The Aftermath: 6

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Hi, this is Jill Schlesinger, CBS News Business Analyst, Certified Financial Planner, and host of the Money Watch podcast. This is the show where your money is not scary, and it's not boring. It is a show that's all about you. It's your questions that make it possible for me to provide unconventional and entertaining insights on your money, and, maybe more importantly, on your life. I'm going to be your financial coach, someone who brings common sense and an insider's perspective on how to manage your money and your emotions.

Anytime we were sitting and awaiting a verdict from a jury is a little bit nerve-wracking.

Detective Brian Byerson anxiously waited in the hallway at the Fairfax County Courthouse while jurors considered Megan Hargan's fate.

You never really know what a jury's thinking.

During the trial, Detective Byerson says he rarely knows what is happening inside the courtroom. As a witness, he is forbidden from hearing other testimony until it's time for closing arguments.

I can't talk to the other witnesses, so I end up just sitting in the hallway or sitting in a conference room by myself and just kind of wondering for weeks, you know, I hope it's going well.

Byerson says he spends hours studying people's faces as they go in and out of court. He'll notice whether prosecutors walk by in a good mood or if a witness seems upset after they testify. But outside of those glimpses, Byerson doesn't have any other idea how a trial is going, including the case against Megan Hargan.

Juries can be funny.

And, of course, Detective Byerson was hoping that when the jurors heard all the evidence laid out, they'd convict Megan.

I've always thought that once you explain this to anybody, they generally at the end go, oh yeah, she absolutely did this. It's clear as day, right? But you don't know what's going on behind those closed doors with the jury.

After three weeks of testimony and two days of jury deliberations, Detective Byerson could finally exhale. Megan Hargan was found guilty of first degree murder for killing her mother and youngest sister.

It's like an emotional rush. I mean, you feel good. I remember feeling like the jury understood what happened here.

A McLean woman could be happy.

Headed to prison for the rest of her life for killing her mother and her sister.

Jurors found Megan Hargan guilty of the murders and staging the crime scene to look like it was a murder-suicide. Detective Byerson thought it was all over, except for the sentencing. He was wrong. A wrench, or perhaps a sledgehammer, got thrown into the proceedings. After Megan's conviction, the defense alerted the judge that they had discovered juror misconduct.

One of the jurors had volunteered that they had done an experiment.

Jurors are supposed to stick with what they're told in court, not reenact a crime scene on their own.

So the judge made a decision to vacate the jury verdict and told us that we would have to retry Megan Hargan.

It was anyone's guess whether the second jury would agree with the first.

The detectives in the family are the only ones that have been dealing with it since day one.

Byerson started with the Fairfax County Police Department about two decades ago. He's worked homicides for nearly 10 years and he spent six of those years regularly talking to Megan's sister, Ashley Hargan. At times, he said they spoke nearly every week.

There is a very small group of people in the world that have been intimately involved in these murder cases, where they are like a direct victim of what happened. And in this case, it's so much worse because the perpetrator of these crimes is also a member of your family.

Victims' families say Byerson brings a calmness to dark situations. He gives his time freely to suffering family members like Ashley. After all, the Hargan murders are just one of many he's assigned with at any given time.

We can only cherish these wins for a short amount of time because we live in tragedy.

Byerson understands he's the person who likely knows the most about what happened to their loved one. He thinks it's part of his job to be there.

We're available to these families 24 hours a day, even to this day.

And so, Detective Byerson was there when the judge decided Megan and what was left of the family she helped to destroy would have to relive all that pain a second time.

You always want to know afterwards, hey, what did we do that you guys thought was important? Or do you guys have any questions in general about anything that happened? Sort of trying to gauge them, to see. how do we do a better job in the next trial?

But after Megan's first trial, when her attorneys polled jurors, one of them volunteered that she had done an experiment.

Outside of the jury room at home, sort of a reenactment to try to figure out if one of the theories presented by the defense was possible.

In fact, that juror had tried to test whether Helen could have used her toe to push the trigger of a long rifle. Here's 48 Hours. producer, Michelle Sagona.

I have personally not had very many cases over my career where there's been juror misconduct. This isn't something that I have personally seen. It happens, but generally there's some sort of conclusion. Someone is found guilty or not guilty.

Byerson told us how the juror's admission set off a chain of events.

The defense then notified us about this. The judge did exactly what he should have done, and that is just vacate the ruling.

