Season 8 - Episode 1 -NEW- The McStay Family Murders: Part One
Sources:
https://coronadotimes.com/event/down-to-the-bone-caitlin-rother-and-the-mcstay-family-murders/
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/judge-unseals-court-records-in-mcstay-murder-case/509-5297be95-2f41-4ce7-931e-8c3dc98e0918
https://allthatsinteresting.com/mcstay-family-murders
https://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/missing-mcstay-family-cross-mexico/story?id=10042816
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/mcstay-family-murder-trial-charles-merritt-closing-arguments-jury/159073/
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mcstay-family-deaths-20190120-story.html
https://www.sbsun.com/2019/03/11/key-prosecution-evidence-flopped-in-mcstay-family-murder-case-defense-contends/
https://www.sbsun.com/2019/03/11/key-prosecution-evidence-flopped-in-mcstay-family-murder-case-defense-contends/
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Speaker 1: Warning, kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and
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Speaker 2: True Crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish,
Speaker 2: the strange in the darkly comic, a podcast that's about
Speaker 2: more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension,
Speaker 2: home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories,
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Speaker 2: all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey everybody,
Speaker 2: it's Zemnodleberg, and I don't blame you if you were
Speaker 2: starting to wonder when you might hear me say this.
Speaker 2: But I'm back with a bran spanken new Fresh to
Speaker 2: Death episode here in twenty twenty six. This is the
Speaker 2: first episode of season eight, So thanks for hanging in there.
Speaker 2: Season eight, and we're gonna try something a little bit
Speaker 2: different than what we've done before. Don't worry, it's still
Speaker 2: gonna be true crime, it's still gonna be murder mysteries,
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna go for the uh, the slow burn,
Speaker 2: the truly mysterious. And here in episode one, I'll be
Speaker 2: kicking off the story of the murder of a northern
Speaker 2: San Diego County family, the Mixed Days. It's a tragedy,
Speaker 2: of course, and it's quite a story, so let's get
Speaker 2: right to it kind of murders. The Mixed Day Family
Speaker 2: Murders Part one starts now twenty ten the thirty four
Speaker 2: hundred block of Avocado Vista Lane, Fallbrook, California, in northern
Speaker 2: San Diego County. The street ends in a cul de
Speaker 2: sac and the houses face the curve. The Mixed Day
Speaker 2: house sits on that term two stories light tan stucco,
Speaker 2: a white two car garage door dominating the front, and
Speaker 2: the white paint is clean enough to catch the daylight
Speaker 2: when the sun hits it. Above the garage, a tall,
Speaker 2: arched window rises into the second floor. Off to the side.
Speaker 2: Another upstairs window is framed by dark shutters. The front
Speaker 2: door sits recessed on the right, beneath a small covered porch,
Speaker 2: set back from the driveway and partly hidden by the
Speaker 2: angle of the front wall. The driveway is concrete and
Speaker 2: slopes up to the garage, and a cement walkway runs
Speaker 2: from the driveway to the porch. The lawn is green
Speaker 2: and trimmed. A slender, pale bark tree stands near the walkway,
Speaker 2: and low plants sit along the base of the porch.
Speaker 2: From the outside, it looks composed, maintained, a family house
Speaker 2: that's been lived in long enough to have a rhythm,
Speaker 2: but not long enough to look worn out. Joseph in
Speaker 2: Summer Micstay moved here in late two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: around Thanksgiving weekend, after living in San Clemente. They brought
Speaker 2: with them two small boys and two dogs. Joseph McStay
Speaker 2: was forty years old, Summer was forty three. Their sons
Speaker 2: were Johnny four and Joseph Junior or Joey three. The
Speaker 2: dogs were Bear and Digger. In a family photo later
Speaker 2: released to the press, Joseph's hair is dark and curly,
Speaker 2: sitting in loose waves that don't flatten into place. Light
Speaker 2: facial hair shades his jaw and mouth. His expression is
Speaker 2: steady serious. Summer wears glasses. Her hair is long and dark.
