In a voice that seemed relieved to be unburdened from its depth a long-kept secret, Stayner blurted, "I am guilty. But, says Delbert, puberty-aged Cary endured some emotional hardships because of that incident. Out of respect for his family and the victim's family, we don't want to say anymore." He denied any role in the Yosemite slayings. Unfortunately, less than a decade after his incredible escape, Steven Stayner died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 24, leaving behind a wife and two children. In 1972, Stayners He usually ate lunch and dinner at the motel restaurant. But, to no avail. Cary always wore a hat because he was compulsively pulling his hair out. "I've struggled with that issue for the last 24 hours and continue to do so," he confessed. Stevens death, along with the death of his uncle soon afterward, reportedly had a serious impact on Cary Stayners mental health and well-being. In December 1972, a 7-year-old Steven was kidnapped by Kenneth Parnell, a man who worked at the Yosemite Lodge at the national park near Stevens hometown of Merced, California. They finally caught up with him at the Laguna Del Sol nudist colony, which he frequently visited. He was charged with attempting to purchase a child and attempted child molestation in 2004, that he was sentenced to 25 years to life. What followed turned out to be one of the most shocking crimes in both National Park and American history, involving a man whose family had already been involved in a notorious crime, literally the two faces of evil. It was discovered beyond a campground adjacent to her living quarters in the Foresta community, a group of 30 cabins for use by park workers. Teresa Kay Gray, 36, of Modesto. "'Deep in my heart I know something my mind does not want to learn,' said Gina,13. The trivia item below may give away important plot points. The two hitchhiked to Ukiah, California. "I'm confident we've done everything that could be reasonably done.". Local police and Yosemite Park Rangers began to search the area where the missing three were last seen. In 2002, Cary Stayner was convicted of first-degree murder on four counts and sentenced to death. The trio stayed at the lodge in February 1999, during which time Cary talked his way into their room, where he sexually assaulted and murdered all of them. Still, the Bureau intensified its search, recruiting the use of more high-tech equipment and air support. Agents had interviewed Stayner, a handyman at the Cedar Lodge where the tourists had stayed, and later dismissed him as a suspect. Acting on a tip from a caller who was worried about the whereabouts of his friend, Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, park rangers found her decapitated body on the morning of July 22, 1999. Larry Duane Utley, 41 an associate of Dykes and Larwick, first picked up during a March parole sweep. More than a thousand leads, they confessed, produced nothing. He was arrested on March 5 when he allegedly reported to his parole officer with liquor on his breath. You could see that he wanted to play and be with kids and be normal. ", Steven Stayner and Cary Stayner in the baseball cap in the background. Larwick, who grew up in Tuolumme County near where the bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso were found, was jailed on March 16 after he allegedly shot a Modesto police office. He was convicted of four brutal murders in 2002. That evening, the group grabbed some videos from the lodge's service desk to watch in their room. Because he was the handyman at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal where the Sund & Pelosso group had stayed before they were murdered, his questioning at that time seems to have been more routine than anything. FBI agent Nick Rossi said on February 26, "At this point, we have not yet uncovered evidence to allow us to determine conclusively whether this was a tragic accident or a criminal act. Two weeks later, FBI agent James Maddock, now placed in charge of the investigation, told the press, "We feel almost certain that the women were victims of a violent crime.". This time, agents detained him and forced him to answer more questions. ", FBI sources claimed that he had already confessed his guilt during the Saturday evening interrogation. Cary, as the older brother, had a very strange relationship now with his younger brother, Steven, who was getting all of this attention and who was a different person, former KNTV reporter Ted Rowlands told ABC News. They were looking for the missing red 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix as well as the women. Im so proud of the way Carole and Juli lived, and Im so ashamed of Stayner.. It was badly decomposed and her throat had been cut. | Cary was the ideal son, Kay Stayner revealed to the jury during her elder sons trial for murder. Cary Stayner confesses to killing four innocent women in 1999: Part 9 Two FBI agents were eating pizza with Stayner when he suddenly admitted he murdered Joie By the end of that evening, the FBI felt it had gathered enough evidence to arrest Cary Stayner for murder, Sunday morning, they rushed him to Fresno to officially lodge a complaint, then to Sacramento on Monday where he was put before the courts. He did feel, however, that the FBI spared nothing to investigate the earlier killings. Check-out had apparently been done in advance and the keys were left on the room desk. The issue of whether his confession was coerced seemed to be resolved when on July 24, the court heard the recorded demands that Stayner made to the FBI agents that he wanted to be satisfied before he would give them his confession. He died in jail in 2008 at the age of 76. They lived in the farming town of Merced, California, the Gateway to Yosemite. