Criminology - The Murder of Megan Nichols

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

On July 3, 2014, 15-year-old Megan Nichols disappeared from her Fairfield, Illinois home. Megan was dating an 18-year-old named Brodey Murbarger, and the relationship had caused a rift between Megan and her mother. There were a few cryptic clues left behind at the home, one was Megan's cell phone which had been completely wiped. Another was a note that Megan had written that contained very strange word choices and phrasing. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance and murder of Megan Nichols. Megan's body was more than four years after she disappeared. After she was discovered, the police quickly zeroed in on her boyfriend Brodey Murbarger, who, by that time, had moved on with his life. Brody has been arrested and charged with Megan's murder, but his case has taken quite some time to get through the courts. This is a case that we'll have to watch closely to see what comes out at trial and whether a jury finds Brodey guilty or not. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. For everyone and welcome to episode 169 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, what's going on with you, buddy? Not too much. I've had a little bit of the quiet time this week.

Got some extra work done. My wife and kids were away visiting beautiful New Jersey. And I had the house to myself and I got some work done. but I thought I'd like that peace and quiet. And then I realized how much I missed everyone, but they're back now. So I'm happy about that. What's going on with you? Yeah, it's funny you say that because I always like about the first day when my wife and kids go somewhere and I have the house to myself.

I'm kind of, you know, into it. And then it quickly wears off. I'm missing everybody. I'm missing the noise and all that and them. So I get that for sure. Yeah. And I use that. that time, and we know from podcasting that that quiet time is, is good work time because you

don't have to worry about certain schedules and making sure that the noise levels are good. You have everything to yourself, so it's good to do that. Yeah, absolutely. We continue to see some great Patreon support. Let's give some shoutouts. We had Paulette McNally, Holly Stevens, Sherry Bear, Maylee Romero, Kipper, Westbrook. Sabina Siblowska, Cheryl Fink, and Tori Adams. So some great support.

We really appreciate it. Yeah, that supports wonderful. We have some great supporters and you guys are rock stars. Thank you very much. If there's anyone that would like to help support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. Just a reminder about CrimeCon 2022. Morph and I will be there.

It's from April 29th to May 1st. And we've said it morph, but this is a must for any big true crime fan. And we're planning to get together with some of our listeners. It's always a blast. Yeah, I'm really excited. And I think a lot of people are planning right now. And it's a good time to do it. The tickets are going fast.

So you want to make your plans down and maybe even book your stay. So you don't miss out. Yeah, absolutely. And we want to help everyone save a little. money. So when you go to crime kind.com, don't forget to use our promo code criminology to save 10% on your standard badges. All right, buddy. So now that we have all that out of the way, are you ready to jump into this episode? Yeah, I'm ready to go. Let's do it. In this episode, we're talking about Megan Page Nichols, who was a presumed runaway. Her family had no idea

what happened to her. It wasn't until a number of years later that her family learned the truth. And that truth is still coming out. I mean, this is one of those cases that is still going through the criminal justice system right now. Megan Page Nichols was born on July 18th, 1999. She loved to play her ukulele and sing. And her mother loved to hear all of that happen. recalling being able to hear it even with her door closed.

Although her parents Kathy Joe and Jackson divorced, Megan seemed to adjust to the new family dynamic. Kathy Joe remarried and Megan lived with her mother and stepfather. Friends remember that Megan was guaranteed to make you laugh, guaranteed to make sure you had a great time. This was the type of person who was always upbeat and very outgoing. But on July 3rd, 2014, Megan Nichols disappeared from her Fairfield, Illinois home. She was 15 years old at the time and a sophomore in high school.

At around 2 p.m. she went on a bike ride. Later that day, Megan and her mother, Kathy Jo Hutchcraft, went shopping. But Megan said she wasn't feeling well. And she wanted to go to bed. So Kathy Joe dropped Megan off at home. They hugged. Megan said she loved her mom, and Kathy Joe left her at home to go finish her shopping. Kathy Joe returned home after getting her shopping done, and she didn't see Megan. She just assumed that Megan was asleep since she hadn't felt good.

