A McLean woman has received two consecutive life sentences for killing her mother and sister in July 2017, Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano announced Jan. 26.
Megan Hargan was convicted in September 2023 of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of using a firearm in commission of a felony. (An initial jury found Hargan guilty in November 2022, but that conviction was vacated due to juror misconduct.)
In addition to the sentences for the murders, Hargan received six years in prison for the two weapons charges, authorities said.
On the afternoon of July 14, 2017, Megan Hargan, 41, shot her mother, Pamela Hargan, 63, and younger sister Helen Hargan, 24, in the mother’s McLean home where the three were living at the time, along with Megan Hargan’s then-8-year-old daughter.
Hargan staged the house as a murder-suicide and claimed her younger sister had killed their mother before killing herself.
Prosecutors presented evidence at the trial showing that the conflict stemmed from a financial dispute. Hargan, who was buying a house in West Virginia, resented that her mother wasn’t helping her financially, but was at the same time helping her sister buy a house.
On July 13, the day before the killings, Hargan attempted to transfer upward of $400,000 from her mother’s bank account to pay for Megan Hargan’s new house, which was closing that day. The transaction was flagged as fraud, and the next day Hargan shot her mother before attempting to make the same wire transfer again from her mother’s account. She then shot her sister Helen, who was upstairs at the time.
Both family members were killed with a .22-caliber rifle, which belonged to Megan Hargan’s husband and was being stored in the McLean house temporarily.
