SAN DIEGO _ Patrick McStay has waited for this day, when he finally gets to speak in court, gets to speak for his slain son Joseph McStay, daughter-in-law Summer and two young grandsons. On Friday, he will speak at the sentencing of the man convicted of killing them.
It will mark the end of a long journey, he said this week. And he will "absolutely" ask the judge to send the man to death row.
In June, a San Bernardino County jury recommended that Charles "Chase" Merritt be sentenced to life in prison for the beating death of his business associate, 40-year-old Joseph McStay, but be sentenced to death for the beating deaths of McStay's wife and two preschool-age sons, Gianni, 4 and Joey Jr. 3.
The sentencing decision falls to San Bernardino Judge Michael Smith, who presided over the trial.
The hearing will come just shy of 10 years since the family vanished from their Fallbrook home.
"I don't think about how long it's been," Patrick McStay said in a phone interview earlier this week from his Houston home. "I am mostly thinking about the boys and what I could be doing with them and Joey and Summer.
"And those are the things that I try to keep in my thoughts."
Merritt, 62 and a welder, had been friends with and worked with Joseph McStay, who sold indoor water features. Merritt has long denied any involvement in the family's disappearances or deaths.
The family went missing in February 2010, eggs left on the counter, unfed dogs left outside. In their place was a mystery with few clues _ and a notable red herring pointing south of the border _ for investigators to follow.
Four days after they vanished, but before anybody knew they were missing, the family's Isuzu Trooper was towed from a San Ysidro parking lot, walking distance to the U.S. Mexico border.
In early 2013, San Diego sheriff's detectives handed off the case to the FBI.
A few months later, in November 2013, the family's remains were found _ not south, but rather 100 miles north of their home _ in shallow desert graves in San Bernardino County.
A three-pound sledgehammer was found in one of the graves. The McStays had been beaten to death.
Merritt was arrested a year later. He pleaded not guilty and would go through several attorneys in the years to come.
Trial testimony got under way in January 2019.
The prosecutor contended the reason behind the killings was greed and that Merritt had dipped into McStay's business accounts. The defense said there was no evidence connecting Merritt to the deaths, and the case was built on a weak motive.
Last June, nearly five years after his arrest, and roughly five months after trial testimony started, a San Bernardino County jury found Merritt guilty of four counts of murder and came back with the mixed recommendations for life without parole and death.
