Pod Insights Crime Weekly S3 Ep348: The Case of Megan Trussell | Suspects and Snow Covered Evidence (Part 2) About this episode Sign the petition to reopen Megan's case here: www.change.org/p/reopen-megan-trussell-s-case-in-boulder-coPlease consider donating or sharing Megan's family's GoFundMe for private testing and legal costs here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-megan-memorial-fundAlso please consider following the fight for answers on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/523984600725253Megan Trussell, an 18-year-old University of Colorado Boulder student, was reported missing on February 12, 2025 after last being seen leaving her dorm on February 9. Her body was found just a few days later in remote area near Boulder Canyon, and after an investigation, the Boulder County Coroner’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office ruled her death a suicide. Though Megan's toxicology reports show medications had been in her system at the time of death, the rest of her autopsy tells a chilling story, and her family is fighting to get her case reopened. Try our coffee!! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. https://www. ZipRecruiter.com/CrimeWeekly - Try ZipRecruiter for FREE today!2. https://www. TryFUM.com - Try FUM Zero today!3. https://www. HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeekly10FM - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY10FM for 10 FREE meals and a FREE item for life!4. https://www. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% of ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping!5. https://www. SKIMS.com/CrimeWeekly - Shop our favorites at SKIMS! After you place your order, let them know we sent you!
Transcript 23,047 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:11 Stephanie Harlowe? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.
0:15 Derrick Levasseur? And I'm Derrick Levasseur.
0:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Today, we're diving into part two and the final part of the Megan Trussell case, which is close to our hearts. Before we do get into that and I give you a recap of what we talked about in part one, Derek, tell them the good news.
0:31 Derrick Levasseur? Good news. Pumpkin Spice finally here for Criminal Coffee. We just covered Joanne Zamora last week. We talked about what the mission is behind Criminal Coffee, but we also want to do some fun stuff. You guys have wanted Pumpkin Spice for years. We're dabbling in the flavored coffee market now. We have French Vanilla, Hazelnut, and now Pumpkin Spice. This is going to be seasonal. In conjunction with the seasonal coffee, we're going to have our new Halloween Criminal Coffee merch. If you're on YouTube, you can see everything on the screen right now. The designs are awesome. Shout out to Ashley for that. She did a great job with both of them. We are going to have a limited quantity on each of these. I know some people say that just to create a sense of urgency, but no, really, we are. I think I only ordered like 250 pieces. So personally, I love the front of the merch,
1:15 Derrick Levasseur? the little fingerprint bats. I think that's pretty cool. But if this is your style and you want to get one while your size is in stock, head on over to CriminalCoffeeCo.com and you can pick up your merch and/or your Pumpkin Spice coffee right now. It is absolutely delicious, as all of our coffees are, and we would love for you to check it out and try it. And if you do, make sure you tag us. Make sure we see the post so we can reshare it on our personal Instagram page, or I should say our business Instagram page. We really appreciate it. I don't think there's anything else. That was a quick little announcement there. Wanted to get that out. It's going to be out for October and a little bit of November.
1:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, check out the merch. The new design for the sweatshirt is so cool. I love it. I can't wait to get it. It's so retro-looking and just really cool, perfect for Halloween. I really love it. I told Derek I want one immediately, so. Hopefully he sends that out today.
2:03 Derrick Levasseur? I got you. I got you covered. That's it for us. We'll get into the episode, but yes, CriminalCoffeeCo.com, get yours.
2:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, let's dive into the episode. I'm going to give you a quick recap and summary. On the night of February 9th, 2025, 18-year-old CU Boulder student Megan Trussell got into an argument with her roommate, which led her boyfriend to end their relationship. After both of them left the dorm, Megan also walked out. She was last seen crossing campus alone. It was cold and she wasn't wearing a heavy coat, leading her family to believe she was maybe heading out for a Diet Coke or to visit her sister who lived nearby. Megan's phone later pinged miles from campus near the 40-mile marker of Boulder Canyon Drive. This is an area known for drug activity and homeless encampments, and not somewhere she would have gone willingly. Six days later, on February 15th, Megan's body was found at that same
2:55 Stephanie Harlowe? 40-mile marker, just feet from where volunteers had searched two days earlier. She was lying on snow-covered rocks, dressed in the same clothes she'd worn the night she disappeared, but missing one shoe, her phone, and her signature purse. Beneath her body was a pair of gray sweatpants that weren't hers. Megan's frozen body was taken in for autopsy and her parents were told there were no signs of trauma beside a scratch on her leg. But when the full report was released months later, it revealed dozens of injuries from head to toe, and that investigators had ruled her death a suicide. Her parents were left devastated, and as they began piecing together the evidence, they found themselves with far more questions than answers, and that's where we'll pick up today. Megan's family
3:38 Stephanie Harlowe? has been instrumental in helping us put this together. We have a lot of information, a lot more information now, right Derek? We've got body cam footage and things like that.
3:46 Derrick Levasseur? Body cam footage, crime scene photos from the day when she was actually found. We obviously can't show you guys a lot of these photos, out of respect for, for not only Megan, but her family. So, we're seeing them because it gives us a better idea of what the scene looked like on the day she was found, and we'll be able to describe a lot of it to you. But yes, there's a lot more information with this case now than we even had a month ago. So, it's- It's an evolving situation and we're going to get more, especially with it being classified as a closed investigation. We should have access to all this and hopefully it allows a fresh set of eyes to look at it or for someone to come forward because as we had said last week, there is a reward now, $11,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction. So this
4:30 Derrick Levasseur? is just another piece of the puzzle to maybe try to get closure for Megan and her family.
4:33 Stephanie Harlowe? I will also say if you're an audio listener, that's great. Thank you. We love you. But when the episode posts on Sunday on YouTube, I would head over there and check it out again because we're going to place photos on screen to give you a better indication of where she was found, the area, the culvert, the size of the culvert, things like that. So if you really kind of can't get a mental picture in your head and you want something more specific and factual, head over and watch this video on Sunday when it goes live on YouTube. So you can see for yourself some of these pictures and where they are and where everything kind of is located and it'll give you a better indication of what happened here, hopefully.
5:13 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
5:13 Stephanie Harlowe? Before we get into what was found in Megan's autopsy, I do want to go back and talk more about where she was found, where she was located. So this case continues to evolve and just in the time between our last recording and this one, Megan's family obtained hundreds of photos and videos from the scene along with additional police reports. That new information provides a much clearer picture of the area where she was found and it's going to help us understand the physical challenges of that location in a way that earlier reports didn't really capture. So according to these new records, Megan was found about eight feet below the culvert that runs under Boulder Canyon Drive. If you remember from part one, the culvert itself is large enough
5:52 Stephanie Harlowe? to walk in, like you can walk through it if you crouch down. And then inside it, inside that culvert, there was a homeless encampment. The photo we're showing on screen right now is the culvert entrance near the bike path. So the opposite side of where Megan was found.
6:08 Derrick Levasseur? I want to also throw up the photo. I don't know if that's the photo that's on the screen right now. I'm scanning through the photos, but you actually have a pallet inside the culvert, which gives you a good idea of the size. Most people out there have seen a pallet by this point, you know, shipping pallet and It's basically vertical inside the culvert and it's almost completely vertical. It's a little bit on its side, but it gives you a good indication. Maybe I would say four, four and a half feet tall.
6:33 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. To show you how much room is in there.
6:35 Derrick Levasseur? You could definitely walk through there. You wouldn't get stuck in there. Uh, you, but you would have to crouch.
6:40 Stephanie Harlowe? So now we're going to put up a picture that shows the culvert in Canyon slope where Meghan was found. This is the view as if you're standing down by the creek, looking toward Boulder Canyon Road. You can see the culvert opening built into the slope, a few feet below the roadway. And then about eight feet below that point is where Meghan's body was discovered. Now that photo isn't particularly helpful for understanding the scale of the area. So next, let's look at a closer up photo of the culvert area without any snow. Now, according to the crime scene photos, Meghan's body was found directly in front of this huge, flat boulder. Near where the crime scene tape is. Do you have that picture up?
7:19 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I can see it here and I could see how with that flat boulder from the top of the road. It would have been difficult to see her because it almost acts as like a, like a, like a roof over her.
7:31 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
7:31 Derrick Levasseur? So I, that makes it a little bit more clearer to me. Why maybe someone wouldn't see her from the road?
7:38 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, it's probably, even though she, you know, listen, her hair was brightly colored. She had brightly colored clothes on, things like that. You, you'd still think that maybe somebody would have caught a glimpse, but it's possible. That they wouldn't, especially if they're not looking down there, if they're just walking from the road. Yeah.
7:55 Derrick Levasseur? And most people wouldn't be walking if we remember, just a refresher. The, the path to walk and ride your bike is on the opposite side of the road. So the only people that would see her on this side would be if you were to come through that culvert. I'll also say, I, I don't know exactly what photos are going to make the final cut of this episode. But on this particular day, when they found her, as you can see from some of these photos, the ground is completely covered in snow. And I'm looking at the photo of her before it was disturbed, before anybody moved anything. And take my word for it, it took me a good three or four minutes to find her in this photo. And the only thing you can really see with this, this snow covering her is her arm.
8:38 Derrick Levasseur? And it looks like a, it looks like a rock or it looks like a stick.
8:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, and, and you located it because you were looking for something.
8:46 Derrick Levasseur? Looking for something and I had to go through to the photos where they actually zoomed in on her. So it kind of cut like when I was looking at the overview, couldn't find her.
8:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I agree.
8:57 Derrick Levasseur? And then when they, they did the zoom in photos, I'm like, oh wait, no, there's her hand. And the only reason I really knew it was her hand is because it's almost on the angles where you can tell it's a human hand. They blurred it slightly. So I'm like, oh, that's her. And so, yes, before the snow, it would have been easier to see her, but after the snow, no shot. The fact that they found her is extremely impressive.
9:21 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, the snow, the snow basically started the same day that they did find her, correct?
9:25 Derrick Levasseur? That's, well, there was a snowfall that day, yes.
9:27 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so.
9:28 Derrick Levasseur? But even where she is below that culvert, with that big boulder, just the way she fell, where she was positioned, it would have been difficult to see her from the road.
9:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and I mean, once again, this isn't an area that people are just having a nice walk. Number one, it's freezing. Number two, not known to be a safe area. So people aren't just going to be having a nice, you know, Sunday afternoon stroll and kind of looking at the scenery, which is just, you know, a canyon with, you know, a culvert in it and stuff. It's not something that people are going to be actively kind of taking in the view. So it's not surprising that she wasn't found before that, even though there were searches going on for her. That is confusing because you look at the picture and you see her because you know you're looking for something. But we do assume that the people who were searching for her beforehand, AKA the police and things like that,
10:19 Stephanie Harlowe? they too would be looking for something, but maybe because it wasn't very super evident right away, they missed it. All right.
10:26 Derrick Levasseur? I also want to clear up one of the questions we had from not only Detective Perspective, but this episode. And I know Joe and Vanessa had questioned it as well, which is, was this tarp around Meghan when she was found? And from what I can see, that is not the case. There is no blue tarp or any type of tarp wrapped around her or on her. However-
10:46 Stephanie Harlowe? In these pictures, yeah.
10:47 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, during the rescue efforts, when they're pulling her out of there, they do wrap her body in a fresh blue tarp to bring her up, obviously to keep people from seeing what's going on. So if you, if you, just based on these photos, to me, that question has been answered. There was nothing covering her body that would have been put there after the fact by someone else. It was simply the area in which she was found, behind this big boulder, and also the snow eventually covering her, that made her hard to see.
11:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, crime scene photos, which for obvious reasons, we will not be releasing or showing.
11:21 Derrick Levasseur? Yes.
11:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Those photos show that Meghan was on her back, parallel to the road. The bottom of her pants were kind of pulled up, closer to her knees, leaving her calves exposed. Her bright blue shirt stands out, though, even in the snow. You can tell that from the pictures.
11:38 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
11:39 Stephanie Harlowe? So to get a better understanding of what this area looks like at a different angle, let's watch a body cam video from an officer who was standing at the top of the slope next to the road.
12:39 Derrick Levasseur? So we just watched that video if you're if you're watching on YouTube and for those who of you who are on audio, the the police officers on one side, the left side of the covert from the top, he looks briefly, but then he tries to go to the right side. So another officer says, you can't really see much from here. So he goes back to the left side and looks down the hill. But personally, I slowed the video up, I paused it. You still can't really see her unless you know exactly where you're looking. And I from this angle, it would be very hard for me to see a scenario where she was at the top of this hill and rolled down that far before one of those rocks stopped her. Detectives have theorized that she was inside the covert, walked through from the bike path side and fell from the
13:20 Derrick Levasseur? covert, which to me would be the only scenario. But I still have questions even with that. And we're going to get into it later in this episode. But the way she's found the photos that we're looking at of her being on her back. And and then you have to consider the fact that the strap of her pocketbook was broken. To me, that's more indicative of someone pulling backwards while someone else is pulling forwards, the strap breaking and her falling on her back down the hill. That would make much more sense to me. But that that's a little further down the road, but there's not much you can see. I will acknowledge one thing, the covert from this angle and and Google Maps didn't do it justice. It is steeper than I originally envisioned. Like when I originally thought about it, I thought it was more, I don't know, angles, but like a 45 degree angle. And now it's
14:05 Derrick Levasseur? it's it's steeper than that. It's dangerous. If you were to fall off this, you would get sick, you could get hurt, seriously hurt. I still don't think you would die from it, unless you like fell the perfect way and hit your head.
14:15 Stephanie Harlowe? You wouldn't fall into an open bottle of Adderall.
14:18 Derrick Levasseur? Exactly. And there's all those other circumstances surrounding it. But but yes, to me, it's this, this, these visual representations give you such a better understanding of what we're dealing with.
