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Crime Story Episode 50: Peter Van Sant

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide. Please take care.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: From the outside looking in, Pamela Hargan and her daughters had it all. They lived on a manicured street in McLean, Virginia -- an upscale neighbourhood with a short commute to D.C. On any given day, they might rub shoulders with senators, CIA agents or other political power players who lived in the area. So when police were called to the Hargan home on July 14th, 2017, their first impression was that the place was, quote, "immaculate." But when detectives pushed inside, what they found would shock them. Two women -- dead. Lying in a strange and haunting crime scene that would baffle investigators. In his new podcast, Blood Is Thicker: The Hargan Family Killings, journalist Peter Van Sant pulls back the curtains on this American tragedy, revealing a story of mother-daughter discord, financial greed and cold-blooded betrayal. He joins me today on Crime Story. I'm Kathleen Goldhar. Peter, welcome to Crime Story.

PETER VAN SANT: Thank you, Kathleen. I'm very happy to be here.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So this podcast really was very gripping from the very moment we start. We start by hearing what I can only describe as one of the most harrowing moments that any family would be going through in a situation like this. Can we start right there? Can we start with what we're hearing when we press play on episode one?

PETER VAN SANT: We begin this podcast with harrowing sounds. A family is being notified that there is not one but two of their members who have been found dead. One of them, Pamela Hargan, is the matriarch of this family. She is a loving, generous woman who is taking care of her three daughters after she had divorced from her family. Very successful... She is dead. The youngest sister, Helen Hargan, just 24, just out of university. She is discovered dead inside this beautiful home in McLean, Virginia, in this beautiful tree-lined neighbourhood, where things like this are not supposed to happen.

SOUNDCLIP

OFFICER: Someone matching the description of your mother was found deceased on the main level.

[a woman cries]

OFFICER: She did have a gunshot wound.

[the woman cries out]

PETER VAN SANT: The shock is terrible, and you hear them cry out. And also, then they are told that this may be a murder-suicide on top of everything else. The, the horror, the shock of this, this information. And suddenly they learn that one of their own may have shot the mother and then shot herself. So, it's unimaginable what they were going through. And you hear the heartache, the desperation that had now entered their lives.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And Pamela Hargan, let's start with her. Because she really is a very strong personality and like you said, a matriarch of this family. Can you give me a little bit more about who Pamela was?

PETER VAN SANT: Pamela Hargan was 63 years old, and she had lived a remarkably successful life in business. She worked for an aerospace giant for a number of years. And then she became a vice president of a human relations firm tied in with the federal government. She had built an $8-million estate with all the success in her life. She owned real estate stocks and bonds, cash. And she was very generous with her money. She was helping Helen, her 24-year-old daughter, her youngest -- who had just been graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas -- to buy a home. She was going to come back to Virginia and begin a life there. Living with Pamela at her house was her oldest daughter, Megan. And Megan had an eight-year-old. Pamela had opened up her house to Megan and took care of them; paid all of their expenses and was a loving grandmother and a loving mother to Megan. Pam, by all accounts, was someone who was a demanding personality, not in a mean way, but she expected her girls to work hard in life, to be responsible in life. And that's the way she lived her days. And she had been divorced from her husband, the father of the three girls, for some time. Life, though, was, was going very well, and no one saw this coming.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Why was there any sense that this might have been a murder-suicide? What did they find in the house?

PETER VAN SANT: Well, it began, first, when after the family was notified, Megan, the oldest daughter, offered up to the detective that, well, there had been some trouble in the home. That Helen, the youngest, had been arguing and been angry with her mother, Pam, over an issue about a house that Pamela had promised to pay for for Helen, and that she was now backing out of that. Ashley, the other sister, had said, well, Helen had suffered from depression and that she just wasn't quite herself. And so, right off the bat, there was this suggestion. Here you have found two people dead in the house, and the circumstances are quite disturbing. Pamela is found in the mudroom of the house. She's lying face down with a blanket or a quilt on top of her. And on top of the quilt is her cell phone. [KATHLEEN: Mm-hmm.] Now obviously, it couldn't have fallen on that. Someone must have placed it there. And then inside the house, upstairs in a bathroom, a desperately horrible, bloody scene. Helen, 24 years old, is fully clothed, she's sitting on top of the toilet. She has a head wound, a massive head wound, and there was a rifle between her legs with the barrel of the rifle pointed toward her body. And so, right then, you know, as quick observation, they're looking, Hmm. Looks like she was shot down below, Pamela. Placed under this blanket. And by the way, when family members kill other family members, it's very common that they will cover their face. And that was the situation here. And then you had Helen upstairs with this rifle and it just looked like she had shot herself. And right away, with Megan saying they had been at war with each other, and then Ashley saying that her sister had been depressed, authorities, a little too quickly, came up with the notion that this must be a murder-suicide.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But then that shifts pretty quickly because Megan brings up Helen's boyfriend as, as a possible suspect. Is that right?

