June 24, 2025
A woman has been charged in the 2020 murder of the missing father of her children.
Meagan Jackson, 40, of Horry County, South Carolina, was found guilty last week on a murder charge.
Jackson's co-defendant, Christopher Allen Dontell, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to criminal conspiracy to commit murder and accessory after the fact for his part in the killing.
Gregory Vincent Rice, 46, of Horry County, South Carolina, was a construction worker and father of four, who went missing in the fall of 2020.
Rice was last sighted in the Flint Lake Ct Myrtle Beach area after leaving work on October 2, 2020.
After several weeks of searching, his body was eventually discovered by two fishermen in the Little Pee Dee River, near Highway 378 on the Horry–Marion County line.
The victim was found wrapped and tied in a tarp that had been weighed down by cinderblocks, and his death was soon determined to be a homicide after autopsy found five gunshot wounds.
Gregory Rice had been with his partner, Megan Jackson, for 16 years, however their relationship began to deteriorate around November 2019.
Around this time, Jackson's mother died suddenly before she had the chance to co-sign on a home that Jackson had been planning to purchase, leaving her with nowhere to live. Those close to Jackson said they noticed a change in her after these impactful events.
Meagan Jackson began having an affair with fellow married co-worker Christopher Dontell, who was the deputy coroner at the morgue where Jackson worked transporting bodies. She soon became pregnant with his child.
On the day of Rice’s murder, October 2, 2020, Jackson and Dontell went out to dinner together, after a practice shooting session at Lewis Ocean Bays Heritage Preserve. Jackson contacted Rice and asked if she could drop by his apartment in Arrowhead, to which Rice agreed.
Dontell later said he drove Jackson's work van for her, while she sat in the passenger side.
Dontell alleged that Jackson then got out of the van, walked towards Rice, pulled out a firearm and started shooting at him.
He would later say at trial:
“I pulled up in front of him, it was like one swift move. She opened the door, flipped out and was pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.”
“I asked her what happened. Why did you do that? She didn’t say much. She told me to go to the funeral home, and I just remember the complete nonchalance, like this was a minor inconvenience that we were going through.”
Dontell said he then dragged Rice's body into the van and transported it to their workplace, Myrtle Beach Funeral Home, where it was then placed in a cooler and passed off as the body of a registered decedent.
He would later claim that he did so because he was afraid Jackson would kill him.
On October 3, 2020, Dontell went to a Lowe's and purchased cinder blocks, ratchet straps, zip ties and a tarp. He was captured doing so on surveillance footage, and these same items were later found on Rice's body.
Two days later, On October 5, 2020, Meagan Jackson reported Rice as a missing person to Horry County Police. Jackson and Dontell were quickly identified as persons of interest by the Horry County Police Department (HCPD).
That same day Christopher Dontell was questioned about the disappearance and authorities gained permission to examine both his cell phone and vehicle, which were both issued by the county. Both he and Jackson quickly became suspects.
Dontell was suspended from his work duties on October 23, and terminated from his position the following month.
At 11:00AM on November 11, 2020, Jackson and Dontell were arrested. Through their phone records and witness statements investigators were able to confirm the pair were having a romantic affair, and that they were expecting a child together.
They were charged with Murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy and booked in at J. Reuben Long Detention Center.
Following the arrest, police obtained a search warrant for Jacksons home on Rivers Edge Dr, Conway, Horry County, South Carolina, where they discovered her children locked inside different padlocked rooms with locked windows. Child Neglect Charges soon followed.
Investigation revealed that one of the multiple children, who was 13 years old, was severely underweight, weighing only 50lbs at the time police made contact.
One of the kids told police they only ate once per day.
They were all found in rooms that had no handles on the inside and the doors could only be opened and closed by punching in a code. The kids did not know the code.
Since they were unable to freely go to and from the bathroom, they were made to use jars.
At trial, Donell pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, as well as conspiracy, as part of a deal.
Jacksons own daughter, Savannah Rice, took to the stand on the first day of her mother's trial, where she described her parents relationship as tumultuous, with constant fighting.
Savannah said that her mother at one point came home intoxicated and said: "I hope what happened to your father happens to your sister."
She added Rice was a good father and caring person and claimed she was aware of her mother and Dontell's affair, after hearing them being intimate together in another room of their home.
In a statement Savannah said: “This crime has torn apart my family, other families, and friends beyond any measure, my siblings and I have all suffered greatly, not only from the loss of my father but the loss of a mother too, the loss of our lives. We’ve been waiting so many years for just a little bit of closure, and this is it.”
Maegan Johnson was sentenced to life on June 17, 2025.
July 08, 2025
