Fairfax County police quickly announced that what unfolded inside the large, yellow home in McLean in 2017 appeared to be a tragic murder-suicide. They said they believed Helen Hargan, 23, a recent college graduate, shot her mother, Pamela Hargan, 63, a successful executive, before turning the gun on herself.
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But after a 16-month investigation, police offered a stunning turnabout: what initially appeared to be a murder-suicide was allegedly a double killing. They claimed the scene had been carefully staged by the real perpetrator.
They accused Megan Hargan, one of Pamela Hargan’s other daughters who also lived with her, of killing her mother and sister. The motive, authorities said, appeared to be greed.
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Police said they discovered Megan Hargan was settling on a new home the day of the slayings and she had allegedly withdrawn nearly $420,000 from her mother’s bank account to pay closing costs, according to court documents.
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Megan Hargan is slated to stand trial Monday on two counts of first-degree murder in a case that captured widespread local attention and could last as long as six weeks. Fairfax County Police Major Ed O’Carroll summed up authorities view of events succinctly in 2018.
“This is a tragedy — domestic violence at its worst,” O’Carroll said.
Woman attempted transfer from bank account before killings, police say
Hargan maintains her innocence and is pleading not guilty to all charges.
The public defenders representing Hargan declined to comment or discuss her defense, but in a filing her attorneys assert that time-stamped video evidence shows Megan Hargan’s car leaving her mother’s home possibly before the second killing.
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They argue that video, written statements by the defendant that are exculpatory and other cellphone evidence casts doubt on police’s account of what happened. Police say the time stamp on the video is incorrect, but the defense plans to contest that during the trial, according to the public defender’s filing.
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The Fairfax County Public Defender Office said its attorneys only learned of the video and defendant’s written statements shortly before the original trial date in 2019 and unsuccessfully argued the failure to turn over the evidence was grounds for dismissing the case.
The incident played out in 2017 on July 13 and 14, with part of it captured in a series of chilling phone calls between Helen Hargan and her boyfriend.
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Evidence indicates Megan Hargan called one of her mother’s banks impersonating her and requested nearly $420,000 be transferred from her mother’s account to a title company handling the closing of Megan’s new home on July 13, according to a prosecution filing in the case.
The bank alerted Pamela Hargan, who put a freeze on the transfer, the filing states.
About 11:30 a.m. the next day, Helen Hargan’s boyfriend told authorities she called him sobbing hysterically, prosecutors wrote.
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Helen told her boyfriend that Megan had come into her room and told her “she just shot her mother,” according to the filing. “Megan is downstairs somewhere on the computer transferring funds,” Helen told her boyfriend, the filing states.
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Helen’s boyfriend then asked her why Megan shot the sisters’ mother. Helen replied that Megan told her “she got caught doing an escort service deal” and Pamela Hargan was going to take away Megan’s then 8-year-old daughter who also lived with them, according to the prosecution filing.
The boyfriend urged Helen to get Megan’s daughter out of the home and call police, but Helen kept stammering, “I can’t believe this,” prosecutors wrote.
A short time later, Megan Hargan transferred nearly $420,000 from another bank account of her mother’s to the title company handling the closing for her home, prosecutors said in the filing.
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The frantic phone calls between Helen and her boyfriend continued over the next hour.
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The video evidence highlighted by the defense shows Megan Hargan’s car leaving the home at 12:58 p.m., according to a defense filing. The boyfriend received texts from Helen’s phone after that, but prosecutors wrote in their filing they believe Megan Hargan sent the messages. The defense disputes that.
Helen Hargan’s boyfriend eventually called 911 and summoned police to the McLean home.
Police found Helen Hargan slain in an upstairs bedroom with a gun, according to a search warrant. They found Pamela’s body downstairs in a laundry room with shell casings scattered around it.
In the days that followed, police announced the killings were a murder-suicide. Major O’Carroll indicated police knew early on the scene was allegedly staged, but did not publicly change their account of what happened because they didn’t want to tip off Megan Hargan.
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Tamara North, Pamela Hargan’s sister, declined to comment before the trial, but said in previous Facebook messages to The Washington Post that it was hard for the family to have Helen Hargan publicly and falsely accused of killing her mother for over a year.
“She deserves to be remembered fondly,” North said of Helen in one message. “She would have done great things with her life.”
In the months before her death, North said Helen Hargan had graduated from Southern Methodist University in Texas with a double major and had moved back home with her mother. North said she loved horses and traveling. Helen Hargan had spent six weeks in the Australian outback with a host family when she was 16.
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Pamela Hargan was a vice president of human relations at government contractor SAIC and had spent two decades previously at Lockheed Martin in a similar role.
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Fairfax County prosecutors convened a multi-jurisdictional grand jury to probe the case. In November 2018, it issued murder and weapons indictments against Megan Hargan, then 35, who was arrested in West Virginia.
After her arrest, Megan Hargan allegedly told detectives she wanted to take blame for the killings, according to a prosecution filing.
“I can confess to whatever,” Megan Hargan is quoted as telling detectives. “I just want my family to move on. … It’s been awful living in purgatory.”
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Megan Hargan’s trial has been delayed a number of times because of the coronavirus and the accusations by the public defender’s office that prosecutors failed to turn over evidence in the case in a timely fashion.
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano declined to comment on the case since it was pending, but said in a statement “my heart goes out” to the Hargan family.
“We are eager to present the evidence to a jury and pursue accountability for this tragic crime,” Descano said.