Original subtitles

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.

I'm supposed to be testifying tomorrow.

Just found out about it today.

And I'm a little nervous because I don't know... I don't know what...

I know kind of what they're going to be asking me on the defense side,

but it's always scary to be subject to cross-examination.

And obviously, they're going to try to make us look bad.

They're going to try to make it look like we're lying.

Thank you, Your Honor.

Good morning, Ms. Jarvis.

Good morning.

When you visit your dad, do you talk about the case?

Yes.

And why do you talk about the case?

Because...

I'm, like, our whole family is...

Part of...

Because our whole family is part of this, um, entire thing, and, um, this case is

what made me want... to pursue a career in law.

So...

Going through this process and being able to understand what's happening in court...

has really helped solidify my decision to...

go that route with my career.

Sorry.

In the entire four-and-a-half-year period that you've been visiting your dad,

has he ever once told you to lie for him?

No.

There was just something about the way that she testified.

She's not unlikable.

There was just a sense that it wasn't...

To me, there was a sense that it wasn't genuine.

Do you recall, on February 4th, seeing your dad at home?

I...

I don't know if it was specifically at home,

but I remember being in the vicinity of him...

when the conversation between my mom and dad occurred after the...

his phone rang, and it was Joseph and he didn't take the call.

We have the phone call that occurs at 828.

And nobody can verify that, except for supposedly Cathy and Taylor, because it

doesn't show up... on Merritt's telephone bill.

Taylor never gave a statement to the police

back in the day, when she did make a statement.

There was never any mention of that phone call occurring on that night.

No remembrance of that particular phone call, and things of that nature.

So that was all new on the witness stand.

Now, I wanted to talk to you about the night of February 4th...

Yes.

...of 2010.

When you talked to Detective Steers, do you

recall telling him where you were at that night?

I do recall initially saying that we might have been at the movie theater,

and then just like a minute later, I correct myself.

And actually, how did you come to learn about the date of February 4th?

After my family wasn't able to get a hold of the mixed days, that kind of became an

important date, just because that was the last

time that he had gotten a phone call from him.

So that became kind of the topic of conversation.

Taylor was going to back her dad no matter what.

No matter what the evidence showed, she was

going to say that her dad was home that night.

And she remembers it.

And that was never anything that she said before.

It's almost like she's playing a role.

Taylor is proud to be up there, and she smiles,

and, you know, she cries at the right time, right?

It's almost so staged.

Have you participated in any way in a documentary film?

Yes.

And how have you participated in a documentary film?

They're filming a documentary about this case, and I've done interviews.

We had no idea that there were behind-the-scenes conversations,

and there was videotape for the documentary that was occurring.

Those discussions, what happened in those discussions,

what information they talked about, we don't know.

This was the first question they asked for a sidebar.

And that was subject to you.

Was there anything taken out of context based

on him saying it to you as opposed to your mom?

I think that it's unfair the way that innocent people are treated by the system

when they haven't been convicted of a crime.

I think that it's unfair that his family has

to drive two hours to see him every week.

And...

It's...

It's... It's... It's a... It's a heavy burden.

Oh, that was good.

You articulated that whole thing pretty well.

And that's pretty much what we feel.

You know, we've gotten to know him and know the case, and it's so circumstantial.

Anything they could possibly sweep on one side of the rug, they did.

When the daughter revealed that she had been

interviewed, that's when it became relevant.

Well, wait a minute.

Has your testimony been influenced by these meetings?

Are you changing your story because of these meetings?

We issued a subpoena for the footage of any and all of her statements.

The prosecution was, again, trying to implant conspiracies into things.

In my mind, every time they do that, it just confirmed they knew they were losing.

That's how I saw it.

I said, they are desperate.

This is a team that knows they don't have a case.

And they're gonna win any way they can.

Merritt didn't have the money to pay for attorneys.

And when you have two private attorneys that are essentially giving up their

practice for a period of time and putting their lives on

hold, there has to be some sort of incentive for that.

Your life's a reality TV show now, Raj.

You don't just do that for free.

My agreement on payment is confidential.

