This is throwing them a big lifeline, said Jon Rosenfield, a biologist with conservation advocacy group San Francisco Bay Keeper. Most of Yosemite National Park to close Friday over flooding concerns She previously worked for The Bees sister paper, the Merced Sun-Star, and earned her bachelors degree from Fresno State. The car had been torchedand, once police looked inside the trunk of the vehicle, they discovered the remains of Carole Sundand Pelosso. Another was decapitated. But in December 1972, the Stayner family's own sense of security was disrupted forever, with results that many believe helped shape the person Stayner became. But from February to July 1999, this national park was anything but peaceful. [1] Early life [ edit] Cary Stayner was born and raised in Merced, California. Do you believe in Bigfoot? her passenger asked. His funeral was held on Thursday in Newhall, where he had worked as a deputy. He showed me his cartoons, Miller says. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Just beyond it lay something else: a woman's body, clad in a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Driver remained on scene, Neglected cemetery called insult to all veterans. Fresno County planning changes, Man killed at fire in concrete drain in Fresno identified. In two and a half years of working in Yosemite, Kidd had helped rescue a number of hikers who had lost their way, but before he headed out of Yosemite Village in a convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles toward the nearby hamlet of Foresta, he learned that this search was different. Then Armstrong's mutilated body was discovered. Stayner seems to have maintained a quiet, unexceptional existence for the next several years. The decapitated body of Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, was discovered in Yosemite National Park on July 22, 1999. Eight years later, Cary Stayner took a job as a handyman at Cedar Lodge, a motel just outside the El Portal entrance to Yosemite National Park. The ranger later recalled that Stayner had been easygoing, affable, and calm. more. It hardly helped that such fears are belied by statistics: Of the four million visitors to Yosemite last year, just 15 were victims of violent crimes, a 70 percent drop from six years earlier. A man was arrested, Community Health System board chair Farid Assemi steps down, but many members still tied to him. LiveCopter 3 has a view from above of waterfalls leading into Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite on April 28, 2023. Silently, quickly, he strangled the woman with a rope. Number of murders in the U.S. 2021, by state. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Tuckers son, rookie agent Cullen Tucker, played a major role in helping crack the mystery of the victims identity nearly four decades later. Capitola Village ready for peak season as it recovers from January storm, Storms bring tornado, flooding to the east coast. Market data provided by Factset. Today, Cary Stayner remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison just outside of San Francisco. The only time he seems to have commented on the killings, says a female coworker, was the afternoon he cast an annoyed glance at a pair of FBI agents having lunch in the diner. She staggered to her feet and began running through the brush and trees along Crane Creek, heading toward a cabin where friends lived a few hundred yards away. At the very least, however, it seemed a mark of the hold that the wilderness had over Stayner's imagination, taking him far from the oppressive atmosphere of Bette Street. Not only that, but Stayner's backgroundhis own family had been victimized by a similarly monstrous crimemade the idea that he had metamorphosed into a violent predator almost unimaginable. Grabbing her from behind, he drew a long knife and cut her throat, continuing to slash until he had decapitated her. She never reported the trip to the police until after Stayner's arrest, but months later she remembered an unusual conversation that transpired along the route. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Carole Sund, 42, her daughter Juli Sund, 15, of Eureka, CA, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, a friend visiting from Argentina, were vacationing together. When Armstrong's decapitated body was found, witnesses said they spotted a vehicle that authorities later traced back to Stayner. He dumped the body in the drainage ditch and discarded the severed head 40 feet away. Women were never subjected to physical or sexual abuse. I probably felt jealous at the time. or redistributed. Belize - 37.79 per 100k people. Rangers had cordoned off the area around Armstrong's secluded house with yellow police tape. He calmly identified himself as Cary Stayner and said he was employed as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge. LiveCopter 3 has a view from above of waterfalls leading into Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite on April 28, 2023. Now, Kidd was told, another young woman had disappeared. Then, one day in 1996, a coworker went out into the yard of Merced Glass and Mirror to find Stayner slamming his fist against a piece of wood and bleeding