Speaker 2: She's smiling, an open expression that lifts her cheeks and
Speaker 2: softens her face. Johnny has curly hair and round cheeks,
Speaker 2: caught with his mouth slightly open, the way a child's
Speaker 2: face looks. In the half second between motion and stillness.
Speaker 2: Joey's hair is lighter light brown, trending toward dark blonde,
Speaker 2: with bangs across his forehead. The boys are held in
Speaker 2: close framed by their parents arms San Clemente, where they
Speaker 2: lived before. Fallbrook was the coastal version of their life.
Speaker 2: They were in a small apartment near the beach, surfing
Speaker 2: and biking as part of a regular day. A friend
Speaker 2: of the family, Jesse Silveria, later described what she saw
Speaker 2: when she knew them. She said, as their relationship evolved,
Speaker 2: I saw that both of them really prioritized each other.
Speaker 2: Number one and then number two prioritized their children, and
Speaker 2: that it brought them a lot of pleasure living on
Speaker 2: the coast and by the beach. Fallbrook was the inland
Speaker 2: version of this idyllic life. They were in a house
Speaker 2: instead of an apartment, with a garage facing the street
Speaker 2: and a yard behind the house. The stairs went to
Speaker 2: a second story where there were separate rooms for the
Speaker 2: parents and the kids. But the thing about being a
Speaker 2: homeowner is it means work. And as soon as the
Speaker 2: Mixtays moved in, renovations began. Painting and remodeling were under way.
Speaker 2: Now the work didn't announce itself to the street. The
Speaker 2: stucco looked intact, the garage door was fine, the lawn
Speaker 2: was a brilliant emerald green. But inside, as anyone who's
Speaker 2: been through this knows, renovations change the way a home functions.
Speaker 2: Painting requires clearing space along walls, shifting furniture, setting up supplies,
Speaker 2: and when you're remodeling, it means that certain areas stay
Speaker 2: half finished longer than anyone wants them to. Even when
Speaker 2: the work is planned, it leaves the house in a
Speaker 2: sort of permanent, temporary state. Some rooms look settled and
Speaker 2: some don't. Now. Joseph owned his own business, and his
Speaker 2: work ran alongside all of these renovations. He ran a
Speaker 2: decorative water feature business called Earth Inspired Products. The company
Speaker 2: sold fountains and custom water installations, and of course, custom
Speaker 2: work means more than just online sales and shipping boxes.
Speaker 2: It means design and fabrication custom parts that need to
Speaker 2: be built for clients who are paying for something specific.
Speaker 2: To get this done, Joseph worked with Charles known as
Speaker 2: Chase Merit on Fabrication. Merit was a welder and fabricator
Speaker 2: who built the components for Joseph's custom projects. And Joseph
Speaker 2: had another key business associate named Dan Cavanaugh, who was
Speaker 2: tied to his company and its online presence. Things were
Speaker 2: a bit hectic joseph Summer, the boys, the two dogs,
Speaker 2: Joseph's business, Earth inspired products, all of it happening inside
Speaker 2: their home space under renovation, trying to move forward with
Speaker 2: life as normally as possible while everything was in flux.
Speaker 2: But the work was getting done. And on February third,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, a friend came to the mixed stay house
Speaker 2: to help paint. Now, as anyone who's had to do
Speaker 2: it knows, a paint job does not happen from across
Speaker 2: the room. It requires moving around in close quarters. It
Speaker 2: requires clearing wall space and creating room for supplies, drop cloths,
Speaker 2: paint trays. Everything sits where it can be reached. Tape
Speaker 2: gets torn and pressed along the edges of walls and doors.
Speaker 2: Furniture gets shifted away from walls and pushed into corners
Speaker 2: or moved to the middle of the room. A lamp
Speaker 2: goes from here to there. Things get put somewhere else
Speaker 2: and left there until the work is done. It's a
Speaker 2: bit chaotic, but it's also ordinary. And on February third,
Speaker 2: the day that the friend came to paint. None of
Speaker 2: the items that I had mentioned had he yet become evidence.
