reason I really knew it was her hand is because it's almost on the angles where you can tell it's a human hand, they blurred it slightly. So I'm like, Oh, that's her. And so, yes, before the snow, it would have been easier to see her. But after the snow, no shot. The fact that they found her is extremely impressive. Well, the snow basically started the same day that they did find her, correct?

That's, well, there was a snowfall that day, yes. Yes. But even where she is below that culvert with that big boulder, just the way she fell where she was positioned, it would have been difficult to see her from the road. Yeah. And I mean, once again, this isn't an area that people are just having a nice walk. Number one, it's freezing. Number two, not known to be a safe area. So people aren't just going to be having a nice Sunday afternoon stroll and kind of looking at the scenery, which is just, you know, a canyon with, you know, a culvert in it and stuff. It's not something that people are going to be actively kind of taking in the view. So it's not surprising that she wasn't found before that, even though there were searches going on for her. is confusing because you look at the picture and you see her because you know you're looking for something. But we do assume that the people who were searching for her beforehand, aka the police and things like that, they too would be looking for something. But maybe because it wasn't very super evident right away, they missed it. All right. I also want to clear up one of the questions

we had from not only detective perspective, but this episode, and I know Joe and Vanessa had questioned it as well, which is, was this tarp around Megan when she was found? And from And what I can see, that is not the case. There is no blue tarp or any type of tarp wrapped around her or on her. However, during the rescue efforts when they're pulling her out of there, they do wrap her body in a fresh blue tarp to bring her up, obviously, to keep people from seeing what's going on. So if you just based on these photos, to me, that question has been answered. there was nothing covering her body that would have been put there after the fact by someone else. It was simply the area in which she was found behind this big boulder and also the snow eventually covering her that made her hard to see.

Now, crime scene photos, which for obvious reasons, we will not be releasing or showing. Yes. Those photos show that Megan was on her back parallel to the road. The bottom of her pants were kind of pulled up closer to her knees, leaving her calves exposed. her bright blue shirt stands out though even in the snow you can tell that from the pictures yep so to get a better understanding of what this area looks like at a different angle let's watch a body cam video from an officer who is standing at the top of the slope next to the road

You can't really. You can't really see it from the other side. Okay. So we just watched that video if you're watching on audio. The police officers on one side, the left side of the culvert from the top. He looks briefly, but then he tries to go to the right side. So another officer says you can't really see much from here. So he goes back to the left side and looks down the hill.

But personally, I slowed the video up. I paused it. You still can't really see her unless you know exactly where you're looking. And from this angle, it would be very hard for me to see a scenario where she was at the top of this hill and rolled down that far before one of those rocks stopped her. Detectives have theorized that she was inside the culvert, walked through from the bar, bike path side and fell from the culvert, which to me would be the only scenario. But I still have questions even with that. And we're going to get into it later in this episode.

But the way she's found, the photos that we're looking at of her being on her back. And then you have to consider the fact that the strap of her pocketbook was broken. To me, that's more indicative of someone pulling backwards while someone else is pulling forwards, the strap breaking and her falling on her back down the hill. That would make much more sense to me. but that's a little further down the road, but there's not much you can see. I will acknowledge one thing.

The culvert from this angle and Google Maps didn't do it justice, it is steeper than I originally envisioned. Like when I originally thought about it, I thought it was more, I don't know, angles, but like a 45 degree angle. And now it's steeper than that. It's dangerous.

If you were to fall off this, you could get hurt, seriously hurt. I still don't think you would die from it unless you, like, fell the perfect way and hit your head. You wouldn't fall into an open bottle of Adderall. Exactly. And there's all those other circumstances surrounding it.

But yes, to me, these visual representations give you such a better understanding of what we're dealing with. So Megan's body was then transported for autopsy, which was performed by Dr. Meredith Frank a few days later. I want to walk you through all of Megan's injuries because it's crucial to understand the circumstances surrounding her death and why her family continue to question what happened. But first, I want to take a quick break. We'll be right back. The holidays are right around the corner, and I swear, every year the jobs people take this time of year get more creative. I've seen listings for haunted corn maze workers, which I considered applying for. If I wasn't so busy, I definitely would have.

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So let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And right now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Crime Weekly. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash crime weekly. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Okay. We're back. Let's go through Megan's injuries. Starting with Megan's face and head, the back of her head had a two and a half by two inch swollen contusion. And there were a few small abrasions and nearly inch long superficial lacerations across her forehead. There was also an abrasion with a surrounding contusion on the bridge of her nose and a dark red purple contusion on her right cheek. The lower portion of her face showed additional trauma, including up to one inch irregular abrasions, along. her chin and smaller abrasions on both of her upper and lower lips. There were also chips

along the tips of two teeth on the left front side of her mouth. Megan's torso had many injuries as well. There were a few contusions on her chest centered around the ribs. There was also several grouped abrasions on the right side of her chest and flank, roughly four inches dimension and a dark contusion measuring about three by two inches on her left hip. On her mid and lower left back, there were a few grouped dark linear abrasions reaching up to four inches long. On her right forearm, Megan had multiple contusions and abrasions that reached two and a half by one and a half inches at the widest point. She also had abrasions and lacerations on her fingertips. On her left arm, there was a seven and a half by three inch area containing contusions and up to

two and a half inch contusions on the back of her left hand. Her lower extremities showed several long abrasions, red and purple in color, reaching up to 11 inches in length, along with scattered red contusions approximately three inches in dimension. Her right foot, which remember didn't have a shoe on it, had a few small abrasions on the ankle and toes. There was also several areas of frostbite across her body. So from reading this, from kind of looking at it, it looks like her left side got the worst of the damage. Do you agree? Yes, it does. Yeah, from listening to what you're describing, yes. Yes. I mean, it's, I'm not a pathologist and I'm always wary about what I say here because they're better equipped for it. But yeah, I mean, just layman's perspective, hearing what you have to say, yeah, I would agree with you. And that's the side of her mouth that also had the chipped teeth. Yep. The left side of her head. So once the external exam was complete, Dr. Frank told attending detectives that nothing had stood out to her other than signs consistent with hypothermia and paradoxical undress. We've talked about this before, but that's a phenomenon where people experience hypothermia and they start to remove their clothes.

So Dr. Frank's conclusion about paradoxical undressing was based on the gray pants that had been found underneath Megan. But as we've already discussed, here's the problem. Megan's parents don't believe those pants were hers. They were a size small, which Megan didn't wear, and she already had pants on. So unless she put sweatpants over the pants she was. was wearing, which we did not see on any surveillance video. Where did those pants come from? And why would Dr. Frank immediately assume that they were Megan's and use that as a sign of paradoxical undressing, which she attributes to the hypothermia and the frostbite? What do you think about that?

No, I'm with you. And for me, it starts even before the paradoxal undressing. Like at this moment, my big question is, how did she get out there? I mean, it was freezing to that night. So, yes, If we knew for certain that she walked out to this location, went to this bike path, went through this culvert and was by herself, nobody else around, sure. Even though the clothing wasn't ultimately hers, the parents do not believe that it was hers. And you don't see her wearing those when she leaves her dorm. You don't. Yeah. And you don't, I mean, unless she had it in that little star purse that she had, which I don't know if it would have fit in there.

So, no, I don't see it unless she could have had it underneath. I don't see it. She didn't have it on. But my point being, it was freezing. We know how cold it was. You talked about the elements and how it affected her body once she was found, the evidence we have of that. To think that this young girl walked 50 minutes out to this location before pulling off somewhere because she was absolutely freezing is hard for me to imagine. Yeah. And what is really bothering me is that Dr. Frank is just like, oh yeah, there was sweatpants underneath her. She must have taken those off and doesn't ask the police to see, you know, photos or the video of Megan leaving her door.

to verify that those were her pants. And here's another thing. No one ever even asked Megan's family to look at the pants or confirm whether or not they belonged to Megan. Investigators simply assumed they did. And that assumption became the foundation for the paradoxical undressing theory. And that's really frustrating because the theory doesn't make sense when you look at the evidence. First of all, there were two homeless encampants nearby. So it's not like she was just in the middle of the woods and those were, those sweatpants could only have belonged to her. You know, she's found in like the wilderness in the middle of the woods and it's like, well, who else would these sweatpants belong to? There was two homeless encampments right there in that

direct vicinity. Those pants could have come from any one of those people who lived there and most likely did. So to just assume they were hers, not check the surveillance video, not ask her family to confirm. That's crazy because we know for sure Megan wasn't wearing gray pants in the last image of her. And we also know that she couldn't have carried those sweatpants in her very small purse. The only other explanation would be that she was wearing them underneath her red pants, which, again, doesn't add up because if she had experienced paradoxical undressing, that would mean she took off her red pants and then removed the gray sweatpants and then put the red pants back on and then laid down on top of the gray pair of sweatpants. And then she stayed there until she died, not removing further articles of clothing. That doesn't make any sense. That's not what they do.

There's a paradoxal undressing. They end up being found naked. So after telling the detectives about the undressing theory, Dr. Frank began the internal examination. She noted that the scalp and tissues beneath Megan's scalp contained dark purple hemorrhages measuring up to three inches over the upper left front and top right areas of her head. Additional hemorrhages measured five by two inches on the right back side of her head and up to one and a half inches on the left back side. Dr. Frank also found what she described as, quote, abundant pill or capsule material filling.

end quote, and she found this in both Megan's esophagus and stomach. The pill material consisted of white spheres that appeared to come from time release medication capsules. Toxicology tests were ordered on Megan's blood, but the results wouldn't be available for several weeks. So after the autopsy was over, the coroner's office spoke with Megan's parents. They didn't describe any injuries other than a scratch on her leg, but they did mention that the pill material had been found. During this conversation, investigators made it clear that their preliminary findings led them to believe Megan had likely taken her own life via overdose of these pills, because at this point, allegedly the police don't know what was in these pills, but they found the pill material.

And Megan's parents immediately pushed back saying that their daughter wasn't suicidal. They could not believe what they were hearing. They were then asked what funeral home they wanted to use. based on what the coroner had told them that Megan had no injuries, they chose a special cremation home that offers water cremation. Months later, when they finally received the autopsy report and learned the extent of Megan's issues, they were shocked, devastated, and obviously deeply regretful of their decision to have Megan cremated. But I think it's important for them to remember that they didn't know everything that they know now. They didn't know even a fraction of what they know now. And so they made the best decision based on the information they had at the time.

But what do you make of that? Not only the initial reports coming out saying, oh, she doesn't have any injuries besides this one scratch, but the police or the coroner's office speaking to Megan's parents and saying, yeah, we're only going to tell you about a scratch on her leg. And then the pill material as well. It's almost like they're trying to already set a narrative in line. Because if They said, yeah, she had abrasions and lacerations and bruising all over her body. But we think she killed herself because of the pill material found, then Megan's parents might push back and question that. But if they told Megan's parents, hey, yeah, she has just one scratch and then there was a

bunch of pill material found in her, you know, her stomach and her esophagus, then that's going to at least, I guess, make Megan's parents feel a little bit less like foul play happened or a little bit less that they weren't getting the full truth from the coroner, because why would you think that the coroner would call you and tell you about one injury on your daughter when there was dozens? Yeah. You asked a question, but then you went on for like, I'm trying to remember everything you just said, but I think I followed you.