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. The death-penalty trial of Cary Stayner was moved from Mariposa County to Santa Clara County, CA. He had talked his way into the room under the guise of fixing a leak, and then sexually assaulted both girls and brutally murdered Carole Lund and Silvina Pelosso in the room. "Her mother, sisters, and a family friend had been missing for a month by the time Gina Sund read her poem in front of a thousand or so people who gathered in Modesto," writes Time. When she did not appear as planned, her would-be host had phoned the park. By the end of June, the FBI had reviewed the testimonies and the evidence linked to the suspects in custody. While Steven was a freshman at Mendocino High School, some 300 miles to the south, his older brother Cary was an upperclassman at Merced High School. Woman recalls moment family learned they were target of 1999 In his interview, Stayner claimed that hair from his body was left on the bedspread in their motel room, but he returned later and changed the bed. In a jailhouse interview with a television reporter, he said he did not rape any of the women. Arrested on an unrelated drug charge, he has been questioned about the Yosemite case. She also happens to have a front row seat to two true crime narratives in her own family. The Cedar Lodge hired him as a handyman in 1997 and gave him the use of a small apartment on the top floor. Cary was 11 years old at the time, and deeply upset about his brother's disappearance. Quotes He abandoned the group's rental car with the bodies of Carole and Silvina inside, returning two days later to burn the evidence and retrieve the wallet, which he dumped in Modesto to confuse authorities. On Monday, July 22, the court heard Stayners taped confession, which he had given to FBI agents. Cary Stayner went from being the brother of child abductee Steven Stayer to a full-blown serial killer. He was a good student, a Timothy White, the kidnap victim, was only 35 when he died. Crazy Credits While he attended his meeting, the women were to tour the Grand Canyon. He demanded that his parents be given the reward money, that he be incarcerated at a prison near his parents home, and, to Stayners detriment, that he be given a large cache of child pornography. Campbell, when first arrested on mail fraud charges, had in her possession Carole Sund's checking account and automated teller machine numbers. Then on March 25, Juli Sunds body was discovered near Lake Pedro in Tuolumme County. He was arrested in May on an unrelated crime charge but was soon released. However, given Californias statewide moratorium on capital punishment, it doesnt appear that hell be executed anytime soon the states last execution was held in 2006. The other Sund children believed their mother and sister Juli would be returned. Tragically, Steven Stayner was killed in a 1989 motorcycle accident at the age of 24. I guess seven years changed him, too. It was not animated or digitally created; a stunt driver put the truck into a full controlled jackknife in front of the camera. "Privately, some members of the Sund-Pelosso task force were saying the same things to the media. In (the) interview, Stayner said he had fantasized about killing women for the last 30 years and described in detail how he murdered all the women, He had strangled Pelosso and Carole Sund in their rented cabin in the Cedar Lodge motel, then took Juli Sund to a lake, where he killed her early the next morning. He was known to take refuge in nearby Yosemite, where hed drive up and get lost in nature. The California Highway Patrol verified the car's license plate as the Sunds rented vehicle and immediately notified the FBI. Her body was next to a stream and head within the water that she and her friends used for drinking water. "Thats when I told him, 'You need to go to a doctor, Cary.'" He walked naked and and smoked pot, he could find the peace that he so desperately needed. Stayner said he thought he had gotten away with the earlier crimes, but could not resist the urge to kill Armstrong after he struck up a chance conversation with her. "We never really got along that well after he came back All of a sudden Steve was getting all these gifts, getting all this clothing, getting all this attention. Caroles parents, Francis and Carole Carrington, appeared on the Good Morning, America TV show, to ask for the prayers of Americans and their help in locating their daughter and the children. Parnell worked at the Yosemite Lodge, located about two hours away from the Stayner home. At the time of the murders, Cary was working as a mechanic at the Cedar Lodge, which is where he met his first three victims Carole Sund, her daughter Juli Sund, and her friend Silvina Pelosso. After several days, the bodies were identified as Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso through dental records. It then came out that Steven had been kidnapped by Parnell, who had been sexually abusing Steven while also posing as his father and forcing him to go by the name Dennis Parnell. Some who knew Cary were shocked at his arrest. He had no criminal record and his only encounter with the law