McStay Family Murders: Book Talk With True Crime Author, Discussing 'Down To The Bone'

RIVERSIDE, CA — New York Times bestselling True Crime author Caitlin Rother will discuss her latest work, "Down to the Bone: A Missing Family's Murder and the Elusive Quest For Justice," Saturday, at 2 p.m., at the Riverside Barnes & Noble Bookstore located at 3485 Tyler Street.

Caitlin Rother will appear for a Book Talk discussion, followed by a question-and-answer session, the Barnes & Noble event staff said. She will also be signing copies of her new release during the event.

The mystery of the McStay family's disappearance has been highly publicized on People Magazine and in documentary series. Rother's true-crime story takes the reader on a journey step by step through the decisions, assumptions, and theories by detectives and prosecutors that ultimately led officials to send Charles "Chase" Merritt to death row.

Rother says her work shows "how the prosecution's dots don't all connect."

In 2013, three years after they went missing, the skeletal remains of the McStay family, who went missing from their Fallbrook home under mysterious circumstances, were found in shallow graves in the Mohave desert near Victorville. Joseph and Summer McStay and their two sons, Gianni and Joseph Jr., weren’t missing. They were dead.

What happened and who killed them was decided; however, Rother says she was 90,000 words into her research when she was granted access to rare discovery materials from both police departments who investigated the case.

"I basically had to rewrite the entire book, and do that in four months," she said in a recent podcast interview with Ivy League Murders. "I read and evaluated thousands of pages to do it. This project took 12 years, but much of the work was done at the very end."

Rother introduces some new subjects, meticulously combed through the details of the case, court files, 1,200 exhibits, hundreds of photos, and thousands of pages of records, to paint a compelling and comprehensive portrait of the family's life at the time they disappeared. She asks pointed questions and leaves many unanswered.

With the discovery available to her, she was able to conduct in-depth research and disclose new and exclusive case details that had never been released publicly, describing the eventful journey to trial and sensitively portraying the lasting impact on Joseph's and Summer's families, according to Rother.

"Down to the Bone" reveals an "often troubling investigation and prosecution in San Bernardino County," and exposes "various suspects and motives," according to Justin Brooks, founding director of the California Innocence Project. He recommends the book for "lovers of true crime where the author goes far beyond what is already known and has been proven in court, raising questions that need to be asked."

Merritt remains incarcerated at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County and is working on a Writ of Habeas Corpus petition, Rother says.

"After 12 years of investigating this case, and going through all of the evidence, testimony and interviews, I still don't know who killed this family."

In her acknowledgments, Rother says: "I'm just the messenger, laying out the evidence and the sometimes ugly truth of how this case came together. But I hope this book opens readers' eyes on the workings and flaws of our criminal justice system and also changes preconceived notions about this case in particular."

Rother is anticipating the January 2026 release of her new thriller, "Hooked," the first in the Katrina & Goode series.