[theme music]
There were two bodies that were located inside of this home,
and that's really all we knew.
Is there a little adrenaline when you're pulling up?
Always.
Your blood starts to get pumping a little bit,
and you start to think about how this is going to play out.
What did you see as you entered this home?
Well, it's a very nice home in a great neighborhood.
Fairfax County is located just outside of Washington, DC.
It is an affluent area of Northern Virginia.
It was a million-dollar home.
As you walk through the kitchen, you
encounter a mudroom that connects the kitchen
to the garage.
In that mudroom, we discover Pamela Hargan.
How was she positioned on the ground?
She was lying face down, and she had a blanket laid over her.
Like a quilt. Her cell phone is actually
laying on top of the quilt.
And there was a pool of blood coming
from the area of her head onto the floor.
What else do you find?
We go upstairs, and then we encounter
Helen Hargan inside of the bathroom that's in her bedroom.
She appeared to have been sitting on the toilet
when she was shot.
She was fully clothed.
She has some kind of trauma to her head.
There's a rifle in between her legs.
She's got a tremendous amount of blood in her mouth.
Finding two deceased persons, one with a gun on their body,
might have been a murder-suicide.
Suicide?
Possibly.
What are we looking at here now?
This is the main room of the basement.
That set of books, they're photo albums,
and I wanted to see what my victims may
have looked like in life.
Pam Hargan was a woman in her 60s, an incredibly successful,
business-minded woman.
She was generous with her money.
This is a woman who built an $8 million estate.
She poured her life into her family.
Helen, the youngest daughter, had returned home from college.
Helen was the kind of daughter, I think,
that everybody would want.
She was lovely.
She had a number of friends.
She had a boyfriend.
Helen never struck me as having a dark side.
Mothers and daughters butt heads.
I mean, did Helen and her mother get along perfectly?
I don't think so.
But you don't know what goes on behind closed doors.
Maybe Helen had murdered her mother and then shot herself.
So what's your gut telling you as you take
a look at these two bodies?
Wait.
You will make mistakes if you make assumptions before you
actually do the work.
And so she would have had to have done
what to shoot herself in the head that way?
Magic.
She would have had to done magic.
It just isn't possible.
[music playing]
[theme music]
Friday, July 14, 2017, about 5:00 PM, Fairfax County,
Virginia Police visit the next of kin to deliver awful news.
63-year-old Pam Hargan and 24-year-old Helen Hargan
are dead.
Pamela was shot twice in the mudroom.
Lead Detective Brian Byerson says
police are recording and whispering
to avoid being overheard when they
give Pam's ex-husband, Steve, more
painful details about Helen.
She had a gunshot wound that appears to be self-inflicted.
I'm really sorry.
There was a thought that went around
that it might have been a murder-suicide.
Hargan soon summons his other two daughters, 32-year-old
Ashley and 34-year-old Megan.
What is happening?
What is-- what happened?
[music playing]
They react with equal parts pain and panic.
Oh god.
What are we going to do?
Jesus, what are we going to do?
I don't know.
Our mom took care of everything.
Yeah.
I just don't even understand.
I don't--
We were at the freaking house.
Megan Hargan tells authorities she
and her eight-year-old daughter, Molly,
have been living with Pam and Helen
while her husband is in the military.
She says she'd left the home with Molly at about 1:30 PM
that day, adding that there had been
an argument between her mother and Helen, who had been upset.
Helen has been so angry, just so angry all the time.
And struggling emotionally.
I knew Helen was depressed, but to do this?
I can't wrap my head around this.
Is it true that she once threatened suicide?
I think that is possibly true, yes.
In fact, Ashley would later tell authorities Helen
had thoughts about self-harm.
I know my sister was depressed.
OK.
Has she ever talked about hurting herself?
Yeah.
But Megan also suggests her mother and sister
could have been attacked by offering a potentially
important clue, something she reports
she'd seen the day before.
Two suspicious males casing the neighborhood,
and she later tells us those particular guys
are the reason why she ends up bringing this rifle up
to the main floor of the house.
