Readers love whodunits. Caitlin Rother pens whydunits.
Now the San Diegan’s latest true-crime book — about the haunting disappearance and murder of the four-member McStay family of Fallbrook (and the suspect’s trial) — finally gives the public the fullest picture yet of a case that spawned countless social-media takes.
“Down to the Bone: A Missing Family’s Murder and the Elusive Quest for Justice” will be published June 24 after three delays since January 2024.
Rother, a La Jolla High School graduate who mastered investigative reporting at The San Diego Union Tribune, finished the book in a frenzy of rewriting after obtaining — she won’t say how — a “treasure trove of research.”
“I now had thousands and thousands of pages of investigative reports from the two sheriff’s departments that had handled the case, witness interviews and all kinds of exclusive background information that had never been disclosed publicly,” she said on her blog.
Twelve years in the making, “Down to the Bone” revisits themes from her book on the Rebecca Zahau murder-or-suicide in Coronado — including uncertainty on who the perpetrator was and the “confirmation” bias” certainty of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
As with “Death on Ocean Boulevard: Inside the Coronado Mansion Case” about the Zahau case, Rother’s new book explores evidence for two possible scenarios.
In 2019, Charles “Chase” Merritt was found guilty in the 2010 killings of his business partner, Joseph McStay; his wife, Summer McStay; and their sons, 3 and 4.
A San Bernardino County jury was persuaded by circumstantial evidence that Merritt, 62, was the killer.
But Rother, now also 62, found indications that another McStay business partner, Dan Kavanaugh, also had financial motives to commit the crimes and even confessed to them.
As with the Zahau book, Rother won’t publicly take sides.
“The McStay family has supported the jury’s verdict and say they believe Merritt is guilty,” Rother has written. “But he — and other people who contacted me with lengthy narratives explaining why they believed he was wrongly convicted — claim he is innocent. As usual, I present what I learned and uncovered, and I will let readers decide that question for themselves.”
Merritt, now 68 and sentenced to death, is even the subject of a “he’s innocent” website as he sits in the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego’s Otay Mesa.
Many characters come and go in Rother’s book. One is retired sheriff’s homicide detective Troy DuGal. She cites harsh criticism of DuGal for his apparent failure to move quickly from a missing-persons investigation to a murder probe.
(In a summary of the case, Todd Grande noted how “some evidence pointed against the theory that the McStay family became the McWent family.”
Seeking comment on the book, I reached out to DuGal via Facebook, LinkedIn and a Gmail account. He didn’t respond. Neither has the now-renamed San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.
But former San Diego sheriff’s Commander David Myers — the two-time candidate for sheriff quoted in the book on “group-think” — replied to my queries.
I asked Myers if DuGal was being unfairly criticized.
Myers, who said he knew DuGal very well, called him an accomplished and capable investigator.
“By the sounds of it, Troy‘s desire to even retain the missing person case as a homicide investigator indicates to me that Troy was receiving pressure from above to close out the homicide case,” Myers said via email last week. “Sounds like somebody above Troy was telling him [to] close out homicide investigation and pursue a missing person.”
Myers said good circumstantial evidence existed for convicting Merritt.
But he seemed to agree with Rother when she used terms like “botched” and “bumbling” to describe the San Diego sheriff’s investigation.
“Sounds like Sheriff admin pressuring investigators like in the Zahau murder — to quickly close out case … as a suicide, or missing person (in the McStay matter),” he said.
Myers said he hopes the book encourages people to ask questions of authority.
“The book will shine a needed bright light for transparency,” he said, adding: Sheriffs Office and ALL law enforcement must increase transparency, empower independent community oversight and open to changing policies to increase community trust in their law enforcement.”
DuGal now works as a DMV investigator, according to his LinkedIn profile.
But when he retired from the Sheriff’s Department in March 2022, he posted an eye-opening claim on Facebook as “T-Roy LaGud.”
“I walk away from homicide after 14 years and I left no cases unsolved,” DuGal wrote. “Future cold case detectives will not know me by cases left behind. I’m proud of that achievement.”
This interview was conducted in late April.
TIMES OF SAN DIEGO: Why was this project so challenging to finish? What documents were the hardest to get?
CAITLIN ROTHER: The logistical challenges on this book were ridiculous from start to finish. The San Bernardino courthouse was hours away by car, and the trial also lasted six months, so I covered the prelim and opening statements in person, but it was impossible for me to attend the rest of the proceedings every day.