Speaker 2: They were simply the contents of a working household. The
Speaker 2: next day, on February fourth, Joseph spoke with his father
Speaker 2: by phone, telling his dad that he was in a
Speaker 2: hurry because he had a lunch meeting. Summer talked to
Speaker 2: her sister that morning and made plans to visit her
Speaker 2: sister and her sister's newborn child. It was a regular
Speaker 2: structured morning. Calls were made, plans were discussed, A meeting
Speaker 2: was scheduled. Now around noon, Joseph left the Fallbrook house
Speaker 2: in the family's white Azuzu Trooper and drove to Rancho
Speaker 2: Kucamonga for a meeting with Charles Chase Merrit. Merritt later
Speaker 2: said the meeting took place at a Chick fil A.
Speaker 2: In a recorded interview, Merrit described the purpose of the
Speaker 2: meeting as financial. We just had to go over all
Speaker 2: kinds of money stuff, he said. The remainder of that day,
Speaker 2: February fourth, twenty ten, is not described in memories or
Speaker 2: in eyewitness accounts. It exists through recorded markers. A call placed,
Speaker 2: texts exchanged, a vehicle leaving the street captured by a
Speaker 2: neighbour's camera, A phone pinging off of a cell tower.
Speaker 2: At four twenty five pm, there was an outgoing call
Speaker 2: from the Mtay home phone to Joseph's cell phone. Joseph's
Speaker 2: phone pinged off of Fallbrook cell tower. Between five pm
Speaker 2: and five forty seven pm, Joseph in summer exchanged text messages.
Speaker 2: At seven forty seven pm, a neighbour's security camera captured
Speaker 2: a vehicle leaving Avocado Vista Lane. The footage showed only
Speaker 2: the bottom portion of the vehicle. The occupants could not
Speaker 2: be seen. At eight twenty eight pm, Joseph's phone pinged
Speaker 2: off of Fallbrook tower again. Later that evening, Joseph made
Speaker 2: a call to an employee in Rancho Cucamonga to talk
Speaker 2: about work. Those are all the points that remain visible
Speaker 2: in the sequence of February fourth, a meeting at Chick
Speaker 2: fil A, calls, texts, a passing vehicle captured by a
Speaker 2: security camera, A late call about work from outside the
Speaker 2: house on Avocado Vista Lane would have looked the way
Speaker 2: it always did. Trimmed lawn stucco, the arch second story
Speaker 2: window above the garage from the inside. It would have
Speaker 2: held whatever it held at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: Furniture moved for painting, renovation, supplies, the things of family
Speaker 2: with small boys and dogs, accumulates in the course of
Speaker 2: ordinary life. As for the McStay boys, they would have
Speaker 2: been in the house that day unless they were somewhere
Speaker 2: else with Summer Johnny four and Joey three. At that age,
Speaker 2: boys are not invisible in a home. They leave their
Speaker 2: trace on everything, every surface, every object, small cups, small socks,
Speaker 2: toys in corners, food that gets spilled and wiped up.
Speaker 2: And then there's the dogs. Dog hair on the furniture,
Speaker 2: dog bowls, a dog collar that jingles when it moves.
Speaker 2: We can assume that all of this was part of
Speaker 2: the interior of the Mixtay home on February fourth, twenty ten,
Speaker 2: but none of those details are documented. What is documented
Speaker 2: is what the adults did in terms of recorded communications
Speaker 2: and known movements. But after February fourth, communications and movements stopped.
Speaker 2: After February fourth, there was no phone activity, internet, email,
Speaker 2: bank or credit card activity from either Joseph or Summer mixday.
Speaker 2: Of course, this is a fact that only becomes visible
Speaker 2: later when there's something to compare it to when the
Speaker 2: people who knew them realized that their calls were not
Speaker 2: being answered, that messages were not being returned, and that
Speaker 2: the family's digital and financial footprint had gone silent. When
Speaker 2: Joseph did not answer his phone for days, his friends
Speaker 2: and family began taking steps that were later recorded in summaries.
Speaker 2: Jase Merritt urged Joseph's mother and brother to contact authorities.
