Bonus: The Call

Ashan, you've been with ABC for like 10 years, and that time you've done lots of reporting, especially for Nightline.

This was your first time hosting a podcast, though, right? So what's that been like?

Yeah, Brad, thanks so much for having me and sitting down with me to chat about this.

This project has just been unbelievable.

I've had a few opportunities to kind of delve down the true crime path with Impact by Nightline.

I've done some stuff on some kind of current cases, right? The Delphi murders, the Gilgo Beach murders, and obviously the longstanding cold case of who killed Tupac Shakur.

But I think what made this one so fascinating for me is that This was a case that had lived on the minds and hearts of so many people back in 2010.

And then for years, nobody actually knew what happened.

And so for our team to be able to dig through this archival material that ABC had been collecting over the years and get a clearer picture of this case that almost feels like it couldn't happen in the year 2026, and then to get to sit down and work with our ABC audio team in a podcast, it really leaves no stone left uncovered.

You really get to dive into the nitty gritty of the story.

Well, This story about the McStay family, like you said, is so fascinating.

It's so heartbreaking.

As you start turning those stones, I guess, what really stuck out to you? What grabbed your attention as you started examining this?

Yeah, Brad.

2010 doesn't actually feel like that far back.

Right.

But in reality, there are advances in technology that investigators now have at their disposal that they really didn't have back then.

And so how much technology has advanced since the first investigation, even though it really wasn't that long ago, it's almost like a crime of days past, but happening in the modern era.

So now smartphones have apps that show whereabouts as opposed to only having a cell tower that was pinging back in 2010.

And there are cameras everywhere.

Right.

But San Diego investigators, they were looking at footage from one neighbor's security camera.

And at one point, this grainy footage that was taken from

the border.

And you mentioned like the grainy surveillance, but like even the idea that you'd have to look that closely to tell like which side of a car the exhaust pipe is, like all that seems so far away and yet so close.