5

You're Never Truly Prepared For An Armed Attack

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It went down on November 7, 2009, at around 10 p.m. Megan was doing her makeup in the bathroom, while Randy and two other friends were in the house. Everyone was smoking weed. "I remember I'm doing my eyeliner and I heard three loud thumps, and my first thought was ... when my boyfriend laughed he'd bang his hand on the coffee table sometimes ... So I thought, 'You motherfucker, you just busted my table.' Then I hear another thud and wood cracking."

Mario and his friends burst through the door while using a distressingly common home invasion tactic: pretending to be the police. They announced themselves with, "TPD, get on the ground!"

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Like, pants-shittingly distressingly common.

"My boyfriend was pretty high on the distribution level for marijuana here in Tulsa. So hearing that, I was like, 'Shit, we're getting raided.' But my mom is a Tulsa police officer, and she'd told me that if anyone tries to say they're the police and you have doubt, always look for that badge ... I'm like, it's 10 at night. That doesn't sound right."

4

Some People Fight Back

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There are no guarantees when unhinged people burst into a room waving firearms. But if you've got enough physical strength and act before you've really thought anything through, then rash, aggressive behavior can save your life. This is another way of saying that one of Megan's two friends in the house was an angry giant: "My friend is like 7'2, a big big guy. Tall as a friggin NBA player. And these guys were shorter than me -- I'm 5'9. These were not men who came into my house ... Boys, not men. My friend, he bum rushes one of them ... pushes him out the door, I can hear them start fighting for the gun."

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You know your situation is shit when "wrestle for a gun" seems like the best choice.

Mario and his people hadn't been expecting resistance, least of all from The Mountain Who Rides. One of the other gunmen dragged Megan out of her room and into the living room, while Mario kept his gun on Randy and the other friend, both of whom were laying on the floor. Megan recalls thinking, "If he tries to get me outside, I'm going to make them shoot me, because I am not going to be kidnapped and raped and tortured."

Tragically, the distraction caused by Megan's titanic friend didn't halt the violence for long.

3

Even Stick-Up Men Can Have A Crisis Of Conscience

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2

Death Is Not A Quick Thing

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In movies and TV, guns seem to work one of two ways: Either the shot immediately drops the bad guy as if his "off" switch had been flipped, or it hits the hero in the shoulder and has no more effect than a bee sting. In real life, even fatal shootings take time -- victims linger for minutes, or even hours. So in a movie, if you don't expire the moment you hit the ground, it probably means you're going to be fine.

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Again, sadly, unlike the movies, that's not the case in real life.

"... I look over to my left and I see my friend ... he didn't die right away, but he was unconscious ... He was flat on his back. My boyfriend was fetal, protecting his organs a little better. They shot my friend in the heart and lungs ... I see my boyfriend try to move. He's trying to get up. I decide I'm not leaving him. I can't stress enough that this man was the love of my life. I was only 19 ... but I still love him more than anything. I'd do anything for him, I still would ... When I saw him trying to get up, I ran over, said, 'Baby don't move, are you OK?' He said, 'Call 911.' He's holding his stomach. Of course, blood is profusely pouring out of him."

Megan called 911. Their first priority was to know if Randy was lucid, so they asked Megan if he could hear anything. "I said [to Randy], 'If you can understand me, look me dead in the eyes.' He does. So I tell her, 'He can understand me' ... [then] he closes his eyes and faded away, and I just fucking lost it. I'm screaming at him, 'You have to wake up! You can't leave me here!' ... Blood is coming profusely out of his mouth. I can tell he's suffocating [on it], and at that point I said, 'Ma'am, don't disconnect my call ... but I'm going to put this down because my boyfriend is dying. He needs to hear my voice.'"

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There was a hospital just one mile away, but for the time they had, it might as well have been on the moon.

1

The Lone Survivor Is The First Suspect

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Megan's giant friend survived, having managed to overpower his assailant and take his gun. The shot that had gone off during their struggle (the one that prompted Mario to execute the two people inside) didn't hit anyone. The Mountain reentered the house after Mario and his crew left to make sure that Megan was OK, at which point he heroically ran like fuck and took the first bus to Dallas.

This meant Megan was the sole living person at the scene of a shooting, in a house full of pot. Consequently, the police immediately suspected her involvement extended further than being a horrified bystander. "They thought I set this up, because they couldn't comprehend why those guys would come in, kill two people and leave me."

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Apparently, "remained at the scene of the crime, covered in tears" is criminally suspicious.

One of the only pieces of good news in this whole nightmare story is that Megan's giant friend came back as soon as he heard she was under suspicion. He testified, backing up her story and clearing her name. It also helped that Mario hadn't bothered to cover his face during the murders (he hadn't expected to leave witnesses), and he'd also made the familiar but unfathomably dumb decision to brag around about what he had done. So it didn't take long for the authorities to find his dangerous but entirely stupid ass at his apartment.

But then Megan had to testify in court, which was a whole new nightmare for her:"Dear god, testifying is just as traumatic as living it again. I had to listen to the 911 tape. I had to hear myself screaming, and my boyfriend in the background dying and moaning and trying to talk through all this blood ... I hear maybe two seconds of the tape and I couldn't do it. I got up and fucking ran out of the courtroom. I ended up in a men's bathroom, just hysterically bawling because I had to relive that."

Mario's attorney argued that Megan was putting on a show to try and sway the jury. Obviously he was trying to provide his client with the best defense possible as guaranteed by the Constitution, but seriously, what a piece of shit. Megan wasn't present for the rest of the trial, but she was allowed to show up for the verdict, which handed Mario two consecutive life sentences for aggravated murder.

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Hopefully his jackass attorney was also sentenced to at least a punch in the jaw.

Justice had been done. You'd be surprised at how little that matters when a person you loved is no less dead for it. Megan went from a Saturday night hanging out with friends to holding her dead boyfriend in six minutes.

"And then you spend the rest of your life processing what happened during those six to seven minutes. I still don't know."

Robert Evans is Cracked's editorial manager, and he has a Twitter.

For more insider perspectives, check out 7 Things I Learned As An Accomplice To Mass Murder and Cops Won't Help You: 7 Things I Saw As A Real Slasher Victim.

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