Transcript of The After Show: What Happened to the McStays?

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Hi, everybody. I'm Deborah Roberts, and welcome to 2020 The After Show, where, as always, we take you not only inside our most recent 2020 episode, but we take you behind the scenes, pull back the curtain, so you can learn a little bit more about how we actually worked on this report. And today, we are talking about the mysterious case of the McStay family. If you saw our episode this past week, you saw this story. It's about a California husband and wife and their two sons who seem to just vanished into thin air. It was a mystery for a few years until they were finally found, sadly, murdered. Our 2020 team led by Matt Gutman, explored this case in What Happened to the Mixed Days. It's now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu, and our ABC Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman is here with me now to talk more about it. Hey, Matt.

Hey, Deborah.

Hey. So listen, before we get into this story, I think our viewers, and certainly our listeners, know that you're like the Energizer Bunny. Give our listeners a sense of what that's like for you all over the map, and sometimes you get these calls on a weekend.

Often. I mean, I've worked many, many weekends recently. But the good thing about this story that we're talking about, the McStay family disappearance and murder, was that it essentially had happened almost in my backyard. It's very like a Southern California story. And so many of the stories that we cover, Deborah, we have to travel far. This was a pretty quick commute. The scene of the disappearance is about 90 minutes away south of me in San Diego County. And the scene where they were found is about 90 minutes north in San Bernardino County, which is one of the nation's largest counties. Actually, it is the nation's physically largest county. So this is like a real Southern California story, and it takes place right at 2010, and it's about a surfer dude, and he married this lovely young lady who was a spitfire. They ended up creating a business. He had two kids. They had these two boys that they loved dearly and took such good care of. They had started a life together. They bought a house, a detached house after having an apartment, and then they suddenly disappeared, Deborah. And that's what is so astonishing about this I don't think I've ever covered anything quite like it, in which a family simply vanishes.

They go from being what seems like a normal family to disappearing into thin air. I know we use that phrase all the time, into thin air. But in this case, it was literally that. No messages, no email trail, no phone trail. They just disappeared.

Matt, we saw you reporting from the mixed-day's neighborhood. You're with a detective out there, Detective Bruco, talking about the family doll logs that have been running around and one of the cars missing from the driveway, but they didn't see any evidence of a struggle. And then, of course, they start looking into this case, and there are a lot of things that are strange that began to stick out for them. But years are going by, right?

This is so interesting. You make a really good point, right? Somebody calls in a welfare check. It's actually a guy named Dan Cavenagh and other family members. Dan Cavenagh is a business partner of Joseph McStay. And then police actually go to the house, and they see, as you mentioned, The dog's barking, and they look like they've been hungry and let loose in the yard, but there does not appear to be a crime. And so initially, law enforcement doesn't know what to make of it. So the family is not officially declared missing or at risk for a while. And so that's one of the reasons, I think, that this case takes so many years to unfold, because it's almost, it's well over three years before their bodies are found about 100 miles away from where they disappeared. And when investigators, when the family, when friends go into that house, Deborah, there is no evidence of a struggle. No apparent murder weapons or a murder weapon. It seems like the family just disappeared. There's even food left on the counter. The kids' clothes are about... It looked like they had just started. They had bought the house, and they were painting, and they were refurbishing, and they were going through all this stuff.

They up and decided to just leave.

And for a while, Deborah, there was some thought that maybe they'd gone to Mexico, and there's a good reason for that. Somehow, the family's Isuzu Trooper, which they had had with the car seat still in the back, was found right on the border at the San Desejo Crossing between California and Mexico, one of the busiest and most trafficked border terminals in the entire world. And the car is right there. Eventually, it's towed because it was parked illegally in the shopping center right next to the border crossing. Crossing. And then investigators who still haven't declared a crime start pouring over this video, and they think, after days and days, and with the help of Good Samaritans, they're pouring over countless video feeds coming from the border terminal, and they believe that they spot this family of four that matches the description of the mixed days crossing the border into Mexico. And when they finally get those search warrants, they're able to go on the family computer. And there is some traffic, an Internet traffic, about traveling to Mexico, staying there. And eventually, there's even a waiter who thinks that he spots a child with a description of one of the kids, even with an identifying birthmark.

