20/20 - McStays Episode 3: In the Desert

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

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Hi, this is Ashan Singh here with another weekly episode of our latest true crime series from 2020 and ABC Audio. What Happened to the Mixed? Remember, you can get new episodes weekly on Tuesdays if you follow What Happened to the Mix Days on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Or you can hear the entire series right now, ad free, by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts. Click the link in the description to start your free trial today. Now here's the next episode of what happened to the mixed days. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. In November 2013, a man named John Bluth took his motorcycle out for an off-road adventure. It was around 7.30 a.m. on Veterans Day, when John rode east, up Interstate 15, deep into the Mojave Desert. At that time of year, the sun doesn't come up very early. So it was kind of getting a full light, a little bit cool, nice.

day and look like a good day for a bike ride. John says that on Veterans Day, he thinks about his two brothers, veterans who have passed away. The day is usually a sad one for him, he says. On that morning, John took off, headed across the scrubby, sparsely populated land between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. So actually what happened was I'm heading west on on one of these dirt roads over here towards the mountains that you see behind me there. And I'm looking for the Old Spanish Trail.

The Old Spanish Trail is a 200-year-old road, a historic trade route that cuts across the southwestern states used by settlers heading west. It's now little more than a dirt track and some stretches and almost hidden from sight. But John knew her to look. turned off the highway and started making his way to the trail. I was looking around because I'm going very slow.

And I saw what I thought was a, what looked kind of like an upside down turtle shell. And so I stopped because I'm, you know, I'm curious. Took a stick and turned it over and it didn't look like a tortoise. It looked like a part of a skull. John wondered if it was some kind of historic artifact. He took a closer look. If it was a skull, it was small. I did turn that order with the stick,

but it was no bigger than probably the palm of my hand. John called the police to report what he'd found. How can I help you? Hi. I'm out here on a motorcycle, out behind the dump. And I found what looks like a human skull. Can you give me a location? Yes.

The 911 operator sent an officer to check it out. And John went on with his ride. I was in suspense. I was wondering, you know, what is that? Is it something ancient, something new? It wasn't until a few days later, John said, when he turned on the TV, and he learned more. It wasn't ancient, but it wasn't exactly new either. On the news, they reported that it was the McState family that they had discovered out there in the desert that I had discovered. Nearly four years and a hundred miles away from where the mixed days had disappeared, they were finally found.

Just not the way their family and friends were hoping for. From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm Ashton Singh, and this is What Happened to the Mix Days? Episode 3 In the desert. The area where John Bluth found the mysterious object was deep in the Mojave Desert, inland and north of the McStays home. It was over 150 miles away from where the family's car had been found, abandoned at the U.S.-Mexico border. The location of the find put it in the jurisdiction of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department.

San Bernardino is two counties over from where the McStays lived, and the family didn't have any obvious treatment. strong connections to the desert. So when a report of possible human remains came in, some didn't immediately think it was connected to the McStay case. San Bernardino Detective Eddie Bachman said he hadn't even heard of it. In 2013, I was working with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's

Department assigned to the specialized investigations division on the homicide detail. Detective Bachman says the first people on scene were local sheriff's deputies from Victorville, a town, few miles away. They quickly called for reinforcements, a coroner, and a forensic anthropologist. The team confirmed that the biker's hunch was right. This wasn't a turtle shell. It was a bone fragment, part of a child's skull. And nearby, more horrors were discovered. Once we verified that it was human remains that were out there, they went out and they walked

the scene a little further and they located two shallow graves, a short distance from where the skull was located. Two graves, and inside those graves were more human remains. That's when Detective Eddie Bachman's homicide team was called, and Bachman went out to the gravesites himself. One of the things he says he noticed right away was how close to the main road they were. And the way that the graves were located, it was down inside of almost like a wash area. So if you were standing at the graves, you could see portions of the freeway, and it was probably I would say half a half a mile to a mile away from the exit to the freeway there. The graves themselves were shallow.

