All language subtitles for 2022-Two Shallow Graves-The McStay Family Murders-EP1-The Vanished-E

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?