For three years and eight months, investigators, journalists, and amateur sleuths chased ghosts. They chased theories of Mexican getaways, cartel connections, and voluntary disappearances.
There are some cases that feel like riddles wrapped in a nightmare. The disappearance of the McStay family is one of them.
But forensic accountants noticed a pattern. Immediately after the family vanished, someone began writing checks from Joseph’s business account. Thousands of dollars. The signature? A forgery. The culprit? Chase Merritt.
Chase was Joseph McStay’s business partner and, most heartbreakingly, the godfather to one of the murdered boys. He was the one who had "discovered" the family missing. He was the one who talked to the media, wiping away tears. Two Shallow Graves- The McStay Family Murders
Cell phone data was the final nail in the coffin. Merritt’s phone pinged near the McStay home on the night of the murders. The next morning, his phone pinged near the gravesite in the desert.
Meanwhile, the bodies of Joseph and Summer McStay were lying in two shallow graves, just 100 yards apart, buried in the dirt behind a dumpster in the desolate Victorville desert. Their toddlers were buried beside them. When the bodies were finally discovered in 2013, the case pivoted 180 degrees. The "runaway" theory was dead. This was a massacre.
For nearly four years, the world looked for the McStays in Mexico, in Canada, in hiding. They were never lost. They were just two and a half miles from home, waiting in the dirt to be found. The disappearance of the McStay family is one of them
Four lives vanished overnight. For nearly four years, the world believed they ran away. The truth was hiding just 2.5 miles from home.
Then, on a dusty stretch of the Mojave Desert in November 2013, a motorcyclist made a discovery that shattered every theory. Joseph McStay was a successful businessman in his 40s, running a custom water-fountain manufacturing company out of his home in Fallbrook, California. He had a beautiful wife, Summer (43), and two vibrant little boys: Gianni (4) and Joseph Jr. (3).
It suggests a chilling sequence: a frantic, exhausting night of digging in the dark. Perhaps the killer ran out of time, energy, or humanity. Thousands of dollars
On February 4, 2010, they simply evaporated.
Two Shallow Graves: The Unsettling Final Chapter of the McStay Family
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