“Most bad guys don’t want their victims found. And then we subsequently found her head 27 ft upstream.”
“When the word came in that the car had been burned then you just get this bad feeling.”
“The biggest game in town was the three girls that were missing.”
“A letter was received. It was a map and on the map it said, ‘We had fun with this one.'”
“Nobody ever came up with one piece of information that convinced us that we were on the right track. So this was a real who-done-it.”
“In February of 1999, three vacationers begin a long-anticipated trip to California’s Yosemite National Park.”
“But not one of them could have ever imagined that within the tranquil setting, someone is watching and waiting for an opportunity to act.”
“On February 14th, Carol Sund, her teenage daughter Julie, and their friend Sylvia Peloso, an exchange student from Argentina, check into the Cedar Lodge in El Portal, California, 7 miles outside the park.”
“And so the three of them went to the University of Pacific to check out the cheerleading program in the school. And then since they were here, they traveled on to the park to do some sightseeing.”
“The next day, they hike Yosemite all afternoon and eat an early dinner at the hotel’s restaurant.”
“Then at approximately 7:35 p.m., they return to their room.”
“The following morning, a housekeeper finds nothing out of the ordinary. The room key was left in a prominent location so it looked like they had just left the key and had checked out.”
“Meanwhile, Carol’s husband, Jens, is waiting for his wife and the girls at the San Francisco airport.”
“The plan is to meet there then fly to Arizona to visit his sister in Phoenix. When Carol and the kids did not show up at the airport, Jens thought, ‘Oh, he had the dates wrong.’ And so he continued ahead to Arizona thinking he would either find them there or they would be there soon after.”
“But the next day in Phoenix, Carol still hasn’t shown up.”
“Concerned, Jens calls the Cedar Lodge to see if his wife is still there. The clerk on duty informs him that she never officially checked out, but she does appear to have left.”
“It would not be uncommon for someone to be visiting Yosemite and take a side trip and not contact anyone that they were going to take a side trip. So it did not seem out of the ordinary for them not to have phoned anyone at that point.”
“Jens’s next call is to Carol’s parents. I’ve not seen or not heard from… but her father, Francis Carrington, tells him that neither he nor his wife have heard from their daughter.”
“That same evening, Jens files a missing person’s report with the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Department. Family members had actually gone to Cedar Lodge and that area to ask questions themselves and actually visit with members of the sheriff’s department up there, saying that something was wrong and they needed to be out looking for these missing women.”
“At the Cedar Lodge, the Mariposa authorities search Carol’s room. It remains untouched due to the hotel’s irregular cleaning cycle and nothing seems out of place.”
“The furniture wasn’t askew and the beds aren’t turned over and there’s no signs of violence in the room. The towels and rags in the bathroom were soiled and appear to have been used as if someone had showered and cleaned up and left.”
“Mariposa law enforcement questioned the staff and guests of the Cedar Lodge. It was a mom, a daughter and I think a friend of…”
“But no one has seen the women since the evening of February 15th when they rented a movie at the front desk.”
“And then a troubling discovery. Authorities learn that Carol’s rental car hasn’t been returned, but no one can say why.”
“Sometimes people go missing because they want to go missing. Um, other times, you know, it’s a result of an accident.”
“With nothing solid to go on, investigators consider whether the women could have been involved in a car accident of some kind. In February at Yosemite, it’s known that the driving conditions are very dangerous. The weather can be very changeable. Have a lot of moisture in the air, a lot of fog. The roads get very slippery. Cars go off a cliff and they’re not found until the spring or summer.”
“Knowing that time may be of the essence, authorities issue an APB for the missing women.”
“But 3 days pass with no sign of Carol or the girls.”
“Then on February 19th, a good Samaritan provides a lead that takes the investigation in an entirely new direction. Carol Sund’s ID and credit cards have been found by a teenager more than 100 miles away in Modesto.”
