Jake Merendino Case: The Killing, Motive, Trial, and Appeals

The Jake Merendino murder was the May 2, 2015, stabbing of a 51-year-old retired Texan near Rosarito, Mexico, orchestrated by his 25-year-old boyfriend, David Enrique Meza, so Meza could inherit Merendino’s roughly $3 million estate. A federal jury in San Diego convicted Meza in May 2017 of foreign domestic violence resulting in death and conspiracy to obstruct justice, and he was sentenced to life in prison.¹

Who Jake Merendino Was

Merendino was adopted and grew up in Beaumont, Texas. He inherited his wealth from his parents, who both worked for ExxonMobil.² By the time he died, his estate was worth about $3 million.³ A cousin, Jennifer Sojka, later testified that he had a “big heart” and was “very, very generous.”⁴

Merendino met David Meza in June 2013 after hiring him through an online escort service on a trip to San Diego.⁵ What started as a paid arrangement grew into a two-year relationship in which Merendino spent lavishly on the younger man. He paid Meza between $1,000 and $1,500 a month, bought him a sports car and a motorcycle, paid for dental work, and covered his college tuition.⁶ Eventually Merendino sold his Houston apartment and moved to Rosarito to be near Meza.⁷

Meza was leading a double life. He was working as a porn actor and prostitute while engaged to his high-school sweetheart, Taylor Marie Langston, who was pregnant with his child. He told Langston he was an accountant and that Merendino was a professional client dying of cancer, referring to him by the alias “George.”³

The Night of the Killing

Two days before the murder, on April 30, 2015, Merendino closed escrow on a $273,000 oceanfront condominium at Palacio del Mar between Rosarito and Ensenada. Meza was named the beneficiary.¹ Merendino had also written out a will by hand naming Meza the sole heir to everything he owned.

On May 1, the two men checked into Bobby’s by the Sea, a hotel near Rosarito. That evening Meza left on his motorcycle. Border cameras recorded him crossing into the United States at about 11:00 p.m.⁸ Around 2:00 a.m. on May 2 he called Merendino and said his motorcycle had stalled, asking him to come help.⁶ A hotel security guard watched Merendino drive off, telling staff he was going to assist a “stranded friend.”¹

Merendino was stabbed 24 times, and his throat was slashed twice in what the sentencing judge later called a “near decapitation.”⁹ His body was dragged into a highway ravine in the Los Arenales area. Mexican police found him around 3:00 a.m., only five minutes from the hotel.¹⁰ Border cameras recorded Meza re-entering the United States at 3:57 a.m., and Langston crossed at 4:22 a.m. in a black SUV. Surveillance video also showed Meza changing his clothes before crossing.⁶ The murder weapon was never found.¹¹

The Will, the Money, and the Alibi

In the days after the killing, Meza moved to lock in the inheritance. He withdrew the remaining funds from a bank account he shared with Merendino and sent the handwritten will to a Texas attorney for probate.⁶ The document was written on letterhead from the Hercor Hotel in Chula Vista and purported to have been executed in December 2014, leaving Meza “everything.”¹⁰ When a friend of Merendino’s opened probate in Texas using a legitimate 1998 will, Meza’s lawyers contested it with the handwritten one. Prosecutors said the date on the newer document appeared altered.⁴

Meza and Langston told FBI investigators they had been visiting a friend named “Jose” in Tijuana on the night of the killing. The man they identified said he had not seen the couple in about two years and that Meza had contacted him to prop up the story.¹² Phone records and Facebook posts contradicted the alibi.¹¹ Later on May 2, the couple returned to Bobby’s by the Sea in a black SUV to retrieve Meza’s things from the room he had shared with Merendino. Investigators later recovered Merendino’s stolen iPad from the couple’s San Diego apartment.

