Megan Trussell’s Suicide Fight After Roommate Fight Isn’t Believable, Family Says (Exclusive)

Megan Trussell was about a week into her freshman year at the University of Colorado in Boulder, at the end of August last year, when she texted her dad. 

“I just had my first film class, and my assignment is to watch a movie and then comment on it,” wrote the 17-year-old, who had a creative streak and a playful side. She was a bass player who was good at mimicking one of her teachers’ Scottish accent; she enjoyed writing movie reviews. (She’d published a scathing critique of Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites.)

She seemed, in Boulder, to be at home. 

“COLLEGE RULES,” she texted her father, Joe Trussell, that August day.

Six months later, on Feb. 12, Joe was surprised not to be able to reach Megan. 

He texted her and her older sister asking if they wanted to meet for lunch that coming weekend. But Megan, who had turned 18, wasn’t responding — which is how the family discovered that no one had seen her for three days.

Three days after that, on the morning of Feb. 15, two park rangers found Megan’s missing body just outside the city, past where the orderly grid of neighborhood streets and businesses gives way to the mountainous terrain that comprises much of the state.

Megan was frozen where she was found, lying on an incline near a drainage culvert and creek; about two inches of snow covered her body. All that was visible was her face and her distinctive red hair.

She was almost immediately pronounced dead. In late May, authorities ruled that she’d killed herself “as the result of the toxic effects of amphetamine,” with hypothermia as a contributing factor.

But her mom and dad, Joe Trussell and Vanessa Diaz, continue to dispute that conclusion and say they have been doing their own investigative work while pushing authorities to dig deeper.

They feel sure there is more to the story — more to Megan’s life and to her death. 

She wasn’t suicidal, they insist. It doesn’t make sense.

This account of the case is based on interviews with Megan’s family and friends as well as statements from local authorities and a review of available reports, including the autopsy, that paint a complicated and at times contradictory portrait of a young woman in her final days.

“Sheriff [Curtis] Johnson believes that his detectives and deputies conducted a thorough investigation into Megan’s death based on all available evidence,” a spokesperson for the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office says.

Her parents disagree. 

“I would be willing to accept a suicide finding if you had definitive proof that that’s what happened,” Joe says. “But there is too much evidence.”

“The circumstances are very suspicious,” adds Diaz. “She’s missing a shoe that has never turned up.”

The last time Megan was seen

Everyone generally agrees on some things.

Megan was last seen on security cameras leaving her on-campus dorm around 9 p.m. local time on Feb. 9. She was wearing yoga pants, a sweater, jacket and tennis shoes and was carrying a round, blue purse with a large pink star. 

Diaz, a high school principal in Denver, says Megan sewed the purse herself as a nod to a character from the Scott Pilgrim franchise. Megan did that sort of thing. She and her older sister also dyed their hair in coordination — one red, the other blue; or vice versa — as a reference to Sonic the Hedgehog.

Before walking out of her dorm that February night, Megan had a fight with her roommate and her new boyfriend after the roommate found them being intimate in their room, investigators later wrote in their reports. Megan and the boyfriend then “got into an argument about what happened,” and he broke up with her and blocked her on his phone, according to one of the case file reports.

(PEOPLE is not identifying either the boyfriend or roommate as neither has been accused of any wrongdoing.)

Soon after, Megan left her dorm, wandered for a time around campus and was lost from public view. 

“It was unusual for Megan to walk anywhere, this type of behavior was out of character for her,” a detective later wrote.

It appears no one even knew she was gone.

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In the hours and days after Feb. 9, Megan’s roommate assumed she was staying with her older sister, who was also a student at the university (and whose parents asked that she not to be named in this story).

It was on Feb. 12, when Megan’s dad couldn’t reach her, that her family reported her missing. Searches ensued.

Three days later, on a below-freezing Saturday amid steady snowfall, volunteers who had been looking into reports of a homeless encampment in the area stumbled upon some belongings of Megan’s outside the city: a backpack full of clothing and, nearby, a bottle for Adderall. 

The man who found the pill bottle told investigators his “heart dropped” once he realized who it belonged to.

What the autopsy found

The county coroner has released two autopsies in Megan’s death, in May and July. The latest, an updated report from the first, included the results of tests on her stomach contents after a push by her parents.