PETER VAN SANT: That's right. Well, there are several things that are brought up. Helen, when she was at university in Dallas, Texas, she worked at a restaurant. And she met Carlos and they began dating. They fell in love. Helen said that she and Carlos wanted to get married. And Megan tells a story that Carlos Gutierrez had come to visit the house and that after he left that their mother, Pamela, was convinced that he had stolen some things from the house. So, right away he was being painted as trouble. And Megan also says that Pamela would be very upset with this relationship. She didn't support it, she didn't want Carlos to be in Helen's life. And that as a result of that, Pamela was going to pull back on this promise to provide Helen with a house of her own, which created all this tension and arguing. Now, the problem with all of that is that it turned out to be untrue. This was a fairy tale that was being told that authorities at the time didn't know that.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then we start to hear about Carlos's terrifying sort of, like, participation in what happened to his girlfriend. So that morning of the tragedy, they're talking and Helen says something to him that sort of sparks his fear. Can we talk about what we find out actually was the case with Carlos?

PETER VAN SANT: So, Carlos Gutierrez gets a phone call late morning in Dallas, Texas, from Helen, and she is in a panicked state. He said he could hear the fear and desperation in her voice. And she says to him something extraordinary. She says, My sister has shot my mother, and I think she's down in the basement and she's, she's transferring money. And Carlos is saying, What? Well, get out of the house. Get get out of there as quickly as you can. And then she says, Well, I can't because my older sister, Megan -- and that's the one she accused of shooting her mom -- she has an eight-year-old daughter. I don't want to leave her in the house by herself. And Carlos is, you know, several thousand miles away. And she hangs up and he begins the process of trying to report this. But imagine calling 9-1-1 in Dallas, Texas: ‘9-1-1. May I help you?’ ‘Yes, my girlfriend in Fairfax County, Virginia, is telling me that her sister has shot and killed her mother.’ And the, the audio that you listen to of the 9-1-1 dispatcher is one of the most frustrating things I've heard in a long time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It really is. Yeah.

PETER VAN SANT: ‘Well, you should call the local authorities and things,’ and, ‘why don't you call that jurisdiction,’ I think is the word that she uses.

SOUNDCLIP

DISPATCHER: Okay, 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.

CARLOS: Okay, I think this is like life or death. Like, I think someone might be dead.

PETER VAN SANT: And so Carlos ends up spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get a hold of these people. And all this time goes by. And as it does, Helen, they, they keep reconnecting, and um, she's terrified and she seems immobilized by that terror. He says to run out of the house; she won't do it. She doesn't call 9-1-1. To this day, people are baffled at that. Why didn't she [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] call for for help? And Carlos then begins his quest of trying to notify law enforcement in that part of Virginia that there is an emergency.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Is it his calls that get the police over there?

PETER VAN SANT: Yes, eventually he does get through to Fairfax County Dispatch and he tells them about this. And they do send officers over to the house. And that's when the grisly discoveries are made.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And how quickly do the police start to look at Megan as a suspect versus a grieving sister and daughter?

PETER VAN SANT: There was a Detective Brian Byerson, who's a very savvy fellow, and he comes over to the scene. This is after the first responders had already arrived, and already people were talking of murder-suicide. Detective Byerson, as soon as he got there and walked around, it just didn't add up to him. Because he's, he's looking at the scene, particularly upstairs. There is a rifle, which is a very strange weapon to shoot yourself with because how do you reach the trigger? He noticed that right away. And also he could see that the wound to Helen was at the top of her head. And that suggested to him right off the bat that someone else had pulled a trigger. But what we learned downstream was that Megan had told neighbours and friends and her sister Ashley, that Helen was suffering from depression. It turned out Helen had never had a diagnosis of depression. But this was part of the groundwork, it is believed, that-- what was being laid, the manipulative groundwork, for Megan's plot to kill her mother and her sister so she would be able to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars for a house that... she needed $400,000. The day of the shootings there was a note that she was supposed to pay $400,000 to this trust company so that she could buy a house. And she desperately needed that money. And by the way, in Megan's bank account at the time, she had $30. [KATHLEEN: Oh.] And, and so she didn't have it. And it hatched this, this plot to murder her own mother and her sister and transfer money into her account so she could have the house that she wanted with her husband. And that she would have what she felt she deserved in life, even if that cost her mother's life and her sister's life.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Why, why was Pam not open to giving her daughter money the way she had done with her other children and-- their whole lives? It seemed that Pam did support her children this way, bought them houses and cars and things like that.

