Original subtitles

He murdered the McStay family.

This is my best friend of 10 years.

I would not make this up.

And this individual that you're talking about, when you say he probably had the

wrong man, who were you talking about that you

think could potentially be involved in this?

Daniel Downsville.

Lo and behold, October of 2018, we get a call from the prosecutors.

And we go to the key station there.

And they produce a witness by the name of Tracy Riccobeni.

And Tracy Riccobeni gives a statement, not only to us, but to the prosecutors as

well, and the detectives, and our investigators.

She claims to be kind of an ex-girlfriend type.

She calls Dan Kavanaugh her best friend.

And what she says is Dan Kavanaugh confessed to her that he killed the McStay family.

Judge, let me switch gears here.

So yesterday, the defense came out with a bombshell and said that it was another

individual, Dan Kavanaugh, who also worked for Joseph McStay, who did these murders.

Apparently, he supposedly told this to his girlfriend.

So do you think that will weigh with the jury here?

Well, sure.

Any time that you have testimony to the effect, as I understand from the defense's

opening statement, that Kavanaugh has admitted to these killings to his

girlfriend, that is quite powerful evidence.

We're just glad you're here, Gracie, honestly.

And we want you to tell the truth.

References, information, okay?

Well, I think you guys are the wrong man.

Okay.

And that's what we're here to talk to you about.

Did you ever hear Dan mention the name of the individual in custody, Charles Merritt?

Not until two weeks ago when he told me how he framed him.

So tell me, who is Dan Kavanaugh?

So Dan Kavanaugh was a business associate of Joseph.

Dan Kavanaugh created the website, but he was able to figure out the

algorithm where when you Googled water feature or waterfall, you'd get

Earth-inspired products, which is what Joseph's company was.

So Dan felt like he should get a certain percentage of all of Joseph's sales

because every sale that went through the website is what Dan created.

I know Joseph wanted to cut Dan out of the business because he felt like he was

giving him money for nothing.

My understanding of Tracy's relationship with Dan is that at some point,

they were in some kind of dating relationship.

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

But then once that gut-punch feeling goes away, a prosecutor

is always out to do the right thing to seek justice in a case.

And if that justice is contrary to what you originally thought

because a new piece of evidence comes up, then so be it.

But you run with it and you figure it out.

And that's what we had to do in this case.

He murdered the McStay family.

This is my best friend of ten years.

I would not make this up.

He started with Summer.

He raped Summer.

And had a rope around her neck.

And he was wielding a Swiss Army-type switchblade.

And then he told Joseph, go take a hike with the kids.

And he told Summer to assume the position.

Told her to get on her knees, you know.

He raped her.

And then, um, said he came twice.

And then, so there should be DNA inside the grave somewhere.

I don't know.

It's just a very odd story that you can threaten someone with a Swiss Army knife,

rape them, while you're telling the husband to take a hike and presumably he

comes back so he can be killed as well?

Is that what we're supposed to believe?

Of course, the prosecution is going to say that she learned all of this, you know,

from watching media reports or watching shows about the case.

But in reality, she shared some information that Dan told her that was

information that only, I think, the killer would know.

Things that have not been published.

You need to look in the shower for DNA, okay?

What's in the shower that he said, since your men's in the shower?

I don't know.

He told me.

He had muddy shoes, okay?

He was dirty.

He took a shower.

The fact is, on February 5th, there was a

huge rainstorm, and that softened the ground.

And that is consistent with what Tracy Rico Benny said, that when Dan came back,

after he buried the bodies, he was covered in mud.

That, to me, was pretty significant in the sense

that that wasn't really known to the public.

How would anyone know that it was raining?

I'm not an accomplice to murder or anything over here, you know?

If you guys try to leverage me with any kind of charge,

I will fucking not even talk after that, you know?

You guys can Zipino me.

But I need witness protection, for one, okay?

And for me to even testify on these people.

Uh...

Nothing...

Literally nothing she says jives with what is there, what has happened.

And...

Ultimately believed there was absolutely no credibility whatsoever to it.

So...