It's the .22 Ruger rifle found with Helen's body,
and it belongs to Megan's husband.
She says her mother had allowed her to store it in the house
until the couple moved into their own place
in West Virginia.
My husband and I literally just closed on our new home
yesterday.
My mom bought it for us.
Steve and Pam Hargan divorced when the children were young.
Pam took them and moved around before ending up
in Potomac, Maryland, next door to Tami Mallios.
Megan was very upset about the divorce.
In the next few years, Tami got to know
Megan and her little sister Helen
and often saw them across the backyard fence.
The girls were out in the yard all the time
with the dogs, that sort of thing.
So
Tami says she always knew there was a sibling rivalry.
Megan did bring that up a lot, saying
that Helen was the favorite.
But she remembers that, for the most part,
the Hargan sisters seemed to get along fine.
Pam was proud of them.
She talks highly of her girls whenever I did speak with her.
Pam Hargan poured her life into those kids.
Michelle Sigona works for CBS News.
She's been covering this story for nearly four years
and says the other love of Pam Hargan's life was her job.
Pam had spent decades climbing the career ladder
to become a vice president of aerospace giant Lockheed
Martin.
She had built an $8 million estate,
but she didn't keep it for herself.
She was constantly giving to those around her,
specifically to her children.
Helen seemed to have her mother's ambition,
double majoring in math and management science
at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
That's where Erin Roughneen met her in 2014.
When I first met her, I was extremely scared of her
because she didn't laugh or smile.
She's like an onion.
You have to peel the layers off, and you really
get to know the kind and genuine person underneath there.
Roughneen says they became close friends.
It's been said that Helen may have suffered from depression.
Did you ever see any of that?
I did not at all.
Roughneen says her friend spent a lot of time
studying, though Helen did have a job at a nearby restaurant.
She was working as a waitress.
There was a 30-something named Carlos Gutierrez working
in the restaurant too.
They fell for each other in short order.
And they had plans to move in together.
Pam had started building a house for Helen in Northern Virginia.
So in the spring of 2017, Helen had moved back home
from Dallas.
According to Carlos, he hadn't asked her to be his wife,
but he was working towards that.
But Megan tells police, Pam hadn't approved
of Helen's relationship.
She believed that Helen was going
to try to move Carlos into the house,
and my mom didn't want him being there.
Still, Helen had been moving ahead, planning for the future.
It was just a matter of figuring out her career path.
It takes a little while to figure it out,
but she was going to get there.
But Helen Hargan never got there.
Fairfax County Police and Fire, how may I assist you?
Yes, I have an emergency.
On the day of the shooting, it was Carlos Gutierrez
who had first alerted authorities
that something in the Hargan House was dreadfully wrong.
I'm in Dallas, Texas, and my girlfriend lives in McLean.
He says he and Helen had spoken earlier that morning.
Now he can't get in touch with her, and he's worried.
My girlfriend won't answer the phone,
and I'm thinking my girlfriend's life is in danger.
OK, sir.
What I need you to do then is contact
your local jurisdiction, file a report with them,
and tell them that Fairfax County requires a teletype
in order to do a welfare check.
I feel really bad for Carlos because he's bounced around all
over the place just trying to get somebody
to listen to the fact that he thinks his girlfriend's life is
in danger.
I think this is life or death.
I think someone might be dead.
Carlos Gutierrez would later testify
about why he was so concerned.
He would also tell a jury he felt authorities were giving
him the runaround that day even when
he called back later with something explosive to add,
something Helen had told him.
Exactly what did your girlfriend to you?
[music playing]
Fairfax County Police and Fire, how may I assist you?
Yes, I have an emergency.
It's 1:44 PM on July 14, 2017.
Carlos Gutierrez, Helen's boyfriend in Texas,
is having a hard time with 911 dispatchers in Virginia.
I think someone might be dead.
Right, sir.
Contact your local jurisdiction, file the report, have them--
The call ends without a promise of help.
So 15 minutes later, Carlos calls again.
