Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery - Introducing 'What Happened to the McStays?'

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Today, we're bringing you a new episode of our latest series from 20/20 and ABC Audio, 'What Happened to the McStays?' In episode one, the McStay family home is found frozen in time — and spurs a yearslong mystery. To keep listening, follow 'What Happened to the McStays?' for free on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon Music⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or subscribe to 20/20 True Crime+ to get access to new episodes early and ad-free, plus unlock exclusive bonus content from 20/20 and hundreds of episodes from the 20/20 true crime vault. Visit ⁠apple.co/2020truecrime⁠ to subscribe now. Terms apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, this is Ashton Singh from ABC News, and I want to tell you about a new true crime podcast I'm hosting from 2020 and ABC Audio called What Happened to the Mixed Days. If you enjoyed this show, I think you'll really like it. It's a story about secrets, betrayal, and the dark underbelly of the American dream. In 2010, a family of four goes missing from their Southern California home, no signs of a struggle or forced entry. But clues scattered about the home raised questions. Had the mixed days really left on their own? If they did, where would they have gone in such a hurry? Or had something more sinister happened?

In our new podcast, what happened to the mixed days? We'll be sharing the whole shocking story. Keep listening now to hear the first episode right here. If you like it, you can hear the rest of the series by following what happens to the mixed days for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. or you can get the series early and add 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 episode one of what happened to the mixed days. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify.

Start your free trial today. In November of 2009, family of four moved into a palm tree dotted cul-de-sac in the hills of San Diego County. Joseph McStay and his wife, Summer, were in their early 40s and living a seemingly charmed Southern California life. with their two young sons. Their new neighborhood was surrounded by mountains and farmland. Their new house, a large Spanish-style home on Avocado Vista Lane. It was around 10 years old with the stucco exterior and a red terracotta roof. The mixed days home videos from around this time show an active, fun-loving family.

In one, Little Joseph Jr. runs around the first floor of their new home. In another video, all four of the mixtays bike to the beach. Jake, come here! Oh my god! Cadillac, Mama! And then there's the video where the two mixtay boys, Joseph Jr., and his big brother Gianni, swings side by side at a playground swing set together.

Their mom, Summer, pushes them higher and higher. For a couple of months, these were the types of sounds that filled the McStay residents. One day in February 2010, the house went quiet. Local station KGTV covered the story. The outside of the McStay home remains exactly as the family left it, their shoes and the newspaper, both outside.

There was a carton of eggs left out on the counter, and one other thing, Summer McStay left her prescription sunglasses behind. Family left their dogs behind, and there had been no activity their phones. It was as if the mixed days had simply vanished into thin air. Authorities, friends, and family were baffled. But how does a vibrant family of force suddenly go missing? From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm Ashton Singh, and this is what happened to the mixed days.

Episode 1. 11 days. Joseph McStay, or Joey, had a weekly weekly. ritual with his little brother Michael. In a 2011 interview with ABC News, Michael said that every Friday, Joseph would give him a ring on his way to play pickup soccer. He would call me, we'd touch base. Hey, how's things going?

Hey, Mikey, how's your business? What's going on? How are the girls? I'd ask how the boys were, and he'd tell me what was going on. But on Friday, February 5th, 2010, Michael didn't get that weekly call from his big brother. For Michael, this was unusual, but not a long.

So to miss one Friday, I mean, I didn't think a whole lot of it. But then several days went by without a peep from Joseph. No calls, texts, or emails. It was the same at his work, too. Joseph Cohen, a business that sold high-end decorative fountains, the kind you might see in hotel lobbies. The company was in the middle of a couple of projects. When Joseph's colleagues told the McStey family,

they noticed Joseph's colleagues, and gone completely silent. There was customer emails not being answered, which is not like Joe. He was usually right on top of it. Joseph's friends started reaching out to Michael to ask, Hey, have you heard from Joe? What's going on?