We had gone down to actually interview her, and her behavior

that day was so out there, and she was just bizarre.

And I just remember, I'm looking up at her face, and I could see a lot of marks,

to me, that are indicative of somebody that's using drugs.

Like, she was definitely out of the influence.

And so I think it was quite clear that she very

clearly was unstable, and she wasn't credible.

It's pretty easy to say that somebody's not credible because they did drugs in the

past or something of that nature, but the only reason that they would

discount that and not research it further, I believe, is because they felt like they

had tidied up their loose ends already, and had a case against Chase.

It was just so much easier to tie it up in a red bow and say they're done, right?

I just need to keep the blood flowing.

I get cooped up in my office.

It's too...

It makes me crazy.

So I gotta get out of there.

So we went...

We have a witness that essentially says that Dan Kavanaugh confessed to her,

confessed to killing the McStay family.

You know, she's very... She's very scared of him.

She says, you know, that he's capable of, you know, doing extreme violence.

But, you know, I think she's important.

But I don't wanna take away from the good case that I think that we have now.

I'm putting someone up that might, you know, seem a little too wacky for,

you know, for the jury.

And I don't want the jury to think that we're trying to do anything that's,

you know, not proper or not ethical or whatever,

because she is kind of all over the place right now.

A witness like that can somehow make a difference,

maybe, but more often than not, it backfires.

And it's almost like we're grasping now at anybody who says anything.

So we made a decision not to call her for that reason.

I mean, we didn't feel we needed her.

Yeah, we're gonna try to get Dan Kavanaugh off with him.

Because the DA has not really given us a lot of information about where he is,

his latest location, which is what they're required to do.

And we're gonna send our investigator out there to

try and serve him, you know, and get him in here.

We know the DA obviously is not gonna bring him

down, so it's incumbent upon us to get him in here.

And I think he's probably gonna try to dodge us as best he can.

I would imagine.

But we'll see how that works out.

We then go to try to find him, and we can't.

And we have our investigator in San Diego looking

everywhere for him, and he's nowhere to be found.

He's literally gone.

All the known places that he would frequent.

Nothing.

Yes, Catherine Jarvis.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Ms. Jarvis.

Do you know Charles Merritt?

Yes, of course.

And how do you know him?

Um, we dated, we lived together, and we had children together.

When Chase was arrested for this, we were all

shocked, because I didn't believe that he did do it.

Like, it doesn't make sense.

When I met him, he was wearing a cowboy hat.

Boots and all, you know, cowboy attire.

And, you know, I thought he was attractive.

I actually hit her with my cue stick.

She thought I was an arrogant ass.

I don't know if he did it on purpose or not.

I went and asked her to dance.

He was interesting, charming.

And it just progressed from there.

Within, uh, just a few months, our first was conceived, Taylor.

We were together for pushing 20 years.

We're not together now, but we're still extremely good friends.

She's probably the best friend I have in the world.

She's extremely good mother.

I've got three kids that are absolutely incredible.

I've never seen him act violently, even when he's angry.

Like, I remember shoving him up against a bookcase.

Just, I was so angry, and he never laid a hand on me.

I just can't see him, you know, doing anything like that.

Hi, Dad.

So, I didn't tell you this a couple days ago.

Um, I got a letter in the mail from Southwestern.

Apparently, they heard Loyola and Pepperdine had offered me full tuition.

Um, so I got a letter from them that changed their offer from $100,000,

which is what they originally offered, uh, to a full ride.

Yeah.

Throughout all of high school, I had my heart set on forensic science.

I only got through a year of community college before all this happened with my dad.

I ended up taking a year off of school because I wasn't sure if I wanted to work

within a system that I didn't really trust anymore.

I kind of came to realize that if I wanted to change anything in the criminal justice

system, probably the best way would be to work within it.

So, I want to do criminal defense.

I definitely got my sense of humor from my dad because he's

always making really bad jokes, which is fine because he's a dad.

Also, he set a really good example of just how to be a good person.

He's never had to convince us that he was innocent because we all knew.

So, most of the conversation after he was arrested was, how do we get you back home?

All right.

Love you, too.

