Pamela Hargan, Megan Hargan and Helen Hargan.Photo: Fairfax County Police
On July 14, 2017, a mother and daughter were found dead in their $1.3 million home in upscale McLean, Virginia.
Those who knew Pamela Hargan, 63, and her youngest daughter, Helen, 23, a recent graduate of Southern Methodist University, were shocked when authorities announced that they believed Helen had shot and killed her mother before turning the gun on herself.
Now, Megan Hargan, Pamela’s oldest daughter, is on trial after being arrested and charged with two counts of murder in connection with the shooting deaths of her mother and sister and staging it to look like a murder-suicide.
According to a recording from police played to jurors on Wednesday,NBC4 Washingtonreports, the instant Megan and middle sister Ashley Gerber found out about slayings, they began sobbing and yelling.
“I don’t understand!” one of the two sisters could be heard saying on the recording.
On Wednesday, Helen’s boyfriend, Carlos Gutierrez, testified publicly for the first time. He told the court he spoke on the phone with Helen, who was hysterical as she told him about the terror-filled scenario unfolding at home in McLean.
At the time he spoke to Helen, Gutierrez was in Dallas.
“She told me her sister had killed her mother,” Gutierrez told the court, NBC4 Washington reports.
“She sounded very frightened and scared. I could hear her mouth trembling, and she was sobbing.”
He told the prosecutor Helen said she never saw her mother’s dead body, but said “the door was cracked and she could hear her mom gasping,” NBC4 Washington reports.
Gutierrez testified that Helen allegedly told him that Megan shot and killed their mother because she was afraid that her mother was going to take her 8-year-old daughter away from her, NBC4 Washington reports.
Gutierrez said he begged Helen to get out of the house, he testified that she didn’t want to leave or call 911 because she feared for her niece, Megan’s 8-year-old daughter, who was somewhere in the house.
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“She was saying she didn’t know what to do,” he testified. She said the little girl “was in the house as well and she didn’t know how to get her out.”
At some point, Gutierrez lost contact with Helen and began calling her, to no avail.
Eventually, Megan answered the phone and told him that Helen and her mother were arguing over a speeding ticket, but refused to let him talk to Helen, he testified, NBC4 Washington reports.
Terrified for his girlfriend, Gutierriez called 911.
“I think this is life or death,” he said during the call. “I think someone might be dead.”
Megan’s lawyer did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment but said previously in court records that Megan was not home at the time of the murders.
Pamela’s sister, Tammy North, told PEOPLE she is still struggling with the deaths of her sister and niece and the fact that her other niece is accused of killing them.
“I am overwhelmed at how hard this is to deal with,” North tells PEOPLE. “I feel sick every day.
“What transpired is killing me,” she added. “The hardest thing for me is to wrap my head around Helen. Her last moments must have been horrific.”
source: people.com