Investigators would determine that some bone fragments were buried only six inches deep. Investigators collected the bones from what they labeled as grave A and grave B and sent them for analysis. Within days, the results came back. This collection of skeletal remains was confirmed to be what was left of the McStay family. The bones in Grave A belonged to Joseph McStay and three-year-old Joey Jr. In Grave B,

was Summer and their older son, Gianni. According to their report, Detective's suspected animals had disturbed the graves. The bone found by the biker was part of Joey Jr.'s skull. And there were other items in the grave, potential clues. Joseph McStay was wrapped in a woven blanket

He also had an extension cord that was wrapped around his neck and it had gone down to his ankles. Near Summer's remains, investigators said they found black sweats and the left cup of a bra spattered with paint. Near Gianni, they found a small pair of blue pants, I'll pull up diaper, and a kid's backpack. Inside of the grave with Summer and Gianni, there were some other items, a cell phone holder, and then ultimately after the victims were removed from there, we located Stanley Sledgehammer underneath where the victims were placed. John Bluth, the biker, discovered the skull fragment on a Monday. By Friday, the 15th of November 2013,

investigators were ready to share the news with the world. The mixed days would never be coming home. And while their friends and family had searched for them for years, someone out there had known exactly where they were the whole time. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Answer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. FX presents the Shards. Los Angeles 1981. We're going to roll the school, don't we already? It was supposed to be the best year of their lives. I would stab someone for a drink right now Until their friends started going missing There's something going on

From executive producer Ryan Murphy And based on the best-selling thriller by Brett Easton Ellis I'm terrifying FX's The Shards now streaming On Hulu Four days after the skeletal remains were found The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department held a press conference in a well-lip briefing room

relatives of the mixed days sat at a long table, many of them wearing sunglasses and periodically wiping away tears from underneath them. Sheriff John McMahon stood at the podium and addressed the room. He told reporters that investigators had found the remains of Joseph and Summer McStay in two shallow graves. They'd also found the remains of two children, the sheriff said. They presumed that it was Joey Jr. and Gianni. But by the day of the press conference, they hadn't confirmed the identities of the children yet. Their DNA evidence is on file with DOJ,

and we will be sending that information to DOJ for positive confirmation. Investigators said that the autopsies would be completed by the end of the day. And while they weren't yet willing to share details of the cause of death, they did tell reporters that this case was no longer a missing person's investigator. It was a homicide. Michael McStay, Joseph's brother, was invited to speak. We're going to find this individual or for individuals. I know that the sheriffs, the FBI, everybody wants to bring this to justice.

Michael told reporters that his family was grateful for the support they'd received and asked for privacy as they grieved. In footage from the event, he looks exhausted. exhausted and on the verge of tears. It's not really the, um, the, uh, outcome we were looking for. But, um, it gives us courage to know that they're together and they're in a better place.

That was such a hard day, um, to see Michael on the press conference, barely holding it together. Gina Watson, a friend of Joseph McStay, had been working to help track down where the McStays had gone. She stayed in close contact with Patrick McStay, Joseph's father. Patrick and I both thought we would just go to our grave, never knowing what happened to them. Like we had kind of given up.

Not that we gave up searching, like for God's sake, we were still probably not every night looking at things, but, you know, going back and forth on things. He was at least able to find out what happened, but what a terrible thing to have found out happened, that all of your fears came true. Lawrence Hemingway was a surfing friend of Joseph's. I remember thinking, at least they're going to find who did it.

Soon after the bodies were found, a paddleout was organized in Joseph's honor. It's a surfing tradition where out in the ocean, surfers form a circle on their boards. They often hold hands and remember the dead. Lawrence was there. Joey's paddleout was probably, from what I remember about, 50 people. It was at the San Clemente Pier. It's perfect weather, perfect day. In news footage from that day, we can see the surfers sitting out in the ocean wearing floral necklaces in the style of Hawaiian lace. Sometimes in a paddle out. Everyone goes around the circle,

sharing stories about the person who's not there. Just your grief and the ocean. It was really neat. It was very touching. The same day as the paddle out, there was also a memorial service at a local church. I mean, I would have never, in a million years, ever have thought that they would have disappeared and their lives be ended like that in such a horrific way. Jesse Silveria, a friend of Summers, had also waited for news of the mixed days. There's not a word... bad enough to be able to say how devastating it was to find out that information.