Love you, too.

Me, too.

All right.

Bye.

Okay.

Bye.

It's just a waiting game.

Going back to the QuickBooks records, I'm going to show you for 2040.

And if you can show us on here where you see that

Mr. Merritt or Charles Merritt was added as a vendor.

On February 1st, 2010, 12, 24 p.m., user Joseph McStay added vendor Charles Merritt.

And when you say user Joseph McStay, you don't know who's behind the computer,

right?

I don't know.

I

want to look at some QuickBooks things.

Okay.

Maybe you can help explain it.

Hmm.

So, it looks like February 1st is when Chase

created two checks and deleted those checks.

Then on the 2nd, created two checks, deleted two checks.

Then on the 4th, added check, deleted check, added check.

Yeah, it just, I don't know.

Who's going to create a check for Charles Merritt other than Charles Merritt, right?

February 4th, that's when something clearly happened.

What exactly?

There's a lot of unanswered questions.

Looking at the phone records, I think what happened was, Charles Merritt got fired

that day, that Joseph found out that he was stealing from

him, because on the way to the meeting, he called his bank.

You know, Merritt's explanation was, we met.

I got a stack of checks from him.

We talked about the business plans for this other job we had.

I had access to writing checks.

Did it often.

And from the very first time I had an interview with San Diego, I said,

when Joseph and I met on the 4th, he had given me checks.

We discussed when I was going to write them.

Boy, when I heard that, I knew, nah, that's not going to fly.

Joey's not going to give him blank checks.

There's no way.

Mm-mm.

This would be a check that Joseph McStay had

written to you for $3,000 on November 1st of 2008.

Is that correct?

Yes.

And you indicated at the time that you were renting a house, right?

Yes.

And was your rent due on the 1st of every month?

Yes.

Because we see down in the line it says 4, and

then it says Chase SOS exclamation point, right?

Yes.

Do you know what that means?

Chase muted it right away.

When I first came onto the case, one of the things I

started doing was looking at Merritt's bank records.

And I was a little bit floored because I saw all

these withdrawals that were occurring at a casino.

It was close to somewhere around $15,000 that had been taken out at casinos.

And I don't see any other income that came in besides what he got from Joseph.

And by November of 2009, the account was

forcibly closed by the bank and was overdrawn.

So at this point, I'm like, wow, this is a significant gambling problem.

So the gambling addiction led him to the money mismanagement that led him to

ultimately trying to steal money from Joseph.

Because, you know, he's got a family, he's got expenses, he's got rent,

things like that.

And that was the only way he had to get out from under that.

Their strategy was to just kind of poo-poo him.

Pound fist, shout, indignant, blah, blah, blah, gambler, throw in gambler

every other word, and you got yourself a case.

I mean, that's essentially what they were saying.

He's a degenerate gambler, owed him money, all these ridiculous things.

From a forensic accounting point of view, I would give her cross an F minus.

From an effective, misleading, scored jury points perspective,

I'd give her an A.

February 4th was the last time you talked to him.

Absolute last time I talked to him.

The last time I talked to him was actually, so I'm there.

The last time I talked to him, he left here, went home.

Chick-fil-A.

Right.

And what time was that?

You know, I can't remember the exact time, but it was middle afternoon.

It is really clear from the evidence that that family of

four dropped off the face of the earth on February 4th.

Coincidentally, after some type of meeting or confrontation at the Chick-fil-A

earlier in the day, Merritt's cell phone goes off-grid.

There's no activity for three and a half to four hours until you get to

nine-something when he comes back onto the grid.

So that meeting happens, which is a confrontational meeting, and I think the

argument continued down in their house in

Fallbrook, and that's where it turned physical.

I think eventually Chase grabbed the sledgehammer, and he knocked Joseph

unconscious or killed him right then and there.

I think once he kills Joey, he realizes he has to kill Summer and the boys too.

When Joseph and I separated, that was the last time I saw him.

I had nothing to do with this.

The way they came about a timeline of the death and

the burial was almost exclusively on my records.

