Jealous daughter killed mum and sister and staged murder-suicide
Megan Hargan wanted money to buy a house and was willing to murder her family for it
Ambition and hard work had paid off for Pamela Hargan, 63. After working her way up to become a well-paid senior human resource executive at a top US aerospace corporation, she landed a role at a defence contractor. She owned a $1.3 million (£1 million) home in Mclean, Virginia, and enjoyed a life of luxury holidays and an estimated wealth of $8 million. But her priority was always her daughters, Megan, Ashley and Helen.
In 2017, two of the three daughters were back living with divorcee Pamela. Helen, 24, had recently moved home after graduating from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. During her studies, she’d worked as a waitress and had fallen in love with her colleague, Carlos Gutierrez. Now Pamela was having a house built for Helen in northern Virginia.
Megan, then 34, was married, but said her husband was in the military, so she and their seven-year-old daughter lived with Pamela.
The long-distance marriage raised questions, but Pamela’s loyalty was unwavering.
On 14 July 2017, Helen’s boyfriend Carlos called the police emergency number from
Texas to say that he couldn’t contact his girlfriend and he was concerned.
“I think someone might be dead,” he said. He explained that Helen had called him at 11.30am, crying and saying that Megan had killed their mum. When Carlos asked Helen where her sister was, she told him she was trying to sort out a money transaction.
The police went to Pamela’s home and found her dead, her body face down and covered with a blanket. She’d been shot in the head. Helen was dead on the bathroom floor with a rifle between her legs, its barrel facing towards her. She had been killed by a gunshot wound to her head.
It appeared that Helen had shot her mum then killed herself in a horrific murdersuicide. Had she killed her mum then called Carlos to try to pin the blame on her sister?
First doubts surface
When the police broke the news to
Megan, she cried, “I just don’t even understand. We were in the freaking house!”
She said she had been at her mum’s house earlier that day with her daughter and claimed Pamela and Helen were arguing, but she didn’t believe her sister would kill her mother. Instead, she said she’d seen two suspicious males hanging around the neighbourhood recently.
The rifle belonged to Megan’s husband.
She said her mum had let her keep it in the house until she moved into a new home in West Virginia.
As news of the suspected murder-suicide spread, Helen’s friends said she wasn’t angry with her mum or suicidal. But Megan said her sister struggled with mental health and drug problems and that on the day of the deaths, Pamela had put a stop to the building of Helen’s new home because she disapproved of Carlos.
Crime scene investigators noticed that Pamela’s mobile phone was oddly positioned on top of the blanket and on top of the blood – had it been staged? Helen’s body was covered in blood, but the rifle between her legs had hardly any blood on it. Her phone also had almost no blood on it. It had been used to text
and call Carlos, yet there were no fingerprints on it. It looked like someone had wiped it clean.
Autopsy results cast further doubt on the murder-suicide theory. Helen’s gunshot wound was in the top of her head and the bullet had travelled down into her neck. How had Helen held the long gun to her head and been able to reach the trigger? Her arms were about five inches too short.
And what about Carlos’s revelation that Helen had told him her sister had killed their mum? If that was the case, why hadn’t Helen run? Two hours had passed between Pamela and Helen’s shootings.
Because Megan had been at the house that day, her hands were tested for gunshot residue and traces were found. Now the police needed a motive. Pamela’s bank told them that on the day before the shooting someone claiming to be Pamela had called and requested a wire transfer for more than $400,000 to a real estate company in West Virginia. The caller said she was buying a house for her daughter Megan Hargan. The caller had answered the security questions correctly, but it had been flagged as potential fraud and the transaction had failed. A second call was made on the morning of the shooting from the same woman, still claiming to be Pamela, chasing up the transfer.
Under questioning, Megan eventually admitted she had called the bank pretending to be her mum.
She had been trying to close a house purchase in West Virginia on the day of the double killing.
She acknowledged that without the money she would lose the house. But she denied shooting her mum and sister.
More than a year went by before the police had a case strong enough to arrest her and charge her with Pamela and Helen’s murders. When the case came to trial in 2022, the defence had an explanation for Helen’s injury being on top of her head – she could have put her head down and pulled the trigger with her toe.
Another shocking twist
The prosecution said Megan was furious that her mum was buying Helen a house and had tried to steal $400,000 to complete her own purchase.
She had been exposed when the bank called Pamela about the halted money transfer on the day she was killed.
Desperate Megan had killed her mum and tried to make the transaction go through. She had then killed Helen and staged a murder-suicide. Only she knew what had happened in the two hours between the killings. Helen hadn’t run and there were no signs of a struggle.
Megan continued to protest her innocence, but a jury found her guilty of both murders.
There was another shocking twist to come though – within months the murder verdict was overturned by a judge, owing to jury misconduct.
Despite being banned from outside research, a juror had gone home during the trial and had tried to test the defence’s theory that Helen could have used her toe to pull the trigger. When the juror couldn’t, they told the other jurors it was “impossible”, which might have influenced their unanimous verdict.
A new trial began in September 2023 and Megan, now 41, was again found guilty of both murders.
The judge said the killings were “sinister and chilling” and said the facts of her guilt were overwhelming, adding, “You besmirched Helen’s memory until the jury recognised your deceit for what it was.”
In January, Megan was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences and six more years for gun charges. She was a cold-blooded killer who was convicted twice.
‘Her body was face down under a blanket’