“The wallet changed everybody’s feelings about what was going on investigation. Let’s face it, I mean most people do not part with their wallets willingly because that’s their identity. And so to find the elements of this woman’s identity in an intersection a distance from where we knew them to be is cause for concern.”
“Tension mounts and the scope of the investigation soon widens when authorities learn that 16-year-old Silvina Peloso is not a US citizen.”
“Immediately when we discovered that there was an Argentinian national that was missing, we called the FBI because we believe that they needed to be aware of it and of course they have more resources than we do.”
“On February 22nd, the FBI joins the case. Our office adopted a very aggressive stature towards responding to missing person’s cases where the missing people were children.”
“The first step as in any investigation is to eliminate the next of kin as suspects and move on from there.”
“If your wife suddenly turns up missing under mysterious circumstances, the husband is at least going to be investigated to make sure there’s no involvement on his part.”
“And sure enough, police quickly notice a contrast between Carol’s father’s and her husband’s behavior. Francis Carrington was emotional and seemed much more passionate about trying to solve what had happened. Jens seemed a little more cold and distant. His demeanor and, um, things like that that had them suspicious.”
“Investigators ask Jens to take a polygraph test and in the process they quiz him on his seemingly indifferent behavior. He had been waiting for Carol and the girls to show up and when they didn’t, actually went out and played a round of golf before checking back in with the family to find out what had happened.”
“The interview lasts nearly 3 hours but when it’s over, Jens has shown no sign of deception.”
“Suddenly, investigators find themselves back where they started with a big mystery to solve and no time to lose. Making their job even more difficult is the local terrain. The Yosemite Valley is filled with dangerous detours and some say dangerous people.”
“Modesto is located in the Central Valley of California, so we have a high population of drug users down here. We also have a lot of parolees that get released from state prison before their sentence is over. They seem to gravitate towards this area.”
“Police have to wonder if Carol, Julie, and Silvina may have unwittingly stumbled upon some illegal activity that put them in harm’s way.”
“They weren’t drinkers, they weren’t using narcotics, they weren’t partiers. They were just sightseeing. And for them to not show up for pre-arranged meetings was extremely unusual, very suspicious, and it just had the flavor from the start that something tragic had happened.”
“Modesto, California police have enlisted the help of the FBI to find three women: Carol Sund, her daughter Julie, and a foreign exchange student, Silvina Peloso, who all disappeared without a trace somewhere in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park.”
“As investigators ponder their next move, a lead comes in that confirms their growing fears. In the course of looking through these various alternatives, we discovered that there were suspicious calls to the victim’s bank account. So our obligation at that point is to do everything we can to resolve that and see if it plays a role in why our victims are missing or if it helps us identify where they might be.”
“But the calls are made from local payphones and all attempts to track the caller down are in vain.”
“On February 27th, investigators set up a command center at a hotel in Modesto to begin sorting through the thousands of leads pouring into local authorities.”
“While searchers continue to comb the dense wilderness, bureau agents rein the entire hotel staff.”
“Kind of a lady come in with her young daughter.”
“The reaction from the public when an FBI agent shows that small badge is much different than when they see a local policeman’s badge. Um, their cooperation level goes up, their anxiety level goes up.”
“Agents soon learned that Carol Sund had asked the Cedar Lodge management to change their room lock shortly before the women disappeared. The locksmith who performed the work is a man named Pepper Collins.”
“They only had one key. Carol wanted to have a key and the girls wanted to have a key. So naturally, the person who changed the locks on the door then becomes a suspect. So we had him come to Modesto and we interviewed him and polygraphed him, and he did okay and left.”
“As a matter of routine, agents also interview Cary Stayner, a handyman who lives at the Cedar Lodge. He tells investigators that he never saw Carol or the girls, and a quick background check reveals that he has good reviews from his supervisor and no criminal record.”
“But other employees cannot be eliminated quite as easily. A couple of people worked there who had, let’s say, checkered pasts.”