from cuts on his hand. The two women had been out for a five-day circuit hike in the park when they were attacked; no suspect has been arrested in the killings. On April 1, 2010, Timothy White died as a result of what turned out to be a pulmonary embolism. In a yearbook photo of the Statesman staff, Stayner is half-obscured in the back row, his skinny frame in a slouch, his head covered by a baseball cap. The series features exclusive interviews with the victims close friends and detectives, who reveal details about her involvement in an alleged cult. It is home to nearly 2.2 million acres (0.011 million km2) of private land, according to the park. The Week in Photos: Two cold-case murders are solved, and crews race to Yosemite murders Sund pontiac burnt out Discovery of the bodies in the Stanislaus Forest and Lake Pedro 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. On March 2, 1980, Cary Stayner was returning from a camping trip in Yosemite with friends when he heard a radio report that 14-year-old Steven had escaped from his abductor and would be arriving in Merced that afternoon. But shortly after that encounter, FBI investigators compared tire tracks at the crime scene with photographs of Stayner's treadsand got a perfect match. On Feb. 15, 1999, 42-year-old Carole Sund, her 15-year-old daughter Juli, and Juli's 16-year-old friend Silvina Pelosso all went missing while staying at Cedar Lodge in El Portal, California, according to HISTORY. Rosenfield, the biologist, said that as destructive flood events are likely to become more frequent amid a warming climate, the state will also need to reconsider how it manages its water resources. Between February and July 1999, Cary Staynerkilled four women near the majestic park in brutal fashion -- highlighting the contrast between him and his deceased younger brother, who was lauded as a hero in life. The three tourists had last been seen on February 15 at the Cedar Lodge, just outside the park, and evidence at the motel indicated that they had been abducted. The man responsible for the killings was 37-year-old Cary Stayner, a handyman at a motel near Yosemite State Park. He was previously a housing and homelessness reporter at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in Sonoma County. Sources at the FBIwhich has come under intense criticism for its work in the Sund-Pelosso investigationsay that the Bureau still considers the case open and that investigators are still not completely convinced that Stayner acted alone. Environment | He told Carole and the girls not to panic. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Loophole The second season of "Wild Crime" on Hulu launches on Oct. 24. Steven was subjected to abuse and manipulation for seven years before he reached the age of 14. Homicide in Canada, 2020 - Statistics Canada A witness also was able to describe the vehicle parked outside of Armstrong's house, which was the same car that Stayner drove. The Yosemite Murders by Dennis McDougal - Goodreads There was a leak in the room above, he explained, and he needed to check whether water was dripping through the ceiling. Saint Vincent And The Grenadines - 36.54 per 100k people. Instead he headed east, to the Sierra, back to the woods. Speaking to the FBI, Cary Stayner admitted to killing Armstrong and the three women at Cedar Lodge but he also caught agents unaware, telling them about Lenna and her sister and mother. He hid her lifeless body, with its head nearly severed, in the underbrush. Murders in the U.S. by state 2021 | Statista Police, of course, refused and Stayner made a full confession anyway. Once inside the room, he pulled out a gun and said he was there to rob them. He would go hiking and sunbathing in the nudist colony of Laguna Del Sol on days off. He is 5-foot-10 and 155 pounds, with a gray hair and beard and blue eyes. Bundy abducted Roberta "Kathy" Parks, 20, from Oregon State University around 11 p.m. Police questioned Stayner at the time, but he was clean-cut and had no real criminal history, so they didnt believe he had anything to do with it. AP (file) In a news story that transfixed the country in the winter of 1999, three Yosemite park tourists were murdered in a crime that . The criminal justice systems efforts must be continued in order for these cases to be resolved. The National Park Service has made significant progress in solving these cases and bringing closure to the families of those who have gone missing. Steven Stayner tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 1989. Dear Abby: I have a great life, so why have I fallen into this shameful behavior? Steven ran from his kidnappers house with a 5-year-old named Timothy White on March 1, 1980. Episode 2: A Suspect (October 24, 2022) - "Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas tells Don and Kim he strangled a female hitchhiker in Yosemite. Forecast map: California rivers bulge with snowmelt, but no major floods expected. On March 19, 1999, police found the bodies of Carole and Silvina in the trunk of the burnt vehicle. I guess I was jealous. His parents were overjoyed, recalled former Modesto Bee photographer Ted Benson. Hows it look near you? He absolutely knew that it existed. