Original subtitles

911, emergency.

What are you reporting?

And what's the location?

The remains of four people were discovered in the Mojave Desert.

This morning, we filed a special circumstance of

multiple murders on the defendant, Charles Ray Merritt.

Merritt is accused of killing the entire McStay family.

Joseph, Summer, and their two small sons, Merritt is facing, potentially,

the death penalty.

Did I kill the McStay family?

Absolutely not.

This is the strongest circumstantial evidence case I've ever seen, and if he

didn't do it, he's the unluckiest guy in the world.

It was blow after blow after blow to a child's skull.

I just can't imagine doing that to another human being.

Let a little child.

The evidence shows they got the wrong guy.

This is purely circumstantial, and it's a stretch at best.

As long as my dad is in jail, and as long as they're focusing

on him, there's still somebody out there that did this.

I've never, ever been in a trial that was this contentious.

And it was very personal, and it became very personal.

Again, these accusations are completely unfounded.

I'm still talking.

This prosecutor is a cheater and a liar.

You withheld this evidence, and now your expert is saying that you're full of shit.

And you lied.

All right, all right.

You're already shown to be a liar, so let's not go down.

Just a minute.

Just a minute.

I may deserve a lot of things.

I don't deserve this.

A tragedy that gripped the entire nation.

Tomorrow, jurors announce their verdict.

I'm just not sure where we are here.

Please a jury in the above-entitled action.

Find the defendant, Charles Ray Merritt.

What's up, dudes?

It's hard to watch.

Just that sweet little belly laugh.

And how innocent they were.

Look who this is.

What's up, Jay?

I worked for a waterfall manufacturer.

I was Joey's account manager.

He cared about me as a person.

I cared about him as a person.

It went beyond just a transactional relationship.

I also got to know a lot about his family.

He was very devoted to his wife and kids.

Goodbye.

Goodbye now.

Goodbye now.

They were people that would give you the

shirt off their back and do anything for you.

They were good parents raising what would

have been two great human beings in the world.

Did somebody come last night?

Merry Christmas!

They had it all, you know.

The two kids, the two dogs, their new house.

Both of them were excited about their business prospects.

Yeah.

It was stolen from them.

Joseph McStay, seen in this home video with his wife, Summer, and their two young

sons, Joseph and Gianni, mysteriously disappeared in February of 2010.

The search is over for a California family who disappeared nearly four years ago.

In the California desert just north of Victorville,

a gruesome discovery by a motorcycle rider.

Joseph and Summer McStay, their children, four-year-old

Gianni and three-year-old Joe Jr., buried in shallow graves.

In 2014, law enforcement arrested and charged Charles Merritt for their murders.

Merritt was a business associate of Joseph McStay.

But prosecutors claim things turned sour.

According to prosecutors, Merritt beat all four members of the McStay family to death.

Did I kill the McStay family?

Of course not.

I can't think of the word, but I just simply don't understand how it got to this

point where people are actually believing it.

I would never hurt him, never hurt Summer, Gianni, or Joseph Jr. There's just...

He was my best friend.

Don't you understand?

You are tearing somebody else's life completely apart.

It is a mystery that has captivated the nation.

Joseph McStay, his wife, and their two sons were killed and then buried in the desert.

And now the mystery unraveling in court where their suspected killer is on trial.

The McStay family disappeared about nine years ago from their home in Fallbrook.

Chase Merritt faced down charges of brutally murdering his professed best

friend along with his whole family with a

sledgehammer for the pure reason of financial gain.

Today, opening statements start in San Bernardino for Merritt.

Defense attorneys argue Merritt would never have

hurt McStay, his best friend and business partner.

And they say the real killer is out there because the San Diego County sheriffs made

mistakes in the initial portions of the investigation.

If convicted on all counts, Merritt is facing potentially the death penalty.

From San Bernardino, Jamie Chambers, Fox 5 News.

Good morning.

Good to see everybody back.

We mentioned before there might be some media attention during the trial.

As you can see, there's a bit.

Just again, a reminder, they're not allowed

to film or video or record any of the jurors.

And with that, are people ready to do not restate them?

Yes, good morning.

Sean, do we have the people on record?

Okay.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

How does this family of four disappear off the face of the year?

How does this family of four, a husband who's running a business, a mom who's

raising her two kids, fixing up a house they

just bought recently, how do they just disappear?

Just up and gone.

The how is that each member of this family that you see here, Joseph McStay,

40 years old, his wife Summer, their two kids, Gianni, who was four years

old, and Joe Jr., who four days before they were murdered had just turned three.