But she eventually checked on Megan around 11 p.m. to tell her good night and found that Megan wasn't in her room. Kathy Joe immediately became worried. She and her mother, Megan's grandmother, decided to go to the police station. within two hours of finding Megan missing to report her disappearance. But the police told her that it hadn't been long enough to even be considered a disappearance. Having been turned away by police, the two women headed back to the house where Kathy Joe looked for clues. She pulled Megan's blanket back and found her phone. And I think more of this was an alarming in itself that Megan would leave home with no phone.

and that would be the first thing that would go through my mind as well. You know, I have two girls. They are tied to their cell phones. I mean, there's just no other way to say it. They have them with them at all times. Basically, their whole life in some respects is kind of, you know, run through that cell phone.

And I don't even think it's just kids nowadays. I think a lot of us are going to run our lives through our cell phones. Yeah, I think it's hard to go out of the house without a cell phone. having that. It's sort of one of the things you, when I go to someplace, I grab my wallet, my keys, my phone. There's the three things I have to go out with. And I, I feel like I can't go any place without them. Well, number one, how are you going to listen to your podcast in the car if you don't take your cell phone? So, you know, that's, that's number one. But I think, you know, when it came to finding Megan's phone, when Kathy Joe looked closer at it, she really became nervous.

she saw the phone had been completely wiped. So we're talking about no contacts, no messages, no photos. And it was after that that Kathy Joe found a note left in the room, one that would make her heart sing. The letter read, Mom, I love you, but I'm never going to be happy here. Don't come looking for me because why spend a lifetime looking for somebody that doesn't want to be found? And Kathy Joe recognized the handwriting in this letter.

She knew it was her daughters, but the words themselves, she didn't quite understand. She felt that, you know, these weren't words, phrases that her daughter would use. Later, Kathy Joe would state that if those were going to be her last words from Megan to her, it wouldn't have been those words. Megan would have said something completely different. Kathy Joe describes her relationship with Megan as very close, stating that she knew her daughter very well. They did everything together.

Kathy Joe says she wasn't convinced that Megan wrote the note of her own free will. I think this might be a good time to point out that sometimes notes left behind in missing persons cases are actually pretty common. And they can give investigators something to work with and help them understand, could someone like Megan be a runaway and voluntarily missing, or might she have been abducted? For example, in the case of the Fort Worth missing trio, three girls, ages 17, 14, and 9, went missing in December 1974. The Fort Worth Police Department's Missing Persons Bureau classified the three girls as runaways, despite their young ages. The 17-year-old girl, Rachel Trellica, was married, and maybe you could paint a story of a loveless marriage, and a runaway wife, but this included two other girls, one who was nine.

The three have been missing for 46 years now. In that case, Rachel's husband quickly received a letter addressed to his full name, as if it had been read out of a phone book and not addressed to his nickname, as Rachel called him. The letter supposedly from Rachel claimed that she knew they would all be in trouble, but they had to get away. It also claimed they were going to Houston. for about a week and specified that the car was in the Sears parking garage exactly where

it had been found. Rachel's family never believed that she had been the one to write that note. This was not the only odd thing about the letter that stood out while the letter was written in pen. The envelope was addressed in pencil. No city was in the originating address and the zip code was smudged. The paper the letter was written on was wider than the actual envelope. And Rachel's name seemed to have first been misspelled as Rache before having been corrected. Police in the Fort Worth Trio case felt the letter was not really from Rachel. But at the time, the best they could do was photograph and check the letter for prints or maybe have a question document examiner look at it. DNA wasn't a thing yet. Now, police can check for DNA.

A on letters as well. So these kinds of letters really can impact a case in what direction police go in. Eventually, police did get involved in Megan's case, and they found out she had been dating an 18-year-old man named Brody Ian Murbarger. Authorities believe that Brody and Megan met online. Brody was also dating another girl while involved with Megan. Kathy Jo had known that Megan was dating Brody. She didn't approve. because she felt that not only was he too old for her, he also didn't care about her or treat her right. He actually took his other girlfriend to the prom,

though Megan was hoping he would go with her. Kathy Jo began to try and cut off communication between the two. She took Megan's phone away from her, thinking that she would not be able to communicate with Brody if she couldn't text him from her phone, but like most teens, Megan was smart and she was really good with technology. After Kathy Joe took Megan's phone away, she checked the phone to make sure she hadn't missed any important messages.

