Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
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Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening, a twisting, deeply engrossing investigation into the many
Speaker 2: lingering questions surrounding the sudden disappearance of the mix Stays,
Speaker 2: a family of four who vanished from their suburban San
Speaker 2: Diego home without a trace until their skeletal remains were
Speaker 2: found in the Mohave Desert nearly four years later, from
Speaker 2: New York Times best selling author Caitlin Rother. On February fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two
Speaker 2: young sons were reported missing from their new home in
Speaker 2: San Diego County. They left eggs and fruit rotting on
Speaker 2: the counter, their Dodge truck sat in the driveway. Their
Speaker 2: dogs were abandoned outside without food, but investigators found no blood,
Speaker 2: signs of a struggle or clues to their whereabouts. Did
Speaker 2: the family take an unannounced vacation. Were they running away
Speaker 2: from personal problems or were they victims of foul play.
Speaker 2: Nearly four years later, a motorcyclist found the mcstay's remains
Speaker 2: in and around two shallow graves one hundred miles away
Speaker 2: in the Mojave Desert. Their skulls showed signs of blunt
Speaker 2: force trauma, likely due to the sledgehammer buried with them.
Speaker 2: Authorities focused on Charles Chase Merrit, a close friend and
Speaker 2: subcontractor for Joseph's company. Despite a lack of physical evidence,
Speaker 2: scenarios that defied logic, and numerous unanswered questions, prosecutors convinced
Speaker 2: the jury of Merit's guilt. After an emotional sentencing hearing,
Speaker 2: the judge imposed the death penalty, but did another possible suspect,
Speaker 2: who was ignored by investigators and duct to subpoena to testify,
Speaker 2: get away with murder. In this twisting, deeply researched true
Speaker 2: crime mystery, New York Times bestselling investigative journalist Caitlin Rother
Speaker 2: hunts for answers to reveal the truth behind a heinous
Speaker 2: crime that became a nation's obsession, with a controversial trial
Speaker 2: in its wake and lincring questions of justice. The book
Speaker 2: that we were featuring this evening is Down to the Bone,
Speaker 2: a missing famili's murder and the elusive quest for Justice,
Speaker 2: with my special guest, investigative journalist and author Caitlyn Rother.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 2: for this interview. Caitlyn Rother.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me back on.
Speaker 2: And congratulations on your latest book, Down to the Bone.
Speaker 3: Thank you again.
Speaker 2: Now you are a New York Times bestselling author. This
Speaker 2: is your fifteenth book you write. What did you as
Speaker 2: an author? What did your research involve in writing this book?
Speaker 3: So this case happened back in February of twenty ten,
Speaker 3: so it's been a while, but I think this book
Speaker 3: probably took me longer to research than probably any other
Speaker 3: book because I had twelve years to do it from
Speaker 3: the time that this family of four, Joseph Summer, Jianni
Speaker 3: and Joey Junior mxtay, all disappeared from their house in Albert, California.
Speaker 3: This case kind of got a slow start, but I
Speaker 3: knew pretty soon that it was going to be a
Speaker 3: book worthy case because you know, people go missing, kids
Speaker 3: go missing, you know, moms sometimes go missing, teenagers go missing,
Speaker 3: but it's usually one at a time. It's very unusual
Speaker 3: for a family to go missing, a family four, especially
Speaker 3: when there's two little kids, when they're all together, because
Speaker 3: you know, I've been told by detectives that you know,
Speaker 3: one of the parents will take one of the kids
Speaker 3: and run off. But the fact that all four of
Speaker 3: them went off together and we're missing was very unusual,
Speaker 3: and it was a mystery because nobody knew why they disappeared.
Speaker 3: So anyway, it was investigated for over three years as
Speaker 3: just a missing person's case, so it was kind of
Speaker 3: a slow start, but you know, they were featured on
Speaker 3: the cover of People magazine, so it was a nationally
Speaker 3: high profile case. It was on Nancy Grace a lot.
Speaker 3: They talked about every little turn of the cog and
Speaker 3: every little turn of the wheel, because everybody was like,
Speaker 3: what happened to these adorable little boys. So basically, the
Speaker 3: San Diego County Sheriff's Department investigated it as a missing
Speaker 3: person's case, which they came under quite a bit of
Speaker 3: criticism for, and then they dropped the case and said,
Speaker 3: you know what, we think that they went to Mexico voluntarily,
Speaker 3: and I'll get into why that is in the book.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go into too much time into that. Now,
Speaker 3: eight months later, the skeletal remains of this family were
Speaker 3: found in two shallow graves in the Mojave Desert, about
Speaker 3: one hundred miles from their house. Literally did not go
Speaker 3: to Mexico. They were basically bludgeoned to death in the
Speaker 3: back of their skulls because they each had holes in
Speaker 3: the backs of their skulls, and then put into these
Speaker 3: two shallow graves with one adult and one child in each.
Speaker 3: So from that point they were in San Bernardino County
Speaker 3: and that then moved into a homicide investigation. They did
Speaker 3: that pretty quickly, arrested one of Joseph's business associates, Charles
Speaker 3: Chase Merritt, within about a year, and then the case
Speaker 3: took a while to get to trial because it's a
Speaker 3: death penalty case. But Merritt also kept switching attorneys, so
Speaker 3: by the time you know the trial was over and
Speaker 3: the sentencing, you know, it had been a good ten years.
Speaker 3: And then you know, I then go into high gear
Speaker 3: and do start going deeper into my research. But I
Speaker 3: had been to the preliminary hearing, which was two days.
Speaker 3: I had I had also, you know, read three hundred
Speaker 3: pages of searchworn affidavit that came out early when a
Speaker 3: group of media sued the Sheriff's Department to release them
Speaker 3: because they were not releasing information. And then I basically
Speaker 3: wrote a book after I got a contract. Things were
Speaker 3: really hard because of COVID, and the courthouses were closed
Speaker 3: and you could, you know, limited hours, and people took
Speaker 3: forever to respond. So basically, you know, this research tracked
Speaker 3: on for a long long time. I wrote a book
Speaker 3: of about ninety thousand words, and all this time I
Speaker 3: had been trying to get what I got for Death
Speaker 3: on Ocean Boulevard, which was my last book. Same Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 3: San Diego Sheriff's Department, and curiously, same allegations by the
Speaker 3: family of Rebecca's The How, which basically believed that Rebecca's
Speaker 3: the How was murdered. Sheriff's department said she killed herself
Speaker 3: when she was found hanging naked, bound and gagged in
Speaker 3: the rear courtyard of the of the Spreckles mansion Cornado.
