Megan Beth Johns

All witnesses, suspects, and persons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Warning, this episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as talk of sexual assault. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now on true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and dive into right now in true crime. And let me tell you. I have some case updates for you guys on cases I have previously covered. So the first one up is the case of Brandon Lawson. I originally covered his story. He had gone missing after a kind of, in my opinion, suspicious nine one call came in from bront Or Bronte, Texas from Brandon. There were some parts of the call that were kind of hard to hear, but I go over it all in the episode. I play the n I'm one call in the episode. If you haven't listened to Brandon's episode, I highly suggest you go back and listen to it. Well remains were found in twenty twenty. In an area that was very close to the area that Brandon went missing from where the nine one one call came in from. So the family announced in December of last year that the bones have been positively identified as belonging to Brandon. It took them two years, over two years to positively identify these bones, which is just so wild to me that it took that long when this family has been waiting to figure out what happened to Brandon since he went missing nearly twelve years ago. So this poor. Family has been doing everything in their power at this point in time to try and get Brandon's remains. And this was posted on the Help Find Brandon laws and Facebook page on June eighteenth. So last week, good afternoon. I am so frustrated they are trying to not release the human remains. It's up to the DA in San Angelo. Her name is Alison Palmer and then they give her contact information. Ladessa, who was with brandon significant other at the time of his disappearance and also the mother of his children, goes on to say that this woman has not returned any of her phone calls, and then she talks about the people that essentially were responsible for investigating Brandon's case. They were able to get the case file from the Freedom of Information Act, and there was only ten pages in this whole file of Brandon's case, which is so wild and insane when you know the details of Brandon's case and how involved and convoluted and complex it was, there was only ten pages. And she calls out the two people, Wayne McCutcheon or it might be Wayne McCutcheon, I'm not really sure, but she called him out and Brandon Neil and says that they did nothing to help propel the investigation forward, and they made an oath to treat all individuals with dignity and respect, and that they treat Brandon like he was a criminal, and they dropped the ball on his case big time, which I fully one thousand percent agree with. And then she goes on to say, at the end of the day, he is a father, son, brother, cousin, nephew, and espouse. I hope one day you'll have to answer and everything that you put our family through. I will not be quiet until the human remains are released, Ladessa. And then she does. A multiple, multiple multiple part series where she explains everything from start to finish, and I felt like I knew a majority of Brandon's story, but we didn't really hear everything from the family's point of view until she has put these videos out with everything. And when I tell you, the police department did a horrible job in advocating for figuring out what really happened to Brandon and getting down to the bottom of it and organizing searches and doing everything in their power, they really drop the ball. The family is the people that found Brandon. They never gave up, they never stopped searching, they never gave up hope. And now those people, Brandon's family, his loved ones, are being denied access to his remains. So my question is why why are they not releasing these remains. Ladessa has started a change dot org petition to demand that the DA release Brandon's remains. I am going to link this below in the show notes because I want every single person, if you're listening to this right now, to please go sign the petition, and we really need to help propel this forward for the family. Nobody needs to have Brandon's remains except for Brandon's family so they can give him a proper burial and a proper memorial and just have a little bit of a sense of having him back with them. They deserve this, and nobody else should be in charge of those remains. The investigation, I assume is over because they only have ten pages of documents on his case in general, so it took them two whole years to identify his remains, and now they don't want to give the remains to the family. It's asinine, it's ridiculous, and it shouldn't be allowed. And unfortunately, he disappeared in a very very small Texas town where stuff like this, Unfortunately, I think happens a lot more than we're privy to. But I'm going to link that below in the show notes. Please take a minute to go sign it. And if you haven't listened to Brandon's episode, go listen to it. And also if you haven't followed the Facebook page, please go do that. And you can watch all of Ladessa's videos where she goes into detail about the way everything happened and how everything transpired and the lack of communication and