Crime Weekly - S3 Ep373: Megan Trussell Case Being Reviewed!

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Listen to our series on Megan Trussell here: The Case of Megan Trussell (Part 1) 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 after her family's tireless work, her case is finally being reviewed. Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:https://www.CrimeCon.com - Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your ticket!

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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasse. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And as you can probably tell by the title of this episode, we have an update in the Megan Trussle case. The Colorado Department of Public Safety through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Liaison for Missing and murdered indigenous relatives have accepted a formal request to conduct a statutory case review into the death of 18-year-old Megan Trussle. And Stephanie's going to give you a little overview of Megan's case if you're not familiar with it. But for anybody who's been following us for any amount of time, then you know that I've covered it on Detective Perspective. We did a live show at CrimeCon about it. And we are also offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for Megan's death. So this is good news.

And I had done a, like an Instagram reel slash TikTok on this. And to me, it's just, it's such a positive sign of the direction true crime is. going and the impact it can have because I said in my in my little TikTok there that although this is all the work of Megan's family like they applied for the application to get this done and they're putting in the actual legwork but I do believe that the public pressure and the amount of notoriety surrounding Megan's case absolutely has an influence on these agencies whether or not they decide to approve these types of reviews because they know if they don't, there are people watching and listening and holding them accountable and people who are really curious about this

case and have a passion for it now and feel like they're part of something. So it just, it just goes to show you like there are some negative stigmas around true crime, but if used the right way, it really can have a positive impact. Yeah. So Megan's case is controversial, I would say. I think that the Boulder County Sheriff's Office had given their ruling that this was a self-inflicted death, and some people accepted that, and some people, including Megan's parents, did not. Let me give you a quick summary in case you forgot, or this is the first time you're hearing about it. Megan Trussell, who is 18 years old, was last seen leaving the CU Boulder campus on the night of February 9th, 2025. It's just about a year ago. She was reported missing three days later. On February 15th, her body was discovered near the four. mile marker on Boulder Canyon Drive. The investigation was a coordinated effort, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, the Boulder County Digital Forensics Lab, the University of Colorado Boulder Police Department, also the FBI. They did a thorough review of security footage, cell phone records, key card access logs, witness statements, and that was essential in establishing Megan's

movements and building a timeline for the evening of February 9th. I'm not going to go through that timeline now. We'll link the video. We did a two-part video. We did a two-part video. on this so you can go through that. But basically, her body was found, and then her phone was traced to a resale kiosk at a Boulder grocery store. This had been sold by a man, an unhoused man. They questioned him. He said, another guy gave him the phone. This was a whole back and forth. And then Megan's purse, her very special purse that her mother made for her was found on March 5th on Highway 36 along the bike path, which was quite far from where her body was found. And there was. There was empty Adderall prescription bottles with Megan's name on them. This ended up, I guess,

telling the medical examiner's office based on the contents of Megan's stomach and what her autopsy said, plus the Adderall pills, the bottles being empty that she had taken all of this Adderall in an attempt to end her own life. Megan's parents don't agree. Even Derek and I, when we went through this case, we were like, yeah, there's way too many kind of side characters here involved and space, you know, distance between where Megan's body was found, where her purse was found, then her cell phone being taken and sold, and all this stuff that, yeah, could it be self-inflicted? Sure. Could it be foul play? Yes. So it's good now that they're taking another look at it because that's not going to hurt anybody, right? I think that that's what people don't

understand if it needs to have another look, if it needs a different set of eyes or several different pairs of eyes to look at the case and if they come to the same conclusion, then maybe that will, you know, kind of take down some of the anxiety and the fear and concern over Megan's case not being handled properly. So as of now, they say that this request to conduct another case review into Megan's death was requested by her parents. who identified their daughter as an indigenous woman. Megan's death was officially ruled a suicide slash prescription drug misuse by local authorities on May 27, 2025. The review is mandated under Colorado revised statutes, which requires the department to conduct an independent review for cases involving indigenous persons whose deaths were ruled as suicide or overdose under suspicious circumstances.