In both reports, the coroner’s office said that the 18-year-old died by suicide “as a result of the toxic effects of amphetamine,” a key ingredient in Adderall that Megan’s parents acknowledge she took. 

Officials found three empty bottles for the pill in her dorm, in addition to the bottle near her body. Each could hold 30 pills.

Hypothermia was also a contributing factor.

Deputy Coroner Kolleen Hancock says Megan’s body was found about 20 feet down a steep, rocky slope with blunt force injuries — but those wounds were consistent with a fall and did not contribute to her death.

Dr. Priya Banerjee, an outside forensic pathologist unconnected with the case, reviewed the autopsy records for PEOPLE and agreed that Megan died by suicide.

“She had a stomach and throat full of pills,” Banerjee says. “That to me is very intentional. Rarely can you force-feed someone that many pills.”

Regarding the injuries, including bruising, abrasions and at least one broken tooth, Banerjee says that while drug toxicity is what killed Megan, she might have been confused or “intentionally fell off, tumbled off the cliff or jumped off.”

Exposure to the cold was harmful, too.

Megan’s family contends her unusual manner of death — having wandered partway into the wilderness, alone, at night, with her clothes only to be found injured, without her phone or purse — doesn’t indicate suicide, however. They don’t accept that.

‘Life was going well,’ but ‘issues’ lurked

On Feb. 18, three days after Megan was found, authorities spoke with Megan’s older sister about her frame of mind before her death.

“[Her sister] said that Megan’s life was going well,” an investigator wrote in a report. “Megan really liked college, she was dating someone she really liked, the only thing she didn’t like was her roommate.”

Megan had also been looking forward to a cousin’s birthday party and her sister believed that “no matter how down Megan was, she did not think that she would kill herself.”

Authorities found that Megan had had no history of suicidal behavior and did not leave any sort of note in her room before she died, according to the case files reviewed by PEOPLE. 

Megan’s sister maintained that she didn’t abuse her Adderall.

But her sister said she did struggle with some things — like school and her parents’ divorce two years earlier.

“Their parents were really into grades, and it sounded like this caused Megan some issues,” her sister told investigators, they wrote.

Her sister also said, according to the case file reports, that it was “very strange” for her to realize that Megan didn’t come to her after the incident on Feb. 9 with her roommate and boyfriend. The two had a bond; Megan spent some time at her sister’s apartment as their mom and dad were splitting up back in Denver.

Still, her sister said, they didn’t talk about some things.

“I asked … if she knew whether Megan had ever dealt with any kind of heartache. [She] said that her Spotify playlist would suggest that,” Megan’s sister told a detective, according to the reports.

When “asked if she was aware of whether Megan was ever depressed or was it anything specific, or what was it,” her sister said she “thought it was mostly just a teenage girl thing.” 

She acknowledged their parents’ divorce had been “traumatic” for Megan, as one detective put it.

Speaking with PEOPLE, Joe, Megan’s father, says that the divorce was distressing but she “never once turned on herself.” 

“She handled it extremely well considering the circumstances,” he says. “She was a strong kid.”

Wanting more from investigators

Almost since the start, Megan’s parents have criticized the law enforcement response. 

Speaking to PEOPLE in June after Megan’s death was ruled a suicide, her mom called out the sheriff’s office for having a “callous attitude and obvious bias since the start.” 

The case file shows they also shared their concerns directly with a detective — that they felt a focus on suicide would blind authorities to other evidence. 

Authorities reassured Megan’s mom and dad that they were investigating other possibilities.

Some odd developments fueled the parents’ suspicion about what really happened. Megan’s missing phone, which officials say pinged twice late on Feb. 9 near where her body was ultimately found, was only located the following month. It was traced to a resale kiosk at a Boulder grocery store on March 2. 

Authorities went on to accuse Elliot Bearfore, a homeless man, of theft and false declaration to a pawnbroker after he allegedly tried to sell the phone.

According to authorities, Bearfore said he’d gotten the phone from another homeless man, named Travis, who said he initially found the phone and purse outside the city but did not report them. Travis said he later left the purse on a bike path, where a passerby found it and called it in in March. The purse also had an empty pill bottle inside. (Megan’s shoe, however, has never been located.)