assistance from the police department. It will really enrage you, and I hope no one ever has to go through something like what Brandon Stanley has had to go through Okay Didty trial update. So the prosecutors have decided to abandon multiple different allegations against Ditty in preparation for the closings and the jury to get the case. So government cases are so interesting to me. There's a lot of different components to them. Ditty's team and Ditty himself. He decided he wasn't going to testify and they did not call any witnesses, which I didn't really know this, but I guess that's not really unusual in government run cases because the defense really what their job is because the prosecution, the government has to have that burden of proof. And Ditty's team did, I think, a really good job in cross examining a lot of these witnesses, and that is really where they are most needed and most wanted them calling witnesses. At this point in time, I don't really think changes anything. So the government has decided that in order to streamline the jury instructions because they kind of get very complex and complicated, they have decided that they are going to drop some of the allegations against Ditty, and those are the charges of attempted kidnapping, attempt at Arson and aiding and abetting sex trafficking. They are not going to pursue those charges now. While it sounds like they're dropping charges or something like that against city, that is not the case. They're just going to pursue them in a different way. So they're not suing the kidnapping and attempted arsening as predakick acts for racketeering. But they are still going to argue that the kidnapping of Cassie and Capricorn and the arson alleged arsen of kid Cutty's vehicle are RICO acts and they fall under the Rico umbrella. It is very complicated, and the same goes for the sex trafficking accounts as well. It's basically a simplification of the charges to make it a little more understandable for the jury. We are definitely going to see what happens. Closing arguments should be happening very very soon, and then the jury should be getting this case. It's going to be interesting to see if this latest move helped or hurt them. I personally think it's a good thing, but we're going to see. We're going to see where this all ends up, and I will be sure to keep you updated. All right, last thing I want to talk about and then we're going to get into the episode is Barry Morphew has been of Suzanne Morerifew has officially been arrested and charged once again with the murder of Suzanne. He was arrested in Arizona and re indicted for his involvement in Suzanne's Mother's Day disappearance in twenty twenty. He was initially charged with her murder in twenty twenty one, and then in twenty twenty two, the charges against Barry were dismissed because of some prosecutorial misconduct. And then in twenty twenty three, Suzanne's remains were found and the evidence that was found with her proves that Barry allegedly drugged her with a cocktail of drugs, which includes an animal tranquilizer that was found in her bones. So they have gathered enough evidence and they have now been able to charge him yet again. And I hope this time the charges stick because there has been a lot of back and forth for a long long time, and five years down the road we finally have charges yet again against Barry. So I'm going to keep you guys updated on this one. Is ever developing day by day. All of this happened last Friday, so it's all just kind of culminating and coming. To a head. But I am going to keep you updated on it. If you didn't listen to my Susanne Morphew episode, I also cover that episode and her case a while back. I want to say it was pretty early on in my podcasting journey that I covered her case, but you can search for it. It's in my catalog somewhere. So with all of that being said, we are going to go ahead and get into today's episode. Okay, guys, today we are jumping in to another decades long cold case that I can gladly say is now a soft case. So for this week's episode, I'm going to be telling you the story about a twenty nine year old named Megan Beth John's out of Irving, Texas. We'll talk about how her life was brutally stole from her, and how after thirty one years, her case has finally been solved, and how the now named suspect was close all along and someone that was originally interviewed following her death. I really like doing these now solf cases because it's always so important. To remember the end goal and the reason I cover these cold cases. Exposure it is key. So let's go ahead and dive into Megan's story. Megan Beth Johns was born on January twenty ninth of nineteen sixty five in Dallas, Texas. She was the daughter of a man named Don Johns, who was actually a world renowned speech pathologist and specialized in cleft palates. He unfortunately passed away in two thousand and two, and up until his death he did everything he could to try and solve his daughter's murder. Unfortunately, he passed away before that resolution would come. Megan had a half sister named Bridget, who was only nine years old when Meghan lost her life. Bridget remembers her Megan's relationship as a really good one. They were twenty years apart, but Megan really loved having Bridget as little sister, and anytime she would spend time