Speaker 3: In this case, the defense for Chase Merritt said it
Speaker 3: was confirmation bias. They arrested him. Basically what that means
Speaker 3: is investigators decide on a premise or a theory or
Speaker 3: a suspect and just will not move from it, no
Speaker 3: matter what evidence they see to the contrary. So this
Speaker 3: was to me like part one and part two of
Speaker 3: a pattern of investigative flaws of the way that they
Speaker 3: approached and that was continued as an allegation when it
Speaker 3: got to trial with the prosecution. So you know, by
Speaker 3: the point that I've written a book based on what
Speaker 3: I got from the exhibits, which twelve thousand exhibits. That's
Speaker 3: a lot of exhibits. I went and copied them. Took
Speaker 3: me five days with a copy machine, because these are
Speaker 3: file folders full of you know, thousands of hundreds or
Speaker 3: thousands of pages of documents that were presented in court.
Speaker 3: There were also other documents that were presented that I
Speaker 3: think the jury probably even looked at, but were entered
Speaker 3: for purposes of merits appeal. And so I basically had
Speaker 3: all those and I wrote a book about nine and
Speaker 3: then four months before my deadline, I finally got these
Speaker 3: documents that I've been working to obtain for twelve years.
Speaker 3: That is all the investigative reports from both sheriff's departments
Speaker 3: and many of the witness interviews that they did, and
Speaker 3: a lot of the background materials, so it basically had
Speaker 3: to completely rewrite the book. So because once I had
Speaker 3: that research, that new research, which was full of juicy
Speaker 3: materials about what was going on behind the scenes in
Speaker 3: the investigation that was never made public. You cannot get
Speaker 3: these files with the public records request. You have to
Speaker 3: get them from somebody involved in the case. And I
Speaker 3: was able to do the same thing with Death on
Speaker 3: Ocean Boulevard, and so, you know, these are things that
Speaker 3: the investigators don't really want to be made public because
Speaker 3: it doesn't always make them look good. But I was
Speaker 3: able to work out all the way through the book,
Speaker 3: and so there's a lot of new and exclusive information
Speaker 3: that was never made public before, and so much of
Speaker 3: it didn't even get into the trial. Because of all
Speaker 3: of these it was such a messy, messy case, which
Speaker 3: which I you know, explain and examine in this book.
Speaker 3: So that's a long answer to your question.
Speaker 2: Yes, you certainly do. Now let's go back for people
Speaker 2: that don't know this story, and you do paint a
Speaker 2: compelling portrait of the Mixtage family life at the time
Speaker 2: that they disappeared. So tell us about Joseph in Summer,
Speaker 2: Jianni and Joseph Jr. And their life. Tell us about
Speaker 2: what where they were at and what was happening at
Speaker 2: the time they disappeared.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the family was basically personally, at least, you know,
Speaker 3: going through a bit of a crisis. So shortly before
Speaker 3: they disappeared, Summer had filed a CPS TIALD Protective Services
Speaker 3: complaint and I can't go into details about that for
Speaker 3: privacy reasons, but suffice it to say that it caused
Speaker 3: divisions within Joseph's extended family. So Summer had a falling
Speaker 3: out with Michael McStay, Joseph's brother, even before that happened,
Speaker 3: so there was some division there as well. According to him,
Speaker 3: Summer was also making it difficult for Joseph to see
Speaker 3: his friends, and she didn't like Chase Merritt who was
Speaker 3: coming over to the house. So basically there were divisions
Speaker 3: and conflict and strife going on in the family. Joseph
Speaker 3: told his mother around Christmas time, is about two months before,
Speaker 3: you know, month and a half before they vanished, about
Speaker 3: the CPS investigation, which basically Summer didn't want their two
Speaker 3: little boys to be together with Joseph's son from his
Speaker 3: first marriage, and there were flex and accusations going back
Speaker 3: and forth between that boy's family, you know, Joseph's ex
Speaker 3: wife and her husband who had a criminal record, and
Speaker 3: so there was just a lot going on, and so
Speaker 3: the detectives looked at this pretty early on in interviewed
Speaker 3: Joseph's son's stepfather almost right away, and he was cleared
Speaker 3: actually pretty quickly. But this wasn't made public. They were
Speaker 3: just kind of whispers about it, and the mcsay family
Speaker 3: didn't want to talk about it because they were trying
Speaker 3: to protect the privacy of the people who were accused
Speaker 3: and who were then you know, they CPS found these
Speaker 3: complains the complaint to be unsubstantiated anyway, but this was
Speaker 3: this was going on, and it was an issue in
Speaker 3: the family and it was causing quite a bit of conflict,
Speaker 3: and so the detective initially thought this might have been
Speaker 3: a reason why they left. But basically Joseph and someone
Speaker 3: were also having some issues. He had asked his mom
Speaker 3: to help him find a counselor because they were they
Speaker 3: had had sex in a year and so there were
Speaker 3: just issues, but financially things seemed to be going okay.
Speaker 3: His business, he made waterfalls that he sold online through
Speaker 3: a website, and he had, in addition to Chase Merritt,
Speaker 3: who helped manufacture these and build these waterfalls, he had
Speaker 3: another business associate named Dan Cavanaugh, who designed the website
Speaker 3: where they sold them. So those were the two associates
Speaker 3: who early on noticed he was not responding to emails
Speaker 3: and phone calls, and so Cavanaugh called the police and
Speaker 3: the sheriff's department. Merritt went to Joseph's mother and said,
Speaker 3: you should call the police, but he didn't do it personally.
Speaker 3: So early on it was the two business associates who
Speaker 3: were the ones who called attention to the fact that
Speaker 3: he wasn't responding, and Merritt went to the house and couldn't.
Speaker 3: He said, no one's there, No one's answering the phone.
Speaker 3: It took eleven days for Michael mcstaye to report them missing,
Speaker 3: and then there was some debate later on when Michael
Speaker 3: went by the house and why and blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: and that it became an issue at trial. But basically,
Speaker 3: you know, it was a family going through some issues,
Speaker 3: but financially, it seemed like things were going well because
Speaker 3: new new projects were coming in, and that was part
Speaker 3: of the reason why they weren't sure why they would
Speaker 3: have just disappeared like that, because they were they had
Speaker 3: two big projects that they were working on that were
Speaker 3: going to pay pretty well, and so it didn't really
Speaker 3: make sense for them to just leave without telling anybody
Speaker 3: where they were going.
Speaker 2: What were the issues that were present with Dan Cavanaugh
Speaker 2: and with Chase Merritt in terms of leadership of the
Speaker 2: company itself, their roles at the company itself.
