McStays Episode 4: Questions and Answers

from 2020 in ABC Audio. What happens to the mixed days? Remember you can get new episodes

weekly on Tuesdays, if you follow what happens to the mixed days when Apple Podcasts spotify, Amazon Music, or ever 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 Happens To The Mix Days.

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They believe Kozan Yomdeen. October 22nd, 2014, almost a year after the bodies of the mixed day family were found brutally murdered in the Mojave Desert. We're trying to find the mixed day case. We've been working at the scene and we obviously-- The San Bernardino County Sheriff's detectives called Chase Marriott in front of you. We've been working at Chase nonstop, trying to follow up on everything. Detective Eddie Bachman, and his colleague met Chase Marriott

in a small interview room at the San Bernardino headquarters. Chase wore a low white baseball cap

“and sat sideways on a hard chair. He had first been interviewed by police almost four years ago,”

just days after the mixed day is one 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. We talked every day, 25 minutes, many, many times a day, right on the phone. 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. Two or three big bananas. I helped him pack 'em. 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 went. It was too much trying to upside down.”

We lost everything. That's just trying to make it neat and 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. But I'm been on such a chase. San Bernardino investigators felt that they had found evidence at told a different story. In reinterviewing the McStay's 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 them a safe family? From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm Washington saying, and this is what happened to the McStays. Episode 4. Questions and answers.

Before San Bernardino detectives brought Chase married in for an interview, they dug through the files they'd gotten from San Diego Sheriff's. And 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 10 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 10s. "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.

Another key moment that San Bernardino detected zeroed in on was the day the McStays won't miss it.

February 4, 2010. A neighbor's security camera had captured a grainy dark video of a vehicle leaving the driveway of the McStays house in Fallbrook. San Diego detective who investigated the missing person's case in 2010, told ABC News that the vehicle had looked like the McStays car. A white 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 to 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 McStays car stuck out on the back left side of the vehicle. But investigators thought that the vehicle on this video had an exhaust pipe on the back right side. Tobokman and his team of investigators. This looked more like the exhaust pipe of the utility truck. And at that time, Chase married drove such a truck. Boxy white one. Why would Chase's vehicle be leaving the McStays residents on the night

that they did disappear? The McStays home wasn't the only place that Chase was suspected to have been during

that crucial window of time. Three months after the McStays 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 pinging off around the time that McStays disappeared. We were fortunate that Chase had a new iPhone. iPhone's had just kind of come on the scene in 2010 and he had an iPhone with the AT&T service that provided cell sites. A lot of the other cell phones didn'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 men spoke more than 15 times a day. Investigators determined that after the McStays weren't missing, the volume of calls dropped off.

Chase only called Joseph 11 times between February 5th and February 9th. He made no calls to Joseph after that. This struck Detective Markman as strange. He just stops calling him. That's not characteristic, especially if he was close to friends as 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 detective's report, the 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. In the area where the bodies had been buried on February 6th, two days after the McStays were missing. Okay, is there a reason that he was here? Or, or is he here because he's buried in bodies? The phone records also revealed periods where Chase's phone showed no activity.

For detectives, these blackouts were also intriguing. In their report, detectives indicated that on February 8th, four days after the McStays went missing. Chase's phone was turned off from 7.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. and detectives developed a possible theory as to why. According to their report, detectives thought that Chase had driven the McStays car.

“Their white asuzu trooper to the U.S. Mexico border. Remember, the McStays car had been found on”

February 8th in a shopping center parking lot near the McStays border. We have this question how did the trooper get down to the San Jacidra 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 had never driven the trooper. It was all recorded.

The last time I was in it, we went to Camp Clinton. We went to we played Payne Ball Camp Pendleton.

Back in 2010, San Diego investigators had swabbed the car, taking DNA samples from all over the interior.

“San Bernardino detectives compared 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, it 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 mixed-day'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 four or five six things and it's more than a coincidence and then you start focusing in on, 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.”

