The McStay Family Murders: Part Four

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:18 Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic. A podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hello, everybody, welcome and thank you for being here. I am Zevan Odelberg, and this is kind of murdery. We've got a big time episode today. It's episode four of the Mixedday Family Murders.

0:52 Speaker 2: That's right, I said four. So if you haven't heard one through three yet, go ahead and listen to them and then come on back.

0:57 Speaker 3: I'll save you a seat. We've got a lot to get to. It's a big time episode. Today is the day that we uncover the alleged killer of the McStay family. This story is tragic, is held, but it's also compelling, and I want to get right down to it. So let's do that. I'm glad you're here with me. Episode four of kind of Murderies. The Mixstay Family Murders starts now.

1:29 Speaker 3: Three years earlier, when Earth Inspired Products was still a growing online storefront for decorative fountains and water features. Dan Cavanaugh entered the picture quietly. He was not a fabricator or a designer. He didn't weld metal or sketch basin layouts. His domain was digital. He understood search engine rankings, keyword density, web traffic analytics, and how to turn online visibility into steady revenue. Joseph McStay built custom water features. Cavanaugh built the audience that found them, that fell in love with them, that purchased them.

2:04 Speaker 3: By the time the McStay family disappeared in February twenty ten, Earth Inspired Products had become more than a side venture. It was a functioning e commerce operation with measurable growth. Website traffic had increased steadily, Online sales were consistent. The company's name surfaced prominently in search results related to indoor fountains in decorative water installations. Much of that visibility, according to Dan Kavanaugh, was the result of his work. He managed the back end of the website optimized product listings, and monitored conversion rates.

2:37 Speaker 3: He described his role not as tech support, but as partnership. When detectives revisited the structure of the company after the mix day remains were identified in the desert, they were no longer looking at Earth Inspired Products as a simple business venture. They were examining it as a potential motive structure, and they needed clarity on that structure. Who owned the company, whoationally controlled it. Kavanagh characterized the arrangement as shared From early on. He spoke about collaboration, shared profits, a division of labor in which Joseph handled product design and supplier relationships while he handled digital growth and revenue channels.

3:16 Speaker 3: He described decisions being made together, often informally, without rigid contracts. Detectives asked for documentation in corporation records, partnership agreements, tax filings, any written confirmation of equity percentages. Some existed and some did not. The business, like many small enterprises that scale, quickly, appeared to have evolved faster than its paperwork. Operational ownership emerged as a central concept in the investigation. Detectives mapped who could log into the company's web hosting account, who controlled the domain registration, whose email address was attached to payment processing accounts, whose name appeared on merchant services agreements.

3:58 Speaker 3: In small companies, control is off and dispersed. Out of convenience, there are shared passwords, administrative privileges granted to multiple users. That diffusion makes day to day operations easier and forensic clarity harder. Joseph's father, Patrick mcstaye, began to express concern during this phase of the investigation. His suspicion did not surface as accusation, but as unease. He had always believed his son owned earth inspired products outright. It carried Joseph's vision in Joseph's labour.

4:30 Speaker 3: Hearing that another man, Dan Cavanaugh, described himself as co owner of the company unsettled Patrick. He asked detectives whether that claim was accurate. Detectives did not answer immediately. They continued gathering documents, tracing corporate filings, examining tax records, and comparing them against Kavanaugh's description of the partnership. The distinction between founder and operator became increasingly relevant. Joseph had created the company and built the product line. Kavanagh had built the digital infrastructure that allowed customers to find and purchase those products.

5:04 Speaker 3: Without the website, there were no online sales. Without the products, there was nothing to sell the business function because both components existed simultaneously. Detectives restructured the early years of the partnership. Email exchanges showed enthusiasm and forward planning, discussions about expanding inventory, projections for revenue growth, conversations about scaling marketing campaigns. Nothing in those exchanges suggested hostility. The language was collaborative. The tone was forward looking, optimistic.

5:34 Speaker 3: But as the company grew, so did its revenue. Revenue raises, questions of percentage, percentage raises, questions of entitlement. Detectives were careful not to assume conflict where none was documented. They focused instead on structure. If Joseph were suddenly unable to participate in the company's operations, who could continue running it without interruption, who had access to accounts, who had the authority to change listing, re route payments, or adjust pricing. The homicide investigation required more than understanding who liked or disliked whom.