And he calls law enforcement in the US, or law enforcement is called. And then San Diego sheriffs and others, and the FBI, end up going to Mexico. They interview the waiter at the restaurant, but it turns out to be nothing. Years go by, and still there is no word about what happened, a source of enormous destruction address to Joseph's mom, his dad, his brother. He was very close to them, but still, there's no sign of anything.

And that was what was so confounding about this case. Matt, one of the things, and before we go further into the investigation, I'm just curious because One of the things we talk about on this podcast a lot is what it was like for us out in the field. And you're at this home where this family had recently moved into, and it's 15 years later. I mean, this happened in 2010. It must have been eerie for you, though. I mean, obviously you're reporting, but that must have been when you know what happened, which is that this family disappeared, ultimately, you know that they were not returned safely. Everything was left right there on the countertops. What was that like for you?

It's such A stereotypical California neighborhood, Deborah. It is middle class, right next to Avocado Fields. When we flew the drone, you could see that it's a really lovely place with lots of kids in the neighborhood. And even though it's all these individual houses, the McState family home looked almost exactly like it did 15 years ago. Wow.

Like frozen in time.

Exactly. And the families knew them. And the family across the street, they still have the camera that essentially captured a tiny bit of a vehicle leaving on February fourth, 2010, the day that they are believed to have disappeared, the last time that they were ever heard from.

One One thing that I thought was interesting when you're talking with investigators, and there was a detail that we didn't get to put in our story, which is that a neighbor's security camera actually happened to malfunction. And these days, we think about cameras being everywhere, right? They help police with these investigations. But before we hear more from you about that, let's listen to a bonus clip from your interview with Dennis Brugos of the San Diego Sheriff's office.

This is the house where the neighbor had that camera that had the home surveillance footage.

And what that showed was a vehicle pulling out of the driveway Sometime after seven o'clock on the fourth of February, and then driving down the street. Unfortunately, the picture wasn't clear enough to where you can get any type of reading on the license plate.

And then for some reason, between February fifth and February 15th, the homeowner says that her home surveillance camera malfunctions, and she has no video. Is that significant for the investigation?

Well, yeah, certainly. We would like to have as much video footage as we can, and that's one of the first things we do. We check for cameras in the area.

Investigators come here. There is no sign of struggle. There is no blood. There is no DNA. There are no eyewitness. The one surveillance camera that might exist goes blank on the days they might need it. It feels like this is a really tough start.

Well, it is. I mean, it was a tough case to start with. I mean, it never got much better.

What about that security camera, Matt? Because it multifunctioned a little bit, but it did come into play in this story.

One of the things Deborah that I noticed in the neighborhood is how closely people live, right? Everybody knows each other. And here you have the McState family with two young children, two dogs in the yard. They interacted with their neighbors. And today, everybody's got some doorbell camera or security camera, right? Everyone. We are talking about 15 years ago. The shocking fact is that it seemed to go out between the fifth and the 15th. These are critical days in the investigation. And one wonders what could It would have been captured, the comings and goings on those days. If someone had murdered the family at the house itself, would the video camera have captured it? Would it have seen more during the day? Would it have shown that person or people? Were there multiple people transporting the body or bodies or doing something? But the camera didn't work, and that law enforcement didn't have any video footage from the fifth of February 2010 to the 15th. Of that month in 2010.

Well, Matt, ultimately, authorities arrest Joseph McStay's colleague in his business, Chase Merritt. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we want to hear about your reporting on basically this disturbing story that people are still talking about in California. So don't go away.

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Welcome back to The After Show. Before the break, we were talking with Matt Gutman about the report that he just brought to 2020, What Happened to the Mixed Days? Let's get back to the man who was ultimately convicted in this case, Chase Merritt. And prosecutors allege that he had been writing checks from the business, and he owed McStay more than $40,000. I mean, this is where they're getting to the motive that there was cell phone evidence that led them to argue that he was familiar with the location where the bodies were found. That was how they built their case, and all the evidence that painted a picture of him as a likely suspect. Talk to us a little bit about Chase Merritt. He didn't testify, but we did ultimately hear from him in court after the fact.

