cover of episode Megan Parra

Megan Parra

2024/6/24
logo of podcast Forensic Tales

Forensic Tales

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript
People
旁白
知名游戏《文明VII》的开场动画预告片旁白。
Topics
旁白:本集讲述了2014年6月,29岁的梅根·帕拉在家中被发现头部中枪身亡的故事。警方迅速将此案定性为自杀,但梅根的父母坚信存在他杀。他们对警方的草率调查表示质疑,并进行了长达七年的独立调查,最终找到了关键证据,证明达斯汀·帕拉负有责任。 梅根的父母:他们从一开始就对警方的自杀结论表示怀疑。他们认为梅根生前生活充满希望,没有自杀的动机。他们发现了许多疑点,例如梅根死前一天发生的蹊跷车祸,达斯汀在案发现场和警察局的可疑行为,以及警方对证据的处理不当等。他们坚持不懈地寻找真相,最终促使案件重新调查,并最终将达斯汀绳之以法。 达斯汀·帕拉:达斯汀最初否认参与梅根的死亡,但最终承认了婚外情,并在压力下承认了在争吵中枪击梅根。他被控二级谋杀罪,但最终以过失杀人罪认罪。 警方:警方的调查存在严重缺陷,最初的报告过于简略,对关键证据(例如枪支指纹、车祸情况、邻居证词)的调查不足,甚至对关键证据进行了虚假陈述。这导致案件一度被错误地定性为自杀。 法医专家:法医专家对案发现场的血迹图案进行了分析,发现血迹分布与自杀结论不符,并发现了达斯汀短裤上的血迹,为指控达斯汀提供了关键证据。

Deep Dive

Chapters
Megan Parra, a 29-year-old wife and mother, was found dead in her home with a gunshot wound to her head. Initially ruled a suicide, her parents believe there was foul play involved.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.

On June 28, 2014, in the small town of Cottonport, Louisiana, 29-year-old Megan Parra was discovered in her home by her parents with a gunshot wound to her head. Megan's husband, Dustin Parra, showed up minutes later and tried to save her, but it was too late. She was taken off life support the next day. Her death was ruled a suicide, but her parents are convinced there was foul play.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 234, The Death of Megan Parra. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Now, let's get to this week's episode.

This week's story is all about a young wife, mother, and kindergarten teacher who suddenly turned up dead in June of 2014. The police were quick to rule it a suicide, but her family didn't think so. The Megan Parra they knew just wouldn't do something like that. Let's talk about Megan's story and what the forensic evidence says.

Saturday morning, June 28, 2014, in the tiny southern town of Cottonport, Louisiana, Megan's parents, Steve and Missy, faced the unthinkable. They went over to their youngest daughter's house and found her lying in a pool of blood in her dining room. At first, they thought maybe she had slipped and fallen. She could have hit her head, causing all of the blood. But they didn't.

but then they saw the gun lying in between her legs, a .357 Magnum pistol. When Megan's parents first got there, she was still alive. She was barely breathing, but alive. Megan's mom, Missy, was a nurse practitioner, so she was the first to try CPR before paramedics and first responders showed up. Megan's husband, Dustin, also tried to help since he was a nurse.

Megan was eventually airlifted to a trauma center in Lafayette, but there wasn't much they could do. And by 7.55 a.m. the following day, she was pronounced dead from a single gunshot wound to her head. Less than three weeks later, the Cottonport police and medical examiner came to the same conclusion. Megan shot and killed herself. They believed the evidence spoke for itself. This was a clear case of suicide.

The lead detective himself only wrote a single-page report about the entire incident, and the coroner didn't test for anything out of the box. It was all standard procedure. But her parents, Missy and Steve, didn't think so, and they would spend the next seven years conducting their own investigation to prove the police wrong.

In 2014, 29-year-old Megan Parra was a wife, mother of two small boys, and a kindergarten teacher. She was born the youngest of three girls to her parents, Steve and Missy, and she was described by her dad as a daddy's girl. By the summer of 2014, she lived in Cottonport, Louisiana, a small town about an hour and a half northwest of Baton Rouge with her husband, Dustin.