The how is that they were beaten about the head and face until they died.

And then they were taken 100 miles away from their home and buried in the desert.

They were buried in such a manner that animals tore at their remains,

that they decomposed to almost nothing but a set of a few bones.

Summer's been hit in the front of her face, fracturing her jaw in several places.

She was also struck in the back of the head

and in the front of the head numerous times.

Joseph McStay had a fractured rib bone, which

you can see here in the middle of the photograph.

You can also see to the left the red tie-down strap in the electrical court.

In the back of his head was a clear impact site.

All four members of the McStay family were killed by one force trauma.

So go ahead.

So I, you know, watched the trial hoping to find information

that I hadn't seen before, which I got plenty of.

One of the worst images that I remember from

the trial that I couldn't prepare myself for...

was Joseph's face.

So bad.

Just so weird.

And like, I wish I could have turned away and

not seen it, but like I said, I can't unsee that.

It sucks.

I hate this.

And then little Gianni were somehow severely beaten as well.

And you don't really know what happened to little

Joey because his remains were too scattered.

I just can't imagine doing that to another human being.

Let alone a child.

The why boils down to greed and greed's child fraud.

And the who is sitting here in court today.

Charles Moore.

The man who, while claiming to be Joseph's best friend, was forging checks from

Joseph's business and taking money from him.

Putting his hands in the cookie jar.

The who, the evidence will show, is the person whose cell phone activity

for significant portions of time during significant days

and times around the time of the murder, is off the grid.

We can't answer all of the questions.

We can answer the who.

And the who is the defendant who's ripping off his best friend and got caught.

I think Sean put it well in his opening statement.

The jury needed to understand that not all cases have an eyewitness, a confession,

a smoking gun, and that they have to be open to the concept of circumstantial

evidence, understanding how those circumstances interconnect and interplay

with each other, and how that comes to the

ultimate conclusion that the defendant's guilty.

Hello.

So, you can see what's happening from our perspective.

The prosecution's case, we can tell from their opening, is based on innuendo,

rumor, circumstantial evidence.

They're unwilling to listen.

They're unwilling to look at what we believe the

truth is and what we believe the evidence shows.

Thank you.

Their case was a house of cards.

That's what it was.

There was simply no substance to the allegations when you pick the case apart.

We never found that smoking gun.

It just wasn't there.

In a case like this, when I know he didn't do it, I

know he's not responsible for this, how can I stop?

I mean, what's been forgotten in all of this is that Chase loved him.

As a brother, he adored Joseph.

He couldn't spend a day without him.

And he's fighting for his life because he's innocent.

It's just real fun.

So, uh, how do you think things are going so far?

I am...

taken aback.

Well, actually, the better word would be I'm appalled at the prosecution's strategy.

It scares me.

Chase wanted it told.

The story was always somebody who was an innocent man who was accused of this crime.

Use marker?

Yep.

Go.

Yeah, hold on.

We had grave concerns about the financial relationship between the media company and

the defense counsel and even the defendant.

Are we getting another making-of-a-murderer hit piece on prosecutors?

Is it going to be totally slanted towards the defense?

When did you first find out that there was a documentary being made?

I believe it was just before we went to trial.

And then, when I found out that they were embedded with the defense, I got convinced

that this was going to be a defense story.

And it was going to be one-sided to the defense.

And I wanted no part of that.

I hope, once it's finished and it's done and it airs, that it is absolutely fair.

And the whole story's told, both sides.

Okay?

And the public can decide.

Gee, come on, let's go!

You are not very patient, are you?

Let's go!

Why are you laying in the middle of the street, dude?

Come on!

Let's go on Daddy's bike.

Yeah, let's go on Daddy's bike.

Yeah!

Yeah, let's go.

You gotta understand, man.

I...

I still, to this day, can be sitting in my living room, watching a program on TV,

and something will come up on the screen.

And I'll go, damn, I'm gonna call Joey.

And then it hits me.

I don't have Joey.

I mean, he's in my heart.

In my head.

But there's no physical Joey here.

Look at this guy.

So you lose him all the time, all over again.

Yeah.

Every day.

Every single day.

Yeah, Joey was two years old when I met Susan.

As a matter of fact, he had just turned to.

And so, yeah, he and I, like an instant bond.

And, I think back to those times, and I think that,

I fell as much in love with him as I did his mother.

And, he was the same way.

When Michael was born, you know, and they were, they were pretty much inseparable.

And they were, and they were a perfect pair.

Susan and I got divorced.

But Joey and I were extremely close.

