McStays Episode 4: Questions and Answers

0:00Hi, this is Ashenshing here with another weekly episode of our latest True Crime series from 2020 and ABC audio. What happened to the mixed days? Remember you can get new episodes weekly on Tuesdays if you follow what happened to the mixed days on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or whatever you're listening now. Or you can hear the entire series right now, add free by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts. Click the link in the description to start your free trial today. Now here's the next episode of what happened to the mixed days. This is the way. Hi, I'm John Favreau. We are launching the all new Star Wars, the Manalore and Grogu official podcast. I'm sorry, I can't focus at the moment. We're going behind the scenes, but the cast and crew sharing stories from the set, creative insights, and a few surprises from across the galaxy. I think he's earned a little snack. Watch and listen to Star Wars, the Manalore and Grogu official podcast. Now streaming on Disney Plus or wherever you get your podcasts and catch Star Wars, the Manalore and Grogu

1:02now streaming on Disney Plus terms apply. October 22, 2014. Almost a year after the bodies of the mixed day family were found brutally murdered in the Mojave Desert. We're found and found the mixed day case. We're the one working at CDNH. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's detectives called Chase Marit in for an interview. We've been working this case nonstop in trying to follow up on everything. Detective Eddie Bachman and his colleague met Chase Marit in a small interview room at the San Bernardino headquarters. Chase wore a low white baseball calf and sat sideways on a hard chair. He had first been interviewed by police almost four years ago, just days after the mixed days went missing. Back then, he told San Diego detectives that he and Joseph were friends, best friends. And four years later, this story hadn't changed.

2:03We talked every day, talking about him many, many times a day, right on the phone. We... Chase told San Bernardino detectives that he and Joseph often played paintball together. And he had helped the family move into their new house in late 2009. And two or three big bananas. I helped them pack them. I helped move all of the potted plants and stuff. Chase added that Joseph going missing hadn't just been an emotional loss for him. His entire welding business had depended on Joseph. When he disappeared, my life when it was pretty much turned upside down. I mean, we lost everything. Right. That's just a kind of... Maybe it didn't make time to figure out where I was going to go. To hear Chase tell it, he had lost his friend and his livelihood in one fell swoop.

3:08What I'm known to Chase, San Bernardino investigators felt that they had found evidence that told a different story. In reinterrearing the mixed days family and friends, digging into old case files and uncovering new evidence, detectives hadn't discovered reason to believe. There was more to the story Chase was telling. And now, they were ready to ask him some difficult questions. Did you call him a safe family? From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm Usher Singh. And this is what happened to the mixed days. Episodes 4 Questions and Answers Before San Bernardino detectives brought Chase married in for an interview, they dunked through the files they'd gotten from San Diego Sheriff's.

4:12And they began to find new details that they say raised red flags about Chase. Among the things they looked at was the transcript of a 2010 police interview with Chase. And one thing in particular jumped out at San Bernardino detective Ryan Smith. When he interviewed with San Diego, he referenced the family in the past tense several times, saying, oh, he was my best friend. Like, that's, people don't say that. San Diego detectives had questioned Chase about why he used the past tense. Oh, I did, Chase replied. Chase told them that he didn't know why. And the detectives didn't push him on it. Back then, it was a missing person's investigation. But now San Bernardino detectives were investigating multiple homicides. San Bernardino investigators suspected this choice of words could mean that Chase knew, even in the immediate aftermath of their disappearance, that the mixed days were already dead.

5:17Another key moment that San Bernardino detective Zeridon on was the day the mixed days won missing February 4, 2010. A neighbor's security camera had captured a grainy, dark video of a vehicle leaving the driveway of the mixed days house in Falbrook. A San Diego detective who investigated the missing person's case in 2010 told ABC News that the vehicle had looked like the mixed days car. A white is Susu Trooper, though they couldn't be sure. But when Detective Eddie Bachman and his team reviewed the footage, they spotted something interesting. When we looked, took a deeper dive into the video, we were able to find key markers on that video that it wasn't a trooper. The exhaust pipe on the mixed days cars stuck out on the back left side of the vehicle. But investigators thought the vehicle in this video hadn't exhaust pipe on the back right side. To Bachman and his team of investigators,