Although the trial was livestreamed on Law & Crime, the reception was terrible and the signal kept dropping, so I couldn’t watch it in real time either, though I followed updates on Twitter and Facebook. Trial excerpts were posted on YouTube, which was helpful, though I ultimately learned that some key sessions were missing.
The high-profile nature of this case and the lack of transparency and openness of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department (SDSD) detective, who initially investigated this as a missing person’s case, left a hungry vacuum for amateur sleuths to investigate on their own and air their speculative allegations and theories online.
That in turn led to criticism of McStay family members and the sharing of criminal histories of other folks who were named online as possible suspects. All of these folks were understandably upset by this unwelcome attention, which made them not want to talk to anyone.
The prosecution refused to say a word until after the trial and even then, the defense wouldn’t release much, if any, information either due to the deal it made with defendant Charles “Chase” Merritt and a documentary production company to do a book and limited series. That book was never published.
As a result of these challenges, I interviewed whoever would talk to me, but initially I had to rely primarily on public court records and exhibits, the spotty collection of trial excerpts on YouTube, online research and news articles.
That all changed, however, when four months before my deadline (12 years after I had started following and researching the case), I was finally able to get my hands on the investigative reports, witness interviews and other documents from the sheriff’s agencies in San Diego and San Bernardino counties.
Those many thousands of pages of discovery materials were obviously crucial to telling the story behind the story properly. But that also meant I had to rewrite my entire book, adding 60,000 words to the 90,000 words I’d already written, then editing the manuscript down to about 105,000 words, all in a matter of weeks.
I’m very thankful to have finally obtained these materials, but it took me about three months to recover after I turned in the book. For reasons I can’t discuss, the pub date of the book was then delayed three times, which was frustrating not only for me but for those who had pre-ordered the book.
You quote many people as saying San Diego sheriff’s investigators — who assumed this was a missing persons matter and not a homicide — bungled the case. Do you agree?
As a professionally trained journalist, I never give my opinion on the cases I write about, I only quote others. I simply lay out the evidence I gather, which is no small task, and although I include what I think is most important, I let the reader decide for themselves. Most readers tell me they appreciate this. The book speaks for itself.
Ever been denied interviews before by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office? Is ex-Sheriff Gore mad at you for the Zahau book or others?
As I said above, the SDSD is not known for its transparency or openness, and the new sheriff, Kelly Martinez, has taken that to a new level. I had a good working relationship with Sheriff Gore before he retired, and he agreed to do interviews with me for my book on the Chelsea King/Amber Dubois murders and also for my book on the Rebecca Zahau case.
But he was long gone when I tried to speak to the agency about the McStay case, and Martinez never returned my calls even when I was still writing follow-ups about Zahau.
I was told that no one at the department would speak to me for this book, including Troy DuGal, who had since retired. I’ve never heard a word from anyone at the SDSD that they are “mad” at me for my Zahau book, which didn’t make them look any better than this one does, so that is possible.
The SDSD has been criticized for their handling of both cases. They clearly got this one wrong — by declaring that the family had voluntarily gone to Mexico when their bodies were buried in the desert — and many observers believe they got the Zahau case — declaring it a suicide vs. a murder — wrong, too. The agency seems to believe that not talking to anyone about the McStay case is the only way to deflect that criticism.
The book has details such as Summer being born to a 14-year-old mom and that Merritt’s brother was wrongly held as a Hillside Strangler suspect. Have these been published before or noted on social media?
The Hillside Strangler story was mentioned in passing during the seven-part docuseries “Two Shallow Graves” that ran on ID, and I also found an old news story with an interview with Merritt’s brother from when it actually happened. I don’t know if either of these facts were noted on social media.
What were the most consequential details you uncovered — stuff never before publicly disclosed?
There are far too many to list here, but they are woven throughout the entire book, thanks to those discovery materials that I received four months before my deadline. The book is chock full of new and exclusive details that have never been publicly disclosed.
What reactions do you expect from your book?
So far I’ve gotten really positive feedback, especially about the reporting and research, which has been very gratifying after so many years of work on this book, so I can only hope that will continue.
One review also complimented me on my sensitive yet objective and neutral approach to the story, and to the victims in particular, which tells me I did my job right.
Even if your reporting is based on public records and consensual interviews, did any lawyers review the book for possible defamation?
Of course. Every one of my books has been reviewed by lawyers, and the legal restrictions have only tightened with each book I’ve written. As such, it’s become so cumbersome and difficult to write a true-crime book, let alone get photo permissions, that it’s become almost prohibitive.
