Chasing The Devil In The Details

‘3 people can keep a secret if 2 are dead’

While thinking about the case, as I often do, I saw this grim proverb etched across the back of a hoodie. It’s owner, a motorcycle rider, was weaving in and out of traffic on the 15 freeway in Corona. At first glance I was silently amused but it had a sobering effect as well. It made me think about secrets. What one must go through to hide terrible secrets, secrets such as theft and murder. The many, many lies one must tell. For years. 

Here is a digital recap of the events that occurred on February 4 2010.

Voicemail retrieval 8:56 AM 1 min

Daytona Beach, FL 9:01 AM Vendor A 24 min

1-800 # 9:24 AM Vendor B 7 min

Daytona Beach, FL 9:31 AM Vendor A 4 min

Incoming 9:36 AM EIP 22 min <—— Customer

Incoming 9:40 AM Chase 3 min

1-800 # 10:17 AM Vendor B 1 min

Incoming 10:19 AM Chase 4 min

Daytona Beach, FL 10:34 AM Vendor A 2 min

Incoming 10:39 AM PM Father 4 min

Incoming 10:43 AM EIP 2 min <—— Customer

Pomona, CA 10:46 AM Chase 4 min

Incoming 11:06 AM EIP 17 min <—— Customer

Incoming 11:18 AM EIP 15 min <—— Customer

Incoming 11:33 AM Chase 2 min

Kingsport, TN 11:38 AM 2 min

Kingsport, TN 11:39 AM 1 min

Vm Retrieval 11:41 AM 1 min

Incoming 11:43 AM Blocked NBR 6 min

Incoming 11:46 AM Vendor A 5 min

Capstr Vly, CA 11:51 AM Bank 2 min

Pomona, CA 11:53 AM Chase 2 min

Pomona, CA 11:56 AM Chase Text Outgoing

Between here and about 12:15 it is believed Joseph started to make the trek to meet Chase Merritt at the Chik-fil-a in Rancho Cucamonga.

Anoka, MN 11:57 AM 1 min

St Paul, MN 11:58 AM 2 min

Daytona Beach, FL 12:00 PM Vendor A 2 min

1-800 # 12:02 PM Vendor B 4 min

Incoming 12:04 PM Phone company 8 min

Vm Retrieval 12:11 PM 4 min

Capstr Vly, CA 12:15 PM Bank 7 min

Dublin, CA 12:22 PM 5 min

Pomona, CA 12:28 PM Chase 6 min

Hopewell, VA 12:52 PM Welder 8 min

Pomona, CA 12:52 PM Chase 1 min

Incoming 1:01 PM Chase 1 min

Radio silence, almost exactly 2 hours. 

2:11 Return call 3 min to Summer for medicine inquiry

2:36 purchase at Ross store in Vista, Ca on Summer’s credit card

Pomona, CA 3:03 PM Chase 1 min

Pomona, CA 3:32 PM Chase 2 min

3:52 search on from home computer on Craigslist for children’s toys

Pomona, CA 4:18 PM Chase 3 min

4:25 Landline call to Joseph

Vm Retrieval 4:27 PM 4 min

Vm Retrieval 4:31 PM 2 min

At 5:05 Two texts are sent from Summer’s phone to Joseph’s. They would not be received until Joseph’s phone is reactivated or turned on at 5:47. 

E-Notes 5:47 PM Text Incoming

Pomona, CA 5:47 PM Chase 3 min

Laguna Bch, CA 5:47 PM Summer Texts (2) Incoming

Pomona, CA 8:28 PM Chase 1 min

 

Free Parking

As a family with children of varying ages and a full life, my wife and I are always on the go. Work, school, shopping, karate, Girl Scouts, Color Guard, gymnastics, meetings, church, more meetings, more shopping or just running out for ice cream. That last bit is my own guilty pleasure. Of course, we are a two car family. Sometimes we even have to take two cars to the same events. Mrs. Cornelius and I share an equal balance of running to and fro. Regardless, I purposely would leave the spot in the driveway closest to the front door for her to park so that her and the kids could get in and out quicker. Unloading groceries would also be easier. It was just always that way.

I was listening to a true crime podcast recently, and as I tend to do, I related some of the details discussed to the McStay case. In this such case, the Walker Family murders from 1959, the subject came up about the specific vehicle parking of the victims. My thoughts began to drift to the Trooper, the vehicle in the surveillance video, the Dodge truck……and that afternoon.

