Pamela Hargan was one of the top HR Executives at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics before joining defense contractor SAIC. The divorced mother-of-three had a successful career, thanks to which, she bought a $1.3 million property in McLean, Virginia, an affluent neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
The three Hargan women - Pamela and her two daughters, Megan and Helen - seemed to be living the perfect life until the summer of 2017. On July 14, 2017, the then 37-year-old Megan reportedly shot her mother Pamela, and younger sister Helen, 23, to death. The murder was fueled by anger, jealousy and greed.
However, that wasn't all as Megan Harlan tried to pin their mother's death on her own dead sister, Helen.
Megan Hargan, the accused in the Hargan killings, was convicted in March 2022. Months later, CBS 48 Hours will revisit the brutal double homicide in an upcoming episode, which is scheduled to air on Saturday, October 1, 2022. The episode titled Death Hits Home: The Hargan Killings will air at 10 pm ET.
Here's everything to know about Pamela Hargan and her seemingly perfect family (at least until 2017) ahead of the episode premiere.
Pamela Hargan and her daughters had "troubled" bonds irrespective of a perfect facade
After the murders, it was discovered that despite seeming like a perfect family, the Hargan women had trouble for quite some time before the murders.
A relative even described their relationship as "troubled." Megan was allegedly jealous of her younger sister Helen and often felt that their mother favored her more.
Sources state that 63-year-old Pamela Hargan was looking forward to retiring from work. At the time, her eldest daughter, Megan Hargan, who was married to a West Virginia man, was living with them at their McLena home for several years with her seven-year-old daughter.
Meanwhile, Pamela's youngest daughter Helen returned to the family home in the spring of 2017 after graduating from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She was supposedly awaiting the construction of a new home that her mother bought for her before Helen left for grad school. Allegedly, this was something that made Megan extremely jealous.
Pamela Hargan's sister Tamara North had claimed over the years that Megan became very towards her sister Helen. She added that the hatred only grew with time even though Megan and their second sister, Ashley, helped in raising Helen while their mother wasn't home during work trips.
North said,
"It was an about-face; how could you hate the little sister you raised?"Megan reportedly accused her dead sister of killing their mother, Pamela Hargan
Friends and family of the Hargans knew that something had gone terribly wrong when authorities arrived at their house on July 14, 2017, after receiving a 911 call about a probable shooting.
Officers entered and discovered Pamela Hargan's bloody body in her laundry room. She was found with a fatal bullet wound to the head. Meanwhile, Helen was discovered dead in an upstairs bathroom.
Pamela's sister claimed that she was shocked to learn that Helen murdered her mother and then killed herself because that's what Megan told authorities. North even called the accusation and the incident "horrible."
Although the case was initially determined to be a murder-suicide committed by Helen, North asserted that she knew "right away that something was very wrong."
Tamara's suspicions were proved right when authorities found incriminating evidence against Megan, who allegedly staged the crime scene and put the blame on her dead sister. She was arrested in 2018 about a year after the killings. Her arrest came after a finding hinted that she had tried to fradulently wire transfer $400,000 from her mother's bank account.
The accused's aunt reportedly said that she couldn't have expected something like this to have happened even in a million years.
As previously mentioned, CBS 48 Hours airs this Saturday, October 1, 2022, at 10 pm ET.
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