McStays Episode 1: 11 Days

crime podcast I'm hosting from 2020 in ABC Audio called "What Happens To The Mix Days."

“It's a story about secrets, betrayal, and the dark underbelly of the American dream. In 2010,”

a family of four was found missing from their southern California home, with no signs of a struggle or a forced entry. Had the mixed days really left on their own, if they did, but would they have gone in such a hurry, or had something more sinister happened? Keep listening now to hear

the first few minutes of the shocking story of what happened to the mixed days. If you'd like it,

you can follow what happened to the mixed days for free weekly episodes starting August 11th, or you can subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen to the first four episodes ad-free right away. Now here's an exclusive sneak peek at what happened to the mixed days. Super Troopers 3, me out. Only in fifth rated, under 17, not admitted without fifth.

“In November of 2009, a family of four moved into a palm tree dotted code of sec and the hills”

of San Diego County. Joseph McStan is wife summer, wherein there are early forties and living a seemingly charmed southern California life with their two young sons. Their new neighborhood was surrounded by mountains and farmland. Their new house, a large Spanish style home on avocado vista lay. His around ten years old was the stucco exterior in the red terracotta roof. The mixed days home videos from around this time show an active, fun-loving family.

In one, little Joseph Junior runs around the first floor of their new home.

In another video, all four of the mixed days bites of the beef. "Oh my god. Got a lack mama!" And then there's the video where the two mixed dayboys, Joseph Junior and his big brother Gianni, swing side by side and a playground swing set together. Their mom, summer, horses of them, higher and higher. For a couple of months, these were the types of sounds that filled the

mixed day residents. One day in February 2010, the house and quiet.

Local station KGTV covered the story. The outside of the mixed day home remains

exactly as the family left it. Their shoes and the newspaper both outside. There was a carton of eggs left out on the counter and one other thing. Summer mixed day left for prescription sunglasses behind. Family left their dogs behind and there had been no activity on their phones. It was as if the mixed days had simply vanished into thin air. The authorities, friends and family were baffled.

“But how does a vibrant family of four suddenly go missing?”

From ABC audio in 2020, I'm Austin Singh and this is what happened to the mixed days. Episode 1. 11 Days. Joseph mixed day, or Joey, had a weekly ritual with this little brother Michael. In a 2011 interview with ABC News, Michael said that every Friday Joseph would give him a ring on his way to play pick-up soccer.

He would call me with touch-based, "Hey, how's things going? Hey, Mikey, how's your business? What's going on? How are the girls? I'd ask other boys where and hey, tell me I was going on." But on Friday February 5, 2010, Michael didn't get that weekly call from his big brother. For Michael, this was unusual, but not alarming. So to miss one Friday, I mean I didn't think a whole lot of it.

But then several days went by without a peep from Joseph. No calls, texts, or emails. It was the same at his work, too. Joseph called the business that sold high-end decorative founds. The kind you might see in hotel lobbies. The company was in the middle of a couple of

There was customer emails not being answered, which is not like Joe. He was usually right on top of it.

“Joseph's friends started reaching out to Michael to ask, "Hey, have you heard from Joe?"”

What's going on? It's not answering his phone. Joseph's wife's summer wasn't returning calls either. So Michael posted to his brother's Facebook page asking friends. If you've seen him, we've let the family know. Family and friends got in touch. Michael and Joseph's parents, plus two of Joseph's colleagues. Dan Cavano and Chase Merritt. They shared any relevant information they had. And Michael pieced together at Thursday February 4th was likely the last day

anyone had seen or heard from his brother. Michael and Joseph's father said he talked to Joseph that morning. And according to Joseph's business associated Chase, he and Joseph met up at afternoon. Love-runs were worried about the mixed states. But Michael tried to remain optimistic.

“He thought it was possible the family left on a trip. And just didn't tell anyone.”

I thought, well, maybe they're doing a quick vacate. So I didn't want to jump to any conclusions. A few days after the mixed days went quiet. Joseph's business partner Dan Cavano called the police for a welfare check. San Diego County Sheriff's deputies came out to the home and knocked on the door. No one was home at the time. But with no signs that anything was a mess. Deputies followed procedure and did not go inside. Joseph's business associate, Chase Merritt

also went to the house a couple times that week. He says to see if he could find Joseph. No luck. And by February 13th, the mixed days hadn't been seen or heard from in nine days. Michael says he decided to check the home himself. He took a trip to Avocado, Vista Lane.

