An 18-year-old college freshman, full of creativity and ambition, walked out of her dorm room one cold February night and never made it back.

Her family knew something was wrong immediately, but from the start, the investigation into her disappearance was plagued with delays and unanswered questions.

Six days later, her body was found in a canyon, and what came next would leave her family searching for the truth that still hasn't come.

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa.

Mandy, how are you? I am doing wonderful. We both have kids back in school. Yeah. And we're back to being able to record on our time, which is the middle of the day. Exactly. Yeah. The middle of the day. It works out wonderfully. You text me and said, would you rather do this during the middle of the day or do it at the end of the night? I'm like, no, no, no, let's do it. Middle of the day because it is, at night, it's just chaos. Absolute chaos. For sure. Yeah. And then you have thunderstorms in the afternoon and just a million and other things that derail us, I feel like, in the evening. So this is so lovely to be here with you before lunchtime on a Tuesday. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. So we'll get right into the story that we have for you guys today. Megan Truzzle was born on September 12, 2006 in

Denver, Colorado. She grew up surrounded by love. She was raised by her parents, Vanessa and

Joseph, with her big sister Lindsay at her side. Even after Megan's parents divorced, they worked

hard to co-parent and the family was very close-knit. Megan was also close with

her uncle and her cousin Isabella. Travel was a very big part of their lives. At one point, the family

took a road trip from Canada all the way down to Mexico in a Volkswagen van. Another one of Megan's

favorite stops was Red Frog Beach in Panama, where she

discovered what she believed was the best virgin Pinacolada in the world. And as a Pinacolada lover,

I now have that on my list of places to visit. As for Megan, she was truly an unforgettable person.

She had a very quick wit and a sharp sense of humor,

but she also had a warmth about her that made people gravitate towards her. Megan was artistic,

and she always sketched scenes from life and the people around her in various notebooks that she had.

She also loved music and listened to everything from Jacob Pistorius, The Smashing Pumpkins, and TV Girl.

She grew up listening to her dad's 90s grunge playlists, and she herself played the bass guitar and had a collection of vintage CDs.

Megan was bilingual and spoke both English and Spanish, and she had a gift for picking up accents.

Once she was cast in the school play where she had to play a Russian character, and she did

the accent for the character so well that some of her classmates actually thought she was

Russian for the rest of the school year. Megan was also extremely smart. She scored in the 100th percentile on state vocabulary tests,

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