They're assuming these crimes happened at these particular times because that's when

I'm not getting any phone calls, and that's basically the evidence,

that that's when the crime happened.

All of a sudden, I'm thrown into this, and it's like somebody's gonna realize,

wait, we made a mistake, you know?

But by the time the arraignment got here, I realized

nobody was gonna step up and say, we made a mistake.

You know, so the reality was much...

It was much heavier.

It was daunting to say the least.

On the 4th of February, did Chase remain at home that day?

Do you recall?

In the evening, yes.

I mean, he was home during the day.

At some point, did he... Did Chase come home?

Yes.

Was it light outside or dark outside?

It was light outside.

Okay.

My girlfriend, who lived with me at the time, told the detectives that I was...

that I had gotten home sometime between 5

and 7 p.m., which is pretty much when it was.

But I didn't leave after that.

And that's true.

Now, was there a phone call that Chase received in the evening hours?

Yes.

Do you recall when that was?

Um, it was after dark.

Um, 7 o'clock.

And do you know who the call was from?

Yes.

Who?

Joseph.

How do you know?

Um, it said on his... on Chase's display.

When Joseph called that night, the phone was on the counter in the kitchen.

I was on one side of the bar in the kitchen, and Chase

was in the living room area on the other side of the bar.

And I looked up at the phone to see, you know, Joseph calling.

And he looked over and was like, it's just Joseph.

And I've already talked to him a million times

today, and, you know, not answering the phone.

You know, I'll just call him tomorrow.

I'm like, why do you do that?

Why do you put stuff off?

You could just handle it now.

We had fought about it before, because there were times when,

probably even when I called, that he didn't answer.

Merit's ex-girlfriend, who's the mother of the

couple's three children, spoke out tonight after court.

I know he's not guilty, because he was with me the night that they went missing.

Uh, the whole time period that they're talking about,

the entire weekend, he was in and out of the house.

Kathy was his alibi.

She was the alibi witness to say, he was home on that night.

So, for me, it was important to show that he wasn't home,

and that the evidence didn't support him being home.

Just returning briefly to the phone records from

the 4th on 439C, which we have up on the screen.

You indicated that the defendant got a phone call that night from Joseph, right?

Yes.

And that was sometime around 8 or 8.30?

Yes.

And these are the defendant's phone records.

Can you show me where that call is on here?

No.

Why?

Because it's not on there.

That night, you know, this last call on Joseph's

phone to Chase never shows up on Chase's phone.

She may believe with all of her heart she saw that call,

but, you know, it didn't happen the night they went missing.

There's no evidence of that.

In order for a phone to ring that many times and you saying, hey, it's Joseph,

aren't you going to pick it up?

There's no way that call wouldn't have registered on his bill.

Our belief was that there was a brief phone call that was made so that it

actually registered on Joseph's phone, but not on Merit's phone.

After he killed Joseph, he took his phone,

called himself before he got rid of the phone.

The stuff that he was saying physically did not happen.

I don't remember the phone call at all.

I don't remember it ringing.

I don't remember St. Joseph's name.

I remember nothing about it.

The only reason I know that it occurred is because Kathy has a good memory and she

told me it happened, so I believe her, but I don't remember it.

Now, if I'm trying to establish an alibi, why would I come back and then say,

I don't ever remember getting that phone call?

I would say, oh yeah, he called.

Sure.

He called me at 8.30.

But I never said that.

I always, I was adamant.

I don't remember that phone call.

Do you think we would be here talking today if you had picked up that phone call?

Um, that's a very, very good question.

I should answer my flippin' phone.

And you were trying to get a hold of the defendant

from between basically 609 to 904, right?

Yes.

And it's your testimony that the defendant was

home at that time when you made those calls?

I believe so, yes.

Yes.

And where was he?

I don't know.

He could have been someplace else on the property.

Such as?

Such as the business center at the clubhouse.

So for three hours, you're trying to get a hold of him,

but you couldn't walk to the clubhouse at 256 feet?

His phone was off the grid at this time.

So, you know, if you were trying to get a hold of somebody for essentially a

three-hour period, it just doesn't make any sense

that you wouldn't just walk down to the clubhouse.