Speaker 2: Dan Cavanaugh called the police himself, and Merit and Cavanaugh
Speaker 2: took action because of the silence of February fourth. It
Speaker 2: was a silence that arrived not as a single moment
Speaker 2: that forced everyone to stop, but rather because of the
Speaker 2: failure of a pattern or patterns, the patterns of ordinary life.
Speaker 2: A call that should have been returned isn't. A phone
Speaker 2: goes to voicemail again and again until it stops feeling
Speaker 2: like bad timing and starts to feel like a wall.
Speaker 2: In the world that Joseph McStay lived in family, business,
Speaker 2: small children, and schedules, there were too many lines of
Speaker 2: communication and action that ran through a single day for
Speaker 2: them all to go quiet at once, And yet days
Speaker 2: passed with Joseph not answering his phone, and so as
Speaker 2: I mentioned Merit and Cavanaugh started moving. Merrit urged Joseph's
Speaker 2: mother to call the authorities. Dan Cavanaugh called the police himself,
Speaker 2: and then on February eighth, four days after everything went quiet,
Speaker 2: the family's white nineteen ninety six as Zuzu trooper was
Speaker 2: found in Sanya Sedro, near the Mexican border. It was
Speaker 2: treated as an abandoned vehicle and impounded. The children's car
Speaker 2: seats were still inside. Sanya Siedro is not Fallbrook. It
Speaker 2: is not Avocado Vista Lane. It is not the tan
Speaker 2: stucco house at the end of a cul de sac
Speaker 2: with its recessed porch and arched second story window. It's
Speaker 2: much further south, adjacent to the Mexican border, and the
Speaker 2: presence of the family's trooper there in Sanya Sidro pulls
Speaker 2: the story away from the Micstay home and brings it
Speaker 2: to within walking distance of an international boundary. It also
Speaker 2: introduced a theory that would survive for years that the
Speaker 2: Mixstays had gone to Mexico. Someone using the mcstay's computer
Speaker 2: had searched for information about travel to Mexico and passports
Speaker 2: for the boys. In late January twenty ten, just a
Speaker 2: few days before the family stopped communicating. There were also
Speaker 2: emails indicating interest in obtaining passports to travel to Mexico,
Speaker 2: and Summer had searched online queries about Mexico and about
Speaker 2: learning Spanish. And then there was a video. On March fifth,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, deputies released surveillance footage that appeared to show
Speaker 2: a family of four walking hand in hand into Mexico
Speaker 2: through a pedestrian gate. The footage was dated around seven
Speaker 2: pm on February eighth. San Diego Police Sergeant Roy Frank
Speaker 2: described what investigators believed they were seeing a family quote
Speaker 2: casually strolling into Mexico un quote, with each adult holding
Speaker 2: the hand of one of the toddlers, no obvious signs
Speaker 2: of distress. But the footage was grainy. It did not
Speaker 2: provide clean identification, and Joseph's brother, Mike McStay, said he
Speaker 2: could not make a positive identification because of the video's quality.
Speaker 2: He wrote that careful reviews showed two or three different
Speaker 2: families passing by, and that one man in the footage
Speaker 2: walked nothing like his brother. But in early March twenty ten,
Speaker 2: for investigators trying to find anything solid, it was a lead.
Speaker 2: A family of four had indeed, hand in hand crossed
Speaker 2: into Mexico and the Mixed Day's white Azuzu trooper was
Speaker 2: found close enough to make the walking distance plausible. Let's
Speaker 2: go back in time a little bit now to February tenth.
Speaker 2: The mixed Stay home remained at the end of Avocado Lane.
Speaker 2: Renovations were underway, Painting had been done. That friend had
Speaker 2: come to help on February third, and that's when Summer
Speaker 2: and the boys were last seen as well. Then, on
Speaker 2: February tenth, a San Diego Sheriff's deputy performed a welfare
Speaker 2: check at the house. No one answered the door. There
Speaker 2: were no visible signs of foul play from the outside,
Speaker 2: and the deputy did not go inside. The house remained closed.