He's not answering his phone. Joseph's wife, Summer, wasn't returning calls either. So Michael posted to his brother's Facebook page, asking friends, if you've seen him, please let the family know. Family and friends got in touch. Michael and Joseph's parents,

plus two of Joseph's colleagues, Dan Kavanaugh and Chase Merritt. They shared any relevant information they had and Michael pieced together that Thursday, February 4th was likely the last day anyone had seen or heard from his brother. Michael and Joseph's father said he talked to Joseph that morning and according to Joseph's business associate, Chase,

He and Joseph met up that afternoon. Loved ones were worried about the mixed days. But Michael tried to remain optimistic. He thought it was possible the family left on a trip and just didn't tell anyone. I thought, well, maybe they're doing a quick vacate. So I didn't want to jump to any conclusions. A few days after the mixed days went quiet,

Joseph's business partner, Dan Kavanaugh, called the police for a welfare check. San Diego County Sheriff's deputies came out to the home and knocked on the door. No one was home at the time, but with no signs that anything was amiss, deputies followed procedure and did not go inside. Joseph's business associate, Chase Merritt, also went to the house a couple times that week. He says to see if he could find Joseph. No luck.

And by February 13th, the mixed days hadn't been seen. seen or heard from in nine days. Michael says he decided to check the home himself. He took a trip to Avocado Vista Lane. Chase came along too. I'd went down there, started knocking on doors, asking the neighbors, had they seen him. Michael says he let himself into the house

through a back window that was cracked open. He started looking through the home. He says it was messy. Kitchen drawers had been pulled out and placed on countertops. Toys, books, and clothes were scattered around, and the house was barely furnished. The family was using air mattresses instead of beds. To Michael, it was like his brother and his family were camping in their own home. But this was Michael's first time in the McStay's new house. They'd only moved in about two months earlier, and they were remodeling.

Michael says they'd been doing work on the floors and painting cabinets. So to him, this could have been a normal level of untidiness, given the circumstances, and given that Joseph and Summer had two young children. But there was one thing Michael noticed right away that he clocked as being very, very off. The dogs were left outside unattended. It didn't make sense. The McStay family dogs were left to sit in the hot California sun. By all accounts, the McStays loved their dogs.

A big Akita called bear and a golden retriever puppy called Digger. Friends say they were like second kids to Joseph and Summer. To leave them alone outside for days on end, this just didn't sit right with Michael. He asked a neighbor to keep an eye on the dog. And then he left, hoping his family would show up soon. But the mixed days had disappeared, leaving a puzzle that would soon mystify their friends and family. I'm Keanuana, and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back.

I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. 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.

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Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. One thing about Joseph is he would always talk for hours, and I'm not exaggerating, like sometimes two hours. Gina Watson was one of Joseph Mixday's friends. It meant because Gina also worked in the decorative fountain industry.

She says they'd gotten to know each other well. And according to Gina, Joseph was a talker. I would call him before I'd left for lunch to talk about whatever the problem of the day was. And then it would evolve into just, I don't know, like, conversation goes from one thing to another. And then I'm like, the phone's getting hot because it's been in your ear so long. Like, can we wrap this up? Gina said that Joseph adored his wife Summer and their two boys. Joseph's kids and his wife were everything to him.

Gina says Joseph would share stories about his rambunctious little boys. Like the time they snuck out of their beds early one morning and started rummaging through their kitchen cabinets. He said one night Gianni and little Joey had gotten into the flower. I guess they kept it in a lower cabinet and you're a parent and you're tired and your little kid sneaks out of bed and gets into the flower and they had it all over themselves, and they had, like, handprints and footprints

everywhere, and they were covered head to toe. Gina describes Joseph as a surfer dude. He had wavy, shoulder-length, light brown hair. In pictures, it looks like he would be more comfortable in shorts than a T-shirt and a suit and tie. Joseph and Summer's sons, Gianni and Joseph Jr., were four years old and three, respectively, at the time they vanished.

Photos of the little boys show their hair down to their shoulders, just like their dad. In one photo, Joey Jr. holds an ice cream sandwich, chocolate all over his mouth. And Gina says their dad, Joseph Sr. was generous with his friends. He would buy his friends' laptops just because he was excited about technology and he wanted them to be as excited as he was. and, oh, you've got to check out this gaming laptop. Like, oh, you need top of the line. No, that's not good enough. Let me get you this one.

He was just very easy with money. He never was too uptight about it. He was more so than any person I've ever met, to be honest. Joseph and Summer were introduced in the early 2000s. One of his friends set them up, and everyone says they hit it off right away. Summer was a very passionate woman who went after what she, She wanted.