Fairfax County Police and Fire--
And this time, he makes a startling revelation
about something he says Helen had told him
on the phone that morning.
My girlfriend told me that her sister killed her mom.
Now my girlfriend won't answer her phone.
Megan Hargan had murdered her mother,
or at least that's what Carlos said Helen had told him.
OK.
Well, this was out of the blue?
Your girlfriend is sitting in a house with a dead woman?
Yes.
Why was Carlos, who was more than a thousand miles away,
calling 911?
Why didn't Helen call herself?
What was going on in that house?
I reported a murder earlier, and I didn't have the address.
Now I have the address.
[siren blaring]
When police arrived around 3:00 PM, they find Pam is dead.
But they discover Helen's body too.
Carlos had offered authorities a possible explanation for Pam,
but Helen was a mystery.
Megan Hargan told police something interesting.
Her mother and sister had been arguing that day.
This morning, my mom let Helen know
that she was canceling the contract on the house she's
building her because she truly believed
that Helen was going to try to move Carlos into the house.
And when middle sister Ashley hears
that Carlos is accusing Megan of murder,
she makes it clear she doesn't believe him.
She would never do that ever, never.
OK?
Megan Hargan's friend Rebecca Wolfe agrees.
I do not believe that Megan killed her mom
Pam or her sister Helen.
No piece of me believes that.
Rebecca and Megan met in 2015, when
they both were volunteering in a program
to find homes for dogs rescued from war zones.
Rebecca says that Megan always had a passion for animals.
She is very compassionate, generous heart.
She is just a really good person.
And Rebecca says Megan often talked about her family,
her generous mother.
Megan admired Pam's wisdom, her career.
She always spoke very lovingly of her.
And her sisters, especially the baby of the family, Helen.
Megan talked about Helen struggling with things
and feeling depressed, but I never got the impression
that it was insurmountable.
Rebecca says that Megan called her on the day of the shooting
and sounded like a woman who'd lost everything.
Very distraught, and she did not give me
details of what had happened.
She just said, we've lost mom and Helen.
By 8:00 PM, police had told the media what they
had told the Hargan family.
This looked like a murder-suicide.
But Detective Byerson says, the more he saw of the crime scene,
the less he thought so and the more
he wanted to take a closer look at Megan Hargan.
That night, he had officers test her hands for gunshot residue
and photograph her.
Does she become a person of interest at that moment?
She's certainly a person of interest
because we know that she was in the house.
Police knew the house probably held answers.
Crime scene Detective Julia Elliott,
who had joined Detective Byerson at the scene,
spent the evening combing for evidence.
I was shown Pamela's body first.
One thing that caught her attention
was Pam Hargan's cell phone.
It's laying on top of the pool of blood and the blanket.
Was it unusual to see the cell phone in this kind of position?
Yes, it certainly wouldn't fall on top of the blanket
and on top of the blood once you were already covered up.
And what does it suggest that the cell phone is
lying on top of this comforter?
That suggests to me that it was placed there by someone.
Elliott says the Helen Hargan shooting scene was next.
She had a lot of blood on her face.
So much blood that it was impossible to see an entry
wound, and there was more on the floor.
But there was a lack of blood where investigators
expected to see it.
The rifle itself had very little blood on it.
The rifle was leaning against Helen's body.
The butt was on the floor between her legs.
The barrel was pointed up towards the ceiling.
You would expect that if the rifle had been sitting there,
as she bled so heavily, it would also have blood on it.
And was there anything on this gun from Megan?
No.
What about fingerprints on this rifle?
None that were usable.
There was DNA found on the trigger,
but it wasn't Megan or Helen's.
Is it true that Helen's DNA was found on the rifle case?
Yes, that is true.
But Byerson says, only on the tip of the case.
Megan's DNA was on the case handles.
It's part of the reason police believe Helen Hargan never
touched the gun that day.
As she died, someone else was there to place it on her.
She says Helen's phone was telling as well.
There was almost no blood on it, and although Helen had used it
that day to talk and text with Carlos,
there were no fingerprints either.