14:29 Stephanie Harlowe? So Megan's body was then transported for autopsy, which was performed by Dr. Meredith Frank a few days later. I want to walk you through all of Megan's injuries because it's crucial to understand the circumstances surrounding her death and why her family continue to question what happened. But first, I want to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
14:52 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, we're back. Let's go through Meghan's injuries, starting with Meghan's face and head. The back of her head had a two and a half by two inch swollen contusion. And there were a few small abrasions and nearly inch-long superficial lacerations across her forehead. There was also an abrasion with a surrounding contusion on the bridge of her nose and a dark red-purple contusion on her right cheek. The lower portion of her face showed additional trauma, including up to one inch irregular abrasions along her chin and smaller abrasions on both of her upper and lower lips. There were also chips along the tips of two teeth on the left front side of her mouth. Meghan's torso had many injuries as well.
15:36 Stephanie Harlowe? There were a few contusions on her chest centered around the ribs. There was also several grouped abrasions on the right side of her chest and flank, roughly four inches dimension, and a dark contusion measuring about three by two inches on her left hip. On her mid and lower left back, there were a few grouped dark linear abrasions, reaching up to four inches long. On her right forearm, Meghan had multiple contusions and abrasions that reached two and a half by one and a half inches at the widest point. She also had abrasions and lacerations on her fingertips. On her left arm, there was a seven and a half by three inch area containing contusions and up to two and a half inch contusions on the back of her left hand. Her lower extremities showed several long abrasions, red and purple in color,
16:20 Stephanie Harlowe? reaching up to 11 inches in length, along with scattered red contusions approximately three inches in dimension. Her right foot, which remember didn't have a shoe on it, had a few small abrasions on the ankle and toes. There was also several areas of frostbite across her body. So from reading this, from kind of looking at it, it looks like her left side got the worst of the damage. Do you agree?
16:44 Derrick Levasseur? Yes, it does. Yeah, from listening to what you're describing, yes. Yes, I mean, it's, I'm not a pathologist now. I'm always wary about what I say here because they're better equipped for it. But yeah, I mean, just layman's perspective, hearing what you have to say, yeah, I would agree with you.
16:58 Stephanie Harlowe? And that's the side of her mouth that also had the chipped teeth.
17:02 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
17:02 Stephanie Harlowe? The left side of her head. So, once the external exam was complete, Dr. Frank told attending detectives that nothing had stood out to her other than signs consistent with hypothermia and paradoxical undressing. We've talked about this before, but that's a phenomenon where people experience hypothermia and they start to remove their clothes. So, Dr. Frank's conclusion about paradoxical undressing was based on the gray pants that had been found underneath Megan. But as we've already discussed, here's the problem. Megan's parents don't believe those pants were hers. They were a size small, which Megan didn't wear, and she already had pants on.
17:42 Stephanie Harlowe? So unless she put sweatpants over the pants she was wearing, which we did not see on any surveillance video, where did those pants come from? And why would Dr. Frank immediately assume that they were Megan's and use that as a sign of paradoxical undressing, which she attributes to the hypothermia and the frostbite? What do you think about that?
18:04 Derrick Levasseur? No, I'm with you. And I think for me, it starts even before the paradoxical undressing. Like at this moment, my big question is how did she get out there? I mean, it was freezing to that night. So, yes, if we knew for certain that she walked out to this location, went to this bike path, went through this culvert and was by herself, nobody else around, sure. Even though the clothing wasn't ultimately hers, the parents do not believe that it was hers.
18:28 Stephanie Harlowe? And you don't see her wearing those when she leaves her dorm.
18:30 Derrick Levasseur? You don't. And you don't, I mean, unless she had it in that little star purse that she had, which I don't know if it would have fit in there. So, no, I don't see it unless, she could have had it underneath. I don't see it. She didn't have it on. But my point being, it was freezing. We know how cold it was. You talked about the elements and how it affected her body when she was found, the evidence we have of that. To think that this, this young girl walked 50 minutes out to this location before... Pulling off somewhere because she was absolutely freezing is it's hard for me to imagine.
19:00 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. And what what is really bothering me is that Dr. Frank is just like, oh yeah, there were sweatpants underneath her. She must have taken those off and doesn't ask the police to see, you know, photos or the video of Meghan leaving her dorm to verify that those were her pants. And here's another thing. No one ever even asked Meghan's family to look at the pants or confirm whether or not they belonged to Meghan. Investigators simply assumed they did. And that assumption became the foundation for the paradoxical undressing theory. And that's really frustrating because the theory doesn't make sense when you look at the evidence. First of all, there were two homeless encampments nearby. So it's not like she was just in the middle of the woods and those were those sweatpants could only have belonged
19:43 Stephanie Harlowe? to her. You know, she's found in like the wilderness in the middle of the woods. And it's like, well, who else would these sweatpants belong to? There was two homeless encampments right there in that direct vicinity. Those pants could have come from any one of those people who lived there and most likely did. So to just assume they were hers, not check the surveillance video, not ask her family to confirm. That's crazy because we know for sure Meghan wasn't wearing gray pants in the last image of her. And we also know that she couldn't have carried those sweatpants in her very small purse. The only other explanation would be that she was wearing them underneath her red pants, which again, doesn't add up because if she had experienced paradoxical undressing, that would mean she took off her red pants and then removed the gray sweatpants and then put the red pants back on and then
20:28 Stephanie Harlowe? laid down on top of the gray pair of sweatpants and then she stayed there until she died, not not, you know, removing further articles of clothing. That doesn't make any sense.
20:37 Derrick Levasseur? That's not what they do when there's a paradoxical undressing. They end up being found naked.
20:41 Stephanie Harlowe? So after telling the detectives about the undressing theory, Dr. Frank began the internal examination. She noted that the scalp and tissues beneath Meghan's scalp contained dark purple hemorrhages measuring up to three inches over the upper left front and top right areas of her head. Additional hemorrhages measured five by two inches on the right backside of her head and up to one and a half inches on the left backside. Dr. Frank also found what she described as quote abundant pill or capsule material filling end quote and she found this in both Meghan's esophagus and stomach. The pill material consisted of white spheres that appeared to come from time released medication capsules. Toxicology tests were ordered on Meghan's blood, but the results wouldn't be available for
21:25 Stephanie Harlowe? several weeks. So after the autopsy was over, the coroner's office spoke with Meghan's parents. They didn't describe any injuries other than a scratch on her leg, but they did mention that the pill material had been found. During this conversation, investigators made it clear that their preliminary findings led them to believe Meghan had likely taken her own life via overdose of these of these pills because at this point allegedly the police don't know what was in these pills, but they found the pill material. And Meghan's parents immediately pushed back, saying that their daughter wasn't suicidal. They could not believe what they were hearing. They were then asked what funeral home they wanted to use. Based on what the coroner had told them that Meghan had no injuries, they chose a special
22:08 Stephanie Harlowe? cremation home that offers water cremation. Months later, when they finally received the autopsy report and learned the extent of Meghan's issues, they were shocked, devastated, and obviously deeply regretful of their decision to have Meghan cremated. But I think it's important for them to remember that they didn't know everything that they know now. They didn't know even a fraction of what they know now. And so they made the best decision based on the information they had at the time. But what do you make of that? Not only the initial reports coming out saying, oh, she doesn't have any injuries besides this one scratch, but the the police or the coroner's office speaking to Meghan's parents and saying, yeah, that we were only going to tell you about a scratch on her leg and
22:53 Stephanie Harlowe? then the pill material as well. It's almost like they're trying to already set a narrative in line because if they said, yeah, she had abrasions and lacerations and bruising all over her body, but we think she killed herself because of the pill material found, then Meghan's parents might push back and question that. But if they told Meghan's parents, hey, yeah, she has just one scratch and then There was a bunch of pill material found in her, you know, her stomach and her esophagus. Then that's going to at least, I guess, make Meghan's parents feel a little bit less like foul play happened or a little bit less that they weren't getting the full truth from the coroner. Because why would you think that the coroner would call you and tell you about one injury on your daughter?
23:38 Stephanie Harlowe? When there was dozens?
23:40 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. You asked a question, but then you went on for like, I'm trying to remember everything you just said, but I think I followed you. For me, it goes back to what I've said in numerous episodes where pathology is a science, but the interpretation of that science is subjective. And it sounds like just from hearing the pathologist would have to speak to this directly, but they had made their determination on what they believed happened. And they described the injuries or the evidence that would support that opinion. Instead of allowing the parents to hear everything. They, they basically pointed out what they thought was significant in, in the, the autopsy. Instead of just giving them the whole story and saying, hey, you decide for yourself.
24:22 Derrick Levasseur? Because in fairness to the pathologist, they are a doctor, that's what they do. Are they more qualified to make that determination? Of course they are. So they're saying, hey, let me skip through all the other stuff. Let me give you a summary of what's important here for you guys to know. You have this pill formation, you have these, this one injury. Everything else to me would align with her falling after the, the overdose and/or suicide. And, and so that's, that's what they laid out to him. And it wasn't until Meghan's family learned about everything else later, when they got the report, that they, they obviously came to a different conclusion.
24:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Would you say that it was almost maybe intentional then? To downplay the injuries?
25:02 Derrick Levasseur? I don't know. I think intentional in the sense of I'm going to do you a service by pointing out what you should be focusing on here. Not necessarily all the white noise. Again, white noise, I say in quotations because that's their opinion. But I think in hindsight, the pathologist should have just told them everything and said, "Hey, there are some injuries here and there, but to me, they're superficial. They're not significant. They don't align with anything that would suggest any type of homicidal violence or anything like that." I think more than likely, the one injury we have to focus on here is this one, and I also think the fact that she had this pill formation is highly suggestive that she either killed herself or overdosed accidentally. So if they had phrased it that way and allowed the parents to process that, it would have
25:47 Derrick Levasseur? been much better, but I'm only imagining that when Vanessa and Joe heard this, they assumed they were only told about the one injury.
25:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Because that's all it was.
25:56 Derrick Levasseur? Because there was only one injury.
25:57 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
25:58 Derrick Levasseur? Which is, I think, a very commonsensical conclusion to come to, especially if you're not a doctor. So, yeah, I'm with you. And obviously, when they got the report, they did agree that it wasn't enough.
26:07 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. You'd think that they would, you know, that the medical examiner, if she's going to tell you about one injury, why would she just pick that one specifically and ignore all the others? Like, what about this one injury that you find was special to tell us about? Or did you intentionally withhold the existence of these other injuries so that we would go ahead and get our daughter cremated?
26:30 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
26:31 Stephanie Harlowe? It's concerning.
26:32 Derrick Levasseur? And that's the thing, right? Like, if that's the angle, the question becomes why?
26:35 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm.
26:36 Derrick Levasseur? Or is it just because they felt that confident in their decision-making? Do I think it was malicious in nature? We don't have evidence to suggest that. Doesn't mean it wasn't, but it was a misstep. It was a misstep, for sure. Their job is to make a determination, but they should also disseminate all information that's found.
26:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, well, you would think, and that's why I asked you. I didn't say it wasn't malicious, but I said, "Was it intentional?" Like, is this coming from a perspective of a medical examiner who's like, "Yeah, this girl was pretty beat up, but her parents don't need to know that, and I kind of already figure out what happened." Like, they don't need to go through all that.
27:09 Derrick Levasseur? Precisely, yeah. Something along those... Exactly. They focused on the things that they felt the parents needed to hear.
27:15 Stephanie Harlowe? But who makes that determination? Why is that your...
27:19 Derrick Levasseur? That's what I'm saying.
27:20 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. Why is that your job to make that determination? So, it bothers me because you, you know, is it intentional? Probably, right? You don't accidentally forget all these injuries. Was it malicious? That I think is out for
27:31 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
27:31 Stephanie Harlowe? Discussion still. So on February 21st, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office conducted a search of the area for Meghan's missing belongings. Now, nothing was found during this search. A second search took place on February 25th, and once again, no items were recovered. That same day, a detective called Vanessa, Meghan's mom, to inform her that Meghan's purse and phone had not been located. He did not mention Meghan's missing shoe. And this was the first time that Vanessa had heard that anything was missing, and she was shocked. She said Meghan would never leave her purse. She loved that purse. It was her security blanket. Vanessa and her friends began searching on their own, and it was their hope to find any trace of Meghan's belongings, and it would take weeks before they had answers.
28:15 Stephanie Harlowe? We are going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.
28:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so we're back. And on March 5th, a woman named Beth was biking on the path along Highway 36 near the 40-mile marker when she discovered Meghan's purse near a drainage ditch. The location was about six miles from where Meghan's body had been recovered. Beth reported her discovery to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, and according to their reports, when detectives first heard that Meghan's purse had been found near a 40-mile marker, they misunderstood, and they thought it had been found near the same location as Meghan's body. I mean, what are the chances? Once detectives realized the scene was actually near the 40-mile marker of Highway 36, they went to the site and documented the purse lying beside the bike path.
29:03 Stephanie Harlowe? Beth also pointed out a pink strap near the drainage ditch that appeared to have been attached to the purse. Okay, so Meghan's purse and the strap of her purse was found near a 40-mile marker by this woman, Beth, biking. And Meghan's body was also found near a 40-mile marker, but not the same one. They're actually six miles apart, which is interesting. I mean, what are the chances? It's almost like it was done intentionally.
29:28 Derrick Levasseur? I don't think it was intentionally done. I think it's a coincidence. Um, I think the person who dumped it there, and we're going to get into that, I don't think they're that smart. I think that they dumped it there because they want, whenever they found the purse or however they obtained the purse, and I don't want to get ahead. I think it's just a coincidence. I don't think that the people who are potentially involved with this are that bright.
29:49 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so a brief search of the surrounding area didn't reveal anything else of value, and Meghan's purse and the detached strap were collected and taken back to the sheriff's office, where a detective swabbed the outside of the purse and the wallet for possible touch DNA. Inside the purse, they found an empty prescription bottle for Adderall, a black wallet, pepper spray, Meghan's CU ID card, and several other personal items. Meghan's wallet contained her ID and several credit cards. Detectives also noticed loose mints and a Taco Bell sauce packet, which were wet and discarded, along with a small container that held what they described as wet ibuprofen and Zyrtec, which were also thrown away.