Ross

We know that Joseph was out meeting Chase Merritt in Rancho Cucamonga at around 1pm that afternoon. We have no account for when Summer left the house for her shopping trip to the Ross store in Vista but there is the charge to her card at 2:36. The next activity assumedly by Summer herself is on the home computer for Craigslist children’s toys at 3:52. Next at 4:25, a phone call is placed from the home phone to Joseph’s phone. Inexplicably this call is missing from Joseph’s phone log.  This call info comes from early media reports who got it directly from LE. However there is a voicemail retrieval at 4:27 from Joseph’s phone. It’s 4 minutes long. Would Summer leave a 4 minute voicemail and why would she be using a landline?  Curiously, throughout the entire phone log there is not another call to Joseph’s phone from the house. Next a text is sent from Summer’s phone to Joseph’s at 5:05. Joseph didn’t respond to either the phone call or text.

The 4:25 call to Joseph could have been Summer calling Joseph to tell him she was going out to purchase or look at some toys, or even just to run an errand. We don’t know the duration of the call or if it’s even related to the voicemail.

Could Chase have gained control of Joseph as soon as 3 PM?

Looking at the parked Dodge truck it would appear that it is parked specifically for two vehicles to fit. Many have speculated that it wouldn’t be enough room for another vehicle to fit but I can attest that is. But more to the truck here in particular, I believe it was parked on the left not because it was Summer’s ‘spot’ but because there was another vehicle already parked in the driveway, and not the Trooper.

I imagine Summer pulling up to the house like she had a hundred times before and saw some vehicle parked in the driveway, on the right side. One she may have been familiar with. Maybe this seems way off. I can’t get over the feeling that there possibly was another vehicle there when Summer came home. The fact that what appears to have been Merritt’s truck exiting the driveway that evening is equally troubling.

Did Merritt (or whomever) pull into the driveway because the right side was open?

And where exactly was the Isuzu Trooper?

If Joseph made it home that afternoon, why not pull into the driveway if Summer actually did leave that side of the driveway open?

Could there have been a second perpetrator working in tandem with Merritt?

The Voicemail Thing

There was a voicemail retrieval at 12:11 that afternoon and it was 4 minutes as well. So, at 4:27 was someone (not Joseph?) listening and deleting that voicemail? There was another at 4:31 for 2 minutes. By assumption, Joseph and Chase were to have parted ways by 3 that afternoon. So where was Joseph at 4:27? Where was Chase? By Chase’s own recollection, he could not remember anything after 5PM.

Maybe this is when things really began to go awry.

You might think, these calls and voicemail seem trivial, why is any of this important? As someone suggested, perhaps the 4:25 is not listed on the phone log because the call was dropped or Joseph’s phone was dead. And maybe the 4 minute voicemail was from Summer. That’s totally possible. But to back up a little bit, Joseph’s phone receives a call from Chase at 4:18. It lasts 3 minutes. That puts the time at 4:21. The house call is made at 4:25 to Joseph. The voicemail is next checked at 4:27 for 4 minutes. Then again at 4:31 for 2 minutes (4:25-27). The 4 minute VM could be the same one from that day at 12:11, and the 2 minute VM is from Summer.

Why would Joseph need to listen to a 4 minute VM that he already listened to?  Why would Summer leave a 2 minute long VM? Why wasn’t he calling her back and responding? Summer sent Joseph two texts at 5:05. Was she worried? Should she have been? Of course, the VM may have not been exactly 2 minutes but at least 1 minute. Still, the other VM was listened to first. Why would he listen to it before Summer’s? For this phone I wonder if voicemails stack up with the oldest being first, or the last message left being first? On my current phone it lists the last first in the que.

One other explanation. The 4 minute VM was left after someone called and the call dropped, like with Summer’s attempt. So the number for that caller, like Summer’s, would be absent from the phone record.  But again, who would leave a 4 minute VM?

 

17037 Brookhurst st, Fountain Valley, Ca

Could the VM be connected to the mysterious Google search for an address of a dental office done at the McStay residence on February 8th? Would the time of this search coincide with Merritt’s radio silence that day? 2 weeks prior, Joseph had placed a 3 minute call to this office. Immediately after that call Joseph called Merritt twice.

With the family presumably buried, was there another loose end Chase Merritt needed to take care of on top of staging the Trooper and cancelling Quickbooks? What would be the importance of looking up this address? I’m curious to know if the number to the dental office is on Merritt’s phone records as well. Why was the address search done at all? Considering that the search was done within the home, the address was probably there as well. An address would typically be found on a letterhead or in one’s records. Or, on a bill.