6:08 Speaker 3: It required understanding who held leverage. Ownership in legal terms could be contested later, control in practical terms could be exercised. Immediately, as detectives reviewed corporate documents and back end access credentials, a pattern began to emerge, not of overt wrongdoing, but of concentrated authority in the hands of the person managing the digital spine of the company. Patrick mcstay's suspicion remained persistent. He did not accuse Kavanaugh directly. He asked questions about structure, about paperwork, about whether his son had formalized the partnership in writing.

6:45 Speaker 3: Detectives noted his concerns, but continued their methodical review. They were not yet prepared to label anyone as a suspect. They were tracing authority. The business had been growing, the revenue was real, the digital architecture was sophistically enough to operate remotely. Those facts were not incriminating on their own, but they established something critical. Earth Inspired Products was not merely Joseph's livelihood. It was an asset, and like any asset, it could be controlled. By the end of this phase of the investigation, detectives had not drawn conclusions.

7:19 Speaker 3: They had clarified structure. Earth Inspired Products was no longer just background context. It was a framework through which control, authority, and potential motive could be examined. Suspicion had not solidified, but it had begun to orient toward the person who understood the company's inner workings. At the level of passwords, logins, and merchant accounts. The fracture was subtle. It did not appear as an argument or a threat. It appeared as a question, in the absence of Joseph McStay, who, in practical terms, owned the business he built.

7:51 Speaker 3: By the time detectives shifted from defining ownership to defining control, the questions became more granular. It was no longer an enough to understand who believed they were a partner. The focus moved to who could actually act. Detectives began mapping access points one by one. Who registered the domain name under, whose email address was listed, who had the ability to renew it or transfer it. Next came the web hosting account. Hosting credentials allow a user to modify site content, upload files, change product descriptions, adjust pricing, and redirect traffic.

8:27 Speaker 3: Detectives requested records from the hosting provider, account holders, ip log in histories, timestamps of administrative changes. They wanted to see whether access was centralized or dispersed. Payment processing required its own layer of authority. Merchant accounts linked to credit card processors often list a primary account holder. That person has the ability to route deposits, alter linked bank accounts, and modify settlement settings. Detectives subpoenaed those records, as well, tracing whose name appeared on the agreements and whose bank accounts were tied to the revenue stream.

9:02 Speaker 3: Kavanaugh explained that much of the technical control rested with him because it had to. He was the one maintaining Search engine optimization's campaigns, updating metadata and responding to traffic fluctuations. It would have been inefficient, he said, for Joseph to handle those technical adjustments. Detectives did not dispute the point, they simply recorded it. They asked whether credentials had ever been shared. In small companies, shared passwords are common. Kavanagh acknowledged that there were times when the passwords and credentials were exchanged for convenience.

9:33 Speaker 3: Detectives noted that shared credentials complicate attribution. If multiple people know a password, determining who executed a change becomes more difficult. They turned to email authority. Earth Inspired Products maintained official company email addresses tied to the domain, who controlled those inboxes, who could send messages appearing to originate from the company. Detectives requested server logs to determine which IP addresses accessed those accounts, and when the pattern that emerged was not dramatic, it was functional.

10:04 Speaker 3: Kavanaugh's role placed him at the center of the company's digital architecture. He had legitimate reason to possess administrative privileges. That authority alone did not imply a wrongdoing, but it established capacity within the company. The Hawaii trip surfaced again during this mapping process, but detectives approached it differently. Instead of framing it as an alibi or absence, they examined it as a question of remote capability. If administrative control could be exercised from anywhere with Internet access, physical distance then did not necessarily limit operational influence.

10:39 Speaker 3: They asked about internet access during that period, Hotel, Wi Fi, personal laptops. The inquiry remained technical, not accusatory, but one man, Dan Kavanaugh, was at the center of everything. Suspicion had not solidified into accusation. It had, however, begun to lean and when it escalated, it did not escalate with an accusation. The escalation began with a document. Detectives were reviewing corporate filings when the transaction surfaced. Earth Inspired Products had changed hands. PaperWorks showed that the company had been sold for approximately two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the date of the transaction mattered.

11:24 Speaker 3: Joseph McStay was reported missing on February fifteenth, twenty ten. The formal declaration of death would not come for years, yet the sale of the business occurred while his legal status remained unresolved. Detectives pulled the exact filing date. They obtained the transfer agreement. They examined the purchase documents line by line, who authorized it. The signature block bore Dan Kavanaugh's name. The paperwork around the sale did not sit quietly once detectives began laying it beside everything else.

