- 14 - PROSECUTOR'S OPENING SPEECH
MERRITT CONTACTS SUSAN BLAKE, GOES TO FALLBROOK & HITS THE CASINOS
February 9th the defendant goes to Susan Blake’s house, it’s a Tuesday, says ‘Hey I can’t get a hold of your son Jo do you know anything I don’t know, I’m gonna go down there’ and his cell phone goes down there and accesses towers in the Fallbrook area for about an hour and a half. And then after that it accesses towers near the Pala Casino for about eight hours.
Remember how I said earlier on about the playing the victim and all of that, that came to light kind of in light of his interview with San Diego county. [video skips] “my rep won’t get paid, that’s not gonna be fun”. [video skips]
Takes out $500 at the San Manuel Casino in Highland.
The next day he takes out $300 at the San Manuel Casino in Highland.
Two weeks later takes out $500 at the Commerce Casino.
Same day takes out another $500 from near the Commerce Casino.
After that another $500 from the San Manuel Casino – but he’s talking about this impact that it’s going to have on his life and, you know, his wife she’s worried too because Joseph was the primary source of IDesign [?]’s income. [inaudible recording].
FEBRUARY 6TH MERRITT'S CELL PHONE IN MOUNTAINS NEAR GRAVESITES
Promised we’ll go back to February 6th. February 6th was a Saturday, [video skips] 1.30 pm the defendant [video skips] contacting towers, remember earlier on I said over to the right here is the geographical location of those towers, those were again analysed by Kevin Boles of the FBI and he can look at the location and the azimuth - that is the direction cell towers go certain sectors, there’s a sector for a certain number of degrees, that’s what the cell phone contacts off of - between 10.46 am and 1.30 pm the defendant’s cell phone is contacting towers in the [video skips] .
In particular 11.30 am to 11.52 and 1.30 pm he’s on a tower he’s contacting a tower which is on top of this mountain here on the right of this photograph. Here’s a photograph of that cell tower from the grave site. [video skips] - two days after the family was murdered.
CONCLUDES
Ladies and Gentlemen we talked a little bit about in jury selection and Mr Imes talked to you about unanswered questions. There will be some in this case. We can’t tell you whether or not someone helped the defendant either during the commission of the crime or after. Certainly it would suggest two grown people need to be moved, we can’t answer all of the questions, but we can answer the who, [video skips] he was ripping off his ‘best friend’ and got caught and we can tell you that the evidence is going to show in this case that the only person in this case that’s associated with the McStays that had a connection to the High Desert is the defendant. Everyone else is San Diego county, Riverside county, Orange county. The only connection to the High Desert in this case is that man right there. We can tell you the how, we can tell you the why, and we can tell you the who, and at the end of this case we’re going to give a closing argument and we’re going to ask you to find him guilty and to hold him accountable. Thank you.