What we found was what looked like swipe marks,
as if someone had taken their hand
and wiped off the front of the screen.
Though it would take time to learn exactly how the Hargan
women died, in the basement, Detective Elliott
saw an immediate opportunity to learn how they had lived.
I got a little nosey, and I wanted
to see what my victims may have looked like in life.
So I pulled out one of the center photo albums
to look at it and open it up.
Tucked away in that album of family photos
was something that seemed out of place, documents, Megan's bank
statement, Pam's too, and a spreadsheet full of passwords
and security verification details to unlock
all of Pam Hargan's accounts.
Well, that's interesting.
Were you able to analyze the paper?
So at the time of us locating that,
financial documents were not on our search warrant.
So Detective Elliott photographed the documents
and left them in the house.
But when she entered with the proper search
warrant days later--
They were not there.
They were not there?
They were not.
The house had been returned to the Hargan family's custody
the day after the shooting.
And something else had happened that day.
The medical examiner delivered her report
on Helen Hargan's autopsy, casting doubt
on the murder-suicide theory.
It tells us that someone else pulled the trigger.
What do you think the crime scene
suggests about what happened?
Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and Twitter.
[music playing]
A police spokesman was calling the Hargan shootings
a murder-suicide.
But the next day, when Detective Brian Byerson
saw Helen's autopsy report, he was
certain it was something else.
The gunshot wound on Helen Hargan
was in the top of her head.
The rifle bullet had traveled downward into her neck.
She would have to hold it straight up
and be able to reach the trigger to accomplish this.
I've never seen that before, and I've worked a lot of murders.
Well, what does that tell when you learned that information?
It tells us that someone else pulled the trigger.
As Detective Byerson arrived to work two days later, on Monday,
July 17--
Good morning.
Thank you for calling Cap One bank.
There was a clue waiting for him, a clue
that Byerson was able to take all the way to the bank.
That Monday morning, I have a message on my desk phone
from Capital One.
The bank had some startling news.
Bank employees had seen reports of Pam Hargan's death
and wanted him to know about some strange activity
on her account.
Could you tell me your name, please?
Pamela Hansen Hargan.
Someone claiming to be Pam Hargan
had called the bank the day before the shooting
with a request.
What can I do for you today?
I was told that I could do a wire transfer.
Whoever it was was trying to transfer
money, more than $400,000, out of Pam's account
to a real estate settlement company in West Virginia.
Oh, you're going to buy a house?
For my daughter, yes.
The caller was able to successfully answer
Pam's security questions.
All right, you aced the verification.
Great job.
Detective Byerson discovered that the transaction hadn't
gone through, so the caller had tried again the next day,
on the morning of Pam's murder.
Yes, we attempted to yesterday, and there
was a bit of a mix-up.
So we would like to do it again now.
OK.
They need it today.
Somebody's trying to perhaps steal Pam's money?
Yes.
And Byerson believed he knew who that somebody was.
Well, that is Megan Hargan pretending to be her mother.
Pretending?
Pretending.
He decided it was time for him to get
Megan Hargan on the phone.
Megan, how are you holding up?
I am really not OK.
Megan claimed the attempted wire transfers were just
an innocent mix-up at the bank.
But by now, Byerson was suspicious of everything
she said.
He began to think Megan Hargan had been trying
to confuse police all along.
I realize there's a lot of confusion here.
Megan had stressed Helen's depression and anger issues
with investigators.
Helen has been so angry, just so angry
all the time over everything.
But Megan told Byerson her sister would never
have killed herself or her mom.
I can't imagine my own baby sister doing that at all.
She repeated her story about two strange men
in the neighborhood.
I had to call the police about these two guys.
Other people had called them, apparently.
But Byerson says that tip went nowhere.
The only call that's made about these guys in the neighborhood
is from Megan Hargan.
He had run down every lead, every alternative theory.
There were no other suspects.
But there was a motive, the money,
and the person who had needed it couldn't stop talking.
She demanded to come in and get an update on the case.
