DOWN TO THE BONE—Caitlin Rother

A twisting, deeply engrossing investigation into the many lingering questions surrounding the sudden disappearance of the McStays, a family of four who vanished from their suburban San Diego home without a trace—until their skeletal remains were found in the Mojave Desert nearly four years later—from New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Rother.
On February 15, 2010, Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two young sons were reported missing from their new home in San Diego County. They left eggs and fruit rotting on the counter. Their Dodge truck sat in the driveway. Their dogs were abandoned outside without food. But investigators found no blood, signs of a struggle, or clues to their whereabouts. Did the family take an unannounced vacation? Were they running away from personal problems? Or were they victims of foul play?
 Nearly four years later, a motorcyclist found the McStays’ remains in and around two shallow graves, one hundred miles away in the Mojave Desert. Their skulls showed signs of blunt-force trauma, likely due to the sledgehammer buried with them. Authorities focused on Charles "Chase" Merritt, a close friend and subcontractor for Joseph’s company. Despite a lack of physical evidence, scenarios that defied logic, and numerous unanswered questions, prosecutors convinced a jury of Merritt’s guilt. After an emotional sentencing hearing, the judge imposed the death penalty. But did another possible suspect, who was ignored by investigators and ducked a subpoena to testify, get away with murder?
In this twisting, deeply researched true-crime mystery, New York Times bestselling investigative journalist Caitlin Rother hunts for answers to reveal the truth behind a heinous crime that became a nation’s obsession, with a controversial trial in its wake, and lingering questions of justice.
Joining me to discuss, DOWN TO THE BONE: A Missing Family's Murder and the Elusive Quest for Justice—Caitlin Rother

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your

(00:29):
host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good Evening, a twisting, deeply engrossing investigation into the many
lingering questions surrounding the sudden disappearance of the mix Stays,
a family of four who vanished from their suburban San
Diego home without a trace until their skeletal remains were
found in the Mohave Desert nearly four years later, from

(01:03):
New York Times best selling author Caitlin Rother. On February fifteen,
twenty ten, Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two
young sons were reported missing from their new home in
San Diego County. They left eggs and fruit rotting on
the counter, their Dodge truck sat in the driveway. Their

(01:26):
dogs were abandoned outside without food, but investigators found no blood,
signs of a struggle or clues to their whereabouts. Did
the family take an unannounced vacation. Were they running away
from personal problems or were they victims of foul play.

(01:47):
Nearly four years later, a motorcyclist found the mcstay's remains
in and around two shallow graves one hundred miles away
in the Mojave Desert. Their skulls showed signs of blunt
force trauma, likely due to the sledgehammer buried with them.
Authorities focused on Charles Chase Merrit, a close friend and

(02:09):
subcontractor for Joseph's company. Despite a lack of physical evidence,
scenarios that defied logic, and numerous unanswered questions, prosecutors convinced
the jury of Merit's guilt. After an emotional sentencing hearing,
the judge imposed the death penalty, but did another possible suspect,

(02:33):
who was ignored by investigators and duct to subpoena to testify,
get away with murder. In this twisting, deeply researched true
crime mystery, New York Times bestselling investigative journalist Caitlin Rother
hunts for answers to reveal the truth behind a heinous
crime that became a nation's obsession, with a controversial trial

(02:58):
in its wake and lincring questions of justice. The book
that we were featuring this evening is Down to the Bone,
a missing famili's murder and the elusive quest for Justice,
with my special guest, investigative journalist and author Caitlyn Rother.

(03:21):
Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
for this interview. Caitlyn Rother.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Thank you for having me back on.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
And congratulations on your latest book, Down to the Bone.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Thank you again.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Now you are a New York Times bestselling author. This
is your fifteenth book you write. What did you as
an author? What did your research involve in writing this book?

Speaker 3 (03:52):
So this case happened back in February of twenty ten,
so it's been a while, but I think this book
probably took me longer to research than probably any other
book because I had twelve years to do it from
the time that this family of four, Joseph Summer, Jianni

(04:15):
and Joey Junior mxtay, all disappeared from their house in Albert, California.
This case kind of got a slow start, but I
knew pretty soon that it was going to be a
book worthy case because you know, people go missing, kids
go missing, you know, moms sometimes go missing, teenagers go missing,

(04:37):
but it's usually one at a time. It's very unusual
for a family to go missing, a family four, especially
when there's two little kids, when they're all together, because
you know, I've been told by detectives that you know,
one of the parents will take one of the kids
and run off. But the fact that all four of
them went off together and we're missing was very unusual,

(05:01):
and it was a mystery because nobody knew why they disappeared.
So anyway, it was investigated for over three years as
just a missing person's case, so it was kind of
a slow start, but you know, they were featured on
the cover of People magazine, so it was a nationally
high profile case. It was on Nancy Grace a lot.