“The next guy we looked at was a guy named Billy Joe Strange.”
“Billy Joe, a paroled felon, is working as a janitor in the hotel restaurant, the same restaurant where Carol and the girls had their last meal.”
“We look at who had access to the victims and then we try and determine if these people that had access to the victims have value as suspects.”
“Strange is taken into custody 2 weeks after the disappearance when his parole officer smells alcohol on his breath. But when the FBI asks him about the missing women, he swears he had nothing to do with it.”
“Generalizations, rumors, innuendos—that’s all we were working on this whole time. And in this job, you kind of want to get a little something once in a while.”
“It isn’t long though before police hit on an odd coincidence. As it turns out, Strange has a roommate who also works at the hotel. His name is Daryl Stevens, and he too is a parolee, having served time on charges of rape and robbery.”
“On March 14th, he’s jailed for failing to register as a sex offender.”
“It was not difficult for law enforcement to believe that they might be involved.”
“But like Strange, Stevens denies having anything to do with the missing women. And after some careful digging, both men are fully cleared of any involvement.”
“One of the most difficult things in this case was, of all the people that we talked to and there were well over a hundred, nobody ever came up with one piece of information that convinced us that we were on the right track.”
“Then 4 weeks in, an important discovery 90 miles from the Cedar Lodge on the northwestern edge of Yosemite changes everything.”
“Hidden from view off Highway 108, a hiker stumbles onto a charred car.”
“The red paint has been burned off, but the plate matches the 1999 Pontiac rented by Carol Sund over a month earlier.”
“It was quite obvious the car had been forced into that position. Someone had backed the car through a barbed wire fence and rammed the car down into that position to hide it from people’s view.”
“When the car becomes located, that’s when everything changes. Then you just get this bad feeling, hoping against hope that it’s not what you think it is. The car had been engulfed in a horrendous fire. The trunk lid was distorted because of the heat and it was very difficult to open. But once we pried it open, we found charred human remains of two individuals.”
“People were devastated. They had really hoped and prayed that they were going to find these women alive.”
“But investigators and family members cling to one last glimmer of hope. And now where’s the third person? Is she alive? Is she well? Is she being held captive?”
“Four weeks into the search for three missing women, police find their charred car with two bodies in the trunk.”
“We’re looking for three people. So then we begin this tremendous search thinking, ‘Oh my god, we still have a victim out there.'”
“Because the bodies are so charred, examiners must use dental records to identify the remains as Carol Sund and her 16-year-old charge Silvina Peloso.”
“But as tragic as the news is, investigators have no choice but to stay focused on Carol’s 15-year-old daughter Julie, who’s still missing.”
“There was hope that Julie would be found alive, but realistically for somebody who’s been doing this job for a while, like most of the guys on the task force, there was no chance.”
“They comb the area around the car and nearly 100 ft from the charred vehicle, they find Carol Sund’s purse and a fanny pack. Both contain cameras with film inside. Film that is miraculously intact. The pictures show Carol, Julie, and Silvina having the time of their lives. More importantly, the photographs along with corresponding timestamps help authorities to piece together a precise timeline.”
“And now we have a picture of them alive and well in their pajamas in their hotel room at 10:34 on February 15th.”
“Whatever happened to the women occurred between 10:35 that night and the morning of February 16th before the housekeeper arrived.”
“It’s not much, but it’s a starting point. And based on the remote location of the burned-out car, they can also assume that the killer is a local familiar with the surrounding countryside.”
“At this stage, investigators know it’s a game of chance. But it isn’t long before a local suspect shows his hand.”
“The same day we found the vehicle and started processing the vehicle, Michael Larwick shot a Modesto police officer. I believe his tags had expired.”
“A Modesto police officer decided to pull him over, but instead of pulling over he ran. The officer pursues and Larwick actually opened fire on the officer and wounded him.”