6:20this looked more like the exhaust pipe of the utility truck. And at that time, Chase married drove such a truck. A boxy white one. Why would Chase's vehicle be leaving the mixed day residents, you know, on the night that they did disappear? The mixed days home wasn't the only place that Chase was suspected to have been during that crucial window of time. Three months after the mixed days bodies were found in the desert, detectives pulled Chase's cell records, showed who he called, when he called them, and the cell towers his phone was peeing off around the time the mixed days disappeared. We were fortunate that Chase had a new iPhone. iPhones had just kind of come on the scene in 2010, and he had an iPhone with AT&T service that provided cell sites. A lot of the other cell phones

7:21didn't do that. It would give us their city. It would give us a general location. But Chase's cell phone provided us latitude and longitude coordinates of where towers were and where calls were being made. According to a police report, the phone records backed up Chase's claim that he and Joseph talked on the phone a lot. From February 1st to February 4th, the Ben spoke more than 15 times a day. Investigators determined that after the mixed days weren't missing, the volume of calls dropped off. Chase only called Joseph 11 times between February 5th and February 9th, and he made no calls to Joseph after that. This struck Detective Bachman as strange. He just stops calling him. That's not characteristic, especially if he or she's close to friends is what you say, then you would think that you would be more eager to try to help out and try to find the family, and I think his activity proved otherwise. According to the detectives report,

8:25the location of Chase's phone in the days after their disappearance also revealed something notable. His phone had pinged off a cell tower in Victorville, and the area where the bodies had been buried on February 6th, two days after the mixed days were missing. Okay, is there a reason that he was here? Or is he here because he's burying bodies? The phone records also revealed periods where Chase's phone showed no activity. For detectives, these blackouts were also intriguing. In the report, detectives indicated that on February 8th, four days after the mixed days went missing, Chase's phone was turned off from 7.30 AM to 1.30 PM, and detectives developed a possible theory as to why. According to their report, detectives thought that Chase had driven the mixed days car,

9:27their white Asusu trooper to the US-Mexico border. Remember, the mixed days car had been found on February 8th in a shopping center parking lot near the Mexican border. We have this question, how did the trooper get down to the San Ysidra border? Obviously, we got to answer that question. In 2010, Chase had insisted to detectives. It couldn't have been him. During San Diego's investigation, Chase told them that he had been in the vehicle one time, but only as a passenger, and had never driven the trooper. It was all recorded. The last time I was in it, we went to Camp Pendleton. We went to, we played, paintball, Camp Pendleton. You're a friend passenger? A friend passenger. They never had driven the trooper. Never driven the trooper. Back in 2010, San Diego investigators had swabbed the car, taking DNA samples from all over the interior. San Bernardino detectives

10:31compared those swabs to a sample of Chase's DNA. According to investigative documents, not only was Chase's DNA in the car, but it was found in places they felt the driver was likely to touch, like the steering wheel. And Detective Bachman and his team did some math. According to their report, they thought that the six-hour window when Chase's phone was turned off that day would have given him exactly the right amount of time to drive the McStay's trooper to the border. Get his DNA on the steering wheel in the process and make it back home before turning his phone back on again. So eventually you get, you know, four or five or six things, and it's more than a coincidence, and then you start focusing in on, you know, you realize that Chase had the opportunity to commit the crime. By the summer of 2014, San Bernardino investigators were getting closer and closer to calling Chase in for an interview to answer their growing number of questions.

11:35And then, detectives found something else, something that they said was a huge red flag. Today I want to tell you about an exciting new deal from our friends at CozyEarth. Take a moment and close your eyes and think back to the best night of sleep you ever had. Did it feel like you'd never sleep that well again? Well, good news. You can give yourself an amazing night of sleep every night by upgrading your bedding to CozyEarth. CozyEarth offers luxury bedding at an incredible price. Their ultra soft, temperature-regulating sheets, coverlets, and duvet covers are the perfect companion for a night of uninterrupted relaxation. Their sheets come in all different colors and stripes, so there's something for everyone, whether you're doing a big fall refresh of your master bedroom or updating a guest room in time for the holidays. And as comfy as they are on day one, they only get better from there, because they're designed to get softer with every wash.

