Decades passed before an arrest in a New York college student's brutal death. Now her family has doubts about the DA.
In the two decades after Megan McDonald’s bludgeoned body was found on a dirt path in upstate New York, her family fought for justice in the unsolved killing.
In the two decades after Megan McDonald’s bludgeoned body was found on a dirt path in upstate New York, her family fought for justice in the unsolved killing. They held anniversary events, placed billboards around their county and maintained a Facebook page, “Justice for Megan McDonald.”
But after an arrest in the killing last year, her family turned their attention to an unlikely subject: the prosecutor.
Megan McDonald.DatelineThey have accused Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler of trying to stymie the investigation, failing to disclose that he once represented a suspect in McDonald’s killing and offering a “secret” plea deal with the man charged with second-degree murder in her death in 2003.The allegations were detailed in disciplinary complaints that McDonald’s sister and mother filed against Hoovler last month with the judicial oversight body that investigates allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
In February, McDonald’s sister, Karen Whalen, and her husband appeared at a lectern alongside the head of the New York Police Department’s detectives union as the group called for state and federal officials to investigate Hoovler over what the group called his “untruthful and evasive” actions. (Karen and Megan’s father, who died in 2002, was a detective with the NYPD.)
Days before the union’s news conference, a local reporter revealed a series of explosive allegations after having obtained what was described as an internal New York State Police report detailing the agency’s troubled relationship with Hoovler. According to the report, published by USA Today Network New York, state police believed Hoovler had deliberately tampered with the investigation.
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