Family of McStays still waiting for answers

For four years, relatives of the McStay family have waited.

First, to learn where the missing Fallbrook family was.

And since November, when the bodies of Joseph McStay, wife Summer and their two young sons were found buried in two shallow graves north of Victorville, they’ve waited to find out who killed them. And why.

San Bernardino County sheriff’s detectives took over the case from the FBI and San Diego County Sheriff’s Department but have refused to discuss the investigation publicly since announcing on Nov. 15 that the bones a motorcyclist discovered four days earlier were those of the missing family.

Relatives of the McStay family said detectives have asked them to remain silent on the investigation, too.

“I don’t want to jeopardize the case. I want to do what they asked me to,” Tracy Russell, Summer’s sister, said last week.

The four-year anniversary of the family’s disappearance is Tuesday. The couple and their two boys, Gianni, 4, and Joey Jr., 3, vanished from their Fallbrook home on Feb. 4, 2010.

Four days later, before anyone knew they were missing, their Isuzu Trooper was towed as an abandoned vehicle from a San Ysidro parking lot near the U.S.-Mexico border crossing.

Joseph McStay was 40 at the time, and Summer, 43.

For three years, San Diego County sheriff’s detectives handled the case, chasing down leads, including ones that suggested the McStays may have gone to Mexico. Last April, they turned the investigation over to the FBI in San Diego.

But a break in the case came on Nov. 11, when a motorcyclist off-roading near Victorville called 911 to report finding bones.

“Hi, uh, I’m out here behind the dump, and I found what looks like part of a human skull,” the unidentified caller said to a California Highway Patrol dispatcher.

After determining the caller’s location, the dispatcher transferred the call to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which had jurisdiction.

The CHP made public its portion of the call in January. San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials have declined to release their portion.

Four days after the bones were discovered, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said at a news conference that the bodies uncovered in shallow graves were that of the McStays, and that the deaths were being investigated as homicides. He would not say how the family was killed, and the autopsies remain sealed.

San Diego County sheriff’s investigators immediately turned over their files and evidence — even the Isuzu — to sheriff’s homicide investigators in San Bernardino County.

“We talked with them at length in the beginning,” San Diego County sheriff’s spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said Thursday. “Now they are working hard on their own.”

Caldwell said local investigators stand ready to offer assistance if needed.

Joseph’s father, Patrick McStay, said he has not spoken to detectives in more than a month, but they have told him they planned to reinterview people and “start back at square one.”

Rick Carlson, a retired San Diego police homicide detective who is not associated with the McStay case, said that San Bernardino County detectives will “have to play catch up from all the information that San Diego provided.”

Homicide detectives, he said, must be methodical. And patient.

“Everybody would like to see the suspect in jail right away, but you have to have the proof that is going to put these people in jail,” Carlson said. “It’s frustrating sometimes even for the detectives. They want to solve the case, but they don’t want to jump the gun.”

The San Bernardino County investigators may be getting new leads from forensic evidence found at the grave sites, he said.

Author Rick Baker, who wrote a book when the McStays were missing speculating about what might have happened to them, disavowed “No Goodbyes” in a blog post last month.

Most of the theories were wrong, Baker wrote. He offered refunds to anyone who bought the book before the family was found dead, and asked people to stop buying the book. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Meanwhile, the family members the McStays left behind wait for answers.

Russell, Summer’s sister, said the pain from the loss continues. Her son was born shortly before the family disappeared. He is 4 now. His cousin Gianni would be 8. And Joey Jr. would have turned 7 on Friday.

“I just want them to catch whoever it is,” Russell said. “Obviously, I want justice.”