And she saw in real time a text conversation happening. Now, she could only see Megan's side of the conversation. Kathy Joe went upstairs to check on Megan and she can still remember the look on her dog face when she told Megan that she was seeing this conversation. Kathy Jo knew that her daughter was using some other device to have this conversation, and she asked Megan where her iPod was, but Megan didn't answer. These text messages were full of things, like how Megan couldn't stand her mother about how she had to get out of the house.

Later, when Brody's replies were found, he had texted things like, he wished he could come get Megan. So I think clearly here, despite Kathy Joe's efforts, Megan and Brody remained close. They remained involved in this type of forbidden teenage relationship. Kathy Joe called Brody from Megan's phone and told him, basically, do not communicate with my daughter again. On Memorial Day 2014, Kathy Joe checked. on Megan around 9 p.m. She wasn't in her room, but her phone was. So Kathy Jo checked the phone. And the last text message she received was from a contact with a female name. So she called this

number. And it turned out that it was not a girlfriend of Megan's. It was Brody Murbarger, who answered the phone. Kathy Joe called the police. And while they were at the home, Megan actually showed up, walking home through the backyard. After Megan's disappearance, police weren't the only ones that got involved in searching for her. The Fearfield, Illinois community launched search efforts to help find Megan and support her family. They created t-shirts, signs, wristbands, flyers, ribbon magnets, and more to create awareness of Megan's disappearance and keep her story alive so that if someone saw her or remembered anything, they could call a tip line, or perhaps could reach Megan herself somehow out there and convince her to come home.

Her family wanted to show Megan that they weren't mad at her, and they still loved her no matter what. Volunteers also searched wooded areas. In February 2016, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, Fairfield City Police, and Wayne County Sheriff's Deputies, acted on a tip and conducted a two-day search in a wooded area just south of Fairfield. Unfortunately, no signs of Megan run. covered. So more, if you just mentioned police acting on a tip in February 2016, but, you know, that's almost two years after Megan went missing. So we kind of know what we're in for a little bit as we go through this case. It's going to take some time for them to kind of unravel the mystery.

As we mentioned, Megan's phone was completely wiped on July 3rd, 2014. the day that she went missing. Kathy Joe wondered why Megan hadn't sent a text goodbye to her instead of writing a letter and why she left her phone there at all. And again, Morif I think these are questions that most parents would ask. You know, thinking about it, I cannot remember the last time my girls sat down and actually wrote out a letter. They don't write all that much. you know, basically all of their communication is through text or some other app that I probably don't even quite understand, Snapchat, Instagram, all that stuff. How many teenagers in the last 10 years or so are really sitting down and writing letters?

I would say not many. Yeah, I think some of the younger kids today probably don't even know a lot about the process. And speaking of living on your cell phone, I remember as a teenager having to walk to a phone booth sometimes to call people. We had moved into our house and for some reason our phone didn't get put on for like a month. And I was constantly walking to a nearby phone booth to call friends, girlfriends, things like that. So I can only imagine how foreign something like that would be for a younger person today that lives off their cell phone. Yeah. And, you know, not to date ourselves, but, you know, going back prior to having call waiting and things like that, I can remember my parents getting ticked that I spent so much time on the phone.

They couldn't get any of their phone calls and they couldn't make a phone call because I was tying it up pretty much all night, talking to friends. Like you said, you know, girls, things like that. It was just a much different time. but also sometimes I think back about it and think, man, it was a simpler time. I agree with you. I think it was definitely a time where people spent more time talking and communicating. You know, hear your stories of people today that are sitting across from each other, texting each other, instead of actually having a conversation. But it seems like back then people actually spoke more.

And if there's a benefit to all these electronics today that it leads. a little bit more of a trail. So if somebody does go missing, there's sometimes some clues to work with versus back then. If someone's making a random call from a phone booth or something, there's not much to go with to go on. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. There's good and bad, right? Pros and cons with all of the technology that we have today or that comes about. I think one of the big pros is that, you know, I can jump on myself. phone until at any point in time where my wife is, where my kids are. I can even tell how fast they're driving.

I mean, that stuff is invaluable. Yeah, especially both of us having kids. You want to know where they're at. You want to know that if they're driving and something happens, they break down and they're out in the middle of nowhere. They can make a phone call to have someone come out and help them. So I think that's definitely some good parts of having. having a technology like that.

