Missing?

What Happened to the McStays? - ABC News

This episode explores the mysterious disappearance of the McStay family from their Fallbrook home in February 2010, focusing on investigativ

Key takeaways

• A grainy border video captured four individuals resembling the McStays crossing into Tijuana on the same day their vehicle was found near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Main topics

• The McStays' mysterious disappearance in February 2010
• Border video footage showing four individuals crossing into Mexico

Notable quotes

"If Joseph was still Chase's best friend, why did he use the past tense?"

Conclusion

Despite extensive investigation, interviews, and forensic analysis, the fate of the McStay family remains unknown.

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) Hey, it's Ashen Singh with a quick reminder. You can get episodes of this podcast ad-free and before they appear in our main feed by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus. Click the link in the episode description to learn more. Speaker 5 (0:19) The Speaker 8 (0:20) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 5 (0:30) The new Speaker 8 (0:35) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 1 (0:44) Four weeks had passed since the McStay family vanished from their Fallbrook home. When the investigator assigned to their case, Detective Troy Dugal, asked Joseph McStay's brother to come to the San Diego Sheriff's Department. Speaker 3 (0:58) March 1st, 2010. It's presently 1135. I'm at my office at my computer with Mike. Speaker 1 (1:09) Dugal believed he could have a promising lead to share with Michael. He pressed play on a silent, blurry, and dimly lit video. Speaker 3 (1:19) I'm about to show Michael the video that was relayed to me. In Speaker 1 (1:27) the 15-second clip, a group of four calmly crosses the U.S.-Mexico border on foot. Two of the people in the video appear to be adults, a man and a woman. They have with them two smaller figures who appear to be children. Speaker 1 (1:42) According to police, the individuals are passing from the U.S. side into Tijuana, through Speaker 7 (1:48) the San Isidro Terminal. You see them going through a long, open-air corridor with metal gates, high sides, and barbed wire on top. Speaker 3 (1:57) They're going to be walking right here, and they're going to come right up this sidewalk. Speaker 1 (2:03) Police say that video of this group of four was captured on the very same day that the Mixtez Azuzu trooper was towed from a shopping center, also near the border. Speaker 1 (2:16) The footage is blurry, Speaker 7 (2:17) but the shapes of the people in it still told a story. To Detective Dugal, they look like a mother, father, and two children. Each parent holding a child's hand. Speaker 3 (2:30) There's the male with the kid. There's the female with the kid. Speaker 1 (2:38) Could this be the mixed days? Speaker 1 (2:42) Detective Dugal's first impression of the McStays' disappearance, according to police records, was that something bad had happened to them. He suspected foul play. But this border footage cast new doubt. Maybe the McStays had left of their own accord. In the weeks following the family's disappearance, those who knew the McStays were left scratching their heads. Was the family alive and well in Mexico? Speaker 1 (3:14) Or had something terrible happened to them? From ABC Audio in 2020, I'm Ashin Singh, and this is what happened to the McStays. Episode 2. Missing? When the McStays vanished, they left behind close family and friends who all wanted answers. In 2011, Patrick McStay, Joseph and Michael's father, told ABC News that he started looking into the family's disappearance himself. Speaker 4 (3:57) I don't know what happened, okay? I'm looking for answers just like them. Let's look at everything. Speaker 7 (4:05) Patrick enlisted help from Joseph's friend, Gina Watson. Speaker 2 (4:10) It's not like I always liked true crime, but I liked mysteries or like I'll go down a rabbit hole. And I definitely did that in this case because I wanted to be able to make sense of it all, like something that's so incomprehensible. I will say, yeah, I got a little obsessed. Speaker 7 (4:27) Remember, Gina Watson had met Joseph McStay through work. She says when she learned Joseph and his family had gone missing, she was stunned. wanting to find a way to help. Gina says she reached out to Joseph's family and eventually connected with Patrick, Joseph's dad. Of Speaker 2 (4:47) course, I was more than happy to help him put some things together. Speaker 7 (4:53) Police had executed a search warrant at the McStays' Fallbrook home. They seized a number of electronic devices and did a forensic analysis of them, looking into the family's finances and bank records. They checked Joseph and Summer's cell phone records, too. Gina says she and Patrick did what they could to help investigators. According to Gina, Joseph had given all his email passwords to his dad for safekeeping. So she and Patrick started going through Joseph's emails together. Speaker 2 (5:25) I was conflicted because it's like I'm in my friend's personal email now. Like that felt weird, but I want to help go through things as quickly as possible, make sure everything's paid attention to that should be. Speaker 7 (5:37) Gina found a couple of messages. that raised red flags for her. She says she found one email about a counseling session for Joseph and Summer a month before they disappeared. Gina wasn't sure what to make of this. Speaker 2 (5:52) A lot of times, like they say, the husband did it. So you have to be open-minded and say, well, could Joseph have gone mad and done something to his family? I mean, of course you want to say, no way. And I did think no way, but... You want to be open-minded and consider everything. Did Summer, like, did she do something nefarious? But we could never back any of that up. Speaker 7 (6:16) Another discovery that piqued Gina's interest was a set of transactions from a business account. Speaker 2 (6:22) I saw that there were withdrawals from the PayPal account. Speaker 7 (6:28) A PayPal account that had been set up for the Waterfall company to pay vendors and receive payments from customers. Speaker 7 (6:38) But what caught Gina's attention were the withdrawals from the PayPal account in the days immediately after the McStays went missing. All told, nearly $7,000 had been withdrawn. Speaker 2 (6:50) And so I was like, hmm, if they say they went missing on February 4th, could they have brought a laptop with them and he's