Detective Byerson was at that hearing. He understood why the judge decided to throw out the first verdict against Megan Hargan.

And as difficult as that was to explain to the surviving sister, that we would have to do this whole thing over again.

Byerson remembered sitting in a room at the courthouse with Ashley to talk through what the judge's decision meant.

I mean, we sat down as a group after that hearing, myself and our wonderful victim services representative, who was working alongside me with Ashley for the entirety of this journey, and the prosecutors. And we all had a conversation.

During their meeting, Detective Byerson thought Ashley seemed to take the news okay.

I would say that she took it better than I thought she would. I mean, the mood was not good. That was the expectation going in. there, was that, I mean, we were not happy with what happened with that juror. But that being said, I could not argue with the ruling.

And in a way, Byerson realized this decision by the judge would be a blessing in disguise. If the judge hadn't vacated the first verdict, Byerson thought Megan's lawyers surely would have tried to appeal the verdict after they discovered this juror misconduct. But that appeal would have taken a long time, years, to work its way through the courts. At least in this case, Megan could be tried again more quickly.

I think what the judge was doing was basically saying, there's a likelihood that this will be overturned based on the conduct of the juror. So, instead of just wasting all of that time, I'm just going to say from the bench here that I'm vacating.

At his meeting with Ashley, her father, Steve, and the prosecutors, Byerson said they immediately started strategizing about the next trial.

Ashley understood that, as difficult as that was. I think, for her, she understood what happened and she was very, very steadfast in her cooperation and her intention to help us out or be available for whatever we needed to go through this whole thing again.

Prosecutors and Detective Byerson saw an opportunity to hone their arguments for the second trial.

That meant going back through the witness list and trying to figure out, hey, do we want to approach this in the exact same way, with the exact same witnesses, with the exact same lineup, as we did the first time, or do we want to change some things around, which we ultimately decided to do.

Between trials, Megan stayed locked up.

Megan was never released from custody or anything like that. She was held.

Megan's next trial wouldn't happen until September 2023, almost a year after her first verdict was thrown out. During this time, Michelle Sagona said she thought about Megan's daughter, Molly.

I think about the little girl in all of this who has lost her grandmother, lost her aunt, essentially lost her mother. I think about the victim's loved ones.

While the prosecution had a plan, Byerson still worried about how a new jury would interpret the evidence.

Even though our conviction rate is very, very good here in Fairfax, you never really know what a jury's thinking.

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We did not call Ashley to testify, which was different than the first trial.

In the first trial, the defense accused Ashley of lying and plotting to put Megan behind bars so that she could inherit their mother's entire estate. They also focused on Ashley's inability to remember some details.

The first time was sort of based around some things that she didn't recall. And they spent a lot of time on sort of roughing her up a little bit because she couldn't recall some things.

Ashley wouldn't have to suffer through another difficult cross-examination if she never took the stand.

It just really wasn't worth it to put her up there and put her through sort of a rigorous cross-examination, like that happened the first trial.

Especially when Helen's boyfriend, Carlos Gutierrez, could testify to a lot of the same evidence that Ashley had shared the first time around. Plus, Detective Byerson said he and the prosecutors thought the new plan might surprise the defense.

We just kind of decided, yeah, we're going to keep her subpoenaed or whatever, and then we can use her if we absolutely need to. Or we can use her later on as a rebuttal witness.

Byerson admires Ashley for everything she has endured.

She's one of the strongest people I've ever met in my life. She was there every day. She came in. She dealt with testimony. And then, just like us, she sat and waited for that verdict.

Byerson said that his testimony didn't really change from the first trial to the second.

The way I look at it is, all I'm talking about is basically facts, right? Because I'm not up there. I'm not going to be able to offer my opinion on anything or what I think. None of that stuff matters, right?

Detective Byerson focused on the Capital One calls and the four-and-a-half-hour interview Megan gave him. By then, he'd come to see that long police interview in a different light.

She was demanding an update on where we were with the case, which, in hindsight, is very interesting, right? She really wanted to know what we were doing.

Megan sometimes had a hard time keeping her story straight. But Detective Byerson now thinks during that long interview, she was really trying to figure out how to get away with murder.

I mean, she's a sociopath. I think she's always thought that she could talk her way out of anything or she could explain her way out of all of this stuff.

The prosecutors weren't sure whether Megan would testify in her own defense. That's why they kept Ashley's possible testimony in their back pocket.

If something comes out that we specifically need her to rebut, especially if her sister ends up taking the stand or something like that.