And then waves of sadness come and waves of devastation come. And us as friends, you know, would get together and just cry and sobbed together over what happened to them. For some of the friends who'd waited so long for answers, They said there was a sense of almost relief, just in knowing something after all this time. But Jesse said that relief was short-lived. It was the one big answer to all the questions we had for all those years. And then another whole set of new questions and unanswered questions began to happen.

Because how could somebody overtake a family of four and do that to all of them? Was it a stranger or was it somebody that knew them? Gina Watson again. She'd been trying to help to get to the bottom of the McStay's disappearance since 2010. Back then, the case had been investigated by the San Diego County Sheriff's Office. As a missing person's case, detectives said they had exhausted all possible leads. They later handed the case over to the FBI in March of 2013. But now, seven months later, San Bernardino investigators had bodies and grave sites to investigate.

Detectives started trying to piece it all together. When you have multiple homicides, it's always going to be a big deal. Ryan Smith was a homicide detective working in the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department. As the question of what happened to the mistakes began to resurface, he was assigned to the same San Bernardino, Bernardino investigation team as Detective Edie Bachman. For Detective Smith, the case quickly became personal.

I had young kids at the time, and you know that there's remains of young children in the graves. And so that's something that is just, it's alarming and it's upsetting because who kills children.

Smith started digging into the reports made by the gravesite investigators. What clues could the bodies? and the items they were found with reveal. Especially with graves, we're going to want to see what was left over, right? That's the name of the game of any investigation. What got left behind that we can try to find to help solve the crime? Now, unfortunately, especially with the mixed days in that grave,

you know, they were in the ground for three years. Detective Smith says, those years in the ground meant that it was harder to collect evidence. DNA was less likely to be present. The remains were now skeletal. There was no soft tissue left that would normally reveal something about the manner of death. But once the autopsies were complete, San Bernardino investigators were able to determine how the mixtays died. The coroner did their autopsy,

and they determined that the causes death were blunt force trauma. According to police, Joseph's skull had a large indentation. A bone in his leg was badly broken. Summer's skull was severely damaged, suggesting that someone had hit her head several times. Investigators were able to compare the injuries to the size and shape of the three-pound Stanley Sledgehammer that they found in Grave B. They thought it was a match. Establishing a murder weapon was a step forward for the investigation, but it only added to the horror of the case for Detective Smith. You know, this wasn't a drive-by.

This wasn't someone who unfortunately got struck or became a victim because they were in the wrong place, wrong time. This was up close and personal. And the graves had more to say. Smith reviewed the old case files from 2010 and discovered information in them that helped him make sense of the other items found with the remains. In the graves, we found.

blue painters tape, we found woven fabric. And when we reviewed pictures that were taken of the mixed days' residence, what we saw is that the house was under construction. There was blue painters tape. There were rags. Remember, Summer and Joseph had been in the middle of renovating their house. Right when they went missing, they were painting the walls. Detectives wondered if this meant that the family had been killed at home.

There were no shoes in the graves. Also, you know, you're probably not. not going out without shoes. You know, there's no wallets. So really led us to believe that the family wasn't out traveling. They weren't doing something and then abducted. You know, they were at home. The details as they emerged were hard to hear for the people who knew the family.

Like Gina Watson. You think about what they possibly saw or feared. You think about as a mother wanting to protect those children. And it's heartbreaking. It really is. Brutality of their murders only added to the confusion around the mixed days' deaths. Who would want to kill this young family? Detectives wondered if the answer lay buried in the old case files before them.

Was there a person previously questioned that might now have more to say? Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. When Westchaffirs took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different.