For me, it goes back to what I've said in numerous episodes where pathology is a science, but the interpretation of that science is subjective. And it sounds like just from here and the pathologist would have to speak to this directly, but they had made their determination on what they believed happened, and they described the injuries or the evidence that would support that opinion instead of allowing the parents to hear everything. They basically pointed out what they thought was significant in the autopsy, instead of just giving them the whole story and saying, hey, you decide for yourself because, in fairness to the

pathologist, they are a doctor, that's what they do. are they more qualified to make that determination? Of course they are. So they're saying, hey, let me skip through all the other stuff. Let me give you a summary of what's important here for you guys to know. You have this pill formation. You have this one injury. Everything else to me would align with her falling after the overdose and or suicide.

And so that's what they laid out to him. And it wasn't until Megan's family learned about everything else later when they got the report that they obviously came to a different conclusion. Would you say that it was almost maybe intentional then to downplay the injuries? I don't know. I think intentional in the sense of I'm going to do you a service by pointing out what you should be focusing on here, not necessarily all the white noise. Again, white noise, I say in quotations, because that's their opinion. But I think in hindsight, the pathologist should have just told them everything and said, hey, there are some injuries here and there. but to me they're superficial, they're not significant. They don't align with anything that would suggest any type of homicidal violence or

anything like that. I think more than likely the one injury we have to focus on here is this one. And I also think the fact that she had this pill formation is highly suggestive that she either killed herself or overdosed accidentally. So if they had phrased it that way and allowed the parents to process that, it would have been much better. But I'm only imagining that when Vanessa and Joe heard this, They assumed they were only told about the one injury because there was only one injury, which is, I think, a very common-sensical conclusion to come to, especially if you're not a doctor.

So, yeah, I'm with you. And obviously when they got the report, they did agree that it wasn't enough. Yeah. You'd think that they would, you know, that the medical examiner, if she's going to tell you about one injury, why would she just pick that one specifically and ignore all the others? Like, what about this one injury did you find was special to tell? us about, or did you intentionally withhold the existence of these other injuries so that we would go ahead and get our daughter cremated? Yeah.

It's concerning. And that's the thing, right? Like, if that's the angle, the question becomes why? Or is it just because they felt that confident in their decision making? Do I think it was malicious in nature? We don't have evidence to suggest that. It doesn't mean it wasn't. But it was a misstep.

It was a misstep for sure. Their job is to make a determination, but they should also disseminate all information that's found. Yeah, well, you would think. And that's why it makes, that's why I asked you, I didn't say it was malicious, but I said, was it intentional? Like, is this coming from a perspective of a medical examiner who's like, yeah, this girl was pretty beat up, but her parents don't need to know that? And I kind of already figure out what happened. Like, they don't need to go through all that. Precisely. Yeah, something on those, exactly. They focused on the things that they felt the parents needed to hear. But who, who makes that

determination? Why is that your, yeah, why is that your job to make that determination? So it's It bothers me because, you know, is it intentional? Probably, right? You don't accidentally forget all these injuries. Was it malicious? That I think is out for discussion still. So on February 21st, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office conducted a search of the area for Megan's missing belongings. Now, nothing was found during this search.

A second search took place on February 25th. And once again, no items were recovered. That same day, a detective called Vanessa, Megan's mom, to inform her that Megan's purse and, phone had not been located. He did not mention Megan's missing shoe. And this was the first time that Vanessa had heard that anything was missing, and she was shocked. She said Megan would never leave her purse. She loved that purse. It was her security blanket. Vanessa and her friends began searching on their own, and it was their hope to find any trace of Megan's belongings, and it would take weeks before they had answers. We are going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

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But it's orange vanilla, according to Derek, who knows the real name for things. So tell them how they can check Fume out for that. themselves. Well, you can take zero chances with Fume Zero today available for just 2499. Just head over to tryfume.com. That's T-R-Y-F-U-M dot com to start with zero. Okay, so we're back. And on March 5th, a woman named Beth was biking on the path along Highway 36 near the 40-mile marker when she discovered Megan's purse near a dream. drainage ditch. The location was about six miles from where Megan's body had been recovered. Beth reported her discovery to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, and according to their

reports, when detectives first heard that Megan's purse had been found near a 40-mile marker, they misunderstood and they thought it had been found near the same location as Megan's body. I mean, what are the chances? Once detectives realized the scene was actually near the 40-mile marker of Highway 36, they went to the site and documented the purse lying beside the bike path. Beth also pointed out a pink strap near the drainage ditch that appeared to have been attached to the purse. Okay, so Megan's purse and the strap of her purse was found near a 40-mile marker by this woman, Beth, biking. And Megan's body was also found near a 40-mile marker, but not the same one. They're actually six miles apart, which is interesting.

I mean, what are the chances? It's almost like it was done intentionally. I don't think it was intentionally done. I think it's a coincidence. I think the person who dumped it there, and we're going to get into that, I don't think they're that smart. I think that they dumped it there because whenever they found the purse or however they obtained the person, I don't want to get ahead, I think it's just a coincidence.

I don't think that the people who are potentially involved with this are that bright. Okay. So a brief search of the surrounding area didn't reveal anything else of value, and Megan's purse and the detached strap were collected and taken back to the sheriff's office where a detective swabbed the outside of the purse. and the wallet for possible touch DNA. Inside the purse, they found an empty prescription bottle for Adderall, a black wallet, pepper spray, Megan's CUID card, and several other personal items.

Megan's wallet contained her ID and several credit cards. Detectives also noticed loose mince and a Taco Bell sauce packet, which were wet and discarded, along with a small container that held what they described as wet ibuprofen and Zyrtec, which were also thrown away. And for anyone who doesn't know Zyrtec is an allergy medicine, and ibuprofen is for like pain and headache. So a different detective then called Vanessa, Megan's mom, to inform her of the discovery. And he sent a photo of the recovered items and asked if anything appeared out of place or was missing. Vanessa immediately noticed that Megan's phone, vape, and earbuds weren't in the purse.

She also saw that the purse itself was torn at the spot where the cross-body strap attached to one side of the bag. And that detail was deeply concerning to her because remember, Vanessa had made the purse herself and she had reinforced the attachment so a wouldn't tear. In fact, she'd bought a special sewing machine specifically to make sure it would hold. The fact that it was found ripped meant something had forced it, but detectives didn't seem concerned. So the fact that it was ripped, what Vanessa is saying is, I mean, yeah, like purse straps can break randomly from use, wear and tear. You know, you kind of don't see that they're wearing out, and then it'll just break and snap if you put a little bit of pressure on it. But for this specific purse so that that didn't happen because the purse was so special and valuable to Megan, Vanessa had reinforced the area where the strap meets the body of the purse. And so there would have had to have been a good amount of force to rip those two things apart from each other.

Yeah, and this goes with what we were just talking about maybe 10, 15 minutes ago, about the positioning of her body when she was found being on her back. if you didn't have all these other things that you're starting to get into now I think you could sit here and maybe say all right maybe she was walking maybe something maybe this is a bad accident maybe she took some pills and this just was a tragic set of circumstances

but now you have to add it all these other things the gray pants the strap the reinforced strap being broken the bulk of pills the majority of this pill capsule material being found like she had swallowed a whole bottle of pills before walking down there. Also the fact that it's 50 minutes away from anybody around her that she would know.

Like she just happened to walk out into the middle of nowhere after passing a park. And knowing that there are people who stay inside this culvert eight feet from where she was found, couple all of that with the way her body is located in these photos, you got a problem. Unless she traveled through a bunch of woods before this, with there's no indication of it. And she was just like trudging through brush and ripped her strap on a bag. I mean, there's no indication of any of that. But let's just say for this argument,

I'm trying to give them something here. My point being, it doesn't make sense. And that's why we covered it on detective perspective, even though it was ruled what it was ruled. That's why we're covering it here because the evidence doesn't line up. Either we're missing something or it's exactly how it looks,

which to me is some type of struggle with another human being, by the way, if I'm not being clear here. Something happened with another individual. And we haven't even gotten to the sources of how these items were found. You know, the purse, yes, we're getting there. We're going to talk about her phone. All of that added on to this.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that this was just a tragic accident. And I'm going to ask you a question. You might not know the answer to it. Would the 40-mile marker of Highway 36 be on Megan's way from the campus to where she was found? I think it was after it. I could be wrong. I think where she was. she hadn't reached it yet

or she was close to it but I remember looking on Google Maps and there's nothing after Highway Marker 40. It's just there's no point to, no destination to go to where you could say, all right, maybe she was trying to get to the mall or this restaurant or this bar or a friend's house.

There's really just nothing out there for miles. So she was near Highway Marker 40. Was she before or after it? I'm not completely sure. No, I mean the place, the marker, the 40 mile marker where her purse was found the second one the where her purse was found and then the area where she was found her body is the area where her purse was found would that be on her journey to from campus to where

her body was found or where's or would it be like on her path at all like would she have passed that location and then after losing her purse which would be torn off of her would would she continue walking another six miles right yeah it's a good question it's a good question and even if it was found, let's say it was on her path, right? It's still possible that it was brought back to that location because whoever she met at the Culver or whoever she ran into, I should say, took the purse with them for a short duration before dumping it. Which is clearly, I think, what happened there, which is then going to lead to the question of how can you continue saying this was a suicide when this girl was mugged? Or, you know, you could say, oh, after, you know, her body was there and

then somebody grabbed it and they took off with the purse, I guess. But then you're still. That is possible. I've acknowledged that. But you're still adding elements here that make it less likely that she did this to herself. One thing that I concluded on detective perspective that I feel very confident with is that that purse was at her location where she was found at some point. Why do I think that? I go back to the bottle. To me, human nature is you're going to have that bottle inside your purse. You're not going to be walking around with it in your hand. And so if she took the pills at that point and the pill bottle was found there it was found in the culvert so you're talking about the pill bottle found in the culvert not the pill bottle found in her purse correct okay

these are two separate pill bottles for everybody's that's that's a good thing to point out there was the pill bottle found inside the culvert we talked about it last episode I believe and we might have mentioned it here I don't think we did it was last episode we mentioned it last episode that the guys who were searching for her they saw it but they didn't see her name on it so they thought it was somebody else's yeah so that pill bottle being at the location where she was found but the purse not being there, unless she was carrying it in her hand the entire time, to me is suggestive that the purse was with her at one point. I also think, which is why we're covering it,

it's a big reason that she's not with us anymore. I think that she was in a struggle and the person had control of her purse and the purse strap broke. And that's why she fell backwards. I mean, not going out, it's not a crazy theory. No. It's pretty like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then at that point, the person took the purse. Exactly. So imagine she's at the top where she'd be walking, which I would assume if she was even there of her own accord, she'd be on the other side by the walking path and the bike path.