She was working toward her master's degree to eventually become a school principal, while at the same time helping one of her older sisters plan her upcoming baby shower. On the morning of Megan's death, Officer David Blanchard from the Cottonport Police Department was the first to get there. And to him, everything looked like a suicide.

There was a note on the kitchen counter that read, Dustin, please tell the boys that I have loved them with all of my heart and soul. I'm sorry. The boys referred to her and Dustin's two boys, who were four and 18 months. The gun that was used belonged to Dustin, and according to the autopsy, it had been placed directly on her temple when it went off, a pretty standard suicide position.

Inside one of Megan's pockets, they found a picture of her two boys, almost like she was holding on to them one last time. Then there was the fact that she was by herself when she was shot. No one else was thought to be home because Dustin said he was out running errands and their two boys were staying at their grandparents' house. Even the house itself was locked from the inside, so there was no reason to believe that someone broke in and shot her either.

Now, what about the physical evidence? Well, two days after Megan's death, lead detective Steve Ducat went to her parents and said that Megan's fingerprints were all over the gun, as well as Dustin's, which makes sense because the gun belonged to him. So this seemed to prove that Megan was the one who fired the gun and shot herself.

So for the Cottonport Police Department, this was all they needed to write it off as a simple suicide. It was a case that even the newest of detectives could solve. Or so they thought. But pretty quickly, Megan's family started to have their own suspicions. Starting with something that happened less than 24 hours before she died. Just one day earlier, Megan had gotten into a car accident.

She was driving alone down a stretch of road not far from her house when she somehow drove off and hit a tree head on. She was going about 45 miles per hour, but she wasn't on her cell phone and she had her seatbelt. She only sustained minor injuries from the accident, but oddly enough, there weren't any skid marks on the road. So it didn't seem like she ever tried to apply the brakes or stop the car before going off the road and into the tree.

The cops who investigated the accident asked Megan's parents if they thought their daughter might want to try to hurt herself. Maybe she intentionally drove off the side of the road and into the tree, since there wasn't any evidence that she even tried to stop the car. But Steve and Missy didn't think so. That just didn't sound like something she would do. When they asked Megan about it, she seemed to have two different stories. She told her mom that she lost focus and got distracted.

But according to Steve, Megan told her that she did try to use the brakes, but they didn't work, and that she hit the tree to avoid going into the bayou. So were the brakes working or not? Because that would tell us if Megan did this on her own. If she had, then maybe this was her first attempt at taking her own life. Well, we don't know, because they were never tested or analyzed by the police.

Even after Megan supposedly shot herself the following day, they never went back and looked at her car to see if anyone had messed with the brakes or not. Now, after the accident, Megan was taken to the hospital where she was treated for minor injuries to one of her hands. For some miracle, she wasn't seriously injured even after hitting a tree.

After that, Dustin took her home while Missy and Steve kept their two boys overnight so that she could have some time to recover. The next morning, around 7 a.m., Megan texted her mom to see if the boys were all right. Instead of texting her back, Missy called Megan and told her that the boys were just getting up and about to eat breakfast. She offered to bring Megan some food once the boys were up and ready for the day and just to come by and check on her.

Missy thought everything seemed fine with Megan. Of course, she was still recovering from the accident, but nothing about that phone call made her think that Megan was about to shoot and kill herself less than two hours later. About an hour later, Dustin called Missy saying that Megan was about to go take a bath while he went out to fill a prescription for her at Walmart. He also said that he would come by and pick up the kids on his way back home.

Again, nothing about that phone call was weird either. Dustin sounded like he always did. The only odd thing was, Dustin never came back to pick up the boys like he said he would. That's when Missy and Steve decided to take the kids and go to the house to check on her around 10 a.m. But by the time they got there, Megan was already dead. She was even still wearing the paper shirt that she had on from the hospital.

