The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office announced on Tuesday afternoon that a purse belonging to 18-year-old Megan Trussell, who was found deceased near the 40-mile-marker of Boulder Canyon Drive on February 15, had been “recently recovered.” The sheriff’s office said that it will not release additional details about the purse regarding its location or contents as the investigation is ongoing.
Trussell was last seen on the University of Colorado Boulder campus, where she was a student, on February 9 at 10 p.m. She was reported as missing on February 12 and her body was discovered in a “hard-to-reach” area of Boulder Canyon on February 15. Her body was officially identified on February 18.
An anonymous source told the Boulder Daily Camera on Tuesday that Trussell’s purse was found on March 5 near U.S. 36, more than 6 miles from where her body was found, according to Colorado Hometown Weekly.
Colorado Hometown Weekly also reported that Trussell’s mother, Vanessa Diaz, posted on Facebook on Tuesday night that Trussell had only been wearing one shoe when she was found and that the side seam on the purse was ripped out. “Someone ripped this purse from her,” Diaz wrote. “The damaged purse and the missing shoe lead me to believe there was a struggle, or, at the very least, another person with her when she died.”
The cause and manner of death has yet to be determined by the Boulder County Coroner’s Office. The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on X that “we still have no reason to believe that there is, or was, a threat to the community.”