And then somebody pursues her trying to take her purse. She's running. They run across the road. The person has hold of her purse. She won't let it go because it's important to her. And they push her over the side while holding onto the purse. Oh, interesting. See, you think they ran across the road.

I mean, I don't know if she was there of her own free will. If she was in that location of her own free will, and somebody saw her and was like, give me her purse. And she's like, no, I'm not giving you my purse. She starts to run. She crosses the road. They follow her, grab her purse, hold on to it and push her over. It would account for her injuries. And then maybe later they go back and they put a bunch of stuff in her mouth to make it look like this was something she did to herself.

But either way, it would make sense that the weight of Megan's body kind of going over that embanked, what is it, embankment? Yeah, embankment. Yeah, would pull the strap from the purse and it would give the person who had the purse. Now they've got the purse. Megan's down there and they can go on and do their business and then come back later and maybe stage the body or put the pills in her mouth. But to think that Megan would rip her own purse, take a bunch of Adderall and then throw herself down the embankment, it doesn't make any sense. No, I've never even considered the possibility.

that she fell from the top. I mean, it's, it would be hard for me. I'd have to see a recreation. She has a lot of injuries. She has a lot of injuries, but that's a long way to fall down. I guess it's possible if she had momentum,

like if she was running across the road, and as she's running, the person grabs the purse, and she's like yanking away, and so her momentum is going one way, she'd have to have some, it wasn't like she just fell over. She'd have to have some momentum

because if she just fell over, then she fell from the area of the culvert, which is also still possible, right? Like if she's on the bike path and she's running from someone, she could have made a decision in that moment to just run into the covert to go to the opposite side, which still everything that you just hypothesized is still possible. It's just inside the culvert less of a fall.

So both theories work. I still have a hang up about the park and the area on the way there. I know that we're going off the belief that she walked out there and that whatever happened happened at this location. I'm still not convinced of that. No, she made it out there in time if she had walked it, but to me, it still seems like a long walk and who knows. No reason for that walk. No, no reason, nothing out there, no point of destination to go to.

Could someone have picked her up? Could she have met someone in the park? Could someone have pulled over to the side of the road and chased her down? There's so many variables we don't know in more than like four or five different scenarios that could have resulted from whatever we don't know that ended up at the location where we ended up right next to that Culver. And it doesn't necessarily mean that right before it, she was walking along that bike path by herself. No, but I'm saying if she was, let's say she just kept walking and walking. And this is where she ended up. And she's like, oh, how the heck did I get here?

I don't know this area that well. And then somebody's, you know, some shady figure comes out. He's a little girl with a bright pink and blue purse. And it's like, hey, give me that purse. And she's like, no. And they pursue her. And they grab onto her purse and then push her over the sidewall still holding onto the purse. that's possible.

Let me throw another scenario at you. Let's say wherever the purse was found, that's closer to the actual original crime scene. Whatever struggle happened, whoever she encountered, that's where whatever injury she has occurred. They bring her to this other location. They pull over somewhere

and to try to avoid her being found, her being eventually located. They purposely hit her in this location thinking that no one would find her. And by the way, they almost got what they wanted. Luckily, we were able to find her, but they put her under this culvert because maybe it was an area they had familiarity with. They bring her through there. You're not going to see it from the street.

You can dump her body over there. That's your red herring. Oh, yeah, whatever happened to her happened over here. Stephanie, there's nothing to suggest definitively that those injuries occurred on those rocks. There's just a lot of injuries. She's got broken teeth. She's got the strap. But show me the rock that caused those injuries.

I'll wait. Yeah. So I'm still on the fence about. whether or not this is the primary or secondary crime scene and whatever actually happened to her happened at a different location which would go more in line with what you said which is instead of returning back to the scene of the crime if it happened somewhere else and closer to where the purse was found you could stuff the pills in her body there in her throat there then dump her at the secondary location now you don't have to go back to it

now you have to have to worry about being seen there you go in the middle of the night you go through the culvert nobody from the street sees you you dump her and then you walk back down the culvert to whatever vehicle's waiting for you. If I had a chance to sit down with the detectives on this case and just do an interview with them, these are some of the questions I would have because I'd want to give them a fair shake to ask them, did you explore this scenario? And how did you rule it out? Maybe there's something that we don't know that they were able to rule it up because just

sitting here on the outside, I don't know how you deduce that this is what happened without having those answers because finding her property at different locations five to six miles away. I know. How do you explain that? I know. I just want to hear their, their assessment of that information. Yeah, especially at this point, because they just found the purse and they hadn't located or identified anybody who possibly would have taken that purse, which we're going to talk about. So right now, it just looks like the body of your victim was found six miles away from where her purse was found with a broken strap. Exactly. And it's easy to get caught up on, oh, this is what we're at it, whatever happened, this is where it happened. Sure.

Very possible. But it's also possible that nothing happened there. That was just the final resting place for Megan. And considering how close she was in proximity to the culvert, very easy to see a scenario where her killer dumped her right there and then walked away. And that would be the perfect location because nobody would see you from the street. But under that theory, her killer would have to have a vehicle of some sort. A vehicle that would be parked along the side of the road. I'm assuming not near the bike path, somewhere where if someone drove back,

buy, they wouldn't say, oh, I saw a car there. But they'd have to have access to a vehicle. Access to a vehicle, or I've even explored the possibility when we think about, and I want to wait until we get there, but when we talk about potential suspects, if they didn't have a vehicle, but they had something that they were trailing with a bike or something like that, they could have wrapped her. Damn. Possible.

Yeah. When we talk about the potential suspects here, how they could have transport her. Again, when you guys look at that video. Like a shopping cart or something? Something. You could have covered her up, made it look like trash. easily gotten her out there, especially if it's only five or six miles. Yeah, nobody's going to ask questions.

Nobody's going to ask questions. And if you look at the Google map, the bike path there is off the side of the road. So it's nobody's going to pay no mind to that. Well, a few days later, Vanessa and Joe, Megan's parents, they wanted to see exactly where Megan had been found. So they met with the Rangers who had discovered her body and they were escorted to the site. Vanessa noted that Megan had been wearing three inch platform shoes and said it seemed like an impossible place for her to have ended up.

She asked one of the Rangers if he saw her shoes and he responded that he'd only seen one shoe. And remember, this was the family's first time learning that Megan had been missing one of her shoes, which was deeply upsetting to them for multiple reasons. But one of the reasons it would be upsetting to them is, hey, how come we keep talking to people and you keep telling us what happened? But then we find out we're not getting anywhere close to the full information that you guys have. Why are we just finding things out like little breadcrumbs at this point? And just not, I don't want to skip over this because it's significant. We just talked about the purse. We're going to talk about the phone.

And you just mentioned a shoe. And a vape too, yeah. You mentioned this weird theory that obviously you don't believe in, but now we'd have to have a scenario where her purse gets broken. She continues walking. She's got the pill bottle on her hand. She's missing a shoe. Missing a shoe.

She's still walking. Hold in the pill bottle. There you go. Leaving her purse there for no reason. And we talk about the shoe like, oh, it's just a shoe. as we said in episode one, they are like these platform shoes. It would be very difficult to war. It's like the Spice Girl shoes.

Yeah. It's completely different heights. You'd have to take off both shoes at that point if you would even want to get anywhere. And then how did it get back on? And you may say, oh, it was a white shoe. It was snow on the ground. That shoe has still never been found to this day.

So where did it go? Did it just vanish into thin air? Come on. Nope. Nope. It did not. Somebody took it. Just like they took the purse.

Which makes it harder to believe that this is a second. And if they took both shoes, if both shoes were missing, I could say maybe a homeless person took them, obviously, that's terrible, but they ain't going to take just one shoe. Is it more likely that that shoe could have been at the primary crime scene during the struggle and was left behind accidentally? Like the place where her purse was found? Bingo. That seems more likely to me. Or in someone's vehicle or in someone's shopping cart. I don't know.

Shopping car on the woods somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So on March 10th, Vanessa and Joe, Megan's parents, they met with the sheriff to express their concerns that Megan's case wasn't being taken seriously. The sheriff told them something along the lines of, quote, based on the evidence I've seen, I don't believe a crime was committed, end quote. And this is after they found her purse six miles away from her body.

He's still seeing this. So when Vanessa and Joe asked about Megan's missing belongings, the purse, the phone, the shoe, the sheriff replied, quote, sometimes weird things happen in an investigation and we never find out why, end quote. Well, okay. That's actually your job to find out why. And yeah. And I mean, like, what are you doing now? Now, sometimes weird things happen in an investigation. So we're not even just talking about the crime. Like sometimes weird things happen in a crime and, you know, we'll have to figure out exactly how this thing happened. But he's like, yeah, sometimes in an investigation, you know, weird things, weird, wild things happen. Here's what I'll say to that statement because I don't want to bash too hard. I want to be realistic here. There are times in an investigation where you can't find the answer to a question that you want.

right but what you don't do is without having those answers is come to a conclusion right it's like I can't solve the math problem if I don't have all the numbers so I have no problem with them saying listen sometimes there's just certain things you can't figure out there's certain things you can't you don't have an answer for we just don't have enough information to give you the answer that you deserve however we're not going to take what we do have piece piece it together and say this is what happened and ignore the pieces that don't fit that we don't have answers Yeah, to say this is what happened. At that point, the sheriff should have been like, okay, maybe we'll reevaluate our final

decision on that. Agreed. That's the problem here. It's okay not to have the answer to everything. Police officers aren't magicians, but to say, based on the evidence, I don't believe we have a crime. Well, that's not true because you're not including all the evidence that you're basing your decision on because you just admitted you don't have answers to some of the evidence.

I can see the way this is going. This is a stepbrothers movie. Yeah, exactly. He's like, well, I don't have any. reason to believe a crime was committed and then Megan's parents like what about this this this and this and he's like you know ignore that stuff we did we don't have answers to that we ignored it focus on what we know it too focus on what we know here please come my gosh hey detective civilian listen to me okay I got this I mean does that really feel important to you

because we didn't think it was the purse being found six miles away not like a foot away not like you know across the street I can't explain this and I don't want to yeah no no it's so that that's my issue issue with them, to be fair. It's okay to say, I don't know. Yeah, perfect. I love that. Yeah. That's the honesty I can take, but it's coming to a conclusion when you're just admitting that you don't have answers for all the evidence that's been found. A critical piece of evidence, by the way. It should be, we don't know, but we're going to find out. We're going to find out. And if we don't, we're not going to close this case until we do. Yeah, until all the puzzle pieces fit. Yep.

