McStays, Bonus: The Call
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What sparked the renewed interest in the McStay murders for this bonus episode?
Hi, this is Ashan Singh here with the final episode of What Happened to the Mixed Days. Remember, you can catch up on the entire series for free if you follow What Happened to the Mixed Days on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Or listen to this entire series ad-free and discover so much more from 2020 by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts. Click the link in the description to start your free trial today. Now, here's the final episode of what happened to the McStays.
Early morning on a Manhattan sidewalk, a shooting caught on surveillance video.
It was an assassination style killing and everybody saw it.
A new podcast series from ABC Audio in 2020 goes inside this captivating case. I'm ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmeyer. Listen to Burden of Proof, Luigi Mangione, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Brad Milkey, host of ABC's daily news podcast, Start Here. And if you just finished listening to the captivating story of what happened to the McStays, I think you're going to really enjoy this special bonus episode. Because today, I'm here with the host who led us on this journey, Ashin Singh. And today, we're going to dive deeper into the story. We've got some interview material you have not yet heard in this podcast, including...
I can hear you right now, yes.
An ABC exclusive interview with Chase Merritt from prison. We're going to get into what we learned from that interview. But first, let's welcome our guest here, our host, rather, Ashan Singh. Ashan, you've been with ABC for like 10 years, and that time you've done lots of reporting, especially for Nightline. This was your first time hosting a podcast, though, right? So what's that been like?
Yeah, Brad, thanks so much for having me and sitting down with me to chat about this. This project has just been unbelievable. I've had a few opportunities to kind of delve down the true crime path with Impact by Nightline. I've done some stuff on some kind of current cases, right? The Delphi murders, the Gilgo Beach murders, and obviously the longstanding cold case of who killed Tupac Shakur. But I think what made this one so fascinating for me is that This was a case that had lived on the minds and hearts of so many people back in 2010. And then for years, nobody actually knew what happened. And so for our team to be able to dig through this archival material that ABC had been collecting over the years and get a clearer picture of this case that almost feels like it couldn't happen in the year 2026, and then to get to sit down and work with our ABC audio team in a podcast, it really leaves no stone left uncovered.
You really get to dive into the nitty gritty of the story.
Well, And this story about the McStay family, like you said, is so fascinating. It's so heartbreaking. As you start turning those stones, I guess, what really stuck out to you? What grabbed your attention as you started examining this?
Yeah, Brad. So 2010 doesn't actually feel like that far back, right? But in reality, there are advances in technology that investigators now have at their disposal that they really didn't have back then. Right.
How did advances in technology change the investigation of the McStay case?
Right. But San Diego investigators, they were looking at footage from one neighbor's security camera. And at one point, this grainy footage that was taken from
the border. And you mentioned like the grainy surveillance, but like even the idea that you'd have to look that closely to tell like which side of a car the exhaust pipe is, like all of that seems so far away and yet so
close. Sign of
the times, right? No, literally. Exactly. Like you said, like somebody's ring doorbell cam probably gets you better footage at this point, but that's just not what they were dealing
with. Exactly. So now it's really interesting to me that there are two different investigations going on here. First, you have the San Diego police trying to figure out exactly what happened to the McStays. It was this missing persons case. And there wasn't this discovery of graves. So police did not have this explicit knowledge of foul play like they did in the in the second investigation.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What sparked the renewed interest in the McStay murders for this bonus episode?
0:00–3:05
2
How did advances in technology change the investigation of the McStay case?
3:05–5:55
3
Why were there two separate investigations (missing‑persons vs. murder) and how did they differ?
5:55–8:46
4
What new insights did the ABC‑exclusive interview with Chase Merritt reveal?
8:46–12:00
5
How did family members and friends like Gina Watson help keep the case alive?
12:00–15:04
6
What role did Dan Kavanaugh’s false accusation play in the trial narrative?
15:04–17:39
7
Why does Chase Merritt maintain his innocence despite a guilty verdict?
17:39–20:00
8
What are the ongoing legal actions (habeas petition, book plans) and future hopes for closure?
20:00–22:49