“Chase came along too. I'd went down there, started knocking on doors, asking the neighbors that they”

seen him. Michael says he let himself into the house through a back window that was cracked open. He started looking through the home. He says it was messy. Kitchen drawers have been pulled out and placed on countertops. Toys, books, and clothes were scattered around. And the house was barely furnished. The family was using air mattresses instead of beds. To Michael, it was like his brother and his family were camping in their own home.

But this was Michael's first time in the mixed day's new house. It only moved in about two months

earlier and they were remodeling. Michael says they'd been doing work on the floors and painting cabinets. So to him, this could have been a normal level of untitlingness, given the circumstances, and given that Joseph and Summer had two young children. But there was one thing Michael noticed right away that he clocked as being very, very off. The dogs were left outside unattended. It didn't make sense.

It makes stay family dogs were left to sit in the hot California sun. By all accounts, the mixed days loved their dogs. A big Akita called mayor and a golden retriever

puppy called Digger. Friends say they were like second kids to Joseph and Summer.

To leave them alone outside for days on end, this just didn't sit right with Michael. He asked an neighbor to keep an eye on the dogs. And then, he left, hoping his family would show up soon. But the mixed days had disappeared, leaving a puzzle that would soon mystify their friends and family. Mysteries unravel and stunning truths are revealed when 2020 investigates. Follow the clues, the evidence, the breaking new details. ABC's 2020 needs true murder mysteries.

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One thing about Joseph is he would always talk for hours and I'm not exaggerating like

sometimes two hours. Gina Watson was one of Joseph McStay's friends. It meant because Gina also worked in the decorative fountain industry. She says they've gotten to know each other well and according to Gina, Joseph was a talker. I would call him before I left for lunch to talk about whatever the problem of the day was and then it would evolve into just I don't know.

Like conversation goes from one thing to another and then I'm like the phone's getting hot

“because it's been in your ears so long. Like can we wrap this up?”

Gina said that Joseph endured his wife's summer and there are two boys. Joseph's kids and his wife for everything to him. Gina says Joseph would share stories about his room bunkest little boys. Like the time they snuck out of the beds early one morning and started rummaging through their kitchen cabinets. He said one night, Gianni and Little Joe we had gotten into the flower.

I guess they kept it in a lower cabinet and your apparent and your tired and your little kids sneaks out of bed and gets into the flower and they had it all over themselves and they had like hand prints and footprints everywhere and they recovered head to toe. Gina describes Joseph as a surfer dude. He had wavy, shoulder length, light, brown hair and pictures. It looks like he would be more comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt

and a suit and tie. Joseph and summer sons, Gianni and Joseph Junior were four years old and three respectively at the time they vanished. Photos of the little boys show their hair down to their shoulders just like their dad. In one photo, Joey Junior holds an ice cream sandwich, chocolate all over his mouth. And Gina says their dad, Joseph Senior was generous with his friends. He would buy his friends laptops just because he was excited about technology and he wanted them to

be as excited as he was and oh you gotta check out this gaming laptop like oh you need top of the line. No that's not good enough. Let me get you this one. He was just very easy with money.

He never was too uptight about it. He was more so than any person I've ever met to be honest.

Joseph and summer were introduced in the early 2000s. One of his friends said them up and everyone says they hit it off right away. Summer was a very passionate woman who went after what she wanted. That's Jesse Sovaria, a friend of summers. I met summer around 2006 and I was

“living in Laguna Beach and I think both of us were Lagunaites. Jesse and summer were both photographers”

at the time and met while working the same shoot. To me, summer was exotic, you know, she had dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, really big cute smile. Jesse says she and summer would go out together to create it and join the beachy art scene of Laguna. One summer got pregnant, Jesse says she scaled back her active social life, stopped working and became a stay at home mom. They were nesting. That phase in her life was nesting.

Friends and families say Joseph and summer loved the beach. For a time, the couple in their sons lived in San Clomene. Their apartment was on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean, with the world-class surfing right outside their door. The kids, they were growing up to be surfers dudes too. They definitely took after Joey, you know, wanting to be close to the ocean. Another big part of them backstage lives was Joseph's work. Earth inspired products.