Missy was the one who called 911 and Steve called Dustin. They said he got there about 10 minutes later and came running into the house, even slipping on the blood that was on the floor, getting some of it on his shorts. The next day, Dustin and Megan's parents went to the Cottonport Police Department to meet with lead detective Christopher Knight. But it didn't seem to be much of an interview.

The police had pretty much already made up their minds that this was a suicide. It was like they just needed to check off the boxes and move on. Dustin was the first one to go in to be questioned. And when he came out, he apparently raised his hands in the air and said, well, I guess I'm not a suspect. Pretty strange thing to say after your wife just supposedly shot herself.

Missy and Steve just looked at each other wondering, did he really just say that? And right away, this comment set off some alarm bells in their heads. Why would he say something like that? What made him think that anyone was considering him a suspect in any of this? Not long after that, more alarm bells went off.

After the interviews were done, Detective Knight handed Dustin that suicide note that was found on the kitchen counter, presumably left behind by Megan. He said he didn't know what to do with it and that he was probably just going to throw it away in the trash. But Steve and Missy were like, no, wait, don't do that. Let's just keep it just in case.

It was almost like Dustin wanted nothing to do with his wife's own suicide note. He just wanted to throw it away. Alarm bell number two. Missy and Steve found out about the fingerprints the very next day. Detective Knight told them that Megan's and Dustin's fingerprints were all over the gun, which again makes sense because it was his gun in the first place.

So for a moment, a brief moment, Steve and Missy wondered if the police could be right. Maybe their youngest daughter really did kill herself. And maybe she intentionally caused that car accident the day before. But as it turned out, Detective Knight wasn't exactly telling the truth about the fingerprints. The truth was, the gun had never been tested.

Even though he told Megan's parents their daughter's prints were on the gun, it was never sent to the lab to be tested. And what's worse is that even before the coroner officially ruled Megan's death a suicide, the police turned the gun over back to Dustin. It was never put into the evidence. And a lab never determined whose fingerprints were actually on the gun. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip. Even when we know it makes us feel good, it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.

Therapy can help with things like how to set healthy boundaries or find ways to be the best version of yourself. So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist or switch therapist anytime for no additional charge.

Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. The more Missy and Steve thought about their daughter's death, the less sense it made to them. The first, of course, was the gun. Megan had never fired a gun in her entire life, so they weren't even sure that she would know how to load it.

And even though it belonged to Dustin, she had never touched it before. And why would the lead detective on the case tell them that they found Megan's prints on it when it was never actually tested? They also doubted why she would have taken her own life in the first place. She had so much to live for at this point in her life.

She was just weeks away from graduating with her master's degree. She was helping her older sister plan her baby shower for her first child. And just two days before she died, she asked her what color balloons she wanted. Nothing pointed toward suicide. Then there was how she died. This was something that really bothered Steve and Missy. She must have known that her two kids would have come home that morning and found her like that.

So Megan's parents just didn't believe that she would have done that, knowing that her boys would have had to see that and know that for the rest of their lives. It just didn't make sense. All of this led Megan's family to suspect that her husband, Dustin, might know more than what he was saying. Not only was his behavior strange at the police station, but they also had other reasons to suspect him.

like how he told three different stories to three different people about where he was when Steve called him, but that was never investigated by the police, or how the brakes on Megan's car were messed with just 24 hours before she died. There were also rumors that Dustin might be having an affair, also something that was never investigated by the Cottonport Police Department.

Megan's dad Steve even wondered if they may have gotten into a fight about it the morning that she died. It's possible that Megan found out about the affair and was threatening to leave him over it, a fight that could certainly cause something like this to happen. Besides the gunshot wound, Megan also had some strange bruises on her abdomen and chest area, so maybe they got into a fight about the affair or something else that morning and Dustin shot her.

Missy and Steve decided they just couldn't let this go. But the police didn't have any interest in it anymore. So they contacted a judge to see if they would agree to have another police department look at the case. They just didn't feel like the Cottonport Police Department did a good enough job in the first place. The judge agreed, so the county sheriff's office reopened the case four months later.

