Nearly two years after arrest, woman awaiting murder trial

The trial for Megan Boswell, accused in 2020 of killing her 15-month-old daughter, is scheduled to happen later this year, and a judge is keeping her in jail in the meantime.

Sullivan County Judge Jim Goodwin ruled Friday that there will be no reduction in Boswell’s $1 million bail, which was set after her arrest in February 2020. The 20-year-old could receive a sentence of life in prison without parole as she faces 19 charges related to the death of Evelyn Mae Boswell, including felony murder and aggravated child abuse.

Megan Boswell’s trial has been set for Sept. 26, with a motion for a change of venue scheduled for April 7. The case in the northeast corner of Tennessee received national attention after the girl was missing for weeks and Megan Boswell spoke to the media several times with theories about who had her daughter.

Police said she offered a series of inconsistent and conflicting claims about her daughter’s whereabouts. They later arrested her.

The eventual discovery of Evelyn Boswell’s body also made national headlines, though the circumstances of her death have been kept under wraps by authorities. The indictment filed against Megan Boswell does not offer details on how Evelyn Boswell died or an exact date of her death. The toddler was first reported missing by her grandfather, Tommy Boswell Sr., who told authorities he had not seen the child since early December 2019.

He has never publicly explained why he delayed in reporting his granddaughter missing but denies any role in her disappearance and death.

Evelyn Boswell was born in November 2018 to Megan Boswell, then 17, and Ethan Perry, then 19. Perry had joined the military a year earlier after graduating high school.

Megan Boswell was living with her father and two younger siblings at the family compound in Blountville at the time of the birth.

In March 2020, nearly three weeks after Evelyn was reported missing, law enforcement agents found her remains inside a shed at the compound.

Megan Boswell is accused of killing her daughter under two separate legal theories — that the child’s death resulted from an act of child abuse or from an act of child neglect. The indictment alleges Megan Boswell abused her daughter’s corpse, a charge typically leveled when a body is moved and hidden in some manner.

She also is accused of a dozen counts of lying to various law enforcement agents, including detectives with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department and agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the FBI.