But Megan never testified.

So we, just, we ultimately didn't call her.

However, Carlos did have to fly to Virginia from Texas to take the stand again. Detective Byerson knew revisiting that awful day, when the love of his life died, wouldn't be easy.

I've talked to Carlos a lot. Carlos is a good guy. This has affected him tremendously. The loss of his, of Helen and the way it happened, and sort of, because you got to remember, you know, he was basically the last person that she ever talked to. And she not only talked to, but she was telling him what was going on in real time.

It's a burden he eloquently and emotionally shared with the jurors, making him a crucial witness.

Because he's the one that gets in all of that conversation from that morning and the weird things that were going on that morning, like, you know, Megan answering Helen's phone.

Detective Byerson said Carlos struggled to even get through the second trial.

He flew in from Texas for both trials and I'm positive he didn't want to, especially after that time goes by and stuff. And now we're asking you, you know, I'm really sorry, but a juror did something, you know, that is making us have to do this whole thing over again. Can you please come back out and bare your soul on the stand again? But he did it.

Ultimately, he said that continuing to discuss the murders was too difficult and he didn't want to do an interview. But Byerson said one thing was clear.

I think he truly loved Helen.

After the defense chose not to have Megan testify, her fate was once again in the hands of a jury.

For me personally, when you're sitting there and you, you get the call that, hey, there's a verdict and you come back in the courtroom and you sit down and you're waiting like that, that 10 minutes for everybody to get back, including the defense, and then, you know, the defendant and then the jury to sort of come out and read that verdict.

The second jury agreed with the first. Megan Hargan was found guilty again of killing her sister, Helen, and her mother, Pamela.

And then there's kind of like this emotional relief that's taken off your shoulders because especially like for the detectives and the family who have been dealing with this since day one,

at this point, Detective Byerson knew the Hargan family inside and out.

You develop these bonds with these, with these victims, because you talk, you know, weekly.

In their conversations, Byerson said that Ashley talked about her niece, Megan's daughter, Molly. Ashley was worried. At the time of the murders, Molly was eight. And back then, she too had to be interviewed by police.

We had asked that Megan not be involved in bringing Molly to the forensic interview site. The safe spot is, that's who we use to do those interviews. They specialize in traumatic interviews of children. Megan brought her daughter to that interview, which was not helpful. And she also interrupted the interview on several occasions.

Losing her grandmother, Pamela, was devastating for Molly. She'd spent nearly every day of her young life living with her grandma. Remember, soon after the shootings, Molly's parents moved her out of state. She lived with them until her mother's arrest.

Now Molly's going back to live with her dad, who she hadn't ever lived with before, and is taken away from the rest of that family that was taking care of her.

The Hargens had already suffered the worst betrayal. A daughter shooting her mother, and then putting a bullet into her youngest sister's head. And why? For money. And Molly, Detective Byerson says, she was left heartbroken and confused.

In a lot of the phone calls. after this happened, it was very evident to us that her daughter had no idea where she was. She certainly didn't know that mom went to jail.

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Megan Hargan was sentenced at the start of 2024.

A Fairfax County woman was hit with two consecutive life sentences after she was convicted of killing her mother and her younger sister and then telling police it was a murder-suicide.

Both Ashley and Carlos came to the sentencing. It's strange now to think back to 2017 and the phone call when they first spoke. When Carlos called Ashley to tell her shots had been fired at her mother's house and to reveal what Helen had told him, that Megan had killed her mother. Back then, Ashley wasn't sure what to believe.

Every single emotion right now,

hearing about this, finding out about this.

from Helen's piece-of-shit boyfriend.

But now, they both sat united in grief at the Fairfax County courthouse waiting to hear how long Megan would spend behind bars.

More than six years later, this case finally comes to a close.

48 Hours. producer Michelle Sagona can't stop thinking about the Hargens and where they will go from here.

This will obviously go on. This doesn't end. The pain and the anguish, I don't want to speak for them, but I can't imagine ends for the family, especially for this little girl, for Megan's child.

We learn that Steve and Ashley Hargen no longer have contact with Molly. As it turns out, soon after hearing those Capital One calls, Ashley did two things. She cooperated with police on their investigation and she started seeing if she could get custody of Molly from Megan and her husband. At the first trial, Ashley testified that she didn't feel comfortable with Molly living with Megan in West Virginia.

