CA - Joey, Summer, Gianni, Joseph Jr McStay Murders - Feb 4th 2010 #2

[oceanblueeyes]

Regardless of how or why they asked the questions they did, Prosecution included, it gets the information out there. I heard it, you heard it, the jury heard it.

I would love Merritt to get on the stand, but I highly doubt he will lol

I do wonder if Sequieda's father will be testifying? I think Carmen, the secretary, will be, but I don't get the impression that the Dad will be, I wonder why not (he sounds like he might get heated a bit more than David Sequieda, who seems a bit laid back actually lol)

Could he be elderly and sickly now?

More than any other witness I hope Merritt takes the stand.

Whether he does or not the prosecutor is fully prepared to cross examine him if it does happen.

Although it doesnt happen often I thoroughly have enjoyed the trials of those who did.

It's a different game then and many things that may have been ruled inadmissible as too prejudicial will come in since he/she has given up his/her right not to testify.

It also greatly diminishes the appellate issues if the defendant testified in their own behalf and was convicted.

I know the state is hoping he will and he is narccistic enough he very well may testify.

It was the highlight of Daron Wint's recent trial to me. It helped seal his fate even more.

Jmo

 

[Force Ten]

This is what really annoyed me about Maline's X

Starting with the cheque/statement on Thursday , he kept trying to introduce primary evidence under the guise of cross examination by using a state witness who is not a primary source for the info.

Hence the numerous state objections e.g

1. Placing financial documents in front of Sequieda when he did not create them nor ever see them before. How should he testify about them? Why should he be required to interpret them in 2019? This is not what a direct witness does. The witness shall testify as to matters that happened in 2014 that were within his direct experience.

2. Ask the witness to discuss CM's role in installing fountains around the US and internationally. The witness stated he did not have direct knowledge of this. The correct witness with direct knowledge is CM!! Or clients who had fountains installed. Or correspondence with Joey about trips and relevant travel records. Indeed the defence had a fine opportunity to put such exhibits before the witness to ask him if the dates might have been relevant to absences.

Funny they didn't do that!

3. Asking Sequieda to speculate about an argument between CM and his father. The witness may testify as to what he directly observed yet Maline asks him to speculate or give hearsay testimony. Again the defence has the correct witness to testify as to the nature of the argument. i.e the defendant Chase Merritt.

4. Attempting to give Evidence in Chief as counsel by explaining to the witness what made CMs fountain work so market leading. Correct witness is the defendant.

Fortunately the Judge was tight on each occasion - e.g. point 4 is an obvious attempt to put matters not in evidence to the witness.

Clearly behind the scenes, CM is very active in creating counter points to each witness, which the defence then tries to get in front of the jury via X

I realise it is a difficult line for the Judge, as the defence may later introduce some of this stuff via EIC, and this is the one and only chance to put matters to potentially related witnesses.

However I suspect what we saw was much more an attempt to have CM essentially argue with the witness, via his attorney, around matters that CM himself needs to testify to if the defence wishes to use them

Maline is really starting to grate my nerves with his pointless questions. Like "They had sold fountains across the country and around the world, isn't that correct?" He has no directive with this question. It supports no narrative other than the company was successful. He vaguely tried to insinuate MSM could have been a part of the murders with the notion that they wanted a bigger piece of the pie with EIP's sales.

 

[Tortoise]

Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait for the dang accountants to testify to make any sense of the cheques. I get that the prosecution is kind of going chronological, but possibly explaining the financial side of this before we see witnesses like Sequieda saying "Merritt said he used the cheque for supplies", might help make sense of everything.

What I meant to say and forgot completely was that if the search re. Mexico and child passports was on the McStay desktop computer on or about January 28th it seems that could coincide with the assumed theft of blank cheques from the McStay home office around the same time, since the first ones he printed were on Feb 1st.

I wonder if he was breaking in regularly through that ground floor window.

 

[missy1974]

Sequieda could not say the real reason because the warning from the previous workshop was hearsay

However he was able to state on redirect that he was in fact so warned, and the quality of Chase's welding etc was so poor, he had to be supervised at all times.

To be honest Joey's operation sounded a bit cowboy to me and I have some sympathy for MSM

MSM were treated only as a supplier, but provided almost all the capability to do the work, including tools and premises.