PETER VAN SANT: Much of this I have to label as speculation. This is talking to investigators because we were not able to speak with Ashley herself. But Pamela had very high standards. She demanded of her kids that they work hard, they'd be responsible for themselves. And Megan was perceived within the family, I was told, as somebody who was basically living off of her mother's generosity and taking advantage of that. Now, Megan did have a more difficult situation financially. She had a young child, an eight-year-old. Her husband in the military was overseas much of the time, and of course, didn't make much money in the military. And, you know, Helen was, was the apple of Pamela's eye. She saw [KATHLEEN: Hm.] Helen, we were told, as basically a young version of herself. Helen had been graduated from this prestigious university with two degrees in engineering. She was very ambitious. She was going to come back and begin a job in Virginia. And I think she was in many ways the favoured child. So she was willing to buy her a house with Megan. She preferred that Megan just live with her. She just was not ready to bestow on her that kind of support until Megan was able to get her life together, I think, to a place that Pamela would respect.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And so much of the story... I mean, it's astounding how much tape there is of, of actual crimes being committed. One of the tapes that I found the most incredible to listen to, and I'm, and I know ended up helping the police a lot, was a call to a bank. Can you tell us about that?

PETER VAN SANT: Well, let me, let me back up a little bit [KATHLEEN: Please.] on that, on that story. So Detective Brian Byerson -- and this almost feels like something out of a television detective show -- when he was walking around the house, he went downstairs and he noticed some photo albums on a bookshelf. And he thought to himself, I'd like to see what these people looked like in life. And so he pulls a photo album from the bookcase, and behind it he discovers some papers. And these are documents that have passwords to all of Pamela, the mother's, bank accounts and account information. And also had Megan's bank account information. And it just struck him at the moment of, what the heck is this? What a suspicious place to put this. But the search warrant did not include going in the basement and going through books. And so he took a picture of the-- some pictures of these documents and he left. And they then got a warrant the next day. And when he came back to get these documents, they were gone. But he did have pictures of them. And so, he saw this link that it was to a bank called Capital One. And by this time, too, they were getting into Pam's telephone, and they discovered a voicemail from Capital One that was expressing concern that somebody was trying to do a wire transfer out of her account of $400,000. It turned out Pam had called the bank. And this is all on audiotape.

SOUNDCLIP

PAMELA HARGAN: Hello?

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 1: Hi. Who am I speaking to?

PAMELA HARGAN: Who am I speaking to?

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 1: My name is Jeff with Capital One.

PAMELA HARGAN: Okay. This is Pamela Hansen Hargan.

PETER VAN SANT: She had called the bank and basically said, What is going on? Someone's trying to do-- No, this is not me. I am not the person that's trying to do this wire transfer.

SOUNDCLIP

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 1: So, I hear that somebody tried to do a wire out of your account for four hundred and some odd thousand dollars.

PAMELA HARGAN: What?

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 1: Yeah, that's what the other gentleman was saying.

PAMELA HARGAN: For how much?

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 1: Four hundred and some odd thousand, he said.

PAMELA HARGAN: I did not do that.

PETER VAN SANT: Then Byerson learned about this. They talked to Capital One and it turned out that on the morning that these killings occurred, someone had called the bank impersonating Pamela, saying that she wanted to move this $400,000 to this trust company in Virginia. And Byerson thought he recognized the voice.

SOUNDCLIP

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 2: May I have your first and last name, please?

MEGAN: Pamela Hansen Hargan.

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 2: Thank you. I understand you want to complete a wire transfer with us today?

MEGAN: Yes. We attempted to yesterday, and there was a bit of a mix up, so we would like to do it again now.

BANK REPRESENTATIVE 2: Okay.

PETER VAN SANT: And that voice was Megan. Pamela's--

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's Megan.