30:30 Stephanie Harlowe? And for anyone who doesn't know, Zyrtec is an allergy medicine, and ibuprofen is for like, pain and headache. So a different detective then called Vanessa, Meghan's mom, to inform her of the discovery, and he sent a photo of the recovered items and asked if anything appeared out of place or was missing. Vanessa immediately noticed that Meghan's phone, vape, and earbuds weren't in the purse. She also saw that the purse itself was torn at the spot where the cross-body strap attached to one side of the bag, and that detail was deeply concerning to her, because remember, Vanessa had made the purse herself, and she had reinforced the attachment so it wouldn't tear. In fact, she'd bought a special sewing machine specifically to make sure it would hold. The fact that it was found ripped meant
31:14 Stephanie Harlowe? something had forced it, but detectives didn't seem concerned. So, the fact that it was ripped, what Vanessa is saying is, I mean, yeah, like, purse straps can break randomly from use, wear, and tear, you know, you kind of don't see that they're wearing out, and then it'll just break and snap if you put a little bit of pressure on it, but for this specific purse, so that that didn't happen, because the purse was so special and valuable to Meghan, Vanessa had reinforced the area where the strap meets the body of the purse. And so there would have had to have been a good amount of force to rip those two things apart from each other.
31:49 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, and this goes with what we were just talking about, maybe 10, 15 minutes ago, about the positioning of her body when she was found being on her back. If you didn't have all these other things that you're starting to get into now, I think you could sit here and maybe say, all right, maybe she was walking, maybe something, maybe this is a bad accident, maybe she took some pills. And this just was a tragic set of circumstances. But now you have to add in all these other things, the gray pants, the strap, the reinforced strap being broken, the bulk of pills, the majority of this pill capsule material being found, like she had swallowed a whole bottle of pills before walking down there. Um, that also the fact that it's 50 minutes away from anybody around her that she would know,
32:31 Derrick Levasseur? like she just happened to walk out into the middle of nowhere after passing a park. And knowing that there are people who, who stay inside this culvert, eight feet from where she was found. Couple all of that with the way her body is located in these photos, you got a problem. Unless she traveled through a bunch of woods before this, where there's no indication of it, and she was just like trudging through brush and ripped her strap on a bag. I mean, there's no indication of any of that. But let's just say for this argument, I'm trying to give them something here. My point being, it doesn't make sense. And that's why we covered it on Detective Perspective, even though it was ruled what it was ruled. That's why we're covering it here, because the evidence doesn't line up. Either we're missing something, or it's exactly how it looks,
33:15 Derrick Levasseur? which to me is some type of struggle with another human being, by the way, if I'm not being clear here. Something happened with another individual. And we haven't even gotten to the, the, the sources of how these items were found. You know, the purse, yes, we're getting there, we're going to talk about her phone. All of that added on to this, it's, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that this was just a tragic accident.
33:39 Stephanie Harlowe? And I'm going to ask you a question, you might not know the answer to it. Would the 40 mile marker of Highway 36 be on Meghan's way from the campus to where she was found?
33:50 Derrick Levasseur? I think it was after it, I could be wrong. I think where she was, she hadn't reached it yet, or it was, she was close to it. But I remember looking on Google Maps and there's nothing after Highway marker 40. It's just, there's no point to, to, no destination to go to where you could say, all right, maybe she was trying to get to the mall, or this restaurant, or this bar, or a friend's house. There's really just nothing out there for miles. So she was near Highway marker 40, was she before or after it? I'm not completely sure.
34:19 Stephanie Harlowe? No, I mean, the, the place, the hi, the marker, the 40 mile marker where her purse was found.
34:24 Derrick Levasseur? The second one.
34:25 Stephanie Harlowe? Where her purse was found and then the area where she was found, her body is the area where her purse was found. Would that be on her journey to from campus to where her body was found or where's or would it be like on her path at all? Like would she have passed that location and then after losing her purse, which would be torn off of her, would would she continue walking another six miles?
34:51 Derrick Levasseur? Right. Yeah, it's a good question. It's a good question. And even if it was found, let's say it was on her path, right? It's still possible that it was brought back to that location because whoever she met at the covert or whoever she ran into, I should say, took the purse with them for a little a short duration before dumping it.
35:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Which is clearly, I think, what happened there, which is then going to lead to the question of how can you continue saying this was a suicide when this girl was mugged? Or, you know, you could say, oh, after, you know, her body was there and then somebody grabbed it and they took off with the purse.
35:25 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
35:25 Stephanie Harlowe? I guess, but then you're still
35:27 Derrick Levasseur? That is possible. I've acknowledged that.
35:28 Stephanie Harlowe? But you're still adding elements here that make it less likely that she did this to herself.
35:33 Derrick Levasseur? One thing that I concluded on detective perspective that I feel very confident with is that that purse was at her location where she was found at some point. Why do I think that? I go back to the bottle. To me, human nature is you're going to have that bottle inside your purse. You're not going to be walking around with it in your hand. And so if she took the pills at that point and the pill bottle was found there, it was found in the covert.
35:55 Stephanie Harlowe? So you're talking about the pill bottle found in the covert, not the pill bottle found in her purse?
36:00 Derrick Levasseur? Correct.
36:00 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay. These are two separate pill bottles for everybody's.
36:03 Derrick Levasseur? That's, that's a good thing to point out. There was the pill bottle found inside the covert. We talked about it last episode, I believe. And we might have mentioned it here. I don't think we did. It was last episode.
36:11 Stephanie Harlowe? We mentioned it last episode that the guys who were searching for her, they saw it, but they didn't see her name on it. So they thought it was somebody else's. Yeah.
36:18 Derrick Levasseur? So that pill bottle being at the location where she was found, but the purse not being there, unless she was carrying it in her hand the entire time, to me is suggestive that the purse was with her at one point. I also think, which is why we're covering it, it's a big reason that she's not with us anymore. I think that she was in a struggle and the person had control of her purse and the purse strap broke.
36:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Exactly.
36:40 Derrick Levasseur? And that's why she fell backwards. I mean, not going out, it's not a crazy theory.
36:43 Stephanie Harlowe? No.
36:44 Derrick Levasseur? It's, it's pretty like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then at that point, the person took the purse.
36:49 Stephanie Harlowe? Exactly. So imagine she's at the top where she'd be walking. Um, which I would assume if she was even there of her own accord, she'd be on the other side by the walking path and the bike path. And then somebody pursues her trying to take her purse. She's running. They run across the road. The person has hold of her purse. She won't let it go because it's important to her and they push her over the side while holding on to the purse.
37:14 Derrick Levasseur? Oh, interesting. See, you think they ran across the road?
37:16 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, I don't know if she was there of her own free will, if she was in that location of her own free will and somebody saw her and was like, give me your purse. And she's like, no, I'm not giving you my purse. She starts to run. She crosses the road. They follow her, grab her purse, hold on to it and push her over. It would account for her injuries. And then maybe later they go back and they put a bunch of stuff in her mouth to make it look like this was something she did to herself. But either way, it would make sense that the weight of Meghan's body kind of going over that, that embank, what is it? Embankment?
37:51 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, embankment.
37:52 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. Would pull the strap from the purse and it would give the person who had the purse. Now they've got the purse, Meghan's down there and they can go on and do their business and then come back later and maybe stage the body or put the pills in her mouth. But to think that Meghan would rip her own purse, take a bunch of Adderall and then throw herself down the embankment. It doesn't make any sense.
38:16 Derrick Levasseur? No, I, I've never even considered the possibility that she fell from the top. I mean, it's, I guess, it would be hard for me. I'd have to see a recreation.
38:24 Stephanie Harlowe? She has a lot of injuries.
38:25 Derrick Levasseur? She has a lot of injuries. But that's a long way to fall down. I guess it's possible she had momentum, like if she was running across the road and as she's running, the person grabs the purse and she's like yanking away. And so her momentum is going one way. She'd have, she'd have to have some, it wasn't like she just fell over. She'd have to have some momentum because if she just fell over, then she fell from the area of the covert, which is also still possible, right? Like if she's on the bike path and she's running from someone, she could have made a decision in that moment to just run into the covert to go to the opposite side, which still, everything that you just hypothesized is still possible. It's just inside the covert. Less of a fall. So both theories work. I still have a hang up about the park and the area on the way there.
39:10 Derrick Levasseur? I know that we're going off the belief that she walked out there and that whatever happened, happened at this location. I'm still not convinced of that. I know she made it out there in time if she had walked it. But to me, it still seems like a long walk and.
39:25 Stephanie Harlowe? No reason for that walk.
39:27 Derrick Levasseur? No, no reason, nothing out there, no point of destination to go to. Could someone have picked her up? Could she have met someone in the park? Could someone have pulled over to the side of the road and chased her down? There's so many variables we don't know and more than like four or five different scenarios. That could have resulted from whatever we don't know that ended up at the location where we ended up right next to that culvert. And it doesn't necessarily mean that right before it, she was walking along that bike path by herself.
39:54 Stephanie Harlowe? No, but I'm saying if she was, let's say she just kept walking and walking and this is where she ended up. And she's like, ah, how the heck did I get here? I don't know this area that well. And then somebody's, you know, some shady figure comes out, sees a little girl with a bright pink and blue purse. And it's like, hey, give me that purse. And she's like, no. And they pursue her and they grab onto her purse and then push her over the sidewalk, still holding on to the purse. That's possible.
40:20 Derrick Levasseur? Let me throw another scenario at you. Let's say wherever the purse was found, that's closer to the actual original crime scene. Whatever struggle happened, whoever she encountered, that's where whatever injury she has occurred. They bring her to this other location. They pull over somewhere and to try to avoid her being found, her being eventually located. They purposely hit her in this location, thinking that no one would find her. And by the way, they almost, they almost got what they wanted. Luckily we were able to find her, but they put her under this culvert because maybe it was an area they had familiarity with. They bring her through there. You're not going to see it from the street. You can dump her body over there. That's your red herring.
41:02 Derrick Levasseur? Oh yeah, whatever happened to her, it happened over here. Stephanie, there's nothing to suggest definitively that those injuries occurred on those rocks. There's just a lot of injuries. She's got broken teeth. She's got the strap, but show me the rock that caused those injuries. I'll wait.
41:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
41:17 Derrick Levasseur? So I'm still on the, on the fence about whether or not this is the primary or secondary crime scene. And whatever actually happened to her, happened at a different location, which would go more in line with what you said, which is instead of returning back to the scene of the crime, if it happened somewhere else and closer to where the purse was found, you could stuff the pills in her body there, in her throat there, then dump her at the secondary location. Now you don't have to go back to it. Now you don't have to worry about being seen there. You go in the middle of the night, you go through the covert, nobody from the street sees you, you dump her, and then you walk back down the covert to whatever vehicle's waiting for you. If I had a chance to sit down with the detectives on this case and just do an interview with them, these are some of the questions I would have because I'd want to give them a fair shake to ask them,
42:00 Derrick Levasseur? did you explore this scenario and how did you rule it out? Maybe there's something that we don't know that they were able to rule it out because just sitting here on the outside, I don't know how you deduce that this is what happened without having those answers. Because finding her property at different locations, five to six miles away.
42:19 Stephanie Harlowe? I know.
42:20 Derrick Levasseur? How do you explain that?
42:21 Stephanie Harlowe? I know.
42:22 Derrick Levasseur? I just want to hear their, their, their assessment of that information.
42:25 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, especially at this point because they just found the purse and they hadn't located or identified anybody who possibly would have taken that purse, which we're going to talk about. So right now, it just looks like the, the body of your victim was found six miles away from where her purse was found with a broken strap.
42:43 Derrick Levasseur? Exactly. And it's easy to get caught up on, oh, this is what we're at, whatever happened, this is where it happened. Sure, very possible, but it's also possible that nothing happened there. That was just the final resting place for Megan. And considering how close she was in proximity to the covert, very easy to see a scenario where her killer dumped her right there. And then walked away and that would be the perfect location because nobody would see you from the street.
43:07 Stephanie Harlowe? But under that theory, her killer would have to have a vehicle of some sort.
43:12 Derrick Levasseur? A vehicle that would be parked along the side of the road, I'm assuming not near the bike path, somewhere where if someone drove by, they wouldn't say, oh, I saw a car there.
43:20 Stephanie Harlowe? But they'd have to have access to a vehicle.
43:22 Derrick Levasseur? Access to a vehicle, or I've even explored the possibility when we think about, and I, I want to wait till we get there, but we talk about potential suspects, if they didn't have a vehicle, but they had something that they were trailing with a bike or something like that, they could have wrapped her.
43:36 Stephanie Harlowe? Damn.
43:37 Derrick Levasseur? Possible.
43:38 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
43:38 Derrick Levasseur? When we talk about the potential suspects here, how they could have transported her, again, when you guys look at that video.
43:44 Stephanie Harlowe? Like a shopping cart or something?
43:45 Derrick Levasseur? Shot, something. You could have covered her up, made it look like trash, easily gotten her out there, especially if it's only five or six miles.
43:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, nobody's gonna ask questions.
43:53 Derrick Levasseur? Nobody's gonna ask questions, and if you look at the Google map, the bike path there is off the side of the road, so it's, nobody's gonna pay no mind to that.
44:01 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, a few days later, Vanessa and Joe, Megan's parents, they wanted to see exactly where Megan had been found. So they met with the rangers who had discovered her body and they were escorted to the site. Vanessa noted that Megan had been wearing three-inch platform shoes and said it seemed like an impossible place for her to have ended up. She asked one of the rangers if he saw her shoes and he responded that he'd only seen one shoe. And remember, this was the, the family's first time learning that Megan had been missing one of her shoes, which was deeply upsetting to them, for multiple reasons. But, one of the reasons it would be upsetting to them is, hey, how come we keep talking to people and you keep telling us what happened? But then we find out we're not getting anywhere close to the full information that you guys have. Why are we just finding things out like little breadcrumbs at this point?
44:46 Derrick Levasseur? And, and just not, I don't want to skip over this because it's significant. We just talked about the purse.
44:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm.
44:51 Derrick Levasseur? We're gonna talk about the phone.
44:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm.
44:53 Derrick Levasseur? And you just mentioned a shoe, so.
44:55 Stephanie Harlowe? And a vape too, yeah.
