By Count Friedrich von Olsen
This week I’m in danger of becoming a crime reporter, as the subjects of larceny and murder are the most interesting things going on…
Most crime columnists butter their bread by making the cops and prosecutors seem like they are gods of rectitude, efficiency, investigative precision and keeping us civilized sorts safe by ensuring the sociopaths who would prey on us are locked up. I regret to let you know ahead of time, I am going to be an abject failure in living up to that standard, as what I am gazing out upon is ineptitude and slovenliness that has let the guilty go free and landed someone in the docket who, though accused of one of the most heinous crimes to intrude into our collective existence in San Bernardino County in the last several years, may indeed have been falsely implicated…
Let us start with Judith Oakes, whose embezzlement from the children of the Rialto Unified School District and the taxpayers in that blue collar city was prodigious. To recap her sordid story, she was hired by the school district in 1997 as an accountant on the strength of her experience with the former Bank of Redlands, now known as Community Bank. She was married to educator Jack Oakes, and she was entrusted with the position of accounting supervisor in 1999. Perhaps as early as that year but certainly no later than 2001, she began stealing from her employer. And she wasn’t just pilfering a dime here and a quarter there, but in such large quantities that once she began, she simply could not quit because doing so would have been a giveaway that something was amiss. Her job consisted almost entirely of overseeing the district-wide proceeds from the schools’ nutrition programs, as she supervised the crew that had physical custody of the money and was also charged with accounting authority over those funds. Boldly, day after day, year after year for well over a decade, while in the enclosed counting office where the district’s money-counting machines bundled the money into batches of bills to be taken to the bank for deposit, she began pocketing – to use a euphemism – something over $4,000 per week. Not just one week when she and her husband, who went on to become the principal of Ramona-Allesandro Elementary School in the San Bernardino City School District, were behind in the mortgage, but every week, for thirteen or fourteen years, she continued to pocket the money. Pocketing isn’t the right term. Actually, she would slip the packs of money into her brassiere. Once she had begun her larcenous escapades, she was obliged to continue stealing approximately the same amount of money per week – an average of between $4,100 and $4,300 every five school days – so that the pattern of thefts would remain undetected…
She and Jack Oakes lived high on the hog, living almost as grandly and sinfully as do I, eating lobster, or roast pheasant under glass or pate foie regularly, purchasing a grand home and grownup toys of all descriptions, dune-buggies, motorcycles, boats and luxury and sports vehicles. Even after Jack Oakes died of a trauma-induced heart attack following his being severely injured in an off-roading accident in the desert in April 2010, she continued to live the good life, regularly running up $10,000-to-$12,000-a-month charges on her credit card, purchasing expensive clothes, taking trips to exotic destinations while staying at the most expensive hotels, rendezvousing regularly with gentleman companions, including the school district’s former superintendent with whom she was once seen necking…
True, after suspicions were aroused in the late spring of 2013 and investigators took the opportunity to actuate existing and install new cameras in the district money counting room and she was caught, Oakes has had a rough 22-month go of it. She spent time in jail awaiting trial. Forensic accountants pieced together exacting documentation showing she had stolen $1.8 million between 2005 and 2013 and estimated – based on less reliable documentation – that she had stolen another $1.3 million between 1999 and 2005. Faced with this, she was induced to plead guilty and was sentenced in January to five years in jail along with three years of supervised probation. Justice, of sorts, it seemed…
But word comes now that Oakes, 50, has been released from custody. On June 5, she walked out of the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center in Devore a free woman, or a relatively free woman, subject only to what are termed “general” probation terms. Bear in mind that in addition to the five-year sentence she received, she was to be subject to supervised probation for three years after her release. What is the reason for her release? She spent slightly more than 20 months in custody awaiting trial as well as serving time after her sentencing. Her jailers are striving to reduce the number of inmates in the state prison system. The Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center is now considered to be part of the state prison system, even though it is run by the county. Ms. Oakes probably would have served out a large part of her sentence there. But now she is free to go back to the upscale home she lived in with her husband, and which was paid for, at least partially, with the ill-gotten proceeds of her life of crime…
I have left a few things out here. Let me try to fill them in. I didn’t mention that she has already made restitution of $339,002.08, composed mostly of the bundles of bills that investigators found lying all around her house, on the floor, beneath a bed, in closets and in drawers. Most of those bundles still had the district’s paper wrapping bands around them. As part of her sentencing, she was ordered to pay $1,845,137.81 in restitution. So far, she has covered $997.98 less than $340,000 of that. Rest assured, my kind and naive readers, that she is not getting off easily. The district attorney’s office would never have let her do that! Under the terms of her sentencing and her probation she has to continue to make restitution – at a rate of $150 per month. So, you see, she will indeed pay her debt to society in full. Her final payment will come, let’s see here, sometime in the summer of the year 2851! Because of the statute of limitations, she was not ordered to make restitution on the $1.3 million she was suspected but not convicted of stealing between the years of 1999 and 2005. If the statute of limitations did not apply, she would remain in arrears on her debt to society until October of 3573. Oh, by the way, those calculations do not include interest…