PETER VAN SANT: --oldest daughter. It's an extraordinary break in this case. And it all came from a man who just wanted to take some-- take a look at what these people looked like in real life when they were alive.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's an extraordinary piece of tape, too. And I just thought, I was thinking about sort of the trajectory of Megan and her decision to do this. So, we have that phone call in the morning, and one can just maybe assume that Pamela obviously found out about it and maybe she approached her daughter to get, you know, to find out what was going on. But we also know that the day before, Megan called the police, saying that there were strange men in the neighbourhood.

PETER VAN SANT: Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So, so do we think that maybe Megan had actually planned this? That it wasn't some passionate, angry response to being caught out, that it might have been something planned?

PETER VAN SANT: Absolutely. And this is always sad to say, too, because of course, the two men that were in this upscale neighbourhood, she said, were African American men.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yes.

PETER VAN SANT: She felt that they were scoping out the neighbourhood. And as a result, she said she went down into the basement. There was a closet where they kept a rifle inside a case, and that she had then brought this rifle up into the main floor of the house to have handy. You know, I guess she was going to get ready to fire upon them if they tried to enter her house. She also called the police to report that these men had been wandering about. And by the way, no one else in that neighbourhood had ever called. And authorities do believe that she was laying the foundation for this murder, because she needed to get that weapon that was used upstairs where her younger sister, Helen, could have access to it. If she was planning a murder-suicide, how would Helen, who, according to everyone, was afraid of firearms and had never shot a firearm in her life, how she would have had access to this? Well, Megan said she'd brought it up because these two men were...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Were in the neighbourhood.

PETER VAN SANT: ...suspiciously wandering about the neighbourhood. It was a pretty diabolical idea, and at the time, it fit the murder-suicide theory that was out there. Very clever, but not clever enough.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Not clever enough. And in the end, shows premeditation. So, when do the police switch and actually set their sights on Megan and start to question her story?

PETER VAN SANT: This happened about probably 36 hours after the two bodies had been discovered, and Byerson had found those documents when they disappeared the next day. And then they found on Pamela's phone the voicemail, and then they contacted the bank. So suddenly this house of cards was starting to crumble. But within about 30 hours, investigators were on top of this and realized the, the connection to this attempted wire transfer went directly to Megan.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And their long interrogation of Megan is also on tape.

PETER VAN SANT: Yes, she agreed to be questioned by police. She goes down to the police station. There was a video camera there, so her image is being recorded. And every defense attorney will tell you, don't ever talk to the police. And Megan sits down and doesn't talk for five or ten minutes, and says, That's my story and I'm going to leave. She stays for four hours. And during the course of that gives investigators the opportunity to press her on all these details, and there's no attorney there to tell her to be quiet. And, and she's implicated and she's realizing that they're on to her. And at one point, she just kind of says, Okay, blame me. Just blame me for this.

SOUNDCLIP

MEGAN: Blame me.

INVESTIGATOR: Listen--

MEGAN: Blame me.

INVESTIGATOR: Listen...

MEGAN: My family's been through enough. Let Molly grow up without me, it's fine.

INVESTIGATOR: You have got to unload this.

MEGAN: Blame me. That's fine. There's nothing... Just blame me.

PETER VAN SANT: It was a very strange moment, but one in which I think she came to the realization that this intricate plan of hers -- which involved psychologically, in my opinion, manipulating her sister Ashley; her father, who lived at a different residence; neighbours; police, with the false report of these men moving in the neighbourhood, meaning she had to bring a firearm to the main floor of the house... All of that intricate planning. Posing as her mother to try to get hundreds of thousands of dollars transferred into her bank account. All of that scheming now was collapsing around her and she realized they were on her. And that's why I think at that moment, Just blame me, she said. It was, it was the closest thing, and Byerson and said later it was the closest thing to a confession that he could get.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Very interesting. Who knows what our guilty conscience make us do and make us say. Eventually, they do charge her. And what do they charge her with?

PETER VAN SANT: She is charged with first degree murder in the death, both of her mother, Pamela, and her younger sister, Helen.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And let's move to the trial, because I can't imagine what it must be like for the family members that are left. So her sister and her father, what kind of role do they have to play at her trial?