44:56 Derrick Levasseur? You mentioned this weird theory that obviously you don't believe in, but, now we'd have to have a scenario where, her, her purse gets broken, she continues walking, she's got the pill bottle in her hand, she's missing a shoe.
45:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Missing a shoe, she's still walking, holding the pill bottle.
45:09 Derrick Levasseur? There you go.
45:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Leaving her purse there for no reason.
45:11 Derrick Levasseur? And we talk about the shoe, like, oh, it's just a shoe. As we said in episode one, they are like these platform shoes. It would be very difficult to wear, it's like the Spice Girls shoes.
45:20 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
45:20 Derrick Levasseur? It's completely different heights.
45:22 Stephanie Harlowe? You'd have to take off both shoes at that point, if you even wanna get anywhere, and then how did it get back on?
45:29 Derrick Levasseur? And you may say, oh, it was a white shoe, it was snow on the ground. That shoe has still never been found to this day. So where did it go? Did it just vanish into thin air? Come on.
45:38 Stephanie Harlowe? Nope, nope, it did not. Somebody took it, just like they took the purse.
45:42 Derrick Levasseur? Which makes it harder to believe that this is a sec- and if they took both shoes, if both shoes were missing, I could say maybe a homeless person took them. Obviously, that's terrible, but they ain't gonna take just one shoe. Is it more likely that that shoe could have been at the primary crime scene during the struggle and was left behind accidentally?
45:57 Stephanie Harlowe? Like the place where her purse was found?
45:59 Derrick Levasseur? Bingo. That seems more likely to me.
46:01 Stephanie Harlowe? Or in someone's vehicle, or in someone's shopping cart. I don't know.
46:05 Derrick Levasseur? Shopping cart, in the woods somewhere?
46:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Wherever she was transferred, yeah.
46:07 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
46:08 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. So, on March 10th, Vanessa and Joe, Meghan's parents, they met with the sheriff to express their concerns that Megan's case wasn't being taken seriously. The sheriff told them something along the lines of, quote, "Based on the evidence I've seen, I don't believe a crime was committed," end quote. And this is after they found her purse six miles away from her body. He's still saying this. So, when Vanessa and Joe asked about Meghan's missing belongings, the purse, the phone, the shoe, the sheriff replied, quote, "Sometimes weird things happen in an investigation, and we never find out why," end quote. Well, okay.
46:41 Derrick Levasseur? That's actually your job, to find out why.
46:42 Stephanie Harlowe? And, yeah, and I mean, like, what are you doing now? Now, sometimes weird things happen in an investigation, so we're not even just talking about the crime. Like, sometimes weird things happen in a crime, and you know, we'll have to figure out exactly how this thing happened. But he's like, yeah, sometimes in an investigation, you know, weird things, weird, wild things happen.
47:02 Derrick Levasseur? Here, here's what I'll say to that statement, because I don't want to bash too hard, I want to be realistic here. There are times in an investigation where you can't find the answer to a question that you want, right? But what you don't do is, without having those answers, is come to a conclusion, right? It's like, I can't solve the math problem if I don't have all the numbers. So, I have no problem with them saying, listen, sometimes there's just certain things you can't figure out, there's certain things you can't, you don't have an answer for. We just don't have enough information to give you the answer that you deserve. However, we're not gonna take what we do have, piece, piece it together, and say, this is what happened.
47:39 Stephanie Harlowe? And ignore the pieces that don't fit.
47:41 Derrick Levasseur? That we don't have answers for.
47:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, to say this is what happened.
47:44 Derrick Levasseur? That's the problem.
47:45 Stephanie Harlowe? The sheriff should have been like, okay, maybe we'll reevaluate our final decision on that.
47:49 Derrick Levasseur? Agreed. That's the problem here. It's okay not to have the answer to everything. Police officers aren't magicians, but to say, based on the evidence, I don't believe we have a crime. Well, that's not true because you're not including all the evidence that you're basing your decision on. Because you just admitted you don't have answers to some of the evidence.
48:06 Stephanie Harlowe? I can see the way this is going and he's like.
48:09 Derrick Levasseur? This is a Step Brothers movie.
48:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, exactly. He's like, well, I don't, I don't have any reason to believe a crime was committed. And then Megan's parents like, what about this, this, this, and this? And he's like, you know what? Ignore that stuff. We did.
48:19 Derrick Levasseur? We don't have answers to that, okay?
48:20 Stephanie Harlowe? We ignored it. You just ignore it too.
48:22 Derrick Levasseur? Focus on what we know here, please.
48:23 Stephanie Harlowe? Oh my gosh.
48:25 Derrick Levasseur? Hey, detective, civilian, listen to me, okay? I got this.
48:29 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, does that really feel important to you? Because we didn't think it was.
48:32 Derrick Levasseur? Nah, the purse being found six miles away, not like a foot away, not like, you know, across the street.
48:37 Stephanie Harlowe? I can't explain this and I don't want to.
48:40 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, no, no, it's so that that's my issue with them, to be fair. It's okay to say, I don't know.
48:45 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, perfect. I love that, yeah.
48:47 Derrick Levasseur? That that's the honesty I can take, but it's coming to a conclusion when you're just admitting that you don't have answers for all the evidence that's been found. A critical piece of evidence, by the way.
48:56 Stephanie Harlowe? We don't know, but we're gonna find out.
48:59 Derrick Levasseur? We're gonna find out, and if we don't, we're not gonna close this case until we do.
49:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, until all the puzzle pieces fit.
49:04 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
49:04 Stephanie Harlowe? So not long after that meeting, one of Vanessa's friends, who had been speaking with people in the local homeless community, this person heard that someone might have tried to sell a phone to an eco ATM. So an eco ATM is a kiosk that buys used cell phones and electronic devices. And you basically just put it in, like you'll answer some questions on the screen, what make and model of the phone, et cetera, and then you'll drop it in there and then it gives you money in return. So Vanessa immediately filed a claim with eco ATM about Megan's missing phone. Remember, I said Vanessa filed a claim, not the police department.
49:38 Derrick Levasseur? Right, we talked about this at Crime Con.
49:40 Stephanie Harlowe? So two days later, Vanessa received a response confirming that Megan's phone had been located. Look at that. Look at that.
49:47 Derrick Levasseur? It's amazing. Good detective work by the, oh wait, oh wait, it wasn't the detectives, it was, is it the same detective who said, sometimes things just don't fit?
49:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Sometimes things don't fit. We're not going to look for a missing phone because why? Why? That might give us answers and we prefer to just close this. So after Vanessa notified the police that she had, you know, located Meghan's phone, they were able to retrieve the phone. Now, records showed the phone had been sold on March 2nd at a grocery store kiosk in Boulder for $75 by a man named Elliot Bayfor, who was known to be part of the local homeless community. Photos from the ECO ATM showed he was alone when he sold it. Unfortunately, the phone had been wiped before the sale, leaving investigators with no usable data that might have revealed Meghan's final movements or communications.
50:37 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, that is confusing to me because, and I asked Vanessa this.
50:42 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
50:43 Stephanie Harlowe? At, when we were talking to her at CrimeCon. Usually, you can't factory reset a phone without having the Google password or your, your Apple ID password, right?
50:54 Derrick Levasseur? Normally, yeah, you, it's, if it's a lost phone, they might have a way to do it. I don't know. I mean, I, I agree with you. Like, you can't factory reset your iPhone.
51:02 Stephanie Harlowe? No.
51:03 Derrick Levasseur? Because someone could steal it and factory reset it and use it.
51:05 Stephanie Harlowe? And then start using it.
51:06 Derrick Levasseur? But didn't we ask her if she had an iPhone?
51:08 Stephanie Harlowe? She had a Samsung, yeah.
51:09 Derrick Levasseur? She had a, she had a Samsung, which I know a lot of people like Android phones. I think they're easier to, to reset than iPhones. iPhones, it's an act of Congress to reset it.
51:19 Stephanie Harlowe? I agree.
51:20 Derrick Levasseur? I think with an Android-based phone, they are, it's easier to, to, to reset the phone without...
51:26 Stephanie Harlowe? Dude, I just looked it up. It's crazy. So not only can you factory reset a Samsung phone, but you can factory reset a locked Samsung phone.
51:34 Derrick Levasseur? There you go.
51:34 Stephanie Harlowe? Without a password, by booting into recovery mode and selecting wipe data slash factory reset.
51:40 Derrick Levasseur? That's crazy.
51:41 Stephanie Harlowe? I should have known this because I did work at Verizon and I know exactly. I know exactly how to do it. And it comes up with like a menu and it's just words. It kind of looks like a computer screen, like an old school computer screen, and it's just words. And it's like giving you options and one of them is, yeah, factory reset the phone.
51:57 Derrick Levasseur? I wonder if ECO ATM only takes us, like, certain phones and not...
52:01 Stephanie Harlowe? They won't take them unless they're factory reset.
52:03 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, so you, so that's, yeah.
52:05 Stephanie Harlowe? That's crazy.
52:06 Derrick Levasseur? That's unfortunate.
52:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Wow. So somebody could do that even if there was a password on it?
52:10 Derrick Levasseur? I wonder, I wonder with phones... If it's like hard drives, right? Because when you
52:15 Stephanie Harlowe? That's what I was thinking. Couldn't they still get stuff off of it?
52:18 Derrick Levasseur? So when you reset, and I don't know if a lot of people know this, but when you restore your hard drive, when you delete all the stuff, even when you empty your trash, the information is still there. It's just been designated to be written over. So as long as you haven't saved other information or done other things on the phone to rewrite over that existing data, it's still there. I think with phones, it might be different, though. I think it's like a hard boot where the phone is just restored to factory settings and any data that was there is completely wiped. It's not like a hard drive or a flash drive where it's designated to be written over. It's just no longer existent.
52:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, it said this method will erase all data. And after a factory reset, you'll likely need to enter the password for the Google account that was previously synced to the device in order to bring anything back. And pretty much it just,
53:07 Stephanie Harlowe? it just acts as a complete wipe. It's completely wiped, yeah.
53:11 Derrick Levasseur? But just another thing here, where this person who was suicidal or in a tragic accident, their property just keeps showing up in places it shouldn't be found. But we're supposed to believe she was out there alone.
53:23 Stephanie Harlowe? I still remember cases where suspects, of course, suspects factory reset their phone and then police were still able to extract data. And I just looked it up and it said, yes, this is going to depend on the phone's age, encryption and the method of reset. But yeah, I mean, there's still a way to do it. You can use, and they could have gone in her cloud, you know what I mean? Like her Google, everything saved to the Google cloud, like your photos saved to Google Photos. All your stuff is like saved in that area. So I'm, even your maps, like your maps will show where you walked, where you went. And that's all backed up to the cloud, which you can access from a computer just by having your
54:07 Stephanie Harlowe? your Google information. So I feel like they just really didn't try hard enough to get information off the phone. Because they could have gotten warrants to access data from the cloud service or the third-party platforms.
54:19 Derrick Levasseur? Well, I'm sure they still have the phone.
54:21 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, but they need to go into the cloud. It'll show the map location. It'll show where she walked, where that phone went.
54:27 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it's above my pay grade, but you're right.
54:29 Stephanie Harlowe? Like, I've had to do that because I have, I have a Samsung phone and I have an iPhone, but I've had to do that in the past with an Android phone because I lost my phone. And so I had to go online, like on my computer, sign into my Google account and look up my, like, location history to see where I last had it and then go back there.
54:46 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, I, I wonder why they haven't given that phone back to Joe and Vanessa, or if they have. I'm sure they'll be listening to this episode, so they'll, they'll be telling us.
54:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, an attempt to locate alert was issued for this guy, Elliot Befour, so detectives could question him, but they would not end up tracking him down for several more months. All right, we're gonna take another quick break. We'll be right back.
55:11 Stephanie Harlowe? We're back from break and we're, we're talking about Meghan's cellphone and the guy who traded it into the eco ATM, Elliot Befour. The police are trying to track him down at this point. It's gonna take a few months, which, once again, that, that's crazy to me, but it's gonna take a few months. Meanwhile, detectives continue trying to reach Meghan's roommates, Hannah, her friend Lane, who'd been staying in the dorm after Meghan disappeared. It wasn't until April 8th, nearly two months later, that Lane finally agreed to speak with them. Lane said they hadn't seen Meghan the night she disappeared, but knew about the argument through a text from Hannah. Lane explained that after Hannah's shift ended around 11:30,
55:53 Stephanie Harlowe? they met her in the dorm lobby, went upstairs together and saw that Meghan wasn't there. Lane stayed the night, assuming Meghan had gone to her sister's. And that's another thing. She wasn't there when you guys got back around 11:30. And so, instead of being like, "Well, I, I'm assuming Meghan's gonna come back and sleep in her bed," Lane was like, "Well, I'm assuming she's not and I'm gonna sleep in her bed. What if Meghan had come in at 1 a.m. and you're sleeping in her bed?" There's just no care or consideration here. It's very weird. So the next morning, Meghan still wasn't back, but neither Lane nor Hannah thought anything bad had happened. Lane then told detectives they believed Meghan's death was a suicide, saying that the combination of the argument with Hannah and the breakup
56:37 Stephanie Harlowe? with her boyfriend might have overwhelmed her.
56:42 Stephanie Harlowe? This is making me mad because Lane, what do you know about Meghan? You know what I mean? What do you know about Meghan? Besides the fact that you have no problem sleeping in her bed? To go and tell the police like, "Oh yeah, I think this girl took her own life" when you don't even know her? That's upsetting to me. That's upsetting to me. Now Meghan's family agreed that she likely was upset that night, but they don't believe that she was suicidal. Frankly put, she would never take her life over a guy. I mean, she's got a lot of other stuff going on for her. She's in college, she's loving college, she has a good time. You can get a new roommate next semester. You can get a new boyfriend anytime, but you have a lot of other stuff going on in your life that's great. And she'd only been seeing this guy for a very short time. It's not like they'd been together years.
57:26 Stephanie Harlowe? And they were talking about marriage and babies and stuff. Like, this was a college boyfriend she'd only been with for a few months. And yeah, you don't have a great relationship with your roommate, but like I said, that can change. Just wait for the next semester and get a new roommate. Why would you be so upset about a fight with your roommate? And breaking up with a boyfriend you'd been with for a few months? That you're going to now take your own life out of nowhere? And not contact the family you're so close to? It does not make sense.