It's an attorney-client confidentiality.

I can't reach that.

They actually said, we wanna take your case, but

we can't afford to just try it and not get paid.

They didn't just object to the documentary.

They went to the judge and they said, this documentary is unethical.

These defense attorneys are profiting off of it.

You know, they can say what they want.

We went to the judge with this.

We provided all the financial disclosures.

We gave them everything to look at.

The judge ultimately ruled that those things were not correct and he allowed it.

So that speaks for itself.

I definitely felt that tension from the prosecution

side that they didn't enjoy having that camera there.

And a little smugness on the part of the defense that they had that in their corner.

They didn't want anyone to see this because

they knew at that time what they're doing.

Which is taking an innocent guy and building a case

around some wacky theory that they came up with.

It began in January of this past year.

The McStay family, there they are.

Oh my God, those beautiful child faces.

The whole trial was hard to watch.

It caused a lot of anxiety for people.

You know, this is a family.

They all slept together in the same bed night after night.

And, you know, Joseph wouldn't even spend a night away from his family.

I mean, every time I look at my teenage children and know that Johnny and Joey Jr.

should be that age.

And wondering what they look like.

And I don't know why I always pictured Gianni having glasses.

And I know that Joseph would have been so proud of them and bragging about how smart

they were, with their accomplishments, whatever they were.

They said I would do whatever it took to find out who did this.

And bring it, bring them to trial.

Look, I lost family.

I lost sleep.

I had no social life.

I'm not a perfect person.

I've made mistakes in my life.

But I can tell you this.

I was not gonna give up on my grandchildren, my son, or my daughter-in-law.

I was gonna find out what in the hell happened.

Why?

Why them?

I was staying awake 18, 19 hours.

I was sleeping a couple hours.

And now she's on the phone with me.

And we're talking to the wee hours of the night.

And we're going over things.

We're going through emails.

In Joey's emails at the time, there were over 12,000.

In Summers at the time, there were over 4,000.

So I found the email from Vic to Summers in 2009 saying that he still loved her.

When Joey met Summers, I knew she had a boyfriend.

And she was still living with Vic.

But he was off some... gone somewhere.

You got the email there.

What was it?

23rd of December.

Read it to me.

Yeah, this is a killer to Summers.

I love you forever.

Happy birthday, Summers.

Forever and ever, Vic.

This is five years after they split up.

Hasn't seen her.

Has had no contact with her.

Okay?

She's got two children with Joey.

And he's sending her this email.

Thinking he's nuts.

But then we go and start checking it out and find

out he's living within like a mile of their house.

And then in January, after he sends that email, he's in a bar in San Clemente in a

building next door to where Joey has an office.

And he gets arrested for threatening people in the bar there.

Well, then we go a little farther.

We start checking his background.

We find out that he was arrested in 2004 for

threatening the neighbor and her daughter.

What did he say?

He was an ex-Marine or something like that and he knew how to kill?

And then he would, if she gave him any more

trouble, he would kill her and her daughter.

So he's arrested.

We never hear from him for five years or something.

Then he sends this email two months before they go missing.

Soon into your investigation, Patrick McState would also give you information.

Correct?

To try to help.

He would give me his beliefs.

He would give you whatever information he gave.

Whether you use it or not is your decision, correct?

Oh, I used it.

I would follow up on it.

And in every instance, it was disproved.

The thing you gotta realize is, we just didn't see San Diego Sheriff doing anything.

Dougal knew nothing about this guy until we told him.

Why did we have to tell him?

Why didn't he find him?

I mean, wouldn't one of the first things you would do is go look at old boyfriends?

But, oh, wait a minute, I forgot.

There's no case here.

It's voluntary missing.

You named four suspects publicly, like, very early on.

Who were those four?

Oh, boy.

Okay, we had Chase Merritt, Dan Cavanaugh, Vic Johansson, and Michael McFadden.

Who is McFadden?

Michael McFadden.

Is the husband of Joey's first wife.

And my oldest grandson is a stepfather.

This is, um, a summary of a conversation with Patrick.

