Prosecutors went through several messages from Maya Millete’s secret Instagram account on Wednesday. Mathew Grindley, an investigator with the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, said the vast majority of those messages were between the missing Chula Vista mother and Jamey Laird, the co-worker he said she was having an affair with.
Maya’s husband, Larry Millete, is on trial, accused of murdering her and hiding her body in 2021. He’s pleaded not guilty, and her body has never been found.
Grindley testified that Maya had several social media accounts, which included one with a display name of sailormoon.713579. That had been created in February of 2020.
That account had its privacy protections turned up so that only accounts it approved could see its posts, but it hadn’t approved any followers who could see them. However, Grindley said the account had messaged Jamey’s account quite a bit.
“The messages between them were sexual,” Grindley said. “They were also very emotional.”
Mathew Grindley, an investigator with the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office testifies during Larry Millete’s preliminary hearing in 2021.
For now, none of those sexually-charged messages were shown to the jury. Instead, testimony centered on the other main use for the account, acting as a private diary for Maya.
Because Maya’s secret account had no followers, Grindley said Maya wrote lengthy messages to herself, which often included iMessage screenshots of arguments she had with Larry.
That included one fight between the two from late August 2020, where Maya wrote, “I can’t wait to get away from this toxicity that you create.”
In response, Larry would repeatedly tell her he loved her, expressing frustration that everything he did annoyed her, and begging her to move forward with him.
Grindley also testified about several other search warrants, which captured emails from Maya’s Yahoo account. She also used that forum to write lengthy diary entries.
On Christmas Eve of 2020, Grindley said Maya wrote, “He’s never going to change. He will always control who you will or will not interact with. He’ll never get past what happened in 2020. LEAVE.”
Maya Millete
Emails were also shown to the jury that indicate more plans Maya made for herself for 2021, going against the narrative from the defense that she chose to run away. That included plans to attend graduate school at Point Loma Nazarene University as well as making an appointment with a divorce attorney for January 12, 2021, which was about five days after she disappeared.
Grindley is expected to retake the stand tomorrow, and Larry’s defense team could get their first opportunity to question him about more of Maya’s secret communications.
FBI biologist testifies about vial with toxin found in Millete home
A forensic examiner biologist with the FBI also testified Wednesday about a vial of a substance that police seized from the Millete home. Dr. Neel Barnaby explained how DNA sequencing was performed on two samples from the container, which he said matched a database that identified them as erigeron bonariensis, commonly known as hairy fleabane.
He said that the plant is non-toxic and different from what one of his colleagues found. That witness, an FBI chemist, told jurors yesterday that samples she tested contained a toxin called coniine, which is found in a plant called poison hemlock.
That toxin is deadly. One of Larry’s defense attorneys, Colby Ryan, repeatedly highlighted the differences found between the two types of testing.
Deputy District Attorney Christy Bowles then asked Barnaby questions, which he said revealed two reasons why. He said it was because the vial contained several different types of plant matter and because his team was unable to do DNA sequencing on all of the items inside due to their small size.
Expert says poison hemlock is considered to be a ‘super toxin’
In the afternoon, Dr. Frank Lee Cantrell was called to the stand. He’s one of the most educated and respected toxicologists in the state of California.
Cantrell has more than 30 years of experience teaching pharmacology and toxicology at both UC San Diego and UC San Francisco. In addition to that, he serves as Director of the San Diego Division of California’s Poison Control System.
Cantrell testified about how incredibly dangerous hemlock can be. He said it causes the body’s nervous system to go into high gear, causing spikes in blood pressure, convulsions, nausea, vomiting, tremors, and profuse sweating.
He said the body can’t sustain those effects, and it begins shutting down. Cantrell said just five drops of the plant-extracted toxin then causes blood pressure to nose drive, and a person then stops breathing.
“It’s really toxic stuff,” Cantrell testified. “There’s no commercial use and no legitimate use whatsoever for it.”
During cross-examination, Cantrell was asked questions that revealed how incredibly rare coniine poisoning is. He said he’d never seen any cases personally, but said anecdotal examples almost always involved people who ingested the plant mistakenly.
Cantrell also acknowledged that the plant could also grow naturally next to hairy fleabane, which was also determined to be inside the same vial.