According to Ashley, in her own words, she wanted to take custody of her because she knew she could give her the home that Molly deserved, essentially. And when she said, quote, I could give her a loving and caring home. And yeah, she's an amazing little girl. End quote.

Ashley had stopped trusting her sister and perhaps, by extension, her husband too.

Ashley was in fear for Molly being in a situation or in a home with Megan and her husband. And that's why, according to court testimony, Ashley went forward and applied for custody. She wanted to protect Molly as best as she could.

But Ashley's attempts to get custody failed. And after Megan's arrest, her husband, Frank, stopped allowing Molly to call Ashley or her grandpa. They are now estranged. Here's Detective Brian Byerson.

For Ashley, not only does she lose her mom and her sister, but effectively, she loses her other sister as well in the process. And she's left completely, you know, by herself. She was an aunt to Megan's daughter and saw her consistently. And after this happened, all of that stuff was cut off.

Steve Hargan asked to get visitation rights as a grandparent, but was denied.

Megan's husband at the time just totally cut off communication between their daughter and that side of the family.

Frank hung up on us when we called him for comment. Frank has been such a mystery in this story. Frank didn't testify in either trial, nor has he kept in touch with detectives. Here's Byerson.

He answered some questions that we had in the beginning of this stuff. And then he, you know, he just, he sort of just disappeared. It seems like he just didn't want to deal with this.

Byerson said he questioned Frank, but never got all the answers.

I've always thought about it like this. If I'm sitting, personally, if I'm sitting in a realtor's office and I'm going to buy a home with my wife, and my wife sends me a bank statement that would indicate that we had half a million dollars in the bank, I would have several questions about that. He seemed to have none.

Frank was never charged with anything connected to the house or Helen and Pamela's murders. And Detective Byerson said they chose not to investigate his involvement further.

I think anybody looking at this from like a fair point of view would probably have those same questions that we have.

Frank was often away on a military deployment, which is why Megan said they didn't live together. It was easier to live with her mother and have her help raise Molly. But Byerson didn't know what changed in 2017.. Why, all of a sudden, did Megan desperately want to live with her husband?

As far as we were able to ascertain, they never lived together. She always sort of lived with her mom and sort of, her mom took care of her, and her mom took care of her granddaughter. She was being a doting grandmother and she wanted to make sure that Molly, you know, had all these nice things in life. And, and then, at the end of the day, that's also taken away from Molly.

Byerson said Megan has never offered her father or sister more details.

I don't know that she'll ever give them the satisfaction of explaining to them why she did it.

Megan's attorney at the Fairfax County, Virginia's Public Defender's Office did not respond. when we contacted them for this podcast. At the time of sentencing, her attorneys claimed they would appeal. Even today, Byerson doesn't think Megan would even admit to her crimes.

I think if you asked her today, she would still say she didn't do it. What, at this point, 24 people have decided that she did in two separate trials. And, you know, we're supposed to believe that it's just a coincidence that the day before and the day of your, your family's murder, that you're trying to do this crazy wire transfer for a half a million dollars to buy a house in West Virginia.

Byerson knows that even if Megan were to explain why she shot her mother and sister, it wouldn't do much good.

To me personally, because it's just, I know what, what they lost and how they lost it. And the fact that they're still, you know, putting one foot in front of the other is a testament to them for sure.

Ashley never spoke to us for this podcast, but Steve Hargan did go on the record to offer a simple truth. I will forever be devastated.

Um, Helen.

Um.

And it's, uh, it's something that is, has had a, uh, profound impact on the family as a whole. And I will, I will leave it at that.

I agree with him. You don't need a lot of words to sort of explain something that's not explainable to the majority of the people who are going to hear it.

Byerson has long believed a court's decision can bring justice, but not closure. Helen Hargan will never marry Carlos or finish grad school. Pamela will never be surrounded by loving children and grandchildren.

This, this family violence is sort of the worst of the worst of this, because I think, I think when it's a stranger, you can still in your mind, kind of put out a bunch of scenarios as to why this happened, right? But when this person is a part of your immediate family, that does this to another person in your immediate family.

From 48 Hours, this is Blood is Thicker, the Hargan family killings. Judy Tigard is the executive producer of 48 Hours. Original reporting by 48 Hours producers Josh Yeager, Sarah Ely-Hulse, Michelle Sagona, and Lauren White. Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount Audio, and Maura Walls is the senior story editor. Recording assistants from Alan Pang and Marlon Policarp.

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