Abused boy ate feces, drank urine to survive 1
Frat boy wrapped in TP, set on fire 2
Bogus butt surgery leaves 6 hospitalized 3
By Steve Huff in homicide, unsolved
Friday, Nov. 21 2008 @ 8:52AM


News report about Meghan Runkle's murder.

Early in the morning on November 21, 2008, the javascript countdown on Meghan Runkle's MySpace profile said it had been 7 days, 8 hours since her birthday. Meghan would have turned 18 on November 14.

By then, Meghan had been dead for a week or more.

Meghan Runkle was discovered in the Jennings State Forest in a ditch near a bike path. Her nude body lay in shallow water.

Police confirmed Meghan's identity on November 12. They are treating her death as a homicide.

For Meghan's family, it was tragedy on tragedy -- her younger brother Jonathan Hackett had died under medical care on November 2 in the Childrens Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA.

There's no doubt that Meghan Runkle was having a rough time in Florida. She had lived in California until at least 2007 and was living with friends in Florida when she died, but it wasn't clear as to whether she'd even finished high school or not. Her stepmom, Rebecca Jageacks, told Florida media that Meghan had encountered some "hardships" while living in Jacksonville, and that her stepdaughter had "wanted to get back in contact with her family." Jageacks said that Meghan "wanted to get a car, she wanted to get a job and put herself through school. She had so many choices that she wanted to do."

Meghan identified with fans of Insane Clown Posse. In addition to her MySpace page, she had profiles and at least one blog on Xanga.com. There she wrote, "umm... im a juggalette..." (juggalos are male fans of ICP, juggalettes the female fans) and posted original poems. One piece, posted on January 7, 2007, seemed to be about cutting:

"...I Promised Her I Would Not Leave
We Kissed And Then She Started To Bleed
As I Began To Cry
I Just Remembered I Didn't Say Goodbye
Forgive Me Please, I Cannot Stay
Though I Have Since That Day
'Too Much Pain I Cannot Bear'
She Said Crying, Then 'Will They Really Care?'
So As I Lay Here Crying And Bleeding
I Can Almost Hear You, Silently Screaming."

Meghan also had a personal profile on MyJuggaloSpace.com. There she wrote that her "religion" was "The Fellowship of Juggalos" and her occupation was "mass murderer."

I should stop right here and say that a lot of people misinterpret the Insane Clown Posse thing. (And it should be said, ICP followers can get very defensive about ICP being associated with anything like a newsworthy crime.)

It is easy for the judgmental and narrow-minded to look for ways to blame this group or its music -- ICP are essentially a hip-hop group and perform what Wikipedia refers to as horrorcore -- for Meghan Runkle's mysterious fate, but that would be missing the point. ICP are artists who have maintained a tight focus on a core audience and reaped substantial rewards from doing so. For the majority of ICP fans, the music is an outlet. It's like a pressure valve, releasing steam when the internal temperature gets too hot to bear. The guys who created the Insane Clown Posse personas are not really mass murderers and the kids who like them are not part of some evil satanic cult. Too few journalists and bloggers ignore this sort of caveat, and it is unfair (and tabloid) to the larger number of ICP fans who never do anything violent or criminal to do so.

The best reason to acknowledge Meghan Runkle's devotion to ICP as evidenced by her online presence is the insight it may give into the murdered girl and where she was in her life when she died. Was she running with other self-identified juggalos and juggalettes? Was there a predator in the group? That's a worthwhile question, because as anyone involved in any group on the "fringes" of society can tell you, psychopaths are drawn into exotic lifestyles along with good people who just refuse to lead ordinary lives. Another example of what I'm talking about might be the bdsm-fetish community: most people into bondage and dominance, most fetishists are not predatory killers. However, predators are easily drawn into those lifestyles, because they perceive easy pickings there.

Before she died, Meghan was apparently trying to re-connect with her family. She was a vulnerable point in life, and if you read much of her poetry [another example here], you can see she was inherently vulnerable, anyway.

If Meghan was indeed murdered as police believe, then someone picked her off, just as a wolf might single out the slow or sick sheep in the herd.

Meghan Runkle had other online profiles here and here. Another example of a poem apparently written by Meghan: The Attic Site Poetry page.

If you think you have information that might help investigators find out what really happened to Meghan Runkle, contact the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

[Hat-tip to my friends at DreaminDemon.com. See also: FirstCoastNews.com. See also: further reading from Phoenix New Times about ICP and juggalos.]