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13:40Someone's obsessed with Chad Powers. He released a master of disguise. Chad is hot. From Blaine Power and the creator of Loki, I might be an overman. Please do not get caught. The Hulu Original Chad Powers. So we're stuck in Africa. Coach, find out your best holiday and actually murders you. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundled subscribers. Terms apply. The detective said when they looked at the QuickBooks account activity,

14:40they thought there was something unusual happening around the date of the McStay's disappearance. Checks had been written from Joseph McStay to Charles Merritt and not for small amounts. There was over $30,000 spread over several checks. Some of them, according to police reports, were written just before Joseph was last seen. But there were others written afterwards. Of particular interest to detectives or several checks that had been created on February 5th, but that someone had then changed the date in the log to February 4th. Someone had then printed those checks and deleted the log entries. They were backdated to February, February 4th, and then they were deleted from the system. And that's a huge red flag for us and that's important because we realized that nobody knew

15:41the family was missing yet. So why would someone go in, create a check, and delete it, backdating it to the 4th? According to detectives, four days after the family went missing, a QuickBooks employee got a customer service in court. The person on the other end of the phone identified themselves as Joseph McStay and then told the employee that they needed to delete all of the QuickBooks records related to the Earth-inspired products account. If Joseph McStay had called QuickBooks on February 8th, that would mean he was still alive at the time. Why would he need to edit and delete the records of his own account? The investigators spoke to the QuickBooks employee who'd taken that call. According to the detectives report, the employee remembered specifically how much urgency the person at the other end of the phone spoke with. Investigators had reason to believe

16:43that the person who made that call wasn't Joseph McStay. We determined that the phone call that was made into QuickBooks actually came from Charles Merritt's phone number. Charles Merritt, it was a name that kept appearing on DNA results, on mysterious checks, and whose phone had pinged off a cell tower in the desert. But even though detectives thought the evidence was building against Chase, they didn't think it was conclusive. When they called Chase Merritt in for a voluntary interview in October 2014, it had been almost a year since the McStay's bodies were discovered. Detectives wanted to see if he'd had an explanation for some of the evidence they'd found. In the first part of their long interview, they'd talk with Chase about his health, his new job, his recent trip to the McStay's gravesite in the desert. He said it was for a project he was working on about the family. I had decided that I was going to write a book.

17:50And I was going to do the cover of the book with me standing next to Joseph's cross. When Chase mentioned something about the day the McStay's disappeared, February 4, 2010, detective has began to narrow their line of questioning. Detective has asked Chase to tell them from the morning of the fourth onwards, where he was, and what he did. Chase said he got up and called Joseph to plan a meeting that day. So, after the meeting, he went his way, I went mine. The next few days after that, Chase said, weren't notable, but by the following week, he said he was so worried about Joseph that he decided to contact his family and visit the

18:55McStay home. So February 4, there's a lot of time you see Joseph. In the week after that, is there any reason that anyone would have seen you or your vehicle up in the eye desert area? I know what I went to my sisters. Chase wasn't in the high desert in that time period, he said. But if he was, he might have been visiting some of his family in the area. Detective's new from Chase's phone records, that his phone had been in this area, but detectives didn't reveal this. Not yet. They asked Chase about his access to the QuickBooks account that Joseph used for the business. Without being asked, Chase offered an explanation, saying that Joseph had asked him to switch the QuickBooks account. He claimed that Joseph wanted a new account that summer couldn't access.

20:14And as for making checks that look like they were from Joseph to Chase, he said he'd written checks from Joseph's account, quote, dozens and dozens of times. He said he would do this to pay both himself and other suppliers on behalf of the company. Again, the detectives gave no indication that they had any further questions to ask Chase about the checks. They moved on. This time, to find out if Chase had an explanation for why his DNA was on the steering wheel of the McStay's trooper. Chase denied telling San Diego detectives that he'd only ever been a passenger in the McStay's car,

21:22which, remember, was all caught on tape. But never driven. Never driven. And Chase told San Bernardino detectives, actually, he had driven the car when he and Joseph went paintballing. Detective Ryan Smith says that Chase's timeline didn't make any sense. The DNA was processed or collected from the trooper in, I want to say, February 2010, they went paintballing in January. After the date, Chase said he'd driven the car, it would have seen over a month of other use, other journeys, potentially other drivers. Smith claims that it would be very unlikely that Chase's DNA would have still been there for San Diego detectives to collect in February. You wouldn't expect any if they had driven the car a month ago. The amount of Chase's DNA that was found in the car, Smith says, was consistent with more recent use.