“The common theme with just about everybody was it was very suspicious that Mike Larwick would be involved in a broad daylight shooting with a policeman here in Modesto. He had to be involved in something serious, and the biggest game in town, the biggest serious thing in town, was the three girls that were missing.”
“Michael Larwick is a 42-year-old resident of Stanislaus County who grew up within miles from where Carol Sund’s car was found. And that ignited this big investigation on Larwick and his half-brother Eugene Dykes.”
“Investigators soon learned that Eugene Dykes is a parolee that had recently been picked up on a violation. And a cursory background check reveals that both Larwick and Dykes have extensive criminal histories.”
“Methamphetamine has infiltrated this community and has been here for many, many years. And because of that, it spawns a lot of other crimes. They might have kidnapped these people for some type of ransom or just because they thought they were wealthy and they could get money, that type of thing.”
“Both Larwick and Dykes immediately deny any involvement in the murders. And they go one step further to prove their innocence when both agree to take polygraph tests. Michael Larwick’s is inconclusive, and Eugene Dykes failed his polygraph. But that’s not all.”
“After some careful digging, investigators turn up several witnesses that can link the brothers to Carol Sund.”
“It was Carol’s wallet found on February 19th. It had identification and credit cards. Um, we had witnesses that developed witnesses that said they saw Dykes and Larwick with her identification and trying to use it for identity theft. These same witnesses also told us that they had some of the victim’s jewelry as well.”
“But formal charges are put on hold when the FBI’s Modesto office gets a mysterious new lead.”
“A letter was received at our office in Modesto. It was a map and on the map it said, ‘We had fun with this one.'”
“They subsequently brought up an FBI cadaver dog from Los Angeles. They went to the spot at Don Pedro Reservoir and immediately the dog hit on the and found Julie’s body.”
“The scene is a gruesome one and it’s clear right away that the 15-year-old’s throat has been slashed.”
“When we found her body at Lake Don Pedro, again, it was you know that that moment, ‘Okay, well again, she’s also been a victim of a violent crime.'”
“Unlike a lot of cases, we were personally invested in this one. And so it was very sad. Sad and extremely unusual. Most bad guys don’t want their victims found. Now we have the offender telling us where to go to find a third victim. And so that was very interesting behavior on his part to help us, meaning that you know he had… did he have some sort of affinity for this victim? Or why was he directing us there when he’s taken so much time to conceal his identity and other evidence? Why is he now directing us to go find more evidence?”
“But the authorities have more pressing questions. The letter was received after both Eugene Dykes and Michael Larwick were in police custody on unrelated charges. Did the brothers have someone on the outside write the letter to simply throw police off their trail, or could they have an actual accomplice still at large?”
“There was a lot of investigative attention being directed towards the two suspects of Eugene Dykes and Michael Larwick and their associates. And so when we saw the ‘we,’ the natural progression of thought would be ‘we’ means more than one.”
“Then the task force gets its first forensic break when trace evidence found by Julie Sund’s body links the brothers to the crime.”
“At Julie’s scene, we did find pink acrylic fibers and orange acrylic fibers. The orange acrylic fibers were consistent with orange acrylic fibers. We also identified off items that we obtained from Larwick and Dykes. After the… we have a forensic link between Julie’s body recovery and Larwick’s and Dykes, they became the main focus of our investigation.”
“Under extreme pressure, Larwick publicly maintains his innocence, but Dykes ultimately confesses to the kidnapping and murder of all three women.”
“You don’t…”
“But while Dykes makes no mention of an accomplice, many residents throughout the area remain on edge. The backdrop is Yosemite National Park, known throughout the world, and by the nature of the kind of crimes that were occurred, the investigators were concerned that there was going to be yet another victim.”
“I couldn’t go to a little league game without being almost attacked by the mothers of the players that my son played baseball with. They wanted to know what was going on. Are they safe in their house? Are they safe going to the mall? This is what was going on with a lot of the people that lived around here and we didn’t really have anything that we could tell them that would take away those fears.”
“But residents of the Yosemite area will soon learn that they have reason to worry.”