So this is a law, right, that if a request is made and it involves an indigenous person, they have, have to conduct an independent review. What does an independent review mean? Does that mean the same investigatory body that already looked into Megan's case, which is, you know, the Colorado, the Boulder Sheriff's Office and the FBI? Does that mean they're going to look at it again or are they going to bring in a different investigatory body? I would hope that it's going to involve some new people. How would it be an independent review if it's the same people reviewing their own work? So I have to imagine that the Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives are,

they have either PIs or former law enforcement officers who are going to come in with a panel and look over the original investigation. That's the only issue that you could have with an independent review is even if it's a new body of people looking at it, if they're only using documentation from the original investigation, then they're more than likely going to come to the same. conclusion because they're getting a narrative fed to them. But if that also involves them going out and doing some of their own interviews, maybe going out to the crime scene, then it's going to be more well-rounded. And I think a lot more people will be willing to digest whatever they have to say. It kind of looks, based on this press release, it sort of looks that it's going to be the same people. So it says CDPS and the CBI are committed to fulfilling

their statutory duties under Colorado law. The Division of Criminal Justice, Office of the Liaison of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives continues to work with families need of support, but it kind of looks like the CDPS, which is the Colorado Department of Public Safety, and the CBI, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, are going to be the ones leading this investigation. And I know that the FBI was involved in Megan's case and her investigation as well as the Boulder County Sheriff's Office. So I'm not sure if the CBI, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, how much they were involved prior to this. Yeah. But hopefully at least you'll bring new people on.

And they could just be doing this to shut everyone up. That is true. And hopefully that's not what happens. And hopefully they take it seriously because this was an 18-year-old girl's life we're talking about. So we can only hope for the best and we hope that Megan's family gets the answers that they deserve and that they've been wanting for almost a year now. Yeah. And what you're saying is probably true because right in that article, I believe it said something along the lines of the CBI will conduct a review, not a reinvestigation of the case. So that is exactly what you're saying here, where it's not as thorough.

It's not like a whole new team of people are coming in and starting from ground zero like it happened yesterday. that would be ideal. But I still think the premise of this is important. Hopefully they see something in the review. Correct. Something that they missed or something that could have been looked into further, something that, you know, just as simple as like a person they identified, who now in hindsight, their story doesn't align with what we currently know

based on everything that's come out. And all the documents are publicly available at this point. And even when I did that social media post, I had put out there that I was cautiously optimistic. I don't want to poo-poo on this, but just when you have people who are involved with the original investigation

investigating themselves, more than likely human nature, you're going to be like, yeah, I did a great job. You know, that's just the way it is. Only thing you can hope is that

because a little bit of time has passed, not a ton, but, you know, a little bit of time. You have about a year at this point coming up on a year, there may be somebody new who didn't work the original case who's now being assigned to this. I would think that

should be the common practice where you make sure that you have some individuals who have not really touched this case yet doing the review. Somebody who's unbiased, yeah. Yeah, you know how you, so that's that's my hope. But what I said at the top of this episode, it still holds very true because you never like to overpromise and under deliver. I have hope that something will happen here. Obviously, you and I are passionate about this case, which is why we're putting our money where our mouth is, it may not work out. It may not work out. And like you said, there may be just too much here that we can't answer for them to

overrule their original findings. To me, as far as this case is concerned, there is some truth in what they've already released. Like we have the pill bottle in the culvert. We have her body being found on the rocks. And yes, there is a possibility, which we said in the original episode that we did. that she had taken the pills and she lost her mobility and maybe her bearings a little bit and she fell on the rocks, injured herself and was unable to get up and due to the weather, she died from exposure.