Perhaps the most damaging piece of evidence was a voicemail Meza left for Langston: “I honestly feel like shit with myself when I, ever since I did that, I hated myself more every day… I had to, I had no choice, well, I had a choice, but I did it because I wanted to, for my family.”⁶

Why the Case Was Prosecuted in the United States

The killing happened on Mexican soil, but the case was tried in federal court in San Diego. The statute was 18 U.S.C. § 2261(a)(1), which covers foreign domestic violence resulting in death when the victim is a U.S. citizen. Acting U.S. Attorney Alana W. Robinson said “the United States will use every tool at its disposal to investigate and prosecute offenders who prey on U.S. citizens abroad.”⁸ The FBI built the case with the Baja California Attorney General’s office and the Rosarito Municipal Police, using cell-phone GPS data, border camera footage, hotel security records, forensic evidence from the recovered iPad, and witness testimony. A federal indictment was unsealed on December 23, 2015, and Meza and Langston were arrested in Imperial Beach.¹²

The Trial

Meza’s trial opened on April 11, 2017, before Judge Jeffrey T. Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.¹³ Testimony lasted about two weeks, followed by seven days of jury deliberations.⁸

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Foster led the prosecution and argued that Meza planned the killing to inherit Merendino’s fortune. Jurors saw the border footage, GPS tracking, the fabricated alibi, and the disputed will. Text messages showed Meza expressing love to Merendino while messaging Langston with disdain for the older man.¹⁴ Prosecutors also introduced evidence that Langston knew about the expected windfall and was “prepared for Merendino to die soon.”³

Defense attorneys Reuben Cahn and Richard Deke Falls argued the case was entirely circumstantial. They pointed to the absence of DNA linking Meza to the scene and questioned whether he could have dragged the body of a six-foot-four, 310-pound man on his own.¹⁴ Meza did not testify. On May 2, 2017, exactly two years to the day after the murder, the jury convicted him on both counts.⁸

The Sentences

On December 11, 2017, Judge Miller sentenced Meza to life in prison on the murder count and 20 years on the obstruction count, to run concurrently. Meza chose not to speak.¹⁵ The judge called the killing an “inhumane, depraved act” and “shockingly evil,” saying Meza’s “double life was collapsing under its own weight” and that “a solution was the savage murder of Mr. Merendino.”¹

Langston pleaded guilty in February 2017 to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice for lying to the FBI about where the couple had been on the night of the killing. On June 16, 2017, Judge Miller sentenced her to 21 months in federal prison, describing the underlying crime as “a brutal murder of extreme barbarity.”³ Her attorney, Don Levine, said Langston had been physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by Meza and knew nothing of his escort work.⁵

Appeals

Meza appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, raising four issues: adequacy of his Miranda warnings, whether he knowingly waived his Miranda rights, the trial court’s refusal of a “heat of passion” jury instruction, and whether the obstruction indictment properly alleged the required mental state. On January 21, 2020, the Ninth Circuit rejected each argument and affirmed his convictions and sentence. The court found the Miranda warnings were sufficient, no evidence supported a heat-of-passion instruction, and the obstruction argument was “squarely foreclosed” by the Supreme Court’s decision in Marinello v. United States.⁶

On August 3, 2020, Meza petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari on the Miranda waiver standard and the required mental state for federal obstruction offenses.¹⁶ He also filed a post-conviction motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 claiming ineffective assistance of counsel. His trial attorneys explained that they had advised him not to testify and had not pursued a voluntary manslaughter or self-defense theory because Meza never admitted to the killing.¹⁷ David Meza is serving a life sentence in federal prison.

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Imperial Beach Man Sentenced to Life for Fatal Stabbing of His Texas Boyfriend
2
People. Calif. Man Guilty of Killing Wealthy Male Lover
3
Los Angeles Times. Imperial Beach Man Sentenced in Baja Murder
4
Courthouse News Service. Personal Lives on Display in Love Gone Bad Murder Trial
5
Oxygen. Fiancée Discovers David Meza’s Secret Life After Murder of Jake Merendino
6
FindLaw. United States v. Meza
7
Courthouse News Service. Male Escort Convicted of Murdering Wealthy Boyfriend
8
U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Jury Convicts Imperial Beach Man for Fatal Stabbing of His Texas Boyfriend
9
Times of San Diego. Imperial Beach Man Sentenced to Life for Killing Wealthy Boyfriend
10
NBC San Diego. Jake Clyde Merendino Stabbed in Mexico
11
NBC San Diego. David Meza, Taylor Langston Created Phony Alibi
12
Los Angeles Times. Wealthy Retiree Killed in Rosarito
13
People. Calif. Man Allegedly Murders Wealthy Male Lover
14
NBC San Diego. Bizarre Baja Homicide Trial in San Diego
15
Courthouse News Service. Male Escort Sentenced to Life for Murdering Wealthy Boyfriend
16
U.S. Supreme Court. Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Meza v. United States
17
GovInfo. Meza v. United States, Section 2255 Motion