PETER VAN SANT: This is where the surviving sister, Ashley, is really put through hell. Because remember, Ashley had been manipulated by Megan to believe that Helen suffered from depression. Megan had told Ashley in the weeks prior to the murder that Helen had even talked about suicide. And so when Ashley was initially questioned by detectives and the fact that they were looking at this as a potential murder-suicide, she offered that Helen had expressed a desire to possibly take her own life. Or self-harm, she may have used that expression. And so that fortified the notion that this was a murder-suicide. So now Ashley becomes a very important witness. And she comes up on the stand, and, and there is an extraordinary time in which, during the course of her testimony that went on for a long time, 150 times she says, 'I don't recall' or 'I can't remember.' Because they, they press her. The defence is hoping that she will be a powerful witness for them. They said, you know, You told police that your sister, Helen, talked about killing herself. 'I don't recall. I don't recall.' They asked over and over again. 'I don't recall. I don't recall.' They played the audiotape of her saying this. 'I don't remember saying that.' So it was a torturous time for Ashley, because I think, caught up in all of this, I mean, she cherished her mother. She loved her younger sister, Helen. She was a gentle soul, and now she's caught up in this where a defence attorney is trying to use her to help, by that time, um, you know, she realized her sister Megan was undoubtedly the killer. They're trying to use her to get Megan off. And so that was very traumatizing, and her testimony was, was agonizing to watch.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And the defence really do work hard to try to get Megan off. I mean, they even have, they work pretty hard to show that, in fact, Helen could have killed herself with that rifle in that position. And they, they-- it's been called, like, the toe defence. So, what was that about?

PETER VAN SANT: You know, this theory that they put forward as to how she shot herself with the rifle, is, is absurd, but they presented it with all seriousness. Now, keep in mind, at autopsy, the medical examiner was able to establish the bullet trajectory and Helen had been shot at the top of the head. The bullet went down through into her neck. And so, how is that possible? Well, they did all these measurements. The prosecution experts, forensic experts, did these measurements, and for her to have placed the rifle on top of her head, they did measurements and they found that she was five inches short of being able to reach the trigger with her hand. And so this is a problem for the defence because they're claiming that she did commit suicide. So they came up with a theory, and they hired an expert that came up with this Rube Goldberg kind of circumstance that she sat on that toilet seat. She bent down, she put the barrel of the rifle on the top of her head, and with her toe she pulled the trigger. And um... I don't know. If there was a laugh track in the, in the courthouse, I think you would have heard it. And I challenged, during the course of this, the expert who had put together a video about how this could be done. It was not allowed to be played at court, but in, in the story that we had worked on, we were able to use the video. It's just quite absurd. And then also, imagine how much she would have had to manipulate that rifle, Helen, to get it in place and whatnot. Well, it was fascinating, because none of her fingerprints were on the rifle.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Oh, wow.

PETER VAN SANT: In fact, no one's fingerprints were found on that rifle, which suggested it had been wiped clean.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Wiped clean. I also just keep thinking about the family and the left-- the daughter who was left over, and just how desperately terrible this must have been for them. Not only did they lose their sister and their mom and another sister, because what-- you know, she was, she had killed her, but also there was a relationship there that they had to contend with. And then for it to be pushed so hard, this murder-suicide theory, was such a ridiculous and thoughtless kind of effort. It just must have added to the whole torture for this poor woman.

PETER VAN SANT: Oh, absolutely. When, you know, when they were told of these murders, Ashley was sobbing, and she said, It just breaks your heart. Mom took care of everything.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

PETER VAN SANT: And suddenly, mom was gone. Her younger sister, Helen, who she treasured, was gone. And, and Megan quickly became a suspect. So try to imagine that. You've lost your mom, your sister, and the killer is another sister. I mean, this is... not many-- use any cliches here, but the ultimate betrayal. It is so shocking that this could have occurred inside a family that was successful and happy, um, is, is still baffling to me. After all these years, I still can't wrap my brain around the horror of this act.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The jury obviously didn't believe it. So what do they come back with?

PETER VAN SANT: They-- the trial lasted for three weeks. There were many, many witnesses, so a lot of stuff to go over. But the jury only needed a day and a half of deliberations, and they come [KATHLEEN: Hm, interesting.] back guilty of first-degree murder in both cases. And we had some people talk to some of the jurors afterwards, and they, they knew right at the start of their deliberations. They wanted to go over things to be responsible, but they, they had reached that guilty conclusion right away.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Right away. And so, where is Megan now? What is she serving?

