McStays Episode 5: The Best Friend

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

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Mandalorian in Grogu official podcast now streaming on Disney Plus, or wherever you get your podcast, and catch Star Wars The Mandalorian in Grogu now streaming on Disney Plus, terms apply. When Kathy Jarvis heard that Joseph McStay was confirmed dead, she says she could hardly believe it. When the news came that they had found Joseph's family, it was hard. It was hard to process that. It doesn't feel real. It just kind of, I can't be that man-hook. I even called Joseph's phone

or something like, "No, this can't be happening. You've got to come back." Kathy had known Joseph for a few years. She said she met him through a partner at the time.

“I'm Chase Merritt's ex-girlfriend and mother of his three children.”

Back when the McStay's had gone missing, Kathy and Chase were still together. They had one teenager and two kids under time. We're living in Rancho Cucamanga, a city on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Kathy says that Joseph would often drive their way to have dinner with Chase and talk about upcoming projects. She says she got to know Joseph well. After the McStay's went missing, she said that Chase wanted to be there for Joseph's extended family. But after the bodies were found

in the desert and the investigation into their murders began, Kathy says people in the McStay's inner circle began to look at Chase differently. I feel like a story's changed. Chase was a good guy and then all of a sudden he was submitted. They would think murdered their son or their brother or their family. Kathy says the idea just didn't make sense to her. Why would Chase kill someone who was giving him work? Joseph and Chase were talking about plans

“for the future. Like there was lucrative contracts coming. Why would you put that in jeopardy?”

It just doesn't make any sense. But San Bernardino shares to tech news. I've come to think otherwise. They now believe Chase married did have a reason to kill Joseph McStay. For them, it came down to what investigators believed happened on February 4th, 2010. When they said a dangerous confrontation had led to irreversible decisions. But who is Chase married? A man that detectives now felt was capable of killing an entire family.

From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm Washington and this is what happened to the McStays. Episode 5 The Best Friend Kathy and Chase met in the early 1990s and according to Kathy, they were together, often on for around 20 years. They've been broken up for over a decade now. But Kathy still remembers Chase as being a good person. Even if he's far from perfect.

Chase is a little arrogant. He's creative. He'll tell you he's athletic. He'll boast about how

athletic he is. But the first time I saw him be athletic was at a mountain bike race.

And he hopped on the mountain bike and he was about to jump over this little curb and he hit it in face planted. And he just jumps up and he's like, oh, you know, he's just like a big door. He's

Kathy said that the day they first saw each other, it was an instant attraction.

“I actually met Chase at a country western bar. He was there playing pool. I was there to dance.”

Kathy described Chase wearing a cowboy hat and said that he was in shape. She said he looked like a big, tough cowboy who could take care of her. I happened to be sitting near the dance floor by the pool tables when he hit me with his pool cube. And I kind of turned around like, hello, and he just had no clue. He just didn't even acknowledge me. So I was like, what an idiot. So I got turned back around. I was like, okay, whatever. By the end of the night,

I was on the dance floor with somebody else. And Chase was standing at the dance floor like waiting

just standing, watching. And when I walked off, he's like, oh, we should go get something to eat.

“And let's talk. And I was like, oh, okay. Not long after they started dating,”

Kathy said Chase took her to meet his family. They lived east of L.A., just over the San Gabriel Mountains in the Mojave Desert. At 3000 feet elevation, the high desert is dotted with sagebrush and juniper trees. Small towns are scattered across the landscape. Chase grew up in his area of California. At that time, like the 60s, early 70s, it was pretty much the middle nowhere.

The next town over from his area is Victorville, where the mixed days bodies were found just outside

city limits. Kathy says that some of Chase's family still live in the desert, including a sister, Juanita. When Kathy says he was especially close to, according to Kathy, Chase was from a big family. There were eight brothers and sisters. As Chase grew up, he was kind of the one that, you know, his family could lean on. If they needed something, like he would be there. He's just that sibling that I feel like they all could rely on. Over the years, Chase had some troubles with the

law. Between 1977 and 2001, he had several convictions for burglary. Kathy says that when they started dating, Chase seemed to focus on pursuing a career in welding. He was a skill his father had taught him. Early in their relationship, Chase set up a metal workshop and Kathy's garage. He started making these metal art wall hangings, and when I saw them I was like, wow, I mean, that's pretty cool. Soon, she says the couple started their own metal work business.

Chase was making one of a kind waterfalls. And Kathy was helping with designs. But according to Kathy, Chase could be difficult to work with.