Joey's business would have operated a lot better without Chase IMO - but it also seems like Joey wanted to stay in the business development / entrepreneur end and not be much involved on the operations

I don't know if I had sympathy for MSM, but I definitely had a different view of the situation by the end of his testimony. Before this, it was implied that they had issues with Merritt, and only Merritt. It was implied that he 'stole' from them, and 'owed' them money. At this time, I no longer believe that (subject to change if we hear more testimony about it lol). What I understand now is that Sequieda Sr. also had an issue with Joey, Joey not telling him the selling price, Sequieda Sr. feeling like they weren't getting enough of a cut or a piece of the pie, even calling Joey a crook. On Thursday, I was left with thinking that they would have gladly worked with Joey and still made fountains, if CM wasn't in the picture, now I'm not so sure about that. JMO

I don't think this means that CM isn't guilty by any means, but if this was part of their 'motive' theory, I don't know how well it worked.

 

[missy1974]

I went right thru Avila testimony and there is no mention of a knife.

The Defence would have needed to X on this, so one can only assume any knife is not a state exhibit.

I am just watching his testimony now, I did catch the end of Sgt. Gary Hart's testimony (I didn't watch it all), and I caught him saying that their CSI's would have tagged and marked and taken photo's of all the evidence at the grave site. Does Avila go through all of that evidence as well?

 

[oceanblueeyes]

I agree

The state needed to call the biker, the responding officer as well as Sgt Avila. The first two are needed to establish a key part of the actus reus (bodies found buried in the desert). Avila is needed to support the exhibits re a forensic dig and recovery of grave contents.

But then there is nearly 1 hr of X!

Combined with the short court days this is going to take forever

At the snail pace this trial is going we could be here way into the fall! That is not only ridiculous but shameful. Imo

Once the important witnesses for the state starts heating up if the defense is already doing long crosses now on witnesses not nearly as important then we can be assured the crosses will be even much much longer. Gah!

I dont know how much more the jury can stand with even much longer crosses.

And when these jurors were selected they were given a timeline so they could make sure they could sit for that long.

Jurors do have lives beyond this. So what is going to happen when it goes much longer than they were initially
told upfront?

Or is this what the DT is hoping thinking jurors will tell the judge they can't serve any longer since it's way beyond what they were first told.

They could become sick or even have family members pass away. Anything could happen.

Imo it's a dicey gamble when trials last way longer than necessary.

At some point the jury is going to start complaining to the judge about so much wasted downtime.

Jmo

 

[missy1974]

Could he be elderly and sickly now?

More than any other witness I hope Merritt takes the stand.

Whether he does or not the prosecutor is fully prepared to cross examine him if it does happen.

Although it doesnt happen often I thoroughly have enjoyed the trials of those who did.

It's a different game then and many things that may have been ruled inadmissible as too prejudicial will come in since he/she has given up his/her right not to testify.

It also greatly diminishes the appellate issues if the defendant testified in their own behalf and was convicted.

I know the state is hoping he will and he is narccistic enough he very well may testify.

It was the highlight of Daron Wint's recent trial to me. It helped seal his fate even more.

Jmo

I was wondering if his age and/or health might be preventing him from testifying as well and almost expected to hear, but we didn't.

I would love to see Chase hit the stand ;-) and I think you might be right, he might do it! I can see him insisting on it with his lawyers lol

 

[geevee]

What I meant to say and forgot completely was that if the search re. Mexico and child passports was on the McStay desktop computer on or about January 28th it seems that could coincide with the assumed theft of blank cheques from the McStay home office around the same time, since the first ones he printed were on Feb 1st.

I wonder if he was breaking in regularly through that ground floor window.

I wonder if the prosecution will bother trying to connect CM to the Mexico searches; it would be rather salient (conjecturing) at the time the searches were being done if say CM's phone pinged at the home while Summer's phone was doing some internet shopping, and Joey's was pinging well away from the house.

Or as you speculate that he may have been going in through that window when he knew none were at home. Hope they've looking into all of his cell data surrounding this time period.

 

[Timekeeper65]

Mind blowing how Joey was so good to this creep. I've never had an employer who would have done that.

Maybe because Joey wanted to believe if you treat someone decent they will be like minded and return that treatment.

Unfortunately I have had experience with a CON MAN. Call me naive. I can look back on conversations and realize just how a CON MAN works. Talking a good game and smiling the whole time. UGH. Some things are etched in my memory and will never go away. Gawd. You believe and never question. Until the first lie. By then it’s too late.

My go to name for CM is CON MAN.

 

[missy1974]

What I meant to say and forgot completely was that if the search re. Mexico and child passports was on the McStay desktop computer on or about January 28th it seems that could coincide with the assumed theft of blank cheques from the McStay home office around the same time, since the first ones he printed were on Feb 1st.

I wonder if he was breaking in regularly through that ground floor window.

I understand what you are saying about the cheque #'s, but until we see the full accounting of EIP, it's hard to tell why they are missing or where those cheques should be.