Speaker 3: Well, a year before this, before they disappeared, Joseph and
Speaker 3: Mxedday and Dan Kevanaugh had a falling out. Cavanaugh had
Speaker 3: discovered that Joseph was working on these more expensive custom
Speaker 3: projects with Merritt and cutting Kavanaugh out of them, which
Speaker 3: was true. They were, and they kept a separate set
Speaker 3: of books for that, a separate online accounting system with that,
Speaker 3: and so Kalvanaugh threatened Joseph, you know, if you don't,
Speaker 3: you know, pay me off or cut me in or
Speaker 3: make a deal, you know, I'm going to take your
Speaker 3: website down and I'm going to destroy your business. So
Speaker 3: it's in writing too. He did it in you know,
Speaker 3: text messages or instant messages, but they were in writing,
Speaker 3: and so Joseph was scared that Calvin I was going
Speaker 3: to follow through on those threats. So he was trying
Speaker 3: to you know, pay him off, make him happy, and
Speaker 3: apparently he had almost done that when they vanished. There
Speaker 3: were some issues that came out after later about Merritt's work,
Speaker 3: the quality of his work, and some of the issues
Speaker 3: that were going on with I guess there was there
Speaker 3: was waterfall that apparently had you know, leaked or had
Speaker 3: holes or I don't remember exactly what the situation was,
Speaker 3: but there were just a couple customers I guess that
Speaker 3: were not happy when they got their waterfalls. But according
Speaker 3: to Joseph, the things that Joseph told his family, particularly
Speaker 3: his father Patrick McStay he was and a friend of
Speaker 3: his mcgiver macargur, which is kind of a tricky name,
Speaker 3: I might he said that Joseph had pretty much paid
Speaker 3: off Kavanaugh. He was trying to expand the business with
Speaker 3: Merit so that they could make bigger and more custom
Speaker 3: waterfalls and expand the size of the manufacturing operation into
Speaker 3: it like a separate place and bring it in house.
Speaker 3: So that he didn't have to deal with Kevanaugh anymore. Now,
Speaker 3: that became a matter of quite some debate, and later
Speaker 3: the prosecution claimed that they were trying to get rid
Speaker 3: of that, he was trying to sideline Merit. But you know,
Speaker 3: going back through through who said what to who, it
Speaker 3: really doesn't appear like he was trying to get rid
Speaker 3: of Merit. He was trying to get rid of Kavanaugh
Speaker 3: because of the threats.
Speaker 2: That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: let's get to the prosecution's case against Chase Merit. How
Speaker 2: does he come to be the sole suspect in this
Speaker 2: There's not really any physical evidence, so this is a
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence case. Just tell us what the prosecution's case
Speaker 2: against Chase Merit is based on.
Speaker 3: So the preliminary hearing, this came out and it was
Speaker 3: very vague and they didn't even add up the amounts,
Speaker 3: which I had to do because the prosecution refused to
Speaker 3: talk until after the trial. The case boiled down to
Speaker 3: they accused Merrit of basically forging checks, writing checks and
Speaker 3: forging checks with this online system that they were using,
Speaker 3: and then deleting checks from the accounting system, so that
Speaker 3: you know, basically amounted to like twenty thousand dollars. And
Speaker 3: the prosecution claimed that Joseph found out that he had
Speaker 3: started doing this, so they had a confrontation and he
Speaker 3: fired him, at which point Merrett got upset and decided
Speaker 3: to kill the entire family. So that's their argument, and
Speaker 3: they claimed even in the trial that Merrit killed them
Speaker 3: or the murder started or happened in the house. Now,
Speaker 3: one of my issues, which I explained in the book,
Speaker 3: they never found a drop of blood. In fact, that
Speaker 3: that's why the first detective from San Diego County couldn't
Speaker 3: investigate the case as a homicide. According to him, because
Speaker 3: he initially thought there was foul play. But when he
Speaker 3: put a search warrant to the judge claiming that they
Speaker 3: had been murdered, the judge said, well, I need more
Speaker 3: probable cause than this. You know, where is it. And
Speaker 3: so because they never found a single drop of blood
Speaker 3: or any real sign of foul play in the house,
Speaker 3: it's very curious to me and to the defense why
Speaker 3: the detectives from Zaan Bernardino continued to argue even at
Speaker 3: trial that this had happened in the house. When there
Speaker 3: was absolutely no forensic evidence to support that. Now, there
Speaker 3: also was no blood found on any of Merit's belongings,
Speaker 3: any of his clothes, or in his truck which they
Speaker 3: tracked down years later, and there was no blood. So,
Speaker 3: like you said, there really was no physical evidence tying
Speaker 3: him to the murder at the house. The only thing
Speaker 3: that they claim to have as physical evidence was trace
Speaker 3: a trace of Merrit's DNA on the steering wheel of
Speaker 3: the families Azuzu trooper, which was found at the border
Speaker 3: in a parking lot where it was towed from. And
Speaker 3: then during the trial, the defense's expert basically said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, he was a possible minor contributor, but the
Speaker 3: major contributor was Joseph McStay, and the major contributor is
Speaker 3: generally the person who had the most DNA on the
Speaker 3: steering wheel, as in the last person who drove it.
Speaker 3: So that didn't even really hold up in my mind.
Speaker 2: What about the controversial topic at issue at trial was
Speaker 2: the cell phone power expert and his calculations.
Speaker 3: Okay, well this gets this gets a little complicated, but
Speaker 3: I'll see if I can boil it down. There was
Speaker 3: a cell phone expert that the defense was supposed to call,
Speaker 3: but one of the defense attorneys decided he didn't need
Speaker 3: to call him because he felt like he had gotten
Speaker 3: what he needed from the prosecution's cell phone expert, who
Speaker 3: was an FBI agent who had all these records and
Speaker 3: some of which were not shared with the defense even
Speaker 3: when they asked for them, and they kept claiming that
Speaker 3: you have everything, when in fact, it was clear that
Speaker 3: they didn't have everything because they were referring to records
Speaker 3: that these guys didn't have, so the judge ordered them
Speaker 3: to hand them over. But what they basically were arguing
Speaker 3: is that those records could not place Chase Merritt at
Speaker 3: the grave site, specifically on you know, two days after
Speaker 3: they disappeared, which is when the prosecution said they believed
Speaker 3: that he buried their bodies. They also kind of hemmed
Speaker 3: and hot and changed their story about this well ranged
Speaker 3: So maybe he was going back to check to see
Speaker 3: if the graves were okay and that these bodies had
Speaker 3: not come unearthed. But Merritt really wanted that expert to testify,
Speaker 3: and this became an issue even with his own defense
Speaker 3: team because the lawyer who was supposed to present this
Speaker 3: expert changed his mind and then proceeded to develop a
Speaker 3: neurological condition and disappeared from the trial for a good
Speaker 3: month or month and a half. I don't remember specifically
Speaker 3: how many weeks it was, but it delayed the trial significantly.
