BAY AREA, CA — A Bay Area mother convicted of killing her three young daughters in 1998 has been found suitable for parole, nearly three decades after the murders, according to prosecutors.
Megan Hogg, now 53, was deemed eligible for release Friday following a hearing before the California Board of Parole Hearings at the Central California Women’s Facility, according to reports.
She was convicted of murdering her three daughters — Antoinette, 7, Angelique, 3, and Alexandra, 2 — and sentenced to 25 years to life. Now, the family and investigators are working together to oppose her release, NBC Bay Area reported.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office said Hogg, then 25, taped the mouths and feet of her daughters and smothered them to death on March 23, 1998, KRON4 News reported. Hogg pleaded no contest to three counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Ten relatives attended the parole hearing. Seven members of Hogg’s immediate family supported her release, while two relatives from the children’s father’s side opposed it, according to prosecutors.
On the morning of March 23, 1998, Karen Hogg, the children’s maternal grandmother, discovered the girls’ bodies in the rear bedroom of the family’s Daly City home, SF Gate reported at the time. She also found her daughter, Megan, who had attempted suicide by drinking hot chocolate laced with about 40 tablets of codeine, Tylenol, Vicodin, and Trazodone, according to SF Gate.
During the 1999 trial, Greg Hogg said his daughter’s battle with depression, her failed relationships with the girls’ fathers, and traumatic events in her childhood — including being gang-raped as a teenager — all led up to the killings of her daughters, the SF Gate reported.
Then Gov. Jerry Brown denied her parole. Subsequent hearings in 2019, 2021, and 2023 resulted in denials, according to KRON4 News. On Friday, Mary Roberts, the paternal grandmother of Angelique and Alexandra, said Megan Hogg had no reason to take three innocent lives that day. The thought of the girls’ last moments alive still “makes me sick to my heart,” she said during the trial, KRON4 News reported.
The victims’ aunt, Damali Ross, says news of the early release is “like ripping the Band-Aid of a wound that never healed,” according to CBS News.
Friday’s decision marked Hogg’s fifth parole hearing in less than eight years and the second time a panel has found her suitable for release.
The district attorney’s office said Monday it continues to oppose Hogg’s release, according to KRON4 News. The case now moves to Gov. Gavin Newsom for final review.