11:58 Speaker 3: The transfer of Earth Inspired Products had occurred months after the family disappeared, at a time when Joseph had not been declared dead and no executor had been appointed. The buyer paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the business. That number, standing alone, felt concrete. It suggested valuation, negotiation, and authority, but detectives were less interested in the amount than in the timing. They pulled their calendars back out February fourth, twenty ten, the last confirmed day anyone heard from the Mixed Days February fifteenth.

12:32 Speaker 3: The Missing Persons report the business transfer PaperWorks surfaced more than a year later, in the summer of twenty eleven. By then, the case had gone cold in the public eye. The Mix Days were presumed gone, but legally still alive. No death certificates, no probate, no formal dissolution of partnership. Detectives examined the documents line by line. Who signed, under what authority, What legal mechanism permitted the sale as it structured as an acid transfer, a stock transfer, a liquidation. The answers mattered.

13:06 Speaker 3: If Kavanagh had ownership, he could argue he had authority to sell. If he did not, the sale was something else entirely. Investigator's subpoenaed bank records connected to the transaction. They traced the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They examined whether the money passed directly to CAVANAUGHH or to an intermediary corporate account. First, they mapped the routing paths. What they did not find, at least not immediately was an obvious procedural violation that screamed fraud. The transaction appeared documented, It appeared processed.

13:40 Speaker 3: It appeared, at least on its surface, administratively valid. That did not settle the question of legitimacy. Patrick mcstay's insistence that Dan quote owned nothing unquote remained in the file. But detectives knew that family indignation was not corporate structure contracts in corporation filings tax documents. They requested the original articles of incorporation for Earth Inspired Products. They reviewed whether Kavanaugh's name appeared anywhere as a formal officer, shareholder, or managing member.

14:14 Speaker 3: The paperwork showed Joseph as the principle, but small businesses often evolved faster than their filings. Detectives had seen that before. Still, something subtle began to bother analysts reviewing the sale. The valuation. Earth Inspired Products had been profitable. Sales were strong in the months before the disappearance, Web traffic was up, revenue had grown. Yet the final sale price did not reflect a distressed liquidation, nor did it reflect the kind of premium often associated with a thriving niche e commerce company.

14:46 Speaker 3: It sat smack in the middle, not a fire sale and not a windfall. Detectives brought in a forensic accountant to review comparable businesses from that period. What was a company of that size with that revenue realistically worth In twenty eleven. The estimate range overlapped with the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars figure, but barely. It was not wildly off. It was not dramatically low. It was arguable that ambiguity complicated motive. If someone murdered Joseph to gain control of the company, the financial payoff would need to justify the risk.

15:23 Speaker 3: Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, while significant, was not generational wealth. It was not a life altering sum in the context of a quadruple homicide. Motive built solely on that number felt thin, But then, of course people had been killed for far less. But something about it didn't satisfy detectives, so they returned to the timeline. When the mix days disappeared, Earth Inspired Products did not immediately change hands. There was no rapid seizure of control, no sudden announcement, no immediate restructuring.

15:56 Speaker 3: The business continued operating. Online orders were processed, and the website remained functional. That continuity suggested forethought, but it also suggested patients if the goal had been immediate financial gain, why wait. Kavanaugh's Hawaii trip still hovered in the background. Airline records confirmed Dan had been on the islands during the early days after February fourth. Credit card transactions supported that he was physically present there. Cell tower data from his phone aligned with the geography.

16:27 Speaker 3: Remote access remained technically possible that fact never left the board, but the physical alibi held. Detectives were careful not to discard a suspect simply because an alibi existed. They had seen orchestrated crimes before, but they also knew when suspicion began to outrun evidence. The sale created heat, it created motive. On paper, it made narrative sense. But as analysts widened the lens beyond the transaction, inconsistencies began to surface, not explode of contradictions, but small misalignments.

17:03 Speaker 3: Login records tied to the company's back end showed activity that did not neatly match Hawaii timestamps. Certain administrative changes occurred during windows when Dan's confirmed location data did not support live logins. The discrepancies were minor. They could be explained by saved credentials or automated systems, but they required explanation. At the same time, detectives revisited early financial movements from February twenty ten itself. They looked not just at Earth inspired products as a whole, but at personal accounts connected to Joseph's business circle.