At this point, Megan and Dustin's two boys were living with Missy and Steve, and no one wanted Dustin to find out that they were investigating him. So everything the sheriff's office did had to be done without him finding out. They started by looking through the original detective, Detective Knight's report, which again was only a single page long. You'd expect it to be much longer for a case like this, but it wasn't.

It basically said that they got a call about a woman who had been shot. They got there, took some photos, and ruled it a suicide. And speaking of photos, the sheriff's office also looked at the 115 crime scene photos taken by Officer Dave Blanchard. But the biggest thing they did was that they interviewed two witnesses that were not originally interviewed by the Cottonport police.

Two of Megan and Dustin's neighbors thought that they heard what sounded like a gunshot that morning, but they heard it at two different times. The neighbor on the right said that she heard a very loud boom sometime after 7 a.m., but the neighbor on the left said that he heard the same exact thing about two hours later. He said he was still in bed, but he thought he heard the gunshot at 9.15. So which one is it? 7 or 9.15?

That seems to be a pretty important detail here because that creates a two-hour gap, and it's basically the difference between whether Dustin was home or not at the time that Megan was shot. The neighbor on the right said that she wasn't sure that what she heard at 7 a.m. was actually a gunshot or not. So the sheriff's office decided to believe the neighbor on the left since he said he was 100% positive that it was a gunshot that he heard.

So now the question became, could Dustin have been home at 9.15 a.m.? Well, Dustin had to go to Walmart that morning to pick up that prescription for Megan. And based on what the police knew, they felt pretty good about where he said he was. A state trooper said that he saw Dustin at an intersection near the Walmart just before 9 a.m.,

And even though they couldn't get a surveillance footage from inside of the Walmart, they did find Dustin's time-stamped receipt showing that he paid for the medicine at 9.43 a.m. So for the sheriff's office, this was pretty much all they needed. If one of the neighbors heard the gunshot at 9.15 a.m., but Dustin was at a Walmart paying for the prescriptions at pretty much the same time,

then there was no way that Dustin could have been at the house when Megan was shot. He couldn't be in two places at once. So on January 15, 2015, the lead detective from the sheriff's office released his eight-page report with the same exact findings as a Cottonport Police Department did, that Megan died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Case closed again.

But instead of this being any type of step back for Megan's parents, it was actually a blessing in disguise. That's because after the sheriff's office finished their investigation, Steve got access to the entire case file, including the 115 crime scene photos taken the morning of Megan's shooting. And what they found in some of the photos pretty much turned everything upside down.

Some of the photos in the file were blurry, so Steve tracked down the detective who took them, Officer David Blanchard. And when Steve spoke with him, he was surprised to find out that he had actually saved all of the original photos. As it turned out, Blanchard was also a little suspicious of Megan's death, so he kept the originals just in case.

Steve and his daughter, Betsy, went through every single one of the photos, trying to find something that might prove this wasn't a suicide. Even though they were photos of Megan after she had been shot, they knew that something could be hidden in one of these photos. They just needed to find it. Steve and Betsy also became their own forensic experts. They started studying bloodstain patterns and what they could mean at crime scenes.

They also looked at what's typical in suicide cases involving a gun and what wasn't. And that's when they noticed something in some of the photos. The blood around Megan just didn't look right. For starters, there was a lot more blood around the entry wound than there was around the exit. Normally, you'd expect to see a lot more blood near the exit, so that was a little strange.

Then, in some of the other photos, it looked like someone had rolled Megan over after she was shot, causing even more strange patterns in the blood on the floor that just didn't make any sense. She couldn't have shot herself and then rolled over. Or at least it's not likely given the fact that she was shot in the head. When it came to the photos of the gun itself, Megan's family thought that it looked like someone had wiped it clean.

