Case by Case | The Trial of Larry Millete Begins

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happen next. Take a listen. It is a trial that is five years in the making. Larry Milliette is in court this week, charged with killing his 39-year-old wife, Maya, who was last seen in their true list of California home on January 7, 2021.

48-hours followed Maya's family, friends, and the community as they searched and searched for her.

Yet her body has still never been found.

Meanwhile, prosecutors say that Larry had been paying people online to cast spells on his wife, spells to first make her stay with him and then later to harm her. In opening statements, the prosecution said that Maya was having an affair, and according to emails, Larry sent to spellcasters, the affair resulted in Maya getting pregnant. The prosecution says this revelation caused a huge fight between Larry and Maya in January of 2021,

right around the time she went missing. Larry Milliette has pleaded not guilty. I'm 48-hours correspondent Anne Marie Greene, and this is Case By Case. And today, I'm being joined by Kelly. As a doll, she is a CBS-8 San Diego reporter.

She has been following this story and was in court earlier this week, so Kelly, thank you so much for making some time for us. Thank you for having me. So let's just sort of start kind of in the beginning. I want to talk about Maya or Maya as some people called her.

“What was her relationship with Larry like in the beginning?”

Maya and Larry met when they were working in a fast food restaurant. Maya had actually immigrated to the United States from the Philippines with her family back in 1995, and she was just 13 years old. So they actually got married when they were pretty young. Maya was 19 years old and believe Larry was 18 years old, and they fell in love got married.

Weighted about 10 years until they had children, they ended up having three children, two girls, and one boy, and Larry had enlisted in the Navy at one point. And so they had relocated from Hawaii to San Diego. And that's where they settled. In a portion of San Diego called Chulavista, they loved their children.

Larry was an attentive father according to family and friends.

Maya has always been described as very bubbly, very outgoing.

Someone who loved the outdoors, loved being outside, and by all accounts, they had a typical married life. But clearly things started to change. They started to unravel at some point. The prosecution said this week in opening statements to really understand this story you have to go back to 2020.

Maya was confiding in her friends about the struggles in their marriage. She wasn't really confiding in her family quite yet about what was going on, but she was definitely letting her friends know that there were problems. She began to fare with a coworker according to prosecutors and her opening statements. It started out as a friendship and then turned physical.

Larry obviously was not doing well with this. He did not want a divorce. That was not an option for him, and he is reaching out to Maya's family. He's sort of the prosecution said that he was writing notes to his sister-in-law trying to get her to help him keep the marriage together.

But then he writes something sort of really curious in one of the notes. This is according to the prosecution.

And he writes, "I always say friends help you move, real friends help you move dead bodies."

And I've kind of heard this line before and it could be sort of humorous but considering now what has happened, it doesn't sound so funny. Right, and when the prosecutor said those words in court this week during opening statements, I mean there's many reporters that are sitting in the courtroom and you could hear everybody's

“fingers tapping on the keyboard at the moment that she said that because I think it really”

struck everybody as a line that really stood out. Right, in fact one of Maya's co-workers testified that she had said Maya had said to her, "Listen, if anything happens to me, it was Larry. Was there any talk of a legal separation or divorce?

I know Larry didn't want that, but I wondered if Maya had brought it up."

“So there was a portion of time during 2020 when she actually moved in with her brother and her”

sister-in-law for several weeks, police found a letter in the Milliette home during one of the

searches there that Maya had written to Larry basically saying, "This is unhealthy, this is toxic,

I want to be happy and happy is not with you." She said, "Let me find my piece and I cannot find it with you." But Larry, according to prosecutors, was desperate to keep her with him to keep the marriage going. Yeah, that note to me is about as direct as it gets she wanted out. Well, Wednesday on the standby sister, Mary Chris testified that Larry had called her for advice

about the relationship and this happened in 2020 and then a little over a week before Maya disappeared, Maya had opened up to her siblings about wanting a divorce.