Mm-hmm.

During the course of Patrick's investigation, he

received an email from Summer's sister, Tracy Russell.

Tracy told Patrick that McFadden had threatened to Joseph and Summer at

Christmas of 2009 or early 2010, that he told Joseph to muzzle his wife or

he would come to his house, kick his ass, and muzzle Summer for him.

I would say he was probably Patrick's number one suspect at that point.

I found that in 1998, he had been charged with great bodily injury, domestic

violence, corporal injury on spouse or co-inhabitant, criminal threats,

attempted murder.

Victims said her ex-boyfriend Michael James McFadden broke into her house and

beat her up for one hour before she escaped to her brother's house.

Wow.

The door was kicked open, saw McFadden entering her room, looking extremely

angry, stated McFadden was yelling, I'm gonna kill you.

She had a two-inch laceration on her forehead, a three-inch contusion above her

left eye, bruised shoulder, red scratch to left side

of face, numerous bruises to both arms and legs.

The only things he pled guilty to were criminal

threats and the assault with a deadly weapon.

But all of those other charges were pretty eyebrow-raising.

Hi there.

Michael?

No, no, no.

I'm with Channel 8 in San Diego.

Hold on a second.

You guys are gonna have to leave.

I just wanted to get a statement.

Right now.

Patrick puts McFadden's record up on the boards, right?

Yeah.

And what happens then?

You know, people went nuts, and it caused a lot of conversation, and it also...

I believe McFadden ended up, if not reaching out

directly to Patrick, at least sending a message.

He wasn't happy about it, obviously.

He threatened me.

Threatened you?

He threatened me on Facebook in the message center.

I still have it.

Patrick cares about his family and his son.

And I think, although sometimes it was a little

over the top, his intentions were always pure.

And he was doing that any way he could.

If it was banging, you know, pot and pan as loud as he could so that someone would

listen to him, he was willing to do that because he wants justice for his family.

I never knew who did it.

I never settled on anybody.

I never... I would follow all of these paths, but I

never followed just one to the exclusion of any other.

I kept everybody in the running until they weren't anymore.

And to be honest, I was not disappointed when they arrested Chase, but scared that

perhaps they didn't look into the whole thing enough.

Because of the fact that we found so much

compelling stuff in these other people's files.

No news questions right now, bud.

Sorry, can't do it.

Like, right now, this footage right here is not going anywhere.

As far as you asking me if I'm a violent person, the answer is a resounding no.

Definitely not.

And whether I would have it in me to do something like that or not, come on, dude.

Absolutely not.

You don't understand how badly I've suspected Dan, right?

I mean, I still do.

So...

Do you think Dan Kavanaugh has anything to do with the murders?

I believe he has virtually everything to do with this.

Do I believe he hands-on did it?

No.

But I believe he got Joseph McStay into some kind of

business deal that Joseph didn't understand well enough.

And Dan Kavanaugh was crooked enough that it ended up going south.

And I believe Dan Kavanaugh specifically either orchestrated

or directly caused the McStay family to get killed.

Most definitely.

an e-check payment He starts taking money, I believe it was on February the 6th.

He didn't contact me till the 9th.

So that means he was taking money three days before he ever contacted me.

So, how did he know to take the money?

Did he know that Joey was not coming back?

Dan was upset.

He felt like Joe was not paying him.

And he described it as an allowance.

Okay, he's giving me, he's throwing me down a couple thousand dollars every month.

But he's got hundreds of thousand dollars in his bank.

You know, he's making good money.

Looking at the layman, he's blackmailing Joey for money.

Dan's trying to control and manipulate Joseph based

on threats that he's going to take the site down.

And the fact of the matter is, Dan probably could, right?

And Joseph didn't know enough about computers and how to protect himself.

This is pretty serious.

When you threaten somebody, you're going to take away their livelihood and everything.

It's like, if you can do that, how far can you go?

How far will you go?

I worked for a company called Blue World from 2006 to 2010.

And sometimes Joseph would resell our pre-made fountains.

And there was a day, I believe it was in June of 2010, that I got a call from

another waterfall reseller.

