“Don’t let the coyotes get you”: Tyler McCain’s mom testifies in his preliminary hearing on murder charges

Shasta County prosecutor Sarah Murphy appeared to grow angry with Tyler McCain’s mom, Jeanette Hayward, midway through testimony. McCain is being accused of killing his wife, Nikki Cheng Saelee-McCain, last year in order to prevent her from testifying against him on felony domestic violence charges. She’s been missing since May 18, 2024.

One of Hayward’s comments on the stand indicated that her daughter, who’s been attending the trial, has been sharing information with her. That triggered a series of sharp questions from Murphy. There’s a witness exclusion order in the case, meaning witnesses can’t be in the room unless they’re testifying. Witnesses are also forbidden from speaking to anyone about the case.

During the interchange, Murphy appeared to be restraining anger, staring intently at the ceiling as she moved around the courtroom and escalating both her tone and the pace of her questions. Hayward responded to many of Murphy’s questions with the words “I don’t recall,” eventually saying that she used to drink a pint of vodka a day during the time her daughter-in-law went missing. Drinking that much affected her memory, she said.

Overall, Hayward provided relatively little new information during her time on the stand so far, testifying that items found in a shop on her property on Redding Rancheria Road belonged to McCain and discussing how she drove her son to look for the couple’s Chevy Avalanche in the days after Saelee-McCain went missing. 

“Don’t let the coyotes get you,” Hayward said she told her son on a rural road when he decided to get out and walk rather than go home when she was ready to be done searching for the vehicle. McCain was later picked up in the area by friends, according to testimony given over the past week, one of whom said he was asked by McCain to help “disappear” the Avalanche and what was inside it.

About a week after Saelee-McCain went missing, the vehicle was found abandoned off Highway 36 with a bloody sheet inside. Testimony from California Department of Justice criminalist Carolyn Heitsman Tuesday indicated that the blood stains found on the sheet as well as blood in the truck bed and on its fuel tank all belong to the same female, most likely Saelee-McCain. In the absence of DNA obtained directly from Saelee-McCain, because no body has been found, Heitsman used kinship comparisons that utilized the DNA of her sisters Chloe Saelee and Kaye Ford as well as Saelee-McCain’s oldest daughter. 

DNA on drink bottles found inside the cab of the truck, Heitsman testified, indicates they were used by McCain, who also drove the vehicle, which the couple had only recently purchased. But the prosecution’s case against McCain was complicated by seminal staining on the bloody sheet found in the truck bed that includes DNA likely belonging to Luis Barajas, Heitsman testified, who has told the court he was in a relationship with Saelee-McCain for about a year before her disappearance. 

During his testimony Tuesday, Barajas told the court he had sex with Saelee-McCain on May 17, the day before she disappeared, on a couch in his room with a sheet thrown over it. He is unsure if Saelee-McCain took the sheet with her when she left to wash it, but he said she often took dirty laundry back to the home she shared with McCain.

Prosecutors grilled Barajas on texts he sent to Saelee-McCain later that night, her last known communications in the wee hours of May 18 before she disappeared. The texts took an ominous tone as Barajas verbally berated Saelee-McCain about whether she had engaged in sexual intercourse with Justin “Too Tall” Karren, who lives in a trailer on the McCain property. 

In one text, Barajas told her he released “all his evil” on her and that she was “going to pay.” In another, he wrote, “I hope whatever is lying around there goes and gets you,” explaining to prosecutors that the message was a reference to the presence of spirits Saelee-McCain could sometimes feel around her. 

When she stopped texting back that night, Barajas said he assumed she was angry with him. He tried to call within a few minutes to apologize but was unable to reach her. Over the coming days and weeks as the community searched for her, he said he hoped she was just taking a break and getting away. 

He did not initially reveal his sexual relationship with her to law enforcement, who spoke to him in the days after her disappearance, saying he did not reveal more than Saelee-Mccain was comfortable sharing in an effort to protect her relationship with her children, whom she no longer had custody of, as well as her sisters.

Barajas told prosecutors the texts that night came from a place of insecurity, not about her relationship with her husband but about the ride she had taken that night with Karren. McCain’s defense attorney Michael Borges asked the witness if he thought Saelee-McCain was in a relationship with Karren or “just fucking him.”

Barajas responded in the same steady careful tone he has taken throughout his time on the stand, using his hands to emphasize his words as he said he was wrong to have accused Saelee-McCain in that way. 

“It was wrong then, and it feels wrong right now,” Barajas said, appearing to rebuke Borges for repeating his words, “especially because she’s not here.”

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