So on July 19, five days after Pam and Helen's deaths,
Detective Byerson brought Megan in.
My mom--
He says that once Megan started--
Just unimaginable.
--she wouldn't stop.
I could ask her for anything.
We just can't get her to leave.
This is you.
She stayed for more than four hours.
Long story short, the point I'm making--
We would ask her questions that we knew the answer to,
and then she would either pivot to something else--
I don't understand.
--or just outright not answer the question.
I don't know what you want me to say.
We want you to tell the truth.
I just want you to answer the question.
At first, Megan insisted it was her mom who had
made those calls to the bank.
I'm going to play the call for you.
But when Byerson played the tapes for her--
Who is it on the phone?
It is me.
It's you, right?
Right.
Detective Byerson says she finally
admitted to lying to him about the wire transfer.
Why in the world would you do that?
Because I knew how it would look.
No, no.
It's not how it would look.
You knew that if we knew about this, that would
shine a whole new light on you.
Still, she was adamant that she hadn't shot anyone.
So it was truly bizarre when halfway into the interview--
Just blame me.
Just answer the question and explain it.
Just blame me, just blame me, just blame me.
My family has been through enough.
Just blame me so they can move on from that, OK?
It seemed like she was acknowledging
that we knew that she did it without openly giving us
a detailed confession.
This is not happening.
This is not--
Though inadmissible in court, she readily
agreed to take a polygraph.
She failed three times.
Byerson says it was all adding up.
He was sitting across from a killer.
It becomes very obvious to us.
It is exactly who we think it is, and it's Megan Hargan.
But despite everything, police let Megan leave that day.
So murder investigations can be extremely complex.
You not only have to be sure, you have to be right.
And that decision is not just-- it does not just rest on me.
I have to be on the same page as the Commonwealth Attorney's
Office.
So in consultation with them, we decided to wait.
Law enforcement may not have moved, but Megan Hargan did.
Though she never got Pam's money, she and her husband
used a VA loan to buy a different house
in West Virginia.
We kept an eye on her.
We knew where she was.
Byerson methodically kept building his case.
Evidence kept trickling in, including the results
of Megan's gunshot residue test, which showed
she had it on both hands.
And on November 9, 2018, almost a year
and a half after the deaths of Pam and Helen Hargan--
This morning, at approximately 7:40 AM,
detectives from our Major Crimes Bureau
stopped and arrested Megan Hargan near her home
in West Virginia.
As Detective Byerson takes Megan in,
investigators search her home and find yet
another important clue, that missing password sheet
to Pam Hargan's accounts.
Do you have any doubt that Megan was the person who
pulled that trigger?
I have no doubt at all.
What the defense would say is that there is doubt
all over this case.
Megan Hargan's defense will include
a specific theory of how Helen could have killed herself.
She puts her head down and that she's
able to utilize the trigger, probably with her toe,
to be able to discharge the weapon.
But will the jury agree?
Even the expert said it's possible.
[music playing]
What did you see in her eyes?
Nothing.
I don't see much behind those eyes.
More than three years after her arrest
for the murders of her mother and sister,
Megan Hargan is going on trial.
I think she's pure evil.
Whitney Gregory and Tyler Bezilla
are prosecuting the case.
Megan is a pathological liar.
That's what she is.
The Commonwealth of Virginia opens
by arguing Megan tried to steal more than $400,000
from Pam for this new house and got so desperate for the cash
that she killed her.
Then, she killed Helen to keep her quiet
and staged the scene as a murder-suicide.
This is an individual who murdered two of her closest
family members for money.
The defense argues Helen was the killer, mentally unstable
and furious at her mother, who had offered her a new house,
but the morning of the shooting, announced there
was one devastating condition.
Helen had to break up with the man she had hoped to marry,
Carlos Gutierrez.
What is your greatest challenge with this jury?
Proving it wasn't a suicide.
To do that, they begin by calling Carlos and Helen's
sister Ashley, who'd testify, on the day she died,
Helen seemed normal and fine.
Did Helen have a diagnosis of depression?
No.
