SAN BERNARDINO >> Defense attorneys for McStay family murder suspect Charles “Chase” Merritt said Friday prosecutors gave them a recent interview with a woman claiming to know about other potential suspects in the case.
“One of the things we got today centers on other responsible parties,” said Rajan Maline, Merritt’s co-counsel, after a pretrial hearing for Merritt on Friday in San Bernardino Superior court. “Today, what we’re receiving is additional information, not necessarily tied to any particular group, but with a connection to potentially drugs and drug dealers and things of that nature. There’s a lot of third-party culpability in this case.”
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Maline and Merritt’s lead attorney, Jimmy Mettias, said they do not know who the woman is who was recently interviewed by investigators for the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office and have yet to review the interview transcript and talk to the woman themselves.
“These are statements being made by people we don’t even know. We don’t know how credible it is,” Maline said, adding that the woman interviewed by district attorney’s investigators appeared to know things about the case that have not been released.
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Prosecutors Sean Daugherty and Britt Imes declined to comment.
“At this time, it would be absolutely inappropriate to discuss these matters or anything related to the evidence in our case,” district attorney’s spokesman Christopher Lee said in an email. “Ultimately, our role is to protect the integrity of this case and all cases, for that matter, while seeking justice for victims.”
Merritt, 58, of Homeland, faces the death penalty in connection with the sledgehammer beating deaths of Joseph McStay, 40, his wife, Summer, 43, and their two sons, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, in their Fallbrook home on or around Feb. 4, 2010. He was arrested in November 2014 and charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
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The disappearance of the McStay family in February 2010 drew national media attention, and rumors have since swirled about a possible link to the Mexican drug cartels. The family’s Isuzu Trooper was found abandoned at the Mexican border in San Ysidro, and a video surveillance camera at the border recorded footage of a man, a woman and two small children walking across the border around the time the McStay family disappeared.
Authorities have since determined the family seen in the video was not the McStays.
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Investigators also came across searches on the McStays’ computer for information on travel to Mexico and passports.
Merritt’s defense team says it has seen similar methods of execution — bludgeoning by sledgehammer — by the Los Zetas crime syndicate.
“We’ve talked about the Los Zetas and different cartels using that method of killing, especially during that time,” Mettias said Friday. “There’s a lot we’re looking at. It’s still an active investigation.”
No information linking the McStay family disappearance and killings to Mexican drug cartels was mentioned in the hundreds of pages of search warrants released in July.
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The family’s skeletal remains were discovered in November 2013 buried in shallow graves in the Mojave Desert outside of Victorville, west of the 15 Freeway and north of Stoddard Wells Road.
Prosecutors believe greed was the motive behind the killings. Merritt, according to search warrant affidavits and testimony at Merritt’s preliminary hearing in June, was a gambling addict who was more than $50,000 in debt when the McStay family disappeared. That debt included a $30,000 loan from Joseph McStay to cover Merritt’s gambling debt.
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In the wake of the McStay family’s disappearance, Merritt wrote checks totaling more than $15,000 on Joseph McStay’s business account, cashed them, then deleted the checks from McStay’s Quickbooks computer software accounting program, authorities say.
Joseph McStay employed Merritt to build custom, decorative water fountains for McStay’s online business, Earth Inspired Products. Around the time of the McStay family’s disappearance, the two had a falling out, and one witness told investigators McStay was considering firing Merritt due to his gambling addiction, according to search warrants filed in the case.
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Still, the evidence points to other potential suspects, defense attorneys say, including two sets of tire tracks found at the graves of the victims, a fact revealed at Merritt’s preliminary hearing.
That, coupled with new information being revealed in the case, begs a lot of questions about the crimes, defense attorneys say.
“The interesting thing is even today — almost a year since our client was charged — we’re still getting people coming forward with more information and different information. There’s still additional information trickling in,” Mettias said.
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Maline added, “I think we’re absolutely at the beginning of this investigation. We’re not at the end of it.”