Original subtitles

The defense came out with the bombshell and said that it was another individual,

uh, Dan Cavanaugh, who did these murders.

He murdered the McStay family.

Who are you talking about that you think could potentially be involved in this?

Dan starts taking money.

I believe it was on February the 6th.

Did he know that Joey was not coming back?

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

I mean, I still do.

I believe Dan Cavanaugh specifically either orchestrated

or directly caused the McStay family to get killed.

Are you afraid of Dan Cavanaugh?

It makes me uncomfortable.

Cavanaugh was a walking, talking red flag.

This guy's a maniac.

We had a motive to kill.

We did really want to put Cavanaugh up.

We looked for him for months.

We tried everything we could.

We have our investigator in San Diego looking

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

He's literally gone.

Hi.

How's it going?

Can you tell me who you are?

I'm Daniel Cavanaugh.

You're a hard person to find.

Yeah, it's... I've had to, uh, change some of my lifestyle around because

of, you know, recent events over the last 10 years.

And just, I made it a little bit, uh, more difficult to just instantly find me.

And why is that?

There's... I was actually told by the homicide detectives, they're like,

stay out of Dodge.

We got some work to do.

Don't get found.

We want to... we want to basically pull your name out of the hat.

We want to essentially get this guy.

We know you didn't do it, pretty much, but just don't get found anyways.

Like, these other guys are gonna try to bring you in and pull you into it and stuff.

Basically disappear.

You know?

They told you you should disappear.

They had just got done telling me that this case was gonna take time to get the

conviction, and that it's more useful not getting found after that point.

Well, they told me that Chase had said to them that basically he never killed Joseph.

He would never kill anybody, but if he ever did, it would have been Daniel.

Tell me why, um, Chase would tell San Diego that if

he was gonna ever kill anybody, he would kill you.

He told what?

Yeah.

He told me that.

San Diego.

I talked to the homicide detectives.

I didn't talk to, like, all these Starsky and Hutch fake-ass people on the Internet.

And they were basically like, just stay out of Dodge.

Like, they're definitely gonna try to come get you or

try to implicate you in some way or bring you into this.

But you're not involved from our perspective,

uh, any longer since we've crossed your name off.

And so, like, it's up to you if you want to get found or, but they're gonna

probably send out private investigators and this, that, and just stay out of Dodge

until we can hem this dude up proper and put a nail in his coffin.

They're, they didn't say don't be found, they warned me that there was a,

a guy that had said he wanted to kill me if he was ever gonna kill anybody.

They said that.

These guys are gonna try to say whatever they can, they're probably gonna try to

throw you into the bus, but if they can't find you,

then, like, we're just gonna take care of this.

You know what I mean?

I wanted them to get caught and convicted just as bad as anybody else, and I knew,

like, if I was found and complicated any part of that case, like those guys had

told me, in any way, or slowed it or delayed it or convoluted the case,

just, you would just, you would just gaslight more people for nothing,

and I was just not gonna get found.

I was gonna do what they said.

So, as of today's date, have you been able to locate or get any leads on where Mr.

Kavanaugh is?

No.

There's, like, 20 different instances where my, at my house,

just random private investigators over many years tried.

None of them were legit.

None of them had any badges or anything.

They didn't find me.

I just ghosted these fools.

We found you.

We got...

Weeks before the trial was to begin, a witness comes forward who claims that

you confessed to her that you killed the McStays.

Oh, the Tracy girl?

What a joke, huh?

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 you probably had the

wrong man, who were you talking about that you

think could potentially be involved in this?

Dan McStay.

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.

Who is Tracy?

She was just a friend that kind of lost her mind.

Have you heard any of her statements?

Have you seen her interview?

No.

Well, let me show you.

Oh, God, here we go.

Something new.

This is why reactions are the biggest thing on YouTube, you know?

He started with Summer, he raped Summer, and had a rope around her neck.

And he was wielding a Swiss Army type switchblade.

A Swiss Army knife is a different knife than a 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.

It's creative.

And then, um, said he came twice.

And then, so there should be DNA inside of the Gravesome.

You know?

Thanks for making me laugh, honestly.

That's a next level psycho.

You know?

Why would she say that stuff?

I mean, you just can't discount it that some people are crazy.

You can't logically make sense of it.

Just...

Yeah.

It's a crazy person, you know?

I met her through some other mutual friends.

And I just was, like, platonic friends with her.

And then, eventually, I didn't really want to take

it any other place, because she's really not my type.

And I just had, like, a friendship with her.

And so that kind of just set her off.

And then she went down this whole rabbit hole.