Neither homeless man was accused in connection with Megan’s death; they could not be reached for comment. Bearfore is expected back in court in October.

Megan’s parents vehemently deny that she would take her own life. Instead, they believe she was attacked after she left home the night of Feb. 9 to get a Diet Coke — her favorite drink.

“The one place she could buy a Diet Coke on campus was where her roommate worked, so she couldn’t go there [after they fought],” Diaz says. “I think she was going to Circle K or another convenience store …. And then I think somewhere along that path, somebody grabbed her.”

Diaz thinks someone took Megan’s purse, and she was pulled as she fought back — giving her the blunt force injuries described in both autopsies. That would make the pills found in Megan’s system a cover-up by the assailant, and she would have been forced to take them.

Joe, who owns a commercial driver school, claims authorities never “wavered” from the belief Megan died by suicide. His ex-wife agrees. 

“They did nothing to rule anything out,” she says. “Truly, it was confirmation bias. They only went with what aligned with what their theory was.”

Joe says he was frustrated when he met with a detective on the case and was allegedly told the detective was working on a lot of other cases and was only going to contact the family if there were “big” updates.

A freshman was “found dead in a canyon. I don’t know how you don’t prioritize that,” Joe says.

The official conclusions about Megan’s death seem like “an extremely elaborate way for somebody who’s never had a history to commit suicide,” Joe says. 

She even hated hiking.

“Megan was a pretty well-adjusted person,” he says. “She was a pretty well-put-together woman, and nothing in her past behavior would point to that. I also find it extremely offensive, even though it’s within their rights, for the Boulder sheriff in their press release to say that she had amphetamine in her body when it was an Adderall prescription. Because the public perception then becomes, ‘Oh, this is just a meth-head who killed herself.’ ”

Sheriff Johnson’s office declined to make him available for an interview for this story and a spokesperson said in a statement that “it is standard practice for our agency to limit public comment in cases involving suicide in order to maintain a sense of dignity for those affected and to handle these situations with the seriousness they deserve.”

“All available leads were followed until both our office and the Coroner’s Office reached our final conclusions,” the spokesperson said.

A future cut short

Megan’s parents have retained a private investigator, who is in the early stages of their own work, and are offering $6,000 for information that leads to an arrest. 

They’ve launched an outreach program with the local homeless community in the hopes that it can lead to possible new leads; a Change.org petition has been created to urge that Megan’s case be reopened.

“The goal is, No. 1, to clear Megan of having her name associated with suicide, because I don’t think it’s true,” her dad says. “No. 2, to catch whoever is responsible. Because what’s lost in all this is that somebody played a part in this, and they’re still out there and potentially still out there among 40,000 college students. And nobody seems to be looking at that. And that’s a scary thing.”

Joe says the second autopsy, with testing on Megan’s stomach, left him with more questions than answers. 

“We don’t know what else was in the stomach contents,” he says. “They only tested for toxicology. And, we don’t know where this extra pill material came from. Megan did not have any Adderall beyond her normal prescription in her possession.”

Months after Megan was found, sisters Brie and Madison Brocato still hope for closure in the death of their childhood friend.

They remember how she used to go skiing with them for New Year’s. They remember her sense of humor.

“She was always just super bright. … she was very quick-witted,” Madison, 18, says. “She always had a joke where you’re like, ‘Oh, I wish I thought of that.’ Or always making people laugh. I can’t even remember a time where she was ever feeling down or anything.”

“She’d always get this mac and cheese that she insisted was the worst mac and cheese ever. But that’s what made her love it so much,” says Brie, 20.

Megan, the youngest in her family, was just “starting to really blossom as a person and turn into the woman she was going to become,” her father says. He has his own memories to share.

In middle school, Megan had to adopt a Russian accent for a school play. “She stayed in character the whole year, because she switched schools that year,” Joe says. “People actually thought she was Russian. That’s just how she was. She could make any situation fun, and that’s how she lived her life.”

She was “so loved,” he says.

“This is not going to be resolved this week or next week,” Joe says. “If it takes the rest of my life, this is what we’re going to do.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.