22:29If Chase had driven the car to the Mexican border, it would have been just a few days before the DNA was collected from it. That's what San Bernardino detectives believed had happened. Over the course of several hours, the detectives asked Chase about these key pieces of evidence that had stood out to them. And they told him his answers didn't match what they'd found in their investigation. Now it was time for the detectives to show their hand and reveal that they knew more, much more than they'd been letting on. What does it take to become a real Lion King? A cub named Kio is about to find out. From executive producers John Favreau and Mike Guntany, and with music by Hans Zimmer, National Geographic and Disney present,

23:32Lion, the story of a cub who could be king. National Geographic's Lion is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday night football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL live, NFL prime time, everything you need to stay on top of every game every week. Unbelievable. And now NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on. All season long on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app. A new podcast series from ABC Audio in 2020 goes inside a case that has captivated the nation. To many people, Luigi Mangione is a modern day Robin Hood. People were cheering the demise of this person they'd never met. It was a father of two and a husband and had a life and was just doing a job. From the manhunt, ending in a McDonald's in

24:35Altoona, Pennsylvania to what authorities are saying about a possible motive. I'm ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmeyer. Listen to Burn in a Proof, Luigi Mangione, wherever you get your podcasts. Four hours into their interview would chase Marit in October 2014. Detectives were ready to step things up a notch. There's a big dynamic shift throughout the interview when you transition from interview to interrogation. Detective Eddie Bachman was in the room that day. At the point where chase continued to lie and we knew that there were certain portions of the interview that he was lying with. At that point, we transitioned into interrogation, to confront him with some of the facts that we knew that there were things that chase did that he wasn't being honest about. On my half here is what those tells me from footbooks,

25:36is how the fan story erases. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I sat down in this room today and every single thing that I told you today is as far as my recollection goes, the absolute truth. So when you call the person on the radio, did you say, this is Chase Marit and I need a word for it? So did you represent yourself to be just to say? I didn't know. I don't think I represent myself to be Joseph. I don't think I represented myself as Joseph, he said. The detectives pushed chase. They told him that a story about writing dozens of checks from Joseph's account. They didn't believe it. They claimed that chase didn't write checks on the half of Joseph on a regular basis. And the checks police found from the days right before and after Joseph went missing.

26:37They said those checks were written by Chase without Joseph's knowledge. Because this is a murder investigation. Chase kept saying that he knew how important the case was, but that he just didn't have another answer to offer. Detective showed him the check created on February 6th that was then backdated to the fourth. I have no clue, Chase said. And I can't remember. The detectives pressed chase further. They asked him about the vehicle seen in the neighbor's video. The one leaving the McStay's home on February 4th, 2010. The detectives now believed belonged to Chase. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you straight up. We're not lying to you. I know you

27:41were involved or come January 4th, okay? All I want to know is what was the reason for a surgery. I don't think I was done there. Detectives told Chase your phone record showed you were in the desert two days after this family went missing. Why would your phone show you at the grave site on February 6th? I don't know. Do you even remember either who said he pointed at this or did you just have to have a left one or two? It was just him denying like he was going to deny he was just going to deny it all all the way. The detectives spent hours confronting Chase with their claims about his role in the McStay's murders. But Chase kept saying he didn't know or denying their allegations.

28:58I know. So hot inside of four people. I know. Four people, okay? All right. People that were very close to you. You're self-proclaimed, just friends and just family, okay? Two of them, Royce? All right. This has gone on for 30 years, okay? I need to know what happened that night, Chase. Something happened. But Chase's story didn't change. If investigators were hoping for a confession, they didn't get one. And after seven hours of interviewing, they let them go. But this wasn't the last time that detectives would talk to Chase Marit. Because with or without answers from Chase, they believed they knew what actually happened on February 4, 2010. And about why the McStays had been murdered to begin with.

30:08What happened to the McStays is a production of ABC audio in 2020. Posted by me, Ash and Sing, produced by Madeline Wood, Vika Erinzen, Audrey Mastek, and Kiara Powell. With help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer, our supervising producer is Susie Lu, music by Evan Viola, mixing by Evan Viola and Bob Mallory. Thanks to Katie Dendas, Janice Johnson, Camille Peterson, Sabrina Fang, Chris Donovan, Joseph Free, Sonny Antrim, Alyssa Stoller, Zander Samaris, Tom Birmingham, Indra Dallasahub, and Blue Browning. Josh Cohen is our director of podcast programming. Evan McNiff is our executive producer.

31:33I was drinking sweat for Evan's stasis. For the stars and fans of the Hula reality verse, do you think she's stirring the pot to secure a place on the show? Find and listen to Get Real wherever you get your podcasts, and stream new episodes Thursdays on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Terms apply. Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers and on my podcast The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons, designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck Now wherever you get your podcasts.