proving a decades old suicide that might actually be homicide? well, that is more a matter of timing and look. in the case of meg purk, the stars aligned in the summer of 2011, one detective ken mifflin walked into the office of summit county ohio prosecutor sherri bevan walsh. i actually still remember when detective ken mifflin came to my office, and he was basically asking for my assistance to file a motion to exhumed the body and reopen the case. he was pretty confident it was not a suicide, and this was a murder. my guess is you guys have plenty of open cases that are, as of that moment, unsolved? you probably didn t need one in a closed file reopened right away? we have, unfortunately, a lot of homicides in summit county, ohio, and we were probably, i would estimate at that time, already working on
when they married in 1981, her family was not invited. they didn t run off and eloped. we had a wedding ceremony in the area, and i guess a reception. but her family wasn t there? she knew how we felt. nevertheless, meg over the moon when she learned she was pregnant. as her due date approached, she wrote this letter to her grandmother, a letter she never got the chance to mail. just think, any day now, you are going to be a great grandmother, and i m going to be a mother. a mother! it s even hard for me to believe, but i am looking forward to it . those did not sound like the words of someone thinking of suicide. she was extremely excited for that baby. and that was one of the things she always wanted. she wanted to be a mom.
she wanted a family. so, dawn was stunned when, on march 19th, 1985, she heard meg had been rushed to the hospital. and then i get the phone call, and. kind of like the floor drops out from under you. it was a shock. who was on the phone? scott. do you remember anything he said? it was, dawn, i ve got bad news. meg tried to kill herself. she s in the hospital. they don t know if she is going to make it . she did not. as for suicide well, there had been times before she married scott, when meg had spoken of taking her own life. there was an incident one time where she locked herself in a bathroom, and said she was going to cut her wrists. this was over at a friends house. but, you know, after that, she came out, she had not cut herself or anything like that.
so, he calls for invest respond and meets them at the door when they get their. meg s unborn baby, a boy, died at that same day. meg lingered another 24 hours. she never regained consciousness. the detective had nothing he could test or examine. in fact, even the police photos from the scene had been tossed long ago. still, nothing about scott purk s version of the story felt right. most women who are nine months pregnant and carry their child full term typically do not commit suicide. that was the first thing. second thing was, he was in the apartment when his wife hung herself and a stairwell of their apartment. most individuals do it by themselves with no one around. both of those facts were available to the akron police back in 1985. they had their doubts that this was a truly a suicide. however, they just didn t have enough. next, the detective examined
all along. and add in s money woes and his admission that an insurance payout would clear most of his debt. and like dell with spree saw on the idea of scott purk as an arson lid suspect. oh and mifflin wasn t finished. on the night of the fire, the detective tall lidlel. had casually scott purk had tuck casually added a tantalizing detailed his life story. scott just out of the blue says to me, well, his first wife had committed suicide in 1985. she was pregnant, nine months pregnant. as if not only is my house in embers but this isn t even the worst thing that happened to be? i was shocked and it made me wonder, okay, now i need to look into this. i m looking at someone who believes in arsonists. now i m wondering, okay, we ll see a murderer?