“Right, and she testified that Maya was adamant about this.”

And this was actually just in the days leading up to when Maya disappeared that her family

found out she was really set on this divorce and that she had said she wanted to pause some of her luxury handbags including a Louis Vuitton purse for $10,000 to help pay for a divorce attorney. Wow, okay, that is interesting and all of this for the prosecution, I presume, you know, points to motive. But as I understand it as well, there were some references to domestic violence in the arrest warrant. In the arrest warrant, there was a friend that had told investigators

at one point that Larry had choked Maya to the point that she was unconscious. However, the defense has said there's no evidence at all of domestic violence between the two. "Wanna leave your relationship with Choppy Fein and kiss us."

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can be made to a real help. Let's start with the test for Choppy Fein. All right, so that brings us to the day that Maya just appears. This is January 7th, 2021. This is last time that anyone has seen Maya. Kelly, just walk us through what we know about that day.

There was a receptionist from a law office that testified about noon on that date. Maya made a call to that law office and said she wanted to get a divorce from her husband. This receptionist, Destiny Johnson, testified that Maya wanted to do the consultation virtually, but Destiny had told her, according to her testimony, we really should do this in person. But Maya was so afraid that Larry was going to find out she didn't want to.

So she ended up making an appointment for a week later, and partly that was also because that weekend, they were going to be celebrating her daughter's 11th birthday up in Big Bear with the entire family. And she, according to prosecutors, really did not want to ruin that for their children or for the entire family.

“We know that her cell phone stops, I guess, hanging at around 125 in the morning, right?”

That night, she Maya is doing some sort of random Google searches, isn't she? That's right. So what we know from January 7th, according to prosecutors, there's surveillance video earlier in the day of her going out to get her Jeep washed. The children asked if they can come with around 443 that afternoon, there's surveillance video showing her returning home. And yes, that around 8 o'clock that night,

there was a Google search, she Googled something about a motorcycle according to prosecutors. There was also a message to her family. She had this group chat. She was in with her family. And around that same time, she had message them talking about the sale of a trailer, buying some toys. They were planning ahead according to prosecutors for future trips, as well as that big bear trip that they were going to be going on that weekend. So for Maya, it's by and large or regular

day. What about Larry? So on January 8th, we know from security footage, he backed his Lexus SUV into the driveway early that morning around 645 or so. And then there's also security footage

prosecution that he took his four-year-old son to the beach. According to the prosecution, his phone

“was turned off that entire time. And when asked about that by Maya's family members, he just said,”

"You know, I kept it off for the entire day, but didn't explain why." So obviously her family has become increasingly concerned. I mean, so what is her family doing? So on January 8th, her brother says, "I've been trying to call her, I've been messaging her, I've been texting her, and she's not answering. Something is wrong. He messages are talks to Mary Chris, the older sister, according to prosecution, and says, "I don't know what to do." So family went to check on her, Mary Chris

drove down to San Diego to the Milliette home, and she testified that Larry's demeanor was normal. He acted like everything was just fine. Don't worry. Don't call police. Don't call investigators. And that is when Mary Chris dialed 911. And so that is when Maya is officially reported missing, right? When Mary Chris makes that 911 call. So yes, it kind of happened overnight because Mary Chris and her husband spent the night at the home. They were even out canvassing the neighborhood

like into the early morning hours, according to her testimony, looking for her sister. And it was the next morning that they went out and even gathered some volunteers up and began looking for her.

“So Kelly, let us talk about what I think is one of the wildest pieces of evidence in this case,”

prosecutor said that Larry was paying people online to cast spells on his wife. He wanted to be able to control her. He wanted to, you know, make her fall back in love with him.