He was concerned about Joseph because he saw an ad that his business was for sale.

So I immediately, like, what are you talking about?

And he sent the ad to me.

And sure enough, it was Dan Cavanaugh with his name and everything on there.

He was saying that he was the owner and that he wanted to sell it.

And then, from what we understand, he did sell it.

The following purchase price, $20,000 United States dollars in cash.

Wow, I never knew that he sold it for so little.

That's insane.

And he had no right at all.

Signed by Dan Cavanaugh, an individual.

Ugh, he's a disgusting person.

I mean, it's always going to leave a question in people's mind, was Dan involved?

Especially when you start just simply looking at money

being taken before they're ever known to be missing.

What did he know?

Come to order.

Reverend Flick, we are back in session.

Parties and council are present.

All members of our train or outfits are present.

Do you know what the total amount that Dan Cavanaugh took in when it came to these

online orders from, let's say, February 10th, 2010 to

when he sold the company, which would be in July of 2011.

The PayPal orders that came in were about $127,000.

I'm talking total.

So, PayPal, bank...

There were, there would have been, in addition to that,

there were some wires that came in, there were ATM deposits.

And in total, the income was $206,000.

And that money went into Cavanaugh's account.

That's correct.

So that, to me, was a pretty extraordinary event.

And it appears that investigators just missed it.

They never got Dan Cavanaugh's PayPal records.

They had Joseph's, but they didn't seem to really care too much that money was being

taken out by Dan Cavanaugh during that period.

And again, it was all ignored.

Why?

Because you wanted to have that bias.

It didn't confirm your story.

It didn't confirm your belief.

If it doesn't confirm it, ignore it.

I think it's very clear that the defense is trying to point fingers and show why

this is all about motive, a financial motive for someone else who did the

murder, not the defendant, and that would be this Dan Cavanaugh.

One of the ways to cast reasonable doubt is to say, if he didn't do it, who did?

Well, here's a good explanation.

Look, follow the money, right?

Follow the money and the money trail, and it points to Cavanaugh, a different

business relationship than this defendant, so he must have done it.

We did really want to put Cavanaugh up.

We looked for him for months, for months.

We tried everything we could.

The defense point the finger at Dan Cavanaugh and maybe others, right?

Well, under the law, they're not allowed to do that, absent some, really,

shred of evidence to link them to the crime, other than a mere accusation.

How that didn't come in, I'm still kind of bewildered about that.

Now, were those instant messages allowed to be read in court?

No.

No.

The jury never heard that.

Never heard of them.

The jury never knew they existed?

Never knew they existed.

Dan Cavanaugh was a walking, talking red flag, and they ignored it.

This guy's a maniac.

Who had a motive to kill.

I mean, that's what you want the jury to be listening to.

When you talk about some of those transactions, the stuff that occurred

afterwards, like selling the business and stuff like that, how does that show that

he was connected to the crime in the first place, as opposed

to just taking advantage of a missing family of four?

We were trying to find him.

We need to get to the bottom of it.

Prosecuting the wrong person makes no sense.

They got the wrong guy.

As part of the missing persons investigation, San Diego

County Sheriff's Department canvassed the neighborhood.

And at some point, they come into contact with Miss Mitchley, who lives kind of

diagonally across the street from the mixed days.

And they notice that she has security cameras on her house.

She was able to give them a few clips that she felt was

relevant, that the detectives felt were relevant as well.

The most important being a vehicle that was backed into the mixed days driveway

that pulled out and left that evening on the 4th.

The truck pulls out at 747, and we know this is

the last time, you know, anyone saw them ever.

We know this is, this is the murderer leaving.

So that was a very, very big deal for us.

So, tell me, what do you see on her video?

I see the defendant's truck leaving the driveway.

Whether to either park down the street or to actually just leave completely.

That's my interpretation of it.

This is Chase's truck at the house at the time the family disappeared.

That's, that's a big deal.

This is a damning piece of evidence.

No doubt that was not his truck.

Evidence doesn't lie.

It wasn't his truck.

I am 100% certain of that.

