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Oct 5, 2023 · NBC’s ‘Dateline: The Note’ narrates the story of Megan Nichols, a 15-year-old who vanished from her Fairfield, Illinois, residence in early July 2014. Initially classified as a runaway, the discovery of her remains almost four years later led to a series of shocking revelations during the police investigation. These revelations included the involvement of sexual […]
Andrea Cavallier. Andrea Cavallier is a Digital Producer for Dateline NBC. Brodey Ian Murbarger, 24, was arrested Wednesday, October 8, 2020, in the 2014 murder of 15-year-old Megan Nichols whose ...
- Overview
- Teenage drama in a small town
- Megan vanishes
- A key piece of evidence
- Putting on the wire
Kyle Ellis was in a panic. Two FBI agents were at his Indiana apartment with alarming news: They said they had evidence that his best friend and roommate may have been involved in the mysterious disappearance and murder of a onetime girlfriend.
Days later, the agents made a proposal that was nearly as shocking: They wanted Ellis to confront his best friend with the evidence — and to wear a wire when he did it.
Ellis agreed, and his secret recording would play an important role in a case that had eluded authorities, helping convict Brodey Murbarger in the murder of Megan Nichols, 15, who vanished in 2014. Her remains were found three years later.
Murbarger, 27, who has denied the charge, was sentenced in January to 50 years in prison.
In Ellis’ first interview about the case, he told “Dateline” about his recorded confrontation and the dramatic end of a close friendship that he and Murbarger had spent years building in Fairfield, the small farming community where they grew up in southern Illinois.
Megan’s murder, he said, was the “ultimate betrayal."
Ellis, who’s preparing to become a lawyer and lives in Fairfield, and Murbarger got close as high school freshmen. He said they were “very” similar — smart kids from a small, rural town who didn’t fit in with the farming families and wanted to get out.
Both earned straight A’s their senior year and were two of the students in a four-way tie for Fairfield Community High School’s 2014 valedictorian, Ellis said.
Murbarger had known Megan since grade school. She was outgoing and thoughtful — someone who thought of others first and wanted to make them laugh, her mother said.
Megan, who was a couple of years younger, reconnected with Murbarger in her eighth grade year and later in glee club — which Ellis said most likely magnified the animosity of what became a fraught relationship, because another girl whom Murbarger was seeing was also in the club.
Murbarger bragged about being with both girls, Ellis recalled.
The teenage drama that followed escalated when Murbarger — who had been spending more and more time with Megan — took the other girl to prom. When Megan’s mother, Kathy Jo Hutchcraft, forbade her daughter from seeing Murbarger, he showed up at their house anyway.
In April 2014, Murbarger made a strange offer. He wanted to give Ellis all of his things — his guitars, video game consoles and motorcycle — in exchange for $3,000. Murbarger was sick of his family, he told Ellis, and he wanted to run away.
Murbarger could also be overly dramatic, Ellis said, and he didn’t believe his friend was serious. But the fantasy kept evolving, with Murbarger running away sometimes on his own and sometimes with Megan, Ellis said.
Three months later, on the night of July 3, Megan vanished. Authorities later discovered security video from two local banks showing her withdrawing cash from an ATM the day she disappeared. And her mother found ominous clues in her bedroom — a cellphone that had been wiped and a note telling her mother she loved her but not to look for her.
Ellis said that the next morning, when he learned the news, he immediately texted his friend — not to find out about what happened but to give him advice and see whether he was all right.
"I was concerned that he would be blamed unfairly for Megan’s disappearance," Ellis said. "My advice to him was don’t talk to anybody without a lawyer."
But Murbarger did, repeatedly, in the months and years that followed, providing an account of his whereabouts to the local police department and then, after the case was handed off a year later amid sluggish progress, to the Illinois State Police.
The car — a 2009 Dodge Avenger — became key evidence after state police turned to the FBI for help.
In 2016, Murbarger wrecked it. Ellis — who by then was living with Murbarger in Evansville, where they attended the University of Southern Indiana — recalled his roommate saying he’d been involved in a single-car crash: He’d passed out while driving to his parents’ and veered into a tree.
He was floored when Hart, the FBI agent, showed up two years later with critical new information about the car.
A stroke of luck had allowed Hart to track down the Avenger. After the crash, it was sold to a salvage yard, which then sold it to a Missouri couple, who allowed the FBI to conduct more extensive testing on the trunk, Hart said. The couple agreed to the testing without a warrant, which wouldn’t have been possible to obtain because of how much time had passed since Megan disappeared.
The tests confirmed that the stain was Megan’s blood, Hart said.
"I’m sure the color just drained out of my face, and the only thing I was thinking, like, the whole time they were talking was ‘oh, s---!’” Ellis said, recalling his first meeting with the FBI.
Ellis said he didn’t sleep for days. Fearing what Murbarger might do to others — including a new girlfriend Murbarger was seeing — Ellis met with the FBI again and agreed to help. When Murbarger left town for a couple of weeks, Ellis moved out — and he later planned a get-together to explain why he’d left so suddenly.
The FBI would be listening as he did. It needed Ellis, Hart said, because Murbarger was no longer talking to authorities without a lawyer, and officials wanted to see how he’d respond to the new evidence.
"He was clearly nervous, but Kyle is certainly motivated by the right thing,” Hart said.
On July 2, 2018, Ellis made the case the FBI had made to him, telling Murbarger that the blood the agents had found was Megan’s, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by “Dateline.”
"Why is her blood in your car?” Ellis asked.
"That’s a good question,” Murbarger replied. “I would like to know that, too."
Jan 27, 2023 · Brodey Murbarger has been sentenced to prison for the murder of Fairfield, Illinois teen Megan Nichols. The man at the center of a high profile murder case out of Wayne County, Illinois, learned his sentence on Friday. As reported in October, Brodey Murbarger was found guilty of the murder of Megan Nichols, of Fairfield, Illinois.
F AIRFIELD, Ill. — A man has been sentenced to 50-years in prison for the murder of Megan Nichols. Brodey Murbarger was convicted in 2023.An episode titled “The Note” will air on Dateline ...
Oct 13, 2022 · Updated: Oct 13, 2022 / 04:08 PM CDT. FAIRFIELD, Ill (WEHT) – Brodey Murbarger, 26, was found guilty of first degree murder on Thursday after the jury deliberated for only an hour. Murbarger was ...
