Indiana man sentenced to 50 years in Wayne County, Ill. murder case

WAYNE COUNTY, Ill. (KFVS) - Illinois Attorney General, Kwame Raoul, announced that a man from Evansville, Ind. was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murder of a teenager from Fairfield, Ill.

27-year-old Brody Murbarger was prosecuted for the murder of 15-year-old Megan Nichols that took place in 2014. Brody was sentenced on January 27 by Wayne County Circuit Judge Michael Molt after a jury found Murbarger guilty of first-degree murder in October 2022. Raoul said that while this won’t make up for the loss of Nichols, he hops this will at least bring the family some peace of mind.

“When Megan Nichols disappeared in 2014, the lives of her family and friends changed forever. Throughout this case, my office has been committed to obtaining justice for Megan and for her loved ones,” Raoul said. “While nothing will make up for the tremendous loss they have experienced, I hope that this sentence will aid in their healing.”

According to the Attorney General’s office, Murbarger and Nichols were dating during the summer of 2014. The pair ran away together, but Murbarger, who was 18 at the time, returned home alone the next morning.

In 2017, investigators searched Murbarger’s car and found traces of Nichols’s blood. Later that year, Nichols’s body was found buried in a shallow grave, and her cause of death was determined to be “probable asphyxiation by homicidal violence”.