SAN BERNARDINO >> Charles “Chase” Merritt, accused of killing a San Diego County family of four and burying their bodies in the Mojave Desert near Victorville in what prosecutors allege was a crime committed for financial gain, has fired his four attorneys.
Following a closed hearing Thursday in San Bernardino Superior Court in which Judge Michael A. Smith conferred with Merritt’s attorneys – Jimmy Mettias, David Askander, Sharon Brunner and Rajan Maline – Smith granted Merritt’s request to relieve him of his defense team.
“There’s a finding that there’s been a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship that justified Mr. Merritt relieving his retained counsel,” Smith said.
The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, where it will be determined if Meritt will retain or be appointed a new attorney or if he will represent himself as he initially intended.
“There’s been some disagreements over when and how things are going to go. There has been a breakdown in understanding between us,” Merritt’s former lead attorney, Jimmy Mettias, said following Thursday’s hearing. “It happens at times, so we felt it was best to end the relationship.”
Mettias said he did not know what Merritt’s next move will be.
Merritt informed Smith during a pretrial hearing last week that he did not want to waive any more time for trial and wished to proceed to trial in April, but attorney Rajan Maline said there was no way he and the rest of Merritt’s defense team would be ready that soon, and that the earliest they would be ready for trial was late July or early August.
Merritt, 58, of Homeland, faces the death penalty if convicted for the February 2010 beating deaths of Fallbrook residents Joseph McStay, 40; his wife, Summer, 43; and their two children, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3. Prosecutors allege Merritt was a gambling addict heavily in debt who killed the McStay family for financial gain, writing multiple checks exceeding $21,000 on Joseph McStay’s online business account beginning the day after the family was last seen alive and continuing through Feb. 8, 2010. Merritt then patronized Indian casinos in Temecula and San Bernardino and the Commerce Casino near Los Angeles, dropping thousands of dollars, authorities said.
In November 2013, a man riding his dirt bike in the Mojave Desert near Victorville came across partial skeletal remains north of Stoddard Wells Road and west of the 15 Freeway. Sheriff’s crime scene investigators discovered two shallow graves and unearthed the skeletal remains of two adults and two children, later identified by dental records as those of the McStay family.
The autopsies concluded that the entire family had been beaten to death with a blunt object, and investigators believe the murder weapon was a 3-pound Stanley brand sledgehammer found in the grave where Summer McStay and one of her sons were buried, according to arrest warrant affidavits filed in the case.
Sheriff’s detectives testified in court that, given the extent of injuries inflicted on the McStay family, they believe the victims were tortured before they died, beaten repeatedly in the head, legs, arms and torso.
Other evidence connecting Merritt to the crimes include five calls he made from his cell phone on Feb. 6, 2010, two days after the family was last seen alive, that pinged to a tower in Victorville near where the victims were buried. In addition, DNA matching Merritt was taken from the steering wheel and gearshift handle of the McStay’s Isuzu Trooper found abandoned at the Mexican border. Merritt told investigators he had never driven the vehicle.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s homicide investigators arrested Merritt at his workplace in Chatsworth in November 2014.
The McStay family was last seen alive on Feb. 4, 2010, when Joseph McStay met Merritt for lunch at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga, where Merritt lived at the time, to discuss business, including a lucrative contract with a chain of upscale beauty salons, authorities said.
Joseph McStay owned the online company Earth Inspired Products, which sold custom made decorative water fountains. Merritt worked for McStay designing and building the fountains.