He designed, and they built, custom waterfalls.

pretty.

For example, if you walked into a lobby of a business, and you saw on a wall,

their logo, with water running down the wall over the logo, that's what Joey did.

Sometimes on glass feet, you'd have some dry spots at startup.

But, watch this.

All right, Chase.

Just gonna shake the edge of the glass, and it's corrected immediately.

Chase Merritt was, let's see, I guess the

best way to describe it is, he was a welder.

Whatever Joey designed, he would build.

And, they really did well.

Hey Chase, step back.

If the company had survived, it had contracts, for 11 to 12 million dollars,

over the next five years.

And, I can honestly say, Merritt was good at what he did.

Joey, he would have called him a friend.

Joseph and I, we were, we were pretty close.

He was really a cool guy.

We used to, play paintball together.

We, he'd come down, to my house, every other week or so.

Uh, have dinner.

I would go to his house, probably, once a week.

Sometimes, sometimes more often.

Just depending on, the week.

Joseph and I talked for, at least 15 times a day.

So, were we close?

Yeah.

We talked, all day.

Every day.

Every day.

Good morning, everyone.

As you know, my name is James McGee.

I'm representing Mr. Merritt.

We're just sitting here, before you.

When we see the McStay family, we see victims.

We do.

And we want justice for them as well.

What you gotta realize is, Charles Merritt, which here, he calls Chase.

Chase is Joseph's best friend.

The loss is also to him.

The theme you're gonna hear, throughout this trial, is confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias.

That's when, you decide what conclusion you

want, and look for the facts that support it.

And that's what, this whole investigation is.

We want Chase Merritt.

So let's just, do gymnastics with logic, and

figure out, how do we build a case against him?

DNA from the grave site, excludes, Charles Merritt.

That's correct.

Nobody knows this, but us.

So apparently, Chase killed his family, buried him, and put someone else's DNA,

on everything, and not his own.

And we're still going to try.

Any good defense attorney, would say, you know, that's

really nice, they've charged my client, they can't prove it.

For whatever grounds, whether it's, you don't know

when, where, why, how, or that my client did it.

I think in this case, it was pretty obvious, they were murdered.

Right?

They were spirited away, from their house, at some point.

They were murdered, they were buried, in shallow graves.

And I think, the first question to ask, is how does that family of four,

just disappear, off the face of the earth?

I'm at home, and the phone rings, I pick up the phone, and I look at it,

and I get a caller ID, and it says, D Cavanaugh.

Delete.

Who in the hell is Dan Cavanaugh?

About an hour later, I get an email, pops up.

Whoop.

D Cavanaugh.

So then, I'm talking to Michael.

Who's D Cavanaugh?

I don't know ID Cavanaugh.

I don't know ID Cavanaugh.

My son Michael goes, oh yeah you do dad.

Dan Cavanaugh.

Dan the hacker.

And I went, oh hell, I know who that is.

Yeah.

I knew his name, but I never paid attention to it.

Probably heard it, maybe once or twice.

Joey hired him, to design his website.

And the deal was, Joey would pay him, based off the sales, and the hits to the site.

And that was basically it.

Dan would maintain the site.

When Cavanaugh, he's trying to get him, he can't get him.

And the emails full.

And phone messages are full.

Something's wrong.

Joey, he'll do a lot of things.

But he is not gonna miss an order for money.

I'm telling you that right now.

That's his livelihood.

That's his support for his family.

Something's wrong.

It was just baffling to me at the time.

When I tried to call him, and it goes to his

voicemail, and it says the voicemail's full.

Why isn't he picking up?

Why isn't he calling me back?

Okay, Friday.

Eh, no big deal.

Maybe he's doing something.

Maybe he's busy.

Saturday.

Eh, well.

Maybe he and Summer are doing something.

Maybe they're out shopping.

So Sunday evening.

Now I'm getting a little worried.

This is a little out of the ordinary.

Monday, I'm getting upset.

So, now I gotta find out.

So, I'm telling Michael I can't reach him.

And I asked him if he could run down to the house and check on his brother.

Because I was really getting to that point.

And he was, no, Dad, I'm too busy.

And I'm going, you know, please, Mike.

This is really important.

I'm really worried about your brother.

And he's like, Dad, I'm busy.

He said, I can't do it.

How mad at Michael were you?

Pretty mad.

If I could have jumped through the phone, I would have.

I was pretty hot.

We had several projects in the works.

And he just suddenly stopped calling.

So, I tried to reach him for several days.

Finally, I decided on the 9th to drive out there.