(05:21):
They talked about every little turn of the cog and
every little turn of the wheel, because everybody was like,
what happened to these adorable little boys. So basically, the
San Diego County Sheriff's Department investigated it as a missing
person's case, which they came under quite a bit of
criticism for, and then they dropped the case and said,
you know what, we think that they went to Mexico voluntarily,

(05:45):
and I'll get into why that is in the book.
I'm not going to go into too much time into that. Now,
eight months later, the skeletal remains of this family were
found in two shallow graves in the Mojave Desert, about
one hundred miles from their house. Literally did not go
to Mexico. They were basically bludgeoned to death in the
back of their skulls because they each had holes in

(06:08):
the backs of their skulls, and then put into these
two shallow graves with one adult and one child in each.
So from that point they were in San Bernardino County
and that then moved into a homicide investigation. They did
that pretty quickly, arrested one of Joseph's business associates, Charles

(06:29):
Chase Merritt, within about a year, and then the case
took a while to get to trial because it's a
death penalty case. But Merritt also kept switching attorneys, so
by the time you know the trial was over and
the sentencing, you know, it had been a good ten years.
And then you know, I then go into high gear
and do start going deeper into my research. But I

(06:50):
had been to the preliminary hearing, which was two days.
I had I had also, you know, read three hundred
pages of searchworn affidavit that came out early when a
group of media sued the Sheriff's Department to release them
because they were not releasing information. And then I basically
wrote a book after I got a contract. Things were

(07:12):
really hard because of COVID, and the courthouses were closed
and you could, you know, limited hours, and people took
forever to respond. So basically, you know, this research tracked
on for a long long time. I wrote a book
of about ninety thousand words, and all this time I
had been trying to get what I got for Death
on Ocean Boulevard, which was my last book. Same Sheriff's Department,

(07:33):
San Diego Sheriff's Department, and curiously, same allegations by the
family of Rebecca's The How, which basically believed that Rebecca's
the How was murdered. Sheriff's department said she killed herself
when she was found hanging naked, bound and gagged in
the rear courtyard of the of the Spreckles mansion Cornado.

(07:53):
In this case, the defense for Chase Merritt said it
was confirmation bias. They arrested him. Basically what that means
is investigators decide on a premise or a theory or
a suspect and just will not move from it, no
matter what evidence they see to the contrary. So this
was to me like part one and part two of

(08:15):
a pattern of investigative flaws of the way that they
approached and that was continued as an allegation when it
got to trial with the prosecution. So you know, by
the point that I've written a book based on what
I got from the exhibits, which twelve thousand exhibits. That's
a lot of exhibits. I went and copied them. Took

(08:35):
me five days with a copy machine, because these are
file folders full of you know, thousands of hundreds or
thousands of pages of documents that were presented in court.
There were also other documents that were presented that I
think the jury probably even looked at, but were entered
for purposes of merits appeal. And so I basically had

(08:57):
all those and I wrote a book about nine and
then four months before my deadline, I finally got these
documents that I've been working to obtain for twelve years.
That is all the investigative reports from both sheriff's departments
and many of the witness interviews that they did, and
a lot of the background materials, so it basically had

(09:18):
to completely rewrite the book. So because once I had
that research, that new research, which was full of juicy
materials about what was going on behind the scenes in
the investigation that was never made public. You cannot get
these files with the public records request. You have to
get them from somebody involved in the case. And I

(09:38):
was able to do the same thing with Death on
Ocean Boulevard, and so, you know, these are things that
the investigators don't really want to be made public because
it doesn't always make them look good. But I was
able to work out all the way through the book,
and so there's a lot of new and exclusive information
that was never made public before, and so much of

(10:00):
it didn't even get into the trial. Because of all
of these it was such a messy, messy case, which
which I you know, explain and examine in this book.
So that's a long answer to your question.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yes, you certainly do. Now let's go back for people
that don't know this story, and you do paint a
compelling portrait of the Mixtage family life at the time
that they disappeared. So tell us about Joseph in Summer,
Jianni and Joseph Jr. And their life. Tell us about

(10:34):
what where they were at and what was happening at
the time they disappeared.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Okay, so the family was basically personally, at least, you know,
going through a bit of a crisis. So shortly before
they disappeared, Summer had filed a CPS TIALD Protective Services
complaint and I can't go into details about that for
privacy reasons, but suffice it to say that it caused

(11:03):
divisions within Joseph's extended family. So Summer had a falling
out with Michael McStay, Joseph's brother, even before that happened,
so there was some division there as well. According to him,
Summer was also making it difficult for Joseph to see
his friends, and she didn't like Chase Merritt who was

(11:28):
coming over to the house. So basically there were divisions
and conflict and strife going on in the family. Joseph
told his mother around Christmas time, is about two months before,
you know, month and a half before they vanished, about
the CPS investigation, which basically Summer didn't want their two

(11:50):
little boys to be together with Joseph's son from his
first marriage, and there were flex and accusations going back
and forth between that boy's family, you know, Joseph's ex
wife and her husband who had a criminal record, and
so there was just a lot going on, and so
the detectives looked at this pretty early on in interviewed

(12:14):
Joseph's son's stepfather almost right away, and he was cleared
actually pretty quickly. But this wasn't made public. They were
just kind of whispers about it, and the mcsay family
didn't want to talk about it because they were trying
to protect the privacy of the people who were accused
and who were then you know, they CPS found these

(12:36):
complains the complaint to be unsubstantiated anyway, but this was
this was going on, and it was an issue in
the family and it was causing quite a bit of conflict,
and so the detective initially thought this might have been
a reason why they left. But basically Joseph and someone
were also having some issues. He had asked his mom
to help him find a counselor because they were they

(12:59):
had had sex in a year and so there were
just issues, but financially things seemed to be going okay.
His business, he made waterfalls that he sold online through
a website, and he had, in addition to Chase Merritt,
who helped manufacture these and build these waterfalls, he had
another business associate named Dan Cavanaugh, who designed the website

(13:23):
where they sold them. So those were the two associates
who early on noticed he was not responding to emails
and phone calls, and so Cavanaugh called the police and
the sheriff's department. Merritt went to Joseph's mother and said,
you should call the police, but he didn't do it personally.