That is possible. But I don't know how it's also not equally as possible that she was in that culvert with someone else using those pills. And something went down while she was in there. Even if she was by herself initially where someone saw her with these pills and said, hey, I want them. There was a brief struggle. She fell backwards. And that's why she died.

So when you have other people bringing her items forward, when they originally kind of lied about how they came into those items. And her purse is ending up five miles away from her. Yeah. I don't think it's a stretch for us to say something seems off here. And we need to relook into it. No, it doesn't appear this was a homicide in the sense that you would traditionally see a homicide. But there's still a possibility that her death was the.

result of someone else's actions and at minimum that needs to be looked into. So we're hoping for the best, always planning for the worst just in case, but stand by what I said. This is a good sign of things to come where when a community gets behind a particular case, even though maybe the agencies just wanted to go away because they feel like they've done a thorough job with enough public pressure, not only on those agencies, but the political figures that employ them, we can force their hand to do something because they know if they don't, there's going to be hell to pay, right? We're going to do it the right way,

but there's going to be people holding them accountable, which is what my goal is for true crime in the direction we go, not only here, but detective perspective. I know you do it on your channel as well, where we're bringing exposure to these cases that maybe you haven't heard of and using the platform that we've built through covering bigger cases like Amanda Knox to bring eyes and ears on these lesser known cases

so that everybody knows about them, the same way they know about an Amanda Knox. You know, that's the, that's the goal. Yeah, absolutely. Thinking of her family, thinking of everybody involved, wishing the best of luck to the investigators, I really do hope there's new people around this case and they give it a really good look over and make sure they dot all their eyes and cross their teeth. And I did mention a few minutes ago that we talked about Megan at CrimeCon.

And that's what we want to talk about today because right now it's January. CrimeCon is coming to Vegas in May. Anybody who's been there before, you're already familiar with CrimeCon. It's an amazing time. There's plenty of speaking engagements going on. There's different sessions with investigators and people who are in the true crime space, both on television and in podcasting. There's also opportunities to go around podcast row and meet all of your favorite podcasters.

And then there's just a ton of cool vendors that even I find myself sitting at their booth, learning more information about how they conduct their cases. And then, of course, most importantly, there's a lot of families there, trying to get answers for their loved ones. And what a better place than six or seven thousand people who care about these crimes as much as we do. In addition to podcasts who have the platforms to share that information, all congregating in one place, getting to interact, talk about these cases, and figure out how we can

move forward. So if you have been to CrimeCon before, then you already know, head over to CrimeCon.com. Use our code Crime Weekly so that we know you're going there and you want to meet us because that is something we take into account as far as how much merchandise we bring, our scheduling as far as how much time we leave open to stay at our booth to make sure that we meet each and every one of you. We want to meet each of you. We want to spend time with you. We want to talk to you. It's our favorite part. Yes.

Yes, 100%. I just did a little sort of convention thing. It's connected to New York. It was just one day. And I got to meet about 55 people. And I just remember, like, I love this part. I love this part because we sit behind a camera. We're alone for most of the time. We're with you guys and we're talking to you guys. But we don't get to actually like interact one on one. And getting to do that is such a privilege. And it's such a connecting experience. We love it. It's our favorite part. We love going to crunch. I'm kind every year because of that. We want to hug you guys. We want to laugh with you guys. We want to talk and share things. We want to hang out with you guys at the bar after and have a great time. Yeah, and watch Stephanie sing songs with you guys all night. Or have like a complete, you know, anxious mental breakdown because I'm overstimulated. But either way, it's fun. It is a good time. We love it. We really do love interacting with you guys, meeting with you guys. That makes it, I mean, I get kind of emotional because it's like, this is what it's all for. This makes it all worth it to see you one on one and know you're real people. You know we're real people. So we love that. It's May 29th through

the 31st. It's at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Go over to the CrimeConn website. Do we have a code for them to use? Crime Weekly. Crime Weekly is our code. So use that. You're going to get how much off 10%? 10% off. See? I know things. You're right there. And we really hope you guys do. Yeah. Like Derek said, if you use our code, it's going to give us an indication of what to bring because we make a special shirt for each location that we go to every year. And we, obviously can't make like a ton of them because if they don't go during that that convention or that date, then what do we use them for? So it really helps us to know how many people are going to be there to see us. So please do that. We cannot wait to see you there. We love you all.

