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Gianni and Joey
The McStay family
March 28, 2010
VOL 27 NO 13
Why would this family disappear?
The vanishing without trace of an apparently happy Californian family has baffled police and spawned many conspiracy theories, writes Dave Hannigan
Joseph with Gianni
Joseph
Summer
Joey
Gianni
The first the neighbours knew that the McStay family might be gone from their house was when they heard the dogs. For days in early February, Bear and Digger barked incessantly the way that only ravenously hungry mutts can. The animal-lovers on the street took it upon themselves to start passing in some food to the pets and the barking stopped. All the while though, there was no sign of Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, or their two kids, returning to their well-appointed home on a cul-de-sac in Fallbrook, just outside San Diego, California. Strangely, nobody remembered them saying anything about a vacation and they didn't look the type to up and leave their beloved dogs without even water.
On 14 February, Michael McStay had grown worried enough about the lack of contact with his brother to drive over to the house with the stunning mountain views on Avocado Vista Lane. There, he found only the dogs and a burgeoning mystery. He called the police and inside the home they found no evidence of a struggle, just a bizarre scene that resembled nothing as much as a suburban American version of the Marie Celeste. Food that should have been refrigerated 10 days earlier was rotting on the counter in the kitchen, Summer McStay's prescription sunglasses (without which she struggles to see) were lying there too, and the cupboards seemed full of recently-purchased groceries.
Whatever happened, the McStays had left in a bit of hurry, without preparation and, judging by the condition of a house they were supposedly busy renovating, under no apparent duress. That is about all the investigators can say for certain. More than six weeks after anybody last spoke to them, the family has disappeared from the face of the earth. Despite their story featuring regularly on cable news shows across America and in California newspapers each day, nobody has heard or seen a sign of them. The only lead so far is their Isuzu Trooper, which turned up 70 miles away in the town of San Ysidro on the border with Mexico.
"At this point, it just seems to be a mystery," said Lieutenant Dennis Brugos of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. "There is a chance the family could have voluntarily left and disappeared, but it's unlikely. I think there were some food items left out. Those types of things sparked our attention, and on the chance that this turns into a criminal investigation, we want to be on the ground floor with this thing. Is the vehicle down by the border a ploy? Were they voluntarily missing? Were they taken against their will? Just for a family of four to disappear, I've never seen anything like it."
People disappear in America every day. Many are abducted and killed, others just choose to walk away from their existing lives and start again, somewhere else. As the saying goes, they head off the grid and hope to never be found. That profile more usually fits individuals than entire families though. Not to mention families with an apparently solid marriage (nobody has yet come forward to suggest the couple were anything but as happy as they outwardly seemed), and a household in reasonable financial shape (albeit with some questions about the way in which they secured a mortgage last year) via Joseph's self-employment as the designer and installer of indoor water fountains.
"They're a very happy, loving couple," said Blanche Aranda, Summer's mother. "They're very active with their children. How do four people vanish without a trace? Such a loving family – who would want to hurt them?"
With no obvious answers to that question, and in the absence of any concrete evidence, conspiracy theories have flourished. They range from the obvious to the ridiculous. Among the questions being asked: How come the McStays were out of contact with their family for 10 days before anybody took action and involved the police? Is it true one of Joseph's business partners is a violent ex-convict? Is Michael McStay himself a suspect?
The house's proximity to the Mexican border has many more imagining the family was kidnapped by a drug cartel from over the border. Despite the fact Joseph McStay and his wife have never come to the attention of police before for anything serious, there's no shortage of speculation that they somehow became embroiled with hardcore criminals and, whether hostages or dead, are now paying for that association.
As Lieutenant Brugos alluded to, the more cynical originally believed that the placement of the car near the border was a strategic move by people wanting to send anybody intent on finding them on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction.
Two weeks back though, footage emerged from a video surveillance camera that on 8 February had captured a family resembling the McStays walking across the border just five miles from where their Isuzu had been found. While police initially sounded hopeful this might prove a fruitful lead, Michael McStay dismissed this "sighting".
"The video quality is very poor, I personally could not make a positive identification," wrote McStay on the website he established to publicise the family's disappearance. "Careful reviews of the video show that there are two or three different families passing by, one with a little girl actually, and the other with a man who walks nothing like my brother."
The relatives have gone to extreme lengths to unearth any sign of their kin. A couple of weeks back, they employed a drone, a remote-controlled aircraft capable of searching 15 square miles in a matter of minutes, to scan the entire area from the McStay home to the spot where the Isuzu was discovered. Again, this spawned nothing for them to go on and led more people to conclude that, if they are alive, it is most likely they are south of the border. Inevitably in a situation like this, the internet is aflame with rumours and whispers, none of which have been substantiated by the authorities.
Entire pages of message boards are given over to people with nothing else to do but parse the significance of the police finding a dirty nappy (presumably belonging to the three-year-old Joseph) on the floor near the bathroom of the McStay house. Where some see evidence of a family leaving in chaotic circumstances, others have tended to view even something like that as an item left there by the family to deliberately give off the impression they were being taken against their will.
In that particular version of events, the McStays were also involved in an elaborate but unexplained real-estate scam though which they somehow pocketed a six-figure sum and were heading south to live on the beach in Mexico for the rest of their lives. Joseph liked to surf, his wife liked to shop, and hey presto, that's enough for people to piece together an entire Shawshank Redemption-style escape to a life of indolence in the sun. Never mind that the father was the only member of the family with a valid passport.
Not every hypothesis out there has the family turn into beach bums. Darker possibilities have been mentioned too. In the past year or so, America has witnessed a rise in domestic murder-suicides, horrific episodes in which the father of a family, usually overwhelmed by debt, decides to end it all and to take his wife and kids with him. Again, the McStay case doesn't fit with this paradigm, because very often these types of incidents occur in the home and some have even included the burning down of the house itself. Michael McStay this week says he fears the worst for his brother, sister-in-law and nephews. "Joey had a YouTube account. It's possible some sick criminal paedophile saw his profile and tracked him down," he said. "In one of the videos you can literally see where the house is located and the address."
The McStays aren't the only family to have disappeared in recent weeks either. In Omaha, Nebraska, Vanderlei Szczepanik, his wife Jaqueline and their seven-year-old son Christopher went missing from a church they were renovating into a school last December.
"It just looks like they up and left," said Omaha police spokesman Michael Pecha. "Anytime you have a whole family like that seemingly disappear, it's unusual and adds to the difficulty of locating them."
Originally from Brazil, there has, despite the usual news reports publicising their plight, been no sighting of that trio since. Like with the McStays, there were no signs of foul play, all of their belongings were untouched in their home, and their cars were discovered abandoned nearby. Jaqueline Szczepanik's computer was also still on and her husband left four uncashed cheques behind. Hardly the behaviour of a family willingly doing a runner.
The vast distance between Omaha and San Diego means the cases are unlikely to be related, just uncannily similar in the circumstances. In the age of mobile phone triangulation and blanket video camera surveillance, it would seem nearly impossible for entire families to just disappear in America. Apparently not.
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