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters. Yosemite Valley to close due to flood risk from melting Sierra snowpack, Big melt begins for Sierra Nevada snowpack. At some point he removed the tape from her mouth. Steven had been the apple of his father's eye, a close family friend says. Juli Sund was put in the car, still alivebut not for long. Why didn't the FBI ever search for my brother? he muttered. According to PEOPLE, Stayner said he murdered his victims for simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Hed given in to the continuous fantasy of killing women that had reportedly been circling in his thoughts for over 30 years. Stayner, 57, remains in San Quentin Prison. The second season of Wild Crime is titled Murder in Yosemite and is available on Hulu and Disney Plus. The series tries to connect Cary's story thematically to the role of media, emphasizing a reporter's claim that Cary's motive for the murders was wanting his own movie of the week. Stayner now awaits trial in a solitary-confinement cell in the Fresno County Jail. Incredibly, nothing had seemed amiss. Cary Stayners trial has been relocated from Mariposa County to Santa Clara County, California. Although the clumsiness of that crime contrasted sharply with the methodical coverup that followed the Sund-Pelosso murders, Armstrong's beheading spread fear through Yosemite that the killings were connectedand that the FBI's investigation had gone awry. According to the March arrest report, Eugene Rufus Dykes, 32, of Modesto, and Larwicks half-brother, was arrested. The 1999 murders of four women near Yosemite National Park were already a big story before Cary Stayner confessed in an FBI interview. In Canada, homicides represent a fraction of the total number of police-reported violent Criminal Code offences each year. Cary Stayner later admitted that hed told the women there was a leak to gain access to their room, then strangled Carole and Silvina, put their bodies in the trunk of their car, and forced Juli to ride with him for hours as he searched for a place to dump the corpses. Kidd and four other members of the search party walked the woods along Crane Creek. The Yosemite Valley, home to many of the famous cliffs and waterfalls in the park, was expected to re-open for day-use only on Sunday morning before a full opening Monday morning, when a flood . One week later the FBI, acting on an anonymous tip, discovered Juli Sund's corpse dumped in heavy underbrush by an overlook at the Don Pedro Reservoir, several miles from the logging trail where the car had been found. There is no definitive answer to this question as different national parks have different policies and procedures in place for dealing with bodies that are found within their boundaries. Details appear to match the death in Summit Meadow, and they find evidence Lucas described. A new season of an ABC News Studios docuseries called Wild Crime, set to begin streaming Monday, follows a nearly 40-year-old murder cold case in Yosemite National Park and how investigators finally identified the victim. Then, in 1990, police discovered Jerry Stayner sprawled dead in the bedroom of the house where he lived with Cary, with a shotgun wound to the chest. His stories about housing, business and culture have been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Guardian US, among others. The case at the heart of this season begins in June 1983 when a man out walking with his friends' son in Yosemite National Park finds a hand in a meadow. Yosemite National Park conducted a winter survey for one week in February 2008. Armstrong and her boyfriend, Michael Raffaeli, another instructor, commuted a few miles to the Institute from their pine cabin, which they called The Green House. He would use his position to gain access to his victims. He then slit Julis throat and left her body near a creek before returning to burn the car. We never really got along well after he came back. "I don't know that what we found was proof," said Tucker, "but I felt like we had found the scene that he described.". Aware of the murders of the three tourists at the Cedar Lodge, she had told colleagues at the Institute that she'd worried about spending a night alone at her isolated cabin. Big melt begins for Sierra Nevada snowpack Kenneth Parnell, who by the time he raped Steven Stayner, was his father all night. Carole Sund answered, and he told her he was there to repair a leak. You should, he said, because he's real., The Yosemite Institute lies a few miles up the road from the Cedar Lodge: a rustic encampment of wooden cabins and trailers set in a clearing in a pine forest. The Stayner family consisted of Kay and Delbert Stayner, two brothers, three sisters, and two parents. Brianna Vaccari covers Fresno City Hall for The Bee, where she works to hold public officials accountable and shine a light on issues that deeply affect residents lives. Four months after Stayner killed three women and had seemingly gotten away with it, he decided to kill again. In a narrow ditch filled with three feet of still water, Kidd spotted a key ring glinting in the sun. Yosemite National Park is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States, attracting