Family featured in heart transplant stories found dead

On Saturday, officers from the Sinking Spring Borough Police Department learned that Megan Short failed to attend a pre-arranged lunch date with a another family member.

On Saturday, police discovered the bodies of Megan Short, 33, her husband Mark Short, 40, and their three children: Willow, 2, Mark, Jr., 5, and Liana, 8.

Authorities said they found a gun next to one of the parents.

Adams says a handwritten note found in the home “appeared to be a “murder/suicide” note”.

James Short and other relatives said that Megan Short began dating Mark, who was seven years her senior, when she was just 17 years old, and that the couple had a child and married not long after that.

Willow had undergone a heart transplant as a baby. What soon followed were specialty drug doses administered on a daily basis in an effort to prevent her body from rejecting the new heart.

Police investigating the murder-suicide case released a statement.

A neighbour who saw the post, called Angie Burke, told Reading Eagle that she saw emergency vehicles outside the family’s home at the weekend and her “heart sank”.

Last April, Megan Short blogged about her struggles with her child’s condition, writing of anxiety and nightmares, saying, it took her “nearly two years to recognize how much I was truly impacted by the experiences”. A “murder-suicide” note was also discovered in the home.

A neighbor, Angie Burke, said she posted an online article by Leigh Stein titled, “He didn’t hit me”. They said their investigation revealed the couple had been having “domestic issues” and called the family’s deaths “an apparent tragic domestic incident”. “Just when I get used to her getting a little bit of normal childhood, I am reminded of all that she has to endure throughout her life”, Megan Short wrote.

One time, Megan Short recalled in a blog post, the pharmacy did not send enough medication and she was afraid for her daughter’s life.

“Certain smells and hallways trigger memories every single time“, she said.

But the PTSD still reared its head, Short wrote, in intermittent anxiety and depression that she was handling with therapy, medication and support. “She talked about the emotional roller-coaster of caring for a sick child because she wanted other parents of sick children to know they weren’t alone”.

There are still several details surrounding the Pennsylvania murder-suicide to come.