with her, she would always bring her little gifts of sorts. Megan is described as always having a smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye, despite having struggled with addiction issues in her past. At the time of her death in nineteen ninety. Four, she had been sober for about five years and had dedicated her life to helping others that also struggled with addiction. At the time of her death, she was living in an apartment at a complex called the Apple Apartments in Irving, Texas, located at three zero zero five West Walnut Hill Lane, and she had only lived there a short while. At the time of her death, Megan worked as a secretary at Smith Barney in Las Colinas, which I believe is a financial services firm, and she was well known as a reliable employee and very punctual when it came to her job. So we're now going to about the day in question. It was a Wednesday morning, October fifth of nineteen ninety four, and Megan did not show up for work, which very much raised an eyebrow for all of her coworkers. So they ended up contacting the apartment complex around eleven thirty that morning, and they wanted. Them to do a well for a check on her. So around that time, a maintenance man who worked there attempted to make contact with Megan, but the door to her apartment was locked and there was no answer, so he ended up getting in through a patio door. And what he found inside was the unthinkable. Inside of the apartment, on the living room floor, he found Megan, face down, deceased. She had been. Stabbed multiple times in the chest. There were no signs of a sexual assault, as she was fully clothed. There did appear to have been a struggle. There was some furniture that was overturned, and there were slices of bread kind of scattered about, which I think is such an interesting little tidbit of information in this whole thing, and to me, it says that Megan was fighting for her life and the bread was probably the closest thing that she could grab to try and defend herself. So, of course, law enforcement was called and Megan was pronounced de ceased at the scene. DNA was retrieved from the scene, but it was also nineteen ninety four and DNA analysis was just up and coming at the time. They really didn't have a whole lot to go on. Nobody really saw anything suspicious, no comings and goings from Megan's apartment that would lead them to believe that anything horrible had gone on. But investigators did believe that it was likely that whoever did this was somebody that Megan knew because there was no forced entry into her apartment and the front door leading to the apartment had been locked. But like I said, despite this, there definitely had been a struggle inside of the apartment and from different things that investigators saw at the scene, they also noted that some of Megan's dress for drawers and bathroom cabinets had opened and gone through, and there was a VCR and some of Megan's jewelry that had been missing and stolen from the scene. There was also a partial bloody palm print that was left at the scene. Following the murder, investigators did speak with friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, but nobody really stood out or was on their radar. So that is kind of where we leave things in nineteen ninety four, the brutal murder of Megan happens, and investigators don't really have a lot to go off of. They don't have any suspects, so the case unfortunately grows cold. Like I said, her father Don did everything in his power to try and solve his daughter's murder, but unfortunately the case kind of does lose its traction. Over the years, there were a lot of different detectives and sergeants that came and went from the Irving Police Department that would end up being in charge of Megan's case. One in particular was a sergeant named Tom Rowan, and he had very much dedicated a lot of his career in his life to trying to solve her case. He ended up retiring in twenty sixteen, but her case was always at the forefront of his mind, even so much so that he carried a picture of Megan in his wallet. A new investigator had taken over the case, and even though Tom was retired, he still kept in touch with this new investigator, and he said that they would periodically send DNA samples out for testing, but they were never able to come up with the DNA profile for the person that was responsible for Megan's murder. Now I talked about Bridget earlier, Megan's half sister. She was only nine when her sister was killed, so when she got older, she started getting, of course, more curious about what had happened to her sister. And she said one particular day, on a flight home, she had a dream about her sister, and that led to her going to the Urban Police department, walking in and asking to talk to somebody who knew about her sister's case, which is where she first connected with Sergeant Tom Rowan, and she's been very, very involved with things ever since. Now. Another person that's been at the forefront of this investigation is one of Megan's good friends named Kelly Chance. They have been good friends since high school. They got very close, and Megan even served as a bride'smaid in Kelly's wedding. Kelly took it upon herself to start a Facebook page to spread awareness. And try to keep Megan's story in the forefront. She would also regularly