(13:45):
So early on it was the two business associates who
were the ones who called attention to the fact that
he wasn't responding, and Merritt went to the house and couldn't.
He said, no one's there, No one's answering the phone.
It took eleven days for Michael mcstaye to report them missing,
and then there was some debate later on when Michael
went by the house and why and blah blah blah,

(14:07):
and that it became an issue at trial. But basically,
you know, it was a family going through some issues,
but financially, it seemed like things were going well because
new new projects were coming in, and that was part
of the reason why they weren't sure why they would
have just disappeared like that, because they were they had
two big projects that they were working on that were
going to pay pretty well, and so it didn't really

(14:28):
make sense for them to just leave without telling anybody
where they were going.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
What were the issues that were present with Dan Cavanaugh
and with Chase Merritt in terms of leadership of the
company itself, their roles at the company itself.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Well, a year before this, before they disappeared, Joseph and
Mxedday and Dan Kevanaugh had a falling out. Cavanaugh had
discovered that Joseph was working on these more expensive custom
projects with Merritt and cutting Kavanaugh out of them, which

(15:09):
was true. They were, and they kept a separate set
of books for that, a separate online accounting system with that,
and so Kalvanaugh threatened Joseph, you know, if you don't,
you know, pay me off or cut me in or
make a deal, you know, I'm going to take your
website down and I'm going to destroy your business. So

(15:30):
it's in writing too. He did it in you know,
text messages or instant messages, but they were in writing,
and so Joseph was scared that Calvin I was going
to follow through on those threats. So he was trying
to you know, pay him off, make him happy, and
apparently he had almost done that when they vanished. There
were some issues that came out after later about Merritt's work,

(15:54):
the quality of his work, and some of the issues
that were going on with I guess there was there
was waterfall that apparently had you know, leaked or had
holes or I don't remember exactly what the situation was,
but there were just a couple customers I guess that
were not happy when they got their waterfalls. But according
to Joseph, the things that Joseph told his family, particularly

(16:19):
his father Patrick McStay he was and a friend of
his mcgiver macargur, which is kind of a tricky name,
I might he said that Joseph had pretty much paid
off Kavanaugh. He was trying to expand the business with
Merit so that they could make bigger and more custom

(16:42):
waterfalls and expand the size of the manufacturing operation into
it like a separate place and bring it in house.
So that he didn't have to deal with Kevanaugh anymore. Now,
that became a matter of quite some debate, and later
the prosecution claimed that they were trying to get rid

(17:02):
of that, he was trying to sideline Merit. But you know,
going back through through who said what to who, it
really doesn't appear like he was trying to get rid
of Merit. He was trying to get rid of Kavanaugh
because of the threats.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
let's get to the prosecution's case against Chase Merit. How
does he come to be the sole suspect in this
There's not really any physical evidence, so this is a
circumstantial evidence case. Just tell us what the prosecution's case

(17:43):
against Chase Merit is based on.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
So the preliminary hearing, this came out and it was
very vague and they didn't even add up the amounts,
which I had to do because the prosecution refused to
talk until after the trial. The case boiled down to
they accused Merrit of basically forging checks, writing checks and

(18:09):
forging checks with this online system that they were using,
and then deleting checks from the accounting system, so that
you know, basically amounted to like twenty thousand dollars. And
the prosecution claimed that Joseph found out that he had
started doing this, so they had a confrontation and he
fired him, at which point Merrett got upset and decided

(18:33):
to kill the entire family. So that's their argument, and
they claimed even in the trial that Merrit killed them
or the murder started or happened in the house. Now,
one of my issues, which I explained in the book,

(18:54):
they never found a drop of blood. In fact, that
that's why the first detective from San Diego County couldn't
investigate the case as a homicide. According to him, because
he initially thought there was foul play. But when he
put a search warrant to the judge claiming that they
had been murdered, the judge said, well, I need more

(19:15):
probable cause than this. You know, where is it. And
so because they never found a single drop of blood
or any real sign of foul play in the house,
it's very curious to me and to the defense why
the detectives from Zaan Bernardino continued to argue even at
trial that this had happened in the house. When there

(19:38):
was absolutely no forensic evidence to support that. Now, there
also was no blood found on any of Merit's belongings,
any of his clothes, or in his truck which they
tracked down years later, and there was no blood. So,
like you said, there really was no physical evidence tying

(19:58):
him to the murder at the house. The only thing
that they claim to have as physical evidence was trace
a trace of Merrit's DNA on the steering wheel of
the families Azuzu trooper, which was found at the border
in a parking lot where it was towed from. And

(20:19):
then during the trial, the defense's expert basically said, well,
you know, he was a possible minor contributor, but the
major contributor was Joseph McStay, and the major contributor is
generally the person who had the most DNA on the
steering wheel, as in the last person who drove it.
So that didn't even really hold up in my mind.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
What about the controversial topic at issue at trial was
the cell phone power expert and his calculations.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Okay, well this gets this gets a little complicated, but
I'll see if I can boil it down. There was
a cell phone expert that the defense was supposed to call,
but one of the defense attorneys decided he didn't need
to call him because he felt like he had gotten
what he needed from the prosecution's cell phone expert, who

