The Colorado Bureau of Investigation will review the investigation into the death of University of Colorado Boulder student Megan Trussell, whose body was found in Boulder Canyon in February, the agency announced Friday evening.
Trussell’s parents, Joe Trussell and Vanessa Diaz, submitted a request for the case to be reviewed to the Colorado Department of Public Safety and the Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives on Monday, citing a 2022 law that requires the state to review certain types of cases involving Indigenous people.
A bill passed in 2022 created the Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives with the goal of addressing the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Colorado. Indigenous people face violence at higher rates than the population at large, researchers say, and often those crimes are not properly tracked.
Among other duties, the law requires the department to review cold cases for missing Indigenous people and death-investigation cases of Indigenous people ruled as suicide or overdose under suspicious circumstances.
In a May news release, the Boulder County Coroner’s Office announced Trussell’s manner of death was suicide. Diaz said she has Indigenous heritage.
Diaz said Friday afternoon she hoped CBI would take up the case and that she felt the law was “written for our exact situation.”
In a Friday evening news release, CBI announced it would “conduct a review, not a re-investigation” of the case.
CBI Director Armando Saldate spoke with Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson, Boulder County Coroner Jeff Martin, University of Colorado Police Chief Ashley Griffin and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty about the parameters of the review, and none objected to the review, the release said.
The Sheriff’s Office will be making the entire case file available to CBI, the office said in a Friday evening news release.
“We recognize the concerns this case has raised in our community and believe transparency is essential to public trust. We welcome this independent review and stand by the thoroughness and outcome of our investigation,” Johnson said in a statement Friday evening.
Trussell, 18, was on Feb. 15 near the 40-mile marker of Boulder Canyon Drive in “hard-to-reach” terrain. Trussell was last seen at 9 p.m. Feb. 9 while leaving her campus dorm, Hallett Hall. The Boulder County Coroner’s Office was a result of the toxic effects of amphetamine and exposure to a cold environment, or hypothermia, and ruled the manner of her death as suicide.
Her parents have consistently disputed the official finding that she died by suicide. In August, the asking the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office to reopen the investigation. The sheriff’s office said it did not plan to reopen the investigation barring new information.