Speaker 2: Three days later, later, on February thirteenth, Mike mcstaye, Joseph's brother,
Speaker 2: went to the house. He entered through an open window.
Speaker 2: The family was not there. Joseph wasn't there, Summer wasn't there,
Speaker 2: Johnny wasn't there, and Joey wasn't there. The dogs were
Speaker 2: in the back yard they'd not been fed. Inside the house,
Speaker 2: a tall lamp was lying on the floor. There were
Speaker 2: several open suitcases with folded clothing inside. There were rotten
Speaker 2: eggs in the kitchen and food left out. Two small
Speaker 2: bowls of popcorn were in the living room. Slightly spilled
Speaker 2: clothes were tossed on the floor. Summer's prescription sunglasses were
Speaker 2: in the house. The scene did not show forced injury.
Speaker 2: Detectives later stated they found no blood and no sign
Speaker 2: of a struggle in the house. The lack of visible
Speaker 2: violence became a reoccurring theme in the case. It allowed
Speaker 2: theories to live longer than they otherwise might have. The
Speaker 2: walk into Mexico voluntary travel, or a family just leaving
Speaker 2: and going somewhere without telling anyone. But for the people
Speaker 2: who knew them, the interior of the Mixday home was
Speaker 2: not just a set of haphazard objects. It was proof
Speaker 2: that something had gone terribly wrong. Dogs were unfed, suitcases
Speaker 2: where open food was rotting, the children's popcorn bowls in
Speaker 2: the living room. Prescription sunglasses, the kind of thing you
Speaker 2: would almost certainly take on a vacation to Mexico, were
Speaker 2: still in the house. On February fifteenth, twenty ten, Joseph's brother,
Speaker 2: Mike McStay reported the family missing to the San Diego
Speaker 2: County Sheriff's Department, and once the report was filed, law
Speaker 2: enforcement began the formal process of searching the house. On
Speaker 2: February nineteenth, twenty ten, detective searched the mix Stay home,
Speaker 2: and a search warrant affidavit by San Diego Sheriff Homicide
Speaker 2: Detective Troy Dougall stated that there was no evidence of
Speaker 2: foul play in the home, but Dougall also wrote his
Speaker 2: opinion that the McStay family was the victim of foul
Speaker 2: play and that some or all of them had been
Speaker 2: kidnapped or killed. Dougal also described what evidence might exist
Speaker 2: if the family had been killed in residence, trace evidence,
Speaker 2: hair tissue, secretions, other forensic material, and he stated that
Speaker 2: he believed that evidence might eventually be found. An inventory
Speaker 2: list from the search detailed what investigators seized documents, letters, computers,
Speaker 2: hard drives, cameras, cell phones, power cords. From the outside,
Speaker 2: the house remained unchanged, but inside the family that made
Speaker 2: it a home, the McStay family was gone. The case
Speaker 2: would grow outward from their absence. The border video, the
Speaker 2: Mexican vacation, theories, federal involvement, Interpol alerts, and years of waiting,
Speaker 2: but the first concrete evidence that something was terribly wrong.
Speaker 2: Wasn't a dramatic public moment. It was Joseph's brother climbing
Speaker 2: through an open window and finding a house that still
Speaker 2: held the possessions and the evidence of a life lived
Speaker 2: by a family with two small boys and two dogs.
Speaker 2: But there was no family inside the house and the
Speaker 2: dogs were starving in the backyard. Where did they go?
Speaker 2: What happened to the Mixed days? To find out more,
Speaker 2: join me on Thursday, January twenty ninth for part two
Speaker 2: of the Mixtay Family Murders. And Hey, I'm back with
Speaker 2: new weekly episodes. So if you like the show, tell
Speaker 2: your family, tell your friends, tell any true crime fans
Speaker 2: you know. Hey, I sure would appreciate it. I'm Zevan
Speaker 2: Odleberg and this has been kind of Murdery.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell
Speaker 1: your friends. You can find us on social media at
Speaker 1: kinda Murdery or email at Kindamurdery at gmail dot com.
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