17:40 Speaker 3: Some transactions did not belong to Dan at all. They belonged to someone closer. The name had been in the file since the beginning. It had been interviewed early. It had sat quietly in the background while attention drifted toward Mexico, toward digital travel searches, toward corps for ownership. Now analysts began cross referencing that name with time stamps from February fourth. The pivot was not dramatic. No one declared, Kavanaugh cleared, no one erased his photograph from the wall, But the certainty that had begun forming around the sale began to soften.

18:17 Speaker 3: The tensions in the business still mattered. The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars still mattered. Ownerships still mattered. Yet detectives were no longer asking only who benefited from Joseph being gone. They were asking who was present. That question narrowed the board. The sale remained a powerful narrative thread, but it was no longer the only thread pulling tight and as analysts reconstructed February fourth, minute by minute, a different set of numbers began to demand attention. A twenty eight p m.

18:51 Speaker 3: A phone call not answered, the file shifted again. By the time investigators reached the end of the business trail, they they were no longer looking at Earth inspired products in isolation. The sale, of the ownership, language, the administrative access, all of it remained relevant. But something quieter had begun to surface beneath the financial layers. It started with the calendar February fourth, twenty ten. Detectives rebuilt the day again, not from the perspective of web traffic or corporate filings, but from physical movement.

19:25 Speaker 3: Joseph's schedule, his meetings, his calls, his last confirmed face to face interaction that brought them back to lunch in Rancho Cucamonga. Joseph had met Charles Chase Merritt at a Chick fil at that afternoon. The two men had known each other for years. Their relationship was not limited to Earth inspired products. Merit built custom waterfalls and indoor water features. Joseph designed and sold them. The partnership was operational and frequent. They spoke often, they met often. The business depended on their coordination.

20:00 Speaker 3: The lunch itself was not dramatic. It was business. Receipts confirmed both men were present. Witnesses placed them there. Surveillance footage captured them entering and leaving. Detectives noted the duration of the meeting. They noted the time it ended. They noted that Joseph returned home afterward. That detail mattered. It placed Merit as the last verified in person contact outside the family. Investigators did not immediately treat that as suspicious business partners meet. They talked numbers, they part ways, But as February fourth was reconstructed minute by minute, the proximity of that meeting to the disappearance tightened.

20:41 Speaker 3: Phone records showed frequent communication between the two men earlier in the day. That pattern was not unusual. What stood out was the call that came later eight twenty eight p m. Joseph's phone dialed Merit. Merit did not answer. He later acknowledged seeing the call come through. He did not dispute that He said he was busy, He said he was tired. He said he'd already spoken to Joseph multiple times that day. Investigators logged the call as the last known outbound communication from Joseph's phone.

21:12 Speaker 3: They asked Meret to describe his movements that evening. He provided a timeline. He described where he was, He described who he was with. Detectives cross checked those statements against available records. Some elements aligned, others relied on memory rather than documentation. Unlike Cavanagh, Merit had been in southern California on February fourth, He had not been in Hawaii. He had not been twenty five hundred miles away. He had been within driving distance of Fallbrook. That fact alone did not elevate him above other possibilities.

21:47 Speaker 3: Geography creates opportunity. It does not create guilt, but investigators could not ignore physical proximity. They also revisited the custom water feature projects that two men were developing together. Contracts, pending deals, commission structures, payment schedules. Some invoices had been drafted but not yet settled. Certain deposits were anticipated but not yet cleared. Financial tension did not leap off the page. There was no obvious blow up in the paperwork, but small businesses often carry strain beneath surface optimism.

22:20 Speaker 3: Detectives examined whether Joseph had been fronting materials, whether Merit had been reimbursed, whether balances were owed in either direction. Nothing definitive emerged in the early passes. Still, the file again began to change shape. Kavanaugh represented digital leverage and post disappearance benefit. Merit represented proximity and immediacy. Investigators reviewed Merit's past interactions with Joseph in the days leading up to February fourth emails, text messages, voicemails. The tone was business like.

22:55 Speaker 3: There was no recorded argument, no documented threat, no abrupt severing ties. The lunch meeting at Chick fil A remained ordinary on its face, but the eight twenty eight p m call would not leave the board. Detectives asked themselves a narrow question, if Joseph felt the need to call Merit that evening, what prompted a follow up to lunch? A clarification A problem HM They did not know. What they did know was that after that call, Joseph's phone went dark. The Desert Graves had introduced homicide.