So not long after that meeting, one of Vanessa's friends who had been speaking with people in the local homeless community, this person heard that someone might have tried to sell. a phone to an eco ATM. So an eco-atm is a kiosk that buys used to cell phones and electronic devices. And you basically just put it in. Like you'll answer some questions on the screen, what make and model of the phone, et cetera. And then you'll drop it in there and then it gives you money in return. So Vanessa immediately filed a claim with Eco-Atm about Megan's missing phone. Remember, I said Vanessa filed a claim. Not the police department. Right. We talked about this at CrimeCon. So two days later, Vanessa received a response.

confirming that Megan's phone had been located. Look at that. Look at that. It's amazing. Good detective work by the day. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. It wasn't the detectives. It was, is it the same detective who said, sometimes things just don't fit? Sometimes things don't fit. We're not going to look for a missing phone because why. Why? That might give us answers and we prefer to just close this. So after Vanessa notified the police that she had, you know, located Megan's phone, they were able to retrieve the phone. Now, records showed the phone had been sold on March 2nd at a grocery store kiosk in Boulder for $75 by a man named Elliot Bayfor, who was known to be part of the local homeless community. Photos from the Eco ATM showed he was alone when

he sold it. Unfortunately, the phone had been wiped before the sale, leaving investigators with no usable data that might have revealed Megan's final movements or communications. Now, that is confusing to me because, and I asked Vanessa this when we were talking to our crime con, usually you can't factory reset a phone without having the Google password or your Apple ID password, right? Normally, yeah, if it's a lost phone, they might have a way to do it. I don't know. I mean, I agree with you.

Like, you can't factory reset your iPhone. No. Because someone could steal it and factory reset it and use it. And then start using it. But didn't we ask her if she had an iPhone? She had a Samsung, which I know a lot of people like Android phones. I think they're easier to reset than iPhones. iPhones, it's an act of Congress to reset it.

I agree. I think with an Android-based phone, it's easier to reset the phone without. I just looked it up. It's crazy. So not only can you factory reset a Samsung phone, but you can factory reset a locked Samsung phone without a password by booting into recovery mode and selecting wipe data slash factory reset, which I should have known this because I did work at Verizon, and I know exactly, I know exactly how to do it. And it comes up with like a menu and it's just words. It kind of looks like a computer screen, like an old school computer screen, and it's

just words. And it's like giving you options. And one of them is, yeah, factory reset the phone. I wonder if EcoAATM only takes like certain phones and not. They won't take them unless they're a factory reset. Yeah. So that's, yeah. That's unfortunate. Wow. So somebody could do that, even if there was a password on it. I wonder with phones if it's like hard drives, right? Because when you delete. That's what I was thinking. Couldn't they still get stuff off of it?

So when you reset, and I don't know if a lot of people know this, but when you restore your hard drive, when you delete all the stuff, even when you empty your trash, the information is still there. It's just been designated to be written over. So as long as you haven't saved other information or done other things on the phone to rewrite over that, existing data. It's still there. I think with phones, it might be different, though. I think it's like a hard boot where the phone is just restored to factory settings and any data that was there is completely wiped. It's not like a hard drive or a flash drive where it's designated to be written over. It's just no longer existent. Yeah, it said this method will erase all data. And after a factory reset, you'll likely need to enter the password for the Google account that was previously

synced to the device in order to bring anything back. And pretty much it just, it just, it just acts as a complete wipe. It's completely wiped. Yeah. But just another thing here where this person who was suicidal or in a tragic accident, their property just keeps showing up in places it shouldn't be found. But we're supposed to believe she was out there alone. I still remember cases where suspects, of course, suspects factory reset their phone

and then police were still able to extract data. And I just looked it up and it said, yes, this is going to depend on the phone's age encryption and the method of reset. But yeah, I mean, there's still a way to do it. You can use and they could have gone in her cloud. You know what I mean? Like her Google, everything saved to the Google cloud. Like your photos saved to Google Photos. All your stuff is like saved in that area. So I'm even your your maps like your maps will show where you walked, where you went. And that's all backed up to the cloud, which you can access from a computer just by having your Google information.

So I feel like they just really didn't try hard enough to get information off the phone because they could have gotten warrants to access data from the cloud service or the third-party platforms. Well, I'm sure they still have the phone. Yeah, but they need to go into the cloud. It'll show the map location. It'll show where she walked, where that phone went. Yeah, that's above my pay grade, but you're right.

Like, I've had to do that because I have a Samsung phone and I have an iPhone, but I've had to do that in the past with an Android phone because I lost my phone. phone. And so I had to go online, like on my computer, sign into my Google account and look up my, like, location history to see where I last had it and then go back there. I mean, I wonder why they haven't given that phone back to Joe and Vanessa, or if they have. They'll be listening to this episode. So they'll be telling us. Well, an attempt to locate alert was issued for this guy, Elliot Bayford, so detectives could question him, but they would not end up tracking him down for several more months.

All right. We're going to take another quick break. We'll be right back. fall is here which means cooler nights warmer sweaters and that seasonal urge to make something comforting for dinner without spending hours in the kitchen because it gets dark at six o'clock now so you start dinner at five and then you feel like you're finishing at midnight and that's where hallo fresh comes in now i've been using hello fresh for a while now since 2020 since the beginning of 2020 and i have to say this season they have outdone themselves. They've rolled out their biggest menu refresh ever with over 100 recipes to choose from each week. Whether you want cozy comfort food, which is what I want, or lighter meals or international flavors, they've made it so easy to find something you're

actually excited to cook. And the best part, HelloFresh now has bigger portions and healthier options, including high protein and veggie-packed recipes with at least two vegetables per dish. You can even get steak and seafood recipes every week at no extra cost. And I love that I can have restaurant quality meals without paying restaurant prices. Now, I always thought the portions on HelloFresh were good. They're good for me. So to hear they have bigger portions is interesting. I think that will be great for people like my son who is going through a growth spurt. And every time I make him a meal, he's like, is that, is that it? You know, he's like a full piece of chicken and three sides. But he's still hungry. Well, that's me now at 40. So I believe that. I believe

that. In your heart, you're just a 14-year-old boy going through a growth spurt. That's why I tell myself every day when I go for the extra cookies. I love HelloFresh for so many reasons. Derek tell them how they can check Hallow Fresh out for themselves. That's right. The best way to cook just got better. Go to Hellofresh.com slash crime weekly 10FM. That's all one word, crime weekly 10 FM.

And you can get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. That's one per box with an active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. Once again, that's hellofresh.com. Crime Weekly 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. We're back from break, and we're talking about Megan's cell phone and the guy who traded it into the Eco-Atm, Elliot Bayford. The police are trying to track him down at this point.

It's going to take a few months, which once again, that's crazy to me, but it's going to take a few months. Meanwhile, detectives continue trying to reach Megan's roommates, Hannah, her friend Lane, who had been staying in the dorm after Megan disappeared. It wasn't until April 8th, nearly two months later, that Lane finally agreed to speak with them. Lane said they hadn't seen Megan the night she disappeared, but knew about the argument through a text from Hannah. Lane explained that after Hannah's shift ended around 1130, they met her in the dorm lobby, went upstairs together and saw that Megan wasn't there.

Lane stayed the night, assuming Megan had gone to her sisters. And that's another thing. She wasn't there when you guys got back around 11.30. And so instead of being like, well, I'm assuming Megan's going to come back and sleep in her bed, Lane was like, well, I'm assuming she's not and I'm going to sleep in her bed. What if Megan had come in at 1 a.m. and you're sleeping in her bed. There's just no care or consideration here. It's very weird.

So the next morning, Megan still wasn't back, but neither Lane nor Hannah thought anything bad had happened. Lane then told detectives they believed Megan's death was a suicide, saying that the combination of the argument with Hannah and the breakup with her boyfriend might have overwhelmed her. This is making me mad because Lane, what do you know about Megan? You know what I mean? What do you know about Megan? Besides the fact that you have no problem of sleeping in her bed, to go and tell the police like, oh yeah, I think this girl took her own life when you don't even know her, that's upsetting to me. That's upsetting to me.

Now, Megan's family agreed that she likely was upset that night, but they don't believe that she was suicidal. Frankly put, she would never take her life over a guy. I mean, she's got a lot of other stuff going on for her. She's in college. She's loving college. She has a good time. You can get a new roommate next semester.

You can get a new boyfriend any time. But you have a lot of other stuff going on in your life. That's great. And she'd only been seeing this guy for a very short time. It's not like they'd been together years. And they were talking about marriage and babies and stuff. Like this was a college boyfriend she'd only been with for a few months. And yeah, you don't have a great relationship with your roommate.

But like I said, that can change. Just wait for the next semester and get a new roommate. Why would you be so upset about a fight with your roommate and breaking up with a boyfriend you'd been with for a few months that you're going to now take your own life out of nowhere and not contact the family you're so close to? It does not make sense. I agree. Now around the same time that Lane was interviewed, detectives.

also learned that Hannah had been telling her co-workers that Megan, quote, took a lot of Adderall the night she disappeared and that she was always suicidal, end quote. When confronted, Hannah denied saying those things. She told detectives she had only said that Megan seemed depressed and that she speculated suicide might have been possible because Megan's Adderall bottles were missing from their dorm. Now, according to the new reports Megan's family obtained, back in her first interview with detectives, that when she came back from work that night, she found four empty Adderall bottles on Megan's metal cart table, which she stored her over-the-counter meds on as well. And Hannah explained

that Megan usually kept one or two leftover Adderall pills in each of the four bottles. She assumed Megan had consolidated the leftover pills into her current prescription bottles and taken them with her to her sisters. She wasn't concerned at all about the empty bottles when she saw them. Detectives collected the bottles, which were prescriptions from May, August, October, and December of 2024. And Vanessa told us this when we were talking to our crime con, and Megan's parents also told this to the detectives. Megan didn't throw away her old bottles.

She has ADHD, after all, and detectives noticed that her dorm room was messy and cluttered with trash. And I'm going to be honest with you, I have ADHD, and I have a prescription for Adderall. I think if you looked at my office in my house, you'd find six or seven empty Adderall bottles because I get paranoid that sometime I'm going to go to refill it, and they're going to be like, what's the prescription number?

And I don't know it. And then I have to call my doctor and have them call the pharmacy. And then it's going to be this whole thing. So for some reason, I just keep them. I also have a bunch of, like, empty birth control packets, you know, the ones where you, like, pop them out the back. I have, like, five or six of those. I don't know why.

It's a weird thing. I don't throw them out. I feel like. Yeah, me too. I know. You don't throw your birth control out. No, I keep it. I have, like, the line of sugar pills in there, you know, the line of sugar pills in there.

