The Disappearance of the McStay Family.

As the cold bleeds into a February evening in 2010, Joseph and Summer McStay and their two sons—four-year-old Gianni and three-year-old Joseph Junior—leave their cozy family home in suburban San Diego County, Fallbrook.

Piling into their Isuzu Trooper, they leave behind two dogs and two untouched bowls of popcorn. A lamp is knocked over in a bedroom, and there is coffee still in the pot.

Why would they leave their home in such an active state?

Joseph McStay was a laid-back surfer and an outgoing, chatty businessman. Summer McStay was a woman unafraid to say what was on her mind. And they both loved their two sons dearly. So why was February 4, 2010, the last day the McStay’s were seen?

Why have their bank accounts remained untouched and their mobile phones and emails silent since then—just mere days after Joe Junior had turned three? It is put best by Deputy District Attorney Sean Daugherty, who said, “How does a family of four disappear off the face of the earth? How does a family of four—a husband who is running a business, a mom who is raising her two kids and fixing up a house they bought just recently—how do they just disappear?”

How indeed?

But this question wouldn’t be answered for more than three years.

In the fall of 2013, an off-road motorcyclist was spending Veterans Day dirt biking when something peculiar caught his eye as he went off-road near the county landfill. This was about 100 miles from the McStay’s’ house and less than a mile from the freeway.

A small white object.

A bone.

Later, he would discover that it was part of a child’s skull.

Even later, two shallow graves were uncovered, each burial site containing the remains of an adult and a child.

A considerable amount of time had passed, so there was no useful DNA, but dental records confirmed the remains as those of the McStay family. A three-pound sledgehammer was also found at the site. The cause of death for all four victims was determined to be blunt force trauma.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department took over the case, which went from missing persons to homicide.

Who killed the McStay family?

Was it Dan Kavanagh, who used to run Joseph’s business website and profited from a percentage of the sales made online? Or was it Chase (Charles) Merritt—Joseph’s close business associate, personal friend, and the last known individual to have seen Joseph alive?

Who would stand to gain from the brutal demise of an entire family, their bodies left to nature’s mercy in shallow graves?

Find out more in my book: How to Solve True Crime. Occam’s Razor and the Limitations of Simplicity within Investigations.