57:50 Derrick Levasseur? I agree.
57:50 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, around the same time that Lane was interviewed, detectives also learned that Hannah had been telling her coworkers that Meghan, quote, "took a lot of Adderall the night she disappeared", and that she was always suicidal, end quote. When confronted, Hannah denied saying those things. She told detectives she had only said that Meghan seemed depressed and that she speculated suicide might have been possible because Meghan's Adderall bottles were missing from their dorm. Now, according to the new reports Meghan's family obtained, back in her first interview with detectives, Hannah said that when she came back from work that night, she found four empty Adderall bottles on Meghan's metal cart table, which she stored her over-the-counter meds on as well. And Hannah explained that Meghan usually kept
58:34 Stephanie Harlowe? one or two leftover Adderall pills in each of the four bottles. She assumed Meghan had consolidated the leftover pills into her current prescription bottles and taken them with her to her sister's. She wasn't concerned at all about the empty bottles when she saw them. Detectives collected the bottles which were prescribed- From May, August, October, and December of 2024. And Vanessa told us this when we were talking to her at Crime Con. And Meghan's parents also told this to the detectives. Meghan didn't throw away her old bottles. She has ADHD after all, and detectives noticed that her dorm room was messy and cluttered with trash. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I have ADHD and I have a prescription for Adderall.
59:15 Stephanie Harlowe? I think if you looked at my office in my house, you'd find six or seven empty Adderall bottles. Cause I get paranoid that sometime I'm gonna go to refill it and they're gonna be like, what's the prescription number? And I don't know it. And then I have to call my doctor and have them call the pharmacy. And then it's gonna be this whole thing. So for some reason I just keep them. I also have a bunch of like empty birth control packets. You know, the ones where you like pop them out the back? I have like five or six of those. I don't know why. It's a weird thing. I don't throw them out. I feel like-
59:43 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, me too.
59:44 Stephanie Harlowe? I know. You don't throw your birth control out?
59:46 Derrick Levasseur? Nah, I keep it.
59:47 Stephanie Harlowe? I have like the line of sugar pills in there, you know, the line of sugar pills in there and I don't know why.
59:51 Derrick Levasseur? I eat those for candy.
59:52 Stephanie Harlowe? You should try that, actually. I think they are just sugar pills. Like, I'm pretty sure you don't have to take them. I think it's just to like remind you of when you have to start your next month. But I have like five or six packets and I don't know if that's a normal ADHD thing. Let me know in the comments, but yeah, I keep all of those things. I there, you'd be surprised the random things I keep.
1:00:13 Derrick Levasseur? No, I wouldn't.
1:00:14 Stephanie Harlowe? No, you wouldn't.
1:00:16 Derrick Levasseur? I would not be surprised.
1:00:18 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, there's one more thing I need to mention about Hannah before we move on. As I was finishing the research for this episode, she came forward publicly for the first time and gave an exclusive interview to People Magazine. In that interview, she claimed that she believed Meghan had taken her own life. That statement is significant because it contradicts what she told the police, right? The police heard that Hannah was telling friends and coworkers that Meghan took her own life. They asked her about it. She's like, no, I didn't say that. I just said she was like depressed. And now she's talking to People Magazine and she's like saying the same thing. Meghan took her own life. That's what I believe. And as we know from police records, she told the detectives multiple times that she didn't think Meghan would hurt herself and that she hadn't been worried until Meghan's
1:01:02 Stephanie Harlowe? mother Vanessa contacted her on the 12th. So either Hannah lied to the police, which is a crime, or she's lying now to People Magazine. And either way, it's harmful. And I think in general, it's harmful to speak about what somebody's motivations were. You know, like if somebody's dead, under these circumstances where it's pretty mysterious, I think. I think you agree. And then you're going around telling people that you think she took her own life and that's your belief. You guys didn't even get along. You weren't friends. You would have no real grasp on Meghan's like internal processes or what she's going through inside of herself. Why would you be telling people that? It's really, I think it's really problematic in general.
1:01:45 Derrick Levasseur? Well, you're not a doctor, and there's really no need to give your opinion on it. Like you had just said, you knew her for a few months. You guys were roommates. You weren't even on good terms at the time when it happened. It wasn't like she was confiding in you about certain things in her life. You only knew what you could see with your own eyes. And so I understand the need to want to come out and for self-serving reasons, defend yourself by being like, oh, I think she killed herself. But it probably would be better just not to speak about it at all. It's not your area of expertise. Go on with your life. I personally don't think that she was involved in any way, shape or form with what happened to Meghan. That's really where I stand on it. If you're not helping with the case, I don't really need to hear from you publicly.
1:02:27 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. Do you think she was defending herself because she thought people would think?
1:02:34 Derrick Levasseur? I think there's some people out there, and even you were critical of her, where they hear the things that have been put out there about her and her relationship with Meghan at the time.
1:02:42 Stephanie Harlowe? I'm critical of the way that she just like disrespected her private space and wasn't a great roommate. But I'm not like, oh, I think she drove out there to kill her that night.
1:02:50 Derrick Levasseur? No, I think that she probably came out to give her side of the story. And that is for a self-serving reason, right? Meghan's no longer here. If you had information that was critical to the case, you'd be giving it to law enforcement. But if you're going to speak. To People Magazine, which is a magazine.
1:03:06 Stephanie Harlowe? A national magazine, yeah.
1:03:08 Derrick Levasseur? You're doing it to put out a story and you have to assume that story has something to do with her. Right? What else would be the motive for putting that story out there? If you believe she killed herself and you had something to support that, would People Magazine be the outlet that you would discuss that with? No, it'd be law enforcement. So there's gotta be an agenda. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. There's been a lot of disparaging things said about her. Maybe she felt like she wanted the opportunity to give her side of the story where she was because.
1:03:35 Stephanie Harlowe? Has there been disparaging things said about her? Like people are saying, I think she's responsible for this?
1:03:40 Derrick Levasseur? No, but just like critical of her behavior on the day that Meghan went missing and the days after you yourself had said like, you know, why didn't she call her parents?
1:03:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Her behavior, yeah. Not saying like, I think you killed her. So if, if you were being, if somebody was critical of your behavior and your callousness towards your roommate, do you think you would then come out and be like, yeah, she definitely killed herself? Like, is that the way to make yourself look better?
1:04:02 Derrick Levasseur? That's, that's what I'm saying. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. I would just go on with my life.
1:04:08 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:04:08 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. Nobody, nobody thinks that you are responsible for her death.
1:04:11 Stephanie Harlowe? So be quiet.
1:04:12 Derrick Levasseur? So just, you know, move on with your life.
1:04:14 Stephanie Harlowe? All right. So back to the police investigation. Around the same time detectives finally spoke with Lane, which was in April of 2025. They also interviewed Alexander Connor, who went by Travis. And Alexander Connor, AKA Travis, uh, was a homeless man known to frequent the Boulder Canyon culvert area. So Travis explained that he'd been in jail from January 23rd to February 13th. And sometime after his release between February 13th and the 22nd, he returned to the Boulder Canyon encampment to collect his belongings. While he was there, he said he found Meghan's purse in the same general area of the culvert. He said he couldn't pinpoint the exact location, but described the purse as being to the left and up a hill.
1:04:58 Stephanie Harlowe? If you were standing near the creekside camp, which could mean the slope where Meghan was found, or possibly the hill across the road. Travis said the bag's strap was torn and he assumed it had belonged to a hiker who'd dropped it. Inside, he found a vape. Credit cards, keys, chapstick, a single earbud, an empty Adderall prescription bottle, a wallet, and possibly a small toy or keychain. He admitted to removing the disposable vape to use it, but he said he left everything else inside. He took the purse with him and later left it on a bike trail off Highway 36, the same area where it would eventually be recovered by Beth, the girl on the bike. He denied knowing anything about Megan's phone and claimed the vape was the only thing he had taken.
1:05:42 Stephanie Harlowe? All right, so now we have Travis saying, "I found her purse in the same place where her body would later be found. I took the vape out, right? I took some things out of it. I left everything inside, otherwise, and then I dropped the purse off on this bike trail off Highway 36." Do we know how he got there?
1:06:03 Derrick Levasseur? I have a question.
1:06:04 Stephanie Harlowe? What is it?
1:06:05 Derrick Levasseur? If you took the vape out.
1:06:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:06:07 Derrick Levasseur? And that's the only thing that you found valuable.
1:06:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:06:10 Derrick Levasseur? Why are you walking around with a girl's purse?
1:06:11 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:06:12 Derrick Levasseur? If you're just gonna dump it six miles later?
1:06:14 Stephanie Harlowe? Why are you finding the need to bring it six miles away?
1:06:17 Derrick Levasseur? How'd the strap break, right? You know who would know, and I'm not suggesting this, but you know who would be able to tell a story that would align with the evidence found? Someone who was involved with the crime. Because they know what happened, more even so than police. They know where she was found because they would have been involved with her being disposed of there. I'm not saying that's what happened here. I'm just saying it's, nobody can deny that possibility. So, his story makes sense. Yeah, I found the purse on the left side of the rocky hill there. These are the items that were inside of it. There could be some truth to that story, but it doesn't explain how the strap broke. If she was alone and she fell on her own, whether it was by accident or intentional, how the, did her purse break?
1:07:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Why would you take it six miles away if all you did was take a vape out of it?
1:07:05 Derrick Levasseur? That's the second part of it, but it doesn't explain a reinforced strap being broken by thin air. It didn't get caught on the rocks and break like that. It would have been around her body.
1:07:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Somebody took that purse off her body, yeah.
1:07:20 Derrick Levasseur? Or yes, or she was struggling with them and yeah, it snapped while they were struggling over the purse. I don't see a world where, here's the only thing I will say in his defense. If the strap had broken while she was wearing it on the rocks, he would have saw her as well.
1:07:36 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes.
1:07:36 Derrick Levasseur? Would have been right next to her.
1:07:37 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes.
1:07:38 Derrick Levasseur? So if that's what happened, then say that's what happened. But you're saying you found the purse and there was no body near it. Don't believe you.
1:07:44 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I don't believe it either. And, and if you, like, I could see if maybe he took the credit cards and he used them and then he's like, I'm gonna dump the purse six miles away from where I found it because I, I just committed a crime.
1:07:54 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:07:55 Stephanie Harlowe? You know, but to just be like, I took the vape out to use it, but I left everything else in there.
1:07:59 Derrick Levasseur? Left everything else.
1:08:00 Stephanie Harlowe? And then went six miles with, I don't know what transportation.
1:08:05 Derrick Levasseur? To just dump it.
1:08:05 Stephanie Harlowe? To just dump it? Yeah.
1:08:07 Derrick Levasseur? Because I didn't want it to be found where I found it.
1:08:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm. Why?
1:08:10 Derrick Levasseur? What about the shoe? What about the phone?
1:08:12 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:08:13 Derrick Levasseur? Where are those items? Well, we know, we know where the phone was, but where's the shoe? Where, how did they get there?
1:08:18 Stephanie Harlowe? And if what he's saying is true, then either somebody had already taken the phone out.
1:08:22 Derrick Levasseur? That's right.
1:08:23 Stephanie Harlowe? And then what? Left everything else in there? The credit cards, everything?
1:08:26 Derrick Levasseur? That, that's what you have to believe.
1:08:27 Stephanie Harlowe? Because at that point, the person who took the phone out has already committed a crime. You stole someone's phone and you're selling it as your own. You've already committed a crime. Why not just take the credit cards and see what you can do with that?
1:08:35 Derrick Levasseur? And someone out there right now, walking around with one Spice Girls shoe, one platform shoe, just walking around.
1:08:41 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, well, I hope they're not walking around with it. But, okay, so.
1:08:44 Derrick Levasseur? That's what they want us to believe.
1:08:45 Stephanie Harlowe? We don't believe Travis. Well, detectives didn't believe him either.
1:08:49 Derrick Levasseur? Shocker.
1:08:49 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. It's a shocker because they didn't believe him, but they still kept going on this stupid theory that she took her own life. So the detectives felt he was withholding information and intentionally avoiding questions about the phone. They told him that something bad had happened to the owner of the purse and they urged him to tell the truth about everything that had been inside, but he insisted he couldn't remember anything else. He then provided a DNA sample and he was released, which is weird, by the way, that he was released because now he's in the wind. He doesn't have a home. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have a.
1:09:21 Derrick Levasseur? There's no way you can't hold him.
1:09:22 Stephanie Harlowe? He could leave the state. He could leave the country. He could have been responsible for her murder and you let him go and he's gone.
1:09:27 Derrick Levasseur? Can't hold him without cause.
1:09:28 Stephanie Harlowe? You can't hold him with like suspicion that he stole her purse.
1:09:32 Derrick Levasseur? You gotta, you got like 24 hours or 48 hour hold? That's max. If you don't have something that can, you can charge him with, you gotta release him.
1:09:38 Stephanie Harlowe? Even suspicion?
1:09:39 Derrick Levasseur? Suspicion's not a crime.
1:09:41 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, suspicion of like, you know, let us investigate this further.
1:09:45 Derrick Levasseur? Suspicion's not a crime. You can't keep someone in prison saying, we think you did something wrong. We just haven't figured out what it is yet.
1:09:51 Stephanie Harlowe? What about jail? Can you keep him in jail?
1:09:52 Derrick Levasseur? You can't.
1:09:53 Stephanie Harlowe? No? Okay.
1:09:54 Derrick Levasseur? No.
1:09:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, he provided a DNA sample, so that's a relief.
1:09:58 Derrick Levasseur? They got all his name, you know, they got, they have a lot on him, but you're right. He could technically disappear.