And I don't know why. I eat those for candy. You should. try that, actually. I think they are just sugar pills. Like, I'm pretty sure you don't have to take them. I think it's just to like remind you of when you have to start your next month. But I have like five or six packets. And I don't know if that's a normal ADHD thing. Let me know in the comments. But yeah, I keep all of those things. You'd be surprised the random things I keep. No, I wouldn't. You know, you wouldn't. I would not be surprised. Now, there's one more thing

I need to mention about Hannah before we move on. As I was finishing the research for this episode, she came forward publicly for the first time and gave an exclusive interview to People Magazine. In that interview, she claimed that she believed Megan had taken her own life. That statement is significant because it contradicts while she told the police, right? The police heard that Hannah was telling friends and coworkers that Megan took her own life. They asked her about it. She's like, no, I didn't say that.

I just said she was depressed. And now she's talking to People Magazine and she's like saying the same thing. Megan took her own life. That's what I believe. And as we know from police records, she told the detectives multiple times that she didn't think Megan would hurt herself and that she hadn't been worried until Megan's mother, Vanessa, contacted her on the 12th. So either Hannah lied to the police, which is a crime, or she's lying now to People magazine. And either way, it's harmful. And I think in general it's harmful to speak about what somebody's motivations were.

you know, like if somebody's dead under these circumstances where it's pretty mysterious, I think, I think you agree. And then you're going around telling people that you think she took her own life and that's your belief. You guys didn't even get along. You weren't friends. You would have no real grasp on, on Megan's like internal processes or what she's going through inside of herself. Why would you be telling people that? It's really, I think it's really problematic in general. well you're not a doctor and there's really no need to give your opinion on it you like you had just said you knew her for a few months you guys were roommates you weren't even on good terms at the time when it happened it wasn't like she was confiding in you about certain things in her life you only knew what you could see with your own eyes and so i understand the need to want to come out and for self-serving reasons defend yourself by being like oh i think she killed herself but it probably would be better just not to speak about it at all it's not your area of expertise go on with you your life, I personally don't think that she was involved in any way, shape, or form with what happened to Megan. That's really where I stand on it. If you're not helping with the

case, I don't really need to hear from you publicly. I mean, I don't know. Do you think she was defending herself? Because she thought people would think. I think there's some people out there and even you were critical of her where they hear the things that have been put out there about her and her relationship with Megan at the time. I'm critical of the way that she just like disrespected her private space and wasn't a great roommate, but I'm not like, oh, I think she drove out there to kill her that night. No, I think that she probably came out to give her side of the story. And that is for a self-serving reason, right? Megan's no longer here. If you had information that was critical to the case, you'd be giving it to law enforcement. But if you're

going to speak to People magazine, which is a magazine. A national magazine, yeah. You're doing it to put out a story. And you have to assume that story has something to do with her, right? What would be the motive for putting that story out there. If you believe she killed herself and you had something to support that, would people magazine be the outlet that you would discuss that with? No, it'd be law enforcement. So there's got to be an agenda. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing.

There's been a lot of disparaging things said about her. Maybe she felt like she wanted the opportunity to give her side of the story where she was because has there been disparaging things said about her? Like people are saying, I think she's responsible for this? No, but just like critical of her behavior on the day that Megan went missing. in the days after you yourself had said like, you know, why didn't she call her parents? Critical of her behavior. Yeah, not saying, like, I think you killed her. So if you were being, if somebody was critical of your behavior and your callousness towards your roommate, do you think

you would then come out and be like, yeah, she definitely killed herself? Like, is that the way to make yourself look better? That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. I would just go on with my life. Yeah. Yeah, nobody, nobody thinks that you are responsible for her death. So be quiet. So just, you know, move on with your life. All right. So back to the police investigation. Around the same time detectives finally spoke with Lane, which was in April of 2025, they also interviewed Alexander Connor, who went by Travis. And Alexander Connor, aka Travis, was a homeless man known to frequent the Boulder Canyon culvert area. So Travis explained that he'd been in jail from January 23rd to February 13th. And sometime after his release between February 13th and the 22nd, he returned to the Boulder Canyon in California. man to collect his belongings. While he was there, he said he found Megan's purse in the same general area of the culvert. He said he couldn't pinpoint the exact location, but described the purse as being to the left and up a hill if you were standing near the creek side camp,

which could mean the slope where Megan was found or possibly the hill across the road. Travis said the bag's strap was torn, and he assumed it had belonged to a hiker who'd dropped it. inside he found a vape, credit cards, keys, chapstick, a single earbud, an empty Adderall prescription bottle, a wallet, and possibly a small toy or keychain. He admitted to removing the disposable vape to use it, but he said he left everything else inside. He took the purse with him and later left it on a bike trail off Highway 36, the same area where it would eventually be recovered by Beth, the girl on the bike. He denied knowing anything about Megan's phone and claimed the vape was the only thing he had taken.

All right. So now we have Travis saying, I found her purse in the same place where her body would later be found. I took the vape out, right? I took some things out of it. I left everything inside otherwise. And then I dropped the purse off on this bike trail off Highway 36. Do we know how he got there? Have a question.

What is it? If you took the vape out. Yeah. And that's the only thing that you found valuable. Yeah. Why are you walking around with a girl's purse? Yeah. If you're just going to dump it six miles later.

Why are you finding the need to bring it six miles away? How the strap break, right? You know who would know, and I'm not suggesting this, but you know who would be able to tell a story that would align with the evidence found? Hmm. Someone who was involved with the crime. Mm-hmm. Because they know what happened, more even so than police.

They know where she was found because they would have been involved with her being disposed of there. I'm not saying that's what happened here. I'm just saying it's nobody can deny that possibility. So his story makes sense. Yeah, I found the purse on the left side of the, the Rocky Hill there. These are the items that were inside of it. There could be some truth to that story. But it doesn't explain how the strap broke.

If she was alone and she fell on her own, whether it was by accident or intentional, how did her purse break? Why would you take it six miles away if all you did was take a vape out of it? That's the second part of it. But it doesn't explain a. reinforced strap being broken by thin air. It didn't get caught on the rocks and break like that. It would have been around her body. Somebody took that purse off her body, yeah. Or yes, or she was struggling with them. And yeah, it's strap. It snapped while they were struggling over the

purse. I don't see a world where here's the only thing I will say in his defense. If the strap had broken while she was wearing it on the rocks, he would have saw her as well. Yes. It would have been right next to her. Yes. So if that's what happened, then say that's what happened. But you're saying you found the person there was no body near it. Don't believe you. Yeah.

I don't believe it either. And if you, like I could see if maybe he took the credit cards and he used them and he's like, oh, I'm going to dump the purse six miles away from where I found it because I just committed a crime, you know, but to just be like, I took the vape out to use it, but I left everything else in there. With everything else. And then went six miles with, I don't know what transportation. To just dump it.

To just dump it. Yeah. Because I didn't want it to be found where I found it. Why? What about the shoe? What about the phone? Yeah. Where are those items?

Well, we know where the phone was, but where is the shoe? How did they get there? And if what he's saying is true, then either somebody had already taken the phone out. That's right. And then what? Left everything else in there? The credit cards, everything? That's what you have to believe.

Because at that point, the person who took the phone out has already committed a crime. You stole someone's phone and you're selling it as your own. You've already committed a crime. Why not just take the credit cards and see what you can do with that? It's someone out there right now walking around with one Spice Girl shoe, one platform shoe, just walking around. Yeah, well, I hope they're not walking around with it. But, okay, so that's what they want us to believe. We don't believe, Travis.

Well, detectives didn't believe him either. Shocker. Yeah. It's a shocker because they didn't believe him, but they still kept going on this stupid theory that she took her own life. So the detectives felt he was withholding information and intentionally avoiding questions about the phone. They told him that something bad had happened to the owner of the purse, and they urged him to tell the truth about everything. that had been inside, but he insisted he couldn't remember anything else. He then provided a DNA sample and he was released, which is weird, by the way, that he was released because now he's in the wind.

He doesn't have a home. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have a... There's no way. You can't hold him. He could leave the state. He could leave the country. He could have been responsible for her murder and you let him go and he's gone. Can't hold him without cause. You can't hold him with like suspicion that he stole her purse. You got like 24 hours or 48 hour hold. That's max. If you don't have something that you can charge them with, you got to release them. Even suspicion? Suspicion's not a crime. I mean, suspicion of like, you know, let us investigate this further.

Suspicion's not a crime. You can't keep someone in prison and say, we think you did something wrong. We just haven't figured out what it is yet. What about jail? Can you keep them in jail? You can't. No, okay. No.

Well, he provided a DNA sample, so that's a relief. They got all his name, you know, they have a lot on them. But you're right. He could technically disappear. Yeah, I mean, he could have killed her and then just been like, I'm going to leave. guys, and you will never, ever find me again. But detectives continue trying to locate Elliot Bafor, who's the man that sold Megan's phone, and they were hoping they could learn more from him. Now, in mid-May, detectives finally located and interviewed Elliot. He said

he had never seen Megan before and didn't know who she was. At first, he claimed he found the phone along the trail, but then he changed his story and said it came from someone named Travis, which is the same person that detectives knew as Alexander Connor. Elliot said, he didn't know where Travis got the phone. All he knew was that Travis had asked him to sell the phone at the eco-at-m because Elliot had an ID and you need an ID to sell these things at the eco-at-m and Travis didn't have an ID. Can I throw a crazy thing at you? Yeah.

You know, it would be another reason that you wouldn't want to be the one to dump the phone at the eco-at-m? Because you know what happened? Because you know it's connected to a dead girl? Yeah, and because you know what happened to it. And now we know Travis is lying, by the way, or Alexander, whatever you want to call him. So he's already lied, yeah. You know, there could be some truth to what Elliot's saying.

And what happened? Did you guys split the $75? Like, this is the thing I'll say as we get into Elliott. I do find a little bit more truth to Elliot's story only because he was dumb enough to drop the phone off at a recorded air kiosk where they would know his name or they would be able to identify him. And it seemed like Travis was smart enough to take that purse six miles away from the place he found it. Yep. And then give the phone to someone else. to turn it in for the cash.

You think, maybe this is a stigma, I apologize if I have anyone, but in that world, especially if you're hurting for money, you're not going to trust anyone to take a phone that has value and do it for you because then you're never going to see him again. And so I think that's a big leap of faith for Travis to say, hey, here you go. I want to split the money with you because you have an ID and I don't. Well, Travis, if he didn't have an ID, he wouldn't have been able to use the EcoATM. But I would think he would accompany Elliott and just stand. away from the eco-ATM so he wasn't seen on camera.

Like, I think that if you were going to do that and there's an amount of money there, even if you're giving Elliott, you know, a cut, you're not going to just send him off. You're going to be somewhere in the vicinity watching. So you know what's happening. But maybe Travis knew there was a camera on that eco-ATM, so he made sure to not be in that camera view. Possible. There's just so many other ways that Travis, aka Alex, I'm just going to call him Travis for now, could have gotten money without having a paper trail.

and I see it all the time when we have breaking and enterings and car robberies you'll end up finding stolen radios GPS's cell phones change at drug dealers houses because they'll go there with the phone and say hey I'm not looking for cash

just give me four bags of rock and we'll call it or even like a kind of shady pawn shop whatever where there's no paper trail the fact that Travis went to this extreme to say hey you do it are you saying that you think he was maybe setting

Elliot up possibly setting him up or didn't want anyone drug dealer pawn shop owner anyone to be able to say that's the guy that gave me the phone but elliot can say that but he knew him as Travis he didn't even tell him his real name he was taking measures to avoid it coming back to him that shows to me that there's some sign of guilt yeah that's that's crazy so elliot was arrested on charges of theft and false declaration to a pawnbroker which would be the eco ATM in this case and then he was released on bond It doesn't, if you're released on bond, don't you have to have money for that?