“I would tell them which way I think it should be. I'm like, I think it'd be more marketable”

if you did this color or that stone or something. And he would just not listen to me and do it his own way. Kathy said there was another reason that she and Chase would butt heads how work. Finances. Oh gosh, Chase was terrible with money. Kathy says Chase was a once, what he wants, when he wants it kind of guy. We had a boat. We had a couple of boats for a while. We had jet skis. We had things we didn't need. Around 2006, Chase met and started working with

Joseph McStay. Chase told the San Bernardino detectives that Joseph was looking for a welder to build a fountain for him. Someone recommended Chase. He said that soon, use the only person that Joseph would turn to for custom work. Kathy says, where Chase's stubborn street had bothered her. Joseph was easy going enough for both of them. He was likable and good with people. This just seemed to fit. Like, Joseph was really smart.

He was great with customers. And they had a great collaboration. Soon, Kathy says, Chase and Joseph's business relationship blossomed into a personal one. Joseph was his best friend. I mean, he didn't have a whole lot of close contacts. I mean,

people necessarily. So the fact that he spent time outside of work with Joseph was kind of a big deal

“because he didn't really do that with many people. Investigators learned that by early 2010,”

Chase and Joseph had been working together for a few years. And the company had a couple of big contracts coming up on February 4th. Chase said he had a meeting with Joseph at Chick-fil-A. Kathy says that afterwards, Chase spent the evening at their home. Looking back, there was a detail about that night at home with Chase that bothered Kathy. A phone call. She says, Chase received.

That happened to see the caller ID when it rang. And I told them,

I just was calling, you know, and it was like, I'll talk to him tomorrow, whatever.

So, you know, the next day when he couldn't get a whole Joseph and he told me that. And then the day after, like, I was concerned. I know he was trying to keep it cool. Like, he didn't want to, you know, overstep the boundaries. But I was getting concerned. And I told him, I told Chase, what if, you know, what if that was Joseph's last? It's called you. Like, what, what if he needed your help and you didn't answer the phone? Like, it started weighing heavy on me

then, like, if you can't get a hold of him, that's unusual. And we should do something.

“You know, you should, you should call the police, you should. And that's when he, like, reached out to the family.”

The rest of the story, we've heard before. Chase spoke with Joseph's brother on the 9th of February and said that he hadn't heard from Joseph for a few days. Kathy was interviewed by San Bernardino detectives in October 2014, and they asked her about the night of February 4th. The investigators asked her if she might have been mistaken about the date of the call or she said she saw from Joseph. She admitted to detectives that she could have been.

But she insisted both to San Bernardino detectives and to ABC News. And Chase had been at home with her on the evening of February 4th. By the time they would call Chase married in for his interview, detectives had come to believe that Chase wasn't at home with Kathy that evening. And they said, "How to prove it."

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“You need to stay on top of every game, every week.”

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four years before. What happened that night? Where did you go?

“I don't even remember the after. What I'm asking for you to throw in the blank and explain to me what happened.”

I don't, I don't require to be in anywhere except probably health. San Bernardino detectives asked Chase Merritt to describe his meeting with Joseph earlier that day. And according to Detective Smith, Chase implied that it was not a big deal. So the way Chase painted that meeting on February 4th is that it was a great kind of successful meeting that things are going great. We have these projects. We're moving forward and everything is good.

What caught our attention about that is the fact that when you look at the financials and

some of the emails going back and forth, they weren't good. Investigators thought that Joseph

had met with Chase to confront him. We believed that Joseph in Chase met that morning at Chick-fil-A. There was an interaction between them and that that meeting resulted in Chase being

“let go of the business. Detective Scott fired that day. In the reason, he felt that it all came”

down to money. So when we looked into Chase's finances, we found that he was just horrible with his personal finances. He had a gambling issue where he would go to Casinos and spend a lot of money. Investigators believed Chase owed money to Joseph from previous projects that worked on together. According to their case report, they alleged he'd also been forging checks from him.

It wasn't email sent from Joseph to Chase a few days before their Chick-fil-A meeting.

Chase had shared it with San Diego detectives back in 2010. This email had several rows of figures. Big ones, tens of thousands of dollars, which Chase had told detectives were related to projects he and Joseph were working on together. He said the figures were a running tab of finances between the two men. But when San Bernardino investigators read this email, it looked to them like a tally of debt that Joseph said Chase owed him.