I'll say he did it, or he confessed it to me.

Just scatterbrained.

She's a fucking idiot.

The defense probably saw that as, like, a silver bullet.

Or that it was going to amount to something.

They didn't realize they were dealing with a fucking idiot.

That...

knew, like, she knew nothing.

And then she was willing to go to great lengths to, like, straight lie.

You can't put her in this thing, by the way.

She's just bullshit.

You're not going to actually have her in this thing, right?

I want to show you a clip of Chase.

Oh, let's see what we got here.

Dan Cavanaugh.

He looks bad.

I believe he has virtually everything to do with this.

What do you think?

Convincing?

So he said, I had virtually had everything to do with this.

It must have been virtual, because if I was 2,500

miles away, I sure as hell couldn't have done it here.

I was in Hawaii, like, just so far away.

I don't like it.

Honestly, didn't do me any favors.

He's given you a spun, twisted version that makes sense in his little mind.

Which could have been a formidable frame job if I was in

the country, or if I was, like, in the state, you know?

And that people didn't discover the bodies that you shallowly buried.

Like, yeah.

He wasn't getting away with that.

They should just kill him.

I'd go watch.

They asked me if I wanted to go watch.

Who asked you?

The cops.

Homicide detectives.

Like, there's gonna be, if, like, this goes down, and we convict this dude,

he's gonna get the death penalty, like, family, and you can go watch that shit.

So maybe he'll look at me through the glass for his last time.

Did you have anything to do with the murder of Joseph McStay, Summer, and the boys?

Not only did I not, but I have no knowledge of anybody that did.

But you're 100% convinced the right man is in jail?

Yeah.

There were some exchanges between you and him, right?

Like, some instant messages.

When I found and discovered that there was sales that were going on that were kind of

not reported to me, and they're hidden, I just call it out.

And I'm like, hey, we got a problem here, Joe.

You know, I thought we had a good deal going.

You need to make up for this, bud.

Yeah, he says, Nell, I, Summer, and the kids know the real you and what

you would potentially do to harm me and my family.

He said, don't try your guilt trip shit on me, bro.

It's a threat against your livelihood, but I built that company.

I built that for us to be successful.

So that's just, like, completely goes against you

helping them when they just steal the business.

You said, your sight will be gone from the engines.

I will make my own fountain site.

The later you respond and deal with this, the worse it's going to be.

I think at one point, you know, you talk about, I'll take down the site.

So after these exchanges right here, Joe kind of comes around and you guys,

okay, you got me.

I was pocketing all the money and stealing all the sales.

What can I do to make it right?

I'm like, well, thank you for coming around and being honest.

You got caught, but here's what we're going to do.

You're going to need to get current on the lost sales that were hidden and

cherry-picked, and you're going to need to pay all that back.

I felt that this guy couldn't be trusted anymore at that point.

I was just going to let him eventually try to pay it off, which would have taken him

years, and then I was just going to delete it.

Delete?

The whole website.

That was your plan?

Yeah.

You don't want to play around with me, dude.

Several months later, he was just taken out by Chase.

Do you remember the first time you learned about Chase?

So the first time I ever talked to him, I was in Hawaii.

Joseph had not been responding for several days, and I was trying to get in touch

with not only the authorities to let him know a welfare check would probably be a

good idea, but also called his mom, his brother, his dad.

I'm like, no one knew.

But then someone said, like, do you know Chase?

And I was like, what?

And at this point, I hadn't ever talked to

him on the phone, seen him, met him, nothing.

And all of a sudden, this guy's, like, calling me.

And I'm out in Hawaii, and I had this random guy calling me.

And my partner hasn't answered for a few days.

Something's up.

Come to think of it, I didn't even know about some of these deals.

I was trying to sort and sift through, like, the information and the profits and

losses and compare different balances and compare accounts and Quicken and

QuickBooks accounts and just looking at what's going on here.

And so then I find a little spreadsheet that's just, like, a single sheet,

and it's just saved in our web server directory.

And so then I'm like, this is weird.

I gave it to the authorities and just said, I think this is a running balance

sheet, like, indicating that he might have been

indebted to Joe Ranger, which is a smoking gun.

Chase owed Joseph from the books, and I saw that they were maintaining

between themselves like 30 Gs on these books around the time they disappeared.

That's just bullshit.

They have no clue as to how Joseph McStay did his math and how he did that ledger.

And Dan Kavanaugh told the police that he made 50%.

I was never told that, and he was never black.

And he just found out because he had... he hacked Joseph's stuff.

That is serious motive for Dan.