It sold the elaborate custom decorative waterfalls. These were large-scale standalone objects, often six feet tall. Water would be pumped invisibly to the top of tall glass pains,

Earth inspired products also had an online retail side where they sold pre-manufactured water features.

Gina Watson worked for one of Joseph's manufacturing partners. As had the two men and became friends,

“she says Joseph was a designer at heart. He actually started his business, I think,”

like in his garage, designing his own features by hand. Gina says Joseph was taking on more and more custom work, and the business was doing really well. According to people familiar with the company, Earth inspired products had gotten big contracts. A car wash chain with 150 locations, a huge custom job for the Palm Mitchell hair salon brand, and even a project in Saudi Arabia. In late 2009, it mixed a family mood from their small beachside apartment in San Clemente,

so their house on that palm tree line called a sack. Their new town of fallbroke is better known for its avocado orchards than its proximity to the coast. It's a 30-minute drive to the beach,

“a trade-off for the surf-loving week stays. But it was big, five bedrooms with a back yard.”

Here's some nice friend, Jesse again. All the outside was completely populated with kids, toys, and trucks, and boy stuff, and she was growing flowers and gardens. Again, they had plans to remodel the home. In my early 2010, some of the renovations were underweight. Joseph would fill his brother Michael in on the progress. Okay, the remodel in the house, it's kind of crazy, you know, the furniture still in storage.

I February of 2010, Joseph was doing well professionally. The couple was working on upgrading their new house. Family seemed settled. Joe doesn't invest, you know, like $30,000 into a house to renovate it

“because he's going to leave tomorrow. That doesn't drive. He doesn't walk out on his friends and his family.”

And yet, that house in fallbroke, no one was home. And for over a week, there had only been silence from the family who lived there. It didn't add up. Michael McStay says he decided that if his brother and family were, as he hoped, just on an extended vacation. It should be back by February 15th. He says he told himself that if by 9 a.m., he still hadn't heard from Joseph. File a missing person's report. That's exactly what Michael did.

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Stossy is back. Most people know me for a fan or pump rules, but I'm a mom of a wife, a podcaster. I'm traumatized by reality TV, but I can't stay away from it. It's like it's an ordinary payroll,

they don't get to be in your life. Wow, reality has never been this real. Not everyone is

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Lieutenant Dennis Brugos from the San Diego Sheriff's Department, over saw the investigation.

“According to police at 1032 AM, Michael, along with officers from the San Diego Sheriff's Department,”

arrived at the McStay's Fallbroke House. A knocked on the door, checked the exterior for signs of forced entry. When they got in no response, they entered the residence and started a search. It began by looking for people, either people in distress or bodies. They found neither. But they didn't counter the dogs. We're still in the backyard alone. With some water and food left out for them.

That raised red flags because, by all accounts, they took very good care of their dogs. And when police heard from Michael that the McStay's had left without notifying any friends or family, that raised immediate alarm bells too. What the deputy initially learned was this was a really nice family,

and they never made plans to leave. And so that raised the suspicion level to the point where he said,

"You know what? I should probably call Homicide. I don't know what's going on out of here." Lieutenant Brugos says suspicious circumstances cases like this one are handled by the Homicide Unit. But there's a dead body or not. Please say that when Homicide Detective has joined the search at the McStay residents, they checked again for any signs of foul play.

Any clue as to what may have happened to the McStays. Officers looked all over the home, inside the kitchen pantry, in the den, the garage, in a recycling bin outside, in the trunk part in the driveway. As detective searched, they noticed a few curious things. To start, it was the food that was left out.

According to police and court documents, downstairs in the living room, there were two small bowls of popcorn, half eaten, left on a futon, bananas that had started to rock. And the carton of eggs were sitting out on the kitchen counter. You don't need perishable food out if you're going to be gone for an extended period of time, generally. It seemed like the family may have left the house suddenly, even unexpectedly.

And then, those are the mess. Police documented. Wows powered up on the bathroom counter. Suitcases left open with clothes spilling out in a pile. A tall lamp that looked like it had been knocked over. If the McStays had gone on vacation, like Michael so hoped was the case.

“Why would they have left suitcases full of clothing behind?”