You can be released on bond. It could be for personal recognizance or surety, where it's like 10% of your total bond. It may be like 100 bucks. Okay, so answer this then. They can't keep Travis or Alexander because it's just suspicion. But they've actually, they're actually charging Elliott over here with something. And they don't have to offer him bond, especially if he doesn't have money to put up. So why do they do that?

That's the judge. That's the judge who's ultimately, or the match. magistrate who's ultimately decided that based on the charges. But the DA is going to give their recommendation, correct? They don't get involved at this point most of the time. I mean, you've got a dead girl. How are you not getting involved? And now you've got a bunch of shady figures who have her belongings.

Why isn't this looking like it might be something else than you thought I was? So from the perspective that I'm seeing it, I'm not saying I disagree with you. They have nothing on Alex to hold him or Alexander to hold him. Travis keeps confusing these names. They have nothing to hold him. they have his buddy here, they got him with a charge, it's a phone, it's not much, and the bail or the bond can't exceed the charge itself. So they can't say, oh, we're charging you with a theft, but we're going to put a bail over your head like it's murder. It doesn't, a bond,

it doesn't work like that. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, guideline. Yeah, but I've seen this before. If the DA gets involved and goes to the judge and says, yeah, judge, we got him for, we got him for stealing a phone. However, we also have a dead girl who this phone belonged to. Yes. And we might have some suspicion that he might have been involved with this. Or has information. So do you think you could, you know, maybe keep him in a little longer?

And the judge could say, yeah, because he's actually been charged with something. I can't believe I'm playing devil's advocate here. But when the judge is deciding bond, he can't base it on suspicion. He has to base it on the crime itself and does he view this person as a flight risk? The point of bond is not for punishment. It's to ensure they show back up to court. So for whatever reason, I can't get it into the judges or the magistrate's because it's not always a judge.

Sometimes it's on the weekend. It's a magistrate. I can't get into their head. And you could have four different magistrates who have come, maybe have come to different bonds. But in this person's opinion, they felt like based on the information they had about Elliott and the charges he was being charged with, they would be able to find him at a later date.

And he wasn't a danger to the society that he was in. Okay. So, okay. I'm not saying I agree with that. But I'm just saying that's what it is. So now we have Travis. who has admitted to having Megan's purse, has admitted taking a vape out,

has admitted to dropping the purse off six miles away from where he found it. Air quotes admitted. Yep. And now we have Elliott who's like, hey, I got the phone. And Travis says, I never saw. A.k.a. scapegoat.

Yeah, Travis says, I never saw Megan's phone. There was no phone when I got the purse. Never said he gave the phone to someone else. Never said that. Never even saw the phone. What phone? You would remember that. Yeah.

So now we have Elliott saying, yeah, I did have her phone. And I brought to the EcoATM. But I got it from Travis. old boy Travis over here, right? And then they arrest him. They let him go. Stupid, but okay, they let him go.

And now, as a police detective, what's the next thing you're going to do? Well, you're going to bring Travis back in, right? You still don't have him on a crime, but you could charge him with obstruction of justice. He's lying to police officers. You're not going to be able to hold him, but you can start to put the feet to the fire. Or just ask him, why do you lie? Yeah, you ask him why you lied, all that good stuff, for sure. Well, as far as I can tell from all the reports we have, detectives never went back

to question Travis about why he lied when he said he hadn't found Megan's phone. Had no idea he never saw the phone. They never went to go find him and ask him to clarify that. And by another question, I would love to ask them because that seems stupid, completely unlikely. But if that happened, that's just a complete lapse of judgment, negligence, whatever you want to call it. And it's ridiculous. I hope that there's a reason or there's just something missing from the report. that we don't know about.

That's all I can hope for. I would hope you're right, but the way that this case has been handled, I don't know. It doesn't look good. No, no, I'm not, I wouldn't put a bet on it. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't either. I mean, they probably were like, oh, he's a homeless guy. Like, how are we going to find him again?

Yeah, I wouldn't put a, yeah, he's just lying because that's what people do. So a few weeks later on May 27th, Megan's toxicology report was released to her parents, Joe and Vanessa. They had been asking about the report for weeks and were repeatedly told that the results weren't ready, which makes sense. Toxicology is the longest thing in the autopsy report. It takes the longest to come back. But when they finally received the report, they discovered that testing had actually been

completed back on March 8th, so months before they had it, even though they've been asking for it regularly. And the results showed the presence of Adderall at 1,900 nanograms per milliliter in Megan's blood, as well as phenoproponalamine, which can occur as a byproduct of Adderal. at 22 nanograms per milliliter. While 1900 nanograms per milliliter of Adderall is a high concentration, it isn't necessarily fatal. The report itself stated that reported blood concentrations

in amphetamine-related fatalities ranged from 500 to 41,000 nanograms per milliliter with an average of 9,000. So that means... Well below the average. Yeah, in fatalities that are resulting from amphetamines or Adderall. they can go anywhere from 500 to 41,000, but the average is 9,000. So Megan's was 1900, which is, like Derek said, well below the average. Yeah.

So that same day, Megan's autopsy report was also released, and it listed all of Megan's injuries, but said none of those had anything to do with her death. The report concluded with a statement from Dr. Meredith Frank saying, quote, it is my opinion that Megan Trussle died as a result of the toxic effects of amphetamine and that exposure to a cold environment hypothermia contributed to her death. It is my further opinion that the manner of death is suicide, end quote. So when Megan's parents read their report, they were stunned. They couldn't understand how investigators had reached that conclusion.

There was nothing in the report explaining how Megan could have done this to herself and everything they knew about her life contradicted that finding. Aside from the evidence that suggested a struggle, Megan had no history of suicidal thoughts or behavior. She loved college. She was thriving in her classes, and she seemed genuinely happy. Even the autopsy report itself noted, quote, no previous suicidal ideations or attempts were known, end quote.

The report also mentioned no suicide note was ever found. So we're going to take a quick break, our last one, and then I want to come back and talk a little bit more about this. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack and hydration sponsor. IQ Bar is the better for you plant protein-based snack made with brain-boasting nutrients to refuel, nourish, and satisfy hunger without the sugar crash. Now, you guys have heard us talk about IQ Bar endlessly. Now, I've tried a lot of healthy snacks over the years.

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be sure to let them know that we sent you select podcasts in the survey, and be sure to select our show in the drop-down menu that follows. We would greatly appreciate it. Again, that is skims.com. We're back, and I wanted to quickly talk about some statistics. So when the medical examiner is saying that Megan committed suicide by basically just taking all of her Adderall medication. I tried to find studies showing how common it is to complete suicide by taking Adderall alone.

I really couldn't find anything, and I kind of went a little bit deeper just to get some statistics. And there's a study in stimulant medication and suicide mortality in ADHD that found that among patients diagnosed with ADHD, months during which they had an active prescription for stimulant medication were associated with a lower. risk of death by suicide compared to months without medication. Another review in medication for ADHD and risk for suicide attempts concluded that stimulant medications like Adderall were actually associated with reduced risk of suicide attempts in people with ADHD. And the CDC classifies prescription stimulants, which includes amphetamines under the broader category of psychostimulants with abuse potential and records overdose deaths involving stimulants. But these deaths are typically,

And when I say typically, I mean, all of them that I could find, they're typically accidental or undetermined. They're not explicitly categorized as suicides. Additionally, a historical medical review found 43 reported deaths over a 35-year span associated with amphetamine use for various causes, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, poisoning, et cetera. Some of those may involve self-harm, but the paper that I found this in in the medical review does not attribute them explicitly. as suicides. And we talked about this at CrimeCon right before we went on stage. I was sitting there and I take Adderall. And I'm thinking, if I was going to take my own life, my Adderall is the very last thing I would grab because it's not a fun thing to take too much Adderall. And if you've ever accidentally done it, which if you have ADHD, I'm sure you have, because I have, right? Sometimes I'll

take it in the morning. And then my brain completely goes crazy. And I don't know if I'm if I took it and then I'll be sitting there at my desk and I'll be like, I don't feel like I took it. I must not have taken it. And then I'll wait a few minutes. And then I'll be like, I didn't take it. I'm not feeling it. And then I'll take another one. And then about 20 minutes later, they both hit.

And it's not a pleasant experience. What is it like? Like you're very anxious, your heart's beating fast. You're kind of uncomfortable. You get really hot. It's just not a good feeling. It's not a feeling. I would assume if you took a bunch of Adderall like that, it would feel like your heart was going to explode.

And if Megan wanted to take her own life, she could have easily gone into a drugstore and gotten like NyQuil or some sleep aid. She could have done that and taken that and she would have just fallen asleep, not felt like her entire heart was going to explode out of her body after taking a handful of Adderall, especially extended release Adderall. That would not be a pleasant way to go. And for somebody who had never spoken about suicide didn't have behavior that would suggest she was considering suicide, I don't see it happening personally. It just doesn't seem like something anybody would do if they'd had any experience at all with Adderall. You know what I mean? I have investigated a few suicides in my career. None of them ever involved Adderall.

That doesn't say much. It's not like I've done a hundred different suicide cases, but I don't think Adderall would be the pill of trouble. choice. I just can't even find anything. I can't find anybody who has concretely done that. And you know what else is interesting? The ME said that she died from hypothermia, right? Yeah. Well, what happens when you take Adderall, especially if you take too much? Hyperthermia happens. Body temperatures can rise dangerously high, sometimes to over 104 degrees. It causes profuse sweating. Like, everything gets dry, your mouth gets dry, your nose, like everything. I don't understand how somebody can die from hypothermia after taking a handful of Adderall.

Your body temperature would shoot up. Scientifically, it doesn't make any sense. And if she had hypothermia, that would mean that she was alive when she was experiencing the effects of hypothermia, correct? You're going way over my head right now. You're using terms that I am not familiar with as far. I mean, I obviously know what hypothermia is, but I mean, I don't know. It could be a mixture of it where she was taking the Adderall and she was out in the cold. She gets into this struggle.

She doesn't die from her injuries from the struggle. And she's dumped at this location where she eventually dies from hypothermia. I don't think taking Adderall would prevent you from hypothermia. you would still experience it, even though you may feel it or experience it differently. I don't think taking a couple adderals are going to stop you from going into that state. But she didn't take a couple, remember? Well, she took a lot. Allegedly, according to them.