I'm absolutely convinced it was Chase's truck.

If it's not their, his truck, then where's his opportunity to commit the crime?

The people really needed Chase's vehicle to be on that video.

And it wasn't.

They didn't have any direct evidence to support that I did these crimes.

Everything was circumstantial.

Everything.

So, without direct evidence, then they have to show enough circumstantial

evidence to convince the jury that it was me at their home and who killed them.

But obviously the video is so grainy, um, that it's really difficult to be able

to ascertain what are we going to be able to get from this and what can we use this

for and how significant is this piece of evidence going to be.

Essentially what you needed was you needed some expert to

be able to explain the significance of the Mitchley video.

How are you this morning?

Good.

Good morning.

Where are you from?

I'm from Toronto.

Okay.

Welcome to California.

Thank you.

What do you do for a living?

Uh, I'm a 3D forensic analyst.

We don't go to it with an agenda looking for an outcome.

We sent him the footage, we sent him the

scans of the truck, and he went to work on it.

And we were actually just taken aback by the conclusions

he reached when he sent us his preliminary report.

So, after conducting all of this analysis, what conclusions

could you draw from the evidence that you were providing?

The first one is that the position of the headlights on the 2000 Chevy truck,

such as those in Mr. Merrick's truck, is consistent with the, um, the position

of the glare that we're seeing in the video.

That is consistent.

I compared the height of the, where those were located on the vehicle, down to the

ground, and that is also consistent with the

range that we found on the 2000 Chevy truck.

All these features are consistent with the 2000 Chevy truck.

So, if I go to the last few frames, and I, and I move in on this area,

you know, just look around this area here,

what you'll see is, there's the bright spot.

Okay?

Now, that bright spot happens to coincide with

a latch, which is on the side of the vehicle.

It's not inconceivable that the latch could be causing some type of reflection.

Now, having said that, I can't make an identification

with the, with the evidence that I have.

I can't go in and say, well, look, you know, I

can tell exactly that it's this 2000 Chevy truck.

All I can say is that this model truck that we have is consistent with all the

features that I've pointed out in the video.

So, he was able to illustrate for the jury that while you can't conclusively say it

is the truck, he could say that here are all of these unique identifiers that are

consistent with the defendant's truck, and let the jury draw its own conclusion.

You can't rule it out.

You can't rule it out, ultimately, came the theme of all of that testimony.

You cannot rule out the defendant's truck.

But as it turns out, when Mr. Licio testifies, there's one person that they

didn't anticipate listening to the testimony, and that was Dr. Rudin.

Because this trial was carried live on Law and Crime Network.

You can see that it comes from just about any way.

I listened to it, and that's the first time I heard about this latch theory.

I think something is wrong here.

And that whole thing made no sense to me.

His findings that this vehicle is consistent with this truck is wrong.

In the world of criminal forensics, Dr. Lenny

Rudin is one of the world's experts in this area.

Dr. Rudin consulted with the prosecution, I think, in excess of two years.

He was their retained advisor and expert on that video.

I can't validate this anymore.

I mean, after a certain amount of work, thinking,

computing, and so on, I arrived in an opposite conclusion.

That's all.

He had gotten fired by the prosecution for wanting to just tell the truth.

The truck was everything to them.

Putting Chase's truck there was their whole case.

After Mr. Imes tells me to stand down, I sent Mr. Imes that message.

Essentially, what he was saying is, we eliminate it.

It's not Chase's truck.

It can't be.

It's impossible.

And in a series of text messages, that was the

message Dr. Rudin was saying to Britt Imes.

Dr.

Rudin contacted me.

And he told me, Mr. McGee, I have concerns.

And I want to tell you what really happened.

He felt that we needed to be notified of the

truth because you can't keep this from a defense.

And that became a pretty big violation.

And that's when we started saying, this is misconduct.

This is a Brady violation.

Those are very serious accusations.

This is grounds for a mistrial.

The defense called Dr. Rudin as a witness for themselves.

Yeah, it's a unique once in a lifetime experience

having a prosecution witness become a defense witness.

