Merritt said he had never driven the vehicle, DuGal said.ĭet. When DuGal’s partner confronted him about using past tense, Merritt seemed confused and disregarded the question.ĭetectives swabbed his cheek for DNA and asked him about a critical piece of evidence: the McStay family’s Isuzu Trooper, which was towed from the parking lot of a strip mall near the Mexican border days after the disappearance. Merritt also used the past tense when speaking about Summer, saying she “was a verbal person.” During an interview two weeks after the family disappeared, Merritt told detectives that McStay “was” one of his best friends, according to a transcript of the defendant’s preliminary hearing. Troy DuGal, the lead sheriff’s investigator in San Diego County, where the case began as a missing-persons investigation. Merritt had used that same past-tense phrasing years earlier, according to court testimony from Det. He was arrested and charged with four counts of murder in 2014. “He was my best friend,” Merritt told the tabloid. A week after officials excavated the bodies in Victorville, Merritt was quoted in a British tabloid, saying that the business was flourishing before the disappearance and that the two men had spent more than an hour together the day McStay vanished. He frequently bounced between jobs, eventually landing work as a subcontractor for Earth Inspired Products, Joseph McStay’s company, which sold water fountains. His probation was extended to a decade because he skipped so many court-ordered programs and was late to pay fines. Merritt, now 61, was sentenced to six months in jail and three years’ probation. In 2001, the Riverside County resident and father pleaded no contest to second-degree burglary and grand theft after authorities accused him of stealing from a San Gabriel Valley ironworks company. Merritt had cycled in and out of jails and prisons after several criminal convictions for burglary and receiving stolen property during the 1970s and ’80s.
But police now say they believe the McStays were killed at their home, on a cul-de-sac beneath a hill dotted with avocado trees. San Diego County sheriff’s investigators eventually handed the case off to the FBI, saying they believed the family was out of the country.Īuthorities received hundreds of tips from callers reporting sightings around the country. A check of the family’s computer revealed searches suggesting an international trip, including “What documents do children need for traveling to Mexico?” But friends and family insisted the couple would never travel there with their children. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry. “I’ve been living in a fog for nine years now,” said Patrick McStay, Joseph’s father, who investigated the disappearance and chronicled his findings in a book, “McStays, Taken Too Soon: A True Story.”įrom the start the case baffled detectives, who initially believed the family may have ventured out on their own and planned to return.
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