And once again, go to the crime con website. Las Vegas for 2026 in May and then use code crime weekly for 10% off your ticket. We cannot wait to see you there. Yeah. She nailed it. That's basically it. And by the way, like we both said, it's in Vegas. I know Stephanie is not a huge Vegas person. I love Vegas. So it's also an opportunity if you're going by yourself or with a loved one or sometimes the crime weekly people get together and kind of become friends while they're there. Oh, they absolutely do. It's amazing.

After hours, it's not like we're in the middle of nowhere. There's going to be plenty for you to do. So I personally am upset that Backstreet Boys will not be at the sphere anymore at that point. It's going to be wicked over there, which I heard is amazing as well. So I already have my plans for what I'm going to do at night. But yes, there's also the Clue Awards. We can't forget that. This year we were fortunate enough, or I should say last year,

we were fortunate enough to win the People's Choice Award. That's always a great night, too. Are we nominated again this year? I believe so. We won't know for a couple more weeks, but normally the People's Choice Award is based on you guys, whoever's going and who you nominate. They'll pick the top five, and then you don't find out who wins until that night.

But even if you don't win, just going, everyone gets dressed up, everyone looks great. We all go to the Clue Awards. Usually they have a pretty cool host. Last year it was iced tea that Stephanie decided to ignore. So, and then we had John Crononez. Oh my God, he's amazing. I mean, it was pretty cool.

It's a really good time, really good food. And then afterwards, we all kind of end up down in like the common area bar so that, you know, everyone's talking and interacting afterwards. And this year, it's at Caesar's Palace. Yeah. Also, can I give a shout out? over the weekend I met a young man named Ian who has been watching me for a long time and then you, Derek, were his favorite big brother character.

I was his favorite, like, true crime YouTuber and you were his favorite big brother character. And then we started the podcast and he was like, well, this is a dream come true. I can't believe this. And he said from day one, he's been listening. He's never missed an episode. And then his girlfriend, Rosie was there. And she's like, I can attest to the fact that he never misses an episode. They were great.

Shout out to Ian and Rosie. They're going to try to make it to crime. I was just about to say, I was just about to say, I mean, with that pitch, he better be at crime crime con. Yeah. He's awesome. Great kid. I look forward to meeting them.

And we do. We have a great time. They, they, yeah, we do. We do have a great time. The one mistake we have is that we spend so much time talking to you guys that the lines get pretty long and that's partially our fault because we're sitting there having like full-blown conversations with everyone. But at least you know when you get up to us, we're not just going to be like, hey, take

a picture and get the hell out of here. We're spending time with you. We care about you. We can't wait to see. see you. Absolutely. Likewise, I concur with everything she said. Go check it out, crimecon.com. Code Crime Weekly. And we did a live podcast last year with Megan Trussell. If we do a live podcast this year, more than likely we'll cover another case as well. But to wrap it up, to bring it back to what's important here, Megan Trussell's case is now being reviewed,

which we didn't know if that was going to happen a few months ago when we were covering it at CrimeCon. But here we are, real people, real cases, everyone coming together. And to get behind a unified cause, we're making a difference. And we really hope that there's a positive outcome in this case. And remember, even though they're reviewing the case, if you have information that you haven't come forward with yet, there's still time to do so. And if you provide information that leads to an arrest and conviction, Stephanie and I will pay you $10,000. So if it's not enough just to do the right thing, there's a financial incentive as well. So we'll see what happens. Until then, everyone stays safe out there. We'll see you later this week with

Amanda Knox part four. Have a good night. Bye.