Witnesses describe alleged domestic violence, searches, welfare checks during first day of McCain’s preliminary hearing

Editor’s Note: This story includes graphic descriptions of domestic violence. Read with care. If you or someone you know needs help to stay safe you can find shelter at One Safe Place. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233.

“Good morning,” Tyler Scott McCain responded to the Honorable Judge Thomas L. Bender in Shasta County Superior Court yesterday morning, September 4.

McCain appeared without shackles, wearing a blue sweatshirt, blue pants, orange socks and slip-on shoes. Throughout much of yesterday’s approximately six hours of testimony, McCain bent forward in his seat with his face in his hands, only occasionally taking notes or speaking in whispers to his attorney, Michael Borges. 

Family members of his wife, Nikki Cheng Saelee-McCain, whose disappearance was declared a homicide in March, sat in the front row during the first day of a preliminary hearing. McCain has been charged with murdering his wife with a special allegation that he killed her to prevent her from testifying against him on felony domestic violence charges. The body of Saelee-McCain has not been located.  

Several statements shared by witnesses on the stand yesterday indicate the victim told members of her family in the months before she disappeared: “if anything happens to me, Tyler did it.” Her recorded report to law enforcement about an incident that prompted felony domestic violence charges was played in court yesterday afternoon. 

On the recording, Saelee-McCain’s voice sounded strong and clear as she spoke to Shasta County Sheriff’s Sergeant Gerry Maul from a local emergency room where she sought treatment after an alleged attack by her husband in their home on December 1, 2023. Maul described Saelee-McCain as having been severely beaten by someone larger than her. Photos showing her face with two blackened eyes were admitted into evidence.

During the attack, Saelee-McCain told Maul, her hands and feet were bound with tape and her mouth covered. She said McCain spoke to God during the incident, saying he was going to kill her. She escaped when McCain went outside for a break and she was able to work her hands and feet free and run to her vehicle, leaving her phone and other items behind. She said McCain jumped on the hood of her vehicle as she tried to leave but she was able to get away.

Six months later, shortly before Saelee-McCain was scheduled to testify against her husband on those domestic violence charges, she disappeared. Her last known location was at the same home in Happy Valley. Cell phone records show both the victim and her husband were at that shared home in the hours before she was reported missing by her sister, Chloe Saelee on May 19.

A Redding Police Officer told the court that McCain allowed Saelee to search the couple’s home on the morning of May 19 after Saelee-McCain had stopped responding to text messages. She found Saelee-McCain’s purse, but no sign of her sister. The resident of a trailer home on the property was interviewed by deputies in the days that followed. 

Dustin Warren of the Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services also testified, describing five separate searches that have been conducted over the past eighteen months. One site along Platina Road, includes sometimes steep and almost impenetrable terrain. Asked if it’s possible human remains could be located in those areas, despite not having been found so far, Warren answered yes, explaining that the vastness of the site and the thickness of the brush makes it impossible to rule out.

Former Shasta County Sheriff Deputy Eliseo Brito also took to the stand, recalling the evening of May 25, 2025.  He said he was on patrol when he was asked to respond to a report that Saelee-McCain’s missing vehicle had been spotted by a roadside in rural Shasta County. Brito said when he approached the closed bed of the truck he noted the “distinct smell” of death and a number of flying insects swarming in the area. Brito did not provide further details about what was found inside, but statements by the Sheriff’s Office over the last month indicate that a bloody sheet found in the truck bed matched Saelee-McCain’s DNA.

Much of the afternoon was taken up by testimony from Amanda Pruitt, a detective with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office assigned to the case shortly after Saelee-McCain went missing. She described a number of investigative leads that have not previously been shared with the public including an eye witness who reported seeing the victim’s vehicle by a rural road in eastern Shasta County on May 24, six days after she was last seen. The witness, who was returning from hauling logs in the woods at the time, also reported seeing a white “tweaker looking” male walking on the road near the vehicle. 

Asked to identify the man in a line up in August 2024, the witness identified McCain. The defendant’s attorney questioned the accuracy of that identification process, noting that the witness had seen news reports related to the disappearance, most of which included a picture of the suspect, before claiming to identify him several months later.

Other testimony offered in the first day of the hearing indicated that some individuals had noticed McCain’s behavior changing in the last few years with one person reported as having said the changes began around the same time he started a job as a slot operator at the Redding Rancheria’s casino.

In a recorded interview at the Shasta County Jail in December 2023, following the alleged violence against his wife, McCain admitted to using methamphetamine shortly before being arrested. He denied beating his wife and holding her hostage in their home, telling law enforcement that she was attacked by someone else she knew. As McCain’s recorded statements about the victim were played aloud, her sister, Kaye Ford, could be seen in the court’s front row seating shaking her head in apparent disbelief.

Judge Bender is a visiting retired judge from Madera County who is overseeing the preliminary hearing which will determine whether McCain’s charges move forward. The hearing is expected to last 5-7 days and will resume on Tuesday, September 9, at 9:30 in Department 63 of Shasta County’s Superior Court.

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