Now, one of the reasons that Kathy Joe thought Megan may have left her phone behind was so that it could not help track her movements. Obviously, we all know. We just kind of talked about it, right? Cell phones can be pinged. They can be tracked. So perhaps Megan had left the phone behind for that reason. It's also important to point out that even if a text came from Megan to her mom to say,

goodbye, there would have been no way for Kathy Joe to really know that it had come from her daughter. One of the things we know is that with advances in technology, like cell phones and things like that, there's been a rise in cases where someone sent like a cryptic final message or, you know, they left a final message. But there's also been a rise in cases where people aren't quite sure, whether the victim truly sent these final messages or not. Really, all it takes is an assailant forcing someone to unlock their phone or even using the owner's finger to unlock the phone. And they can easily impersonate the owner of that phone.

Kathy Joe's friend suggested that she check all the bank accounts for activity. As it turned out, when Megan went on that bike ride at 2 p.m. the day she went missing. she withdrew money from an ATM. When Megan asked her mom if she could go on a bike ride that day, Kathy Joe replied, Just don't do anything you're not supposed to be doing. The last sighting of Megan anywhere is on the surveillance camera from that bank. In the footage, she rides her bike up to the ATM

and withdraws money from an account. Early on, Kathy Joe got to see that video. In the video, according to Kathy Joe, she could see a familiar car in the background, Brody Murberger's car. But police later told Kathy Joe that there is no car in the video to be seen at all. And Kathy Joe hasn't seen the footage since the first day that she viewed it. So, Morph, this is something that we need to talk about, right?

Let's take a pause, address this video. You mentioned it. Kathy Joe saw this surveillance video early on. She recognized Brody's car. And then later on, the police told her that there was no car in the video. She hasn't seen the surveillance. surveillance video since, and she's not allowed to see it. So, I mean, I think you have to ask the question, what's the harm in showing Kathy Joe the footage again and proving that what she thought

she saw was not correct rather than just telling her that she didn't see what she thought she saw? I don't know. I don't know how to answer that question. Morph is there, you know, obviously it was okay to show her once, is there something now that makes it not okay for her to see it? I just don't see the harm in showing the parent of a missing person, their last known sighting, especially when they'd already seen it once. It was never a secret. And then it was almost like it was. And I think that's tough.

That would be very tough for Kathy Joe when police are telling her. we can't let you see it again. I think to a lot of people that would look suspicious and make it look like the police are hiding something. And in fact, as we're going to talk about coming up, that seems to turn into the case that a lot of people think they had reason to hide something. Yeah, but how many times does that come up

in these types of cases where, you know, the police do something or they make a decision that seems questionable? Now, they might have their reasons. They may not tell everybody what those reasons are that would help explain their actions. But I think at the very least, what it does in many cases is it makes people suspicious or it causes people to lose trust in the police. We see that time and time again. I think while we're talking about this ATM surveillance video, we should point out that we don't know if the account Megan would

drew money from was her own account or her mom's account. There aren't many details reported on this issue. It may have been Kathy Joe's bank account that Megan would drew money from, but it may not have been. Most people online seem to agree that it was Kathy Joe's account that Megan took money from that day. The fact that Kathy Joe felt comfortable taking away Megan's things like her phone and iPod may indicate that Megan didn't have her own income stream or bank account, because if she did, she could have bought new devices and hid them. Well, and I don't know about that, right? You know, a lot of young teenagers might have their own bank account,

but do they really have their own source of income? Because those are two different things. My girls had bank accounts from a pretty young age, but they didn't always have a job. They weren't putting their own money into the bank account. So could they really have, access the type of money that it would have taken to buy a new phone, buy a new iPod, iPad, things like that.

Morbidology is a weekly true crime podcast hosted by me, Emily G. Thompson, author of Unsolved Child Murders, Unsolved Murders, Cults Uncovered, and Mysteries Uncovered. 911 emergency. I just shot my husband. I need an ambulance. He's bleeding. Each week on Morbidology, I uncover a new true crime. crime case using investigative research combined with source audio. I just snatched it from her. My son had taken. It's like, I just hit her with it.

Morvidology is a victim-focused podcast that mostly covers cases that aren't widely documented in mainstream media. I also like to take an in-depth look at any systemic failures, which had a part to play in the crime. Do you know why you're here? For a homeless Beijing run, terribly wrong. Listen to Morbinology across all podcast platforms. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency.