1:10:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I mean, he could have killed her and then just been like, I'm, I'm gonna leave, guys, and you will never, ever find me again. But detectives continue trying to locate Elliot Befor, who's the man that sold Meghan's phone, and they were hoping they could learn more from him. Now, in mid-May detectives finally located and interviewed Elliot. He said he had never seen Meghan before and didn't know who she was. At first, he claimed he found the phone along the trail, but then he changed his story and said it came from someone named Travis, which is the same person that detectives knew as Alexander Connor. Elliot said he didn't know where Travis got the phone. All he knew was that Travis had asked him to sell the phone at the Eco ATM, because Elliot had an ID and you need an ID to sell these things at the Eco ATM,
1:10:47 Stephanie Harlowe? and Travis didn't have an ID.
1:10:49 Derrick Levasseur? Can I throw a crazy thing at you?
1:10:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:10:51 Derrick Levasseur? You know what would be another reason that you wouldn't want to be the one to dump the phone at the Eco ATM?
1:10:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Because you know what happened.
1:10:58 Derrick Levasseur? Because you know it's connected to a dead girl?
1:10:59 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and because you know what happened to it.
1:11:01 Derrick Levasseur? And now we know Travis is lying, by the way, or Alexander, whatever you want to call him.
1:11:05 Stephanie Harlowe? So he's already lied, yeah.
1:11:06 Derrick Levasseur? You know, there could be some truth to what Elliot's saying.
1:11:08 Stephanie Harlowe? And what happened? Did you guys split the $75, like?
1:11:12 Derrick Levasseur? And this is the thing I'll say as we get into Elliot. I do find a little bit more truth to Elliot's story only because he was dumb enough to drop the phone off at a recorded kiosk where they would know his name, or they would be able to identify him.
1:11:26 Stephanie Harlowe? And it seemed like Travis was smart enough to take that purse six miles away from the place he found it.
1:11:32 Derrick Levasseur? Yep, and then give the phone to someone else to turn it in for the cash. You think, you think, and maybe this is a stigma and I apologize if I offend anyone, but in that world, especially if you're hurting for money, you're not going to trust anyone to take a phone that has value and do it for you, because then you're never going to see him again. And so I think that's a, it's a big leap of faith for Travis to say, "Hey, here you go. I want to split the money with you because you have an ID and I don't."
1:11:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, Travis, if he didn't have an ID, he wouldn't have been able to use the Eco ATM. But I would think he would accompany Elliot and just stand away from the Eco ATM so he wasn't seen on camera, like, I think that if you were going to do that... And there's an amount of money there, even if you're giving Elliot, you know, a cut, you're not going to just send him off. You're going to be somewhere in the vicinity.
1:12:18 Derrick Levasseur? So you know what's happening.
1:12:19 Stephanie Harlowe? But maybe Travis knew there was a camera on that Eagle ATM, so he made sure to not be in that camera view.
1:12:25 Derrick Levasseur? Possible. There's just so many other ways that Travis, AKA Alex, I'm just going to call him Travis for now, could have, could have gotten money without having a paper trail. And I see it all the time when we have breaking and enterings and car, you know, car robberies. You'll end up finding stolen radios, GPSs, cell phones, change at drug dealers' houses because they'll go there with the phone and say, hey, I'm not looking for cash, just give me four bags of rock.
1:12:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, sure.
1:12:49 Derrick Levasseur? And we'll call it.
1:12:50 Stephanie Harlowe? Or even like a, a kind of shady pawn shop.
1:12:53 Derrick Levasseur? Whatever. Where there's no paper trail. The fact that Travis went to this extreme to say, hey, you do it.
1:12:59 Stephanie Harlowe? Are you saying that you think he was maybe setting Elliot up?
1:13:01 Derrick Levasseur? Possibly setting him up or didn't want anyone, drug dealer, pawn shop owner, anyone to be able to say, that's the guy that gave me the phone.
1:13:09 Stephanie Harlowe? But Elliot can say that.
1:13:11 Derrick Levasseur? But he knew him as Travis. He didn't even tell him his real name. He was taking measures to avoid it coming back to him. That shows to me that there's some, some sign of guilt.
1:13:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, that's, that's crazy. So Elliot was arrested on charges of theft and false declaration to a pawn broker, which would be the Eco ATM in this case. And then he was released on bond. Doesn't, if you're released on bond, don't you have to have money for that?
1:13:36 Derrick Levasseur? You can be released on bond. It could be for personal recognizance or surety, where it's like 10% of your total bond, it may be like a hundred bucks.
1:13:45 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so answer this then. They can't keep Travis or Alexander because it's just suspicion, but they've actually,
1:13:52 Derrick Levasseur? There's no charge.
1:13:52 Stephanie Harlowe? They're actually charging Elliot over here.
1:13:55 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
1:13:55 Stephanie Harlowe? With something, and they don't have to offer him bond, especially if he doesn't have money to put up. So why do they do that?
1:14:00 Derrick Levasseur? That's the judge. That's the judge who's ultimately, or the magistrate, who's ultimately deciding that based on the charges.
1:14:06 Stephanie Harlowe? But the DA is going to give their recommendation, correct?
1:14:09 Derrick Levasseur? They don't get involved at this point, most of the time.
1:14:12 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, you've got a dead girl. How do you, how are you not getting involved? And now you've got a bunch of shady figures who have her belongings. Why, why isn't this looking like it might be something else than you thought it was?
1:14:21 Derrick Levasseur? So from, from the perspective that I'm seeing it, I'm not saying I disagree with you. They have nothing on Alex to hold him or Alexander to hold him. Travis, keeps confusing these names. They have nothing to hold him. They have his buddy here. They got him with a charge. It's a phone. It's not much. And the bail or the bond can't exceed the charge itself. So they can't say, oh, we're charging you with a theft, but we're gonna charge, we're gonna put a bail over your head like it's murder. It doesn't, a bond, it doesn't work like that. There's a, there's, there's a guideline.
1:14:53 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, but I've seen this before. If the DA gets involved and goes to the judge and says, yeah, judge, we got him for, we got him for stealing a phone. However, we also have a dead girl who this phone belonged to.
1:15:03 Derrick Levasseur? Yes.
1:15:03 Stephanie Harlowe? And we might have some suspicion that he might have been involved with this.
1:15:07 Derrick Levasseur? Or has information.
1:15:07 Stephanie Harlowe? So do you think you could, you know, maybe keep him in a little longer? And the judge could say, yeah, because he's actually been charged with something.
1:15:14 Derrick Levasseur? I can't believe I'm playing devil's advocate here, but when the judge is deciding bond, he can't base it on suspicion. He has to base it on the crime itself and does he view this person as a flight risk? The point of bond is not for punishment, it's to ensure they show back up to court. So for whatever reason, I can't get it into the judge's or the magistrate's head, because it's not always a judge. Sometimes it's on the weekend, it's a magistrate. I can't get into their head and you could have four different magistrates who have come, maybe have come to different bonds. But in this person's opinion, they felt like, based on the information they had about Elliot and the charges he was being charged with, they would be able to find him at a later date. And he wasn't a danger to this society that he was in.
1:15:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so, okay, now.
1:15:56 Derrick Levasseur? Not saying I agree with that, but I'm just saying that's what it is.
1:15:58 Stephanie Harlowe? So now we have Travis, who has admitted to having Megan's purse, has admitted taking a vape out, has admitted to dropping the purse off six miles away from where he found it.
1:16:08 Derrick Levasseur? Air quotes admitted.
1:16:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yep, and now we have Elliot, who's like, hey, I got the phone, and Travis says, I never saw.
1:16:14 Derrick Levasseur? AKA scapegoat.
1:16:15 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, Travis says, I never saw Megan's phone. There was no phone when I got the purse.
1:16:18 Derrick Levasseur? Never said he gave the phone to someone else.
1:16:20 Stephanie Harlowe? Never said that. Never even saw the phone. What?
1:16:22 Derrick Levasseur? You would remember that.
1:16:23 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. So now we have Elliot saying, yeah, I did have her phone and I brought it to the eco ATM, but I got it from Travis, old boy Travis over here, right? And then they arrest him, they let him go, stupid, but okay, they let him go. And now, as a police detective, what's the next thing you're gonna do?
1:16:41 Derrick Levasseur? Well, you're gonna bring Travis back in, right? You still don't have him on a crime, but you could charge him with obstruction of justice. He's lying to police officers. You're not gonna be able to hold him, but you can start to put the feet to the fire.
1:16:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Or just ask him, why'd you lie?
1:16:53 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, you ask him why you lied, all that good stuff, for sure.
1:16:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, as far as I can tell, from all the reports we have, detectives never went back to question Travis about why he lied when he said he hadn't found Meghan's phone. Had no idea, he never saw the phone. They never went to go find him and ask him to clarify that.
1:17:09 Derrick Levasseur? And by another question I would love to ask them because that seems
1:17:15 Stephanie Harlowe? Stupid.
1:17:15 Derrick Levasseur? Completely unlikely, but
1:17:19 Derrick Levasseur? if that happened, that's just a complete lapse of judgment, negligence, whatever you want to call it. And it's ridiculous. I, I hope that there's a reason or there's just something missing from the report that we don't know about. That's all I can hope for.
1:17:34 Stephanie Harlowe? I would hope you're right, but the way that this case has been handled, I don't know.
1:17:38 Derrick Levasseur? Doesn't look good. No, no, I'm not, I wouldn't put a bet on it, that's for sure.
1:17:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't either. I mean, they probably were like, oh, he's a homeless guy. Like, how are we gonna find him again?
1:17:46 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put a, yeah, he's just lying because that's what people do.
1:17:49 Stephanie Harlowe? So, a few weeks later, on May 27th, Megan's toxicology report was released to her parents, Joan and Vanessa. They had been asking about the report for weeks and were repeatedly told that the results weren't ready, which makes sense. Toxicology is the longest thing in the autopsy report. It takes the longest to come back. But when they finally received the report, they discovered that testing had actually been completed back on March 8th. So, months before they had it, even though they've been asking for it regularly. And the results showed the presence of Adderall at 1,900 nanograms per milliliter in Meghan's blood, as well as phenylpropanolamine, which can occur as a byproduct of Adderall at 22 nanograms per milliliter.
1:18:33 Stephanie Harlowe? While 1,900 nanograms per milliliter of Adderall is a high concentration, it isn't necessarily fatal. The report itself stated that reported blood concentrations in amphetamine-related fatalities ranged from 500 to 41,000 nanograms per milliliter, with an average of 9,000. So, that means
1:18:54 Derrick Levasseur? Well below the average.
1:18:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, in, in fatalities that are resulting from amphetamines or Adderall, they can go anywhere from 500 to 41,000, but the average is 9,000. So, Meghan's was 1,900, which is, like Derek said, well below the average. Yeah. So that same day, Meghan's autopsy report was also released and it listed all of Meghan's injuries, but said none of those had anything to do with her death. The report concluded with a statement from Dr. Meredith Frank saying, quote, "It is my opinion that Megan Trussell died as a result of the toxic effects of amphetamine and that exposure to a cold environment, hypothermia, contributed to her death. It is my further opinion that the manner of death is suicide." End quote.
1:19:41 Stephanie Harlowe? So when Meghan's parents read the report, they were stunned. They couldn't understand how investigators had reached that conclusion. There was nothing in the report explaining how Meghan could have done this to herself and everything they knew about her life contradicted that finding. Aside from the evidence that suggested a struggle, Meghan had no history of suicidal thoughts or behavior. She loved college, she was thriving in her classes, and she seemed genuinely happy. Even the autopsy report itself noted, quote, "No previous suicidal ideations or attempts were known." End quote. The report also mentioned no suicide note was ever found. So we're going to take a quick break, our last one, and then I want to come back and talk a little bit more about this.
1:20:26 Stephanie Harlowe? For me, you know, no one's really seeing it. So I'd spend more time, a lot more time, focusing on what I was wearing on the outside, a new sweater, a cute jacket, thinking that's what would make me feel confident. But once I tried Skims, I realized the real secret starts underneath. When what you're wearing under your clothes actually fits right and feels amazing, everything else just falls into place. My favorite piece right now is the Fits Everybody Racer Back bralette. I do have a fuller chest, so finding a bralette that actually supports without feeling and looking like a sports bra has always been a challenge. But this one, it's lightweight, soft, like everything Skim has. The fabric is just so soft and supple and buttery, and it's supportive. And it gives shape instead of flattening, which is a game changer. I reach for it every single day.
1:21:09 Stephanie Harlowe? It's big boob approved, and I mean that sincerely. I love Skims, everything. I love their clothes, their dresses. I just got a cool pair of sweatpants that I wore on the plane, so comfortable. Their underwear- I don't want to use any other underwear ever. It's safe to say I've fully converted. Skims has completely changed how I think about my basics. They're no longer an afterthought. They're the foundation of how I feel. And we think you should check Skims out too. Keep in mind, they have more than just underwear. They have really like their dresses, the long dresses are so cute and flattering. Derek's going to tell you how you can check them out for yourself. Not the dresses, everything Skims has.
1:21:48 Derrick Levasseur? Well, we're all about equality here at Crime Weekly. So you can shop our favorite bras and underwear at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know that we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select our show in the dropdown menu that follows. We would greatly appreciate it. Again, that is skims.com.
1:22:12 Stephanie Harlowe? We're back and I wanted to quickly talk about some statistics. So when the medical examiner is saying that Meghan committed suicide by basically just taking all of her Adderall medication. I tried to find studies showing how common it is to complete suicide by taking Adderall alone. I really couldn't find anything and I kind of went a little bit deeper just to get some statistics. And there's a study in stimulant medication and a suicide mortality in ADHD that found that among patients diagnosed with ADHD, months during which they had an active prescription for stimulant medication
1:22:55 Stephanie Harlowe? were associated with a lower risk of death by suicide compared to months without medication. Another review in medication for ADHD and risk for suicide attempts concluded that stimulant medications like Adderall were actually associated with reduced risk of suicide attempts in people with ADHD. And the CDC classifies prescription stimulants, which includes amphetamines, under the broader category of psychostimulants with abuse potential and records overdose deaths involving stimulants. But these deaths are typically, and when I say typically, I mean, all of them that I could find. They're typically accidental or undetermined. They're not explicitly categorized as suicides.