Nobody was home.

So, finally, I got hold of Michael and said,

Look, you're going to meet me down there.

You need to file a missing persons report.

And it took several phone calls for him to

finally say, Okay, I'll meet you down there.

On that day, him and I were there at the house.

And he went through the window of Joseph's office.

And opened the house.

And we went in.

And, you know, nothing looked awry.

But the kitchen was kind of a mess.

And he just kept, it's no big deal.

And I'm like, it's a big deal.

He would have called me.

And I said, dude, call the Sheriff Department.

And then, finally, the last time I said, Dude,

call the Sheriff Department and I'm going to.

The police went through the whole house.

They were in the midst of a huge remodel.

So, carpets were coming up.

Wood floor was going down.

They were in the midst, like right in the middle of that.

They looked for any obvious sights of blood or sign of a struggle.

And didn't see anything like that.

But

my thinking was, if they took a three-day weekend because of the holiday,

then they took the week, then they took the following weekend.

That's a ten-day stint.

So that's why I didn't call.

Should I call on Saturday?

Is that the day I should have called on Saturday?

No.

The answer to your question is, there's no right and no wrong.

It's what you feel when you thought that it was important enough.

What do you think?

As a brother, where are they?

I'm hoping they went down and they just went

to Mexico and they took a two-week vacation.

I mean, that's a pipe dream at this point.

I don't know.

What did you see in the house that would indicate that that's probably not true?

Did you see in... did you go through the house?

I just walked through, but I didn't get a...

Well, let me help you out.

The food laying out.

The food laying out.

That makes me nervous.

Yeah, but it doesn't look like any violence or anything gnarly.

And I don't see anything broken like there was

a struggle or somebody threw something down.

Okay.

You're pretty much free to do whatever you want.

Understand this, though.

If something happened in that house that I need to know, for evidentiary purposes...

Right.

The more you're in there and the more you manipulate things...

Right.

The more the scene and why figuring out goes out the window.

Evidence that was lost in the house.

Susan Blake thoroughly cleaned that house with bleach.

And thoroughly bleached down everything.

But, you know, she was scared.

She was trying to make herself busy.

I don't blame her in the least.

I do blame the detectives.

They should have not let them back in that house.

If they hadn't have, there would have been a plethora of evidence that would,

at the very least, have the possibility of exonerating me.

But now, it's just gone.

Police discovered the couple's 1996 white SUV had been

abandoned in a San Ysidro parking lot near the Mexican border.

Investigators released this surveillance video of what

appeared to be the mixed days crossing the Mexican border.

I just didn't believe that they would go into Mexico.

There were sightings in Mexico, but nobody ever confirmed any of them.

None of them.

It was kind of like we made an agreement that Susan and I and Michael would talk to.

And we would all agree on what we were going

to do, step by step, or we wouldn't do it.

But within a matter of a week or two, it was almost like what I said had no meaning.

And so at that point, I said, I'm done.

You guys do what you want to do.

I'm out of it.

The first thing that broke them apart was Michael and Susan saying they wanted to

take over the business, and Patrick said no.

My family became estranged from me.

We became apart.

We didn't speak for long, for years.

I'm not going to go into stuff like that.

It was just the way...

The only thing I would say is it was what he and his mother

believed at the time, and what I believed was different.

It's really sad to me to think that, you know,

like, that's his only remaining son, and...

It's just a shame, like, to see something so horrible happen to a family member,

and then you can't get it together with the one you have left.

Life's too short for that.

No, we haven't communicated that much.

You know, we have our differences.

But he's my son, and he always will be my son.

And I will always be there if he needs me.

And, uh... It's all that needs to be said.

9-1-1 emergency.

What are you reporting?

Hi.

Uh, I'm out here behind the dump, and I found

what looks like part of a shooting skull.

And what's the location?

There's no paved roads around here.

We continued the investigation on Tuesday and Wednesday, excavating the site.

And through the use of dental records, we're able to

identify the adult victims as Summer and Joseph McStay.

We believe the other two sets of remains are that of the boys, their sons.

Uh, good morning.

It's not really the, uh...

The, uh...

Outcome

we were looking for.

But, um...

It gives us courage to know that

they're together.

And they're in a better place.

The more than three-year disappearance of the McStay family captured national

headlines and a vast array of theories about their fate before

their bodies were found in shallow graves near Victorville.

I was numb.

You know, I was like...

Had I expected it?

Yes.

Um... I fully expected it.

Because...

There's... Me and the entire family...

Knew...

That something had happened...

To the, to the family.

Because... It's not Joseph.

