- 3 - PROSECUTOR'S OPENING SPEECH
FEBRUARY 15TH – MISSING PERSONS’ REPORT & FEBRUARY 8TH – IMPOUNDING THE ISUZU TROOPER
On February 15th 2010, that was a Monday, San Diego Sheriff’s Department was notified of a missing persons’ report. That missing persons’ report was called in by Joseph’s brother Michael McStay who had been to the residence on the 13th, the Saturday before, with the defendant.
You’re going to hear from Michael McStay. Mike McStay is going to tell you I went and the defendant pointed out a small crack, the window in the back yard was open, that led into Joseph’s study, he pointed it out and said that he had noticed it before, and no one had heard from my brother, so I went in, and I opened the front door for the defendant and he wouldn’t come in, he wouldn’t come anywhere near the house.
So he waited two days, he thought there was a time period you had to wait when adults go missing, and he waited a couple of days and he called the San Diego Sheriff’s Department and they arrived at the residence on the 15th, that’s a Monday.
Deputy Tingley in the San Diego Sheriff’s Department came to the residence and took the initial missing persons investigation. What was learned was on the 10th of February, that was the Wednesday prior to this, was that a welfare check had been called in by Dan Kavanaugh, from Hawaii. He also went into the residence and took some initial pictures and you can notice from some of these pictures –
there’s newspapers on the floor,
drawers are out,
this is looking down the stairway – to the left here is going to be the kitchen – to the right is going to be the living room,
there’s a table here and some chairs.
took some photographs of the upstairs bathroom, and you’ll note here on the left is a child’s onesie, several items of clothing on the bathroom counter,
took a picture of Joseph’s study and this is the window that Michael came through, notice this lamp here that will become important here in a minute,
this is a photograph of Joseph and Summer’s bedroom, you’ll notice in the photograph this lamp is knocked over.
After taking these photographs, conducting the initial interview with Michael McStay, deputy Tingley called in detectives. Two detectives from the San Diego sheriff’s department came to the residence – detective Troy DuGal and Suzanne Fiske – came to the residence on that same day, on the 15th February. What they learned through their investigation was that
The last contact anyone in the family, Summer, Joseph, anyone had, anyone, was on February 4th 2010, that’s a Thursday.
They learned that that week in particular February 2nd and 3rd a mutual friend of Joseph and Summer – his name’s McGyver McCargar – first name’s McGyver – was at the residence helping them paint.
And they learned that on February 8th the family’s Trooper, the white Isuzu Trooper that I showed you a photograph of earlier was towed, it was towed from a parking lot right across from the United States/Mexico border. SDSD got a hold of the tow company, they discovered that in this parking lot in this shopping centre here in San Ysidro, the car was towed about 11/11.30 on the night of the 8th, that’s Monday the 8th. They learned that the car could have been there as early as 7 am, that security really doesn’t start going around looking for cars that aren’t supposed to be parked there any longer until after the last business has closed which is about 9 o’clock. They noticed it, they towed the vehicle because it wasn’t supposed to be parked there.
SDSD secured the vehicle and took it to their impound lot.
Here’s a photograph taken by the tow company at 11.01 [pm – dark] on February 8th 2010. The security company or the tow company.
SDSD processed that Trooper including taking what they call swabs for biological material particularly DNA from the steering wheel, from the door handles, from the center console, from the gear shifter. They did that as precaution, again keep in mind they’ve only known about this family for a few days when all this is happening and they’re discovering all this information.