The tune of $42,000. And investigators believe that Chase had been writing checks to himself from the business account that Joseph used. Several times in the day is leading up to their meeting. They also came to believe that Joseph had noticed Chase moving money around. Even as Joseph is driving up to meet Chase, he's on the phone with Union Bank. Now, we don't know what the context of those calls were, but we know he was checking, he called at least twice,

Union Bank as he's driving up to meet Chase. When detectives interviewed Chase in late October of 2014, they told him what they believed. "You guys don't have to sit play and ask the person who's about to see the set. You can stay on the phone."

“"You're a gambler. You sell all your money down, but you're not going to work down and you need to look down."”

"You were still money from Joseph for a long time. He might have to go. No." No, Chase told detectives. Chase was adamant that he and Joseph were on good terms, and that his gambling wasn't an issue. He told detectives that he wasn't stealing from Joseph. That he wasn't fired by him. Continue to insist that the meeting at the Chick-fil-A wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

But investigators suspected that the working relationship between the two men had deteriorated to the point where Joseph was ready to sever their partnership. And, police believed, there had been some kind of argument between them. Investigators thought that after the Chick-fil-A meeting, Chase had something dangerous, a motive.

According to phone records, after the two men met that day, Joseph's phone began to move, "Pinging off a series of cell towers near the highway. Investigators believed that Joseph was going south. Back to his home in Faubera. That he arrived there just after 4 pm." Joseph's phone made one more call that went through to Chase's 548 pm.

The call lasted about three minutes. And then, according to the police report, appeared that Chase's phone shut off for three and a half hours. According to authorities, during this window, several calls came into Chase's phone

Authorities suspected that Chase's phone was purposefully turned off, or put in an airplane mode.

Detectives had theorized about what they believed had happened in this three and a half hour period. How and when the McStays had died. Investigators believed that Chase followed Joseph McStay back to Faubera.

“I believe it was a continuation of that contentious meeting in the beginning.”

So they're down there, they're at Faubera. An argument occurs, it turns physical, where Joseph and Chase get into an altercation. Joseph had Chase either fighting or Chase murders him right there. And then at that point, Chase is committed and follows through with the rest of the family. Detectives believed that Chase killed Joseph, Summer, Gianni, and Joey Junior.

According to the investigators report, Detectives spoke to a friend of the McStays who had been

helping them redecorate their house. The friend told them that he'd been using a sledge hammer to close paint cans in the McStays home. Days before they disappeared. San Bernardino Detectives noticed that the hammer was missing from crime scene photographs. And a pain splattered sledge hammer had later been found in one of the graves. Investigators believed that Chase had used it to murder the McStays in their own home. Investigators said that after killing the family, Chase logged onto the McStays

“home computer and created a $4,000 check made out to himself. Although that check they said was never”

printed, it looked to them like further evidence of Chase being inside the Faubera house. Chase told San Bernardino Detectives that he and Joseph hadn't argued that day.

He hadn't gone to the McStays house that evening, and that he hadn't killed them.

Are you on the foot of the night? I did not drag forward on course. You did drag to forward on course. You was down there and sat with on the horse. What you were saying obviously is not going to change, but Einstein definitely is not going to change. While Detectives did not have physical evidence tying Chase to the murders or the alleged crime scene at the McStays home, they believed they could place them close to where the bodies were

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Find and listen to Get Real wherever you get your podcast and stream new episodes of Ferris Ais on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Terms apply. When Chase Merritt was interviewed by San Bernardino detectives in late October 2014, he denied killing the McStays and he denied burying them in the desert on February 6.

I would people put you up and I didn't want that to reach it. You're right here. I'm trying to do not know where he's now to ever go to the high desert is for my brother, my sister. Detectives claimed that they knew from his cell records,

was in an area near the McStays graves.

“San Bernardino detective Ryan Smith was aware of Chase's family in the desert.”

In fact, nine days before Chase Merritt was interviewed, Smith had gone to speak to Chase's sister, Juanita. Juanita lived a few miles from where the bodies were buried. Here the base of court-side mountain. On top of the mountain was the cell tower that police set.

Chase's phone hanged off on February 6, 2010. So the interesting thing about the court-side tower is it's right on that mountain on the back side or the west side of that mountain is one eat of Merritt's residents. On the north side or north east side is kind of the desert and the 15 freeway where the McStays bodies were buried.

To determine if Chase's phone had hanged off that cell tower because he was visiting a sister, detective Ryan Smith went to investigate. He drove up to visit Juanita. By then, it had been over four and a half years since the McStays weren't missing. Smith, Matt Juanita at her home, is set outside and talked.

