By Count Friedrich von Olsen
The district attorney’s office this week offered up just enough information to bind Charles Merritt over for trial. In the course of doing so, prosecutors provided a glimpse of just why it is that they believe Mr. Merritt is the individual wholly and solely responsible for murdering – brutally – the McStay Family. The recitation of evidence implicating him is as follows:
According to San Diego County Sheriff’s Detective Troy DuGal, Mr. Merritt’s DNA was found on the steering wheel, gear shift and radio control of the McStay family’s Isuzu Trooper, after it was found February 8, 2010 in an impound lot in San Ysidro…
DuGal testified that when he asked Mr. Merritt about the Trooper, he said he had ridden in the vehicle multiple times but never drove it…
Between February 1, 2010 and February 4, 2010, thousands of dollars in checks were written from Joseph McStay to Mr. Merritt on Joseph McStay’s business account…
Mr. Merritt was added to that account as a vendor on February 1…
Most, though not all of the activity on Joseph McStay’s account during the early days of February 2010 did not process through his laptop computer, as was normally the case…
Checks written on the account after February 4, 2010 were edited to be backdated to February 4. Many of the checks were deleted after they were printed. There were peculiarities about the way the checks were written that did not match Joseph McStay’s manner of drafting and handwriting…
Mr. Merritt cashed some of those checks…
In the months after the disappearance of the McStay family, Mr. Merritt went on a high rolling gambling spree at several casinos in Southern California…
On February 8, 2010, a man identifying himself as Joseph McStay who was using a cell phone that has been established as one Mr. Merritt was using at that time called Joseph McStay’s accounting company and was insistent that Mr. McStay’s business account be closed out…
Video from one of the McStays’ neighbor’s surveillance cameras shows a vehicle matching Mr. Merritt’s pickup truck leaving the McStay home on February 4, 2010…
According to FBI agent Kevin Boles, phone records show that Joseph McStay and Mr. Merritt talked to each other 27 times on February 4, 2010, which is incidentally the last time the McStay family was known to be alive…
And, perhaps most significantly, also according to Mr. Boles, the two closest cell towers to the site where the McStay family’s remains were found near Victorville registered pings from Mr. Merritt’s cell phone on February 6, 2010.
Let me fill in a bit of detail here…
Jospeh McStay ran a business known as Earth Inspired Products which was pretty much limited to decorative water fountains for landscaping and yards. Mr. Merritt installed those fountains for Mr. McStay. There was apparently a business dispute between the two men that escalated in the months and weeks prior to the McStay family’s brutal murders. The McStay family disappeared from their home in Fallbrook, in north San Diego County, on February 4 or 5, 2010. It was believed they had crossed into Mexico after leaving the Isuzu Trooper near the border at San Ysidro. There was a grainy video of a man and woman with two children, all of whose images roughly matched those of the McStay family, crossing into Mexico by foot at the checkpoint there on February 5, 2010. Investigators now believe that the family of four making that crossing into Mexico at that point on that day was just a coincidence and those four people were not the McStay family. Investigators and prosecutors have theorized that Mr. Merritt killed the entire McStay family as a consequence of either the business dispute that had developed between the two men or simply because of Mr. Merritt’s greed. Shortly after the family’s disappearance and the McStay’s relatives became concerned, their house was found to be in a curious state, with food items left out and their pets neglected. When authorities began looking into the family’s disappearance shortly thereafter, they interviewed Mr. Merritt, who coolly related that he had last seen Joseph McStay on February 4, 2010 at a Chick-fil-A restaurant to discuss future business projects and prospects and so Mr. McStay could give him some checks for some projects he had recently completed. San Diego authorities carried out a very intensive search for the McStay family at that time but reached an apparent dead-end. The video of the family, presumed to be the McStays, crossing into Mexico played a part in convincing authorities that the McStay family, for some unknown reason, had voluntarily taken leave of their home, albeit in a hurry. There was much speculation at the time to the effect that Mr. McStay had been engaged with or had crossed some underworld figures and for that reason, to assure his family’s safety, had taken refuge across the border. The mystery only intensified until more than three years later, the bodies of the McStays were found in two graves in the area north of Victorville near Oro Grande in November 2013. It was a full year later, in November 2014 that Mr. Merritt was arrested and charged with having coldbloodedly and brutally murdered them…