(21:18):
was an FBI agent who had all these records and
some of which were not shared with the defense even
when they asked for them, and they kept claiming that
you have everything, when in fact, it was clear that
they didn't have everything because they were referring to records
that these guys didn't have, so the judge ordered them
to hand them over. But what they basically were arguing
is that those records could not place Chase Merritt at

(21:44):
the grave site, specifically on you know, two days after
they disappeared, which is when the prosecution said they believed
that he buried their bodies. They also kind of hemmed
and hot and changed their story about this well ranged
So maybe he was going back to check to see
if the graves were okay and that these bodies had

(22:07):
not come unearthed. But Merritt really wanted that expert to testify,
and this became an issue even with his own defense
team because the lawyer who was supposed to present this
expert changed his mind and then proceeded to develop a
neurological condition and disappeared from the trial for a good

(22:28):
month or month and a half. I don't remember specifically
how many weeks it was, but it delayed the trial significantly.
And he was the one who knew all this information
and had prepared this witness, and then he decided not
to call him. So to this day, Merritt is still
holding on to this and is still angry about it,
and is still citing it as a reason for in

(22:49):
effective counsel because he figured out by going through the
records himself that that tower that was on a hill
overlooking where those two shallow grapes were was malfunctioning and
that it was saying that the direction of the phone
call where the phone was, which was moving around and

(23:10):
bouncing around, was actually in the opposite direction. Very complicated,
and I you know, this didn't even really get to
come before the jury. So this came out in a
sentencing hearing where the other attorney, who was the only
one left because that one who got sick, ended up
saying I have a conflict of interest in I can't

(23:32):
proceed with the sentencing motions. And it was very long
and complicated. It's on the book, but the jury never
really got to hear this stuff. And frankly, it's very obtuse.
It's it's tricky to I think, to explain to anybody,
and I think that it's it likely would have just
gone over their heads anyway, because it's it's you know,

(23:53):
it's it's not exciting sexy testimony.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
I feel the same way about DNA testimony. I feel
the same way about some of these very very technical
topics that it's just very difficult for juries to process.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Certainly, and keeping in that theme, you right, how do
you believe this case got so messed up?

Speaker 3 (24:20):
Well, it was just like a whole series of things.
It wasn't any one thing, you know, I mean, honestly,
it's just one thing after another. Merritt is a difficult
person to start with. He's never satisfied with anybody who
works for him. He switched attorneys repeatedly, like you just
fire them, you know, one after another, until the got

(24:41):
to the point where the judge was like, look, you
can't have any more attorneys. You've gone through six of them,
you know, you need to just stick with these two.
And then even at the sentencing, you know, he lost
one of them because that one stepped off and said
I have a conflict. You know, it couldn't basically defend
and he wouldn't give a reason publicly, but we found
out later he says he couldn't defend himself and his

(25:03):
client at the same time as his client is attacking him.
And then he tried to fire the very last one
too at the last minute, you know, and the judge
was like, no, this is your attorney. You got to
just stick with them.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Was there any criticism of the initial lead detective in
this case, Dougal, and his handling of this case from
the perspective of a missing person's case rather than finding
any information that would further it as a homicide case.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, a lot of us
were observers in general were just watching, going, well, why
is this a missing person's case? I mean, clearly there
were some red flags, and you know, like I said,
even he said initially he thought this was a murder
and he put that in the search warrant. But like
he claimed, well, the judge said, you don't have any
probable cause, so you can't. I don't want to see

(25:57):
another search warrant with that same information, because you don't
have any evidence that it was a murder. But what
the lead detective said to me from San Bernardino, when
I asked him what he thought, he said, well, if
it were us, we would have tried another judge, or
we would have you know, maybe waited a while and
when they had not turned up, gone back and tried again,

(26:19):
which apparently he did not do so basically because they
left under such bizarre circumstances. I mean, they left their
dogs in the backyard with no food or water, which
they never did. They always kept their dogs inside at night.
And according to the prosecution, they were taken the night

(26:41):
of February fourth, twenty ten. Even though the food that
was left out on the kitchen counter, which showed that
they left abruptly, looked like breakfast. So there were eggs
out on the counter, coffee in the pot, stuff like
that fruit in this bowl. The criticism was, basically, you know,

(27:02):
these things are not adding up, these are red flags.
He's got a you know, successful business, he's in the
middle of these projects. Why would he just leave unless
something was wrong, right, something bad happened. So the criticism was,
why did you keep you know, investigating this as a
missing person's case rather than a homicide, because there are

(27:23):
things that you can't do. You know, in a missing
person's case, you can't subpoena records, you can't you ask
you can ask for them. You can go to a
bank or cell phone companies and ask voluntarily for them
to hand over things, but they don't have to because
you can't subpoena them. So that was you know, that
was a criticism because there were missed opportunities in terms

(27:44):
of the investigation.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
It was also criticized, wasn't heed for Susan Blake, Joseph's
mother leaning up the crime scene, and also even more importantly,
I think Joseph's brother Michael, said that he had permission
to take the Joseph's computer, the family computer home with
him to take it out of the house.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Right, So basically, you know, according to the detective, he
never gave permission to Joseph's mother to clean up, and
she called him while she was in the middle of
doing that, so she came over somehow got back into
the house. This is still unclear to me how this
how they got back into the house because the detective
did not lock the house. He left that to them

(28:30):
to do. But supposedly that the house was locked. I
don't know how they got it anyway, maybe they didn't
lock it. But she came in and she asked mcgui
vray mccagur to meet her there, who is helping Joseph
and Summer paint the house. And she cleaned up all
the paint supplies and put them away and moved everything

(28:50):
around in the kitchen, straightened up, threw away the newspapers
you know that they were using to paint, and you know,
cleaned up the kitchen. So all those traces of how
their house was left so abruptly or gone. And there's
also some debate whether or not she used windecks to
clean and was there any bleach blah blah blah. She

(29:12):
says no at one point, said yes another point, But
according to the detective, he never told her not to
do that, because he said, well, I didn't tell them
that I was about to file a search warrant to
search the house, and I didn't tell them not to
do that because I didn't want to scare them and
I wanted to I want them to cooperate with me.