It's not Summer.

It's not this... They... They would not have left...

For... For... You know... Uh... Four years.

Especially... Three and a half years.

They wouldn't have done it.

It just... Yeah.

So...

Uh... I...

I was just numb.

I can't honestly tell you how I felt.

I just...

Uh... I think... The only way I can really describe it at that point is I was lost.

I just felt lost.

I ask for God's help all the time.

You know... Help me make it through another day, Lord.

You know... Uh... Help me keep my sanity.

You know?

You didn't go to the memorial service.

No, I... I was asked not to come.

I'm not going any farther with it.

I... Yeah, I will go farther.

I knew one thing.

I wasn't raised that way.

And I would never do that, no matter what.

And for someone to do that to me was...

Let's just say I wouldn't do it.

My name is Ryan Smith.

I'm a lieutenant with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

As soon as they were identified as the McStay family, we started coordinating

with San Diego, and we just transferred everything they had, everything they did,

from the second they were reported missing.

Someone put up a new memorial.

Yeah, that's interesting.

That's new.

That's probably within the past...

couple months, actually.

When was the last time you were up here?

It was within a year I've been up here.

So... I don't really know.

This shoe is interesting.

So the two graves were right here?

This is in the middle.

The graves are actually...

One's over there and the other is right there.

The family went missing February 4th, 2010.

The graves were found in November, 2013.

So it's three years, nine months.

And that entire time, where were they?

Right here, in the desert.

So now we knew where they were.

But now you have to find out who did it?

Right.

Yeah, now the real work begins.

Our sergeant told us, take everything that you've heard and throw it out the window.

We want you to look specifically at these cases and start writing suspect lists,

start identifying people that we need to interview.

So you have one grave down over in that area,

and the second grave is kind of right behind me.

And then the cell phone tower is actually up on the mountain right there,

and that's the cell phone tower that Chase pinged off of.

You look on the 6th, and he's pinging at that

Stoddard Wells tower, right at the graves.

It kind of puts you on your heels a little bit.

That's pretty damning evidence.

Yeah, that's, that's, there's no reason, I mean you

can look around and there's no reason to be over here.

There's no stores, there's no people, there's no houses, there's nothing over here.

There's nothing over here.

So they took the Azuzu Trooper from the impound lot, and they process it.

So we do get a DNA hit on Joseph, not surprisingly, as a major contributor,

because he's the one who drove it.

I believe Summer's DNA was in there as a trace, and then so was Charles Merritt's,

as a trace contributor, on the driver's side.

Charles Merritt is a suspect, you could not cross him off as an alibi.

You could not cross him off as not having a motive, you know, or an opportunity.

His initial statement, I was home that night.

I didn't go anywhere, but the phone records actually don't support that.

Joseph was operating his business out of QuickBooks.

And around the first of February became evidence that

someone else had access to it because the activity changed.

If Joseph finds out that Chase had indeed forged a check and cashed it, I think that

certainly would be significant enough to sever that relationship.

And he had no other source of income.

That was desperation.

When you look at the phones, with the car, with the financial fraud, with his

behavior, when you look at just all of these

things, that's when you realize, this is our guy.

This is, this is who did it.

On Wednesday, San Bernardino County Sheriff's

deputies hauled Chase Merritt off to jail.

He's accused of killing the family, including two young children in their home.

This morning, we filed four counts of murder on the defendant, Charles Ray

Merritt, for the murder of Joseph McStay, his wife, Summer, and their children,

Gianni and Joseph Jr. We filed the special circumstance of multiple murders,

what makes them eligible for the death penalty.

It was a vindication that somebody had been arrested.

Of course, it just brought up more questions than answers, really.

It's like, okay, what was it?

What was the final piece of evidence?

We really could not wait for the trial to come out just to hear what they had on him.

And because it worried us, it was like, do they have enough?

You know, what is it that they have?

Is it going to be enough to convict?

How are you going to win this?

They put you at the crime scene.

They put you at the grave site.

They put you at the home.

Like, no, they didn't.

Chase, look, they've got the evidence.

Well, they didn't.

They lied.

They falsified documents.

They manipulated this evidence to look impressive, unless you really looked.

So we got a call from the prosecutors before

trial started, saying that there was a witness.

Essentially what she was saying was someone else was the killer.

Well, I think you guys are the wrong man.

I continued suspecting him.

I mean, I still do.

This is my best friend of ten years.

I would not make this up.

I need to look in the shower for DNA.

You do look at yourself and go, oh, shit, right?

What, what, what, what can happen next?