“On July 21st, Joie Armstrong, a 26-year-old naturalist with the Yosemite Institute, is scheduled to visit a friend in Sausalito. At 3:00 a.m., her friend concerned about the usually punctual Joie calls the park to report her missing.”
“A few hours later, a park ranger leads investigators to Joie’s cabin.”
“Right from the beginning, we have a broken sunglasses on the front porch, a tipped over water and can’t… In one of the bedrooms furniture is askew and turned over. The bed is a complete mess, um, as an act where a violent crime had occurred. So it was clear that at this crime scene that the victim fought very hard and the suspect did not have time to go back and clean it up.”
“Investigators immediately lock down the scene and begin the scrupulous task of collecting evidence.”
“Of course, the first question we asked was, ‘Is this related?’ And we were being told very firmly that no, that there was no connection between her murder and the earlier murders of Carol and Julie and Silvina Peloso.”
“5 hours later, in a creek nearby, Joie Armstrong’s body is found. Her shirt had been pushed up and her pants were unzipped, which gives us evidence of a sexual assault and then we subsequently found her head 27 ft upstream.”
“The latest crime once again send shockwaves through the community. The initial murders of Carol and Julie Sund and Silvina Peloso were grizzly enough. And then when the details started to emerge about what had happened to her… uh you know, it was sickening.”
“You know, why, why, how could this have happened? How could this not be related? Well, then maybe these guys who are all in jail, they couldn’t have done it. So maybe, you know, there’s something more to the case, something missing.”
“Something may indeed be missing. But this time investigators have plenty of clues thanks to Joie herself.”
“She did such a phenomenal job on fighting this offender that the offender left all sorts of evidence behind for us to find. They had tire tracks. It was like the opposite of the Yosemite murder scenes. There was all kinds of leads and evidence for law enforcement investigators to follow.”
“And they did. A fireman soon reports seeing a 1979 Blue International Scout parked near Joie’s cabin. Park rangers quickly trace the registration to a handyman at the Cedar Lodge.”
“They’re surprised to discover that the owner is Cary Stayner, the same handyman who police interviewed in the Sund-Peloso murders months earlier.”
“Team members canvas the area and soon discover the Scout near a riverbank. Stayner is sunbathing and smoking a joint nearby. They immediately confiscate the marijuana and take him in for questioning.”
“When the law enforcement officers questioned Stayner about being in Joie’s neighborhood with his Scout, he denied ever being down in that area himself or with his car.”
“After several hours, Stayner is released. But investigators are far from satisfied and waste no time comparing impressions of the tire tracks outside Joie’s cabin to pictures of Cary Stayner’s tires taken while he was being questioned.”
“The front two tires matched and the back two tires were different. But yet we had both sets of tires at that crime scene and Cary Stayner was denying ever being down in that area. So I liked him as a suspect.”
“On Friday July 23rd, 2 days after Joie’s body was discovered, police arrived at the Cedar Lodge to question Stayner again. But they’re told he never reported for work. Authorities immediately issue a be on the lookout or BOLO alert for Cary Stayner.”
“The next morning, the FBI gets a tip that Stayner is at a California nudist colony south of Sacramento.”
“So um when we got down there, there was a person waiting for us and they were pretty fired up because he was in the restaurant eating breakfast and he had his clothes on. And when Cary saw us standing at the doors, he stood up, put his hands on his head, which is a normal behavior you know, so we figured that was the guy we were there to talk to.”
“At the FBI Sacramento field office, agents prepared to confront Stayner about the murder of Joie Armstrong.”
“We had taken him away from his breakfast. So we ordered a pizza and we called for the polygrapher. And during that time, uh, we took pictures of them and took some fingerprints, things like that. The polygrapher shows up at the same time as the pizzas are delivered. So we say to Cary, ‘Hey, the pizza’s here, the polygrapher’s here, what do you want to do first?’ Giving him the choice. And he turns to us and says, ‘Let’s skip the polygraph, I want to talk to Jeff alone.’ That began the… what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on?”