We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. So back to Megan's disappearance. You had the note, you had the wiped phone, and you had the money withdrawn from the ATM. So authorities looked at all of this, and they classified Megan as a runaway. She was not listed as endangered missing for years.

And really, you know, there was a lot of valuable time, Morp. that investigators could have been working the case, and that was lost because of this type of classification. On July 5th, 2014, a judge signed a search warrant for Megan's telephone records from Allied Wireless. And this is interesting because, you know, this is just a day or so after Megan went missing. We just said authorities classified Megan as a runaway. The problem is we couldn't really find the information behind the reason for the search warrant, how it came about. Now, later, Brody Murbarker is connected to this case.

And this judge signing the search warrant for Megan's telephone records almost created a conflict of interest because he later became the state's attorney of Wayne County. and because he had already participated in the case in a way, it kind of muddied the waters. But at the time of the warrant, Brody Murberger was not on any suspect list. They weren't searching for anything related to him specifically. So the conflict seems to have been avoided. But records would show that most of the calls and texts, Megan sent or received on July 3rd, were either two or from Brody, including the last three calls she ever made.

When the police finally started investigating Megan as an endangered missing person, they didn't start with Brody. Surprisingly, the first suspect in the case was Megan's own father, Jackson Nichols. U.S. Marshals arrested Jackson Nichols due to a federal warrant stating that he was an unregistered sex offender. The offense said he committed parallels Megan's case. When Jackson was 18, he was dating a 14-year-old girl. The girl's mother found out and put a stop to it. Jackson ended up being charged with two counts of non-violent sexual assault.

This most recent arrest, and the charges against Jackson turned out to be a clerical error, and his case was quickly dismissed. He was finally cleared of any involvement in Megan's disappearance, but the fact he had been looked at as a suspect in his own daughter's case had to be hard on him. Well, and I think that's an understatement, right? First of all, you're dealing with the shock, the despair of a child who's missing. And then the police are looking at you and suspecting that you had something to do with it. To me, that's just like a double punch in the gut.

If, in fact, you had nothing to do with it, that's brutal. And what was it all about more of the fact that, You know, he did something way back in time when he was 18 years old. He was dating a 14 year old girl. He caught some charges. I'm sure he did whatever time or was sentenced to whatever he was. Now, many years later, the police are putting this together and saying, we don't know.

We better look at you. But it was more than that, right? He was arrested. He was charged. Now, it was quickly dismissed, but that, that's, still rough, man. And we know in missing persons cases or any kind of murder case, whatever, the police usually work closely and look at people closely in the inner circle of the victim. So it makes sense that they would look at someone like Megan's own father and then work their way out from there.

Yeah, I think it makes sense that they would look at him. And obviously, once they started looking at him and they saw that he had this past, okay, is that going to peak their interest further? I'm sure it did. But I think what has shocked a lot of people in this case is that it doesn't appear as though police really looked hard at Brody early on. I think that has shocked a lot of people. And online, rumors have spread that this case was covered up from the start. Brody Murbarger's father is an Illinois state troop.

and many people, apparently including Jackson Nichols, believe that the authorities there stuck together and protected who they considered one of their own. Instead of ever taking the investigation seriously, Brody Murbarger's father was accused in court records of performing dirty traffic stops, following and keeping people he pulled over until something could be found to cite.

It's also interesting that Brody was never arrested in Illinois. It was only in the state of Indiana where his father didn't work where he was pursued. So it absolutely could be a coincidence, but you can also see where people would question this. Megan's family hoped that she would return or make contact with them. And I think they had specific hope that she would make contact on. her 18th birthday when no one could try to control who she communicated with or dated. But sadly, that day came and went with no word from Megan. On December 26, 2018, a man was preparing to cut firewood just south of Bullston, Illinois.

That's when he and his girlfriend found skeletal remains wrapped in a blanket. The blanket was on top of a burn pile in a remote field. The remains had to be sent first to the FBI facility in a store. Springfield, Illinois, and then finally to Quantico, Virginia, where a forensic anthropologist would examine them. Wayne County Coroner Jimmy Taylor warned that a positive identification would take weeks at best. Many thought that these could be the remains of Megan Nichols, or, though it was a long shot, Lauren Spire, a 20-year-old who went missing from Bloomington, Indiana in 2011. People even held out hope that it was Timothy Pitson, a six-year-old who

disappeared from Aurora, Illinois in 2011. And more if there were a number of missing persons cases in Illinois, that people tried to connect to these remains. 37-year-old Lisa Michelle Stebich disappeared from Plainfield in 2007. Also in 2007, Stacey Ann Cales Peterson, Drew Peterson's fourth wife, disappeared. And the circumstances of her disappearance led to a murder conviction for Drew Peterson. in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. In 2017, Ying Ying Jiang was kidnapped and murdered in Champaign, and her remains had not been found.

