The Disappearance and Murder of the McStay Family

On February 4, 2010, the McStay family, Joseph, Summer, Gianni (4), and Joseph Jr. (3), a happy prosperous family, fell off the face of the earth.

            Five days later, family members got worried when they had not heard from the family in five days, so they sent a family friend to check on the family. When he went in through an open window, what he found was a house that looked as if the family had just stepped out, with food left on the countertop and the dogs in the backyard with fresh food and water. It looked as if the McStays had someone looking after the dogs while they were away. This was beginning to look as if the McStays might have left on their own. But was that true?

            Nine days later, Joseph’s brother went to the house and left a note. Animal Control called and said they had been feeding the dogs in the McStay’s backyard and were about to take them to the shelter. Knowing that the care of the dogs would be important to his brother and that he would never leave the dogs unattended, Joseph’s brother called the police.

            Eleven days after the family went missing, police are called and search the house. Other than the food that was left out to rot, they found nothing. The family had just moved into this house, so there were boxes everywhere, nothing you wouldn’t expect.

            The day they went missing, Joseph had attended a few meetings, planned with the painter for him to come back the next day, and spent the night making cell phone calls from home while his wife, Summer was preparing for a visit to see her sister.

            The neighbor’s security cameras had caught the McStay’s car leaving the house in the evening they were last seen. The car never returned and the camera didn’t catch who was in the car when it left.

On Feb. 8^th, the McStay’s car was towed from a parking lot near the Merican border. The car

was searched, but nothing was found that wasn’t normally found in a car with two small boys: new toys, the boys' car seats. The car’s seats were adjusted for the McStay’s heights. The security cameras in the parking lot showed that the car had been dropped off there on the day it was towed.

            The assumption was that the McStay’s had parked their car and walked across the border to Mexico. But, many of Summer’s friends said she would never go to Mexico; she thought it was too dangerous there for her family.

           

Border security reviewed their cameras and found footage of a man holding the hand of a little boy and a woman holding the hand of another little child, all walking across the Mexican border at 7:00 p.m. on the 8^th. It fit with the fact that the car was left in the parking lot the same day.

                The family had mixed feeling on whether it was the McStays, but the authorities felt differently. A search of the Mc Stay’s computer found searches about what was needed in the way of identification to get children into Mexico and also lessons in Spanish. Somehow this information leads some to believe that Summer killed her family.

One issue was that Joseph had a valid passport, but Summer’s was expired and the children didn’t have any at all. In addition, one of the children’s birth certificate was found still inside the home. They could not have entered Mexico with no identification. Also, the McStays had just bought their house, and they had over $100,000 in the bank. If they left willingly, why didn’t they take their money with them?

            Stories on America’s Most Wanted, Nancy Grace, and Unsolved Mysteries did not help to bring the McStays home.

            In April of 2013, the case is turned over to the FBI, and, that November, the remains of four people were found in a shallow grave in the Mojave Desert. Two of them were adults, and two were small children. Only a few days later, it was confirmed that the bodies were, indeed, the McStay family. They had all died of blunt force trauma, and there was evidence that the family had been tortured before they died.

            A year later, Chase Merritt, a business associate of Joseph McStay and whose DNA was found in the McStay’s car was arrested..But why would this man kill the family? It turned out he had forged $21,000 checks from the McStay’s account to settle his gambling debts after the McStays went missing. Perhaps this explains why the family was tortured. Was it in an attempt to get pin numbers from the adults to get access to all the money in their accounts?

            Merritt tried to defend himself and then hired and fired numerous lawyers, dragging out his trial for years. The trial finally commenced on January 7, 2019, and 6 months later, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Merritt continues to profess his innocence 

            What an awful story. A young family was destroyed by a man whose only concern was getting money to support his gambling habit. How sad.