was for marijuana use in 1997. On February 15, the ladies hiked into Yosemite National Park on one of the many trails. The FBI pushed for Strange's arrest, but he denied any part in the triple murders. Sandy Cox, whose husband owned the window company where Stayner worked for in Atwater, says, "We've known Cary since he was a little boyIt just doesn't match up. Then he took action. But seven years later in February 1980, Steven miraculously reappeared. He told Hartman that his parents "didnt change that much," but his brother and sisters, "they changed a lot. Angelia Dale, who testified before the federal grand jury. Specifically, the media scrutiny seemed to affect his older brother Cary, who clashed with his brother after his return. They had been hosting Silvina, who was a foreign exchange student from Argentina and a friend of Juli's, She was spending three months with the family. Darrell Gray Stephens, 55, Strange's roommate. Investigators searched his truck and confiscated his backpack for examination. The inn staff claimed that when they cleaned the room the next morning, they had detected no evidence of foul play or anything that made them suspicious. The Stayner family was made up of two brothers, three sisters, and parents Kay and Delbert. She was subpoenaed because she is a friend of Dykes and Larwick. Maria Ledbetter, 24, of Modesto, an admitted methamphetamine addict and former girlfriend of Dykes, about whom she was questioned extensively. He had given the FBI details "only the killer would know in such specificity that agents were able to recover evidence confirming his confession. Silvina Pelossos mother, Raquel, said, I just cannot understand how so many peopledidn't realize that maybe (Stayner) was the man since I heard that he was interviewed some time ago. Chief James Maddock said he himself questioned whether the Bureau could have done anything to prevent Armstrong's killing. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "(A witness claimed that) Stayner was angry about authorities seizing his backpack after he was questioned earlier that day. His attempt was foiled when other people were at the house at the time he was planning to commit the crimes. I was the oldest and all that. The police reckoned that the killer of the three women was someone familiar with the county given the location of the Pontiac. According to Special Agent Christopher Hopkins , both the FBI's Evidence Response Team and the Mariposa County Sheriff's Office collected items of potential interest from Room 509 at the Cedar Lodge Motel, the room in which Stayner sexually assaulted Juli Sund and Silvina Pelosso and murdered both Carole Sund and Silvina. By the time Steven was 14, he had been abused and manipulated by Parnell for seven years and Parnell and Steven together realized that Steven was growing up and that he was no longer going to be controlled by Parnell and they would need to find someone else that they could sexually abuse. For two weeks, Steven watched Timothy suffer the separation from his family. By this point, Cary Stayner had a couple of nervous breakdowns. He remains on On Good Morning America in March 1980, Steven shared with host David Hartman that it felt "great" to be home. | Cedar Lodge, 9966 CA-140, El Portal, CA 95318. Agents descended on the colony and returned him to El Portal on Saturday where he was put through a more lengthy interrogation. Very seldom did he get into trouble. You know, hung out with him, played with him.. where Stayner was employed as a handyman. During the first crash, the truck jackknifed before hitting the car. Emotionally, Cary Stayner had a tough time during his childhood. Parnell and Murphy were driving towards town when Stephen was lured into their vehicle and abducted. Initially, the police didn't have any solid leads as to who killed them. Agents arrived at the scene early on the 19th and upon opening the trunk, investigators found two charred bodies. | He paid a local kid to ride with him to the town of Ukiah, California and he told to go and find him a boy. I wouldnt think that he would think of himself as one, but he is a hero.". The FBI task force investigating Yosemite issued a federal warrant for her arrest after she failed to appear in Stanislaus County drug court in June. ", The FBI was reluctant to finger Stayner because, they, and many others, did not believe that Stayner acted by himself, given the brazen killing of the three women in the Cedar Lodge Motel and the disposal of the bodies. From hair trends to relationship advice, our daily newsletter has everything you need to sound like a person whos on TikTok, even if you arent. Kenneth"Soldier" Stewart, 24, a former cellmate of Dykes who was charged with attempted murder. In the end, Stayner confessed without the promise of child pornography or reward money for his parents. How can one family, contain two completely contrasting children? Upon examination by the FBI Laboratory, some items have yielded trace evidence. Cary Stayner, now 57, was convicted of the murders of Armstrong, the Sunds and Pelosso, and sentenced to death for all except Armstrong's. In 1997, Stayner got a job as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge, seven miles from the gate of the national park, where he worked for 2 years before the murders.. However, when they found Cary at a nudist colony nearby and brought him in for questioning, he quickly confessed to Armstrongs murder, and soon after admitted he