PETER VAN SANT: Megan is in... well, you know, there's drama because this case ended up being thrown out. The verdict got thrown out because they discovered that a juror had taken a .22 rifle, and at home had tried to figure out if she could pull the trigger and then try to do the toe...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Oh, good God.

PETER VAN SANT: ...situation. And so she had violated the rules of the court. You cannot make up your own evidence. And so the verdict was actually set aside and they had a second trial and she was found guilty again. But she is in prison for life. And, of course, we had hoped to speak with her. She has turned us down. But she is in life without the possibility of parole.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Has she ever admitted that she's the killer?

PETER VAN SANT: No, she has not.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She maintains her innocence.

PETER VAN SANT: When the guilty verdict came down, she had her back to us and she started shuddering. You know, her shoulders were shaking and her defence attorney took his palm and was just rubbing the top of her back. She didn't turn around. Um, but she's never expressed remorse for this. She's never accepted responsibility for this, and um, and everyone lives with the consequences of that. Carlos Gutierrez, the boyfriend, he and Helen were going to get married. They were planning a life together. That was all destroyed. He now works in the oil fields in the Permian Basin in Texas and is a very sad person. We've had folks speak with him and he has agreed to brief phone conversations. But he says, to this day, years later, his, his life was destroyed. Ashley, we've been told, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Um, she had a boyfriend the last time that we talked to her who was giving her lots of support. But it's been absolutely devastating for her as well.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Megan had a young daughter, you know, who was there when all of this went down, which is even more horrible. Do you know anything about where she is and how she's doing?

PETER VAN SANT: We-- All that we know is that, um, Molly is her name. Molly lives with her father. He was the fellow who was in the U.S. military. He's out of the military now, and they moved to a state in the Midwest somewhere. And so she, she lives with her dad.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And what about Megan's husband? Do we have any sense of whether he was aware of any of this, or what was-- you know, how did that kind of happen?

PETER VAN SANT: Detective Byerson questioned him extensively. He always volunteered to help. No, he thought that they were moving forward to buying this house and that Megan was getting help from Pamela. He never suspected anything. He had no idea there was anything nefarious that was being planned. And again, he spent so much of that time -- he was out of the country. He was posted overseas in the Middle East. And they believe he had no role in this whatsoever.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And lastly, Peter, I just want to ask about you. I mean, you have covered some pretty big stories: 9-1-1, the collapse of the Soviet Union, you know, Katrina. This is kind of a smaller-scale story in a way because it's about one family, but I'm curious, like, how it's impacted the journalist that you are, if at all?

PETER VAN SANT: Well, I work for 48 Hours, and um, I cover the worst of humanity at times. I admit that I am fascinated, as the people listening to this podcast are fascinated, with the depths that human beings can sink to. I always look at murders as sort of the, the parakeet in the mineshaft, right? It's an expression of where we are as a culture and a people; the state of our country and society. The prosecutor in this case -- I wrote this down. I wanted to read it during this. He said, There's nothing more deliberate, willful and cruel than to put a firearm to the head and pull the trigger. He said that in court. This case has... I can't get out of my mind the viciousness, the callousness to kill the woman who brought you into this world. And who was so generous with her, who took care of her in the home, paid all of her expenses, um, was a wonderful grandmother to her daughter. For that woman to kill her mom and then kill her younger sister who clearly she was jealous of. And for what? I mean, how is she going to live the rest of her life? She had her-- a house and her kitchen and a TV room. And what? How was that going to work? She had a child that she was raising. It's... That viciousness, that, that darkness inside the human soul is something that I have trouble figuring out. And I'm, I'm as baffled as anyone else. And it takes a lot to shock me, but this one shocked me to the core.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, it's a very compelling podcast as well. So thank you for doing that work and thank you for joining us.

PETER VAN SANT: Great. Thank you, Kathleen, I appreciate it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We release a new episode every Monday, so please remember to follow the show in your podcast app. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcasts' YouTube channel or by subscribing to CBC Podcasts' True Crime channel on Apple Podcasts. In addition to early access, subscribers to our True Crime channel also listen ad-free. Crime Story is hosted by me, Kathleen Goldhar. Our producers are Nicky Manfredi and Sara Claydon. Sound design by Julian Uzielli. Media sourced from Blood is Thicker, NBC News, 48 Hours and Wondery. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard, and our YouTube producer is Jon Lee. Executive Producers are Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is the Senior Manager of CBC Podcasts and Arif Noorani is the Director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 50

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