Speaker 3: And he was the one who knew all this information
Speaker 3: and had prepared this witness, and then he decided not
Speaker 3: to call him. So to this day, Merritt is still
Speaker 3: holding on to this and is still angry about it,
Speaker 3: and is still citing it as a reason for in
Speaker 3: effective counsel because he figured out by going through the
Speaker 3: records himself that that tower that was on a hill
Speaker 3: overlooking where those two shallow grapes were was malfunctioning and
Speaker 3: that it was saying that the direction of the phone
Speaker 3: call where the phone was, which was moving around and
Speaker 3: bouncing around, was actually in the opposite direction. Very complicated,
Speaker 3: and I you know, this didn't even really get to
Speaker 3: come before the jury. So this came out in a
Speaker 3: sentencing hearing where the other attorney, who was the only
Speaker 3: one left because that one who got sick, ended up
Speaker 3: saying I have a conflict of interest in I can't
Speaker 3: proceed with the sentencing motions. And it was very long
Speaker 3: and complicated. It's on the book, but the jury never
Speaker 3: really got to hear this stuff. And frankly, it's very obtuse.
Speaker 3: It's it's tricky to I think, to explain to anybody,
Speaker 3: and I think that it's it likely would have just
Speaker 3: gone over their heads anyway, because it's it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's not exciting sexy testimony.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I feel the same way about DNA testimony. I feel
Speaker 3: the same way about some of these very very technical
Speaker 3: topics that it's just very difficult for juries to process.
Speaker 2: Certainly, and keeping in that theme, you right, how do
Speaker 2: you believe this case got so messed up?
Speaker 3: Well, it was just like a whole series of things.
Speaker 3: It wasn't any one thing, you know, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 3: it's just one thing after another. Merritt is a difficult
Speaker 3: person to start with. He's never satisfied with anybody who
Speaker 3: works for him. He switched attorneys repeatedly, like you just
Speaker 3: fire them, you know, one after another, until the got
Speaker 3: to the point where the judge was like, look, you
Speaker 3: can't have any more attorneys. You've gone through six of them,
Speaker 3: you know, you need to just stick with these two.
Speaker 3: And then even at the sentencing, you know, he lost
Speaker 3: one of them because that one stepped off and said
Speaker 3: I have a conflict. You know, it couldn't basically defend
Speaker 3: and he wouldn't give a reason publicly, but we found
Speaker 3: out later he says he couldn't defend himself and his
Speaker 3: client at the same time as his client is attacking him.
Speaker 3: And then he tried to fire the very last one
Speaker 3: too at the last minute, you know, and the judge
Speaker 3: was like, no, this is your attorney. You got to
Speaker 3: just stick with them.
Speaker 2: Was there any criticism of the initial lead detective in
Speaker 2: this case, Dougal, and his handling of this case from
Speaker 2: the perspective of a missing person's case rather than finding
Speaker 2: any information that would further it as a homicide case.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, a lot of us
Speaker 3: were observers in general were just watching, going, well, why
Speaker 3: is this a missing person's case? I mean, clearly there
Speaker 3: were some red flags, and you know, like I said,
Speaker 3: even he said initially he thought this was a murder
Speaker 3: and he put that in the search warrant. But like
Speaker 3: he claimed, well, the judge said, you don't have any
Speaker 3: probable cause, so you can't. I don't want to see
Speaker 3: another search warrant with that same information, because you don't
Speaker 3: have any evidence that it was a murder. But what
Speaker 3: the lead detective said to me from San Bernardino, when
Speaker 3: I asked him what he thought, he said, well, if
Speaker 3: it were us, we would have tried another judge, or
Speaker 3: we would have you know, maybe waited a while and
Speaker 3: when they had not turned up, gone back and tried again,
Speaker 3: which apparently he did not do so basically because they
Speaker 3: left under such bizarre circumstances. I mean, they left their
Speaker 3: dogs in the backyard with no food or water, which
Speaker 3: they never did. They always kept their dogs inside at night.
Speaker 3: And according to the prosecution, they were taken the night
Speaker 3: of February fourth, twenty ten. Even though the food that
Speaker 3: was left out on the kitchen counter, which showed that
Speaker 3: they left abruptly, looked like breakfast. So there were eggs
Speaker 3: out on the counter, coffee in the pot, stuff like
Speaker 3: that fruit in this bowl. The criticism was, basically, you know,
Speaker 3: these things are not adding up, these are red flags.
Speaker 3: He's got a you know, successful business, he's in the
Speaker 3: middle of these projects. Why would he just leave unless
Speaker 3: something was wrong, right, something bad happened. So the criticism was,
Speaker 3: why did you keep you know, investigating this as a
Speaker 3: missing person's case rather than a homicide, because there are
Speaker 3: things that you can't do. You know, in a missing
Speaker 3: person's case, you can't subpoena records, you can't you ask
Speaker 3: you can ask for them. You can go to a
Speaker 3: bank or cell phone companies and ask voluntarily for them
Speaker 3: to hand over things, but they don't have to because
Speaker 3: you can't subpoena them. So that was you know, that
Speaker 3: was a criticism because there were missed opportunities in terms
Speaker 3: of the investigation.
Speaker 2: It was also criticized, wasn't heed for Susan Blake, Joseph's
Speaker 2: mother leaning up the crime scene, and also even more importantly,
Speaker 2: I think Joseph's brother Michael, said that he had permission
Speaker 2: to take the Joseph's computer, the family computer home with
Speaker 2: him to take it out of the house.
Speaker 3: Right, So basically, you know, according to the detective, he
Speaker 3: never gave permission to Joseph's mother to clean up, and
Speaker 3: she called him while she was in the middle of
Speaker 3: doing that, so she came over somehow got back into
Speaker 3: the house. This is still unclear to me how this
Speaker 3: how they got back into the house because the detective
Speaker 3: did not lock the house. He left that to them
Speaker 3: to do. But supposedly that the house was locked. I
Speaker 3: don't know how they got it anyway, maybe they didn't
Speaker 3: lock it. But she came in and she asked mcgui
Speaker 3: vray mccagur to meet her there, who is helping Joseph
Speaker 3: and Summer paint the house. And she cleaned up all
Speaker 3: the paint supplies and put them away and moved everything
Speaker 3: around in the kitchen, straightened up, threw away the newspapers
Speaker 3: you know that they were using to paint, and you know,
Speaker 3: cleaned up the kitchen. So all those traces of how
Speaker 3: their house was left so abruptly or gone. And there's
Speaker 3: also some debate whether or not she used windecks to
Speaker 3: clean and was there any bleach blah blah blah. She
Speaker 3: says no at one point, said yes another point, But
Speaker 3: according to the detective, he never told her not to
Speaker 3: do that, because he said, well, I didn't tell them
Speaker 3: that I was about to file a search warrant to
Speaker 3: search the house, and I didn't tell them not to
Speaker 3: do that because I didn't want to scare them and
Speaker 3: I wanted to I want them to cooperate with me.