If you're on Mount Everest and you're experiencing hypothermia, you're not going to be able to take Adderall to prevent it. It's still going to happen. So we don't know all the mechanics of this. However, I do know a doctor who I go to for things like that. this sometimes whenever I have medical questions and I'm going to contact him. And I kind of want to know if that would be, you know, possible to die from hypothermia if you're, if you've taken, you know, a handful of Adderall because it makes you really hot and it raises your body temperature.

So it almost would feel like it would protect you from the cold a little bit more than just being out there without it. But I will double check and then I will update. I still think long term exposure would over would supersede that. Yeah, but that would mean she was alive during that time. Yeah, I mean, she takes this Adderall, maybe it, like you just said, it throws her off, throws her equilibrium off, she's feeling hot, she's having heart palpitations, whatever the symptoms are after taking that much Adderall, and she could have fallen, and then she's out in these conditions for an extended period of time, and then the side effects of being out in those conditions is hypothermia. Yeah. Extremity starts to get cold, frostbite, all these different things. So, yeah, that could be a potential scenario for sure. Well, guys, I will look into it and I'll ask somebody who does have the medical know-how for that.

Yeah, it's not me. But I'll update you if I get any answers. So after the autopsy report was completed, the sheriff's office closed the case and Megan's parents were able to obtain roughly 250 pages of reports. As they began reading through them, they were stunned by what they found and what they didn't find. Once again, there was no explanation anywhere for how investigators believed Megan had killed herself, no working theory, no narrative, nothing that explained how she could have reached. the 40-mile marker wearing no coat in only one three-inch platform shoe. There was no explanation for how Megan sustained so many injuries, why her jacket sleeve was ripped on the same side she wore her purse, or whose glove had been found on her hand. Even the gray pants

beneath her body remained unidentified. The reports also revealed just how little had actually been done in the investigation. Fresh blood found in the culvert had never been analyzed, and Neither had Megan's fingernail clippings or any of the biological swaps collected during the autopsy, including the rape kit. A blue tarp found in the culvert wasn't tested either, and no forensic expert has been consulted to examine or interpret the injury patterns across her body. Megan's parents also learned that the Adderall bottle found in the culvert near her body contained instant release tablets, which didn't match the white spheres recovered from her esophagus in stomach. The prescription bottle for the time-release capsules was found six miles away inside her purse.

All right, so now she's got in her system, in her body, they are the time-released capsules. They take longer to dissolve so that the medication enters your body in a more paced way. But the Adderall bottle found in the culvert near her body had instant release tablets in it. And remember that bottle was empty as well, but it was a prescription for instant release, not extended release. prescription bottle for the extended release capsules was found in her purse, six miles away also empty. So that's interesting because you would assume that if she had done this to herself, the Adderall bottle that was near her would have the pills in it that she took. And you could say that she maybe put the extended release capsules in the immediate release bottle, because we know

she kind of moved things around, and that's possible. Megan's clothes were placed in a drying cabinet, but after they were finished drying, both socks were sealed together in one bag, even though one sock came from a foot that had no shoe. And other socks recovered from the scene, which didn't belong to Megan, were each stored in separate bags. On top of that, at one point, a staff member found the drying cabinet unlocked, which compromised the integrity of the evidence. To make matters worse, the detective who inventoried Megan's purse made independent decisions about what evidence to keep and what to discard, so this person ended up throwing away several items, including pills, that could have been important later. So after reading the reports, Megan's parents begged for answers about why her death had been ruled a suicide.

And on June 4th, they were finally able to sit down with Dr. Meredith Frank, the person who had conducted Megan's autopsy. Megan's parents wanted to know how the investigators believed Megan had sustained her injuries, but Dr. Frank didn't have an answer. She said that while she hadn't been to the scene herself, her quote unquote team had, and they concluded that Megan's injuries were likely the result of a fall. When Vanessa pointed out that it didn't seem possible to sustain that many injuries from falling less than 10 feet, Dr. Frank responded, quote, I'm not going to get into this speculation that the blunt force injuries that I saw in her body were not fatal, end quote. She then described Megan's injuries as small and went on to say, quote, the only fatal condition

is that the entire upper esophagus and stomach was filled with pill material. It's the most I've ever seen in my 14 years of experience. I have never seen this widening or stretching of the esophagus by pill material. It was volumes, multiple, potentially multiple bottles, but definitely multiple capsules. And to me, this is a volitional use of medication, and that is really pointing me strongly towards the direction of a manner, end quote. So at that moment, Vanessa did interrupt Dr. Frank to ask whether the pill material had been tested, and she was told it hadn't been.

And this answer left her and Joe stunned. How could investigators determine Megan had taken her own life if they didn't even know what kind of pills she had supposedly ingested? And how could Megan have died from an overdose of medication that hadn't yet been digested? There was also the question of where those multiple bottles worth of capsules came from because Megan only had one bottle of capsules. The other prescription was tablets. And I think it's interesting to hear Dr. Frank explain that there was so much pill material in Megan's esophagus. that it was widened or stretched by it. Yeah.

It kind of sounds like it was shoved in her throat. I agree. I could see that as well. I'm sure there's people in the other camp that would say that stretching could have been due to Megan physically stuffing the pills down her throat, like trying to get them all down at once and causing some stretching while doing so. I think that would be the other camp as far as what they would say. Yeah, but I mean, if you haven't digested all of that yet, then how is it? contributing to this Adderall toxicity that's taking your life, which is what Thami is saying. And that's a good valid point from Vanessa as well. I mean, there's just, yes, I suppose what

Dr. Frank is saying is all possible theoretically and scientifically, but why? Why would you take your life like that? Why would you shove pills down your throat to the point where you couldn't even breathe and you were choking yourself with them? It doesn't make any sense. And then once again, you have all the other factors of how our purse ended up six miles away. how her shoe is just completely gone. If she had her shoe on when this happened, then where did it go? Why would, like you said earlier, why would somebody take only one shoe? Yeah.

It doesn't make sense. But to Megan's family, the circumstances did not point to suicide. They feared she might have been attacked and that someone could have forced the pills down her throat. The bruising on her face and head only made that possibility seem more likely. Megan's parents demanded that the pill material be tested and the coroner assured them that it would be. But on June 4th, before those contents were sent out, the coroner's office completed the official report of death, formally classifying Megan's death as a suicide. Two days later, on June 6th, the gastric contents were finally sent for testing. And by mid-July, the results were back.

The coroner's office reported that the testing confirmed the presence of Adderall in Megan's stomach, with the levels being significantly higher at 1.7 million nanograms per milliliter, compared to 1900. in blood. Am I reading that right, Derek? 1.7 million nanograms? That's what I'm seeing here. Higher higher at one seven. Significantly higher than the, you know, what was in her blood, which was 1900. 1.7 million nanograms. Wow. So this report doesn't explain what that means in regards to fatality. However, the coroner's office maintained that the Adderall caused Megan's death and that the manner of death was suicide. When Megan's family asked for more details on what was tested, they were told that only a small portion of the gastric fluids had been sent off, and that result was then used to calculate the estimated concentration of amphetamine in her stomach.

To Megan's parents, that explanation didn't resolve anything. It only raised more questions about what all was in Megan's stomach and esophagus. So basically what I'm hearing is they took a sample size of contents from Megan's stomach and determined how many nanograms were in that small section and then multiplied it based on the, what, surface area of Megan's stomach? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that's an accepted mathematical equation that they're able to use. I'm assuming they didn't just make this up. I suppose 1.7 million?

It's a lot. Like you might want to go back to the drawing board and be like, I can't possibly be true. Yeah, I mean, I'm not even disputing it. I'm going to save my final thoughts from when we get there because we could dispute every single thing. I still think this all paints a picture. But I'll let us get through it and then we'll go there. Well, as of this recording, Megan's case remains closed and ruled a suicide. Investigators have never explained what happened to Megan. Based on everything they've learned so far, Megan's parents think investigators theory is that Megan walked to the canyon, left the bike path when she reached the area near the culvert and climbed inside. from the bike path side, and then while in the culvert, she took all of her pills and then exited on the creek side where she collapsed from the overdose and fell eight feet to the spot where she was found. But that theory doesn't make sense to her family. It doesn't explain how Megan sustained all of her injuries, how her shoe, phone, and purse went missing or why she was found lying on a pair of pants that weren't hers. It also doesn't explain how she could have

fallen out of the culvert without landing directly on the large boulder positioned below it. They also don't understand how the searchers who looked in the culvert two days before Megan was found didn't see her body there. It hadn't been snowing at all, and yet they didn't see her. One of them was looking directly at the culvert while one was next to it. So how did they miss her bright blue shirt, her red hair, her red pants? None of it adds up. Megan's parents don't believe she walked out there and took her own life. They feel that authorities are unwilling to acknowledge that a young college student could be murdered in Boulder. CU Boulder is an affluent university, often described, as a public ivy, and it brings in tens of millions of dollars a year.

Having a student vanish from campus and be killed nearby is the kind of story that damages the image of safety that the school and city both rely on heavily for a financial means. There may also be something larger at play. In September of 2024, Boulder was named one of three finalists to host the Sundance film festival starting in 2027. Over the next six months, the city competed with two others for the opportunity. and on March 27, 2025, it was announced that Boulder had won.

A coalition that included the city of Boulder and the University of Colorado Boulder had offered Sundance $34 million in incentives to relocate to the area. That local investment came on top of millions more from the state, including another 34 million in tax credits, bringing the total package to nearly 70 million. That means both the city and the university had a tremendous financial interest in maintaining the perception that Boulder is a safe community, one where college students don't get murdered, one where you could come to a fancy high-status film festival and walk around the

city and not be afraid that something bad could happen to you. Now, obviously, we can't prove that the Sundance deal or anything else had any influence on the determinations made in Megan's case. But whatever the reason for the failures in this investigation, there's no excuse for them, Nothing matters more than a human life, and no amount of money, image, or opportunity changes that. Megan's life mattered and to dismiss her death as a suicide, despite so many unanswered questions, is not only irresponsible, it's cruel. These officials, the police and the M.E. and the people at the college, they have told Joe and Vanessa that their daughter killed herself, but they've never been able to explain how. And that just doesn't sit right with me. Doesn't sit right with Joe and Vanessa. Despite all of these roadblocks, Joe and Vanessa refused to stop fighting.

They are currently working to hire independent experts to review the evidence, but the coroner's office has refused to give their private pathologist access to photos of Megan's body. The family's goal is to have those photos released, the cause of death changed to undetermined, and a new agency brought in to investigate Megan's death. They've launched a change.org petition to push for these changes, along with a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the cost of hiring forensic experts. So I'm going to tell everyone how you can check these things out and how you can do more for Megan if you'd like to stay up today in her case.

