Megan Karik is a murdered freelance gossip writer for Citysmear.com and the girlfriend of Dennis Di Palma, the editor supervising her job.
History[]
Megan was running a story on Vanessa Carville, a talk show host on a production titled The Sisters, where Megan herself was a production assistant before her transfer to Citysmear. Carville had a history of coercing employees under her into being exploited for sexual abuse, reportedly including Megan herself, which made her all the more motivated to release the report. She arranged an interview with Sara Bradley, another one of Carville's victims, and did her best to encourage Sara to give a formal statement. When Megan ran her draft by Di Palma, his sub-editor Derek Fanning decided to get even more money with a blackmail scheme targeting Carville, much more elaborate than a straightforward extortion plan.
Fanning made Di Palma and Megan act out Di Palma strangling Megan at gunpoint, while Fanning recorded the whole illusion. Di Palma and Megan then went to the Cayman Islands to set up an offshore account for the blackmail money. They never knew just what his intentions were, until Fanning coerced Di Palma to leave the demands at Carville's door, threatening the release of a book on her sexually dominating her employees if she didn't cough up 3 million dollars. Megan, who wasn't even direct involved in the actual extortion plot, was horrified when she found out and ready to call the cops or Carville to report the scheme. Fanning manually strangled her to death and left her on the side of a road after she met with Sara at a restaurant. Using the video, Fanning blackmailed Di Palma with framing him for murder if he didn't continue the plan without a hitch nor the cops finding out.
Sara clarified the story Megan was reporting after she was found form a message she left on Megan's phone, refusing to give a statement after all. When Carville's blackmailing was uncovered, Di Palma was arrested in a sting, and the video was given to the cops by Fanning anonymously to secure his immunity. However, Di Palma wore a ring in the video, which left no marks on Megan when she was murdered, revealing it was a lie. Di Palma went into detail about how Fanning was behind it all, refusing to testify so he wasn't imprisoned. To reverse the blackmailing "daisy chain", Carville was threatened with drug charges pertaining to substances involved in sexually abusing her colleagues if she didn't send Di Palma and Fanning to jail, convincing Di Palma to take a plea to testify. Carville caved and agreed, and the rest fell into place to reduce Di Palma's penalty and convict Fanning with the harshest charges and punishments. (L&O: "Blackmail")