We just kind of asked what the relationship was like and then we went into what his her relationship with Chase does Chase come to visit when was last time he came to visit. Smith. It recorded their conversation. Asked Juanita if she'd seen Chase up in the desert around February 2010.

Juanita said, "No."

Chase said that time and he was with Joe and never came up here.

“That's why I was going to ask, can you remember it all the time?”

You didn't even hardly visit. I can remember one time he visited. What about how long before? So I mean, five years I hadn't seen him. So that's comfortable to the desert because he works 24/7.

Smith asked Juanita if she and Chase had talked about the McStays. Did you guys ever have that conversation ask him what he thinks happens? I asked him playing blank and didn't you know, clue. He was devastated. He lost everything.

Juanita told police that Chase hadn't visited her around the time of the McStays' disappearance. So a little over a week later when he offered that as his only possible explanation for why his phone had pinged in the desert. The detectives were skeptical. In fact, five hours into their interview, Chase had been unable to give the detectives

any new explanations that might have eased their suspicions about him. There was no explanation as to why he was there. We believed we had enough to prove that he was the only person who had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit this crime. You know, he should happen to the person that killed McStays' family.

I think they should get killed. So exactly the same way they got killed. What do you mean? I think they should get killed.

“I think I think they should be official.”

But he has to execute it somehow. Well, if I could get it, I don't know if they want they shouldn't get killed. Because nobody that kills too little kids should be alive. My opinion. Is that trouble you?

Of course it does. You didn't even know the heart that was there on an heart, right? Of course, that's crazy. Oh, boy. By this point, the detective sitting across from him,

though confident it was Chase who killed this family. Chase left the interview room, a free man, but he wouldn't stay that way for long. About two weeks later, he got some visitors at his place of work. The police, they'd come to arrest him for the murders of the McStay family.

Now, police finally felt they had an answer to the question of what happened to the McStays.

Good morning. We'd like to get started. Is everyone ready? Two days after Chase's arrest, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department called a press conference. Charles Chase Merit was identified as the suspect responsible for the death of Joseph,

Summer, Gianni, and Joseph McStay. There's no information to suggest there were any other suspects involved in this crime.

transported and booked at our West Valley Detention Center where he is currently being held.

“Susan Blake, Joseph McStay's mother, was in the briefing room that day.”

She stood to say a few words to the gathered press. Small and blonde, she was a head-shorter than the Sheriff's deputies behind her. Good morning. My son and his family was a beautiful family that did not discern this.

Joey was so generous and kind to so many people. I always kept hope we'd find them and then I

received the phone call. And now there's a little more charge journey. I need justice from the law and the courts and get to talk to the judge. And most of all, just as of stairs for my lovely

“family, thank you. For the family that had waited so long, the wheels of justice can now”

finally turn. The San Bernardino District Attorney told the press that Chase Merit was facing four murder charges and that the brutality of the case hadn't gone unnoticed by prosecutors.

I don't need to tell you that this is a cold and callous murder of an entire family.

We filed a special circumstance of multiple murders that makes him eligible for the death penalty. Chase Merit would said he hoped for the death penalty for whoever killed the McStay family would now face a courtroom in the prospect of capital punishment himself. Everyone's made them out to be the monster that he's not.

“But Kathy Jarvis, Chase's ex, says he was being made into a scapegoat.”

Somebody murdered this family, but it wasn't Chase. Chase Merit maintained his innocence and soon you would have to fight for his life. What happens to the McStays is a production of ABC audio in 2020, hosted by me, Ocean Singh, produced by Maddoan Wood, Vika Erranton, Audrey Mastek, and Kiara Powell, with help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer,

our supervising producer is Susie Liu, music by having Viola, scoring by Kiara Powell, mixing by having Viola and Bob Mallory, special thanks to Katie Dendos, Gianna Johnson, Chris Donovan, Joseph Rie, Sonny Andrewm, Alyssa Stoller, Zenderson Morris, Tom Burmett, Indra Dalisaham, and Blue Browning. Gosh Cohen is our director of podcast program. 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. On Reddit, True Crime doesn't come from journalists. It comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves. Every Tuesday on crimes of Reddit, we read these posts

out loud. I'm Sabrina Diana Roga, and I'm Alexis Lindglutter. One of us brings the story, the other goes in blind, reacting in real time, just like you. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts. More likely explanations other than serial killer. All right, maybe another doesn't. In Florida, crime has no off-season.

I just heard you were shot at today with a rocket launcher. Well, missed. RJ Decker from his Tuesday 10th Central on ABC next day on Bulu.