Prosecutors said today that the McStay family murder suspect killed the California foursome and dumped their bodies in a shallow desert grave because he owed the family’s patriarch about $30,000.
Records show that, prior to his beating death in 2010, Joseph McStay had loaned accused killer and business associate Charles “Chase” Merritt that sum to cover the latter’s gambling losses. But when the money was not repaid as promised he had planned on firing him.
The financial motive for the multiple murders was established according to testimony unsealed on Wednesday which was provided by a third man, also involved with McStay’s construction and design business.
Merritt -- a former convict -- came under immediate suspicion by police who, from the start, viewed the quadruple missing-person case of the McStays as a classic case of foul play.
Only until recently, however, did investigators finally begin trickling the evidence they’d collected which would have supported such a belief.
That body of proof, they posit now, shows that on the day the McStay family “mysteriously” vanished forever -- leaving their groceries to rot on the kitchen counter and dogs to starve in the yard -- Merritt angrily confronted his employer about the debt call and his looming termination.
Then, convinced that his boss wasn’t going to back down from his ultimatum, the defendant took a 3-pound sledgehammer and brutally murdered both McStay and his wife, as well as their two young sons.
Autopsies on the victims’ skeletal remains, discovered years later not far from the McStay residence, showed they suffered an unusually violent end, with one of the boys having been struck in the head with a blunt object at least seven times.
Chase Merritt was arrested last year for the grisly McStay family massacre, but has always asserted his innocence and, predictably, has pled not guilty to all charges.
More pretrial revelations are expected in the weeks to come.