1:23:36 Stephanie Harlowe? Additionally, a historical medical review found 43 reported deaths over a 35-year span associated with amphetamine use for various causes, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular poisoning, etc. Some of those may involve self-harm, but the paper that I found this in, in the medical review, does not attribute them explicitly as suicides. And we talked about this at CrimeCon right before we went on stage. I was sitting there, and I take Adderall, and I'm thinking, if I was going to take my own life, my Adderall is the very last thing I would grab, because it's not a fun thing to take too much Adderall. And if you've ever accidentally done it, which if you have ADHD, I'm sure you have, because I have,
1:24:20 Stephanie Harlowe? right? Sometimes I'll take it in the morning, and then my brain completely goes crazy, and I don't know if I took it. And then I'll be sitting there at my desk, and I'll be like, I don't feel like I took it. I must not have taken it. And then I'll wait a few minutes, and then I'll be like, I didn't take it. I'm not feeling it. And then I'll take another one. And then about 20 minutes later, they both hit. And it's not a pleasant experience.
1:24:43 Derrick Levasseur? What is it like?
1:24:44 Stephanie Harlowe? Like, you're very anxious, your heart's beating fast, you're kind of uncomfortable, you get really hot. It's just not a good feeling. It's not a feeling. I would assume if you took a bunch of Adderall like that, it would feel like your heart was going to explode. And if Megan wanted to take her own life, she could have easily gone into a drugstore and gotten, like, NyQuil, or some sleep aid. She could have done that and taken that, and she would have just fallen asleep, not felt like her entire heart was going to explode out of her body after taking a handful of Adderall, especially extended release Adderall. That would not be a pleasant way to go. And for somebody who had never spoken about suicide, didn't have behavior
1:25:28 Stephanie Harlowe? that would suggest she was considering suicide,
1:25:32 Stephanie Harlowe? I don't, I don't see it happening personally. It just doesn't seem like something anybody would do if they'd had any experience at all with Adderall. You know what I mean?
1:25:42 Derrick Levasseur? I have investigated a few suicides in my career. None of them ever involved Adderall. That doesn't say much. It's not like I've done 100 different suicide cases, but I don't think Adderall would be the pill of choice.
1:25:53 Stephanie Harlowe? I just can't even find anything. I can't find any, anybody who has concretely done that. And you know what else is interesting? The ME said that she died from hypothermia, right?
1:26:07 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:26:08 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, what happens when you take Adderall, especially if you take too much? Hyperthermia happens. Body temperatures can rise dangerously high, sometimes to over 104 degrees. It causes profuse sweating, like everything gets dry, your mouth gets dry, your nose, like everything. I don't understand how somebody can die from hypothermia after taking a handful of Adderall. Your body temperature would shoot up. Scientifically, it doesn't make any sense. And if she had hypothermia, that would mean that she was alive when she was experiencing the effects of hypothermia, correct?
1:26:48 Derrick Levasseur? You're going way over my head right now. You're using terms that I am not familiar with as far, I mean, I obviously know what hypothermia is, but I mean, I don't know. It could be a mixture of it where she was taking the Adderall and she was out in the cold. She gets into this struggle. She doesn't die from her injuries from the struggle and she's dumped at this location where she eventually dies from hypothermia. I don't think taking Adderall would prevent you from hypothermia. You would still experience it, even though you may feel it or experience it differently. I don't think taking a couple Adderalls are going to stop you from going into that state.
1:27:30 Stephanie Harlowe? But she didn't take a couple, remember?
1:27:32 Derrick Levasseur? Well, she took a lot.
1:27:32 Stephanie Harlowe? Allegedly, according to them.
1:27:34 Derrick Levasseur? If you're on Mount Everest and you're experiencing hypothermia, you're not going to be able to take Adderall to prevent it. Still gonna happen.
1:27:41 Stephanie Harlowe? So we don't know all the mechanics of this. However,
1:27:45 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:27:45 Stephanie Harlowe? I do know a doctor who I go to for things like this sometimes whenever I have medical questions and I'm gonna contact him. And I kinda wanna know if that would be, you know, possible to die from hypothermia if you're, if you've taken, you know, a handful of Adderall, cuz it makes you really hot and it raises your body temperature. So it almost would feel like it would protect you from the cold a little bit more than just being out there without it. But I will double check and then I will update.
1:28:13 Derrick Levasseur? I still think long-term exposure would supersede that.
1:28:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, but that would mean she was alive during that time.
1:28:19 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I mean, she takes this Adderall, maybe it, like you just said, it throws her off, throws her equilibrium off. She's feeling hot, she's having heart palpitations, whatever the symptoms are after taking that much Adderall. And she could have fallen and then she has, she's out in these conditions for an extended period of time. And then the side effects of being out in those conditions is.
1:28:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Hypothermia, yeah.
1:28:40 Derrick Levasseur? Extremities, start to get cold, frostbite, all these different things. So yeah, that could be a potential scenario for sure.
1:28:47 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, guys, I will look into it and I'll ask somebody who does have the, the medical know-how for that.
1:28:53 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it's not me.
1:28:54 Stephanie Harlowe? But I'll update you if I get any answers. So after the autopsy report was completed, the sheriff's office closed the case and Meghan's parents were able to obtain roughly 250 pages of reports. As they began reading through them, they were stunned by what they found and what they didn't find. Once again, there was no explanation anywhere for how investigators believed Meghan had killed herself. No working theory, no narrative, nothing that explained how she could have reached the 40-mile marker, wearing no coat and only one three-inch platform shoe. There was no explanation for how Meghan sustained so many injuries, why her jacket sleeve was ripped on the same side she wore her purse, or whose glove had been found on her hand. Even the gray pants beneath her body remained unidentified. The reports also revealed just how little had actually been done in the investigation.
1:29:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Fresh blood found in the culvert had never been analyzed and neither had Meghan's fingernail clippings or any of the biological swaps collected during the autopsy, including the rape kit. A blue tarp found in the. Culvert wasn't tested either and no forensic expert has been consulted to examine or interpret the injury patterns across her body. Meghan's parents also learned that the Adderall bottle found in the culvert near her body contained instant release tablets which didn't match the white spheres recovered from her esophagus and stomach. The prescription bottle for the time release capsules was found six miles away inside her purse. Alright, so now she's got in her, in her, her system, in her body, they are the time released capsules.
1:30:23 Stephanie Harlowe? They take longer to dissolve so that the medication enters your body in a, a more paced way. But the Adderall bottle found in the culvert near her body had instant release tablets in it. And remember that bottle was empty as well, but it was a prescription for instant release, not extended release. And the prescription bottle for the extended release capsules was found in her purse, six miles away, also empty. So that's interesting because you would assume that if she had done this to herself, the Adderall bottle that was near her would have the, the pills in it that she took. And you could say that she maybe put the extended release capsules in the immediate
1:31:04 Stephanie Harlowe? release bottle, because we know she kind of moved things around, and that's possible. Meghan's clothes were placed in a drying cabinet, but after they were finished drying, both socks were sealed together in one bag, even though one sock came from a foot that had no shoe. And other socks recovered from the scene, which didn't belong to Meghan, were each stored in separate bags. On top of that, at one point, a staff member found the drying cabinet unlocked, which compromised the integrity of the evidence. To make matters worse, the detective who inventoried Meghan's purse made independent decisions about what evidence to keep and what to discard. So this person ended up throwing away several items, including pills that could have been important later. So after reading the reports, Meghan's parents begged for answers about why her death had been ruled a suicide.
1:31:49 Stephanie Harlowe? And on June 4th, they were finally able to sit down with Dr. Meredith Frank, the person who had conducted Meghan's autopsy. Meghan's parents wanted to know how the investigators believed Meghan had sustained her injuries, but Dr. Frank didn't have an answer. She said that while she hadn't been to the scene herself, her quote unquote team had, and they concluded that Meghan's injuries were likely the result of a fall. When Vanessa pointed out that it didn't seem possible to sustain that many injuries from falling less than 10 feet, Dr. Frank responded, quote, "I'm not going to get into this speculation that the blunt force injuries that I saw in her body were not fatal," end quote. She then described Meghan's injuries as "small" and went on to say, quote, "The only fatal condition is that the entire upper esophagus and stomach was filled with pill
1:32:33 Stephanie Harlowe? material. It's the most I've ever seen in my 14 years of experience. I have never seen this widening or stretching of the esophagus by pill material. It was volumes, multiple, potentially multiple bottles, but definitely multiple capsules. And to me, this is a volitional use of medication, and that is really pointing me strongly towards the direction of a manner," end quote. So at that moment, Vanessa did interrupt Dr. Frank to ask whether the pill material had been tested, and she was told it hadn't been. And this answer left her and Joe stunned. How could investigators determine Meghan had taken her own life if they didn't even know what kind of pills she had supposedly ingested? And how could Meghan have died from an overdose of medication that hadn't yet been digested?
1:33:19 Stephanie Harlowe? There was also the question of where those multiple bottles worth of capsules came from, because Meghan only had one bottle of capsules. The other prescription was tablets. And I think it's interesting to hear Dr. Frank explain that there was so much pill material in Meghan's esophagus that it was widened or stretched by it.
1:33:38 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:33:38 Stephanie Harlowe? It kind of sounds like it was shoved in her throat.
1:33:40 Derrick Levasseur? I agree. I could see that as well. I'm sure there's people in the other camp that would say that stretching could have been due to Meghan physically stuffing the pills down her throat, like trying to get them all down at once and causing some stretching while doing so. I think that would be the other camp as far as what they would say.
1:33:59 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, but I mean, if you haven't digested all of that yet, then how is it contributing to this Adderall toxicity that's taking your life, which is what Amy's saying?
1:34:09 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:34:10 Stephanie Harlowe? And that's a good, valid point from Vanessa as well. I mean, there's just- Yes, I suppose what Dr. Frank is saying is all possible theoretically and scientifically, but why? Why would you take your life like that? Why would you shove pills down your throat to the point where you couldn't even breathe and you were choking yourself with them? It doesn't make any sense. And then, once again, you have all the other factors of how her purse ended up six miles away, how her shoe is just completely gone. If she had her shoe on when this happened, then where did it go? Why would, like you said earlier, why would somebody take only one shoe?
1:34:44 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:34:45 Stephanie Harlowe? It doesn't make sense. But to Meghan's family, the circumstances did not point to suicide. They feared she might have been attacked and that someone could have forced the pills down her throat. The bruising on her face and head only made that possibility seem more likely. Meghan's parents demanded that the pill material be tested, and the coroner assured them that it would be. But on June 4th, before those contents were sent out, the coroner's office completed the official report of death, formally classifying Meghan's death as a suicide. Two days later, on June 6th, the gastric contents were finally sent for testing. And by mid-July, the results were back. The coroner's office reported that the testing confirmed the presence of Adderall in Meghan's
1:35:23 Stephanie Harlowe? stomach, with the levels being significantly higher at 1.7 million nanograms per milliliter, compared to 1,900 in blood. Am I reading that right, Derek? 1.7 million nanograms?
1:35:39 Derrick Levasseur? That's what I'm seeing here, higher, higher at 1.7.
1:35:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Significantly higher than the, you know, what was in her blood, which was 1,900. 1.7 million nanograms? Wow. So this report doesn't explain what that means in regards to fatality. However, the coroner's office maintained that the Adderall caused Meghan's death and that the manner of death was suicide. When Meghan's family asked for more details on what was tested, they were told that only a small portion of the gastric fluids had been sent off, and that result was then used to calculate the estimated concentration of amphetamine in her stomach. To Meghan's parents, that explanation didn't resolve anything. It only raised more questions about what all was in Meghan's stomach and to some
1:36:23 Stephanie Harlowe? So basically what I'm hearing is they took a sample size of of contents from Meghan's stomach and determined how many nanograms were in that small section and then multiplied it based on the what surface area of Meghan's stomach?
1:36:39 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's an accepted mathematical equation that they're able to use. I'm assuming they didn't just make this up.
1:36:47 Stephanie Harlowe? I suppose 1.7 million?
1:36:50 Derrick Levasseur? It's a lot.
1:36:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Like you might you might want to go back to the drawing board and be like, that can't possibly be true.
1:36:54 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I mean, I'm not even disputing it. I'm going to save my final thoughts from when we get there because we could dispute every single thing. I still think this all paints a picture, but I'll let us I'll let us get through it and then we'll go there.
1:37:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, as of this recording, Megan's case remains closed and ruled a suicide. Investigators have never explained what happened to Meghan. Based on everything they've learned so far, Meghan's parents think investigators theory is that Meghan walked to the canyon, left the bike path when she reached the area near the culvert and climbed inside from the bike path side. And then while in the culvert, she took all of her pills and then exited on the creek side where she collapsed from the overdose and fell eight feet to the spot where she was found. But that theory doesn't make sense to her family. It doesn't explain how Meghan sustained all of her injuries, how her shoe, phone, and purse went missing, or why she was found lying on a pair of pants that weren't hers. It also doesn't explain
1:37:48 Stephanie Harlowe? how she could have fallen out of the culvert without landing directly on the large boulder positioned below it. They also don't understand how the searchers who looked in the culvert two days before Meghan was found didn't see her body there. It hadn't been snowing at all, and yet they didn't see her. One of them was looking directly at the culvert while one was next to it. So how did they miss her bright blue shirt, her red hair, her red pants? None of it adds up. Meghan's parents don't believe she walked out there and took her own life. They feel that authorities are unwilling to acknowledge that a young college student could be murdered in Boulder. CU Boulder is an affluent university, often described as a public Ivy, and it brings in tens of millions of dollars a year. Having a student vanish from campus and be killed nearby is the kind of story that damages
1:38:32 Stephanie Harlowe? the image of safety that the school and city both rely on heavily for financial means. There may also be something larger at play. In September of 2024, Boulder was named one of three finalists to host the Sundance Film Festival, starting in 2027. Over the next six months, the city competed with two others for the opportunity. And on March 27th, 2025, it was announced that Boulder had won. A coalition that included the city of Boulder and the University of Colorado Boulder had offered Sundance $34 million in incentives to relocate to the area. That local investment came on top of millions more from the state, including another $34 million in tax credits, bringing the total package to nearly 70 million.
