Law&Crime Sidebar - Michigan Woman's Vicious Suffocation Murder Sparks Fear of Killer at Large

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Megan Drumhiller, 31, was killed in her Michigan home in 2022. But her family says the investigation has stalled. Drumhiller’s parents claim DNA evidence found at the crime scene still has not been processed. Now they’re offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the investigation with former CSI and host of True Crime Confidential Alina Burroughs.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve ever been injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: www.forthepeople.com/YouTubeTakeoverHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A family is desperately seeking answers as to who killed Megan Drumhiller. And two years after her death, it's not clear what's happening. We break down this case with former crime scene investigator and forensic expert Alina Burroughs. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law on Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. All right, I'll tell you straight off the top of this, that hearing about this story,

I was left frustrated. I was. So I can only imagine what family, who I'm about to talk about, what they have gone through, and what they're thinking. But let's get into this. So back on January 28, 2022, 31-year-old Megan Drumhiller was found dead in her Carrollton Township, Michigan home. By the way, she had just come back home after spending three weeks with her family.

And now she winds up dead, fixated to death in her living room. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend reportedly found her, called 911. This after her mother couldn't get a hold of her for days. And law enforcement, they classified this as a homicide. It's a chilling case. But here's where it takes a very, as I said, frustrating and disappointing turn. It has been two years, and there really haven't been significant answers. There might be something we'll get into it, but here's what happened.

It's our understanding that the investigation started with the Michigan State Police and the Carrollton Township Police Department, but they allegedly failed to interview possible witnesses or retrieve camera footage. The lead detective reportedly worked from home for months due to COVID issues and didn't really visit the crime scene that frequently. And then law enforcement called the family and said that they found a second woman's DNA on the crime scene, turned out that was a mistake. It was actually Megan's.

This according to Fox News, Megan's family was waiting on DNA test to be conducted on items from Megan's place. They say that items weren't tested 10 months after Megan's death. So the Michigan State Police, they came out and they said, look, there was no mishandling of evidence. They feel confident in that. But at any rate, the family wanted to change. And they asked that the case be transferred to Saginaw County, which it was, Lieutenant

Russell Colb of Saginaw County Sheriff's Office told Dateline that, quote, a codist hit was made to one of the DNA samples, which matched another sample, which was submitted from another agency in Michigan. Investigation into this codist hit continues. Tenet Colb also said that multiple items from Megan's home were collected, including but not limited to clothing, household items, cups, couch cushions, various digital media platforms like cell phone, laptops, wireless router, and that several of her friends have been questioned.

There have been, quote, multiple electronic search warrants, which, according to Colb, has identified a possible person of interest that has not yet been publicly identified. Now, this is all concerning. And Megan's parents, they have offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Megan's killer or killers. And by the way, anybody with information about the case is urged to contact the Saginaw County Sheriff's Office hotline

at 989-790-5423 for crime stoppers at 1-800-4-22 jail. With all this in mind, to make sense of this, let me bring in Alina Burroughs, former crime scene investigator, forensic expert, and host of crime scene confidential on investigation discovery and discovery plus. Alina, thank you so much for coming on. This is a frustrating case. And for me, there's so many different aspects I want to talk about,

but for you hearing about it, what is your initial take? A lot of things. First of all, bits of the crime scene stand out to me. The type of death stands out to me, exfixiation. In 2022, exfixiation represents about 1% of homicides. So that is clearly not a typical cause of death. Women are typically the victims of exfixiation types of deaths. So we see that that's a typical group of people that are the results of exfixiation homicides, but 1%. That is not a large group of homicide type deaths. So exfixiation, not common. When we look at the crime scene, so we can get into the crime scene. Let's just focus on the asphyxiation for one moment.

Typically, in your experience, asphyxiation, is that done by a stranger? in that, is that more of a personal crime? I was just talking about this recently about a stabbing death, how that's really up close and personal. But asphyxiation, in your experience, what does that tell you? A couple of things. So, exfixiation can be done manual or it can be done with a ligature. And again, we kind of branch out into two separate things.

When we see strangulation via manual or ligature, we can go two paths. One, we see an element of there can be sexual, There can be sadism attached to that type of crime. There's obviously an element of emotion that's attached. So we can go the branch of familial or close contact or close relationships when we see that being somebody that is known to our victim. So victim and suspect that are known to each other, that's typically the results of emotions that run high.