In the meantime, her probation officer will be checking up on her every two months or so to make sure she opens no checking accounts, has no blank checks whatsoever in her possession and does not fill out or endorse any checks that are not explicitly made payable to her. She is also required, by the terms of her probation, to remain employed. Hey, maybe she can get a job at a bank! We wouldn’t want her experience with numbers and currency to go to waste…
Let us now turn to the matter of Charles Merritt, who is accused by the district attorney’s office of having killed his one-time business partner, Joseph McStay, as well as Mr. McStay’s wife and two young children. Mr. Merritt was arrested with much fanfare in November, some four years and eight months after the McStay family abruptly took leave of their home in northern San Diego County and their family vehicle, an Isuzu Trooper, was found near the Mexican border at San Ysidro in February 2010 and a year after their bodies were found in relatively shallow graves in the desert north of Victorville in November 2013. The district attorney himself, Mike Ramos, declared absolute confidence in the strength of the case against Mr. Merritt at the press conference heralding his arrest and the filing of charges against him. Charles Merritt was slapped with bail higher than the gross domestic product of several of the countries on the globe, ensuring he would remain jailed until his trial and likely beyond that. He initially chose to represent himself, but was soon overwhelmed with over 12,000 pages of evidence the prosecution laid out and he has since consented to be represented by a team of four lawyers. Assumptions of his guilt run across the gamut of our community, with people writing letters to the editors of local newspapers demanding that he receive the death penalty…
Nevertheless, other than making grand pronouncements as to Mr. Merritt’s guilt, the district attorney’s office has made no showing of such and has resisted making any such disclosures, when something along the lines of 18 news organizations filed motions with the court for access to the evidence against Mr. Merritt. In responding to those requests, which were respectfully submitted, the district attorney’s office asserted that it was premature to do so, as the investigation had not yet been wrapped up. That is your first clue, interested readers, that something is not quite right here. How could the district attorney say with such confidence in November that investigators had their man, arrest him and charge him, if the full range of evidence to establish his guilt has not yet been found and is still being sought? And if the perpetrator of this heinous act is in custody and cannot possibly be released because of the astronomically high freedom bond he must post, what danger is there that talking about the facts of the case will allow the jailed murderer to alter or destroy any remaining evidence yet to be obtained by the prosecutor’s office?
Lest I be accused of being some bleeding heart, molly-coddler of criminals, let me say this: I believe this was a horrible crime. The lifeless corpses of the McStay Family scream from the shallow graves in which they were found for justice. Someone, there can be no doubt, brutally and callously murdered them. That person is a sociopath of unfathomable magnitude. Even assuming the murderer had a legitimate beef with Joseph McStay, applying homicide to settle the dispute was unacceptable and there would be and can be no conceivable justification – in this life or the next – for killing the innocent members of his family. Not only is this person a sociopath, but a homicidal psychopath of the lowest order, deserving, if you believe in capital punishment, of the death penalty, and meriting life in prison with no possibility of parole, if you do not believe in the death penalty. But no matter how heinous the act, no matter how outrageous the taking of life, we as a society are not, and never will be, justified in holding an innocent person to account for something he did not do. The question remains: Did Charles Merritt murder the McStays?
I have entertained the concept that Charles Merritt is guilty. I have tried to fit my analysis through the rubric of what is known and what is likely. The problem, of course, is I do not know everything the investigators know and I have not seen many, or even any, really, of the cards the prosecution is preparing to deal. This makes some of what I am about to write speculative. But that is the point, isn’t it? The prosecution owes us more than it has given. So far, it has written a rubber check. It has filled out a promissory note without providing sufficient funds into the checking account to back it…
What is known is that the case against Mr. Merritt is a circumstantial one. In November, Mike Ramos called the circumstantial case a “strong” one. In January, prosecutors acknowledged the case was indeed circumstantial, and that they were waiting for further information or confirmation of evidence they already had to cinch the case. This was a giveaway that the case was not as strong as earlier represented. Let’s size up the case…
Joseph McStay built fountains and water art pieces for landscaping, residential yards and pools. Charles Merritt installed those fountains and water art pieces for the customers who purchased Joseph McStay’s designs. There is some evidence, at least, to suggest that Charles Merritt constructed some of that art work. The customers in some cases dealt directly with Mr. Merritt and he, apparently, received payment from them. He may have been called upon to deliver that payment to Mr. McStay or his account. There was, it appears, some order of a financial dispute between the two men. There has been indication that the financial dispute escalated in the months just prior to the McStay Family’s disappearance. There is documentation available with regard to the McStay account and with regard to Charles Merritt’s account now in the hands of the investigators and prosecutors. There are corresponding transfers in and out of these accounts. Some of those transfers appear to confirm the existence of this financial