And she didn't take her own life,
says Detective Julia Elliott--
It's a homicide.
--who tells the jury about the bloodstains and possession
of the rifle.
She did not have an arm span long enough
to pull the trigger.
Her fingers are not reaching the trigger.
Crime scene reconstructionist Iris Graff agrees.
What's on the screen?
This is a forensic animation, a virtual model.
Prosecutors hired Graff to use photos and measurements
from the house to create this digital model.
She can't reach that trigger.
Right, we still need another 5 inches.
So based on your scientific analysis,
was the wound that killed Helen self-inflicted?
Within the context of this scene,
it's not possible that she could self-inflict that wound.
Gregory says that's just common sense.
Did the tooth fairy put the gun hole here?
Helen's wound isn't the only evidence pointing at Megan.
Megan's conduct in her police interview is damning too.
Yes, she did.
And so are those phone calls to the bank.
Thank you for calling Cap One Bank.
Would you tell me your name, please?
Pamela Hansen Hargan.
I understand you want to complete a wire
transfer with us today?
Yes.
That wire--
They need it today.
Megan's panicking because she still
owes that money on the house.
Prosecutors reveal Megan lied to police about Pam buying
her a house, saying the reality is that Megan
was trying to buy that West Virginia
property with her mother's money.
Turns out, Megan still owed more than $400,000,
due the day of the shooting.
The prosecution contends she'd secretly
substituted her name onto Pam's bank statement
as proof of funds.
Pam was apparently totally in the dark
until the day before the shooting,
when the bank called the real Pam.
Hi, who am I speaking to?
Who am I speaking to?
My name is Jeff with Capital One.
OK, this is Pamela Hansen Hargan.
A bank officer had called her to authenticate the attempted wire
transfer.
Somebody tried to do a wire out of your account
for 400-and-some-odd thousand dollars.
What?
I did not do that.
The defense would say that there is doubt all over this case.
The defense declined to be interviewed,
so we asked Matt Troiano, an attorney with decades in court.
He didn't try this case, but we hired him to review the file.
To help prove reasonable doubt, he
says the defense contends Helen was
the suspicious one that day.
Helen doesn't call 911.
She doesn't run out of the house for safety.
She tells her boyfriend, do not call for help.
Why didn't Helen call 911?
That is one of the pieces to the puzzle that we'll never have.
That's a question that came up during the trial.
Why didn't she just leave?
Why didn't she call 911?
We don't know.
There's a lot authorities may never
know for sure about the roughly two hours they
say lapsed between Pam's and Helen's deaths.
If Megan killed Pam, why did she wait so long to kill Helen,
and why on Earth hadn't Helen made a run for it?
Testimony suggests she was worried
about eight-year-old Molly, who was home at the time.
Not a good enough explanation, says Troiano.
For hours, Peter.
She allowed what is claimed to be a murderer run loose
in a home with a rifle without seeking help,
without barricading her in to a room.
He says Helen's body showed no definitive signs of a life
and death struggle.
Why wouldn't she have fought back?
And how credible are the witnesses against Megan Hargan?
Troiano says the defense wants the jury
to believe one may not be credible at all,
her sister Ashley.
Her story has changed.
When she'd spoken to investigators
soon after the shooting, Ashley told them
Helen had once been in emotional turmoil.
I know my sister was depressed.
Has she ever talked about hurting herself?
Yeah.
But once on the stand, Ashley testified
she doesn't remember ever saying that.
She says 150 times thereabouts that she doesn't
remember certain things.
There's two ways to look at that.
Number one is that she doesn't remember.
Number two is that she doesn't want
to say things that are not helpful for the prosecution.
Ashley testified that she couldn't
recall more than 150 times.
Why was that?
Any time you're dealing with a victim of trauma,
there are always going to be aspects that she can't recall.
Whatever the jury thinks of Ashley,
the defense wants to explain to them
how Helen could have pulled the trigger on that rifle.
And they have a theory, with her toe.
She puts her head down and that she's
able to utilize the trigger, probably with her toe,
to be able to discharge the weapon.
