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In 1997, Cary Stayner was a handyman at the Cedar Lodge motel in El Portal, California, just outside the Highway 140 entrance to Yosemite National Park. He was convicted of the murders of four women in 1999, Carole Sund, Julie Sund, Silvina Pelosso, and Joie Armstrong. Cary was sentenced to death and is still on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California.
Website: https://www.drinkingthecoolaid.com/
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RECAP: Carole Sund, her daughter Juli Sund, and her friend Silvina Pelosso were staying at Cedar Lodge in Yosemite. The women had done some hiking and exploring in the park and they were going to leave the next day to catch a flight to Arizona with Carole’s husband Jens, but they never arrived. They had all gone missing on February 15th, 1999, and investigators locked up a group of people that they believed were responsible for this. On March 18th, Carole’s rented vehicle was discovered, and it had been torched up.
Two bodies were in the trunk, and they were identified as Carole and Silvina. The FBI received a letter in the mail with a hand drawn map that said, “we had fun with this one.” The map led them to Juli’s body. It was announced that the park was deemed safe again as all the main players were in jail, but on the morning of July 21st, Joie Armstrong was murdered just outside her cabin. There were tire tracks at the scene of the crime and witnesses saw a blue international Scout with white strips which belonged to Cary Stayner, the brother of kidnapped victim, Steven Stayner.
Cary was questioned and was hesitant to allow investigators to search his backpack. Once he was brought down to the police station, Cary told Agent Rinek that he had struggled with thoughts of trapping young girls in a bunker and molesting them since he was 6 or 7. His family had been riddled with mental illness and sexual abuse that went back five generations and he said he could provide a confession if Agent Rinek gave him a large stack of child pornography.
When Steven Stayner was kidnapped in 1972 and held for seven years, Cary, as the older brother, felt that he was partially responsible for not protecting him. Psychiatrist Park Dietz was hired by the prosecution to evaluate whether Cary was sane or not and Cary told him that as a child, he worried that all of his obsessive thoughts about holding their neighbor girl against her will had somehow caused Steven to be kidnapped.
His parents, Del and Kay testified that they both withdrew emotionally after Steven went missing. Del said he put all of his time and efforts into finding his son, then he fell into a depression with thoughts of suicide. He pushed Cary away and said things like his “real son” was gone. Kay said that her own father had told her to view Steven’s kidnapping as a good thing because now she had fewer kids to worry about. Her father told her that she shouldn’t cry or show emotion because she would appear “crazy” like her mother, so she followed his advice and raised her kids with a lack of emotion.
Besides the child pornography, Cary made another demand during the interrogation. He wanted his family to receive the $250k reward the Carrington family had offered and he wanted to be housed in a federal prison being built near his hometown of Merced. He explained that his parents weren’t very well off. His dad lost his job at the cannery and his parents had to give up their home and they were living in a trailer outside Merced. He also had a nephew confined to a wheelchair who needed help. Rinek told him that he couldn’t promise either of those things, but in what universe would the money be paid out to the killer’s own family? Rinek told him he needed to prioritize his demands, what was most important to him? He said it was the child porn. That was his number one request, and it was also a deal breaker. He said he didn’t just want to see a few pictures, he wanted a big stack and it better include videos. Cary claimed that he had never seen child pornography because he had been too afraid to seek it out. It certainly wasn’t as accessible as it is now days, and he didn’t have a computer.
He said, “It’s just something that.....that’s closure for me in that respect. It’s perverted, it’s sick, it’s disgusting. I know all those things, but it’s just.....it’s gotta be one of the conditions, otherwise I...I can’t go to prison for the rest of my life and, sorry to say, be happy.” Agent Rinek says that Cary did have at least one experience with child pornography that had a profound effect on him. The uncle who sexually abused him used pictures of naked girls in a magazine to groom him and some of his other male cousins. In his interview with Dr. Dietz, Cary said he was “enthralled” by a particular picture of naked girls who were around 10 to 11 years old. He mentioned the same photo during a recorded phone call he made to someone from jail. He said he had been “fixated” on that image ever since he saw it.
Rinek wondered if Cary actually had something to do with the murders or if he was just scamming them to get some child pornography. The FBI had already made arrests in the Sund-Pelosso murders and they seemed pretty confident that they had the right guys. Rinek told Cary about this and asked why he should believe him. He said that he could offer some facts that would convince them that he’s the guy and that no one else was involved. Rinek decided to play the game and he told Cary that he was going to give him one word and if he was truly involved, he should know the significance of that word, so he said, “bank.” This was referring to Carole Sund’s account. Cary was confused by this and knew nothing about the bank activity. Rinek was like, listen, we get people that falsely confess all the time. Cary said, “I didn’t use any of the cards, I threw ‘em out the window. There was no bank ever involved.” Rinek told him to give them something that no one else would know and Cary said, “Shaved pubic hair.”
Rinek didn’t know anything about this, so he asked if Cary had ever done something anonymously. He said, “Wrote a letter.” He explained that he sent a letter to the FBI at the DoubleTree Hotel in Modesto. The letter and map to Juli’s body had never been publicized. Rinek told him that his family had already been victimized when Steven Stayner was kidnapped, now they were going to be victimized again and Cary said, “By me this time.” He hung his head and started crying. Rinek told him that one of his conditions had been to look out for his family, so maybe that’s the condition they should prioritize. Rinek offered to personally break the news to his parents before they found out by the media. He could prepare them for what would be coming next, and he could try to comfort them.