But it never came up in trial.

Who was the first person to suggest that you owed Joey money?

Very, very first person was Dan Kavanaugh in

his first interview with San Bernardino County.

Prior to that, nobody had said anything about me buying any money.

If you go back through the trial, they kept saying that I owed a debt to Joseph.

But he knew damn well that's not true.

You see that he's in debt.

What motivates a man to commit a crime of killing an entire family of four,

including two young children?

Money, greed, self-interest.

He had a motive to erase the debt.

Long story short, we get down to Dan's, and I start telling Dan, look,

we need to keep making these sales.

And he got belligerent, I got belligerent back, and then that set off serious

sparks, and I literally wanted to throw him over the damn balcony.

I mean, I was... I was so pissed.

And he physically stands up in my house, and he's like, you don't know me, boy.

So I'm like, see that balcony right there?

You're going off it, dude.

Straight up.

In front of Joe's mom, and she, like, runs out of the room.

And so I just, like, fired him to his face, because I just got a bad vibe.

I had a bad feeling.

I didn't know how he was involved or what, but, like, I know that if it was you,

you can't do shit to me, because you'll get caught.

He definitely had it out for me, and he probably

thought in his head that he killed the wrong guy.

Chase is strong.

Okay, this guy lifts up stainless steel all day and hammers it with a sledgehammer

and folds and bends it into beautiful, amazing works of

art that up 5,000-pound rocks in him and stuff like that.

This guy's not weak.

You know what I mean?

He single-handedly could have done this.

It seemed like I saw a look in this guy's eye.

He said I did it.

Okay.

The homicide detectives, they just told me that after having met with me and gone

through all the paperwork and everything, that I was no longer of interest to be

implicated or having known anything.

He's 100% guilty.

You have a pre-paid call from... Chase Merrick.

An inmate at the California State Prison, San Quentin.

I woke up... I woke up... I woke up...

I woke up on the upro this morning to kind of put a damper on the day, but other than

that, I'm... I'm doing all right.

I didn't do it, therefore somebody else did it.

I believe that early on they made the mistake of focusing only on me.

Eliminating Michael McStay, Dan Cavanaugh, never even...

never even doing any kind of investigation on either one of them or anybody else.

And... I believe that every time they were...

they came face to face with the evidence that demonstrated that it was not me, they.

..

just decided, well, you know what, we're not going to let this go.

When you first...

you guys first started talking to me, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just

entertainment.

I wanted to make sure something got to the general public and the people that have

the power to help me, you know, the truth.

What I'm hoping for is that you can get a grasp of just how the prosecution

manipulated not only the evidence, but witnesses and their statements and all

of that in order to proffer things that were just

simply not true and could not have been true and...

they did knowingly.

The cell phone records should be thrown out.

It should never have been presented in the first place.

I just wanted to make sure that you were completely

aware of just how critical that evidence was

So you have one grave down, um, over in that area, and then 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, um, Chase pinged off of.

When you look on the 6th, and he's pinging at that tower, right at the graves,

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

That's pretty damning evidence.

Yeah.

So the pings on the cell phone tower, the prosecution states that those place

you on the side of the tower where the graves are?

Correct.

Vlad Javonovic is pointing out that there's a problem with the tower,

that it's not relaying its information correctly, and what he's suggesting is

that a tower ping on the east side of the tower

may actually be on the west side of the tower.

Correct.

Correct.

Basically, it would, it would almost certainly put me on the 15 freeway moving

north on the 15 freeway toward, toward Highway 66, which is the highway

that my sister lives on.

Vlad didn't just say there was a problem with that call.

He said, specifically, you cannot trust these records for geolocation.

So to highlight the problems with the cell towers near the gravesite, your expert

points to one call that day that lasted 30 seconds.

And from where it started to where it finished, you'd

have had to have traveled five miles in that 30 seconds.

It's actually 8.5 miles.

The 1152 call shows me allegedly on the east side of the tower, but ending the

call just seconds later, eight and a half miles away.

And my expert himself said, I have never seen any records so inaccurate.

The key at the beginning of trial spent a page and a half or more of describing how

great Vlad was and how he was going to prove the prosecution's theories all wrong.

Our expert, we wanted somebody that knew what he was talking about.

His job is to implement, optimize, commercialize the running of cellular network.

He knows how to talk to one another.

He will explain all of that to you.

He's an interesting guy.

Vlad Yovanovitch.

He said he's going to be calling this great

witness that's going to prove everything wrong.

And what's he do?

Doesn't bother calling him.

In the end, you decide not to call him.