Now, when law enforcement first came to the Milliette house, they found spellbooks in the house

during their first visit to the home. And only to these emails to spellcasters so that Larry wished harm on Maya, but the emails are also a window in what was going on within the relationship and the timeline. So this has already come up this week, but I actually want to refer back to the arrest warrant here. And these are all communications to these spellcasters online. This is some of what he was saying, right? Please punish me and incapacitate her enough so that she can't

leave the house. It's time to take the gloves off. Can you hex to have her hurt enough that she will have to depend on me and need my help? She's only nice to me when she needs me or sick. Thanks again, maybe an accident or broken bone. And then on the day that Maya disappears,

“he sends multiple emails to spellcasters saying, "I think she wants me to snap."”

It was almost like he was confiding, you know, his deepest darkest secrets to them about what was going on in his marriage. He spent a lot of money on these spellcasters and when we first found out about this, you know, five years ago, I mean, everybody's jaw dropped. It was something

that we had just never seen before. But I will say one of the most telling things about the

spellcasters, according to the prosecution, this contact he had with them, the way that it changed after Maya disappeared. Prosecutors say was very apparent. At one point, he had, according to them, at least, said something along the lines of stop hexing may. And this was the day after she disappeared. And then the spellcaster emails all sort of diverged into start punishing Jamie Leard, the man that she had been having an affair with. And there was no mention of Maya again after that.

That is fascinating. So can we talk a little bit more about that? One of the big moments of the trial this week was the prosecution speaking about one particular email that Larry sent to spellcasters where he revealed that the coworker Maya was allegedly having an affair with, and Jamie Leard had gotten Maya pregnant. Do we know if that's even true or if it was just something that Larry made up or let that Larry believe to be true? At this point, there has not been a doctor

up on the witness stand. We have not seen any medical records proving that she was pregnant. I do believe that one point during some of these emails was spellcasters. He had talked about an abortion that Maya had had. But at this point in the trial, we have not seen any proof of this. This is all just through emails that Larry is sending to these spellcasters. So I want to talk about something else that was discovered inside the Amelia Day home of

Bile. That was kind of a moment that we had not heard about up until now. This was a new piece

cap on it. The prosecution says they had the contents of that vile tested and it came back

“positive for the same chemical in poison hemlock. Now the prosecution also said that there was a”

Google account that was traced back to Larry and that Google searches were recovered showing that he had searched for things like flour and hemlock poisoning. What is the best poison for a fast death? Those sorts of things. However, the defense has countered,

basically saying this wasn't what prosecution made it. We're making it out to be right.

When investigators were first on this case and they visited the Amelia Day house, they did not consider it a crime scene, right? They were investigating a missing person's case initially. Absolutely. And so it wasn't for weeks later that they determined that an investigation needed to begin. And at that point, I mean, this was a couple of weeks after she had disappeared. Well, when 48 hours first spoke to my family, this is a few years back,

they were really outspoken and kind of frustrated about the police response. I know the police released a statement in April of 2021 saying that they were keeping cards close to their chest

“because it wasn't active investigation. In the fact there was no bodies. So I think for them,”

they still had the idea as well that it's possible she could potentially still be out there.

But yeah, the family was very frustrated in the beginning and that's when they turned to the media. Mary Chris, the sister, did numerous interviews with the media trying to get her sister's story out there and trying to really put pressure on the police to really focus on this investigation. Yeah, and I mean, police did not formally search the Amelia Day house until January 23rd. It's more than two weeks after Maya disappeared when they did, they seized two glaucome guns,

a rifle, and a shotgun. Additionally, in May of 2021, police served Larry with a gun violence restraining order. Per the order, Larry was to surrender his firearms to law enforcement. He did not comply. And that meant that they could then get a search warrant for the house. They seized more weapons once they got into the house. Additional unregistered firearm as well, meaning that he, Larry, was also now in possession of an illegal firearm gave police a little more leverage,

based on all of this information. All that was uncovered in the investigation law enforcement decided to move forward and arrest Larry. When was he arrested? Larry was arrested in October of 2021, so obviously several months after Maya had disappeared. And the news conference that day is

“something I will never forget because Mary Chris stood up there in front of all of these reporters.”