Because I think at some point, you would get to be a little bit concerned

if somebody tells you they're, you know, right around the corner from

you, and you've called so many times, and they're not answering.

That would be pure speculation.

Phone's off.

So he has to be doing X, Y, and Z.

Okay.

Phone's off.

He was also planning to kill the president.

Phone's off.

You just make up any story you want.

And that's what they were doing.

It was just inventing stories without evidence because they had no evidence.

That could mean a number of things.

that it's in airplane mode.

Battery could be dead.

That means it could not be recognized by a tower.

The cell service is not working on your phone.

I think at that point, you're dealing with a woman who's going

to say anything that she can, even if it's not the truth.

When you get on the stand, don't hesitate

to say that on the stand if that's the case.

Because I know for a fact, now that I go back over everything, I was home.

We believed he was maybe trying to persuade the witnesses,

maybe talking about something pertinent to the trial.

So we ended up having to put recording devices

in his visiting booths to capture those visits.

And that's kind of what really led us to see how

he was trying to influence Cathy specifically.

When you go in for a visit into the jail facility,

there's a phone on one side and a phone on the other side.

And there's some plexiglass in the middle, and you pick up the phone and you have the

conversation with whoever is on the other side.

And there's not an expectation of privacy when you visit with somebody.

And it says that this call is being recorded.

He would circumvent that.

And the way that he would do that is they would yell through the plexiglass.

So the opportunity came before Cathy was going to testify.

And it was basically Ryan Smith who miked both sides of

the booth so that the conversation could be recorded.

And when you had visits with the defendant in

person, you would talk through the glass, right?

Yes, on his patient.

And that's because the defendant didn't want anything recorded, right?

Speculation.

And he talked to you about some stuff that you were supposed to testify about,

right?

He mentioned stuff that might be coming up.

And he told you that you've got to remember that, right?

Yes.

So isn't it true that when you met with the defendant, you went over the specifics

of that, what you were supposed to testify about?

No.

No.

No.

Your Honor, at this time, the people would request a play to call.

We would request a publish to the jury.

Did you meet with Raj?

No.

He came...

He came and saw me, went over some of the stuff about you, wanted to know what...

I wanted him to ask you and what...

maybe you should try to remember, things like that.

When you get on the stand, you're going to be

asked specifically, do you know about this?

Yes.

You know, you don't have to go into big detail.

I tell Raj, you just need to leave me.

And he will.

You know, he's good.

They said, he wasn't home, he was...

remember that?

And you tried to call him five times...

during the evening?

He wouldn't... you wouldn't be trying to call him if he was home, would you?

Don't... don't hesitate to say that, on the stand, if that's the case.

Because...

I know for a fact, now that I go back over everything, I was home.

Oh, I was pissed.

I wanted her to get up and slap with Ms. Rodriguez.

But they used it to try to say, oh, he was trying to influence Kathy.

Prosecution has completely misinterpreted, misconstrued 80 or 90% of my words.

Those recordings, and then it was played.

The mood of the defense team changed.

Up to that point, we thought this case was ours to lose.

At that point, we had done everything right.

When that came out, we said, that impacts not only Kathy, but us.

It paints us in a light that's not accurate.

That was not what we were doing.

It was not a good day.

All the credibility we tried to build.

And it got destroyed.

That day.

The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma.

And based on the entire investigation and the evidence obtained, investigators

believe these murders occurred at their residence in Fallbrook.

There was no physical evidence in the house.

It was damaging to the case, in my opinion.

State your full name, spell it for the record.

Joseph Sears, J-O-S-E-P-H-S-E-S-E-S-E-T-O-M-E-E-R-X.

What is your acquisition, sir?

I'm sorry for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

After reviewing the San Diego investigation, all their reports and

photographs, and you returning to the house, doing your test, is there anything

in that house that you have found, you have read, or you have seen that tells

you those murders happened in the Fallbrook house?

Yes.

Did you see any evidence that shows you that the crime happened in that house?

No.

But you believe it did?

No.

Without evidence?

That's your argument, it is sustained.