And that can be an argument that can be the result of drugs and alcohol that are involved, that can be something that is typically a non-planned event. That's something that results from emotions that are high. And oftentimes we see that with manual strangulation. Then we see another route where we have ligature strangulation. It's not always, nothing cut and dry, nothing falls neatly into either category. But when we see ligature strangulation from the sexual route,

the sadism route, that by definition is somebody that, is somebody that receives some sort of pleasure or gratification at the pain or suffering of another person. So without knowing the in-depth details of this case, I would certainly want to know if there was, I know from the details that she's not found in a bedroom. We want to look at the person of interest in this case. And if there is a close relationship, is it a boyfriend? Is it an ex-boyfriend? Is this person of interest completely random to her? All of those things are pieces of information that detectives are going to be using to identify somebody. And let's talk about that, that idea about the CODIS hit.

Does that give you any kind of indication about the identity of this person of interest or who they might be looking at? Well, the interesting thing about CODIS, and we can talk about CODIS, what it is, how it started, but CODIS hits can happen in a multitude of ways. CODIS hits can happen if somebody is already in the database, right? CODA stands for the combined offender DNA indexing system. It started as basically a burglary DNA database because there was such a large correlation between burglary crimes and homicide, meaning that, you know how they used to say marijuana was the gateway drug.

Burglary is the gateway crime. So a lot of people that have offended in the homicide category, most all of them have priors for burglary, meaning that burglaries escalate. Now, it doesn't mean if you commit burglary, you're always going to commit homicide, but it means if you've committed homicide, chances are very high that you've committed burglary in the past. And on burglaries, because people are breaking and entering, oftentimes they're prying or they're cutting or breaking glass, there is a high likelihood that they're going to injure themselves in the process. So there could be blood. They were seeing this correlation. So they said, let's collect DNA on burglaries. Let's put it in a database. Let's track the people that are doing this and get them in the system early. early on before there is re-offense.

So that becomes the basis of CODIS. Now, what can happen is we can then, ultimately now with a felony offense, when you're arrested for any felony offense, you are found guilty of this felony offense, not arrested, you then go into you get a swab that DNA profiles entered into CODIS. That could then hit backwards to crimes

where DNA was left on a crime scene. What can happen in CODIS is when somebody is found guilty of this crime and their DNA goes into CODIS, it can hit backwards, or if somebody has not been arrested, we can just have DNA that's been collected from a variety of different scenes, and this is unknown. Their unknown profiles are lingering in this database. And that appears to be what's happened in this case. So we have an unknown profile in CODIS from this scene that has hit or matched an unknown profile. profile on another Michigan case. So it's not identified to our knowledge to an individual person yet, but this means that we have two cases, which is multiplied the likelihood of us having more evidence. So now instead of evidence from one case, we have evidence from two cases. Especially if they're similar, right? Especially if you're dealing with similar kinds of crimes, then we're dealing with a very interesting kind of pattern. I wanted to also talk to you, And we'll get more into the crime scene if we can.

But I wanted to ask you about, are you frustrated with what you heard about the way this investigation progressed? I mentioned the idea of the family saying that it took 10 months to test some items that weren't tested. They spoke to Fox News and said that the law enforcement had apologized to them. The idea that this was a mistake about the DNA that was found saying that there was a second female DNA at the crime scene, it turned out to be Megan's. I mean, the family, again, they spoke to media and said that there was this kind of stalling that they were. They never got direct answers that they were told only one or two items could actually be tested at a time. That is correct. What is your reaction to all of this?

So let's correct the record. Are they maybe they're saying things about law enforcement that are incorrect and maybe they're making assumptions, but walk it through what your reaction is to this? I have lots of thoughts. First of all, that is true. Law enforcement, typically I can only speak for the state of Florida where I worked. But because of the overwhelming amount of DNA evidence that submitted through the system, we cannot submit any evidence that we choose. So on homicide cases that I worked, we are typically allowed to submit evidence in order of probative value.