was also responsible for the first three killings. Connecticut Serial Killer William Devin Howell Describes The Shockin Web6,597 views Jan 24, 2019 56 Dislike Share ABC10 172K subscribers On July 26, 1999, former ABC10 reporter Tim Daly went down to the Cedar Lodge where Cary Stayner During the session, an unexpected event occurred. Because of the discovery of Sund's wallet in suburban Modesto, police, and FBI searched "the logical routes in and out of that spot, interviewing homeowners and business owners and others who may have seen them." He said, I want you to get a hold of some producers in Los Angeles. The judge said there was overwhelming evidence against Stayner and that the devastating emotional toll justified execution. He grew up, got married and had two kids. The new three-part Hulu docuseries Captive Audience explores the tragic story of the Stayner family specifically the fraught lives of their two sons, Steven Stayner and Cary Stayner. Four hikers visiting Yosemite National Park had been brutally murdered, and Cary Stayner had confessed to the crimes. Steven was told his new name was Dennis Parnell and was enrolled in school. He had a long criminal record and had been questioned extensively by the FBI. Its manager had seen a story on television, recognized Stayner's photo as one of his guests, and notified the FBI. In mid-July of 2002, the trial began in Judge Thomas C. Hastings courtroom. At that time, the Bureau stated that, while no one had yet been charged, it felt that those responsible for killing the three women at Yosemite were already behind bars. That same day, Stayner allowed himself to be interviewed by a reporter from KNTV. One brother was subjected to just unspeakable horror for years, but by all appearances, he was a happy-go-lucky, jovial kid with a girlfriend. Unsurprisingly, it didnt take long for the story to become national news, and the teenage Steven was at the center of it all. Stayner said to investigators I want you to get a hold of some producers in Los Angeles. There, they got a room with a plan to stay for a few days. The American Court TV (now TruTV) television series Mugshots released an episode on the Stayner case titled "Cary Stayner The Cedar Lodge Killings". [29] In 2018, the Reelz channel aired an hour-long documentary about the murders titled Yosemite Park Killer. The 1999 murders of four women near Yosemite National Park were already a big story before Cary Stayner confessed in an FBI interview. Knives were used in the slayings and the weapon suspected in Ms. Armstrong's death was recovered.". They no longer want you.. Concluding the interview, he addressed the victims' families: "I am sorry their loved ones were where they were when they were. At that time, Steven had been forced to endure sexual abuse by his kidnapper, whom he finally turned in to the police. Stayner was already serving a life sentence for the murder of Joie Ruth Armstrong. One of those arrested, and later released, was Cary Stayner, who worked at the Cedar Lodge as the handyman. During an off-camera jailhouse interview in Sacramento following his arrest, Cary admitted to Armstrong's murder as well as the murders of Carole Sund, 42, her Against the odds, he flourished there. You have the other brother who's left at home. Soundtracks. Real Crime 1.23M subscribers Join Subscribe 6.7K 562K views 1 year ago Also known as the Yosemite Park Killer, Cary Stayner murdered four women in 1999 Curtis Cousin Eddie Smith Claims Alex Murdaugh Made Him A Fall Guy, Morgan Doughty Filed A Lawsuit Against The Murdaugh Family, Buster Murdaugh Testified For The Defense At His Fathers Double Murder Trial, Randy Roth From 'A Rose For Her Grave' Is Still In Prison, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. The Sund family's worst fears were confirmed when a hiker wandered onto the site of a burned-out red 1999 Pontiac, hidden off Highway 108, in the Stanislaus Forest region on March 18. Police found her car in front of her cabin, packed for the trip. I wish I could have controlled myself and not done what I did. She had probably been murdered on the evening of Wednesday, July 21. Cory gets emotional as she describes how he fell through the cracks of familial or institutional care. Whites stepfather, Roger Gitlin, said White died April 1, 2010, of an apparent pulmonary embolism. And he wanted the same treatment. But when Parnell kidnapped another young boy, this time 5-year-old Timothy White, Steven knew he couldnt let another child be subjected to the abuse and torment he had faced for years. Cary didnt emerge as a suspect during the initial investigation, and the FBI actually believed they had the people responsible for the killings in custody. She was seen that day at the Institute offices and was planning to visit a friend in Sausalito, California, that day but never made it. Steven later said in an interview, I returned almost a grown man, and yet my parents saw me at first as their seven-year-old. I guess I was jealous. The Bureau relocated its headquarters from Yosemite to Modesto at this point and, on February 28, twelve days after the women's disappearance, hinted that was is no longer treating the Sund incident as a missing persons case, but as murder. Alternate Versions On the way to his police interview he confessed to a detective in the car to murdering Joie Armstrong, describing the brutal killing "as if he was reading a soup label," said John Boles, another FBI agent on the case.