Isn't it true that if you can't find evidence to make that murder happen in the

house, you can't prove a case to make that murder happen?

Objection?

That's argumentative.

The suicide is not evidence and legal conclusions.

This thing...

All their affidavits say the murders happened.

They're like, yeah, this happened in the house.

You have a belief.

This is what you want the truth to be.

You have no evidence that supports it, but you're still gonna support that belief.

The bottom line is this did not resemble a

crime scene where a family of four was killed.

And so that was a, you know, a big hole in their case.

And if you have a crime scene where the family's basically slaughtered at the

house, there's gonna be an awful lot of blood everywhere.

During preparation for trial, Mr. Dougherty actually was kind of thumbing

through the photographs that we were gonna use for exhibits.

And for whatever reason, he zoomed in on a portion of the table by the remote.

When Sean found this, it was, oh my God, come

see, come look at what, tell me what you see.

And we just kind of went, oh my God.

They saw what they thought was blood spatter on the table.

And now that I'm looking at a picture that was taken that close, that sure as,

sure as heck looks like blood to me.

Blood spatter.

I mean, I don't know how you could call that anything else.

It would lead you to believe that something violent happened.

And this picture here...

I mean, this one just absolutely looks like blood.

Blood spatter.

I don't know how you could say it was anything but.

It was basically new evidence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was crazy to me because, um, it just seems

like such a travesty that this was missed.

That, to me, was one of the biggest things in the

trial that got to me when they pulled this out.

Because, you know, the defense opened their case by saying, you know,

there's not a single bit of evidence in the house that anything like this happened.

And then the prosecution was able to say, are you sure?

Speak your full name and spell it for the record.

It was Dennis Williams.

D-E-N-Y-S Williams.

W-I-L-L-I-A-M-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

D-E-N-Y-S.

With your experience of processing crime scenes,

did you have a belief of what it could be?

I thought it could be blunt.

She was really kind of beating herself up

about, had I seen that, I would have tested it.

I can't believe I missed that.

We circulated it with a whole bunch of people and they said, could be,

looks like it.

There's no way I could say that though, because I don't know.

Just like Ms. Williams.

She looked ashamed, to be honest, like, oh God, how did we miss that?

And like, why?

And then, you know, even if they missed it in the

moment, didn't they have these photos to look back on?

This is probably the only thing that they found that would

show that anything would have happened in that house.

For us, it was really an unfortunate thing that was missed.

If that had actually been tested at the time and there was a realization that it

was blood, this entire case would be different.

I'm

not a blood spatter examiner.

That takes some more training than I have.

But I have had classes and it works better.

And to me, it looked like...

I'm going to object to the foundation if she's not an expert.

She's the same.

This is not blood.

It's just the bottom line.

It's just not blood.

Clearly, it's the nature of the wood and the natural staining

or the staining of this particular design or whatever.

There were so many people that had tables with that stain on it.

Like, this is something you can go to, you know, Levitt's

Furniture and see a table with that same stain pattern.

We were inundated with emails and social media

comments that we have, oh, I'll send you my table.

The idea that they all missed it and that

somehow could be blood is a preposterous idea.

It's simply untrue.

The San Diego Sheriff's Department investigated.

They were there in the house.

The kicker was, this table was the table sitting in the middle

of the room that was used as a command post for the officers.

And they all missed it.

So, prosecution wanting to allow a jury to speculate that that could be blood,

that's the problem.

And that should not have been allowed.

Clearly, it's not blood.

It's presenting falsehoods intentionally in front of a jury.

So, it allows them to speculate on something

that they shouldn't be speculating about.

And there's no evidence to back it up.

It was unethical.

I will say that I think Raj Malin, out of the two of them, probably felt like

the brain power was more than he could handle.

I definitely think there was probably some intimidation, at least on his level,

about the brain power on that side.

I think it was blood.

I really do.

But what gets me is, for the life of me, what happened to the table?

When Susan and Michael and him go in to clean the house up because it's going to

be foreclosed on, what happened to the table?

A little bit more.

I've had...

I've had a lot of the government on this side, but...