So as a crime scene investigator, if I had 30 pieces of DNA evidence on a case, I had to basically rank order the evidence in what I thought was most likely to yield best evidence for me. So even if I had a homicide case, I had 30 pieces of evidence and I had something that I thought maybe related to the scene, you know, a piece of trash, a cigarette butt, but I had something like blood where there was a higher likelihood that this could be a suspect, a baseball cap that I didn't know who it belonged to. I would rank order my evidence and I was able to submit three pieces of evidence at a time. Three pieces. And then wait for those three pieces of evidence to come back, and if they did not yield results, then I could submit

three pieces, wait for those to come back, three pieces, and go on and on and on. And so that, in that case, if I had 30, I'd have to do 10 submissions. In the meantime, I'm working other homicide cases. It's not an excuse. But that's how it happens. We are not able to submit 30 pieces of DNA evidence. Hey, everybody, I want to take a second to thank Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring today's Law and Crime YouTube Takeover. Now, if you've seen our videos, you know that Morgan and Morgan is a very proud sponsor of ours here on Sidebar. I always talk about how one of the scariest things in life is if you get injured, if you get hurt. That can be such a difficult time.

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In the past couple of months, they've gotten verdicts of $12 million in Florida, $26 million in Philadelphia, and $6.8 million in New York. All of these, by the way, were significantly higher than the highest insurance offer. So if you're injured, you can start by easily submitting a claim. for the people.com slash YouTube takeover or by dialing pound law. That's pound 529 on your phone. What about these other aspects that they didn't test the evidence for 10 months, that they made a mistake at the crime scene? Yeah. The question is, did they drop the ball? I can't answer without looking at it. Now, there's not really an excuse for calling and getting their hopes up

and saying we found this other profile because that, that basically what happened, is, and I'm assuming here, but they had a mixed profile of DNA. And because we have victim DNA being Megan's that is going to overwhelm any other profile, they would have to basically clean up that DNA and isolate Megan, our victims, out of that profile. And it sounds like somebody either misread that DNA report or kind of jumped the gun. And it's probably because they wanted so badly to give the family answers that they called and said we have a female profile you know it's an unknown female profile they wanted to give them some answers and unfortunately uh it was Megan's DNA that hadn't been isolated out right so they gave them false

hope and I think it likely came from a good place they wanted to give them an answer you know law enforcement you know people don't get into this job and and make no money and, you know, get PTSD and work through this and work really long hours to mess up, to provide false hope. They want to solve these cases and provide answers. So the intent, I think, was good. But you got to really double check before you make a call like that, knowing that you're going to give these families hope that this is their child. And then only to say, no, we don't really have anything for you. See, my concern also is with the idea of waiting on testing the evidence for two reasons.

One, obviously, it stalls an investigation and potentially capturing who might have done this. But number two, does it affect the evidence, the quality of the evidence? And number three, as an attorney, I know, if they arrest the suspect and it goes to trial, the defense attorneys are going to have a field day with the idea, well, the case started here, then it was transferred here. the evidence was collected here. It was moved. They could say all this idea about how it was contaminated or how it was spoiled.

What do you think about that? They're going to say that anyway. Sure. You know, as an attorney, they're going to say that anyway. Is it valid based on what you're hearing? Sure. They're going to say that regardless. But, you know, I think the evidence, whether or not it's six months or ten months,

the evidence, if it's collected and packaged properly, it's not a concern as to degradation in that period of time. So evidence should be good as far as that's concerned. And, you know, I think what we have to do is look at the bigger picture of DNA backlog, right? Because that's really the concern as to why as an investigator, I don't have the option to say, I have six pieces of evidence that I need to get this person and I need these worked. Now, you know, where I was, I could call the head of the serology department, the DNA lab, and say, I have to have these six pieces worked.

And as long as I had, you know, supervisor approval and homicide detective approval, we could work it out and they could say, okay, you know, as long as you have a really good reason for these six pieces, we can get these six pieces worked rather than the normal three. But the bigger issue here is why are the people that are closest to the case, you know, the detectives and the crime scene investigators that have the knowledge of the evidence that needs to be worked? Why are we struggling and fighting to get our evidence worked? We are the advocates for the family. families shouldn't have to fight. The detectives and the crime scene investigators shouldn't have to fight. So the biggest issue I feel in this case is this massive backlog of DNA evidence. And this is happening with, you know, sexual assault kids. This is, we have really bad people that are out on the streets that could be identified where they're not this backlog of evidence. Now, Alina, just going back to the crime scene, is there anything else that stands out to you

about this case? Yeah, there were a few observations. I made, of course, I haven't seen any crime scene photos, anything like that. But I did read, you know, when the mother couldn't contact Megan, she had called a on again, off again boyfriend and asked him to go to the house. And the first statement that he made was that he looked through the door, looked through the window. So I'm gathering that there may be a window around the door and that he could see her laying on the floor. That's important. Because if he could look through a window surrounding the door and see her, that means that anybody else could look through

