Introducing 'What Happened to the McStays?'

I'm hosting from 2020 and ABC Audio called "What Happens To The Mix Days?"

“If you enjoyed this show, I think you'll really like it.”

It's a story about secrets, betrayal, and the dark underbelly of the American dream. In 2010, a family of four goes missing from the southern California home, no signs of a struggle or a forced entry, but clues scattered about the home raised questions. Had the mixed days really left on their own? If they did, where would they have gone in such a hurry?

Or had something more sinister happened? In our new podcast, "What Happens To The Mix Days?" We'll be sharing the whole shocking story.

Keep listening now to hear the first episode right here.

If you like it, you can hear the rest of the series by falling what happens to the mixed days for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now, or you can get the series early, and add free by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts.

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Now, here's the episode 1 of What Happens To The Mix Days. Stasi 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 not an ordinary payroll, they don't get to be in your life.

Wow, reality has never been this real.

Not everyone is built for this. A micro-to-ice, anyone else? But when you said that, don't pop me off. This time, I get to do it on my turn. I showed up for you!

What could go wrong? House of Stasi, Wednesdays at 10 on Freeform, and now streaming on Hulu. In November of 2009, family of four moved into a palm tree dotted code of sack, and the hills of San Diego County. Joseph McStan is wife, summer, or in their 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 lane, is around 10 years old, with a stucco exterior and a red terracotta roof. The McStays 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 McStays bites of the beef. Still where the two McStayboys, Joseph Junior, and his big brother Gianni, swing side by side, and a playground swing set together. Their mom, summer, pushes them, higher and higher. For a couple of months, these were the types of sounds that filled the McStay residents.

One day in February 2010, the house went quiet. Local station KGTV covered the story. The outside of the McStay 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 McStay left her prescription sunglasses behind. Family left their dogs behind, and there had been no activity on their phone. It was as if the McStays had simply vanished into thin air. 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 McStays. Episode 1, 11 Days. Joseph McStay, 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, Michael, how's your business? What's going on? How are the girls? I'd ask other boys where and he'd tell me I was going on." What 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.

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 projects.”

When Joseph's colleagues told the McStay family, they noticed Joseph had gone completely silent. 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 gotten 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 that 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 McStay's. 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 maybe they're doing a quick vacate. So I didn't want to jump to any conclusions.

A few days after the McStay's won 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, "So see if you can find Joseph."”

No luck. And by February 13th, the McStays 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 said 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 McStay'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 untitiness, 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. McStay family dogs were left to sit in the hot California sun. By all accounts, the McStay's loved their dogs. A big acita 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 McStays 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.

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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'd 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, 'cause it's been in your ear 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 bunked just little boys. Like the time they snuck out of their beds early one morning and started rommaging 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. In pictures, it looks like he would be more comfortable in shorts than a t-shirt, and a suit, and tie. Joseph and Summer Suns, Gianni and Joseph Jr., 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 Jr. holds an ice cream sandwich. Chocolate all over his mouth. And Gina says their dad, Joseph Sr., 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 got to 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 Summer's.

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 creatives and join the beachy art scene of Laguna. Once Summer got pregnant, Jesse says she scaled back

her active social life, stopped working, and became a stay at home up. They were nesting. That phase in her life was nesting. Friends and families say Joseph and Summer loved the beach. For the time, the couple and their sons lived in San Clemente.

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 surfer dudes too. They definitely took after Joey, you know, wanting to be close to the ocean.

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, and then cascaded down into pools that sparkled with a hidden light fixtures. 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.

“That's how the two met 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

Heirsalon brand, and even our project in Saudi Arabia. In late 2009, the mixed-day family moved from their small, beachside apartment in St. Clemente to their house on that Palm Tree line called a sack. Their new town of Fallbrook 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 mixed-days.”

But it was big, five bedrooms with the back yard. Here's some of his 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 underway. Jesse would fill his brother Michael in on the progress. Okay, the remodel in the house, and it's kind of crazy, you know, the furniture still in storage. I February of 2010, Jesse was doing well professionally. The couple was working on upgrading their new house.

Family seemed settled. Joe doesn't invest $30,000 into a house to renovate it because he's going to leave tomorrow.

“That just doesn't jive. He doesn't walk out on his friends and his family.”

And yet, that house in Fallbrook, 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 backed by February 15th.

He says he told himself that if by 9 a.m., he still hadn't heard from Joseph. He'd file a missing person so far. That's exactly what Michael did. As Luigi Mangione prepares to stand trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which he denies, a new podcast series from ABC audio and 2020,

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People were cheering that demise of this person they'd never met.

It was a father of two and a husband and had a life and was just doing a job. From the manhood, ending in a McDonald's in Altuna, Pennsylvania, to what authorities are saying about a possible motive. I'm ABC News legal analyst, Brian Buckmeyer. Listen to burning a proof, Luigi Mangione, wherever you get your podcasts.

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“By the morning of February 15, 2010, Michael McStay had reached his personal deadline to sound”

the alarm. No one had heard from Joseph or summer in 11 days. Michael called the police. He asked for a welfare check, and the patrol deputies came out and checked the house. 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. It 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, in my whole accounts, I took very good care of the 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, or should probably call homicide and let them know what's going on up here?" Lieutenant Brugos says suspicious circumstances cases like this one are handled by the homicide unit. But there's a dead body or not. Police say that when homicide detectives 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 detectives 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 piled up on the bathroom counter. Suit cases left open with clothes spilling out in a pile. The 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 suit cases 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 1996 White Assuzu Trooper was missing. If police could find the vehicle, maybe they could find the McStays.

They ran a search on the Assuzu Trooper, and immediately came up with a hit. According to police records, the check revealed that the vehicle was recently towed 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? Did the McStays leave for Mexico all together? And if so, did they go voluntarily or by force?

“Or they hiding, kidnapped, police couldn't yet say?”

The search of the McStays residents took all day, and in the end, police determined there was no sign of force 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 family car found at the Mexican border, as Lieutenant 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, tried to go all in Suzanne Fisk, pulled Michael aside for an interview in their police car. In the tape from this interview, Michael still hopes that his big brother's family could be perfectly fine.

What's the percentage of these like being in a situation like this, and then had just been something totally innocent?

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

So I can't give you a good statistic. Detective Dugol has Michael for more information about the missing family.

“I was Joseph and Summer's relationship, who are their closest friends? Did he odd problems with anyone?”

Or money trouble? Do you know if there's any money involvement with your brother, only 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, so 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 here to cover? Well, Dugol 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 out there.

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 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. Well, 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've folded little kid laundry, clean laundry in the suitcases. Yeah. And they want on vacation. The kids suitcases would have been with them.

“In his official account of the day, the detectives do go all concluded that there had been no apparent”

sign of a crime. But he also said this, it is my opinion the McStay 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 what had actually happened to the family of four. Before, it was too late. What happened to the McStay's is a production of ABC audio in 2020.

Hosted by me, Austin Singh, produced by Madeline Wood, Vika Erenson, Audrey Mastek, and Kiara Powell, with help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer, our supervising producer is Susie Luke, music by having byola, scoring by Kiara Powell, mixing by having byola and Bob Mallory. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janis Johnson, Chris Donovan, Joseph Rie, Sunny Andrew, Alyssa Stuller, Zenderson Morris, Tom Burmett,

Hendrad Daly 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.