“By and large, the truth is not merely a fierce battle with ignorance and fallacy, but, first and foremost, a combat with our own preconceived ideas and aprioristic conceptions.”
― Erik Pevernagie
It is evident to me that everything that went wrong with the two investigations into the McStay family disappearance/murders began with one very simple, honest mistake. It was the assumption that headlights captured on a neighbor’s surveillance camera, lights of a vehicle appearing to depart the McStay drive at 7:47 pm, February 4, 2010, were those of the McStay Isuzu Trooper–leaving the home, never to return.
What San Diego investigators did not know at that time, was that there was computer activity in the home after the departure of that vehicle, starting at 7:59 pm. Even if that had been the McStay Trooper, given the activity in the home after it’s departure only one parent could have been in it. Therefore, the theory that this exit from the home signaled the timing of the family’s disappearance was a clear fallacy.
There were many more theories developed by San Diego investigators that piggy-backed on this first error. Grainy video from CCTV at the San Ysidro border strip mall where the Trooper was later towed from, appeared to depict a family of four crossing into Mexico. And from there the dominoes fell with one wrong guess following another. San Diego investigators were heavily criticised by many online followers of the case, not to mention loved ones of the missing family. The FBI did agree to assist a few years in.
For all the effort made to find this family, it wouldn’t be law enforcement who managed it, though. A lone motorcyclist happened on the skull of a child and three years after they vanished the McStays were finally found. But they were not found in Mexico, they had been buried 160 miles, and two and a half hours drive south of the San Ysidro border strip mall, the location where their Trooper had been abandoned. Two shallow graves just off the Interstate 15 in the Victorville desert held the remains of this once vibrant family of four.
Everyone expected that once San Bernardino took over the investigation, that this would be a fresh start. No more errors. There was so much evidence to work with. And the whereabouts of the McStays was a mystery no longer. But this isn’t what happened. And I think the second investigation speaks to how confirmation bias and assumptions can infect a process that should always be performed with absolute objectivity and an allegiance to accuracy.
Once San Bernardino took over the case the computer activity in the McStay home was discovered. Also, San Bernardino investigators, on reviewing that video capture, realized that the vehicle could not have been the Isuzu Trooper. The exhaust pipe was on the wrong side.
With this new evidence one would have thought that a new theory, one that might reexamine when the McStays actually vanished, would be explored. But no. Investigators simply dug deeper into the groove carved out by San Diego that the family left their home the evening of the 4th, and switched out a Trooper for Chase Merritt’s truck, and rather than the family driving away of their own accord, the McStays were now already dead, their bludgeoned bodies packed away in the bed of that truck. But there was a problem with this theory, a glaring one: There was this computer activity in the McStay residence, less than 10 minutes after the vehicle captured on surveillance departed. Someone was alive in that home, so how could this be the moment of murder?
Granted, the State had originally believed that more than one person was involved in this crime. But when they couldn’t locate an accomplice, instead of backtracking, reconsidering what the evidence was telling them, they came up with this little jewel of a theory: That a man (Chase) who had just brutally murdered four people, would then drive from their home, park just down the block, walk back to that home (covered in blood), sign onto Joseph’s desktop computer and draft a check he doesn’t print.
And I should add that in addition to no accomplice being identified, other evidence pointing away from the McStays being murdered in their home, on the evening of the fourth, was that no blood or blood spatter was ever discovered in the residence. The home as it was first entered into by San Diego police, looked more in keeping with morning activity than a sudden interruption in the early evening. And though headlights were captured of a vehicle thought to depart the McStay residence at 7:47, no vehicles were captured by the neighbor’s surveillance backing into that drive at the time it was estimated Chase would have arrived that night-approximately 6:45. Why this didn’t result in a cause-to-pause with investigators is as big a mystery to me as what actually happened to the McStays.
The next major fallacy in this case came with the analysis of the QuickBooks activity. Without going into great detail here, San Bernardino investigators never hired a forensic accountant to examine Joseph McStay’s finances to determine how he used QuickBooks. This opened the door to one of the biggest errors in this entire investigation. The activity occurring on one of McStay’s accounts in the week before he went missing was innocuous. There were actually innocent, rational explanations for all of it, mostly having to do with the third party culprit target of the defense at trial, and ex-partner, former web designer of Joseph’s company Earth Inspired Products, Dan Kavanaugh. But you could only really understand this if all of Joseph McStays accounts and financial activities were examined. And it would have been imperative to also consider that Kavanaugh had been hacking into Joseph’s online financial accounts. Kavanaugh admits to as much in the Two Shallow Graves documentary.