dispute. Some transfers could just be, however, business as usual. Investigators and the district attorney are playing way closer to the vest evidence they maintain “might” show that Charles Merritt accessed the McStay account and either made withdrawals from it or disbursements from it prior to and after the disappearance of the McStay Family. This suggestion is a murky one, and no details regarding it are publicly available. lnteresting and intriguing, if true, but not necessarily a smoking gun. It might even be exculpatory, since, if Charles Merritt was not involved in the McStays’ disappearance and he routinely accessed Joseph McStay’s account, his doing so a day or two or even a week after the family disappeared would indicate he was functioning on the assumption Joseph McStay was still alive. Surely, if he murdered Mr. McStay [and his family], Merritt would not then have accessed Mr. McStay’s account, as this would lead investigators right to him upon the discovery of Mr. McStay’s death…
Investigators and prosecutors are convinced, we can piece together, that Mr. Merritt used a sledgehammer to bludgeon to death the entire McStay Family at their Fallbrook home. He then, according to this theory, painted the walls in an effort to obliterate any tell-tale blood splatters, splotches or like evidence of the crime. Found in one if the shallow graves north of Victorville was the sledge hammer. It had on it paint. In November, District Attorney Ramos made statements about the sledge hammer, without actually identifying it as a sledge hammer, that in the light of more recent revelations, suggested that he believed the paint on the hammer matched the paint on the walls at the McStay residence. What we now know is that the paint on the hammer does not – repeat not – match the paint at the McStay residence. We know that there is no overt indication at all that the murders occurred at the McStay residence – no hair, no blood, no indications of any type of a struggle. This is, of course, not to say a clever killer could not have removed that evidence. But there is no evidence that the murders occurred there. Rather, there is something to indicate the McStay family may have left the home rather abruptly. Nor has there been released, yet, any sure-fire forensic evidence implicating Mr. Merritt. As far as we know, there is no DNA linking him to the McStay bodies or the McStay home. If there is, I think it safe to assume, it would have been released. So, to recap, it appears that District Attorney Ramos and his crew, in November, pinned their hopes not on solid scientific evidence but circumstantial evidence, which in part consisted of the paint on the hammer. But that part of the circumstantial evidence has evaporated with the showing that the paint on the hammer does not match the paint at the McStay home. So the elliptical suggestion made by the district attorney’s office that Mr. Merritt killed the McStay Family at their Fallbrook home and then cleaned up the murder scene now appears dubious…
There yet appears to be a peg or maybe even two or three pegs where the prosecution can hang its hat in its focus on Mr Merritt…
One is the place where the bodies were found. There is a lot of desert in California. The Anza-Borrego Desert in Eastern San Diego County and Western Imperial County is closer to Fallbrook than the Mojave Desert. For convenience sake, why didn’t the killer bury the family there? How is it that the bodies ended up in the Mojave Desert north of Victorville, which just happens to be in an area very familiar to Mr. Merritt, relatively close to where he grew up and near where he was living at the time of the McStay family’s disappearance? If Mr. Merritt did kill the McStays, depositing them in a remote place with which he was familiar makes perfect sense. After all, he would have known about the desert area surrounding Victorville, the frequency with which off-roaders or others go there and he conceivably would know where in that particular area he might find a good spot to hide the evidence of his foul deed. Since he lived relatively close, he might have been able to stash the bodies at his residence, perhaps in his garage, head out to a spot he selected in the desert, dig the graves without hazard since if he was discovered at that point he would not be in possession of any incriminating evidence (i.e., the bodies) and, after digging the holes, he could return home, retrieve the bodies and drive back out into the desert to quickly inter them and lessen the risk of being caught in the act…
What we have yet to learn is whether the prosecution has any other data by which Mr Merrittt can be placed at the McStay residence around the time of the family’s disappearance, such as cellphone tower pings. Could cell phone tower pings further establish Mr. Merritt as being near the Mexican border during this time frame and perhaps a day or two or three before the McStays’ Isuzu Trooper was found there? And did his cell phone ping off the cell phone tower nearest the burial site north of Victorville in February 2010? We don’t have that information, but it seems to me that if the prosecution did, we would know about it…
None of what I have come up with proves that Charles Merritt is innocent. But I am having serious doubts about his guilt. I spent a large part of my life in Europe. There are places over there where the authorities would pick people up in the dead of night, charge them with crimes and hold court proceedings, if court proceedings were held at all, where there was no public presentation of evidence against the accused and no showing of guilt and no opportunity for the criminally charged to demonstrate innocence. I was led to believe that things are not like that in America, that those given the authority of prosecution have to make a showing, and a timely one, a speedy one, of the guilt of those charged, complete with evidence that will stand the light of day, that will convince a jury of the arrestee’s peers of his guilt. In America we are supposed to so value freedom and justice that we just don’t take a prosecutor’s word that a crime has been committed and that some individual is guilty and will therefore be locked up or executed. A reasonable showing of that alleged guilt must be made. After more than six months, why is the prosecution shying away from meeting that burden in Mr. Merritt’s case?