Motel handyman charged in Yosemite sightseers case

Christine Hanley

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 10:06 a.m.

MARIPOSA, Calif. - In a quiet anticlimax to one of the FBI's most intense investigations, motel handyman Cary Stayner was charged in the February slayings of three Yosemite National Park sightseers.

The complaint, filed Wednesday by Mariposa County District Attorney Christine Johnson, accuses Stayner of three counts of murder along with special circumstances that could bring the death penalty.

The news arrived without public comment from the FBI, which at one point enlisted about 50 of its own agents, platoons of deputies, police and volunteers, and set up a special command center to solve the case.

The development brought a bit of surprise and a limited amount of closure to family members, who were prepared to wait even longer to make sure justice is carried out.

"I think I'll feel a resolution when it's all done. When this man is in jail or in prison for at least the rest of his life," said Carole Carrington, whose daughter and granddaughter were two of the victims.

"I don't want anything to go wrong, where this man gets off because of a technicality," she added. "But that's one of the reasons we've been more patient. We want a good, solid case."

An affidavit filed in support of the charges was sealed by a judge, so it was not immediately clear how the county prosecutor resolved questions that have lingered long after Stayner shocked the nation in late July by confessing to the sightseer slayings.

At the time of Stayner's arrest, the FBI was presenting circumstantial evidence to a federal grand jury in Fresno implicating a band of drug-abusing ex-convicts in the sightseers' murders.

"I was absolutely stunned when I heard they filed charges at this time. There are just too many unanswered questions," said a task force member who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Nobody is disputing Stayner's involvement," but some task force members still aren't convinced that he didn't have accomplices among the ex-cons in Modesto, he said. Many of the ex-cons remain jailed on unrelated parole violations.

"To our satisfaction, they haven't been eliminated," he said. "There doesn't seem to be any benefit to going forward right now, rather than waiting."

In the weeks since Stayner's confession, the task force has been greatly scaled back and much less visible. The phone number at the command post in Modesto was quietly disconnected.

The FBI's agent-in-charge, James Maddock, and case spokesman Nick Rossi were out of the office Wednesday. FBI agent Joe Sheehan cautioned that nothing prevents additional charges from being filed against other suspects. "At this point, we're still trying to corroborate statements by Stayner, primarily whether he acted alone," he said.

Stayner, 38, has been in jail since his arrest days after the July 21 slaying of Joie Ruth Armstrong, a 26-year-old Yosemite naturalist who was beheaded in a remote corner of the park. Federal murder charges were filed quickly in that case, and while he told a reporter he would plead guilty to all four murders, he later pleaded innocent in the naturalist's slaying.

Stayner told agents in July that he carefully planned the murders of Carole Sund, 42, her daughter Juli Sund, 15, and their Argentine friend Silvina Pelosso, 16, who stayed at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal while they visited the park in February.

An attorney for the Pelosso family said Wednesday he is preparing a wrongful death lawsuit, naming both Stayner and the Cedar Lodge responsible for Silvina's death.

"We plan to file soon," said attorney Steven Fabbro of San Francisco, "possibly the first part of next week."

Specifically, Wednesday's four-page complaint alleges that Stayner used rope, a knife and a gun as he committed multiple murder, burglary, robbery, forcible oral copulation and attempted rape between Feb. 15 and Feb. 16.

For six months, Stayner eluded an intense search by the FBI task force. He said he hid Mrs. Sund's and Silvina's bodies in the trunk of their rental car, then burned the car in a remote forest hours north of the motel. He dropped Mrs. Sund's wallet in Modesto, about two hours to the west, to throw police off his trail, according to people familiar with his confession.

He said he left Juli's body where he killed her, in a thicket above a remote reservoir. Agents found the body only after Stayner said he sent a taunting letter with a map to the crime scene in an envelope sealed with someone else's saliva, to prevent them from collecting his own DNA.

Questioned repeatedly but never considered a suspect in the sightseers' deaths, Stayner was caught only after the naturalist's murder, a crime he said voices in his head drove him to commit after he encountered her alone near her remote cabin.

After the FBI arrested him at a nudist camp and Stayner confessed to killing the naturalist, Stayner volunteered that he killed Mrs. Sund first, then sexually assaulted Silvina and Juli in their room at the lodge before killing them.

He also led agents to the bloodstained knives he said he used to decapitate Armstrong and slash the throat of Juli, as well as the clothes he wore during the sightseers' murders and other evidence, a federal affidavit said.

Now that charges have been filed, the Carringtons are hoping Stayner pleads guilty and spares the family the further pain of a trial.

"It could drag out for years," she said, adding that she will never feel absolute closure.

"The hole will never close up completely," she said. "We miss them. We always will."

No court dates were immediately set in the sightseer case. Unless there's a change in venue, it will be tried in the state's oldest operating courthouse. The courthouse has a wood-burning stove and proceedings pause every hour because of noise from the bell tolling in the clock tower.