Speaker 3: But he said he was disappointed that she did that,
Speaker 3: and when she called him and told him that she
Speaker 3: was cleaning, he told her to stop, but by that
Speaker 3: point it was too late. So also Michael McStay claimed
Speaker 3: that he thought he had permission to take a computer
Speaker 3: and the video camera and the SIM cards and you
Speaker 3: know what have you from the house. The detective said, no,
Speaker 3: I never gave him permission, So it's unclear also whether
Speaker 3: he why he thought he had permission, but there, you know,
Speaker 3: they they did tell him, you know, if you can
Speaker 3: find records that would help us, you know, financial records
Speaker 3: or whatever that we could use to see what they
Speaker 3: were doing and what have you. So I think he
Speaker 3: probably thought, well, I can just take the computer and
Speaker 3: go find those things. So it was like, you know,
Speaker 3: the detective was claiming he didn't give permission, but when
Speaker 3: he asked the question for those records, I think Michael
Speaker 3: thought that he had permission. But on the stand, you know,
Speaker 3: the detective denied that he gave permission, and Michael said
Speaker 3: he had permission. So that was that was a discrepancy certainly,
Speaker 3: and that that also made you know, the McStay family,
Speaker 3: the extended family brought brought them criticism as well, for
Speaker 3: why were you doing those things? Brought suspicion on them
Speaker 3: that why why were they messing with stuff?
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, that's some criticism of the San Diego
Speaker 2: Police Department, But there were some questionable aspects of the
Speaker 2: Bernardino County Sheriff's Department investigation as well. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us about some of those?
Speaker 3: Now, the criticism for the San Diego Sheriff's Department was public.
Speaker 3: The Patrick McStay, Joseph's father, made it public. He talked
Speaker 3: about it to any reporter who would listen. He posted
Speaker 3: it online. He complained about it on web sleuth So
Speaker 3: he made it an issue and there were you know,
Speaker 3: general you know, a web sluths. They had a whole
Speaker 3: forum that was going crazy with all this stuff. Read
Speaker 3: at the same thing that was more public, the criticism
Speaker 3: of the sandy of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department. There
Speaker 3: wasn't anything public that was criticized. They weren't criticizing. But
Speaker 3: when I was writing the book, and there were you know,
Speaker 3: you know groups on Facebook where you could see some
Speaker 3: discussion about this stuff. But it wasn't really like it
Speaker 3: was directed at the department. These are just things that
Speaker 3: I found when I was doing my investigation and people
Speaker 3: who emailed me and complained about this, and it was
Speaker 3: also the subject at trial, but that came from the
Speaker 3: defense attorneys. So I just want to be clear on
Speaker 3: the source of that, which is natural and it's part
Speaker 3: of the defense, right. So confirmation bias was the main
Speaker 3: criticism that they decided on Chase Merrit and did not
Speaker 3: look at Dan Kevnaugh as a suspect. And when they
Speaker 3: according to the defense, they had pretty much the same motive.
Speaker 3: It's just that with Merit, if he really did do this,
Speaker 3: then he took twenty thousand, when Kavanaugh, according to their
Speaker 3: expert ended up taking two hundred and six thousand dollars
Speaker 3: from Joseph's business because he took it over and ran
Speaker 3: it and then sold it without any authorization and kept
Speaker 3: that money as well. So the criticism was, you know,
Speaker 3: why why are you so focused on Merit and why
Speaker 3: didn't you focus on Dan Cavanaugh at all? And that
Speaker 3: was pretty much the whole defense, even though the judge said,
Speaker 3: you know, you can't, you can't do a third party
Speaker 3: culpability case. You don't have permission for that because you
Speaker 3: have to have permission from the judge. But they brought
Speaker 3: it up every chance they could. Dan Kavnaugh, Dan Cavanaugh,
Speaker 3: You're right.
Speaker 2: Just on the verge of the trial, there is an
Speaker 2: alleged last minute confession named Tracy Ricklebein.
Speaker 3: So this woman approached the prosecution and the defense basically
Speaker 3: told them that Dan Kavanaugh had confessed to her that
Speaker 3: he had raped and killed Summer and the rest of
Speaker 3: the family. So tried to deliver subpoena to Dan Kavanaugh
Speaker 3: to get him to testify, but they could never find him.
Speaker 3: He later admitted on television during a documentary that he
Speaker 3: had purposely avoided that. So and then basically Tracy Ricabini
Speaker 3: was mentioned in the opening statement by the defense and
Speaker 3: this confession and what she was like and what she said,
Speaker 3: but they never called her as a witness. So it's
Speaker 3: an interesting claim, but they never followed through on it
Speaker 3: in the trial. I think you just take that for
Speaker 3: what it is. He did brag though to other people
Speaker 3: that he had killed the mixed stays, and the defense,
Speaker 3: you know, tried to get that into the trial. Judge
Speaker 3: wouldn't let them. But there are a couple cases that
Speaker 3: were documented of people claiming that he had you know,
Speaker 3: threatened them, threatened to do it to them what he
Speaker 3: had done to the mix Stay family.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us about this TV documentary Two Shallow Grades
Speaker 2: and its importance to this case and its rule in
Speaker 2: this story.
Speaker 3: Well, it really had more importance to me personally actually,
Speaker 3: because it's what prevented me from getting a lot of
Speaker 3: information and access, which I hope maybe I would have
Speaker 3: gotten a lot sooner if that hadn't happened. But basically,
Speaker 3: Merritt's two defense attorneys made a deal with this company,
Speaker 3: it's production company, to do a documentary in a book.
Speaker 3: And so therefore they they you know, they were going
Speaker 3: to do their own things, So they didn't want to
Speaker 3: give they didn't want to help me or give me
Speaker 3: information or interviews or anything. They signed some kind of
Speaker 3: agreement with Merit to waive him having to pay them
Speaker 3: in order for them to have rights to his story. Now,
Speaker 3: they obviously thought they were going to win the case,
Speaker 3: and so it was going to be a whole defense
Speaker 3: oriented you know, this is how the case went. Well,
Speaker 3: it didn't go very far because the prosecution and the
Speaker 3: McStay family refused to cooperate with a defense project, so
Speaker 3: that kind of fizzled, and what ended up happening is
Speaker 3: they took the footage that they had done and they
Speaker 3: found another production company and agreed to do a more
Speaker 3: balanced version of the of the documentary, which they ended
Speaker 3: up doing. So the prosecution did cooperate and the lead
Speaker 3: detective Patrick McStay participated, but he never testified at trials,
Speaker 3: so it was really just his opinions, you know, and
Speaker 3: his feelings about things, and so it was like a
Speaker 3: seven part documentary and the most interesting thing to me
Speaker 3: that I thought was important was that Dan Kalvanaugh basically,
Speaker 3: you know, dismissed this confession idea, basically said that the
Speaker 3: woman who claimed that he had confessed, you know, was
Speaker 3: not credible. Also gave the chance to the prosecutors to
Speaker 3: say the same thing. And then Kavanaugh said, I didn't
Speaker 3: kill these people, and yes, I you know, basically ducked
Speaker 3: the subpoena to testify. So he admitted that on TV,
Speaker 3: which I thought was interesting, and he claimed that the
Speaker 3: police told him to do that, you know, And I
Speaker 3: asked the lead detective that he's like, we never said that.