(29:32):
But he said he was disappointed that she did that,
and when she called him and told him that she
was cleaning, he told her to stop, but by that
point it was too late. So also Michael McStay claimed
that he thought he had permission to take a computer
and the video camera and the SIM cards and you
know what have you from the house. The detective said, no,

(29:54):
I never gave him permission, So it's unclear also whether
he why he thought he had permission, but there, you know,
they they did tell him, you know, if you can
find records that would help us, you know, financial records
or whatever that we could use to see what they
were doing and what have you. So I think he

(30:15):
probably thought, well, I can just take the computer and
go find those things. So it was like, you know,
the detective was claiming he didn't give permission, but when
he asked the question for those records, I think Michael
thought that he had permission. But on the stand, you know,
the detective denied that he gave permission, and Michael said
he had permission. So that was that was a discrepancy certainly,

(30:40):
and that that also made you know, the McStay family,
the extended family brought brought them criticism as well, for
why were you doing those things? Brought suspicion on them
that why why were they messing with stuff?

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now, that's some criticism of the San Diego
Police Department, But there were some questionable aspects of the
Bernardino County Sheriff's Department investigation as well. Can you tell
us about some of those?

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Now, the criticism for the San Diego Sheriff's Department was public.
The Patrick McStay, Joseph's father, made it public. He talked
about it to any reporter who would listen. He posted
it online. He complained about it on web sleuth So
he made it an issue and there were you know,

(31:37):
general you know, a web sluths. They had a whole
forum that was going crazy with all this stuff. Read
at the same thing that was more public, the criticism
of the sandy of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department. There
wasn't anything public that was criticized. They weren't criticizing. But
when I was writing the book, and there were you know,

(31:57):
you know groups on Facebook where you could see some
discussion about this stuff. But it wasn't really like it
was directed at the department. These are just things that
I found when I was doing my investigation and people
who emailed me and complained about this, and it was
also the subject at trial, but that came from the

(32:18):
defense attorneys. So I just want to be clear on
the source of that, which is natural and it's part
of the defense, right. So confirmation bias was the main
criticism that they decided on Chase Merrit and did not
look at Dan Kevnaugh as a suspect. And when they
according to the defense, they had pretty much the same motive.

(32:42):
It's just that with Merit, if he really did do this,
then he took twenty thousand, when Kavanaugh, according to their
expert ended up taking two hundred and six thousand dollars
from Joseph's business because he took it over and ran
it and then sold it without any authorization and kept
that money as well. So the criticism was, you know,

(33:07):
why why are you so focused on Merit and why
didn't you focus on Dan Cavanaugh at all? And that
was pretty much the whole defense, even though the judge said,
you know, you can't, you can't do a third party
culpability case. You don't have permission for that because you
have to have permission from the judge. But they brought
it up every chance they could. Dan Kavnaugh, Dan Cavanaugh,

(33:31):
You're right.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Just on the verge of the trial, there is an
alleged last minute confession named Tracy Ricklebein.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
So this woman approached the prosecution and the defense basically
told them that Dan Kavanaugh had confessed to her that
he had raped and killed Summer and the rest of
the family. So tried to deliver subpoena to Dan Kavanaugh

(34:03):
to get him to testify, but they could never find him.
He later admitted on television during a documentary that he
had purposely avoided that. So and then basically Tracy Ricabini
was mentioned in the opening statement by the defense and
this confession and what she was like and what she said,
but they never called her as a witness. So it's

(34:27):
an interesting claim, but they never followed through on it
in the trial. I think you just take that for
what it is. He did brag though to other people
that he had killed the mixed stays, and the defense,
you know, tried to get that into the trial. Judge
wouldn't let them. But there are a couple cases that
were documented of people claiming that he had you know,

(34:52):
threatened them, threatened to do it to them what he
had done to the mix Stay family.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Well, tell us about this TV documentary Two Shallow Grades
and its importance to this case and its rule in
this story.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Well, it really had more importance to me personally actually,
because it's what prevented me from getting a lot of
information and access, which I hope maybe I would have
gotten a lot sooner if that hadn't happened. But basically,
Merritt's two defense attorneys made a deal with this company,
it's production company, to do a documentary in a book.