People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I started or not in 2013, and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical. people were able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that

you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. Detective Ryan Smith says that the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department was given over 4,000 pages of case files. Investigators reviewed old interviews that San Diego had done and co-men through old documents. But a homicide investigation is different from a missing person's case. San Bernardino wanted to conduct new interviews, some of them with people who had already spoken to San Diego years before. Now we know this isn't a family that just went on vacation and didn't tell anybody.

This is a family that got murdered. So information they may not have thought was important during a missing person's investigation is very important for us. Investigators made a list of everyone San Diego had spoken to. We put them all on a big board, and then we did our research about them, you know, what they did, where they lived, all that stuff, and then we would go out and talk to them. In the San Bernardino Police Report, detectives mentioned four people. All of them had been close to the McStays at some point in their lives. First was Michael McFadden. McFadden was married to Joseph McStays. ex-wife and was stepfather to Joseph's oldest son.

According to the report, detectives had learned that McFadden and Joseph used to be friends. But Detective Bachman said that in the months before the family's disappearance, things weren't good between them. There were some issues between Michael McFadden and the mixed days, just over some stuff to do with the children. Detectives met with Michael McFadden. They told him, everyone's a suspect until San Bernardino says they aren't.

He was frustrated that he was being looked at as a suspect, I think, which is understandable for anybody. However, he was very open to us when we interviewed him and provided the records to say, hey, I wasn't in the area. San Bernardino investigators cleared Michael McFadden of any involvement in what happened to the mixed days. Next was Vic Johansson.

Police reports say Vic and Summer had dated for around five years. Ms. Vak and Summer's relationship was coming to an end. That's when Summer met Joseph. And when Gina searched Joseph's email, she said she found something that concerned her. An email Summer had forwarded to Joseph. Message from Vic to Summer right before the mixed days went missing.

It said, I love you forever, happy birthday summer, forever and ever. It was just odd. Vic had a criminal record. He had pleaded no contest to a charge of making criminal threats to a neighbor in 2004. But when detectives interviewed Vic, he said he didn't know where the McStay family were living at the time they went missing. And when detectives pulled his cell records for that period of time, it showed that his phone was out of state. Detective Smith again.

We were able to contact him. We were able to verify his whereabouts. and it excluded him from the list of suspects. San Bernardino investigators were also taking a close look at Joseph's business associates, Dan Kavanaugh and Chase Merritt. Dan, again, was Joseph's business partner in their decorative waterfall business. He was the company's webmaster, responsible for their company's website and online marketing.

Chase, remember, was a welder who worked with the company. He was the one who built the towering structures made of glass and steel. At the time Joseph went missing, Ian Chase were in the middle of some lucrative custom projects, including one in Saudi Arabia. San Diego investigators had interviewed Dan Kavanaugh back in 2010, soon after the family disappeared. They had questioned why he'd removed funds from the company PayPal account after the family went missing. Dan had explained that the money, around $7,000, was for keeping the business afloat.

The detectives were satisfied. There was no evidence tying him to the family's disappearance. San Bernardino detectives were interested in Dan and Joseph's business and an instance of some seemingly bad blood between them. There was a string of messages between the two men, months before the family went missing. Messages show an angry Dan, threatening retaliation against the business. Gina Watson, who had access to Joseph,

Joseph's emails came across the back and forth between the two men. Oh, yeah, here's the big part. It will be about 30 days from today that your site is gone from the search engines if you just want to ignore me. Joseph says, why is that? Why not? You treat me like a kid like I'm dumb or some... One, your site will be gone from the engines. Two, I'll make my own fountain site.

And three, I don't need it anyway. I'm killing it on other shit. Joseph says, I summer and kids, the real you and what you would potentially do to harm me and my family. You're a great guy, Dan. F-and-sad. That just sounded like a fake answer to me. That was not being accountable and that was just dodging accountability. That was not being real, you know?

