Megan K Hogg

Victims

3 killings covered by a plea of NO CONTEST to three counts of FIRST-degree murder, which is not an admission of guilt. All three were her own daughters, aged two, three and seven

Years active

March 23, 1998

Location

San Mateo County, California, USA

Method

Suffocation

Status

Taped the mouths and feet of her three daughters at the Daly City home they shared with their grandparents on March 23, 1998, and they suffocated; their grandmother found them in a bedroom. She then attempted to take her own life with a mixture of hot chocolate, Vicodin, codeine and Tylenol, and survived. Court records state she did it to spare them the problems she had faced in her own life; prosecutors said she acted out of anger that the girls loved their grandmother, who was caring for them, more than they loved her. She had been diagnosed with depression two years earlier and prescribed antidepressants, and family members said she had suffered complications from an earlier head injury including frequent seizures. She pleaded NO CONTEST, which is not an admission of guilt, to three counts of FIRST-degree murder, and was sentenced on September 24, 1999 to twenty-five years to life. In 2018 the Board of Parole Hearings found her suitable for release, holding that she no longer constituted an unreasonable risk to the community; the San Mateo County District Attorney and the girls’ relatives campaigned against it and Governor Jerry Brown reversed the decision. She was denied parole in 2019, 2021 and 2023. At her fifth hearing, on February 20, 2026 at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, THE BOARD AGAIN FOUND HER SUITABLE FOR PAROLE. Seven of her own family attended in support and two of the girls’ paternal relatives opposed; a third deferred to the board. The District Attorney’s office said on February 23 that it continues to strongly oppose her release. The decision now goes to the Governor of California for review, and as at September 2026 no outcome has been reported.

On March 23, 1998, in San Mateo County, California, Megan Hogg, twenty-six, killed her three daughters: Antoinette Marden, seven; Angelique Roberts, three; and Alexandra Hogg, two. She bound them with duct tape and suffocated them. She then took an overdose intending to die and survived.

She pleaded guilty to three counts of second degree murder and was sentenced on September 24, 1999 to twenty-five years to life.

Her case included substantial evidence of depression and of a chaotic and abusive domestic situation, which was before the court in mitigation and is why the plea was accepted at second degree rather than first.

This is a single act, not a serial case, and it is in the archive under that classification. It belongs with the group of maternal filicide cases in this archive where the mother intended to die with the children and did not.