Tammy Zewiki vanished while driving from Elvenston, Illinois to Iowa in 1992. So, you know, morph, when you think about it, remains are found. And when that happens, you have a number of families. And in this case, obviously that included Megan's family who were really holding their breath for a period of time until an identification could be made. And that's really sad when you think about it. All of these families who have missing loved ones, they have no idea what happened to them, and this would come up every time a body is found that can't be identified.

right away. I just, I can't imagine it. What that feeling, that roller coaster of emotions must be like for these families. Yeah, the highs and lows of each time learning there's a body has to be really hard on a family that's missing someone and hoping for answers. Not that it's good news that a body's been found. You don't want to celebrate the remains being found as being your loved one, although you want them to be home, if it is your loved one, it might finally give you answers. If it's not, then you know that someone out there in another family is going to be heartbroken over the discovery. So for all the people looking for someone like that, that's got to be, as you mentioned, really, really hard. Finally, in January 2018, the autopsy was performed and

completed, and there was confirmation, but no joy for Megan's family. The remains found south of Williston on December 26, 2018, were those of Megan Nichols. Her parents were devastated. She had been, until then, a missing person who was completely able to come home to her family anytime she wanted to. Now, she could never make that choice again. Kathy Joe and Jackson had to face the reality that Megan was truly gone. It turns out that the couple that found Megan's body were actually familiar with her while she was still alive and had a distant connection to her. but there's no other details about that connection available. I talked about the roller coaster of emotions that these families go through,

but then you get to the point in some of these cases where a family member is identified and the family now knows that they're truly gone, they're deceased, the lowest of the lows, right? Because you've been holding out hope for years that she's going to come back. She just ran away. Maybe she was upset. Now she's an adult. She's going to come back. She doesn't. This has to be the worst of all feelings. And I've heard a lot of times how people say that the not knowing is worse than even finding out that their child has been killed and finding their body,

just going for years and years with no answers and wondering where they're at and what happened to them. for some people is even worse than than finding out early on, say that someone was murdered and having their remains. And I get that. I get how that would be extremely difficult. But it's hard to believe that would be worse than the final moment or the notification that, yes,

this is truly what happened to your son or daughter. My heart goes out to all of these families because unless you've lived through something like this and nobody ever wants to have to, you can't really understand what these families go through. Following the identification of Megan's remains, police finally zoned in on Brody Burbarger. On September 25th, 2020, Brody was indicted by a grand jury in connection with Megan's disappearance and subsequent death. On October 7th of that year, 24-year-old Brody Murbarger was arrested by the Evansville, Indiana Police Department on the direction of the FBI in connection with the death of Megan Nichols. Police made the arrest at his place of work, the RC beverage

company in Evansville, Indiana, where he was a quality control laboratory technician. He was arrested just after he got out of his car. On his way to work, without incident, he was initially charged with first-degree murder via suffocation. first-degree murder via strangulation, first-degree murder with the manner and means unknown, concealment of a homicidal death, criminal home invasion, and home invasion with criminal sexual abuse penetration against a minor. But both of these home invasion charges weren't from July 3rd of 2014. One of those charges stated that Brody Murbarger, on one or more occasions between November,

November 28, 2013, and July 1st, 2014, committed the offense of home invasion. The search warrant was also served on October 7th, and police searched his Evansville, Indiana apartment. Brody was held in the Vanderberg County Jail, awaiting extradition to Illinois. His bond was set at $3 million. On December 8th of 2020, Brody was granted in-person visits, which, with his attorney, Christian Barrel. This had previously not been allowed due to COVID-19 precautions. In the same hearing, Judge Michael Molle, denied his bail reduction request due to just how serious the allegations against him were.