Speaker 3: We would never say that. We don't We're not scared
Speaker 3: to him. We would never do that. But in terms of,
Speaker 3: you know, new information, I didn't really get anything new
Speaker 3: from the documentary itself, other than the fact that they
Speaker 3: got Kavan ought to talk and I tried, but he said, well,
Speaker 3: this seems like a commercial endeavor and I'm not going
Speaker 3: to participate unless you pay me. And I said, I'm
Speaker 3: a newsperson, I don't do that. So he said he
Speaker 3: didn't want to participate.
Speaker 2: Tell us some of the highlights of this trial in
Speaker 2: terms of the defense and their strategy to direct the
Speaker 2: blame towards Dan Kavanaugh as opposed to their client, Charles Merritt.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say they were blaming him because they didn't
Speaker 3: have any proof that Dan Kavanaugh killed these people. However,
Speaker 3: they did say that they had DNA evidence that they
Speaker 3: were not allowed to run through the CODIS database, which
Speaker 3: is a federal database for DNA, and they tried to
Speaker 3: get the county to do it. The county said we
Speaker 3: can't do it. It's not in the right format. The
Speaker 3: defense called some DNA experts who said, yes, it is
Speaker 3: in the right format. You just have to do a
Speaker 3: manual search, not a regular search where you would just
Speaker 3: feed it in like you would normally do. And the
Speaker 3: county just like kept saying they couldn't do it. And
Speaker 3: I tried to follow this up outside of the trial.
Speaker 3: Could not get this CODIS administrator to return a phone call,
Speaker 3: could not get the sheriff's department to hook me up
Speaker 3: with her. I tried repeatedly. So basically the judge even said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, if you had handled this differently and had
Speaker 3: asked for hearing earlier in the trial, we might have
Speaker 3: been able to set up hearing to decide whether or
Speaker 3: not we could actually do what you're asking, which is
Speaker 3: to run this partial profile, which was some probabilistic genotyping,
Speaker 3: you know, advanced scientific way using algorithms to determine whether
Speaker 3: or not there's a match. Then you take, if you
Speaker 3: find a match, you run it against the actual person's
Speaker 3: DNA profile and see if that's really a match rather
Speaker 3: than a probabilistic algorithm of a match. Again, see what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, how complicated this stuff is. That the jury's
Speaker 3: just like what you know, the prosecution basically dismissed this
Speaker 3: as junk science. But this is one more point that's
Speaker 3: still hanging in the balance today if they would just
Speaker 3: run this DNA through codis. The reason it's interesting is
Speaker 3: there are three items in and around a grave that
Speaker 3: did not match Chase Merritt and did not match any
Speaker 3: of the McStay family. So according to the defense, this
Speaker 3: could be the killers DNA that we still don't know
Speaker 3: who it belongs to, and it could be the real killer,
Speaker 3: and yet that was not allowed to it's been tested,
Speaker 3: so it's not like they can do a regular there's
Speaker 3: an actual form that they can do in a whole
Speaker 3: motion that they tried, but it's already been tested. It
Speaker 3: just hasn't been run through the database. So it's like
Speaker 3: super arcane legal stuff, you know. But that's still hanging
Speaker 3: in the balance. You know that there's still and there's
Speaker 3: still this DNA that could belong to someone who actually
Speaker 3: killed these people that we still don't know, still not
Speaker 3: identified who this belongs to and why was it at
Speaker 3: the gravesite? Right? I mean, for all we know, there
Speaker 3: was somebody who's sent around drinking beer and is like
Speaker 3: in the area, didn't have anything to do with it, maybe,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, We don't know, so that
Speaker 3: was one one area that I thought was important. The
Speaker 3: defense didn't actually blame Dan kevinot, but they thought that
Speaker 3: he should have been looked at more closely, and they
Speaker 3: brought up a whole bunch of stuff as much as
Speaker 3: they were allowed to. They were shot down more times
Speaker 3: than they were allowed to let any of the stuff out.
Speaker 3: That basically they said it, well, he at least had
Speaker 3: the same motive, if not more of a motive. And
Speaker 3: so a lot of the questioning was directed about these witnesses,
Speaker 3: about their interactions with and things that you know, Dan
Speaker 3: Kavanaugh did and said to them. But there was a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff, and this is what was really something
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting and wanted to get into
Speaker 3: in the book, all the stuff that didn't get into
Speaker 3: the trial. So I kind of like to talk about
Speaker 3: some of that more than what actually happened at the trial,
Speaker 3: because the trial was pretty tedious. The trial was it
Speaker 3: was just on and on and on, and like I said,
Speaker 3: you know, there were all these delays. The attorneys were
Speaker 3: constantly bickering like school children, and they were kept accusing
Speaker 3: each other of misconduct. I mean, it just went on
Speaker 3: and on, and the jug it pretty much abdicated any
Speaker 3: kind of sense of control, which he even admitted and
Speaker 3: just said, you guys are acting like school children. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't think the jury's really going to be impressed,
Speaker 3: but I'm not gonna I'm going to leave that for
Speaker 3: another court to deal with. And I'm just like, what,
Speaker 3: So it just you know, it was a very odd trial.
Speaker 3: So let me just talk about a couple of things.
Speaker 3: Can I do that? A couple of things that didn't
Speaker 3: even get into the trial that I thought were important.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Let's talk about evidence that wasn't heard, that
Speaker 2: wasn't allowed, and that really makes up a big part
Speaker 2: of this book and very very interesting as opposed to
Speaker 2: the official narrative.
Speaker 3: Right, Just a couple things, honestly, I'll just go into.