(35:31):
And so therefore they they you know, they were going
to do their own things, So they didn't want to
give they didn't want to help me or give me
information or interviews or anything. They signed some kind of
agreement with Merit to waive him having to pay them
in order for them to have rights to his story. Now,
they obviously thought they were going to win the case,

(35:53):
and so it was going to be a whole defense
oriented you know, this is how the case went. Well,
it didn't go very far because the prosecution and the
McStay family refused to cooperate with a defense project, so
that kind of fizzled, and what ended up happening is
they took the footage that they had done and they
found another production company and agreed to do a more

(36:16):
balanced version of the of the documentary, which they ended
up doing. So the prosecution did cooperate and the lead
detective Patrick McStay participated, but he never testified at trials,
so it was really just his opinions, you know, and
his feelings about things, and so it was like a

(36:36):
seven part documentary and the most interesting thing to me
that I thought was important was that Dan Kalvanaugh basically,
you know, dismissed this confession idea, basically said that the
woman who claimed that he had confessed, you know, was
not credible. Also gave the chance to the prosecutors to
say the same thing. And then Kavanaugh said, I didn't

(36:59):
kill these people, and yes, I you know, basically ducked
the subpoena to testify. So he admitted that on TV,
which I thought was interesting, and he claimed that the
police told him to do that, you know, And I
asked the lead detective that he's like, we never said that.
We would never say that. We don't We're not scared

(37:19):
to him. We would never do that. But in terms of,
you know, new information, I didn't really get anything new
from the documentary itself, other than the fact that they
got Kavan ought to talk and I tried, but he said, well,
this seems like a commercial endeavor and I'm not going
to participate unless you pay me. And I said, I'm
a newsperson, I don't do that. So he said he

(37:41):
didn't want to participate.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Tell us some of the highlights of this trial in
terms of the defense and their strategy to direct the
blame towards Dan Kavanaugh as opposed to their client, Charles Merritt.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
I wouldn't say they were blaming him because they didn't
have any proof that Dan Kavanaugh killed these people. However,
they did say that they had DNA evidence that they
were not allowed to run through the CODIS database, which

(38:18):
is a federal database for DNA, and they tried to
get the county to do it. The county said we
can't do it. It's not in the right format. The
defense called some DNA experts who said, yes, it is
in the right format. You just have to do a
manual search, not a regular search where you would just
feed it in like you would normally do. And the
county just like kept saying they couldn't do it. And

(38:40):
I tried to follow this up outside of the trial.
Could not get this CODIS administrator to return a phone call,
could not get the sheriff's department to hook me up
with her. I tried repeatedly. So basically the judge even said, well,
you know, if you had handled this differently and had
asked for hearing earlier in the trial, we might have
been able to set up hearing to decide whether or

(39:02):
not we could actually do what you're asking, which is
to run this partial profile, which was some probabilistic genotyping,
you know, advanced scientific way using algorithms to determine whether
or not there's a match. Then you take, if you
find a match, you run it against the actual person's

(39:24):
DNA profile and see if that's really a match rather
than a probabilistic algorithm of a match. Again, see what
I'm saying, how complicated this stuff is. That the jury's
just like what you know, the prosecution basically dismissed this
as junk science. But this is one more point that's
still hanging in the balance today if they would just

(39:45):
run this DNA through codis. The reason it's interesting is
there are three items in and around a grave that
did not match Chase Merritt and did not match any
of the McStay family. So according to the defense, this
could be the killers DNA that we still don't know
who it belongs to, and it could be the real killer,

(40:06):
and yet that was not allowed to it's been tested,
so it's not like they can do a regular there's
an actual form that they can do in a whole
motion that they tried, but it's already been tested. It
just hasn't been run through the database. So it's like
super arcane legal stuff, you know. But that's still hanging

(40:27):
in the balance. You know that there's still and there's
still this DNA that could belong to someone who actually
killed these people that we still don't know, still not
identified who this belongs to and why was it at
the gravesite? Right? I mean, for all we know, there
was somebody who's sent around drinking beer and is like
in the area, didn't have anything to do with it, maybe,

(40:48):
you know what I mean, We don't know, so that
was one one area that I thought was important. The
defense didn't actually blame Dan kevinot, but they thought that
he should have been looked at more closely, and they
brought up a whole bunch of stuff as much as
they were allowed to. They were shot down more times
than they were allowed to let any of the stuff out.

(41:11):
That basically they said it, well, he at least had
the same motive, if not more of a motive. And
so a lot of the questioning was directed about these witnesses,
about their interactions with and things that you know, Dan
Kavanaugh did and said to them. But there was a
lot of stuff, and this is what was really something
that I thought was interesting and wanted to get into

(41:31):
in the book, all the stuff that didn't get into
the trial. So I kind of like to talk about
some of that more than what actually happened at the trial,
because the trial was pretty tedious. The trial was it
was just on and on and on, and like I said,
you know, there were all these delays. The attorneys were
constantly bickering like school children, and they were kept accusing

(41:56):
each other of misconduct. I mean, it just went on
and on, and the jug it pretty much abdicated any
kind of sense of control, which he even admitted and
just said, you guys are acting like school children. You know,
I don't think the jury's really going to be impressed,
but I'm not gonna I'm going to leave that for
another court to deal with. And I'm just like, what,

(42:17):
So it just you know, it was a very odd trial.
So let me just talk about a couple of things.
Can I do that? A couple of things that didn't
even get into the trial that I thought were important.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Let's talk about evidence that wasn't heard, that
wasn't allowed, and that really makes up a big part
of this book and very very interesting as opposed to
the official narrative.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Right, Just a couple things, honestly, I'll just go into.
One was Joseph had a gun.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Now.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
I heard about this early on and I was like, really, wow,
that's interesting. I heard about this from Chase Merritt's daughter
told me about this, and I'm like, I didn't hear
anything about a gun. And so you know, when I
finally got the investigative reports, I dug in there and
there was like a whole bunch of reports in there
about how they had actually tried to track down where