So what happens with this case and a Brody is going to play out in court? Until we get full details, we have to speculate on some stuff. Megan was clearly very taken with Brody if she was willing to sneak behind her mother's leave the safety of her home in the middle of the night and get in trouble just for talking to him. Megan had left in the middle of the night before, and she had left her phone behind when doing so. This begs the question. Was Megan planning to come back like she had done before? Was the note left for Kathy Joe so that maybe this time she would not call the police when she found Megan missing? It's interesting to note that Kathy Joe said the note was found in Megan's other room, but there's no information on this other room.

But what it does, Morph, is it makes it seem as though the note and phone were in separate rooms. Online in some discussions, people have called this room the prayer room. I think one thing that's very evident, Morph, is that there's a lot to unpack here. And, you know, we don't know all the details yet. Hopefully we will. But there's been a lot of speculation. There are a lot of questions. First of all, you know, how do the note and the wiped phone relate to each other?

We just talked about it. Megan had snuck out before. She had left her phone at home before. Okay, that's one thing. But what jumps out at me is what teenager is going to willingly wipe their phone? You know, we talked about it earlier, right? You're running kind of your whole life off of this phone. So I can't imagine any teenager wanting to willingly get rid of all contacts, messages, all of that. You know, that, that is something that's very perplexing to me. The phone is found underneath the blankets in her bed. Not easy to find, right? Kathy Joe had to have that instinct to turn down Megan's blanket in order to find it.

So why was it there? You know, some people have speculated that Brody entered Megan's room, forced her to write a note and wipe her phone. Maybe he even talked about destroying or getting rid of the phone. Did Megan know that, you know, maybe she was in trouble and she hid the phone where her family could find it later? Maybe she strategically placed the phone and the note in odd places because she did know her mom so well. And she knew that Kathy Jo would find this odd and know that it was something Megan wouldn't do, leading everyone to realize that she didn't truly run away willingly. I think there's other questions as well that hopefully will be answered.

Did Megan plan to run away with Brody, but something went wrong? and why would draw money, wipe your phone, and leave a note if you're not planning to leave? Also, Kathy Joe was well aware that Megan liked to sneak off with Brody, so why would Megan even wipe her entire phone? Kathy Joe would still suspect Brody had something to do with her absence, even without text to prove it. Deleting the last few messages that said when they were planning to leave and where they were going is all that would have been necessary if they were trying to cover their tracks. unless someone thought that wiping the phone meant the records were completely erased.

But it's clear that Megan didn't need her phone to communicate as her mother learned and could use other devices like an iPod that can work with Wi-Fi and maybe harder to track. Whatever happened, however it went down, we just don't know for sure yet at this point. According to the grand jury indictment, Brody murdered Megan Nichols on July 3rd, 2014, the same night that she went missing. And then he just moved on. He earned his bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Southern Indiana in 2019. A lot of these questions still remain because Brody isn't adding any information.

He's not talking to authorities. It's possible that if there was a plan for Megan and Brody to run away, Megan thought she would need some money for it. Or maybe the ATM withdrawal wasn't related to her disappearance at all. Maybe she wanted to go shopping, celebrating. celebrate the 4th of July or, you know, just have a little cash for something in the future. If she didn't think she was going anywhere that night, the withdrawal means nothing. And it's not even really a clue, even if Brody's car was in the footage. They could have just used that time as a way to meet.

But it's odd that she wouldn't leave her bike somewhere safe and have him drive her around. One other little clue about the note, Megan supposedly left that night, is that it asks, why spend a lifetime looking? Not something like, why look for someone or why keep searching. Whoever wrote that note or at least came up with the words seemed to know that Kathy Joe would never find Megan and was encouraging her to not even look for Megan. So as serious as these charges are against Brody, there's some people who think that he didn't kill Megan Nichols. Some suspect that it was a twisted and jealous love triangle and that Brody's other girlfriend killed Megan so that she wouldn't be a rival anymore. Though Brody took this girl to the prom, he clearly was also invested in Megan. It seems highly unlikely that this girl was even peripherally involved in Megan's disappearance and death

because the FBI and authorities had six years to make a case against her first. for any involvement, and they only arrested Brody. Authorities have stayed tight-lipped about the details of the case, so it's unknown if there are any accomplices under suspicion. But the fact Brody is not charged with conspiracy seems to point to him acting alone. Now, I will say this more if a lot of locals seem to agree that Brody is to blame. After Brody Murbarger was arrested, Megan's friend Holden August told the local news, it's one of those things where you kind of always knew it was him.