If he was going through the window before the disappearance, I would have expected him to jump at the chance of going through that window with Mike to leave his DNA there. JMO

 

[mrjitty]

I guess the good news is the witnesses to date established the basis of the McStay mystery. A family goes missing leaving family and business associates behind. Now 4 murdered skeletons are found in the desert.

Who are they? Who killed them?

Everything from here on out is about solving the case.

 

[asyousay]

What I meant to say and forgot completely was that if the search re. Mexico and child passports was on the McStay desktop computer on or about January 28th it seems that could coincide with the assumed theft of blank cheques from the McStay home office around the same time, since the first ones he printed were on Feb 1st.

I wonder if he was breaking in regularly through that ground floor window.

Why would Chase need to break in as he was around at the home a lot from what we know hence Summer complaining to McG over it.

That’s why I think it’s plausible he did the Mexico searches on the computer as he had the time certainly as Joey obviously trusted him around the house and Summer would of been busy with the kids. So what’s to say Joey didn’t get a business call one afternoon and Summer was busy with the kids and he went on the computer quickly. It would hardly be considered strange either if caught by Joey.

 

[mrjitty]

I don't know if I had sympathy for MSM, but I definitely had a different view of the situation by the end of his testimony. Before this, it was implied that they had issues with Merritt, and only Merritt. It was implied that he 'stole' from them, and 'owed' them money. At this time, I no longer believe that (subject to change if we hear more testimony about it lol). What I understand now is that Sequieda Sr. also had an issue with Joey, Joey not telling him the selling price, Sequieda Sr. feeling like they weren't getting enough of a cut or a piece of the pie, even calling Joey a crook. On Thursday, I was left with thinking that they would have gladly worked with Joey and still made fountains, if CM wasn't in the picture, now I'm not so sure about that. JMO

I don't think this means that CM isn't guilty by any means, but if this was part of their 'motive' theory, I don't know how well it worked.

I don't think the issue between Sequieda Sr and Joey is so important. Joey seemed to be having business issues with everyone as the business grew and money was on the table. No doubt had he lived, he would have made some significant changes.

What I think is more important is the business partnership was going off the rails. It's clear from Joey's email & Sequieda testimony that CM somehow stiffed MSM.

Joey himself accepts that happened in black and white.

That will escalate into outright fraud within weeks.

 

[Edmo]

18 inches deep? Is that—sorry for being morbid—the total depth of the grave, not the amount of soil over the bodies? In any case, the more shallow the grave, the more likely it seems that Merritt had no helper.

Yes, the depth of grave B was 18 1/2 ".

 

[Tssiemer]

Is stream up?

 

[Hapworth]

Does anyone have a screen-grab of the electrical cord found in the JM grave? I know it was discussed several pages back. I’m trying to catch up. TIA. With lack of blood evidence found in the home, I’ve considered that CM may have covered their heads with pillow cases or plastic before striking. NOT finding those items in the grave (bloody pillow cases or plastic bags) BUT finding the sledgehammer has me stumped. I’m baffled.

 

[Edmo]

Could something like that be done remotely? I know when I have had computer problems a tech can control my computer and they sounded like they were from India.

Plumeria, you don't want ANYONE from India having access to your pc, ever. The atomic bomb site you get and the # to call are designed to make you think you have a virus and this allows them to get access, once you call. Then they rifle through your pc for personal gain type of information. I don't know if you were being sarcastic about this, or if this has recently happened to you? If recently, you definitely need a professional tech to inspect your pc ASAP and keep an eye on your bank account.

 

[missy1974]

I don't think the issue between Sequieda Sr and Joey is so important. Joey seemed to be having business issues with everyone as the business grew and money was on the table. No doubt had he lived, he would have made some significant changes.

What I think is more important is the business partnership was going off the rails. It's clear from Joey's email & Sequieda testimony that CM somehow stiffed MSM.

Joey himself accepts that happened in black and white.

That will escalate into outright fraud within weeks.

BBM above

IMO, it's not that clear to me. Were they stiffed by CM or were they stiffed by Joey? Now we also know that there was an insurance cheque mixed in here... and an insurance claim that MSM rebuilt that fountain and weren't paid for... was that Joey's responsibility, because according to Sequieda, Joey was the one that paid the bills? His testimony did nothing to establish that Chase owed MSM any money in any way. Again... my opinion is subject to change with further testimony from Carmen or Sequieda Sr. ;-)

 

[missy1974]

Is stream up?

just started now, but the volume is not on

 

[MrsPC]

feed is up but I have no sound ?