The Murder of Meagan McFarlin

By M. Troy McDaniel

When it comes to crime, murder is as bad as it gets. Despite civilization's advancement over the past one hundred years, murder still occurs, and it happens in places you've never heard of. People move to Greenwood, Louisiana, to escape the crime of nearby Shreveport, but in May, 2003, residents of the town could not escape the horror of a brutal murder.
The body of a woman was found in the bushes beside US Highway 80 one mile east of Kelley's Truck Stop. She had been beaten and stabbed to death, but the extent of her injuries went beyond murder. Not only had she been stabbed multiple times, but most of the stab wounds were focused on her eyes and ears. Whoever killed her tried to obliterate her, and punish her for something he found offensive.
It was a crime of passion. The killer was bound to kill again, and everyone at the scene knew it, but no one said so. When the limits of brutality are transgressed in such a way, the killer will return to murder like a dog returns to his vomit because that type of anger feeds upon itself.
The first order of business that morning was to identify the woman, and the sooner the better, but you can't just jump into a crime scene and rummage through pockets. Things had to be done systematically and deliberately. The sense of urgency was real but processing a crime scene takes time.
When a crime scene investigator finally began to search the body, there was no ID. She had no pockets, and no purse could be found. The only hope left of quickly identifying her came from an unusual place: her jewelry. She was wearing a class ring from Rising Star High School in Texas.
The detective who was assigned to the case had little experience with homicides. Instead of referring to a textbook on murder investigations or following a homicide checklist, he bowed his head and asked God for help. After his prayer, he found out who owned the ring. Her name was Meagan McFarlin.
Denise McFarlin was Meagan's mother. Just days earlier, she contacted her local police department in Texas and made a missing person report on her daughter. Meagan had left town a month earlier with her boyfriend, David Ray Wammack. Wammack had swept Meagan off her feet six months earlier. He was a car thief and burglar. Denise knew he was scamming her, but Meagan was an adult. She refused to listen to her parent's warnings.
Over a year earlier, Wammack had been arrested with a Texas woman in Southaven, Mississippi. The detective located the woman, and asked her about him. She said Wammack was her former boyfriend. He was a car thief that was addicted to alcohol and cocaine. He traveled the interstate highway system in east Texas and Louisiana in stolen vehicles, living on the highway and staying at truck stops. For income, Wammack panhandled and hustled. Panhandling meant begging for money while telling lies about sick relatives and broken down vehicles. Hustling meant polishing wheels and tanks on eighteen wheelers for tips. He lived by his wits on the streets, sometimes bedding down in homeless shelters. The woman said her relationship with Wammack ended a year earlier when he, "...beat the hell out of me!" The ex-girlfriend was certain that he committed the homicide in Greenwood.
As a convicted felon, drug addict, and abuser of women, he was a good suspect, but thirty hours after the body was found in Greenwood, there was a problem - a big problem. The Caddo Parish Coroner determined that the woman was not Meagan McFarlin. No one knew who she was, or why she was wearing Meagan's class ring. The investigation was back to square one. It sounded like the detective's prayers were in vain, but a couple of hours later, things changed drastically.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. Troy McDaniel
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370137701

M. Troy McDaniel

M. Troy McDaniel has been a deputy sheriff in Caddo Parish since 1988, and has served in corrections, patrol, SWAT, investigations, financial crimes, and juvenile sex crimes. Currently, he is a swing shift supervisor on patrol. He has been married to Colleen Leach McDaniel for 31 years and has three grown children. His hobbies include woodworking, knife making, shooting, theology and grandchildren. As an a avid believer in creation and original sin, M. Troy has a framework to understand the plight of all mankind, and like the British preacher John Bradford can say, "There, but for the grace of God go I."

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The Murder

of

Meagan McFarlin

by M. Troy McDaniel

Alternative Titles:

Jane Doe in Caddo Parish

The Highway Man

She Lay Still

Copyright 2016 M. Troy McDaniel

Published by M. Troy McDaniel at Smashwords

Cover Design by M. Troy McDaniel on Canva

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All quotations from scripture are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

All quotations from criminal interviews and interrogations are taken from transcripts of in Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office report number 2003-000-13986

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: The Call

CHAPTER TWO: Who Are You

CHAPTER THREE: Two in the Bush

CHAPTER FOUR: The Highway Man

CHAPTER FIVE: Bird in Hand

CHAPTER SIX: Honor Among Thieves

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Pawn

CHAPTER EIGHT: Picking Up the Pieces

CHAPTER NINE: The Aftermath

CHAPTER TEN: It’s Finally Happened

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Deliverance

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER ONE: THE CALL.