The gun wasn't covered in blood like you'd expect it to be if Megan had just shot herself. Instead, it was perfectly clean, which is definitely something that she couldn't have done. Then there was that picture of Megan's boys that Dustin discovered in one of her pockets. Was she really the one who put it there, or did Dustin do it to make it look even more like a suicide?

Megan's parents also don't think that she was the one who wrote it because the handwriting didn't look like hers. They said she never wrote in solid print. She usually used mixed letters from print to cursive back to print all in the same word. So it was pretty unusual for this note to be written in all print letters without cursive.

Some of the other photos showed signs of a struggle inside the house, like a wine rack that had been knocked to the ground and a guitar on the floor that was in a place that it shouldn't have been. The family tried taking the photos back to the sheriff's department so that they could take another look at the case, but they weren't interested. They were pretty much satisfied with their own investigation of things and didn't think that the photos were a big deal.

So they went to the state police and did the same thing, but they weren't interested in it either. Megan's case was already closed to them as well. So that's when they turned to Dr. Mayu, the county coroner who issued Megan's death certificate. Based on the medical examiner's report, he was the one who officially classified her death as a suicide, and they at least wanted him to change it to undetermined until they could find more evidence.

Dr. Mayu agreed to hear what the family had to say. He also looked at the crime scene photos again. And when he did, he was immediately concerned about how the police originally investigated things. Simply put, he thought the investigation was sloppy. And even though he was the one who signed off on the death certificate and it was one of his coroners who did the autopsy, he knew this was a botched investigation pretty much from the get-go.

Not only was he concerned about the lead detective only writing a single-page report about his investigation of Megan's death, but he also didn't even bother to attend the autopsy. So this doctor decided to write a letter to the Louisiana State Police in 2017. He was basically asking for them to review the case, something that they denied doing earlier when the family had asked them to.

But since the request this time came from the county coroner, they agreed to finally look at it. But just when you thought this story might be over and Megan's family could finally get some justice, the state police came to the same conclusion that the Cottonport Police Department did. They said Megan killed herself. After the Louisiana State Police officially closed the case, the people and Megan's life went in two separate ways.

Dustin remarried another woman and started raising their two sons, which probably was yet another red flag, while Megan's parents just couldn't move on. But instead of giving up hope, Steve reached out to an old high school friend who just so happened to also be a retired FBI agent who was now living in Nebraska, David Lamone.

Steve told David Lamone everything that had happened and that he thought his daughter might have actually been murdered, but he needed his help if anything was ever going to change. So in 2018, David flew out to Louisiana to meet with his brother, but also to meet up with Steve to see if there was any way that he could help.

When he got there, Steve turned over everything that he had. The 115 crime scene photos, the coroner's report, everything. David took it home with him, and not even 12 hours later, he went back to Steve's house and told him, your daughter was murdered. He believed in the evidence and what he saw so much that he even came out of retirement from the FBI to help.

So in 2019, that is exactly what he did. He also enlisted the help of another retired FBI agent, Zach Shelton. But to officially dig into the case, they both needed new badges since they were technically retired with no law enforcement power anymore.

So they turned to Cottonport's new police chief, Ernest Anderson, who didn't give them their FBI badges back, but he did something even better. Made them both official Cottonport police officers and even agreed to let them reopen Megan's case. Since becoming the new police chief, he always thought that they botched the investigation.

So being caught in port police officers made them legally and officially able to investigate the case. The first person they wanted to sit down and talk to was Detective Christopher Knight, the head detective. So on January 15th, 2019, David Lamone and Zach Shelton sat down with him with their body cameras rolling. During their interview, he basically admitted that the original investigation was botched from the beginning.

He said the biggest problem was that his officers lacked experience investigating cases like this, but he was adamant that he didn't do it on purpose. He didn't botch the case because he wanted to for some evil reason. It was botched because they simply weren't trained to investigate it, and they didn't have the experience to recognize signs of suicide versus murder.