And actually it made me very emotional that day. It always gets me when I think about it now. She,

her voice was shaking and she was just begging people to to stand by her family. I mean, she said something along the lines of, I promised the children that I would bring my sister home. And so she was really appealing to all of the people out there to help them with any tips, any any leads, anything like that because she said she wanted to keep that promise to the children. But still, there's no body, right? These are difficult cases. Absolutely. And nobody

case a very hybrid in for the prosecution to prove this. And I think that's the reason why this trial is expected to last three months. I mean, there is so much evidence they're putting out there. They're opening statement alone. Nearly went on an entire day because they were laying out in the opening statement piece by piece. All of people that the jury was going to hear from all of this evidence, all of these experts that are going to be testifying. So yes, it is going to be a very

long trial. What do we know about the defense's strategy at this point? The defense's strategy is we don't know what happened to my ameliette. There's lots of things that could have happened to my ameliette. And they have really been steering the jury toward the man that she was having an affair with. You want to stir up that doubt in the jury's mind that it's possible somebody else could have done this at one point during pre trial motions. They

were talking about somebody could have taken Maya, but it wasn't Larry. Well, let's let's talk about this. Let's talk about the man that she was having an affair with according to the defense.

she was basically talking to Jamie Laird on this account and also venting her frustrations about our

“marriage on this account as well. But according to defense, it was a sexual relationship. There was”

a lot of graphic images and graphic photos shared between the two of them that defense made it clear. This wasn't like they just met up a couple of times. This was something that had been ongoing. So the defense also points to Jamie's wife. His wife was pregnant and actually his alibi for where he was the day Maya disappeared. As he says he was at the hospital with her or because she was going into labor. And so the other thing that defense is probably going to point out during

testimony is that Jamie never reached out to Maya after she disappeared. Their communication

pretty much just ended on January 7th. And we learned through the prosecution this week that both Jamie and his wife are expected to take the witness stand during this trial. Hmm, that is

“interesting. Okay. So this trial is expected to last three months. Why so long?”

Well, they have a lot of circumstantial evidence to get through. They have a lot of investigators who are going to testify. They have a lot of experts that they're going to want to put up on the witness

stand out. We know from pretrial motions that just the cell phone data itself was kind of

been questioned by the defense. And then there's a lot of family members to also get through who are all testifying a lot of friends. One of the biggest moments this week was that Maya's father was on the witness stand. He was being questioned by prosecutors. He has a translator with him. And at one moment, he got up and had this just emotional outburst at Larry that he was crying and wailing and screaming saying, I loved my daughter. Why did you do this? Why did you do

this? And this went on for a while. One of the defense attorneys left to the courtroom, crying, the judge cleared everybody out of the courtroom. The defense tried to call for a mistrial, but the judge said, no, the judge said to the jury, you can take into account the emotion behind

“what he said, but you must ignore the statements that he made. But I think that there were a lot of”

people that were pretty shaken by what they saw. Yeah, you know, you don't want people to have outburst in court. But this family is weighted so long for answers. They still don't know where Maya is. And it's, you know, in many ways, kind of a double loss for them. Maya is gone. But Larry was part of their family. You know, and I've talked to legal experts about this, who have made some pretty sad revelations that at the end of the day,

Maya's family just wants to bring her home. That is all they want. They want to know where her body is. They want to bring her home. And sadly, legal experts have said, the chances that they're going to get that closure and find out exactly where she is is extremely slim. I mean, if Larry is found not guilty, obviously, then there's nothing for him to reveal to them, however, if, if he is found guilty, this would probably get tied up in the court system for a while.

It's quite a case. Kelly, and I know you'll be in the courtroom watching. This is a case of 48 hours. Has been following for years. And we're certainly going to continue to follow it as the trial unfolds. Kelly, I got to thank you so much for joining us and taking some time out of your busy day to sit down and talk with us. Thank you for having me. I'm Ann Marie Green. This is case by case from 48 hours. We will be back next week and make sure that you let us

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