You don’t mention jury selection drama or share juror views after the trial. Did jurors refuse to talk to you? Or do you generally leave juror views out of your books?
I always include tidbits from jury deliberations if I get access to them, but that is not an easy thing to do. Jurors’ identities are always heavily protected, and because I wasn’t at the trial, I had no way to try to speak with them afterward. Jury selection “drama” is an oxymoron.
Did the various Internet sites that debated the case get anything right — or contribute to your understanding of the case?
I always find it educational, and sometimes enlightening, to cull through Websleuths, Reddit, blogs and other online amateur sleuth websites, where they discuss the case, offer theories and post court documents.
I use these as tip sheets, essentially, verifying and confirming whatever seems relevant or interesting to me. But this must be done with great care, because there are many crazy conspiracy theories out there, connecting dots using bizarre logic to produce faulty conclusions, and some blogs are posted by people with hidden agendas.
I often find that many of these online sources are full of factual errors and speculation, but I do discover some gems now and then.
Detective Troy DuGal never connected the dots to a suspect, you write. Did he give a reason for not consenting to an interview? Did the case lead him to retire?
I communicated with DuGal through another retired deputy, but never spoke to him myself. I was told DuGal would agree to an interview once he retired, but then he changed his mind. I assume he saw no upside to it, because his firm conclusion that the McStays had gone to Mexico was proven wrong.
That said, I quoted him, his testimony and his perspective on the case, which I pulled from his investigative reports. I have no knowledge that his retirement was prompted by his handling of the case. Sheriff Gore defended DuGal before he, too, abruptly retired.
Why did [Joseph’s brother] Patrick McStay give only one interview?
I have no idea. First, he told me that he was updating his own self-published book on the case, which to my knowledge was never updated. Then he said he had an exclusivity agreement with two documentaries and couldn’t talk to me. But his efforts to share information with DuGal, who rebuffed him, are documented in the book.
Page 110 references the Zahau case. Chelsea King and Amber DuBois cases are noted on page 245. You wrote books on both cases. See any similarities to the McStays?
Both the Zahau and McStay cases involve allegations of confirmation bias. The SDSD didn’t get criticized for its handling of the Chelsea King case except by Amber DuBois’ mother, who was apparently a constant thorn in its side.
‘My book on that case, “Lost Girls,” made the SDSD look pretty good because they quickly solved it and in a timely manner. That was not the situation with Zahau and McStay.
Any new true-crime book in the works?
I started one and have my eye on a couple of other cases, but as I said above, the legal restrictions and other limitations on my research, including people demanding payment to cooperate, have made it difficult to do another one.
I’m still open if an intriguing case comes along, but right now I’m focusing more on a new series of thrillers I’ve got coming out with Thomas & Mercer, starting in January 2026.
Would you update “Down to the Bone” after appeals are exhausted?
I have updated other editions of my books, such as “Body Parts,” which was just reissued with 32 new pages of new developments, but those developments must be significant. Publishers aren’t big on updating books, because it’s not as simple as doing a follow-up story for a newspaper or internet news site.
If that happens, or if Merritt makes any headway with his habeas petition or appeals then, yes, I would propose an update.
What kind of book tour are you planning? Any dates and locations set?
I’m going all out for this one, not just because it’s my first solo hardcover, but also because parts of the plot touch every county in Southern California, which has 21 million residents. So I’m planning to do many media and podcast interviews and book talks/signings. All the event dates are posted on my website.
You have a new series of thrillers coming out, starting in January with the first, titled “Hooked,” and the second one, “Corruption Cocktail,” to follow later in the year. Why did you decide to try your hand at fiction — when truth is often much stranger?
I actually started out writing crime fiction long before I ever published my first true crime book in 2005. “Naked Addiction,” the prequel to my thriller series, was first published in 2007, then was updated and reissued in 2014.
But it took 17 years to get that novel published, as did “Hooked,” my next work of fiction. That’s because it took me a long time — 15 books’ worth — to gather all the knowledge and experience covering homicide cases that I needed to write novels with “verisimilitude.”
Writing crime fiction is actually what I’ve always wanted to do, so I feel like I’m getting a second chance at my dream career. The writing of the later books in the series is coming much faster and easier now, and it’s far more fun, not to mention less stressful, costly and time-consuming, than writing true crime.
I’m also hoping to write screenplays for a movie or series based on some of my books, so stay tuned!
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