So they just took everything at face value. If it looked like a suicide, then it must be. They didn't look any further or look at the forensic evidence. He also finally admitted that the gun Megan supposedly used to shoot herself was never actually tested for fingerprints. So when he told her parents that her prints were on the gun, it wasn't because it was ever tested. So why did he lie about it?

Well, during that interview, Detective Knight said that he didn't do it on purpose. He said he didn't intentionally lie about the fingerprints, he just never fully examined the evidence. Which, I'm not sure what that's even supposed to mean. Either way, what he told Missy and Steve two days after Megan was shot simply wasn't true. They hadn't found her prints on the gun. David and Zach also questioned Dustin for more than an hour.

He finally admitted that, yes, he did have an affair not too long before Megan died, but he insisted he had nothing to do with what happened. Yes, he was a cheater, but he wasn't a murderer. He also said that Megan was depressed and she was obsessed with knowing where her children would go after they died.

He claimed that she would wake up in the middle of the night and tell him that she couldn't stop thinking that they wouldn't go to heaven after they died or if something happened to them, which is a pretty strange thing to think about in the middle of the night. And it's even stranger that Megan never once said that to anyone else.

She never told her parents or her sisters or any of her friends that she was worried about her kids going to heaven. She also never mentioned being depressed before. When they asked Dustin if Megan knew about the affair that he was having, he said that she didn't, but who knows if that's true or not.

Now, one thing that really bothered David and Zach was how Steve described Dustin running into the house that morning and how he apparently slipped in Megan's blood. Now, it wasn't just that he slipped, but according to Steve, Dustin came running into the house like he was sliding into first base in a baseball game.

Dustin said that it was a complete accident and he never meant to slide into the blood like that. But for everyone else, it looked like yet another attempt to try and conceal the forensic evidence. If he slipped in the blood, maybe the blood patterns would also get messed up. And what better way to further screw up a crime scene?

Dustin was also asked about the suicide note, which, by this point, everyone else was convinced that he had written. But not surprisingly, he denied doing that too. Things in the interview got so heated that eventually, Dustin got up from the table and said that he was done with it. Since he wasn't under arrest or anything, he was free to go, so he left. But it didn't stop there.

Zach and David also interviewed Ann Gilroy, one of the neighbors who heard a gunshot that morning. She was the one who said she heard the loud boom sometime around 7 a.m. But when the police first spoke to her, she said she wasn't 100% sure that whether what she heard was actually a gunshot or not. She just knew that she heard something really, really loud.

So that's why the police believed the other neighbor's story instead, the one who said that he heard a gunshot closer to 9 a.m. But now, sitting down with Zach and David, she was convinced that what she heard a little after 7 was in fact a gunshot. And if that was true, then Dustin's alibi completely falls apart. Remember, he was at Walmart picking up Megan's prescription between 9 and 10 a.m.,

But if Megan was shot closer to 7 than 9 a.m., then that means he had plenty of time to do it. He could have easily shot and killed his wife and then left to go to Walmart to help establish his alibi. It also means that the other neighbor was actually mistaken about what time it was when he heard the gunshot. At this point, you might think this was a slam dunk for prosecutors to finally charge Dustin.

But it wasn't. This was all purely circumstantial. Yes, Dustin was an admitted cheater. Yes, it was really weird for him to basically baseball slide into his own wife's blood. And maybe he wrote the suicide note and placed the photograph of the boys inside of her pocket. But none of that was cold, hard evidence. Or at least it wasn't enough for prosecutors.

It wasn't until the family finally got a forensic expert to discover what they believed would be the physical evidence connecting Dustin to the shooting. In April of 2021, Steve hired an independent crime scene analyst named Eric Richardson. Richardson is an expert in blood spatter, and when he looked at some photos of Dustin's shorts, the ones that he wore that morning,

He noticed a fine mist of blood right under one of the pocket flaps. To him, it looked like the kind of fine mist that could only be caused by high-velocity blood spatter from a gunshot wound, which could only mean one thing. Dustin was there when the gun was fired. He didn't just get the blood on them when he slipped in it.