Locals have stated that he washed his car on the day after Megan disappeared. And as we know now, according to police, she was murdered. It's just one more piece of circumstantial evidence. But it's suspicious, nonetheless. There are also rumors like in any other case where a young woman goes missing that Megan was pregnant and Brody did not want to get in trouble or potentially have to pay 18 years of child support. Part of this is due to Megan saying she felt sick that day. But many others believe she wasn't sick. She just wanted to be at home alone to see Brody. If she had been pregnant,

though, she may have believed she and Brody were going to elope and start a life together. From what we can gather from public documents, authorities believe that Brody Mervarger entered Megan's home on July 3rd, 2014, with the intent to sexually assault her or have consensual sex with her. He then murdered her by strangling her, suffocating her, and or via one other method that has yet to be specified publicly. Once he killed Megan, he hit her body in the field south of Bulliston. Though Brody was arrested in 2020 and requested a jury trial before February 4, 2021, there is yet to be a trial. COVID-19 and the subsequent protocols due to the virus have really impacted the true crime world. Hearings and trials were rescheduled or postponed, and most courtrooms moved to Zoom meetings.

Brody pleaded not guilty to all six counts against him. He also requested access to a computer while in jail, which a judge granted under the conditions it would be a computer or tablet with no extra software and only capable of viewing his discovery, which he must keep private. On June 1st, 2021, a status hearing was scheduled for Brody Murbarger, who's now 25 years old. But we don't know the results of that hearing. While we talked about some other cases in this episode, it's because there's something to be learned from these cases. This episode also shows a staggering amount of similar missing persons cases that are mostly unsolved. The absolutely devastating number of families searching for their missing loved ones. The Megan Nichols Memorial Shelter was built in Megan's honor at the New Hope School

playground, which Megan attended. Brody Murbarger had another pretrial conference scheduled for June 29, 2021 at 9 a.m. But as attorney told the court, they needed more time to prepare. So another pretrial conference was set for August 17th at 9 a.m. Hopefully a trial date is set soon, and Megan's family will hopefully receive justice. So morph as we wrap up this case, you know, it's an interesting one, but it's also one that we have to keep a close eye on. This comes up in a number of cases that we do, right? Obviously, the prosecutors are confident that they have the evidence to convict Brody Murrbarger. I'm saying that because hopefully they are. Why would they charge him if they weren't.

confident. Now, we've seen where charges were levied that probably shouldn't have been in other cases. I'm hoping that's not the case here, but we'll have to see. They've been pretty tight-lipped about what they have and what they're going to present at trial, understandably. Yeah, I think it's clear that there's a lot of information that we're just not privy to. The public's not privy to. and how that all fits to this case, how everything played out, how everything went down. Hopefully that all comes out and has made public so we can get a better understanding of what happened to Megan here. Yeah, I'm very interested to find out more about the note, the cell phone, what the plans were for that night. You know, what had Brody told Megan as far as, you know, what they were going to.

going to do? Did they have plans to run away to do whatever? And then how did it all go sideways? Or was all of that predetermined? Was he setting her up knowing that he was going to end her life? And what was the reason behind all of it? I'm really interested to find out all those details. Yeah, I think this trial is going to be one where technology has probably relied on a lot. Maybe the text history between the two of they can produce that. And maybe they have surveillance video of Brody coming or going to Megan's home or to where her body was found. All of that kind of stuff will be interesting to see and just shows what technology can do. We talked a lot about older cases and things that we did back when we were younger.

But now we know that law enforcement has a lot. more tools thanks to this new technology and can use that to help solve cases. Yeah, I'm with you. I think the text messages are probably going to be crucial. They will probably lay out kind of everything that led up to what happened. And, you know, if it was Brody who wiped the phone, okay, he was fairly young. Did he just not have a great understanding of that technology and had no idea that authorities would be able to retrieve those. They were retrievable, right?

Even if the phone was wiped, I'm hoping that's the case. Thanks goes out the Sunny Lynn for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review. Keep telling your friends about criminology. A word of mouth is huge.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. So more if that is it for our episode on the murder of Megan Nichols, still have to wait and see what happens to Brody Murbarger, but we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night

with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike. And more. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.