Here is the way I see this case.
There is a lot off circumstantial evidence in this case. And sure, the defense team can try and give 'alternative explanations' for each 'brick' in that wall, one by one.
They can assert that Chases's DNA on the Trooper steering wheel, which is more prominent than even Summer's, was actually left there because he possibly shook hands with Joey, during a possible lunch meeting together, days earlier.
And they can assert that the cell pings from Chases's phone was really 40 miles off, and he was actually in a different place altogether.
And they can assert that even though circumstances look very clearly like he was stealing from his boss by creating checks from his boss's QB account, and deleting and backdating and forging, in reality they had just come up with a secret , unconventional new way to handle the business account, just a day or two before Joey and his family were murdered.
And they can assert that even though the truck that was seen leaving the McStay home, right around the time the family was last seen or. heard from, looked on video just like the same exhaust pipe configuration and bumper as Chases's work truck, they say art could be someone else's truck instead.
And they say that even though Chase did have financial issues, and his bank closed his account for insufficient funds for bad checks, and even though he did admit to his girlfriend that he owed Joey thousands of dollars, and even though he had a gambling problem in which he lost thousands of dollars routinely, and he was an Ex-Con convicted of fraud and theft, and Joey had been receiving complaints about Chases' shoddy work and bad business ethics, -------
with ALL of the above, the defense wants us to believe that Joey would voluntarily give this employee full access to an account that held 89 thousand dollars.
And would tell that employee to go ahead and write himself checks for thousands of dollars, and to delete them from the check logs, so Joey wouldn't even have a record of them? And tell him to forge the signature?
SO, it might be possible to TRY and explain away each circumstance, brick by brick. However, for Chase to be innocent, we would have to label him the unluckiest bloke in the High Desert Area.
---We would have to believe that his boss decided, against common sense, to give him the password to his QB account, and tell him they were secretly going to set up a new kind of accounting system.
UNFORTUNATELY for Chase, this new accounting system was going to look just like embezzlement.
---And we would have to believe that this
new accounting system, which inexplicably does not account for written checks, and which is illegal because of the forgery, was Joey's idea.
But unfortunately for Chase, this new system, which looks like embezzlement, went into play right before Joey went missing.
And then, to continue the bad luck for Chase, whoever backed their truck into the McStay driveway the night of the murders, used a truck that looked exactly like Chases.
Unfortunately the truck that looked just like his was caught on surveillance by the neighbour, leaving the driveway on the night of the killings.
And the bad luck keeps coming. whomever buried the bodies did so in Chases's childhood stomping grounds. So unfortunately, the area he knew very well , and where he had a lot of family,
showed up on his cell ping records when police searched them. Unfortunately for Chase, his alibi for when his cell was pinging by the burial site, was that he was visiting his sister.
Even more unfortunate for him, she was so strung out and drooling after surgery, that she told detectives he hadn't been to her house in years, ruining his alibi.
To top off all that amazingly bad luck, whomever drove the Trooper to the border and dumped it,
was not able to cover Chase's trace DNA with their own. That must have been a very long, strong handshake.
Unfortunately for Chase, that innocent handshake with Joey, left trace DNA on the Trooper steering wheel and gear shift.
And to make things worse, his boss had just sent him a memo, notating the amount of money that Joey had over paid him, making it appear that Chase owed him thousands of dollars.
Very unfortunate, given that it made it look like his boss was not planning to pay him any more for awhile, because of the big debt between them--especially when that seemed to be in conflict with the new, unconventional payment arrangement, where Chase could write and delete checks himself now from the account.
There were so many unfortunate circumstances that had to come into play for Chase, if he was an innocent man.