Correct.

Tell me why you made that decision.

I cannot speak to the internal decisions and the benefit of a client.

I was actually kind of shocked at the fact that Vlad was not going to be called.

He was there in court, ready to be called.

We had him there for that purpose.

It never got to the jury.

But had the jury heard that, it would have been impossible for them to convict me.

I said, McGee, you're the one that got me convicted.

And you need to step up and do something about this.

You know, and I was chewing his ass up.

And my appeal is going to be primarily about ineffective

assistance of counsel and you guys doing these things.

And McGee took that and said, okay, I'm quitting.

And he filed with the court and quit his counsel.

I recused myself.

I cannot defend myself and defend my client at the same time.

The motion of neutral, it was pretty much an ineffective assistance of counsel

argument that I didn't know what I was doing.

Do you feel like they were using you as an escape boat?

I don't know.

I really didn't evaluate it in that way.

My whole life, I've dealt with people having opinions of me.

And over the years, I just learned to ignore them.

Did Mr. Jovanovic find some problems that you guys

discussed regarding the side tables from AT&T?

He had a lengthy report detailing numerous errors that he saw on the table.

Did you ever have a discussion with him about that call being an impossibility?

He didn't say it was an impossibility.

The more difficult he was, the impossibility of trying to place them.

Or where they could possibly be.

He knew the answer was, yes.

Vlad thought it was an impossibility.

Immediately, what should have been done is...

Moline should have stepped up and said, really?

Well, let's take a look at Vlad's report,

where he stated that 1152 was an impossibility.

I don't recall if they asked me that specific question, but I would have...

I would not have answered it to say yes.

I would have said that the data doesn't allow that kind of decision.

We achieved better than we ever hoped would hold.

So, um...

Any testimony from Mr. Jovanovic about some issues, I

think, would be hampering the presentation as a whole.

From our perspective, it would cause more problems if we put them on.

I think we made a strategic decision to leave it where

it was, because we thought we were in a good place.

In other words, we thought, since Agent Bowles was not able to give a definitive

answer as to the location of where Chase's cell phone would have been when he hit the

courtside tower, we thought that that was good enough, and we left it at that.

When you're talking about a man's life, you throw as much blood on the wall as you

can, and hopefully some of it sticks, you know?

I was just so upset and so pissed, and I let the judge know what I thought.

Your Honor.

He wants to have a talk with you, Your Honor.

I'm sorry?

He wants to, um, take a few minutes to, uh...

I'll go.

That's okay.

Sure.

We'll take, uh, 10-minute recess.

I just finally got so tired of it.

I was so upset that I was absolutely livid.

And I tried to fire Lee.

My dad was feeling very frustrated because, number one, the judge isn't

allowing them to argue the things that they wanted to argue.

Number two, Raj isn't arguing the things that he wanted him to argue.

So, I think all the frustration that has built up over, you know, the entire six

months of trial, I think it all kind of came to a head.

I think it became very evident that he wanted to be in control and that he wanted

to manipulate the storyline or the timeline of

the case that he thought was in his best interest.

If he did not like what, uh, was happening, he fired his attorney.

It showed that he wanted to be the person in charge

of the narrative and in charge of the process.

Chase is definitely a hands-on client.

Now, is it easy to work with Mr. Merritt all the time?

Absolutely not.

He's one of the most demanding, uh, clients I've ever had to deal with.

But I try to look at it instead of clashing with him.

I try to look at it from the standpoint of an innocent person being in jail.

How would I be?

I would probably be demanding myself.

Yeah, what is what we are back in session?

Parties in open court, parties in council are present.

The request to leave Mr. Lee has been denied.

Uh,

Mr. McGee's representation on that issue, on all of

the issues, was at the higher end of representation.

The court does not have a reasonable doubt as Mr. Merritt's guilt.

Therefore, the notion of the new trial, the insufficiency of the evidence,

is denied.

In hindsight, absolutely, we should have brought that cell tower evidence in.

If I would have understood it, like I understand it now, of course I would have.

I would have said, no, we need to put Chase on the other side of the tower.

To not follow through with that was not just ineffective assistance of council.

It was a specific relinquishment of their obligation, their duty to protect me.

What is the likelihood that you would ping off of a tower?

Not only a tower that overlooked the grave sites,

but on the sector that covered the grave sites.

I will guarantee you that when I'm done with all of this, and I get out of here,

if I don't get Imes and all three of these district attorneys

disbarred, I will be after these people until the day I die.

Moline and McGee, I believe that they believed that my

conviction was worth more money to them than my acquittal.