1:39:17 Stephanie Harlowe? That means both the city and the university had a tremendous financial interest in maintaining the perception that Boulder is a safe community, one where college students don't get murdered, one where you could come to a fancy, high-status film festival and walk around the city and not be afraid that something bad could happen to you. Now, obviously, we can't prove that the Sundance deal or anything else had any influence on the determinations made in Megan's case. But whatever the reason for the failures in this investigation, there's no excuse for them. Nothing matters more than a human life, and no amount of money, image, or opportunity changes that. Meghan's life mattered, and to dismiss her death as a suicide despite so many unanswered questions is not only irresponsible, it's cruel.
1:40:02 Stephanie Harlowe? These officials, the police and the ME and the people at the college, they have told Joe and Vanessa that their daughter killed herself, but they've never been able to explain how. And that just doesn't sit right with me, doesn't sit right with Joe and Vanessa. Despite all of these roadblocks, Joe and Vanessa refused to stop fighting. They are currently working to hire independent experts to review the evidence, but the coroner's office has refused to give their private pathologist access to photos of Meghan's body. The family's goal is to have those photos released, the cause of death changed to undetermined, and a new agency brought in to investigate Meghan's death. They've launched a change.org petition to push for these changes, along with a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the cost of hiring forensic experts.
1:40:43 Stephanie Harlowe? So I'm going to tell everyone how you can check these things out and how you can do more for Meghan if you'd like to stay up to date on her case. But first, I want to talk about our final thoughts. Derek, take it away.
1:40:56 Derrick Levasseur? So some of you may be asking, why? Stephanie and I have taken such a vested interest in this case, more so than some of the other cases we've covered. I can only speak for myself, but for me, as a parent, if I send my daughters off to school and God forbid, something like this happened, and I sit down with law enforcement, and they tell me that my daughter took their own life, you better be damn sure, you better be unequivocally sure of what happened, and you better have the evidence to support it. Because that is a big claim to make, that your daughter was in such a bad place that
1:41:39 Derrick Levasseur? they walked out 50 minutes from campus, 50 minutes from anybody around them, went inside a dark covert, sat there, swallowed a bunch of pills, and then died in the freezing cold alone. Not even a normal way that most people would kill themselves, but just this, you want me to believe all this, and you want me to just accept the fact that you've done your due diligence, even though now we have all these other variables regarding items that should have been with her, if that's what happened, being found at different locations, not only that, finding the people who had those items. And they're, and they're clearly lying. They're not telling the truth. So, I've said it to Vanessa and Joe, and I've said it on Crime Con, at Crime Con, and I've
1:42:21 Derrick Levasseur? said it on Detective Perspective, I am of the belief that what happened to Megan was either a tragic accident, or a homicide. If it were an accident, I believe there's a combination of what we know, and what law enforcement has stated, and, and what happened here. I think, yeah, listen, sometimes people are in a bad state of mind, they make an irrational decision, we've all been there, we've all been young, you lose a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and you think it's the end of the world. And I, we see Meghan leaving her building after all this goes down. And yeah, it's possible she decided to go for a walk. She took her pills with her because she didn't want anybody to take them. She wasn't in the right state of mind. She was upset.
1:43:04 Derrick Levasseur? She was thinking that, you know, this guy was probably her husband at some point. Again, we've all been there. It's possible that while she's walking out there, she takes a couple of pills, then a couple more because she's trying. I don't know. I don't know what her thought process is, but she's taking these pills because she feels like it's going to help the situation or maybe give her some type of euphoric feeling. I don't know, hallucinate, I don't know. I can't speak to what Meghan might've been thinking. But while walking out there, she, she's not thinking about where she's going. And she, before she realizes it, she's so far out there and she thinks, okay, maybe I can go inside this covert and get warm. I clearly can't walk back. And then by taking as many pills as she did, not trying to kill herself, there's an impact there.
1:43:49 Derrick Levasseur? Like you said, where you don't, you know, you talk about not remembering taking one and then taking another one. And it's not a good feeling. Well, she clearly had more than that in her system. And that right there could have resulted in her becoming disoriented, losing her bearings and maybe falling accidentally onto those rocks, sustaining some injuries. And because of those injuries and because of the conditions and because of her mind state with the Adderall, she may have expired from the elements outside, the, the temperatures due to hypothermia. Possible. Now, when you consider everything else we know with Elliot and Travis and the purse being broken
1:44:30 Derrick Levasseur? and found six miles away, the phone being given to a third party in order to turn it in. So it wouldn't come back to the person who actually found it, who lied to law enforcement about finding it. And the location in which he found it, he found this purse, but not, but not Meghan. It doesn't align to me. I also think it's hard to believe that Meghan walked for 52 minutes along this roadway and didn't realize how far she had gone. And during that time, there's not a potential that she encountered someone who had nefarious intentions. So where I sit right now is yes, this could be an accident. It could be a homicide. I feel like the investigation hasn't been vetted thoroughly and to come to the conclusion.
1:45:13 Derrick Levasseur? And to say it publicly and to the parents faces that Meghan killed herself is incompetent. And it's irresponsible and unprofessional. It's disrespectful to Meghan. It's disrespectful to her family because now there's a large portion of the public who believes Meghan killed herself. And that's something that is going to be attached to her name for the rest of her life. As you just mentioned, a little while ago, her roommates out there now on People Magazine saying, yeah, I think she killed herself. Well, what is she basing that off of? She's basing it off of what law enforcement and everybody else is saying. So with this case for me, what I want is for it to be looked into thoroughly by a private independent party. I want the medical examiner, if they're so confident in their conclusions, the case is closed.
1:45:58 Derrick Levasseur? Release what you have. Allow an independent pathologist to take a second look at what you had. If you're so sure about it, then they're just going to reaffirm what you've already said. And let's see if they come to the same conclusion. There's nothing to lose, everything to gain. And that's why Stephanie and I are putting up this reward because there's more questions than answers. And I'm hoping that if money's the incentive here, the people who know what happened, whether it's directly connected or indirectly connected through a third party, come forward and give us the information we need. Maybe that just confirms the fact that it was an accident. Or maybe it opens up a whole new can of worms where now law enforcement can go down a different set of trails here and find out what really happened to Meghan.
1:46:42 Derrick Levasseur? But I just have this uncomfortable feeling of lack of resolution. I just feel like so much more could have been done and I'm okay with either outcome. I'm not leaning one way or the other, but just for everyone, as a parent, I need to know. I need more.
1:46:57 Stephanie Harlowe? I'm sure Meghan's parents are okay with either outcome as well, right?
1:47:02 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, they just want to know what happened to their daughter. And they want a thorough investigation. So when they ask questions, they're given answers. They're not told, don't worry about that. It's not important.
1:47:13 Stephanie Harlowe? Weird things happen.
1:47:14 Derrick Levasseur? I'm not giving you this information because that's not relevant to this case. Or I know I'm certain about what happened here and my findings and the cause of death. But I'm not willing to provide the evidence to support it. That's unacceptable. As a society, we can't accept it and we have to hold these departments and these agencies accountable. As far as all the other stuff, I've heard it from Vanessa and Joe about the the film festival and all that, and I'm not going to sit here and say it's not possible. I don't have anything to support it. For me, it's more binary. It's a simple accident or homicide. That's what I'm focused on right now. As far as all these other entities and their motives as to why they may have done something. It's possible. I'm focused on Meghan right now. I think we have names that are connected to her death
1:47:58 Derrick Levasseur? that know more than they're saying. And that's more than we have in a lot of cases, which is why we're putting up the money. That's where I'm at on it.
1:48:05 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I'm in the same place and we talked about this during Crime Con and you said, you know, if you're a law enforcement agency or an ME and you're this sure, you're this sure, which you clearly are because you already done listed it and closed it. If you're that sure, you should be welcoming another party to come in and confirm that. Clear your name, clear your reputation. Because yeah, there are people out there who believe that Meghan died from suicide because that's what the official said, but there's a lot of people that don't believe that. So now you've got people out there questioning your integrity as an investigator, as an ME. And so you'd think you'd be open and and and welcoming of someone to come in and review the evidence and come up with the same conclusion you came up with so that we can put it to bed.
1:48:50 Stephanie Harlowe? But the fact that they're not doing that is concerning. Additionally, I don't know why it would have been so difficult to put her death as undetermined and then just, you know, continue investigating. If Travis ever pops back up, maybe he gets arrested again in a month. And now they can question him more about what happened and ask him those questions about why he lied about the phone. And now your case is still open, even though it's listed as undetermined. Like you don't have to put a a specific cause of death or or even manner of death. You just have to if you put undetermined or inconclusive and then it could stay open and whatever new information you have coming in, you could use because they had it closed within just months, it felt like. That's not long enough. With all the
1:49:33 Stephanie Harlowe? Things that aren't answered, that's not long enough. You don't have enough evidence to say it was a suicide. You can say you believe that it was. You can say that based on your autopsy, that's what you believe happened. But that's not enough to say ultimately and legally, this is exactly what happened and we're not going to explore any other options. And I agree with Derek, it could have been an accident. Do I think that? No, I don't think that. I think that Meghan was brought there to that location. I don't think she went there on her own. I think that she encountered foul play. Somebody wanted what she had in her purse and they were going to get it from her no matter what. And that's it.
1:50:11 Derrick Levasseur? Maybe they didn't even intend on killing her. It could have been her just deciding to fight. I'm not, I'm not giving you what I want.
1:50:16 Stephanie Harlowe? I'm not giving you this.
1:50:17 Derrick Levasseur? And then it escalates. What about that analogy I always give with like the, the street fight? Where you punch someone in the face, they hit their head and you're killing them.
1:50:24 Stephanie Harlowe? And they die. Yeah. You're still on the line.
1:50:26 Derrick Levasseur? You're still on the line. So she could have fallen back out of the covert during the struggle. And that's how she ends up where she is. That's why the purse isn't with her. That's why her shoe's not with her. That's why her phone's not with her because she fell backwards while all of those items, the shoe came off. And that's why the cell phone and the pills were not there because they were in the purse.
1:50:46 Stephanie Harlowe? And then whoever was there took the shoe, took the purse and said, let me get out of there. And I wonder, like Derek said, that six miles away, that other highway marker, that other mile 40 marker? Where her purse was found, I wonder if they had searched more in depth or if they'd, you know, gone a little further out. Maybe they would have found the shoe or maybe whoever got rid of her purse, got rid of her shoe in a completely different area. But either way, the shoe was not there where her body was found. And that doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't make any sense why someone would take one shoe. It doesn't.
1:51:19 Derrick Levasseur? Oh no, I, I think that came off wherever the struggle initially started.
1:51:22 Stephanie Harlowe? And then whoever was there took that as, as along with the purse, which was any evidence of this girl being there and took off. It doesn't make sense. If she took her own life or even if it was an accident, the shoe would be there. But if she took the pills, you'd think they would have been there, right? With her on her person.
1:51:41 Derrick Levasseur? I agree.
1:51:42 Stephanie Harlowe? But they weren't.
1:51:42 Derrick Levasseur? No, I agree. The pill bottle being in that covert.
1:51:44 Stephanie Harlowe? And, and just for us to be sitting here on a podcast and being like, this doesn't make sense. And, and I, I would be willing to go along with law enforcement and be like, yeah, I get that. If you would explain a little bit more, if you would. You know, to show your work, but you're not doing that. So this whole thing doesn't make sense. You're being very protective of your investigation when there's no need to be doing that if you've done everything correctly.
1:52:07 Derrick Levasseur? I would say defensive.
1:52:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I was gonna say that, but I was trying not to.
1:52:10 Derrick Levasseur? I would say defensive, and I'll say it for you.
1:52:12 Stephanie Harlowe? Being very protective and defensive of your investigation, even though there's no reason to be that way if you've done everything properly and you know you've done everything properly.
1:52:20 Derrick Levasseur? Looking at it, I don't know how as, as a detective you sit there and go, yep, I'm convinced this was a suicide. And then you have the balls to go into an office or a room with the parents and say, yeah, your daughter killed herself.
1:52:30 Stephanie Harlowe? That's what I was gonna say. Yeah. How do you look at parents and say that, knowing that there's other possible options?
1:52:37 Derrick Levasseur? We need more, we need more work to be done. And if there's, if the work has been done, well, then you need to publicly release it. Like your, your question earlier about, do you think Travis was re-interviewed after Elliot said, oh, I got the phone from Travis and he's the one. Well, there's no evidence of that.
1:52:52 Stephanie Harlowe? There's no evidence in the police reports that it was done. Yeah.
1:52:54 Derrick Levasseur? If, if it happened, let us know. We're looking for information. Stephanie's gonna give you all the details right here. We want answers for Meghan's family. Vanessa and Joe deserve it. Every parent deserves it. And whatever the outcome, we're okay with it. We just want more details so that a reasonable person reading it would come to the same conclusion, not be left asking more questions at the end of their synopsis.
1:53:18 Stephanie Harlowe? Exactly. So I will tell you guys how you can look more in to Megan's case and stay up to date on it. You can follow us, Crime Weekly on social media, and you can also join the family's official Facebook group, Justice for Megan Trussell Official. If you have any information about Meghan's death, please text or call the family's tip line at 678-636-9771, or email [email protected] . There is currently an $11,000 reward, which includes $5,000 for me and $5,000 from Derek. If anybody has information that leads to an arrest, that will be on the table for you. So please, if you know anything, say something.
1:54:00 Derrick Levasseur? Please, please. We appreciate you guys listening to us talk about this when we covered on Crime Com. We're covering it here two episodes. It's important. It's hard we're covering it. It's not necessarily the case that's getting all the headlines, but it matters. Meghan was a real person with a real family and her whole life ahead of her. And Vanessa and Joe are real parents, just like many of you out there. And so you have to put yourself in their shoes and ask, what would you want done if it was your daughter? And I think 99.9% of you will agree that what we're doing is the least we can do. So if this, if this doesn't give you the episode to say what I'm about to say here to, you know, stay safe out there, I don't know what will because it can happen to anybody out there, especially the people you care about. So keep your head on the swivel, live your life,
1:54:43 Derrick Levasseur? but be cognizant of your surroundings. We love you guys. We want you to stay safe out there. We'll see you next week.
1:54:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Bye.
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