That's Jesse Silveria, a friend of Summers. I met Summer around 2006, and I was living in Laguna Beach, and I think both of us were Lagunaites. Jesse and Summer were both photographers at the time, and met while working the same shoot. To me, Summer was exotic. You know, she had dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, really big, cute smile. Jesse says she and Summer would go out together

to creatives and joined the beachy art scene of Laguna but once Summer got pregnant Jesse says she scaled back her active social life, stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom. They were nesting. That phase in her life was nesting. Friends and families say Joseph and Summer loved the beach.

For a time, the couple and their sons lived in San Clementi. The apartment was on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean with world-class surfing right outside their door. The kids, they were growing up to be a surfer dudes too. They definitely took after Joey, you know, wanting to be close to the ocean. Another big part of the mixed day's lives was Joseph's work. Earth-inspired products.

It sold elaborate custom decorative waterfalls. These were large-scale standalone. objects, often six feet tall. Water would be pumped invisibly to the top of tall glass panes and then cascade down into pools that sparkled with a hidden light fixtures. Earth-inspired products also had an online retail side where they sold pre-manufactured water features. Gina Watson worked for one of Joseph's manufacturing partners. That's how the two met and became friends. She says Joseph was a designer at heart. He actually started his business, I think, like in his garage, designing his own features by hand.

Gina says Joseph was taking on more and more custom work, and the business was doing really well. According to people familiar with the company, Earth-inspired products had gotten big contracts, a car wash chain with 150 locations, a huge custom job for the Paul Mitchell Hair Salon brand. and even our project in Saudi Arabia. In late 2009, the McStay family moved from their small beachside apartment in San Clemente to their house on that palm tree-lined cul-de-sac. Their new town of Fallbrook is better known for its avocado orchards than its proximity to the coast. It's a 30-minute drive to the beach, a trade-off for the surf-loving McStays.

But it was big, five bedrooms of the backyard. You're Summer's friend, Chessie again. All the outside was completely populated with kids' toys and trucks and boy stuff, and she was growing flowers and gardens. Again, they had plans to remodel the home. By early 2010, some of the renovations were underway. Joseph would fill his brother Michael in on the progress. Okay, they're remodeling the house, and it's kind of kind of,

crazy, you know, the furniture is still in storage. By February of 2010, Joseph was doing well professionally. The couple was working on upgrading their new house. The family seemed settled. Joe doesn't invest, you know, like $30,000 into a house to renovate it because he's going to leave tomorrow. That just doesn't jive. He doesn't walk out on his friends and his family. And yet, that house in Fallbrook,

No one was home. And for over a week, there had only been silence from the family who lived there. It didn't add up. Michael McStay says he decided that if his brother and family were, as he'd hoped, just on an extended vacation, they should be back by February 15th. He says he told himself that if by 9 a.m., he still hadn't heard from Joseph, he'd file a missing person's report. That's exactly what Michael did. ESPN fantasy football is now the official fantasy game of the NFL.

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Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com.

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I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. By the morning of February 15, 2010, Michael McStay had reached his personal deadline to sound the alarm. No one had heard from Joseph or Summer in 11 days. Michael called the police. He asked for a welfare check, and the patrol deputies came out and checked the house. Lieutenant Dennis Brugos from the San Diego Sheriff's Department oversaw the investigation. According to police at 1032 a.m., Michael, along with officers from the San Diego Sheriff's Department, arrived at the McStays Falbrook House.

They knocked on the door and checked the exterior for signs of forced entry. When they got no response, they entered the residence and started a surge. It began by looking for people, either people in distress or bodies. They found neither. But they did encounter the dogs, were still in the backyard, alone, with some water and food left out for them. That raised red flags because, by all accounts,

they took very good care of their dogs. And when police heard from Michael that the McStays had left without notifying any friends or family, that raised immediate alarm bells, too. What the deputy initially learned was this was really, a nice family, and they never made plans to leave. And so that raised the suspicion level to the point where he said, you know what should probably call homicide and let them know what's going on out here. Lieutenant Brugos says suspicious circumstances cases like this one are handled by the

homicide unit, whether there's a dead body or not. Police say that when homicide detectives joined the search at the McStay residence, they checked again for any signs of foul play. Any clue as to what may have happened to the mixed days. Officers looked all over the home, inside the kitchen pantry, in the den, the garage, in a recycling bin outside, and the truck parked in the driveway. As detectives searched, they noticed a few curious things. To start, it was the food that was left out. According to police and court documents, downstairs in the living room, There were two small bowls of popcorn, half eaten, left on a futon. Bananas that had started to rot and a carton of eggs were sitting out on the kitchen counter.

