Twenty years ago this Wednesday, Megan McDonald, the daughter of an NYPD detective, was found dead in the backseat of her white Mercury Sable in Orange County, New York. It is believed by New York State Police that an arrest will be made this year, which is a significant improvement from previous years.
“We’re coming for you,” Lieutenant Brad Natalizio of the New York State Police (NYSP) warned. Two days after McDonald’s corpse was found, authorities located her vehicle in the parking area of the Kensington Manor apartment complex in Wallkill, New York. The medical examiner concluded that she died from multiple blows to the head.
McDonald was a waitress while attending SUNY Orange Community College. The NYPD had their “eyes peeled” for a specific person who knew McDonald’s. Their conclusion is that the 20-year-death old’s was the result of “intimate partner violence” and “a crime of passion.”
“We’re getting to the point now where we see the finish line in sight,” Natalizio told Fox News Digital. Many aspects of the case strike a chord with the lieutenant on a personal level. He and McDonald were the same age, he was born in Orange County, and he spent 2006 working for the New York Police Department before relocating to upstate New York.
“Prior to getting promoted to investigator, when I was on patrol, I was actually … driving around and my wife — my girlfriend at the time. She texted me, and she asked, ‘Hey, do you know Megan McDonald?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of her.’ It’s a very popular case in the Orange County area,” Yes, I’ve heard of her, I said.
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The Orange County community has taken this matter to heart “And she said, ‘If you’re ever promoted to investigator, I … want you to get that case. And I want you to solve that case because I work with her mom at the hospital.’ They were both… registered nurses on the same floor. It hits home.”
New York police close to cracking decades-old murder of cop's daughter: 'We're coming for you' https://t.co/rq28cKIz4J
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 17, 2023
Even though Natalizio has had many job changes since 2017 when he first started working for the NYSP, he has continued to investigate the McDonald case, which he describes as a “community endeavor” involving many different divisions, individuals, and the local community.
Their current suspect “flew under the radar for the first several years of the investigation because there was an original suspect that the police and even the suspect were focused on,” he explained. A new suspect has emerged, and the police have been able to “confidently exclude” the previous one.
Two separate $10,000 rewards have been offered by the New York City Detective’s Endowment Association and the FBI for information leading to the suspect’s capture. Her family claimed they are “with the State Police” and “grateful for the great amount of help from various agencies” in a message uploaded to the Facebook page “Justice for Megan McDonald” on March 12.
“There is nowhere this COWARD can hide from all of them,” they wrote. A year before McDonald was murdered, in 2003, her father passed away. Anybody with information regarding this crime is urged to contact the Middletown BCI of the State Police at (845)344-5300.
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