Based on the data you have only, the white truck is

rejected as being the vehicle in the evidence video.

Based on the data I have and all the methods that I have available to me now,

I render a rejection.

The prosecution has a distinct responsibility to forward any exculpatory

information that can be to the issue of guilt or

to any motion that could be brought by the defense.

Exculpatory meaning it's helpful to the defense.

It provides evidence that would help your client.

And they refuse to turn it over and they hide it.

They ignore information that does not fit their theory.

Now we know that information was presented to the

government saying, our regional theory is gone.

We can't agree with that anymore.

And I'm finding this is actually not his truck.

In the state of California, there is law on the books that says if a prosecutor

deliberately withheld evidence from the defense that's

exculpatory, that can be the basis of a charge for a felony.

So it's obviously an extremely serious accusation.

The potential for a mistrial is always there.

They're cherry picking their evidence to say, let's convict the man based on

information that we may know is not accurate.

And let's hide it from the defense.

These people were willing to do anything to prove that it was me.

I think it just shows that it doesn't matter to them to figure out the truth.

It doesn't matter that they have the right guy.

It just matters that they are able to present what they want to present.

They've invested so many resources into showing that that's merit's truck.

Because it's the only thing that places him involved well.

Nothing else.

So, without that, there's no case.

Literally.

That's why you see this fight.

That's why you see a prosecutor doing what he just did.

Lying and cheating.

And withholding evidence.

Because without it, they lose.

End of story.

I sent him that message on...

...February 15, 2019.

He never responded to it.

At the time the issue comes up, I don't have a text thread with Dr.

Rudin, for whatever reason.

It just so happened that...

...during that period, I had an old cell phone.

It had memory issues.

And so I would routinely, as a matter of habit, go through

and delete old text threads that I no longer needed.

What this person, I can't even call him a

prosecutor, because prosecutors don't do that.

I mean, how is it that he's here?

Like, don't you want to know what he's doing?

Covering up the truth?

And really, most prosecutors who do stuff like that never work as prosecutors again,

and they shouldn't.

You know, think about it.

And in a death penalty case especially, you're a cheater and a liar.

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

So what are you going to say as the prosecutor now?

Was the incidental deletion of the text thread a misstep or a miscue?

Yeah, potentially.

I probably should have waited until the end of

trial, you know, to clean out that text thread.

So, based on that type of conduct, Your Honor, I do believe that Mr.

Merritt was prejudiced by that lack of information.

So, in light of that, we are requesting a dismissal of all the charges.

Alternatively, a mistrial, because in reality, if this was post-conviction,

then the remedy for Brady violations is reversal.

Alternatively, I think a jury instruction is appropriate.

At a very minimum, Mr. Imes should be removed

from this case, if not all the prosecutors.

All three of them.

I would say it's extremely appropriate for them to make the request for mistrial,

the request for sanctions.

Is it appropriate to then ask for removal of the prosecutor?

That may be a little far, but nonetheless, they did.

We believe that this prosecutor's committed a felony.

I think it was just the whole allegations of misconduct.

We should be charged with felonies.

I mean, that to me was probably one of the

most underhanded things that the defense did.

In light of the fact that they are prosecutors, they've made a mockery of it.

That was just the general consensus on the mixed day camp.

It was a lot of fear that we'd been all through all of this for nothing.

And that Chase might actually go free.

And nobody wanted to see that smug look on his face.

Brady violation and a death penalty case.

Come on.

This prosecutor is a liar, a cheater.

The question is, was it misconduct for Mr. Arms not to provide the information?

What I was most worried about was that there might be a mistrial.

There was just an inordinate amount of prosecutorial misconduct.

It's very clear in California, as a prosecutor, if

you withhold exculpatory evidence, you go to jail.

Cell phone pings are a really big deal.

It's yet to be explained by any of them.

Are there several things that I would have done up there?

Of course.

Half of my family lives on the high desert.

Isn't it true that you told the detective that your brother hardly visited?

I don't remember saying anything like that.

I can see the writing on the wall.

The problem is, you two have lost this case.

You're getting me convicted.