This same expert, Eric Richardson, also agreed that the gun looked like it had been wiped clean. And the only one that could have done that or wanted to do that was, of course, Dustin. This was finally the forensic proof they needed to move things forward. So on October 13th, 2021, Charles Riddle, the county district attorney, took the case to a grand jury.

And six minutes later, they came back with a decision. Dustin Parra was being charged with second-degree murder, seven long years after his wife Megan was shot. Right after that, Dustin was arrested, pleaded not guilty, and released on bond.

and based on the blood spatter that Richardson found on Dustin's shorts and the charges, the medical examiner changed Megan's autopsy report and changed the manner of death from suicide to undetermined. Now, all that was left to do was bring a decades-old case to trial. Prosecutors suspected that Megan was shot around 7.30 that morning, and Dustin left the house to establish his alibi knowing that she was still alive.

He just needed a time-stamped receipt from Walmart, then no one would question anything. But by no means was this an open and shut case. Experts from both the state and Jefferson Parish crime labs were going to be called by the defense, and they were going to testify to the blood spatter on Dustin's shorts.

They were going to try and convince the jury that none of it proved that he was there when the gun went off and the blood could have gotten there when he went to go help his wife. And then there was Megan's notes to her sons. A handwriting expert hired by Megan's family was going to testify that it was most likely written by Megan herself. It was basically her way of saying goodbye and making sure that her kids knew that she loved them.

But Charlie Riddle, the prosecutor, was prepared to argue that that wasn't a suicide note at all. He was going to tell the jury that it was actually a note Megan wrote to Dustin leaving him. She wanted out of the marriage and she was done.

There were a lot of other details the prosecution needed to explain at trial, like the exact time that Megan was shot, where Dustin was when it happened, and how long she could have been lying on the floor before her parents got there. These are all questions the jury was probably going to have, but luckily for them, they wouldn't have to come up with the answer.

That's because three days before the case was scheduled to go to trial, the prosecutor got a phone call on March 23, 2023. It was Dustin's defense attorney asking for a plea deal. Instead of second-degree murder, Dustin agreed to plead guilty to negligent homicide.

which in the state of Louisiana isn't considered a violent crime and only carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, an incredibly low sentence for something like this. Megan's parents eventually agreed to the plea deal, but only under one condition. Dustin answers some very specific questions. Question number one, was your marriage in trouble at the time of Megan's death?

Dustin's answer, yes. Question number two. On the morning of June 28, 2014, you and her were fighting, and she threatened to leave you. Dustin's answer, yes. Question number three. You had a pistol in your hand, and in the struggle, the gun went off, firing into her head. Correct? Dustin's answer, yes.

None of that was going to bring Megan back, but to her parents, it was as close as they were to getting justice. They just wanted him to finally admit that he shot her, and this was no suicide. On March 23, 2023, Dustin Parra pleaded nolo contendere, or no contest, to negligent homicide.

And about one month later, on April 20, 2023, Missy and Steve were granted full custody of their two grandchildren. In exchange for his plea, Dustin Parra was sentenced to five years, but he will likely only serve about 18 months of that in prison and the rest of it on parole, a sentence completely disproportionate to the crime, at least in my opinion.

On another note, David Limon, the retired FBI agent who helped get things moving, unfortunately passed away from COVID-19 in December 2020 before finding out what happened in the case or learning about the impact his work had on it. Megan's story was solved because of two things, the relentlessness of her family and the forensic evidence.

Without a set of eyes looking at the blood spatter from the crime scene photos, Dustin Parra may have never been arrested for his involvement in what happened that morning, and Megan's death may still be listed as a suicide. But thanks to the forensic evidence, her truth has finally been uncovered. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.

To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us.

You can also help support this show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please, join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

Thank you.

For supporting the show, you'll become one of the first to listen to new ad-free episodes. To learn more about how you can support the show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash friends and family. Or simply click the support link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive review or telling friends and family about us.

Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers. If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page.

or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.