Speaker 3: One was Joseph had a gun.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I heard about this early on and I was like, really, wow,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. I heard about this from Chase Merritt's daughter
Speaker 3: told me about this, and I'm like, I didn't hear
Speaker 3: anything about a gun. And so you know, when I
Speaker 3: finally got the investigative reports, I dug in there and
Speaker 3: there was like a whole bunch of reports in there
Speaker 3: about how they had actually tried to track down where
Speaker 3: this what happened to this gun, because it went missing
Speaker 3: and it ended up in the possession of a convicted
Speaker 3: felon who you know, is not supposed to have a
Speaker 3: gun in Las Vegas, in a car that was stolen
Speaker 3: and left at the side of the road on a
Speaker 3: freeway off ramp. And so they tracked it back and
Speaker 3: they did all this investigation, and they found that this
Speaker 3: guy got it in a trade from somebody who was
Speaker 3: involved in the cannabis recreational cannabis industry. So apparently these
Speaker 3: guys get together and they trade guns and they trade
Speaker 3: other kinds of weird stuff, Like they likened it to
Speaker 3: a tupperware party, except imagine it's just a bunch of
Speaker 3: you know, weed dealers trading stuff. So this is how
Speaker 3: he got it. And whether this is a coincidence or not,
Speaker 3: I just thought this was, you know, one of a
Speaker 3: series of dots that could have you know, that the
Speaker 3: defense was actually trying to connect but were not allowed
Speaker 3: to the people that Dan Kavanaugh sold Joseph's business to
Speaker 3: without any authorization and without any investigation by the San
Speaker 3: Diego County Sheriff's Department, even though they were told that
Speaker 3: he had been trying to sell the business, and then
Speaker 3: after he sold the business, they still never did anything
Speaker 3: about it and didn't ask him really any real deep
Speaker 3: questions about it. But he did it without authorization, and
Speaker 3: that's clear. He claims, oh, I was half owner of
Speaker 3: the business, so I had every I had authorization to
Speaker 3: do it, you know. And there's I don't want to
Speaker 3: go into all the details about that. It's in the
Speaker 3: book of all of the paper trail that Joseph created
Speaker 3: the show that Dan Kavanaugh was never a partner in
Speaker 3: the business, and Patrick McStay kept trying to tell the
Speaker 3: detective that, but the detective and Patrick misstay did not
Speaker 3: get along. So there was all this conflict going on
Speaker 3: when Patrick was trying to get the detective to do
Speaker 3: something with Dan cavan on investigate him, and he just wouldn't.
Speaker 3: But basically, he sold this business to two guys who
Speaker 3: operated a wheat store and one of them was actually
Speaker 3: indicted in a federal investigation for selling pot through the
Speaker 3: mail in boxes. And when they interviewed the accountant who
Speaker 3: handled the business, he basically was like, yeah, there's I
Speaker 3: didn't really get detailed receipts or anything. I didn't really
Speaker 3: get detailed information, but yeah, basically, you know, using boxes
Speaker 3: to ship waterfalls and using boxes to ship weed, you
Speaker 3: know sort of could be you know, some of the
Speaker 3: same kind of methodology. The defense claimed, well, clearly they
Speaker 3: bought this business because they wanted to ship weed in
Speaker 3: the waterfall boxes, you know, pretending to be shipping waterfalls,
Speaker 3: when in fact they were shipping weed for sale in
Speaker 3: a wholesale operation. And they you know, this guy was
Speaker 3: was indicted and convicted. The other guy was not, but
Speaker 3: that's who he sold this business to. So you know,
Speaker 3: in terms of the gun, how did this guy get
Speaker 3: the gun through the some guy in the cannabis industry?
Speaker 3: How did the gun get to you know, it's murky,
Speaker 3: but I just wish that those dots had I wish
Speaker 3: the defense had been able to go into that in court,
Speaker 3: but the judge said it was irrelevant and that there
Speaker 3: was no direct evidence linking any of that to the murders.
Speaker 2: Did you find anything to the idea that it might
Speaker 2: have taken more than one perpetrator to control this family, Well, that.
Speaker 3: Is a common theory. Even the prosecution acknowledged that these
Speaker 3: there were two shallow graves. There were tire tracks of
Speaker 3: two different diameters for the wheelbase going to each one,
Speaker 3: so it looks like there were two different vehicles that
Speaker 3: dropped these these bodies into the two graves. So right there,
Speaker 3: it looks like two trucks, two people, plus you have
Speaker 3: a family of four. How is one person going to
Speaker 3: control four people? Justin McStay had the key to the
Speaker 3: truck that was found at the border in his pocket
Speaker 3: when he and they found it when they found his remains,
Speaker 3: So I mean, there's just there's just a lot of
Speaker 3: unanswered questions. And you know, they initially, well not initially,
Speaker 3: but close to the trial, they actually tried to implicate
Speaker 3: Chase's brother, Bennett, who also had been in prison. So
Speaker 3: Chase Merritt had been in prison as a thie, never
Speaker 3: had a violent crime in his entire history. They were
Speaker 3: trying to paint a portrait of you know, he and
Speaker 3: Bennett potentially did this together. So they got Bennett's DNA,
Speaker 3: but they ended up not being able to get any
Speaker 3: DNA off this sledgehammer that was found in the grave,
Speaker 3: so they were never able to pursue that theory.
Speaker 2: At all.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there there was a theory that there were
Speaker 3: more there was more than one person involved, and nobody
Speaker 3: was really arguing that that wasn't the case. They just
Speaker 3: didn't know who it could be. And they never found
Speaker 3: any evidence of that there was another person involved because
Speaker 3: they were they put wiretaps on Merritt's phone, and he
Speaker 3: never called anybody or mentioned anybody, you know, as an accomplice.
Speaker 3: And he claimed he was never there. He said, I
Speaker 3: was never in the desert. I didn't do this. He
Speaker 3: claims his innocence to this day.
Speaker 2: Was there evidence of or was it just an assumption
Speaker 2: that Summer had been sexually assaulted?
Speaker 3: It is a defense theory because and I think it
Speaker 3: makes sense. Her panties and sweatpants were found separate from
Speaker 3: her body above her head, and her bra was it
Speaker 3: looked like it had been cut down the middle. So
Speaker 3: they said, you know, we can't they can't know for
Speaker 3: sure because there was no tissue left, you know, They
Speaker 3: couldn't do you know, the equivalent of a rape kit
Speaker 3: all those years later, because the tissues had all were gone,
Speaker 3: you know. But and so the prosecution was like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's no evidence of a rape. But clearly. I mean,
Speaker 3: why Joseph was bundled up completely differently and tied with
Speaker 3: these ropes and stuff in summer. Summer's remains were not
Speaker 3: found that way. And like I said, the pants and
Speaker 3: panties were found separate from the rest of her body,
Speaker 3: as if they'd been pulled off, you know, and that
Speaker 3: her bra had been cut off because it was you
Speaker 3: could just see the you know, the front of her
Speaker 3: bra looked like as fraid as if it had been cut.
Speaker 2: And it was confirmed that the murder weapon was the sledgehammer.
Speaker 3: No, they can't confirm that there was no DNA that
Speaker 3: they could find on it. But based on the size
Speaker 3: and shape of the hole in the back of the
Speaker 3: skulls of each one of the victims, and this three
Speaker 3: pound sledge hammer was found in one of the graves,
Speaker 3: they assumed that, you know, it was consistent with But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: they can't say for sure.
Speaker 2: And back to the trial. In the eighty five days
Speaker 2: of trial, jury deliberates for about quite a few days. Actually,
Speaker 2: what is the verdict on three of these four counts
Speaker 2: of first degree murder?