communicate with investigators as to where Megan's case stood. And I really think that that is what is needed in some of. These older, colder cases, and that is exactly what happened in this case. Now. You do hear me often talk about how investigators sometimes in these cold cases don't really want to talk with family or friends regarding the status of a case where things are. But in the Irving Police Department, these investigators were doing everything they could to try and solve Megan's case. Like I said earlier, they were periodically even sending DNA over for testing. They were openly communicating with the family. They were communicating with Kelly. And I think that that is just the perfect storm to solving a cold case. So let's get into it, because this is one of those cases. That is now solved. So investigators were going back through some of the evidence that they had and they found a piece of carpet that had some blood on it, and this was obviously more than likely Megan's blood, but they decided to send this piece of carpet over for testing in hopes that maybe the perpetrator left some of his DNA behind on the carpet as well, And sure enough, the carpet came back with two DNA profiles. One of those was Megan's and the other was an unnamed male. Investigators ended up entering this DNA into codis, and sure enough, it came up with a match. So investigators officially made an arrest recently. On June tenth of twenty twenty five, they arrested a man named Darryl Patrick Goggins, who is at this point in time sixty one years old. He was found in Lancaster, Texas and brought back to Irving. Now this name was a little familiar to investigators because he was originally interviewed in the initial investigation. Because Daryl was in fact Megan's neighbor at the time of her death, so he was known to her. She likely did let him into her apartment, and what happened from there we have yet to find out. Investigators said that when he was interviewed, he said he didn't know anything about it, and there wasn't anything that made them think that he was involved. He didn't make any incriminating statements, and he just never really developed into a suspect. Once they had officially made an arrest, they had a press conference that both Kelly and Bridget got to attend, and they both got to speak at the press conference, and they extended all of their thank yous to law enforcement and all of the different people that helped along the way, who helped keep this case at the forefront and helped solve Megan's murder. Bridget is quoted as saying, I also want to extend some hope to families that continue to live with the unresolved loss of a loved one that even after thirty years, eight months, and six days, God's timing can prevail quote. And I think that that statement is so so important because I'm sure there have been moments in the last thirty one years when anybody that was close with Megan thought that this case probably would never be solved, that they would never be at this point where they have finally made an arrest of the perpetrator in Megan's death, and now that guy is behind bars. While we currently don't know the motive behind why Daryl committed this horrific crime, he is now arrested and facing charges of capital murder. He's behind bars, and we can only hope that justice will take its course and he will be sentenced accordingly and never see the light of day again, because this man got to live a whole thirty one years after he took Megan's life. Now, I don't know what inclined me to do this, but I decided to dig a little deeper into Darryl because all of this is breaking news literally this week, and I wanted to know more about him. Did he have a criminal history, what has he been up to for the last thirty one years. Has he just seemingly blended into society as a normal human and not reoffended. Had he done something like this before? And I found a case file that was tried in nineteen ninety for a sexual assault that took place in Dallas, Texas. So the details of this are as follows. This is all very very interesting. I'm going to link it below as well. Darryl allegedly had contacted an apartment complex about leasing an apartment. The apartment manager, who happened to be female, showed up at the apartment to show the potentially see the apartment, and it is then that she was sexually assaulted by this person. She described him as being a black male who was wearing a baseball cap, and she said that during the assault, he ended up wiping his genitals with her pantyhose, which is so gross. I don't know why anyone would do that. But with that they had DNA evidence. They ended up going to trial in nineteen ninety and Daryl was convicted. However, the DNA evidence was not presented at this trial although they had it. They very much relied on the victim's identification, different fingerprint evidence, and there were also some items that the suspect had stolen and ponned that match description of the items that were taken during the sexual assault. So with this, it's very similar to Megan's case, except as far as we know, Megan was not sexually assaulted, but she was brutally murdered, attacked, and she had some other items that were stolen. The jury did. Convict him and sentenced him to fifty years. Now, in nineteen ninety three, the Court of Criminal