(43:14):
this what happened to this gun, because it went missing
and it ended up in the possession of a convicted
felon who you know, is not supposed to have a
gun in Las Vegas, in a car that was stolen
and left at the side of the road on a
freeway off ramp. And so they tracked it back and

(43:34):
they did all this investigation, and they found that this
guy got it in a trade from somebody who was
involved in the cannabis recreational cannabis industry. So apparently these
guys get together and they trade guns and they trade
other kinds of weird stuff, Like they likened it to
a tupperware party, except imagine it's just a bunch of

(43:55):
you know, weed dealers trading stuff. So this is how
he got it. And whether this is a coincidence or not,
I just thought this was, you know, one of a
series of dots that could have you know, that the
defense was actually trying to connect but were not allowed
to the people that Dan Kavanaugh sold Joseph's business to

(44:18):
without any authorization and without any investigation by the San
Diego County Sheriff's Department, even though they were told that
he had been trying to sell the business, and then
after he sold the business, they still never did anything
about it and didn't ask him really any real deep
questions about it. But he did it without authorization, and

(44:38):
that's clear. He claims, oh, I was half owner of
the business, so I had every I had authorization to
do it, you know. And there's I don't want to
go into all the details about that. It's in the
book of all of the paper trail that Joseph created
the show that Dan Kavanaugh was never a partner in
the business, and Patrick McStay kept trying to tell the

(45:00):
detective that, but the detective and Patrick misstay did not
get along. So there was all this conflict going on
when Patrick was trying to get the detective to do
something with Dan cavan on investigate him, and he just wouldn't.
But basically, he sold this business to two guys who
operated a wheat store and one of them was actually

(45:23):
indicted in a federal investigation for selling pot through the
mail in boxes. And when they interviewed the accountant who
handled the business, he basically was like, yeah, there's I
didn't really get detailed receipts or anything. I didn't really

(45:43):
get detailed information, but yeah, basically, you know, using boxes
to ship waterfalls and using boxes to ship weed, you
know sort of could be you know, some of the
same kind of methodology. The defense claimed, well, clearly they
bought this business because they wanted to ship weed in

(46:05):
the waterfall boxes, you know, pretending to be shipping waterfalls,
when in fact they were shipping weed for sale in
a wholesale operation. And they you know, this guy was
was indicted and convicted. The other guy was not, but
that's who he sold this business to. So you know,

(46:26):
in terms of the gun, how did this guy get
the gun through the some guy in the cannabis industry?
How did the gun get to you know, it's murky,
but I just wish that those dots had I wish
the defense had been able to go into that in court,
but the judge said it was irrelevant and that there
was no direct evidence linking any of that to the murders.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Did you find anything to the idea that it might
have taken more than one perpetrator to control this family, Well, that.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Is a common theory. Even the prosecution acknowledged that these
there were two shallow graves. There were tire tracks of
two different diameters for the wheelbase going to each one,
so it looks like there were two different vehicles that
dropped these these bodies into the two graves. So right there,

(47:20):
it looks like two trucks, two people, plus you have
a family of four. How is one person going to
control four people? Justin McStay had the key to the
truck that was found at the border in his pocket
when he and they found it when they found his remains,

(47:41):
So I mean, there's just there's just a lot of
unanswered questions. And you know, they initially, well not initially,
but close to the trial, they actually tried to implicate
Chase's brother, Bennett, who also had been in prison. So
Chase Merritt had been in prison as a thie, never
had a violent crime in his entire history. They were

(48:04):
trying to paint a portrait of you know, he and
Bennett potentially did this together. So they got Bennett's DNA,
but they ended up not being able to get any
DNA off this sledgehammer that was found in the grave,
so they were never able to pursue that theory.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
At all.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
But yeah, there there was a theory that there were
more there was more than one person involved, and nobody
was really arguing that that wasn't the case. They just
didn't know who it could be. And they never found
any evidence of that there was another person involved because
they were they put wiretaps on Merritt's phone, and he
never called anybody or mentioned anybody, you know, as an accomplice.

(48:46):
And he claimed he was never there. He said, I
was never in the desert. I didn't do this. He
claims his innocence to this day.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Was there evidence of or was it just an assumption
that Summer had been sexually assaulted?

Speaker 3 (49:01):
It is a defense theory because and I think it
makes sense. Her panties and sweatpants were found separate from
her body above her head, and her bra was it
looked like it had been cut down the middle. So
they said, you know, we can't they can't know for

(49:23):
sure because there was no tissue left, you know, They
couldn't do you know, the equivalent of a rape kit
all those years later, because the tissues had all were gone,
you know. But and so the prosecution was like, oh,
there's no evidence of a rape. But clearly. I mean,
why Joseph was bundled up completely differently and tied with
these ropes and stuff in summer. Summer's remains were not

(49:46):
found that way. And like I said, the pants and
panties were found separate from the rest of her body,
as if they'd been pulled off, you know, and that
her bra had been cut off because it was you
could just see the you know, the front of her
bra looked like as fraid as if it had been cut.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
And it was confirmed that the murder weapon was the sledgehammer.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
No, they can't confirm that there was no DNA that
they could find on it. But based on the size
and shape of the hole in the back of the
skulls of each one of the victims, and this three
pound sledge hammer was found in one of the graves,
they assumed that, you know, it was consistent with But yeah, no,
they can't say for sure.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
And back to the trial. In the eighty five days
of trial, jury deliberates for about quite a few days. Actually,
what is the verdict on three of these four counts
of first degree murder?