Joseph appears to have wanted to move all records of the profits he and Chase generated with their custom water feature sales, offline, in order to prevent Kavanaugh from viewing them. Joseph McStay had ended his partnership with Dan right at the end of 2009. The agreement was that a percentage of the sales would continue to be paid to him, however Dan likely wanted a percentage of all Earth Inspired Product sales. It seems that Joseph only intended to pay him a percentage from sales of pre-fabricated water features (which is all that Joseph had been selling prior to partnering with Chase). Once the computer data and accounts were examined more closely, and Dan’s relationship to Joseph was understood, everything made sense.
Regarding checks Chase did write in February, this was something he’d done before. Often times outside vendors didn’t have final amounts due when Chase would pick up checks from Joseph, so Joseph was in the habit of giving Chase blank checks, signed by him. Chase would write in the final amount when paying the vendor. The only change after February 1, is he now did this by way of a computer.
What was never emphasized enough at trial is how often Joseph McStay watched the balances of his accounts. He had to because after one fiasco with a client Joseph never paid out to vendors until he had received full payment from the client.
There was no theft, no embezzlement, just a change in how QuickBook records would be kept. But what really should have alerted investigators to the possibility that they might have been wrong in their assessment of the changes made, was that every single check written that week was in amounts that according to Joseph McStay’s own records, were owed to Chase.
Who steals money they are going to get anyway?
No one.
This mistaken understanding of the QuickBook changes, coincided with DNA profiles generated from swabs taken off the Trooper in 2010, but not tested until 2014. Trace and minor amounts of Chase’s DNA were found on the steering wheel, gear shift and air controls. Chase’s DNA was found to be a major contributor to DNA found on the passenger side door, but the State chose not only to ignore this, but attempted to obscure this fact. (Chase had told investigators that the last time he’d been in that Trooper was as a passenger when he and Joseph went to play paintball.)
The trace amounts of Chase’s DNA should have alerted investigators that it was possibly transfer. Had they found out more about the lunch meeting and Chase’s busy morning on February 8th, making it impossible that he drove the Trooper to the San Ysidro border on the day it was believed to have been left there, they likely would have decided then that the most reasonable explanation for the DNA on the driver’s side was that after a handshake at the close of the lunch meeting, Joseph transferred Chase’s DNA to the steering wheel and gear and air controls.
Once all these major errors in understanding occurred there was nothing left to do but examine Chase’s phone records to see if this old/new theory could be corroborated. And guess what, when there is no objective evidence of when a family left their home, when they were killed and when they were buried, it’s easy to make phone records fit any scenario you want-especially if the target of this investigation isn’t on their phones all that much.
And that’s exactly what San Bernardino did–they made the evidence fit the records. Anyone familiar with this case knows that the only evidence offered as to when certain aspects of this crime occurred, is based solely on when Chase’s phone records allow for it.
No one actually knows when this family was abducted/killed, buried or even when the Trooper was left at the border.
All we know is that San Bernardino investigators were able to make up a story using phone records that proved nothing, sprinkling in quite a few erroneous interpretations of the digital and DNA evidence.
There were other tactics used at trial to assure a conviction. A cryptic email. Numerous, contradictory narratives. However, character assassination, Chase played poker tournaments, (big whoop) was a primary weapon brandished by the prosecution-who, themselves, deserved to receive a few character jabs regarding their performance at trial. These three seasoned prosecutors often behaved like petulant children, rolling their eyes, falling asleep and scrolling through the internet on their phones while the defense struggled to make their case amidst a tsunami of State objections. But, regardless of all that came after, this whole mess started with a wrong assumption as to when the McStays left their home, and that idea was never corrected, even when evidence indicated it should be. From there, investigators were no longer following the evidence, they were cramming evidence in, to fit a confusing and erroneous narrative.
For more information on this, read Merritt’s in depth and searing analysis of the forensics performed on his phone records.
Justice Delayed: Will the McStay murders ever be solved? Is Chase Merritt a killer or an innocent man on California's Death Row? 