All I'm saying is that I can stop the marketing to the site. This is Dan Kavanaugh. In an interview with ABC News, he admitted that it did sound like a threat. but he said Joseph left him no other choice That's all I could do at that point To make him take it seriously Detective Ryan Smith

As you read the messages You see that he's threatening to remove the site And that's Joseph's livelihood Dan Kavanaugh says that the interaction with Joseph Didn't come out of the blue As business partners He and Joseph had an agreed split of profits and responsibilities

customers would order through the fountain website, which Dan maintained and promoted. Joseph would handle customer communication. And when necessary, Joseph would contract Chase Merritt to fabricate custom fountain orders. But around this time, Dan said he started to notice something strange happening. He said their website's rankings were up, but their online sales numbers weren't.

I had a new girlfriend that I got and I was like, I need more money to support this hot girl. And so I'm like, but I thought I already created a business that should be making me enough money to support this. And so then I was like, I started putting two together. I'm like, maybe I do have that company, but it's just I'm not getting the money from it. Dan said that he could see in shared company spreadsheets, that there were other customer orders, ones not made through the website. It looked to Dan like Joseph had contacted potential customers who had made inquiries through the website and backchanneled with them.

Dan accused Joseph of trying to exclude him from the profits and keep it all a secret. Dan said that's what his heated messages to Joseph were about. He thought Joseph was withholding money from him. And the website was Dan's leverage. I had ways that I could deal with it. They weren't violent ways and I put him out in the open. I'm like, hey dude, I'm going to do something about this. And I'm going to do it related to the business.

Dan said the situation affected his friendship with Joseph. But it didn't go further than that. It's like demoralizing for me to see that, you know what I mean? But I'm not like, I'm going to kill someone or something like that. I just, I think more like non-violently, my grandpa taught me to use my brain, and he didn't teach me to use violence to solve things. Dan told detectives in 2014 that after he confronted Joseph, Joseph had agreed to pay him back.

He said that even after this disagreement, he and Joseph had a good relationship, that they still talked every day. every day. Dan also told detectives that he had wondered while the McStays were missing if Joseph had been killed. He said he could see Joseph treating another person the way he'd treated Dan. Maybe someone, quote, who wasn't as nice as me. So Dan was adamant that he was not anywhere in the area at the time the family went missing.

Detective Bachman confirmed Dan's alibi with a window of time when the McStays went missing. During the investigation, we ended up interviewing Dan's ex-girlfriend, who had a strained relationship with Dan, but she was able to corroborate the fact that he was out in Hawaii with him at the time that the family went missing. In the end, San Bernardino investigators cleared Dan Kavanaugh of any involvement in the mixed day murders. As detectives ran down their list of names,

all of them could be cleared, all except one. As you exclude people, You know, there's only one person left. Well, where's Chase? Chase married. The man who welded the fountains for Joseph and Dan's business. The man who said he'd seen Joseph the day the family went missing. As investigators did a deep dive on the timeline of the McStay's disappearance,

Chase Merritt looked increasingly suspicious. What's bad, Chase? It looks very bad for you right now. Bet you're lying about this stuff. Why would Chase's vehicle be leaving the mixed A residence, you know, on the night that they disappeared? Did you kill the Mxtay family? What happened to the Mxtape's is a production of ABC Audio in 2020, hosted by me, Ashen Singh, produced by Madeline Wood, Vika Aronson, Audrey Mastek, and Kiarra Powell.

With help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer, or supervising producer is Susie Lou. Music by Haven Viola, scoring by Kiara Powell, mixing by having Viola, and Bob Mallory. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnson, Chris Donovan, Joseph Rees, Sunny Antrim, Alyssa Stoller, Zander Samaras, Tom Berman, Indra Della Saka, and Blue Browning. Josh Cohen is our director of podcast programming. Eamon McNeff is our executive producer. Can't wait for more. Listen to the next episode ahead of everyone else, ad free. Subscribe now to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Click the link in the description to start your free trial today. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers. in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. I started or not in 2013, and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on.

We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on Shopify.com.