Expert says Merritt truck ‘cannot be excluded’ as vehicle on McStay neighborhood video

An expert testified Tuesday that Charles “Chase” Merritt’s pickup truck “cannot be excluded” as the vehicle caught briefly on a security video driving away from the Fallbrook home of the McStay family the night in 2010 prosecutors say they were slain and disappeared.

Prosecution witness Eugenio Liscio used a laser scan of Merritt’s 2000 Chevrolet 350 truck, outfitted with storage compartments and an elevated rack over the bed, and imposed that image over the grainy black-and-white video. He used a software program to make the analysis.

Merritt’s defense attorney James McGee pushed back, saying Liscio had not used all the video evidence available, questioned how he arrived at some measurements, and suggested some of his conclusions may have been formed to fit the bias of the prosecution, who was paying him.

Liscio denied that, and reminded McGee more than once that he had not identified the truck specifically as Merritt’s

Merritt, 61, who lived in Rancho Cucamonga at the time the investigation began, is being tried in the capital murder case in the downtown San Bernardino Justice Center before Judge Michael A. Smith.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges that he killed Joseph McStay, 40, a former business associate; his wife, Summer, 43, and their two children, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, in their Fallbrook home on Feb. 4, 2010, then buried their bodies more than 100 miles away — in two shallow graves in the Mojave Desert, north of Victorville and west of the 15 Freeway.

Prosecutors said Merritt killed out of greed, and tried to loot McStay’s business account. His defense attorneys have pointed to another McStay business associate as suspect, and said Merritt depended on McStay for income through contracts to build high-end custom water features that McStay designed and sold.

Liscio cautioned under questioning by San Bernardino County Supervising Deputy District Attorney Britt Imes that he could not definitively say the truck on the video was Merritt’s.

The low quality of the video camera, which caught the truck’s headlights as glaring blobs, rather than the rectangular shape they have, prevented precise measurements, he said.

Among the items that helped to reach the conclusion that the vehicle was “consistent” with Merritt’s truck was a glint caught by the video that matched the position of a latch on a passenger-side storage box toward the rear of the truck, said Liscio,who uses 3D imagery.

McGee played for Liscio a different security video from the same home, but from a side yard, with a view more perpendicular to the street. He asked if a “bright and constant” light from the side couldn’t be the truck’s taillight.

That video was not used in the analysis.

“Why won’t you say this is a taillight?” McGee asked.

“It’s not about what I can or can’t say. Its about what the evidence can show and sometimes the evidence can only take you to a certain point,” Liscio said. He said there was little to work with, with the side yard video.

“If that is a taillight, then that does not match the characteristic of the  …  Chevy 350 that you analyzed?” McGee asked Liscio, over an overruled prosecution objection.

“I’m not saying that this your client’s vehicle,” Liscio repeated. “All I am saying is that the vehicle in question is consistent with my report, and if there is another vehicle that looks similar, that is possible.”

Prosecutor Imes read the Liscio report’s “cannot be excluded” conclusion into the record, and Liscio said none of the questions raised by McGee on Tuesday had changed it.

Other measurements Liscio did based on the video and the laser scan was the position of the headlights, the height of the truck, the shape of the shadows thrown at the back of the truck and the position of the truck’s exhaust pipe.

He testified his quote for services was $14,000. Prompted by Imes, he told jurors he would get paid even if his conclusions were not favorable to the prosecution.

Liscio was the prosecution’s last witness in the case. Defense witnesses are expected to be called Wednesday.