Updated

Media outlets including The Associated Press are asking a California judge to unseal search warrants in the investigation into the death of a family of four whose bodies were found in desert graves.

The hearing Friday in San Bernardino Superior Court will follow a pre-trial hearing for the man arrested on murder charges in the deaths.

Forty-year-old Joseph McStay, his 43-year-old wife Summer and their two sons, 4-year-old Gianni and 3-year-old Joseph Jr. disappeared from their Fallbrook home in February 2010.

Their bodies were found in November 2013 in shallow desert graves in nearby San Bernardino County.

Charles Ray Merritt was arrested a year later and charged with murder, but authorities haven't said what led them to him.

Merritt was a business associate of Joseph McStay, who installed water features