Speaker 3: Do you really want to give away the ending? I
Speaker 3: kind of like to leave some mystery Okay, can we
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 2: Sure, I want people.
Speaker 3: To read the book. I surprise, But I guess I
Speaker 3: can tell you that I can't get a I can't
Speaker 3: get a book deal without having kilt him. I guess
Speaker 3: I have to tell you. Yeah, and he is on
Speaker 3: death row. But I always like people to have a
Speaker 3: little bit of a surprise. It was not a straight line, though,
Speaker 3: Let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you say that there's a certain status right now,
Speaker 2: presently for twenty twenty five regarding this case, Maret.
Speaker 3: Is working on a habeas corpus petition. He told me
Speaker 3: he's working with a chapter of the Innocence Project. He
Speaker 3: wouldn't give me any information about who he was working with, though,
Speaker 3: so I could not confirm that. He said he wanted
Speaker 3: to file it in twenty twenty five, but I guess
Speaker 3: he says he's passed it on to them now. So
Speaker 3: I can't confirm that. I just know that he wanted
Speaker 3: to do that. But you know, he's also said other
Speaker 3: things to me that took quite a while to actually happen.
Speaker 3: But when we talked about it, it was, you know,
Speaker 3: the cell phone tower stuff, you know, ineffective counsel And
Speaker 3: I don't. I haven't seen this this habeas petition, so
Speaker 3: I don't know for sure what would be in it,
Speaker 3: and it hasn't been filed yet to my knowledge. But
Speaker 3: that's what he was hoping to do.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us more about this correspondence between you.
Speaker 3: We basically were talking on the phone. I got a
Speaker 3: Burner phone app for my phone, which basically assigns a
Speaker 3: new phone number and then, you know, so that person,
Speaker 3: somebody in prison can call me without having my actual
Speaker 3: phone number. It goes through that app. And so we
Speaker 3: talked on the phone repeatedly for a while. I asked
Speaker 3: him questions, he told me stories, He gave me his
Speaker 3: side of the story, and he told me some pretty
Speaker 3: colorful things about his past, which I put in the book.
Speaker 3: And you know, I thought, you know, he was an
Speaker 3: interesting character. He gets mad though, he gets upset about things,
Speaker 3: and so you kind of have to wade through that.
Speaker 3: I actually just there's a woman who he calls his girlfriend,
Speaker 3: who I have kind of corresponded with, you know, a
Speaker 3: little bit here and there on Facebook through messages, and
Speaker 3: apparently he's upset about something in the book. And the
Speaker 3: book's not even out yet, so I mean, I didn't
Speaker 3: even answer her because I'm like, well, he hasn't even
Speaker 3: seen the book, what do I don't even know what
Speaker 3: you're talking about, you know, and he doesn't understand what
Speaker 3: a journalist really does. He has he has very opinionated,
Speaker 3: he has very strong ideas about things. He's also very
Speaker 3: charming and he's, you know, an interesting guy. But he's
Speaker 3: not an easy person too, because he you know, he
Speaker 3: gets angry about things, and he gets upset about things,
Speaker 3: and he's you know, really has strong opinion about how
Speaker 3: things should be and how you know, you can't there's
Speaker 3: not much you can say when you get to that point,
Speaker 3: you know, but it was it's really important to talk
Speaker 3: to him, and I'm glad I did. But he wouldn't
Speaker 3: let anybody talk to me. You know. He was very
Speaker 3: controlling in terms of you know, there were people I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk to and he basically said, don't talk
Speaker 3: to her. He's like, he would talk to me, but
Speaker 3: he didn't want anyone else talking to me because he
Speaker 3: really wanted to control his own narrative from prison, and
Speaker 3: he was able to do it. These women that I
Speaker 3: tried to talk to just to confirm some of the
Speaker 3: things he told me, you know, one of them. I'll
Speaker 3: give you one example. He told me he was a
Speaker 3: stripper for many, many years, and I'm like, well, I
Speaker 3: thought that was pretty colorful, and I just wanted someone
Speaker 3: to tell me that that was true. So I eventually,
Speaker 3: you know, he didn't want his wife to talk to me.
Speaker 3: She eventually talked to me and she told me, yes,
Speaker 3: he had told her the same thing. I'm like, okay, good.
Speaker 3: And she was with him for quite a long time.
Speaker 3: I had three kids with him, so I figured, Okay,
Speaker 3: I think I'm safe saying that he was a stripper.
Speaker 3: But I would hate to put things in the book
Speaker 3: that he told me that I couldn't confirm, because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a journalist and I'm supposed to confirm things. So
Speaker 3: I did my best to do, you know, to check
Speaker 3: that things, and I give him a chance to explain,
Speaker 3: you know, various things that he was accused of.
Speaker 2: So very interesting. I'll leave it at that. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming on and talking about your latest
Speaker 2: down to the bone a Missing Families, murder and the
Speaker 2: elusive quest for justice. Can you tell us about a
Speaker 2: website or your any social media you do tell us
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 3: Yes, My website is Kaitlinaruther dot com and I'm also
Speaker 3: on Substack. Just started posting on there, so feel free
Speaker 3: to subscribe. It's free. I am on pretty much every
Speaker 3: form of social media there is, Facebook, X, Blue Sky, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't be as active on every single one,
Speaker 3: so I'm mostly on Facebook. But I also wanted to
Speaker 3: let people know that I'm if you're listening to this
Speaker 3: and you're anywhere in southern California, even in Tennessee or
Speaker 3: in Arasz I'm going to be having book signings through
Speaker 3: the months of June, July, and August, and actually one
Speaker 3: in September so far. So and if anybody wants to
Speaker 3: do has a book club that has got you know,
Speaker 3: more than ten people in it, hopefully I do. I
Speaker 3: do sometimes do Zoom book clubs as well, So you
Speaker 3: can contact me through my website and I'll let you
Speaker 3: know if I can do it. I really have worked
Speaker 3: so hard on this book, and it was the publication
Speaker 3: was delayed three times, which has really really been difficult
Speaker 3: to try to, you know, get the momentum going on
Speaker 3: the promotion and then it might the rug would be
Speaker 3: pulled out no, we're delaying it again. Nope, we're delaying
Speaker 3: it again. No, we're doing it one more time. But
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god. So I'm really really excited.
Speaker 3: My author copies I got an email are writing today.
Speaker 3: So I'm super excited about that. And after so many
Speaker 3: years of working on this book, I'm really just really
Speaker 3: excited to get it out there and let people read
Speaker 3: it and see what people think.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you for those updates and all
Speaker 2: that news down to the bone a missing famili's murder
Speaker 2: and the elusive quest for justice. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for this interview, Caitlin Rother, and you have a great
Speaker 2: evening and good night. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Dan, I really appreciate it. Bye bye,
Speaker 3: bye bye