I tend to look on the good side of people and it was then and still is hard for me to believe that Mr. Merritt is responsible for these reprehensible acts. The details of the deaths are appalling, right out of what has to be a phantasmagorical nightmare. The coroner and forensic pathologists indicate the family was very likely killed with a three-pound sledgehammer found in one of the graves. The oldest child, four-year-old Gianni McStay, sustained at least seven blows to his head with the hammer. The body of the three-year-old child, Joseph, was in such a state of decomposition that no determination as to the cause of death could be made. Mrs. McStay suffered multiple blows to her head, including several that fractured her jaw in multiple spots. Joseph McStay, Sr. had a huge hole in the back of his skull, consistent with a forceful blow from the hammer. There was a white extension cord knotted around his neck…
Mr. Merritt grew up in Apple Valley and doubtless, was familiar with the High Desert. If he indeed was the murderer, it makes for some sort of cruel logic that he would have disposed of the bodies at a spot he knew of, had perhaps scouted out and where he might have confidence of its remoteness. As I said, I am reluctant to look on the bad side of people. I had previously entertained the notion that Mr. Merritt was guilty but was nowhere near convinced of it. Based on what I have picked up from the preliminary hearing, I am being pushed toward the conclusion that he may have committed these heinous acts. I am not absolutely convinced. There is still some leeway for doubt. Was there DNA other than Mr. Merritt’s or Mr. McStay’s or Mrs. McStay’s on the steering wheel and gearshift in the Trooper? Whose? Is there some plausible or more than plausible explanation of Mr. Merritt’s presence in the north end of Victorville on February 6, 2010? I am led to believe that Mr. Merritt’s DNA was not on the hammer. Was someone else’s DNA on the handle of that deadly instrument? If so, whose? And remember FBI agent Boles? He had some pretty damning information about Mr. Merritt’s cell phone and the more than two dozen calls between Mr. Merritt and Mr. McStay on February 4, 2010. But he also offered something exculpatory. He reported that on February 5, 2010, a day after authorities believe the entire McStay family was dead, Mr. Merritt three times called Joseph McStay, but those calls went unanswered. Was this Mr. Merritt being clever and thinking ahead, seeking to throw investigators off if they were to start considering him as a suspect, or was he truly ignorant of the McStay family’s fate and earnestly trying to get in touch with his business partner? That gives me pause. But I will admit, my doubt about Mr. Merritt’s guilt has been eroded by what little the prosecution has laid out…
This brings me to the point of this diatribe. I believe the prosecution has been playing this way too close to the vest. More than four months ago 18 news organizations went to court to ask that the search warrants relating to this case and Mr. Merritt be divulged. This was two months after Mr. Merritt had been arrested and charged. The district attorney’s office opposed that request, intimating that the “investigation” of Mr. Merritt would be compromised by such disclosures. This week we were given a glimpse of the evidence against Mr. Merritt. Why could it not have been revealed four months ago? Indeed, why could it not have been disclosed at the time of his arrest and charging? All of this, or most of it, is hard information. Facts. Scientific data. It can’t be compromised and revealing it to the world has not given Mr. Merritt, sitting in a jail cell, any advantage. This secrecy has only served to keep the public in the dark. There is far too much secrecy in our legal proceedings. If people are criminally charged with the authority of prosecutors working on behalf of the public, then the public deserves to know what is being done in its name and why. This is not a police state with star chambers. It is a democratic republic with open courts. This secrecy in criminal proceedings is poisonous. It pollutes the confidence we must have in a treasured institution. Our Constitution guarantees us a speedy trial of the facts. In the Old West, a desperado was arrested and his trial was scheduled for the next morning at 8 a.m., his sentencing at 10 a.m. and his hanging at noon. I am not advocating that we return to those barbaric days of yesteryear. I believe our system of justice demands a deliberative process and that we should take the time to get things right. But weeks of delay when something can be accomplished in days, or months of delay when the same can be accomplished in weeks or years of delay when the matter can be settled in a matter of a few months is itself injustice. Justice delayed is justice denied. And public officials withholding from the public facts that are inherently public ones is unconstitutional and should be considered a criminal act in itself…