Kaleo Schreiner of Tracy was sentenced Thursday to 45-years-to-life in prison for the 2015 murder of his girlfriend Megan Troen, whose bullet-riddled body was found in the California Aqueduct near Nees Avenue and Interstate 5 in Fresno County.
The 28-year-old Schreiner showed little emotion as Fresno County Superior Court Judge Arlan Harrell issued his punishment for first-degree murder and the use of a gun.
Harrell shared his frustration with trying to understand why Schreiner would shoot his 20-year-old girlfriend multiple times, wrap her in a plastic bag and dump her body.
“Only Mr. Schreiner knows why he did this and only he knows how much she (Megan Troen) suffered when he shot her seven times,” the judge said. “It is also very clear that this was a willful, deliberate and pre-meditated murder.”
Detectives with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office testified during Schreiner’s 2017 preliminary hearing that Troen and Schreiner left Tracy on June 20, 2015 for a short trip. But Troen never returned and her mother called the Tracy Police Department the next day to report her daughter missing.
About 10 days later, state workers discovered a decomposed body in the California Aqueduct near Nees Avenue and Interstate 5 in the Firebaugh area. The body was stuffed in black garbage bags and wrapped with duct tape. Detectives determined it was Troen.
Her mother, Barbara Troen, told the court in a letter she fought with the medical examiner to allow her to see her daughter’s body. She wanted to lay a favorite dress of her daughters inside the body bag so it would be buried with her.
She wasn’t prepared for what she saw when they opened the bag, she wrote in a letter to the court.
Prosecutor Kelly Smith read Barbara Troen’s letter.
“My poor baby had no hair, all her gorgeous curly hair was gone,” she wrote. “She had no eyes, and no ears. The fish apparently had a field day with her face. I was not allowed to touch her so I asked for an extra glove and placed it on her forehead and kissed her goodbye.”
Detectives testified during the preliminary hearing that both Troen and Schreiner had mental illness. Schreiner’s brother Kimo Schreiner said after the hearing that his brother had been receiving mental health therapy from the age of 6. He was prescribed medication, some of it worked, some did not.
By 2015, Kimo Schreiner said his brother’s mental health was deteriorating.
“There were times I was afraid to be in the house with him,” Kimo said. “ But I don’t think anyone thought he was capable of hurting someone.”
Kimo Schreiner said he agrees with the judge that Kaleo needs to spend time in prison, receiving help for his mental illness.
“A lot of what was said was hard to hear,” Kimo Schreiner said. “I still see him as my little brother.”
This story was originally published October 27, 2022 5:20 PM.