And I'm gonna do my best to put those two in jail.

There are such things as American tragedies.

When, you know, a family of four is murdered and

senselessly buried away from their homes unceremoniously.

While I may have an opinion as to how things happened or what happened on a

particular day, there's a lot of unanswered questions

that only certain people know the answers to.

Like, this should have been a bloody crime scene.

Well, I don't have to prove it's a bloody crime scene.

I just have to prove that four people are dead and that he did it.

I still believe all the evidence that we talked about Chase.

All of those little pieces that paint the larger puzzle.

I know that he's guilty of this crime.

But there's still a big mystery of...

Not that you really want to know those gruesome details, but how did he do it?

Who did he kill first?

Did he have to tie somebody up?

Just the horror of wondering if one of the parents had

to watch their children be killed in front of them.

You're talking about a significant time to clean anything up, to repaint.

You have all the supplies there if you need them.

When you think of an attack with a sledgehammer, a lot

of people immediately go to this movie-esque attack.

And we don't know that that was the case.

There's a lot of stuff we don't know about that.

I can't believe that he did this because it just doesn't make any sense.

He's not the kind of person who I believe is capable of doing something like this.

He's not a violent person.

He didn't...

He doesn't... He cares about money, but he doesn't care about money that much.

Like, it's... To him, money comes and goes.

And he's had lots, and he's... He's thrown away lots.

And he just... He just moves on.

It's not the be-all, end-all in his life.

It's just... It's not.

I just don't think he's capable.

I don't think there's ever been any doubt, at least

in my mind, about whether he's innocent or not.

I think the motivation to close this case kind of clouded the judgment, possibly,

of the people involved.

And what speaks to someone's guilt or innocence is evidence.

And in this case, there is no evidence.

It's completely circumstantial.

And the investigators see what they want to see.

Under the facts and the law, we should have a not guilty burden.

No question.

This is...

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

They know they charged an innocent man.

Unfortunately, for them, winning is the most important thing.

And they win at all costs.

I don't just blame the prosecutors.

I blame myself.

Surely I could have done something to stop this unethical train that was barreling

towards a conviction.

But I couldn't.

And I have to live with that regret.

And I hope and pray that one day, Chase will be vindicated.

And I honestly believe that he will.

Because there's no question in my mind that he's innocent.

All we know is this family fell off the grid at this time.

And their bodies are discovered, you know, three

years and eight months later in a shallow grave.

And that all four of them were bludgeoned with a sledgehammer.

That's what we know.

We conveyed, I think, that there was a falling out.

And I think that Merritt went up there to Fallbrook to

try to convince Joseph to keep him on in the business.

Hey, Chase, step back.

I think he didn't even go up there with the intent to have anything physical happen.

And I think at some point, the fight, or the argument, or the dispute,

whatever you want to call it, got physical.

Whether he was winning or losing the fight, or

why Chase grabbed the sledgehammer, I don't know.

But eventually he did get there and he knocked Joseph

unconscious or killed him right then and there.

And then at that point, Summer's upstairs.

So she hears this commotion and comes down and

that's when the second confrontation occurs.

I think at that point, you know, the kids, they were killed up at the gravesite.

My opinion of Chase Merritt is that I looked at the evidence from the beginning.

And I do not see how he could have actually done this.

Summer was that mama bear.

And so I guarantee she fought for her life.

And the injuries indicate that she went out in a horrible way.

She looked her attacker right in the face.

Yep.

It seems almost impossible that he could have done that all by himself.

And so that's, that's the part that I think bothers everyone.

That there's no way that he's the only one that knows what

he did and managed to pull it all off without being caught.

Because I never felt like he was that smart either.

I mean, I think we're lucky that they got a conviction at all.

But there just might be more to it that we'll never know.

Let's go on daddy's bike.

Yeah, let's go on daddy's bike like Chubba.

Walk a mile in my shoes, kid.

You know?

Lose two little grandchildren that don't even know what life really is.

That haven't had a chance to do anything really in life.

And then a brilliant, and I mean loving, man.

And a woman that is dedicated to her husband and children.

Because she was.

I mean, take people like that off the earth and the way they did it.

It's just...

Yeah.

They don't deserve anything.

You guys say goodbye.

Bye.

I've been up front.

Everything that I've told my attorneys, everything I've told law enforcement.

All of my actions have to, have to account for something.

Nothing that I've done shows that I did this thing.

And nothing that I've said shows that I've done this thing.

They, in order to put me in this chair, they had to make up just a plethora of

lies and innuendos, and in order to make it happen.

That's all I got to say about that.