“Bureau agents in Sacramento don’t know what to expect when murder suspect Cary Stayner requests to speak with special agent Reinick in private.”
“And he says to me, ‘I… I feel like I’m a bad person. I feel like I’ve done some bad things. I… I um… there’s things that I feel very ashamed of.’ He said, ‘Sometimes I feel that there could be world peace and sometimes I could feel as if I could kill everyone in the world.'”
“And I said to him, ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’ And then he said, ‘I can give you closure on this.'”
“And and I said, ‘You mean, you mean about this, the why we’re here, this case?'”
“And he said, ‘Yeah, I can give you closure on this and more.'”
“When he said ‘more,’ I’m thinking to myself, ‘What else could there be?’ I said, ‘Do you mean the three women from El Portal?’ And he kind of nods his head.”
“Cary Stayner then proceeds to divulge his darkest secrets to the FBI agent.”
“He had revealed to me that at age 11 or 12 he had been molested by a relative and I knew from my experience in training that this meant he could have sexual dysfunction and could be sexually motivated.”
“Agent Reinick also learns that Stayner had worked as a cartoonist for his high school paper and had dreams of someday being an artist, but he had other darker dreams too. Shockingly, Stayner admits to having fantasized about killing women since he was 7 years old.”
“Some men have sexual fantasies that are not legal. Their fantasies include rape, sadistic behavior, sex with children. And for the most part, most men who have fantasies that are illegal, they know where that line is and they don’t cross it. And he decided to take that commitment to cross that line in support of his fantasy. And his fantasy was to have two girls, and he knew the girls would have a guardian.”
“Cary decides to cross that line on February 15th, 1999.”
“He said that, uh, on the day that he ended up committing the murders on Mrs. Sund and Silvina Peloso and Julie, he had gone to his girlfriend’s house because it was she and her daughters that were his true intended victims.”
“But just as he’s about to carry out his plan, Stayner’s disrupted by a visitor. So he went back to the Cedar Lodge and he was very anxious and fired up, and he saw Mrs. Sund, Julie, and Silvina. He knew this was it and he started opening doors and announcing his presence on all the rooms surrounding there, even though there were no one staying there. He made it sound as if he was looking for a leak.”
“At first Carol refuses to open the door, but eventually she gives in.”
“Once inside, Stayner forces the teenagers into the bathroom at gunpoint. Then he quietly strangles Carol in the bedroom.”
“Minutes later he carries her lifeless body outside and dumps it in the trunk of her rental car. When he returns to room 509, he strangles Silvina Peloso and places her in the trunk beside Carol. Then he rapes 15-year-old Julie.”
“Afterward he drives her to a secluded area of Lake Don Pedro.”
“So she did exactly what she should have done. She cooperated with them not knowing that her mom and her friend were in the trunk of a car dead.”
“There in his words, he carries the teenager to a secluded area like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. As the sun rises, he pledges his love and kills her.”
“Stayner then dumps the rental car in a remote part of the Stanislaus Forest and takes a taxi back to El Portal. 2 days later he returns to torch the car. But first, he retrieves Carol Sund’s wallet and throws it out in Modesto to mislead investigators.”
“A month later he mails his anonymous letter.”
“I asked him, you know, why did you write that letter? And, uh, it was bothering him that he knew that Julie was laying out there in the elements and that she wasn’t going to be found. So he decided he was going to make sure she was found.”
“He lays low for a couple of months, but when he meets Joie Armstrong, Stayner can no longer keep his dark fantasies at bay.”
“He, um, sees this girl with blonde hair and ponytails that is moving, working around this little green cabin. He determines that she’s alone enough that he goes to his truck and gets his backpack and he gets a gun from his backpack, a .22 revolver, and he approaches her and starts talking to her.”
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“And then he says when she turns her back to him he pulls out his gun.”
