Stayner trial likely won’t begin before year 2000

HARRY MOK

Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999 | 12:59 p.m.

FRESNO, Calif. - Motel handyman Cary Stayner likely won't face trial until the year 2000 for the murder of a Yosemite National Park naturalist.

Judge Anthony Ishii approved a second public defender today for Stayner, since he faces the death penalty if convicted in the decapitation of Joie Ruth Armstrong.

He also scheduled the next hearing for Aug. 31, on a government request for bodily fluids from Stayner, and gave the defense until Aug. 27 to respond in writing.

After that, the next scheduled hearing is Dec. 2, and the trial date will probably be set then, the judge said. Ishii asked Stayner if he understood that he won't be getting the speedy trial defendants are entitled to ask for.

"Yes, your honor," Stayner said in response to that and several other questions in the 15-minute hearing.

Shuffling into court in a yellow jumpsuit with "Fresno Co. Jail" on the back, his wrists chained to his waist, Stayner said nothing more and just swayed a bit to the left and right as he stood before the judge.

Stayner, 38, worked as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal, near where Armstrong worked at the Yosemite Institute, leading outdoor education programs in the park.

Stayner told investigators he killed her on July 21 as well as Carole and Juli Sund and Silvina Pelosso, who were last seen alive at the Cedar Lodge on Feb. 15. To date, he has been charged only with the Armstrong murder.

Stayner's brother, Steven, became national news 19 years ago when at 14 he escaped from a child molester who had kidnapped him seven years earlier. He brought with him a 5-year-old boy who also had been kidnapped. Steven died in a motorcycle accident in 1989.

Cary Stayner told an interviewer that his younger brother's trauma had nothing to do with the urges that drove him to kill women.