over four million visitors each year. But with so much water coursing through rivers that flow out toward the Pacific Ocean and feed Tulare Lake, officials have warned that a breach in a levee could cause flooding, regardless of temperatures. He was already serving a life sentence for Joie Ruth Armstrongs murder when he was sentenced to death. Hows it look near you? The victim, who was discovered in Yosemite's Summit Meadow along Glacier Point Road, is believed to be between the ages of 18 and 30. August 27, 2002 / 10:21 AM / CBS NEWS. Did someone fire a gun to break up the fight? Stayner chatted with her, fiddled around in the bathroom for a minute or two, and then emerged brandishing a gun. Raw: View of Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite from above - Yahoo News The task force arrested several people with histories of sexual abuse, drug use, or past convictions. He talked about Bigfoot all the time, recalls Kathy Amey, Stayner's cousin. 11 Currently Active Serial Killers: Unsolved Cases in 2023 Motel handyman Cary Stayner is shown in a July 29, 1999, mugshot, was charged Oct. 20, 1999, with capital murder in the killings of three Yosemite sightseers. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Steven became a celebrity: There was national newspaper and television coverage, as well as a book and a TV miniseries chronicling Steven's seven years as the sex slave of Kenneth Parnell, a drifter, convicted pedophile, and former employee of the Yosemite Lodge, inside the national park. Environment | Watch Season 2 of "Wild Crime" on Hulu to learn how the story ends. He said, 'No, I don't think they'd like this stuff.' Nearly three decades before Cary Stayner was arrested for abducting and viciously killing four women near Yosemite National Park, his seven-year-old brother Steven was kidnapped and held captive for seven years by Kenneth Parnell, a convicted child molester in California. The trio of tourists had spent a long day admiring El Capitan, Half Dome, and other granite monoliths, ice skating in Curry Village in the Yosemite Valley, and taking snapshots along the Merced River Gorge. Some criminologists say it is highly unlikely that a serial killer would begin his spree by confidently targeting three victims at once, though Stayner insists that he had never killed before. Stayner used a knife to decapitate Armstrong, later discarding her headless corpse in a stream. Five months earlier, three female tourists had vanished from their hotel room at the Cedar Lodge, near Yosemite's entrance, and had been found a month later, brutally murdered. He held her in her cabin at gunpoint, bound her hands and mouth with duct tape, and forced her into his vehicle. Now Dennis McDougal, acclaimed author of the spellbinding true crime tour de force Mother's Day, brings his considerable investigative and narrative. Murders in the Wild: Cold Cases in U.S. National Parks The last two murders were reported in Washington, D.C., area park units. Special Agents with the National Park Service's Investigative. Stayner then separated the girls, killed Pelosso the same way, and placed her body in the trunk alongside Carole Sund's. Just before dawn Stayner turned off the two-lane road near the town of Moccasin and parked in a deserted parking lot. They were crimes that grabbed headlines around the world and stunned America. Stayner never went back to his job again. It stated, We had fun with this one, according to ABC News. At the time the remains were found, notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas took credit for her murder. The girls body lay near a stream, and her head was in the water she and her friends drank from. At trial, Stayners lawyers argued he suffered from mental illness and the trauma of his brother Stevens kidnapping. In March 1999, police discovered the bodies of three females who had been brutally murdered nearthe park. In El Portal, just west of Yosemite National Park, he found a job as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge, a sprawling complex of rustic pine bungalows that straddle the Merced River. On Thursday morning, July 22, Dr. Desmond Kidd, Yosemite National Park's medical director, had just finished a busy 24-hour shift at the park's clinicit was, after all, the height of the summer tourist seasonand the 36-year-old physician was beat. Stayner, his three sisters, and his younger brother were raised in a little green-shingled house on Bette Street, in a lower-middle-class neighborhood at the edge of town. Joie Armstrong was just 26 years old when she was murdered by Cary Stayner in July 1999. A Towering, Terrifying Demon Horse Isnt Even the Weirdest Part, Man who lost wife, son in Texas mass shooting tells story, Gwyneth Paltrow won't recoup attorney fees in ski crash suit, 'Zombie' misinformation: 'Rape Day' hoax resurfaces on TikTok, 'Very homophobic': Teachers' union leader Randi Weingarten says House hearing crossed the line, A Complete Guide to Visiting Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley reopens after heat wave causes flooding concerns, Yosemite National park partially reopening Sunday after closing due to flood concerns. Steven became known as a hero when