It turned out that Chase Merritt, according to prosecutors, had a gambling problem, and then he needed money. And he was good at making these waterfalls. That was the business that he and Joseph McStay had. He was really good at producing this stuff. He wasn't so good at the business of it. So it turns out that he may have owed Joseph McStay over $40,000 in back payments. It also turned out that he ended up, once Joseph disappeared, putting checks to himself. And those checks began essentially the moment that Joseph disappeared, and they went on for a number of days. And investigators And they just found that very suspicious. And then they built on the cell phones. And they learned that when it's believed that the family was disappeared and buried in the desert, at some point thereafter, in the next couple of days, Well, Chase Merritt's cell phone pings on a tower a mile and a half or two miles away from the site. Chase Merritt said, Hey, my sister lives on the other side of that cell phone tower, and I'm very familiar with the area.

Ultimately, he was convicted in this case, and you actually had an opportunity to speak with him after the fact. I mean, he's in prison now. Not many people have had that opportunity. You spoke with him via phone. He continues to argue a very different story. Talk to us a little bit about that conversation.

Chase Merritt continues to profess his innocence. And remember, Deborah, this is a case that was decided solely on circumstantial evidence. There is not a speck of physical evidence that puts Chase Merritt either at the scene of the possible crime. Nobody knows yet where the McState family was murdered, whether it happened in the house itself or if it happened in another place. That's how little physical evidence there is in this case, but it is all circumstantial. He says, Listen, it wasn't me. I wasn't there. They can't prove it. He claims that there is evidence that the jury was not privy to from another cell phone expert who says Chase Merritt's cell phone could never have pings near the side of the gravesite. The people who said that were wrong. They misinterpreted the data, and Chase Merritt could not have been there. He believes that that's exculpatory evidence That was not presented. His lawyer said the same thing. But the fact is, his lawyer did have the opportunity to present this witness at trial, and he didn't do it. He remains adamant that he did not commit this crime.

And he had argued how much he loved Joseph, and he never would have done this. Well, Matt, when we come back, we want to talk about the behind-the-scenes moments. Stay with us. Welcome back, everybody. I'm here with Matt Gutman. Matt, this story, oftentimes, like these stories do, take you to different places. This one took you out to the Mojave Desert. What was that like?

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If you look in one direction, it feels like the most remote place on the planet, Deborah. On the other hand, you're looking at I-15 right behind you, despite the blistering heat. And that is like one of the main thoroughfares from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. So on the one hand, a mile from where we were, really traveled highway, and everything beyond it is just wilderness. But luckily, I was with these spectacular producers who I've been working with for over probably almost 12, 13 years, Alyssa and Sunny, and we got it all done. It was spectacular.

Yeah, they had your back. Well, it is important, though, for our audience to go to these places and to be able to, in the storytelling to show everybody where these things happened. And you were right there. Basically, it was the gravesite, not far from the highway, as you said, where the bodies were discovered, the McStay family left behind there. And it's so It's interesting because it's so close to this highway, as you said, but not necessarily clearly visible to somebody who would be driving by.

So if you're driving on the highway, you would not have noticed us. But we, standing there in the desert, looking at the highway, saw every single car you could even see into the trucks. And I asked the investigator, how is it possible that nobody saw anything from the highway? He said, folks are cruising there at 75 miles an hour. They're not looking a mile off the side of the road, and they can't see with that detail, even though we're looking at them. And then the other side, about a mile and a half away, was this dump where there are lots of trucks and cars, but they're also not looking out for it. And so there was this memorial set up for them informally because the family of the McStates ended up... Obviously, the bodies were exhumed for forensics, but they were buried in a different place, which was actually their final resting place.

Yeah. Well, Matt, it was just a remarkable story, and it's a reminder to us, too, that at the end of these stories, it's all about the loved ones, right? Those who are left behind, those who are trying to honor the people that they've lost, the victims of these crimes. And you and your team just did a really remarkable job of bringing to us this story of a mystery, but one that just really was so very captivating. Matt, thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time. I know it's a busy time for you. You probably got to go hit the road again.

Not for the next 15 minutes. Oh, yeah.

Well, there you go.

Always good to chat with you, Deborah.

The 2020 After Show is produced by Jess Yancalunas, Olga De La Huz, Emily Shuntz, Madelyne Wood, and Susie Lou, and Trevor Hastings of ABC Audio. With Joseph Re, Elizabeth Stoler, Blue Browning, Tom Bermond, Sonny Entrum, Brian Mzeersky, and Alex Berenfeld of 2020. Theme music by Evan Viola. Janice Johnston is the executive producer of 2020. Josh Cohen, the director of podcasting at ABC, and Laura Meyer is the executive producer.

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