Out On A Limb

We know a lot from what has come out in the media and from witness testimony. Despite that, there is a lot we don’t know. As of this writing there are motions to exclude evidence, before the trial is even underway. There are still many warrants that are sealed.

We really have no idea how things transpired on the afternoon of February 4th. But we have Chase Merritt’s recollection of things. Even that has been conflicting as he has given different reports. We have all these pings between Rancho Cucamonga and Fallbrook. We can assume Joseph did meet Chase for lunch at least round 1PM. The 2 hours of radio silence after that has me bothered because I can’t see them – or anyone – sitting in a Chick-fil-a restaurant that long. One hour tops. Maybe they went back to the warehouse. This is also something Chase had told to some people, but not detectives. It’s curious.

Maybe they went to Chase’s apartment. There was something that Chase had told detectives in one of his interviews that led me to believe he and Javis did not share an apartment but I could be wrong. Or he was caught in a lie within a lie. We haven’t seen all the warrants but I do wonder if all these areas were searched. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have been.

So what became of Joseph after their lunch? Did he simply go home? Why did he only call Chase? From the beginning, what has always bothered me was that electrical cord around Joseph’s neck. It doesn’t sound like it was used as a means of strangulation, but of restraining. To exude dominion and control. Or to keep Joseph quiet if he was being held somewhere. It could have also been used to torture.

Joseph could have very well been overcome by Chase while meeting him after lunch. This theory is nothing new and has been floating around since Chase’s arrest, so I’m not proposing anything new there. In fact Joseph’s father Patrick has suggested this in his latest interview. I don’t agree a lot with what is said here but I do think there is a plausible scenario that Joseph did not make it home in the way we think he did.

LE contends all of the family  members were murdered in the home because of items found in the graves. This could very well be. We know about the material wrapped around Joseph is suggested to have been the futon cover. If it is the cover, it may have been used to hold or cover other things or victims before being used on Joseph. I have expressed belief in the past that Joseph may have been kept alive longer than the others, perhaps much longer, because of the condition his remains were found. Because Joseph was buried with this material around him, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he left the house in the same manner. But why weren’t the other family members wrapped in a similar way?

There is no proof that Joseph made it to Fallbrook, only that his phone did. Merritt never called Joseph after their meeting. If Joseph was done with Merritt, or fired him, why was he still calling him?

It has been long theorized that it was Chase making the 8:27 call from Joseph’s phone to his phone. The suggestion is that Chase was trying to show some proof of life, or that Joseph was okay at this point on the night of the 4th, with his phone pinging in Fallbrook. If we entertain this possibility, is it not to far fetched to believe that Chase had Joseph’s phone all along, calling his own phone maybe even as early as 3 PM. Because of this, Chase could have listened to the last voicemails as well as read any texts. Chase may have decided then he needed to tie up some loose ends, and quick.

I know that the ping info on this makes this theory problematic. Because when Joseph’s phone is calling Merritt’s it pings in Fallbrook while Merritt’s pings in or near Rancho Cucamonga. But Merritt doesn’t need to be with his phone and answering it for it to ping.

There may be something more to that last left voicemail, and not the one from Summer.  I do think it could play a very significant part in all of this, maybe something virtually everyone missed.

Chase Merritt is a very calculated individual.

DNA

Merritt’s DNA was not on the Trooper door handle. In the last installed segment of another documentary, Merritt’s lawyer Maline makes this claim. One theory that is being floated about is that Merritt’s DNA ended up in the Trooper through Touch DNA. This can happen through a simple handshake and skin cells are left behind. I have to ask though, was it not Merritt’s DNA there or no DNA? If Merritt’s DNA was in the other areas by way of transfer, shouldn’t it be on the door handle as well? Could it have been removed by wiping down the handle? Let’s consider this logically. Regardless that there was nothing on the door handle, Merritt’s DNA was elsewhere they shouldn’t have been for someone who claims he’s never once driven the vehicle.

However, if we consider the possibility that Merritt’s DNA ended up in these places as secondary transfer, it should be on the door handle and door. According to Maline it’s not. Also no one else’s DNA is on these other places aside from Joseph’s and Summer’s. Did Joseph and Summer drive it to the border? How is it Merritt’s DNA ends up on the gear shift if he never drove it? Shouldn’t there be someone else’s DNA there if Merritt didn’t drive it?

Merritt’s defense attorney’s are attempting to get the Quickbooks evidence thrown out. I’m confident they won’t succeed but you never know with this legal stuff. If they do succeed, the state going forward may have quite a challenge ahead.