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Do you really want to give away the ending? I
kind of like to leave some mystery Okay, can we
do that?

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Sure, I want people.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
To read the book. I surprise, But I guess I
can tell you that I can't get a I can't
get a book deal without having kilt him. I guess
I have to tell you. Yeah, and he is on
death row. But I always like people to have a
little bit of a surprise. It was not a straight line, though,
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yes, and you say that there's a certain status right now,
presently for twenty twenty five regarding this case, Maret.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Is working on a habeas corpus petition. He told me
he's working with a chapter of the Innocence Project. He
wouldn't give me any information about who he was working with, though,
so I could not confirm that. He said he wanted
to file it in twenty twenty five, but I guess
he says he's passed it on to them now. So
I can't confirm that. I just know that he wanted

(51:50):
to do that. But you know, he's also said other
things to me that took quite a while to actually happen.
But when we talked about it, it was, you know,
the cell phone tower stuff, you know, ineffective counsel And
I don't. I haven't seen this this habeas petition, so
I don't know for sure what would be in it,

(52:10):
and it hasn't been filed yet to my knowledge. But
that's what he was hoping to do.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Well, tell us more about this correspondence between you.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
We basically were talking on the phone. I got a
Burner phone app for my phone, which basically assigns a
new phone number and then, you know, so that person,
somebody in prison can call me without having my actual
phone number. It goes through that app. And so we
talked on the phone repeatedly for a while. I asked

(52:41):
him questions, he told me stories, He gave me his
side of the story, and he told me some pretty
colorful things about his past, which I put in the book.
And you know, I thought, you know, he was an
interesting character. He gets mad though, he gets upset about things,
and so you kind of have to wade through that.

(53:02):
I actually just there's a woman who he calls his girlfriend,
who I have kind of corresponded with, you know, a
little bit here and there on Facebook through messages, and
apparently he's upset about something in the book. And the
book's not even out yet, so I mean, I didn't
even answer her because I'm like, well, he hasn't even
seen the book, what do I don't even know what

(53:24):
you're talking about, you know, and he doesn't understand what
a journalist really does. He has he has very opinionated,
he has very strong ideas about things. He's also very
charming and he's, you know, an interesting guy. But he's
not an easy person too, because he you know, he

(53:44):
gets angry about things, and he gets upset about things,
and he's you know, really has strong opinion about how
things should be and how you know, you can't there's
not much you can say when you get to that point,
you know, but it was it's really important to talk
to him, and I'm glad I did. But he wouldn't
let anybody talk to me. You know. He was very

(54:07):
controlling in terms of you know, there were people I
wanted to talk to and he basically said, don't talk
to her. He's like, he would talk to me, but
he didn't want anyone else talking to me because he
really wanted to control his own narrative from prison, and
he was able to do it. These women that I
tried to talk to just to confirm some of the
things he told me, you know, one of them. I'll

(54:27):
give you one example. He told me he was a
stripper for many, many years, and I'm like, well, I
thought that was pretty colorful, and I just wanted someone
to tell me that that was true. So I eventually,
you know, he didn't want his wife to talk to me.
She eventually talked to me and she told me, yes,
he had told her the same thing. I'm like, okay, good.
And she was with him for quite a long time.
I had three kids with him, so I figured, Okay,
I think I'm safe saying that he was a stripper.

(54:50):
But I would hate to put things in the book
that he told me that I couldn't confirm, because you know,
I'm a journalist and I'm supposed to confirm things. So
I did my best to do, you know, to check
that things, and I give him a chance to explain,
you know, various things that he was accused of.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
So very interesting. I'll leave it at that. Thank you
so much for coming on and talking about your latest
down to the bone a Missing Families, murder and the
elusive quest for justice. Can you tell us about a
website or your any social media you do tell us
about that?

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Yes, My website is Kaitlinaruther dot com and I'm also
on Substack. Just started posting on there, so feel free
to subscribe. It's free. I am on pretty much every
form of social media there is, Facebook, X, Blue Sky, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn.

(55:48):
I mean, I can't be as active on every single one,
so I'm mostly on Facebook. But I also wanted to
let people know that I'm if you're listening to this
and you're anywhere in southern California, even in Tennessee or
in Arasz I'm going to be having book signings through
the months of June, July, and August, and actually one
in September so far. So and if anybody wants to

(56:09):
do has a book club that has got you know,
more than ten people in it, hopefully I do. I
do sometimes do Zoom book clubs as well, So you
can contact me through my website and I'll let you
know if I can do it. I really have worked
so hard on this book, and it was the publication

(56:29):
was delayed three times, which has really really been difficult
to try to, you know, get the momentum going on
the promotion and then it might the rug would be
pulled out no, we're delaying it again. Nope, we're delaying
it again. No, we're doing it one more time. But
I was like, oh my god. So I'm really really excited.
My author copies I got an email are writing today.

(56:50):
So I'm super excited about that. And after so many
years of working on this book, I'm really just really
excited to get it out there and let people read
it and see what people think.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you for those updates and all
that news down to the bone a missing famili's murder
and the elusive quest for justice. Thank you so much
for this interview, Caitlin Rother, and you have a great
evening and good night. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Thank you so much, Dan, I really appreciate it. Bye bye,
bye bye