23:28 Speaker 3: The business sale had introduced motive. Now the timeline introduced presents. Investigators did not shift their full weight away from Cavanagh. The struggle for business control still carried logic, but the circle tightened. They began overlaying Merrit's movements with cell tower data from the high desert region north of Victorville. They examined tower pins in the days immediately following February fourth. They mapped them geographically. Some data points placed Merrit's phone within a broad swath of the high desert.

24:00 Speaker 3: The coverage area was not precise. It did not put him at the grave site. It placed him somewhere within a range of multiple towers that served a wide rural region. The ambiguity neither cleared nor condemned. But the desert had already yielded the McStay family's corpses, and now Merritt's phone had touched the same general terrain. The shift in focus was not loud, It was methodical, and it centered on February fourth. Detectives pulled Merrit's bank records alongside Joseph's. They charted transfers, deposits, withdrawals and patterns that predated February fourth.

24:40 Speaker 3: Small business finances often move in uneven bursts, vendor payments, contractor checks, material purchases. Detectives were not looking for volatility alone. They were looking for timing. What drew attention was not a single dramatic transaction, but the rhythm of activity. Immediately after the disappearance, Joseph's accounts stopped moving. Merits did not. That fact, by itself meant little Merritt had his own household, his own expenses. But investigators noticed that certain business related checks were deposited and certain communications with clients continued in the days and weeks after February fourth, as though the operation were still functioning.

25:21 Speaker 3: They asked a simple question, who had the authority to act on behalf of the custom water feature projects once Joseph was gone. Some checks bore Joseph's name, Some correspondence referenced ongoing installations. Detective scrutinized handwriting, endorsement patterns, email headers. They tracked IP addresses associated with account logins and online banking activity. They requested subpoenas where necessary. The financial trail did not explode, it accumulated in parallel. They returned to the cell data.

25:53 Speaker 3: The earlier high desert pings were broad an expanse that could encompass miles of scrub land and highway. Investigators refined the analysis. They plotted call details. Records from February fourth through February eighth were overlaid with known tower sectors and signal strengths. They compared those patterns against Merit's stated movements. There were moments where the phone appeared to travel north along the fifteen Freeway corridor. There were moments where it fell silent. There were moments where it reappeared within range of desert serving towers.

26:27 Speaker 3: None of it in isolation proved burial rural coverage can span wide distances, but when mapped against the eventual discovery site near Victorville, the proximity narrowed the margin. Detectives returned to the lunch meeting. Timeline receipts showed the afternoon encounter. Surveillance placed both men inside the Rancho Cucamonga Chick fil A. They walked out separately. Joseph's vehicle was later captured on neighborhood cameras near the Fallbrook home. Merit's truck appeared in separate footage in its own vicinity, but in investigators had begun reconstructing something else, the emotional temperature between the two men.

27:06 Speaker 3: They interviewed acquaintances again, contractors, friends, family members. Did Joseph express frustration, did he mention money? Did he hint at dissatisfaction? The responses were mixed. Business stress is common, conflict is not uncommon. But nothing in those interviews screamed rupture. What did stand out was familiarity. Merrit knew the mix Stay home he had visited. He knew the layout, He knew the rhythms of Joseph's work day. He knew when projects required late night calls and when materials were delivered.

27:42 Speaker 3: That knowledge did not implicate him. It contextualized access. Then came the digital overlap. Investigators compared timestamps of online activity tied to the custom water Feature business with Merit's known movements. There were logins that occurred at ten times Joseph's phone was inactive. There were communications with clients that suggested continuity, even as the McStay family had vanished. Who was keeping the machine running. When they re interviewed Merit, his tone shifted from cooperative to cautious.

28:16 Speaker 3: He answered questions, he did not refuse, but he began to parse language. More carefully. He framed his involvement as operational necessity. Projects could not simply halt clients needed responses. Materials had already been purchased. Investigators did not confront him with every data point. They asked about sequence, They asked about memory, They asked about why certain decisions were made on certain dates. The eight twenty eight pm missed call resurfaced in questioning. Merit acknowledged it again.

