AI Summary
5 min readOn February 4, 2010, Joseph McStay had a meeting with his friend and business partner, Chase Merritt, at a Chick-fil-A. Later that evening, Joseph’s phone pinged a tower near his home in Fallbrook, California. Then nothing. Joseph, his wife Summer, and their two young sons, Gianni and Joey Jr., vanished. Four and a half years later, their bodies were found buried in the Mojave Desert, just outside Victorville. The man who had been Joseph’s best friend—the man who said he was devastated by the disappearance—became the prime suspect. But Chase Merritt’s ex-girlfriend, Kathy Jarvis, still struggles to reconcile the man she knew with the monster prosecutors described.
The best friend and the cowboy
Kathy met Chase Merritt at a country-western bar in the early 1990s. He was playing pool, wearing a cowboy hat, and looked like “a big tough cowboy who could take care of her.” He accidentally hit her with his pool cue and didn’t even acknowledge her. She thought he was an idiot. By the end of the night, he was waiting for her by the dance floor. They started dating soon after. Chase, Kathy says, was “a little arrogant,” creative, and funny. “He’s a big dork,” she recalls. “We laughed a lot.”
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:13) **Kathy Jarvis’s Shock and Denial** - Chase Merritt’s ex-girlfriend describes the moment she learned Joseph McStay was dead and how she processed the unthinkable.
- 2 (04:14) **Who Is Chase Merritt?** - Kathy paints a portrait of Chase as a goofy, arrogant, but ultimately good-natured man she met in a country-western bar.
- 3 (08:00) **The Business Partnership Blossoms** - Chase’s metalwork business with Joseph McStay grew into a close personal friendship, with Joseph becoming Chase’s best friend.
- 4 (10:38) **The Night of February 4th** - Kathy recounts a phone call from Joseph that Chase ignored, a detail that later haunted her.
- 5 (15:12) **The Chick-fil-A Meeting and a Motive** - Detectives lay out their theory that Joseph fired Chase on February 4th over financial problems, including a $42,000 debt and alleged check forgery.
- 6 (19:41) **The Three-and-a-Hour Gap** - Phone records show Joseph’s phone moving toward Fallbrook, then a final call to Chase, followed by Chase’s phone going dark for 3.5 hours.
- 7 (20:38) **The Murder Theory** - Investigators reconstruct what they think happened: a fight at the McStay home, then a sledgehammer used as a weapon.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Without a smoking gun, detectives try to piece together what may have happened to the McStays after they disappeared.
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.
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