and see her. That means somebody, a stranger, somebody that was following her, somebody that was stalking her, could plainly look into her home and see her, see if there was a dog, see if there were lights on, they could watch her or see her just by looking through. That was important to me. The fact that she was away for three weeks just prior to returning home, that was three weeks that her residence was unoccupied, that would give somebody the opportunity to come by, watch, maybe even make a plan of entry. Combine that with the fact that you can look through that front door or front window and look inside, that gives somebody plenty of opportunity to kind of plan that out. If this is somebody that's stalking or following her,

and law enforcement would certainly want to look outside, I'm assuming that this is a first floor residence, but they would want to look outside for signs of keeping Tom type behavior, broken leaves, broken branches, disturbed dirt, shoe tracks, or signs of self-sexual gratification outside of those windows, even doing a search with an alternate light source could reveal DNA evidence. Do you feel confident, though, that law enforcement is working towards an arrest? I mean, is there something other than the CODIS hit, maybe something about the crime scene itself that leads you to believe that we might be getting an arrest shortly?

I'm confident this case will be solved. Okay. And why do you say that? I'm confident because looking at the suspect, looking at this type of case, looking at the fact that there's a hit between another case, this person has done it before, they will do it again. They are going to keep doing it. They're going to be caught.

And as soon as this person is caught and they are entered into CODIS, this is going to solve not just one, but multiple cases. And the idea here that they have looked at now all of these other different pieces of evidence, the clothing, the digital media platforms, the family has also said that Megan was kind of like an open book They had access to all of her information. They had access to her passwords, her medical records, or credit card statements, her telephone, her phone records.

This is according to her mother, Lynette Drumhiller, told Fox News. They had believed that the case, they had hoped the case could be solved within a few days. She said she was naive to believe that. But with all of that information now, what does that tell you? Well, I think overall we have to also keep in mind that law enforcement has no obligation to reveal every bit of information they have to the public, nor should they, because their obligation is to Megan. And you know, the best thing that they can do is keep the information that they have quiet. That's the best thing for the case. Okay. Well, that, look, I completely respect that.

I guess the frustration is in terms of where this case started and where it's progressed. I'll give you the final word on that because, you know, the family has come out. They are clearly feeling like there wasn't enough attention paid to this case and there were these missteps. But if you want the final, I would like to give you the final word on that. Talk about, you know, the confidence you have in this case moving forward. I absolutely feel like any parent is valid in feeling that way. How would anybody ever be able to do enough for your child. There's there's no way unless that case were solved immediately that I would feel like anybody had done enough. If this were my family, I agree entirely with them. And no family

should ever feel like they have to be an investigator. They should never feel like they have to be a detective, a crime's an investigator, an advocate for their own family member. They shouldn't have to do that or feel like that. And the investigation should be, a partnership between law enforcement and that family member because I could be the best CSI in the world and that detective could be the best detective in the world, but we don't know Megan's behavior. I maybe could tell you by looking at the crime scene, you know, which door she used to come and go if there's multiple doors in the house. I may be able to tell you where she keeps her purse, I may be able to tell you certain things about, you know, did she

walk? I think I heard that she didn't have a car, so she would walk. You know, where did she usually go? What coffee shop did she go to? There are things that I might be able to tell you by looking at electronic evidence or receipts that I could find. But it's her family that knows her behaviors and her patterns. It should be a partnership, but they should never feel like they have to fight they should never row that boat alone well i will say they have transferred the case and that transfer seems to have been the right decision right it is whatever they feel like they need to do to get the attention to solve the case and if they don't feel like they're getting the attention they do and it's for you know it's something that i i think i have dealt with several

families who I think frequently feel like that. And I don't know if it's because through the course of law enforcement, you feel like you have to turn off your empathy to do your job. I have always argued that that's quite the opposite. You know, that empathy is something that will make you do your job better because if you know your victims and you know your suspects and you're empathetic towards their behavior, you're going to be able to better understand the case and how they would behave. I think empathy, I think empathy is something that aids us in doing our job, but for some reason law enforcement feels like you have to be stoic to do it. And that stoicism makes families feel like they don't matter and like it's cold. And that's not what they need

in this time. Well, I'll tell you this much, Alina Burroughs. I hope you're right. I hope they catch the suspect soon, and because family not only needs answers, but having somebody like this on the loose is very frightening to think about. You can check out Alina. She's the host of Crime Scene Confidential on Investigation Discovery and Discovery Plus. Thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series

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