28:49 Speaker 3: He reiterated that he did not answer. He reiterated that he had spoken to Joseph earlier that day. Detectives pressed, did Joseph sound agitated at lunch, raised financial concerns? Did he mention plans for travel? Did he discuss Mexico? Merrit denied any indication of distress. As interviews concluded, the investigative board began to tilt. Kavanaugh still held financial motive through ownership questions and the business sale, but the sale occurred after Joseph had already vanished. It was an event that followed the disappearance.

29:23 Speaker 3: Merit's contact, by contrast, occurred on the day itself. Proximity in time, proximity in geography, continuity of business control. None of it declared guilt but all of it narrowed focus. By late February twenty fourteen, detectives had reassembled the timeline so many times that the edges had worn thin. February fourth was no longer just a date. It was broken into segments, morning activity, afternoon lunch, late day, phone traffic, evening silence. Each segment had been cross referenced with bank records, cell tower sectors, computer logins, and witness inches.

30:00 Speaker 3: When they laid Kavanaugh's movement beside the growing stack of digital evidence, something continued to miss align. The business transfer and the money it generated had looked like motive, but the timing of certain account activities and access points did not require him to be anywhere near Fallbrook. The Hawaii travel documentation, once created as a soft alibi, hardened under verification. Airline manifests, matched lodging records, matched phone data matched. The control theories, still explained the sale.

30:32 Speaker 3: It did not explain the desert. Investigators zeroed in on merit. They revisited the cell data with updated mapping software, refining sector ranges and narrowing down the geographic footprint of February sixth activity. Two days after the mixdays disappeared, the tower. Hits placed Merrit's phone in the high Desert region, in proximity to the area where the graves would eventually be found. The margin of error had shrunk. It was no longer a broad regional sweep. It was specific enough to draw a circle.

31:05 Speaker 3: They overlaid that circle with merits known associations. He had family in the desert, he had grown up familiar with portions of the terrain. He did not dispute being in the region that weekend, but his explanations varied in detail over time. Detectives logged each version. Meanwhile, the financial review deepened. Nine checks written from Joseph's business accounts after February fourth were examined line by line. The metadata within the accounting software showed creation dates that did not match the handwritten dates on the checks themselves.

31:42 Speaker 3: They had been backdated, Some were payable to Merit, others were payable to vendors to whom Merit owed money. I'm going to repeat that again. Metadata within the accounting software showed creation dates for nine checks that did not match the handwritten dates on the checks themselves. They had been backdated, Some were payable to Merit, and some were payable to vendors to whom Merit owed money. These were checks written to appear as though they had been created before Joseph's disappearance, but the software showed that they had been created afterward.

32:22 Speaker 3: This suggested not just access to Joseph's accounting software, but active manipulation, and investigators subpoenaed phone records connected to customer service calls placed to the accounting software provider, where a representative recalled a man identifying himself as Joseph McStay, requesting deletion of the company account. The caller could not provide the correct passcode, and so the request was denied. Ultimately, it was shown that the call originated from a phone associated with Chase Merit.

32:57 Speaker 3: Then, when investigators placed the sledge dge hammer recovered from the graves into evidence inventory, its three pound weight and blunt face became part of the forensic equation. The tool had been buried with the family. The burial site showed familiarity with the desert landscape, shallow graves dug in terrain that did not draw casual foot traffic. That familiarity, too, narrowed the field because that familiarity was something that Chase Merit was known to have having grown up in the region and having family there still and so finally, by October twenty fourteen, detectives believed that cumulative evidence had crossed the necessary threshold.

33:42 Speaker 3: They presented their case to the District Attorney's office. Financial fraud, post disappearance activity, desert cell data accounting manipulation, the mist call, the lunch meeting, the continuity of business control, the geographic overlap with the burial site. On November umber fifth, twenty fourteen, Charles Chase Merritt was arrested and charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Joseph McStay, Summer Mixday, Jeanny McStay, and Joseph McStay Junior. There was no press conference declaring victory, there was no public certainty.

34:18 Speaker 3: There was a booking photo and a transport And please do tune in next week for the conclusion of the McStay family murders, where we'll talk about the trial, the outcome, and doubts that still remain. And again, if you've enjoyed the show, please do tell your friends, tell your family, tell anyone you know or happen to run into who likes a true crime podcast to listen. I sure do appreciate your efforts and I will see you here again next Thursday, February nineteenth, for the conclusion of the McStay family murders.

34:55 Speaker 3: I'm Zevan Odleberg and this has been kind of murdery.

35:01 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at Kinamurdery or email at Kinomurtery at gmail dot com.