Very few people will ever have to deal with the pain of losing a loved one under mysterious, even sinister, circumstances.
But for those who have, the grief can often feel unbearable.
That’s why the McStay family murders have become known as one of the most brutal crimes in modern history.
On February 4, 2010, Joseph McStay, 40, his wife Summer, 43, and their two little boys, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, vanished from their home in Fallbrook, California.
After days of trying to contact them, Joseph’s brother, Mike, finally broke into the family’s home to see what was going on.
Joseph found the family’s unfed dogs outside, a carton of raw eggs on the counter, and two bowls of popcorn on the sofa.
Other than that, there were absolutely no signs of foul play in the home.
Disappearance Theories
What made the McStay family’s disappearance so different from the rest were the many theories about what might have happened to them that night.
During the investigation, authorities learned that on February 8, the family’s 1996 Isuzu Trooper was towed from a strip mall parking lot in San Ysidro, San Diego, near the Mexican border.
Because of the strange location of their vehicle, police decided to take a look at surveillance footage of the border from the night the family went missing.
Investigators were floored when they saw a family of four that looked just like Summer, Joseph, and their boys from the back casually walking straight across the border.
In the years that followed, many people claimed to see the McStays in Mexico, leading San Diego authorities to conclude that they had left voluntarily.
Still, relatives of the McStays maintained that Summer never would have taken her family to Mexico, fearing the drug wars across the border.
More than anything else, nobody believed that the McStays would ever leave home without their dogs.
One of the more chilling theories actually came from Joseph’s business partner, Chase Merritt—the last known person to contact the family—who told investigators that Joseph feared his wife.
Merritt revealed that Summer was extremely possessive and controlling, and when Joseph suddenly came down with an unexplained illness, they thought she might be poisoning her husband.
Although relatives refuted claims that Summer could have hurt Joseph or the boys, many sleuths online theorized that Summer could have killed her entire family, then herself.
McStay Family Remains Found
On November 11, 2013, a motorcyclist discovered four sets of human remains buried in two shallow graves in the desert near Victorville, California.
Two days later, the adult remains were positively identified as those of Joseph and Summer McStay, crushing all hopes that the family really had been living in Mexico for three years.
The shocking discovery also squashed any theories that Summer had anything to do with the murders.
San Bernardino County officials later revealed that the cause of death had been blunt force trauma for all four victims.
Authorities also announced that they believed the McStays had been bludgeoned to death in their own home.
Arrest of Chase Merritt
Despite the mysterious theories surrounding the McStay family murders, the culprit ended up being the most obvious suspect—the last person to have contact with the family, Chase Merritt.
In the days after the disappearance, it was revealed that Merritt had written himself $21,000 in checks from Joseph’s business account.
Merritt’s DNA was also found all over the family’s abandoned SUV, leading authorities to believe that he was the one who left the vehicle near the border.
As of February 2016, Merritt has been through at least five lawyers since his November 2014 arrest.
He is currently awaiting trial on four counts of murder. The district attorney is seeking the death penalty.