Her toe?
She's got to figure out some way.
And the critical question is, could it have been done?
Even the prosecution's expert witness
concedes, while very unlikely, it is possible.
Can her toe reach the trigger?
Yes, her legs are long enough that her toe
could reach the trigger.
Either way, the judge thinks Iris Graff's
digital reconstruction isn't necessary,
so he prevents the jury from seeing it.
And though Megan Hargan never testifies--
Every shred of evidence shows that Megan Hargan was the one
who committed these murders.
In closings, Prosecutor Bezilla argues there's no evidence Pam
Hargan was actually going to cancel the contract
on Helen's new house, and he urges the jury to compare
Helen's behavior around the time of the shooting to Megan's.
He says Megan's actions speak for themselves.
She's doing all these things that a murderer would do.
But the defense insists there's reasonable doubt in this case.
They argue the prosecutor's forensics are inconclusive,
and the toe on the trigger theory cannot be ruled out.
It's possible, and if it's possible,
that then lends itself to doubt.
Megan Hargan is innocent.
Megan's friend Rebecca Wolfe spent about five years working
for the Justice Department.
She knows her way around a criminal trial
and has been at this one almost every day.
I would not be comfortable sending someone
to prison for the rest of their life
without knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind
that they did it.
On March 24, 2022, almost five years after the shootings,
the jury gets the case.
Based on your review of this case,
as the jury is heading into deliberation,
could this go either way?
Sure.
What do you think of the defense's toe on the trigger
theory?
For a look at a timeline of the investigation,
go to 48hours.com.
As the jurors come back to the room, they have a decision.
Are you looking at their faces?
Yes.
After a three-week trial, it takes
the jury less than two days of deliberations
to reach a verdict.
I thought my legs were going to go weak.
We were standing up, and it had been just months of our lives
that this is all we had done.
Megan Hargan is guilty, two counts
of first degree murder for killing her sister Helen
and mother Pam.
How did Megan react to the verdict?
Least for me as a prosecutor, I don't want
to look over at that table.
I think it's not very classy.
I'm just in the zone, trying not to pass out.
I think weight lifted off of everybody.
But it was a very emotional moment.
The jury recommends the sentence to the judge of life
in prison on each murder count.
He will rule on that this fall.
I thought for sure that I would be getting a phone call
and coming to pick her up, 100%.
Megan's friend Rebecca Wolfe thinks
this jury was short-sighted.
I thought they were going to see through all of this.
They were going to look at all the evidence.
They were going to ask the right questions.
They were going to do their job.
This job is difficult.
Detective Byerson thinks there are
parts of authority's conduct in this case
that he would have changed if he could,
how 911 dispatchers responded to Carlos Gutierrez
and how quickly the Fairfax County PD went public
with the murder-suicide theory.
I don't find it helpful to make a blanket statement about what
we think it is because it doesn't
matter what we think it is.
It only matters what it turns out to be.
Was justice served in this case?
Depends on what justice is.
You're never bringing back the two lives that were lost.
The domino effect of tragedy from what
happened is immeasurable,
Though the trial is finally finished, waves of grief
still wash over the surviving Hargan family.
It's just an immeasurable grief.
And ripples still reverberate in the lives
of people they touched, like Pam's former neighbor Tami.
And I was just devastated.
I mean, just--
I didn't have any words.
It was just unbelievable.
And Helen's friend Erin--
I was in shock.
--who had moved abroad after graduation
and had to hear about her death from us.
I had no idea that happened to her.
You're convinced, if Helen were alive today,
she'd be on the road to some great success,
some great career.
Absolutely.
She'd be a trailblazer.
How do you want your friend Helen to be remembered?
For being kind and compassionate, driven,
and caring, just a very caring person.
[music playing]
A popular college professor found dead in a hot tub,
accident or murder?
Suspected, her boyfriend.
Sheriff's Office.
Then, a stunning act from their host, a sudden shotgun blast.
There's something he's hiding.
48 hours, two weeks from tonight on CBS.
[music playing]