I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. ~ Miss Maudie Atkinson, To Kill a Mocking Bird

Alexander and I left at sunrise. We went to Desoto Parish to look for tools that were stolen from General Motors new Hummer plant in Shreveport. An informant told him a man in Logansport bought some of the tools, but you know how informants are. We searched a couple of old buildings with a Desoto detective, but we didn’t find anything.

In a musty old building, I was wiping sweat from my forehead when my cell phone rang. It was early, but maybe Colleen was having trouble getting the kids ready for school. All I needed to do was listen sympathetically for a few minutes, encourage her, and she would be fine, but when I looked at the caller ID, it wasn’t her - it was Rehak. I told him where I was going the day before, so why was he calling before eight?

I answered to his usual greeting, Where you at? I wanted to say, You should know. I told you yesterday, but I didn’t have a chance. Before I could say a word, he told me there was a homicide in my area, and then inferred that I should’ve looked into the future to know it was going to happen. Why would any decent detective go out of town during a homicide?

There was no sense in arguing with him. He wouldn’t understand. It was his job not to understand the logic of mortal beings. Besides that, I was as frustrated as he was that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t the only detective he had, but he called me. If he was going to give it to someone else, he would’ve waited to tell me about it when I got home, so I had to get back as fast as possible. Homicides in Caddo Parish don’t happen every day. I told him to tape off the scene, and I would be there in an hour.

Bill Rehak was my sergeant. He recently came to Investigations from Patrol, and before that he was in Narcotics. It wasn't even summer yet, and we were swamped with cases. A homicide was just another monkey on the pile, but homicides take their place at the top. Each case is scrutinized all the way to the top of the chain of command and across to the District Attorney’s Office. Apparently, the detectives in town wanted nothing to do with it that Wednesday morning, so he called me. I was glad.

On my way home, I thought about everything I needed to do, but it was premature. There is no way to plan ahead on a murder investigation. You have to have the right information before you can start, and I knew nothing except that there would be no rest until my resources were exhausted or the case was solved. I prepared myself emotionally for what was coming. It was going to be a long week.

An hour later, I arrived in Greenwood. Greenwood is a small town just three miles from the Texas state line. Incorporated in 1839, the town is split in two by Interstate 20. Due to its easy access and close proximity to Shreveport, it is a popular suburb. The crime scene was located on the side of US Highway 80, one mile east of its intersection with I-20. Highway 80 is what remains of the national highway that runs east and west from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In Louisiana, it runs parallel with I-20 into Texas, and in Shreveport, it runs through the middle of downtown. Back in the early 1800s, it was known as the Texas Trail.

Earlier that week, a woman was reported missing in Greenwood. She argued with her husband, left home on foot and was last seen at Love's Truck Stop. Her husband felt guilty for verbally abusing her, so he called me several times every day to ask if I found her. He never called with new information; he just badgered me about why I didn't drain local ponds or set up road blocks on I-20 to find his missing wife.

I had nothing on the case, except a theory that she hitched a ride with a truck driver and was probably somewhere in Nebraska. He did not like my theory. Now that it looked like she might be lying dead on the side of the road, two and a half miles from where she was last seen, I asked myself why I didn't drain local ponds and set up roadblocks to search every vehicle within five miles of their home. Maybe she went walking, got overheated, and fell dead under the trees, or more likely, maybe he knocked her in the head and tossed her body beside the highway. Everybody knows the husband is the most likely suspect. Maybe he was bugging me to make himself look innocent. The more I thought about, the more it made sense. I wanted to skip the crime scene, go straight to his house, and take him in for questioning, but I didn’t. I learned early in my career to beware of hunches. Coincidences occur far more often than people realize. It takes more than suspicion to make a case.

There were already a dozen cars parked on the south shoulder of Highway 80, and yellow tape was spread east and west for fifty yards. Despite the large number of people there, it was lonely and bleak. Anyone passing by could tell something bad happened. Standing just inside the tape were patrolmen, detectives, crime scene investigators, and my lieutenant and captain. Rehak left a few minutes before I arrived.

From the shoulder, I could see the outline of something white in the bushes 25 to 30 feet away. It was that faint

Reviews for The Murder of Meagan McFarlin

[Eva McKenzie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From the view point of a reader, there were some grammatical errors that the editor should have caught, but all in all good read. From the view point of a close friend of Meagan, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so kind to Gene and Denise, and for capturing her killer. The book, although painful to read, answered many of the questions that I have held on to for the last 17 years.

Eva