Appeals ended up granting the suspect habeas relief and they ordered him to have a new trial. And with all of that, he pled guilty in exchange for a twenty year sentence. So I don't really know what happened from there. There's more that happened in two thousand and five, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. But if he was sentenced to twenty years in nineteen ninety three, he technically should have been behind bars in nineteen ninety four when he killed Megan, but he obviously was not. And I don't know why. I don't know the logistics of it all. But in two thousand and five they filed a motion for post conviction DNA testing, So they very much talked about the DNA that was left behind on the victim's pantyhose, because that never was brought in as evidence, and they basically wanted it checked against the defendant's DNA to state that yes, he is the person that did this. The State, of course, argued that although they do have the DNA evidence, it wasn't really up for debate because the suspect's identity was not an issue in this case and that they had the right guy. They also had fingerprint evidence and different items that had been pawned, although the suspect claims that the items that were pawned belonged to his wife, and as far as to explain away his fingerprints being present at the apartment, he said that he had been shown several different apartments in the area and that's probably why his prints were there. Now at the time I'm recording this, that is really all that I know. This is just breaking literally the week that I'm recording this. So I am going to continue to dig in and see what I can find, see what's going to come out, because I do think there's more coming down the pipeline. Now. Upon further research, I. Did find a a fender page basically on a Fender Radar dot com for Darrylpatrick Goggins, and it's your typical every year they have. To come in, they have to submit a. Photo of them, their addresses on their level of danger is on there and his is moderate. It gives his day to birth, his height, his weight, his race, eye color, hair color, all of that, and then for offenses it says aggravated sexual assault. Date convicted August ninth of nineteen ninety and under the sentence it's his twenty years discharged from incarceration. So somewhere along the line, this man was released from prison. Now, I know that there are a lot of people out there who have committed sexual assaults. Who are out on probation. They're released, they're on a registry somewhere, and they're just carefully monitored, so to say. But this man should have never been released. From prison because I think your past behavior is a huge indicator of your future behavior, especially when it comes to these violent type of offenses. I don't think that it's just a one and done type of situation. And obviously, this man was accused of sexual assault in nineteen ninety and then he went on in nineteen ninety four to kill somebody, to actually take somebody else's life in a violent way, and he got away with it, go out away with it. For thirty one years, So what else was going on in those thirty one years, how many more people could potentially be victims. That is the kind of stuff that I'm sure they're going to be looking into. They're going to be looking at some other unsolved cases in the area and seeing if he could possibly be a suspect in those, because this guy really wasn't on their radar. He was Megan's neighbor, but they interviewed him, there wasn't really anything that stood out, and that was it. But it's interesting the. Similarities between the sexual assaults in nineteen ninety and then Megan's homicide. Now granted there are definitely some differences, of course, but the mo of stealing things and then pawning them, that's very interesting to me because I think that while that's not his direct reason for doing what he's doing, that on as kind of a little calling card basically. So this one is going to be very interesting to see how they are able to gather all the evidence. They obviously have enough evidence to charge man, but it's going to be interesting to see what happens as far as what he says and if it subsequently goes to trial, whatever it may be but huge, huge, huge props to the police department on this one and Megan's family and friends who fought like how to get her justice and never let her story fade into the background. That is exactly what we need in these cases. Thirty one years went by it before they saw an arrest, and the arrest is literally happening the week that I'm recording this. The arrest just happened. So there's not a lot of public information available and it's of course to protect the integrity of the case, but it is all very very interesting. I also do want to say, because Darryl Goggins has not been convicted in the court of law, he is considered innocent until proven guilty, and I will be sure to keep you guys updated on all of this. But we have another cold case that is finally in the process of hopefully getting some resolution, and that is all props to Megan's family, Megan's friends, and the police department then never gave up on her story. So thank you guys so much for joining this week, and I will see you next week for a brand new unsolved cold case. Have a great weekend and I will see you then. Bye.