And detectives also uncovered something else. Lieutenant Brugos again. We knew that one of the vehicles was parked here in the driveway and the other one wasn't here. The McStays in 1996, White Isuzu Trooper, was missing. If police could find the vehicle, maybe they could find the McStays.

They ran a search on the Isuzu Trooper, and immediately came up with a hit. According to police records, the check revealed that the vehicle was recently told from a parking lot about 60 miles from the McStays home near the U.S. Mexico border. So near, in fact, that it was walking distance to the border terminal. According to police, the car had been towed from that lot on February 8th,

four days after the McStays vanished. Now, police had to find out. What did this clue mean?

“In the McStays leave for Mexico altogether, and if so, did they go voluntarily or by force?”

Are they hiding, kidnapped? Police couldn't yet say. The search of the McStay residents took all day, and in the end, police determined there was no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle or act of violence, no blood, in other words, no apparent signs of foul play, no clear crime.

But that didn't mean that detectors were confident that always well with the McStays.

The abandoned dogs, the spoiled food left out. The family car found at the McSkin border, as the tenant Brugos puts it. When you put the whole picture together, it raises the level of suspicion that something's not right. One's officers wrapped up the search of the home, a couple of the detectives,

In the tape from this interview, Michael still hopes that his big brother's family could be perfectly fine. What percentage of these like being in a situation like this, and then it just being some totally

innocent? I can tell you that I'd never had one like this where a family is just totally missing,

ever, and so I can't give you a good statistic. Detective Dugal has Michael for more information

“about the missing family. I was Joseph and Summer's relationship, who are their closest friends?”

Did he add problems with anyone, or money trouble? Do you know if there's any money involvement with your brother, owning someone money, or would somebody try to take advantage of your brother? I don't know enough about what's going on with his business. Why? I have no idea. It dug deeper, asking about Joseph's finances. How much is your brother worth?

Oh, I don't know. I have no idea. Do you know what it's yearly to come in?

Dugal asked if Joseph might have been involved in narcotics. My brother doesn't even do drugs. So, that's an out. Detectives also asked about the Asuzu Trooper. Did Michael have any idea what Joseph and his family might be doing walking distance from Teoana? I don't know. I don't know what he's doing out there. I have no idea.

I don't think he knows anybody else. The whole situation still didn't sit right with Michael,

or the detectives. This thing has just got me scratched my head. Well, we don't know any more than you know.

“What do you think? Well, it's a brother. Where are they? What do you mean?”

I'm hoping they went down, and they just went to Mexico and they took a two-ing vacation. I mean, that's a, that's a pipe dream at this point. I don't know. I would hope that too, but what do you see in the house that would indicate that that's probably not true? I just walked through, but I didn't get it. I mean, I didn't, but let me help you out. Inside the walking closet, there's suitcases, and there's little kid suitcases with two-case flaps up,

and we fold it, little kid, laundry, clean laundry in the suitcases. And they want on vacation, the kid suitcases would have been with them. In his official account of the day, Detectives Du Gaul concluded that there had been no apparent

“sign of a crime, but he also said this. It is my opinion the mixed-day family is the victim of”

foul play. The police knew, this wasn't over. It was more work to be done. Now the race was on. To find out one had to actually happen to the family of four. Before, it was too late. What happens to the mixed-day is a production of ABC audio in 2020, hosted by me, Ocean Singh, produced by Madeline Wood, Vika Erenson, Audrey Mastec, and Kiara Powell, with help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer,

or supervising producer as Susie Liu, music by having Viola, scoring by Kiara Powell, mixing by having Viola and Bob Mallody. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janis Johnson, Chris Donnerman, Joseph Reed, Sonny Andrew, Alyssa Stuller, Zenderson Morris, Tom Burmett, Hendra Dallis Sakha, and Blue Brown. Gosh Cohen is our director of podcast programming. Even McMath is our executive producer.

Can't wait for more? Listen to the next episode ahead of everyone else, add free. Subscribe now to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts. Click the link in the description to start your free trial today. In 2023, a source sent me a tip. It tied baseball's biggest star to a vast illegal sports betting operation, but then someone surprising confessed to me, his best friend. From 30 for 30 podcasts, this is the betrayal of Showhail Otani. Listen now,

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