But first, I want to talk about our final thoughts. Derek, take it away. So some of you may be asking why Stephanie and I have taken such a vested interest in this case, more so than some of the other cases we've covered. I can only speak for myself. But for me, as a parent, if I send my... daughter's off to school and God forbid something like this happened and I sit down with law enforcement and they tell me that my daughter took their own life. You better be damn sure. You better be unequivocally sure of what happened and you better have the evidence to support it

because that is a big claim to make that your daughter was in such a bad place that they walked out 50 minutes from campus, 50 minutes from anybody around them, went inside a dark culvert, sat there, swallowed a bunch of pills, and then died in the freezing cold alone. Not even a normal way that most people would kill themselves, but just this, you want me to believe all this and you want me to just accept the fact that you've done your due diligence, even though now we have all these other variables regarding items that should have been with her, if that's what happened, being found at different locations, and Not only that, finding the people who had those items, and they're clearly lying.

They're not telling the truth. So I've said it to Vanessa and Joe, and I've said it at CrimeCon, and I've said it on Detective Perspective. I am of the belief that what happened to Megan was either a tragic accident or a homicide. If it were an accident, I believe there's a combination of what we know and what law enforcement has stated and what happened to. here. I think, yeah, listen, sometimes people are in a bad state of mind. They make an irrational decision. We've all been there. We've all been young. You lose a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you think it's the end of the world. And we see Megan leaving her building after all this goes down. And yeah, it's possible she decided to go for a walk. She took her pills with her because she didn't want anybody

to take them. She wasn't in the right state of mind. She was upset. She was thinking that, you know, this guy was probably her husband at some point. Again, we've all been there. It's, possible that while she's walking out there, she takes a couple pills, then a couple more because she's trying, I don't know, I don't know what her thought process is, but she's taking these pills because she feels like it's going to help the situation or maybe give her some type of euphoric feeling. I don't know, hallucinate. I don't know. I can't speak to what Megan might have been thinking. But while walking out there, she, she's not thinking about where she's going. And she, before she realizes it, she's so far out there. And she thinks, okay, maybe I can go inside

this culvert and get warm. I clearly can't walk back. And then by taking as many pills as she did, not trying to kill herself, there's an impact there. Like you said, where you don't, you know, you talk about not remembering taking one and then taking another one and it's not a good feeling. Well, she clearly had more than that in her system. And that right there could have resulted in her becoming disoriented, losing her bearings, and maybe falling accidentally onto those rocks, sustaining some injuries and because of those injuries and because of the conditions and because of her mind state with the Adderall, she may have expired from the elements outside, the temperatures due to hypothermia. Possible. Now when you consider everything else we know, with Elliot and Travis

and the purse being broken and found six miles away, the phone being given to a third party in order to turn it in so it wouldn't come back to the person who actually found it, who lied to law enforcement about finding it. And the location in which he found it, he found this purse, but not, but not Megan. It doesn't align to me. I also think it's hard to believe that Megan walked for 52 minutes along this roadway and didn't realize how far she had gone. And during that time, there's not a potential that she encountered someone who had nefarious intentions.

So where I sit right now is, yes, this could be an accident. It could be a homicide. I feel like the investigation hasn't been vetted thoroughly. And to come to the conclusion and to say it publicly and to the parents' faces that Megan killed herself is incompetent. And it's irresponsible and unprofessional. It's disrespectful to Megan. It's disrespectful to her family because now there's a large portion of the public who believes Megan killed herself. And that's something that is going to be attached to her name for the rest of her life. you just mentioned a little while ago. Her roommate's out there now on People magazine saying,

yeah, I think she killed herself. Well, what is she basing that off of? She's basing it off of what law enforcement and everybody else is saying. So with this case for me, what I want is for it to be looked into thoroughly by a private independent party. I want the medical examiner. If they're so confident in their conclusions, the case is closed, release what you have, allow an independent pathologist to take a second look at what you had. If you're so sure about it, then they're just going to reaffirm what you've already said. And let's see if they come to the same conclusion. There's nothing to lose, everything to gain.

And that's why Stephanie and I are putting up this reward, because there's more questions than answers. And I'm hoping that if money's the incentive here, the people who know what happened, whether it's directly connected or indirectly connected through a third party, come forward and give us the information we need. Maybe that just confirms the fact that it was an accident, or maybe it'll open. opens up a whole new canter worms where now law enforcement can go down a different set of trails here and find out what really happened to Megan. But I just had this uncomfortable feeling

of lack of resolution. I just feel like so much more could have been done. And I'm okay with either outcome. I'm not leaning one way or the other. But just for everyone, as a parent, I need to know. I need more. I'm sure Megan's parents are okay with either outcome as well, right? Yeah. Yeah, they just want to know what happened their daughter. And they want a thorough investigation. So when they ask questions, they're given answers. That makes sense. Don't worry about that.

It's not important. I'm not... Weird things happen. I'm not giving you this information because that's not irrelevant to this case. Or I know I'm certain about what happened here in my findings and the cause of death, but I'm not willing to provide the evidence to support it. That's unacceptable. As a society, we can't accept it.

and we have to hold these departments and these agencies accountable. As far as all the other stuff, I've heard it from Vanessa and Joe about the film festival and all that. And I'm not going to sit here and say it's not possible. I don't have anything to support it. For me, it's more binary. It's a simple accident or homicide. That's what I'm focused on right now.

As far as all these other entities and their motives as to why they may have done something, it's possible. I'm focused on Megan right now. I think we have names that are connected to her death, that no more than they're saying, and that's more than we have in a lot of cases, which is why we're putting up the money. That's where I'm at on it.

Yeah, I'm in the same place, and we talked about this during CrimeCon, and you said, you know, if you're a law enforcement agency or an ME, and you're this sure, you're this sure, which you clearly are, because you already done, listed it, and closed it.

If you're that sure, you should be welcoming another party to come in and confirm that, clear your name, clear your reputation. Because, yeah, there are people out there who believe that Megan died from suicide because that's what the official said, but there's a lot of people that don't believe that. So now you've got people out there questioning your integrity as an investigator, as an M.E.

And so you'd think you'd be open and welcoming of someone to come in and review the evidence and come up with the same conclusion you came up with so that we can put it to bed. But the fact that they're not doing that is concerning. Additionally, I don't know why it would have been so difficult to put her death as undeterred. and then just, you know, continue investigating if Travis ever pops back up, maybe he gets arrested again in a month, and now they can question him more about what happened and ask him those questions about why he lied about the phone. And now your case is still open, even though it's listed as undetermined, like you don't have to put a specific cause of death or even manner

of death. You just have to, if you put undetermined or inconclusive, and then it could stay open and whatever new information you have coming in you could use because they had it closed within just months it felt like that's not long enough with all those things that aren't answered that's not long enough you don't have enough evidence to say it was a suicide you can say you believe that it was you can say that based on your autopsy that's what you believe happened but that's not enough to say ultimately and legally this is exactly what happened and we're not going to explore any other options and i agree with there it could have been an accident Do I think that?

No, I don't think that. I think that Megan was brought there to that location. I don't think she went there on her own. I think that she encountered foul play. Somebody wanted what she had in her purse and they were going to get it from her no matter what. And that's it. Maybe they didn't even intend on killing her. It could have been her just deciding to fight.

I'm not giving you what I want. I'm not giving you this purse. And then it escalates. What about that analogy I always give with like the street fight where you punch someone in the face? they hit their head and end up killing them. And they die. Yeah. You're still on the line.

You're still in the line. So she could have fallen back out of the culvert during the struggle. And that's how she ends up where she is. That's why the purse isn't with her. That's why her's not with her. That's why her phone's not with her. Because she fell backwards while all of those items, the shoe came off. And that's why the cell phone and the pills were not there because they were in the purse.

And then whoever was there took the shoe, took the purse and said, let me get out of there. And I wonder, like Derek said, that six miles away, that other highway marker, that other mile 40 marker where her purse was found, I wonder if they had searched more in depth or if they'd, you know, gone a little further out. Maybe they would have found the shoe or maybe whoever got rid of her purse got rid of her shoe in a completely different area. But either way, that shoe was not there where her body was found. And that doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't make any sense why someone would take one shoe. It doesn't. Oh, no, I think that came off wherever the struggle initially started.

And then whoever was there took that, along with the purse, which was any evidence of this girl being there, and took off. It doesn't make sense. If she took her own life or even if it was an accident, the shoe would be there. But if she took the pills, you'd think they would have been there, right, with her on her person. I agree. But they weren't.

I agree. The pill bottle being in that culvert. And just for us to be sitting here on a podcast and being like, this doesn't make sense. And I would be willing to go along with law enforcement and be like, yeah, I get that if you would explain a little bit more, if you would, you know, to show your work, but you're not doing that. So this whole thing doesn't make sense. You're being very protective of your investigation when there's no need to be doing that if you've done everything correctly. I would say defensive. Yeah, I was going to say that, but I was trying not to be sure. I'll say defensive and I'll say it for you.

Being very protective and defensive of your investigation, even though there's no reason to be that way if you've done everything properly and you know you've done everything properly. Looking at it, I don't know how as a detective you sit there and go, yep, I'm convinced this was a suicide. And then you have the balls to go into an office or a room with the parents and say, yeah, your daughter killed herself. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. How do you look at parents and say that knowing that there's other possible options? We need more, we need more work to be done. And if there's, if the work has been done, well, then you need to publicly release it. Like your question earlier about, do you think Travis was interviewed after Elliot said, oh, I got the phone from Travis, and he's the one.

Well, there's no evidence. There's no evidence in the police reports that it was, Don, yeah. If it happened, let us know. We're looking for information. Stephanie's going to give you all the details right here. We want answers for Megan's family. Vanessa and Joe deserve it. Every parent deserves it.

And whatever the outcome, we're okay with it. We just want more details so that a reasonable person reading it would come to the same conclusion, not be left asking more questions at the end of their synopsis. Exactly. So I will tell you guys how you can look more in to Megan's case and stay up to date on it. You can follow us, Crime Weekly, on social media, and you can also join the family's official Facebook group, Justice for Megan Trussell official. If you have any information about Megan's death, please text or call the family's tip line at 678-636-9771 or email Trussell tips at vigilante-pr.com. There is currently an $11,000 reward, which includes $5,000 for me and $5,000 from

Derek. If anybody has information that leads to an arrest, that will be on the table for you. So please, if you know anything, say something. Please, please. We appreciate you guys listening to us talk about this when we covered on CrimeCom. We're covering it here two episodes. It's important. It's our recovering it. It's not necessarily the case that's getting all the headlines, but it matters. Megan was a real person with a real family and her whole life ahead of her. And Vanessa and Joe are real parents, just like many of you out there. And so you have to put yourself in their shoes and ask, what would you want done if it

was your daughter? And I think 99.9% of you will agree that what we're doing is the least we can do. So if this doesn't give you the episode to say what I'm about to say here to, you know, stay safe out there. I don't know what will because it can happen to anybody out there, especially the people you care about so keep your head on a swivel live your life but be cognizant of your surroundings we love you guys we want to stay safe out there we'll see you next week bye