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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 Merit in for a voluntary interview in October 2014, it had been almost a year since the mixed-day'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 talked with Chase about his health. His new job,

his recent trip to the mixed-day's gravesite in the desert. He said it was for a project who was working on about the family. I had decided that I was going to write a book. And I was going to do the cover of the book where he standing next to Joseph's cross. When Chase mentioned something about the day the mixed-day's disappeared. February 4, 2010. Detectives began to narrow their line of questioning.

Detectives 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." Sometimes they, I met him at Chick-fil-A. He said, "We ate and tossed him out all over the stuff after the meeting. He went his way, I went mine." The next few days after that, Chase said, "Want notable? But by the following week,

he said he was so worried about Joseph that he decided to contact his family and visit the mixed-day home." So February 4, for a lot of time, he sent Joseph in a week after that.

“Did you ever think that anyone would've seen you or your vehicle up in the high-deader area?”

Victor? Victor, yes? Not that I know. What I want to, my sister. 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. Detectives knew 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. She constantly gone up in here to see him at my buddy. He was making sure fine-ampers where he tried to keep him away from his life and there was a big thing.

And as for making checks that look like they were from Joseph to Chase, he said he'd written checks from Joseph's account, "Dousins and dozens of times." He said he would do this to pay both himself and other suppliers on behalf of the company.

Chase about the checks. They moved on. This time, to find out of Chase had an explanation

for why his DNA was on the steering wheel of the mixed-day's trooper. So at that time, detectives did ask you if you'd ever go to the trooper. And you said, "No, you don't. I'm just going to pass you to the trooper." When you went painful. I just want to clarify that with you.

“Actually, that isn't what I said because I remember the conversation. The last time I had driven”

the trooper was the only one paying ball in. Chase denied telling San Diego detectives that he'd only ever been a passenger in the mixed-day's car, which, remember, was all caught on tape.

But never to. Never to. And Chase told San Bernardino detectives actually. He had driven the car.

When he and Joseph went painful. 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 day 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 month ago. The amount of Chase's DNA that was found in the car, Smith says, was consistent with more recent use. If Chase had driven the car to the Mexican border, what had 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 it 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 revealed that they knew more, much more than they'd been letting on.

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And when it was announced, his news was not in the world. Now the Earth is coming to an end. Four hours into their interview would chase Merit in October 2014. Detectives were ready to step things up and up. 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.

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.”

The checks police found from the days right before and after Joseph went missing. They said those checks were written by Chase without Joseph's knowledge. Chase kept saying that he knew how important the case was, but he just didn't have another answer to offer. Detectives 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.

Detectives pressed Chase further. They asked him about the vehicles seen in the neighbor's video.

The one leaving the McStay's home on February 4th, 2010,

that detectors now believed belonged to Chase. 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?" "That's a great sight on February 6th."

“"Not possibly that's how it was in there."”

"You even read it, you said you coined it in the order. He just asked her about what one of the two." "It was just him denying, he was just going to deny it all the way." Detectives spent hours confronting Chase with their claims about his role in the McStay's murders. Which Chase kept saying he didn't know or denying their allegations.

"Of course not. I have never heard of him."

"What I need you to do is figure out what happened to your phone." "Okay. This isn't some little D.S.K.A.'s or anything like that." "That's man. I know." "So hot outside of four people." "I know those people."

"Okay." "Okay." "People that were very close to you." "You're self-applied and desperate." "And it's family."

"Okay. Two of them go in." "All right." "I know."

“"This is John 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 him go. But this wasn't the last time that detectives would talk to Chase Murray.

Because with or without answers from Chase, they believed they knew what actually happened on February 4th, 2010. And about why the mixtaids had been murdered to begin with. What happens to the mixtaids is a production of ABC audio in 2020. Hosted by me, Ashen Singh, produced by Madeleine Wood,

Vika Arancin, Audrey Mastek, and Kiyara Powell. With help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer, our supervising producer is Susie Luke, music by Evan Viola, mixing by Evan Viola and Bob Mallory. Thanks to Kitty Dendos, Janis Johnson, Camille Peterson, Sabrina Fang,

Chris Donovan, Joseph Rie, Sunny Andrew, Alyssa Stowler, Xander Samaras, Tom Birmingham, Indra Delisaha, and Blue Browning.

Even McNath is our executive producer.

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