The “kind-hearted” mom who was killed by her brother along with her seven relatives was making plans for an upcoming Christmas visit with her best friend just hours before the tragedy.
Slain Megan Ireland-Ghekiere, 39, and her “sister” Kelsey Garland, 36, had been inseparable since childhood and would talk “every day” using the video messaging app Marco Polo, the distraught friend told The Post.
She described how her best friend had sent her a video discussing plans to see “The Nutcracker” at Christmas on Sunday at around noon — just six hours before cops say her older brother, Alan Smith, arrived at the Billings, Montana, house.
“She sent me a Marco Polo on Sunday at about noon, but I hadn’t watched it yet. I’ve watched it now. She was talking about coming to visit me here and coming to Seattle to watch ‘The Nutcracker’ with her mom and her daughter and me and my mom.”
A few hours later she got a frantic phone call from Megan’s panicked husband, Adam Ghekiere.
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“He called me when he found out the house was on fire to tell me that they were all in the house and he wasn’t sure if anyone was okay,” Garland said.
“I immediately called her. Her phone went to voicemail. Her mom’s phone went to voicemail. And then a couple of hours later, he told me what happened, that they were all gone,” she said.
Cops still have not released an official motive for Sunday’s mass murder, in which Megan, her two children, Chloe, 7, and Owen, 13, and her stepchildren Charlotte, 12, and Landon Ghekiere, 15, were killed, along with her parents, Barbara, 72, and Dana Smith, 73, and grandma, Evelyn Smith, 92.
