Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It is a trial that is five years in the making. Larry Milioti is in court this week charged with killing his 39-year-old wife, Maya, who was last seen in their Chula Vista, California, home on January 7th, 2021. 48 hours followed Maya's family, friends and the community as they searched and searched for her. Yet her body has still never been found.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say that Larry had been paying people online to pay.
cast spells on his wife spells to first make her stay with him and then later to harm her in opening statements the prosecution said that maya was having an affair and according to emails larry sent to spell casters the affair resulted in maya getting pregnant the prosecution says this revelation caused a huge fight between larry and maya in january of 2021 right around the time she went missing
Larry Miliente has pleaded not guilty. I'm 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green, and this is Case by Case. And today I'm being joined by Kelly Hesedal. She is a CBS 8 San Diego reporter. She has been following this story and was in court earlier this week. So, Kelly, thank you so much for making some time for us. Thank you for having me. So let's just sort of start kind of in the beginning.
I want to talk about Maya, or May, as some people called her. What was her relationship with Larry like in the beginning?
Maya and Larry met when they were working at a fast food restaurant. Maya had actually immigrated to the United States from the Philippines with her family back in 1995, and she was just 13 years old. So they actually got married when they were pretty young. Maya was 19 years old. I believe Larry was 18 years old. And they fell in love, got married, waited about 10 years until they had children.
They ended up having three children, two girls and one boy. And Larry had enlisted in the Navy at one point, and so they had relocated from Hawaii to San Diego. And that's where they settled in a portion of San Diego called Chula Vista. They loved their children. Larry was an attentive father, according to family and friends.
Maya has always been described as very bubbly, very outgoing, someone who loved the outdoors, loved being outside. And by all accounts, they had a typical married life.
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Chapter 2: What led to the trial of Larry Millete?
But clearly, things started to change. They started to unravel at some point.
The prosecution said this week in opening statements, to really understand this story, you have to go back to 2020. Maya was confiding in her friends about the struggles in their marriage. She wasn't really confiding in her family quite yet about what was going on, but she was definitely letting her friends know that there were problems. She began an affair with a coworker
According to prosecutors, during opening statements, it started out as a friendship and then turned physical.
Larry obviously was not doing well with this. He did not want a divorce. That was not an option for him. And he is reaching out to Maya's family. He's actually sort of, the prosecution said that he was writing sort of notes to his sister-in-law trying to get her to help him
keep the marriage together but then he writes something sort of really curious in one of the notes this is according to the prosecution and he writes i always say friends help you move real friends help you move dead bodies and i've kind of heard this line before um and it could be sort of humorous but considering now what has happened it doesn't sound so funny
Right. And when the prosecutor said those words in court this week during opening statements, I mean, there's many reporters that are sitting in the courtroom and you could hear everybody's fingers tapping on the keyboard the moment that she said that, because I think it really struck everybody as a line that really stood out.
Right. In fact, one of Maya's co-workers testified that she had said Maya had said to her, listen, if anything happens to me, it was Larry. Was there any talk of a legal separation or divorce? Were they moving in that direction? I know Larry didn't want that, but I wondered if Maya had brought it up.
So there was a portion of time during 2020 when she actually moved in with her brother and her sister-in-law for several weeks. Police found a letter in the Miliete home during one of the searches there that Maya had written to Larry, basically saying, you know, this is unhealthy. This is toxic. I want to be happy. And happy is not with you. She said, let me find my peace.
And I cannot find it with you. But Larry, according to prosecutors, was desperate to keep her with him to keep the marriage going.
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Chapter 3: What details are known about Maya Millete's disappearance?
Yeah, that note to me is about as direct as it gets. She wanted out. Well, Wednesday on the stand, Maya's sister, Mary Chris, testified that Larry had called her for advice about the relationship. And this happened in 2020. And then a little over a week before Maya disappeared, Maya had opened up to her siblings about wanting a divorce.
Right. And she testified that Maya was adamant about this.
Chapter 4: What allegations were made against Larry Millete in court?
And this was actually just in the days leading up to when Maya disappeared, that her family found out she was really set on this divorce and that she had said she wanted to pawn some of her luxury handbags, including a Louis Vuitton purse, for $10,000 to help pay for a divorce attorney.
Wow. OK, that is interesting. And all of this for the prosecution, I presume, you know, points to motive. But as I understand it as well, there were some references to domestic violence in the arrest warrant.
In the arrest warrant, there was a friend that had told investigators at one point that Larry had choked Maya to the point that she was unconscious. However, the defense has said there's no evidence at all of domestic violence between the two.
All right. So that brings us to the day that Maya disappears. This is January 7th, 2021. This is the last time that anyone has seen Maya. Kelly, just walk us through what we know about that day.
There was a receptionist from a law office that testified about noon on that date. Maya made a call to that law office and said she wanted to get a divorce from her husband. This receptionist, Destiny Johnson, testified that Maya
wanted to do the consultation virtually but destiny had told her according to her testimony we really should do this in person but maya was so afraid that larry was going to find out she didn't want to so she ended up making an appointment for a week later and and partly that was also because that weekend they were going to be celebrating her daughter's 11th birthday up in big bear with the entire family
And she, according to prosecutors, really did not want to ruin that for her children or for the entire family.
We know that her cell phone stops, I guess, pinging at around 125 in the morning. Right. That night, she Maya is doing some sort of random Google searches, isn't she?
That's right. So what we know from January 7th, according to prosecutors, there's surveillance video earlier in the day of her going out to get her Jeep washed. The children asked if they can come with. Around 4.43 that afternoon, there's surveillance video showing her returning home. And yes, at around 8 o'clock that night, there was a Google search.
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Chapter 5: How did Maya's relationship with Larry change over time?
Not only do these emails to spell casters show that Larry wished harm on Maya, but the emails are also a window into what was going on within the relationship and the timeline.
So this has already come up this week, but I actually want to refer back to the arrest warrant here and These are all communications to these spellcasters online. This is some of what he was saying, right? Please punish May and incapacitate her enough so that she can't leave the house. It's time to take the gloves off.
Can you hex to have her hurt enough that she will have to depend on me and need my help? She's only nice to me when she needs me or sick. Thanks again. Maybe an accident or broken bone. And then on the day that Maya disappears... He sends multiple emails to spellcasters saying, I think she wants me to snap.
It was almost like he was confiding his deepest, darkest secrets to them about what was going on in his marriage. He spent a lot of money on these spellcasters. And when we first found out about this, Five years ago, I mean, everybody's jaw dropped. It was something that we had just never seen before.
But I will say one of the most telling things about the spellcasters, according to the prosecution, this contact he had with them, the way that it changed after Maya disappeared. prosecutors say was very apparent. At one point, he had, according to them at least, said something along the lines of, stop hexing me. And this was the day after she disappeared. And then
the spellcaster emails all sort of diverged into start punishing Jamie Laird, the man that she had been having an affair with. And there was no mention of Maya again after that. That is fascinating. So can we talk a little bit more about that? One of the big moments of the trial this week was the prosecution speaking about one particular email that Larry sent to spellcasters
where he revealed that the coworker Maya was allegedly having an affair with, Jamie Laird, had gotten Maya pregnant.
Do we know if that's even true or if it was just something that Larry made up or that Larry believed to be true?
At this point, there has not been a doctor up on the witness stand. We have not seen any medical records proving that she was pregnant. I do believe at one point, During some of these emails with spellcasters, he had talked about an abortion that Maya had had. But at this point in the trial, we have not seen any proof of this.
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