“Stayner quickly forces her back inside the cabin. She’s small, he’s strong, but she fights for her life. And she’s vivacious and she’s energetic and she loves life. And she fights him to the point where she causes him to feel that he’s going to lose control of her.”
“After a violent struggle, Stayner manages to subdue her and puts Joie in his car. And as he’s driving out, she launches herself from the back seat out through the passenger side window, hits the ground, rolls over, gets up, starts running and in the course of chasing her down and trying to get… he couldn’t get control of her and so he… he… he killed her and he decapitated her.”
“Um, he doesn’t really give a reason for doing it other than saying he did. But I believe it… it was something that comes from control, knowing that he could do it.”
“It doesn’t take long for investigators to confirm that Stayner had absolutely no connection to Dykes and Larwick and they are both fully cleared of any wrongdoing in the case.”
“Well, once we developed Stayner as a suspect at Joie’s crime scene, um, it seemed to me the forensic pieces of the puzzle started to fit together and became a very strong case for us.”
“I was never very confident about Dykes and Larwick and on how they fit in because other than the orange croak fibers, we didn’t have any forensic evidence to tie them into the disappearance of our first three victims.”
“Jeff feels that because these guys were so involved in identity theft that when, um, Stayner threw out the wallet and their belongings in Modesto, they picked it up and started using that stuff and then came in contact with these orange acrylic fibers.”
“But the motivation behind Dykes’ confession and the brother’s professed participation remains a mystery to authorities.”
“Because they were narcotic users, there may have been crimes they were involved in that they didn’t have clear recollection on, and they may have thought they had been involved in something that they weren’t.”
“We did wonder what the incentive would be for Mike Larwick and Eugene Dykes to claim involvement in this. Um, but the problem that we run into is to apply common sense and the way we think to guys like them. It really doesn’t do you any good.”
“Well, when Cary Stayner was arrested for the murder of Joie Armstrong, um, that was shocking enough, but when we quickly learned that Cary Stayner had now confessed to the Yosemite murders, everyone was stunned and shocked.”
“And there’s a reason why residents are so taken aback. The Stayners are already well known in the area for their connection to an equally notorious but entirely different crime that occurred nearly 30 years earlier.”
“And then I said to him, is someone has to go down and prepare your family. Someone has to go down. They’ve already experienced the loss of one son. So someone’s got to go down and take care of your family.”
“Cary Stayner is the brother of Steven Stayner. When Steven was seven, he was abducted by a pedophile and held for 7 years. Eventually he escaped and when asked his identity by police, he replied, ‘I know my first name is Steven.'”
“His abductor was sentenced to 8 years in prison, a punishment considered far too light by many. But Steven was not so lucky. He was killed in a motorcycle accident just a few months after his 24th birthday.”
“Well, I think the fact that you know, uh, the whole Steven Stayner case which got national publicity, TV movie, books, um, you know, that was that was difficult. It was a hard story for the community. And then to have it all kind of come back in in a a really twisted, it even more perverted way with the older brother of Steven Stayner, you know, becoming a serial killer. It was just unbelievable is is the best way I can describe it.”
“I think people to this day have a hard time accepting how this case turned out.”
“In November of 2000, Cary Stayner is tried for the murder of Joie Armstrong. He receives a life sentence in federal prison with no possibility of parole.”
“On May 22nd, 2002, Stayner is tried for various felonies including the murders of Carol and Julie Sund and Silvina Peloso.”
“He pleads insanity but the jury isn’t buying it. They deliberate for less than 5 hours before finding Cary Stayner guilty of first-degree murder. He is sentenced to death.”
“We think this is very appropriate considering what he did to our children and the way he treated for fine human beings—premeditated torture, sexual assault. He deserves it.”
“Today Cary Stayner remains on California’s death row. Had we not arrested him for Joie Armstrong, there would have been a fifth victim and a sixth victim and he would have kept going until we would have caught him.”