he plotted an escape that brought both him and young White to safety and put Parnell behind bars. For law enforcement and park officials in and around Yosemite, the gruesome discovery of Armstrong's corpse marked the return of a nightmare that most had thought was long over. Timeline of many of Ted Bundy's brutal crimes - ABC News At Amistad National Recreation Area, a woman was found floating in a reservoir in about 5 feet of water. Indefinite flood warnings were also in effect for areas near rushing rivers in parts of Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties, where some 60,000 acres of farmland are under about 3 feet of water brought by last months powerful atmospheric river storms. He claimed to have raped and killed her at Taylor Mountain, more than 25 miles southeast of . The message nature is trying to give us, he said, is we really need to learn to live within the limits of where we live and where we plant.. On the afternoon of July 22, two rangers spotted the Scout, parked on the shoulder of California 140 in the Merced River Canyon, about 12 miles from the western entrance of the park. The distraught parents became consumed by the quest to find him. All rights reserved. For the past year, Armstrong had lived with her boyfriend, another Yosemite Institute naturalist, along with a second roommate, in a green cabin set by itself at the edge of a golden meadow. Texas recorded the largest number of homicides in 2021, at 2,064 for the year. Heres what Raider Nation is saying, Update: 4 killed in mass shooting in Kern County, deputies say. Maybe you'll get a scholarship.' Her body was found 27 feet away from her head in a drainage ditch. Then he ordered her back outside. As Kidd drew closer, he noticed something that nearly made him gag. I love Michael with my soul and every last cell in my body. Jamaica - 43.85 per 100k people. Kenneth Parnell and 14-year-old Steven Stayner shortly before the boys escape. Homicides in the 54 national parks are rare; indeed, 64.5 million visitors thronged the parks in 1998, and remarkably, there were no murders. However, it is safe to say that a significant number of bodies are found in national parks each year, as these areas are often remote and difficult to access. Cary Stayner, The Yosemite Killer Who Murdered Four Women 5/20/13 - A climber died Sunday after he fell climbing the Muir Wall (5.10 A2) on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California. The Fresno State counselor spent 19 years on the Fresno school board, advocating for bilingual staff and Latinos in leadership positions. There was a 60% response rate. Despite an extensive investigation, the murders of the four women have not been solved. But the more significant flood danger is in the Tulare Basin of the Central Valley, where the long-dry Tulare Lake once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River has been replenished after reservoirs failed to contain this winters rains. Carol Sund, Juli Sund, and Silvina Pelosso. Wild Crime follows the little-known investigators who are tasked with solving the most brutal crimes in these wild places. Zone of Death (Yellowstone) - Wikipedia Francis Carrington was so proud of how Carole and Juli lived, and so ashamed of Stayner. Authorities found tire tracks from his truck as well as a red mechanics hat that belonged to him. All three were bound and gagged. Cary Stayner killed four women near Yosemite National Park in 1999. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Watch Wild Crime Streaming Online | Hulu (Free Trial) The officers confiscated his marijuana and let him go. Stayner apparently attempted to put the wary young woman at ease by asking if she had ever seen Bigfoot in the area, adding that he had once spotted the creature in the fields just beyond her cabin. In the dead of winter, when snow dusts the granite peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the night temperatures drop below freezing, the Cedar Lodge is often nearly deserted, with most of the staff on hiatus until spring. He was totally likable. The National Park Service, an Interior Department division, is in charge of managing the parks. He said he felt like he was having a breakdown and said he was all nervous and didn't know why, the colleague later told the San Francisco Chronicle. Having decided to begin their search in the immediate area, the squad split up into five groups. On my trip to Yosemite in August, just days after Joie Armstrong's murder and Stayner's arrest, I found the campgrounds, hotels, and gift shops in and around the park filled to capacity. According to FBI sources, he already confessed his guilt during an interview. I love it here in this house, she wrote to a friend in Florida earlier in the summer. Wild Crime: Murder in Yosemite - Rotten Tomatoes In addition, Cary is the brother of Steven Stayner, a victim of kidnapping and sexual abuse who was held captive . The Yosemite Murders - CBS News It is also critical to note that the number of open cases remains surprisingly low. [2] At the Cedar Lodge he maintained a cool facade, even escorting FBI agents from room to room so they could gather fiber samples.
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