You don't leave perishable food out if you're going to be gone for an extended period, time, generally. It seemed like the family may have left the house suddenly, even unexpectedly. And then, it was the mess. Police documented. Clothes piled up on the bathroom counter. suitcases left open with clothes spilling out in a piles, a tall lamp that looked like it had been knocked over. If the McStays had gone on vacation, like Michael so hoped was the case,

why would they have left suitcases full of clothing behind? And detectives also uncovered something else. Lieutenant Brugos again. We knew that one of the vehicles was parked here in a driveway and the other one wasn't here. The McStays, 1990. 96 white Asuzu Trooper was missing. If police could find the vehicle, maybe they could find the mixed stays.

They ran a search on the Asuzu Trooper and immediately came up with a hit. According to police records, the check revealed that the vehicle was recently towed from a parking lot about 60 miles from the mixed days home near the U.S. Mexico border. So near, in fact, that it was walking distance to the border terminal. according to police, the car had been towed from that lot on February 8th, four days after the McStays vanished. Now police had to find out, what did this clue mean? Did the McStays leave for Mexico altogether? And if so, did they go voluntarily or by force? Were they hiding, kidnapped? Police couldn't yet say.

The search of the McStay residents took all day, and in the end, police determined there was no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle or act of violence, no blood. In other words, no apparent signs of foul play, no clear crime. But that didn't mean that detectors were confident that all was well with the McStays. the abandoned dogs, the spoiled food left out, the family car found at the Mexican border, as Lieutenant Brugos puts it. When you put the whole picture together, it raises the level of suspicion that something's not right.

Once officers wrapped up the search of the home, a couple of the detectives, Troy Dugal and Suzanne Fisk, pulled Michael aside for an interview in their police car. In the tape from this interview, Michael still hopes that his Big Brother's family could be perfectly fine. What's the percentages of being in a situation like this and then just being something totally innocent? I can tell you that I've never had one like this where a family is just totally missing, ever. So I can't give you a good statistic.

Detective Dugal asked Michael, for more information about the missing family. How was Joseph and Summers' relationship? Who are their closest friends? Did he have problems with anyone? Or money trouble? Do you know if there's any money involvement with your brother owing someone money

or would somebody try to take advantage of your brother? I don't know enough about what's going on with his business. Why is I have no idea. They dug deeper, asking about Joseph's finances. How much is your brother worth? Oh, I don't know. I have no idea. You know what a hearing you come?

No. Dugall asked if Joseph might have been involved in narcotics. My brother doesn't even do drugs. So that's it out. Detectives also asked about the Asuzu trooper. Did Michael have any idea what Joseph and his family might be doing walking distance from Thioana? I don't know. I don't know what he's doing on there.

I have no idea. I don't think he knows anybody. down there. The whole situation still didn't sit right with Michael or the detectives. This thing just got me scratch my head. Well, we don't know any more than you know. What do you think? As a brother, where are they?

I'm hoping they went down and they just went to Mexico and they took a two-week vacation. I mean, that's a pipe dream at this point. I don't know. I would hope that too, but what did you see in the house that would indicate that that's probably not true? true. I just walked through, but I didn't get a, I mean, I didn't. Well, let me help you out. Inside the walking closet, there's suitcases and there's little kid's suitcases with

suitcase flaps open with folded little kid laundry, clean laundry in the suitcases. Yeah. If they were on vacation, the kid's suitcases would have been with them. In his official account of the day, Detective Dugal concluded that there had been no apparent sign of a crime. But he also said this. It is my opinion the McStay family is the victim of foul play. The police knew this wasn't over.

It was more work to be done. Now the race was on. To find out what had actually happened to the family of four. Before, it was too late. What happened to the McStays is a production of ABC Audio in 2020, hosted by me, Ashton Singh, produced by Madeline Wood, Vika Aronson, Audrey Mastek, and Kiara Powell. With help from Sabrina Fang and Camille Peterson, edited by Gianna Palmer.

Our supervising producer is Susie Liu. Music by Heaven Viola, scoring by Kiara Powell, mixing by having Viola, and Bob Mallory. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnson, Chris Donovan, Joseph Reed, Sunny Antrim, Alyssa, Stoller, Zander Samaras, Tom Berman, Indra Dallisacham, 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.

Add free. Subscribe now to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts. Click the link in the description to start your free trial today. 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. 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.