Rinek asked how hard it would be for his family if he had to tell them that before doing the right thing, their son demanded child pornography? Cary asked what harm there would be in at least showing him some child pornography, compared to the murders of four people? Rinek asked him if he would be willing to tell him about Joie’s murder while they waited to hear back from the U.S. Attorney about his request and he agreed.
Cary began by talking about his love for Yosemite Park. He had been going there all his life and he went there as a kid with his family. In part 3 of Steven Stayner’s story, I mentioned that when Steven was going to be returned to his family, Cary was camping with some friends in Yosemite. He claimed he saw Bigfoot in a barn in Foresta in 1982 and he heard the barn had been rebuilt when he spent the afternoon sunbathing nude on July 21st, 1999, so he decided to go check it out. Foresta Road ends at a little bridge just past Joie’s house. It had been washed out, so vehicles could no longer cross it. Cary stopped at the bridge to throw rocks into the creek, and he saw Joie carrying duffel bags from the Green House to her truck. Cary said, “And I just noticed her, there she is, you know, fairly attractive girl.”
He believed that she was alone, but he wanted to verify, so he walked up the street past her house towards the barn. As he walked back, he began talking to her. He calls this “doing research”, but in reality, it’s called stalking. Joie was on the porch watering her plants and Cary told her how long he’d been coming to Yosemite. He had seen her house many times, but he didn’t know anyone lived there. As he spoke, he moved closer to her. He told Joie that he had seen Bigfoot in the area and asked if she had ever seen the creature or heard anything about it. She said no, but perhaps her roommate had. Cary asked if anyone else was there, maybe they could ask if they’d seen anything and that’s when she said she was home alone. The moment she turned her back to him, he pulled out a gun from the back of his waistband. She saw the gun and Cary shoved her into the house, and duct taped her hands behind her back and gagged her with tape.
He told her she wouldn’t get hurt if she cooperated, he was just there for the money, but she kept fighting and managed to rip through the bindings twice. Cary gripped her by the arm and walked her to the truck that was parked down by the bridge. As they passed her truck, he took the keys that she had left in the trunk lock and shut the open hatch. When they got to his Scout, he lifted her into the backseat and tried to get her to lie down so he could cover her with a sleeping bag. He said he was planning to take her to the backside of a hill away from the other homes in Foresta to rape her. He flipped a U-turn, but as he drove, she kept fighting, kicking and screaming through her gag and trying to sit up.
Cary started to panic because he was losing control. He pulled a knife from back pocket and threatened her, but Joie didn’t stop fighting. He had only driven about 200 to 300 yards and she was able to catapult herself headfirst out of the open passenger side window. Once she landed on the ground, she got to her feet and started running. They were close to other cabins, but Cary took off after her. When he caught up to her, he tried to drag her to a secluded area, but she fought the whole time. He knew he wasn’t going to get what he wanted, so he took out a knife and slit her throat. Cary said she didn’t die from the first cut, and he continued to drag her into the brush, down to a creek. He ran up to park his truck, which was in the middle of the road, running. Somehow, no one heard or saw anything during this chaotic and atrocious murder.
Cary went back to the creek, and he decapitated Joie. He removed the duct tape from her wrists and head, then climbed into the water and tried to conceal her body under some reeds and other vegetation. He took her head and washed the blood from her face and hair in the creek. After that, he said he “Just kind of looked at it a couple times, didn’t do anything with it, basically just kind of amazed at what I’d just done.” Cary said that he didn’t hunt or fish because he couldn’t stand gutting dead animals. Even the sight of roadkill repulsed him, and he has to look away when he sees a dead animal on the road. When it came to cutting Joie’s head off, he said it “didn’t bother him a bit.” He even considered cutting her up into little pieces.
Cary said he washed Joie’s face because he wanted to see her. He knew he couldn’t keep her whole body, but he did consider keeping her head which he thought was weird because he wasn’t much of a “trophy hunter.” Once he decided that he couldn’t keep her head, he put it in the creek face up, but then decided to turn it face down. He said he did this because he didn’t want to scare anyone who might discover it. He said he always kept a “kit” with him that included a gun, a knife, a roll of duct tape, and a camera.
Cary claimed that he got no sexual or emotional thrill from killing. It was just something he had to do when it was all over because he “had nowhere to keep them.” He said he was well aware that he left footprints and tire tracks at the scene. He realized later that he had also lost his sunglasses during the struggle, which was the broken pair the investigators found on Joie’s porch. During the interview, Rinek asked Cary if he felt bad. Would he be willing to write an apology letter? Would he undo the crimes if he could? He said he would undo all of the murders if he could, but he wasn’t ready to write an apology letter.
Word eventually came back from the U.S. Attorney, they would not be meeting Cary’s demands. He was not getting child porn. Rinek broke the news to Cary, but let him know that he had already confessed to the “we had fun with this one” letter and they most likely had DNA and evidence against him. Cary said, “My DNA’s not on the letter.” Rinek asked how he knew that, didn’t he write the letter? Cary said, “Let’s put it this way, my handwriting is not on the letter.” Rinek put an effort into getting him to talk about the other murders. He said he could make sure he helped his family if he did. They sat in a long silence and Cary leaned back in his chair and said, “Let’s do it.”
He talked about the letter and provided the reason his DNA wouldn’t be linked to it. He altered his handwriting on the note, and he paid a kid at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Modesto $5 for a saliva sample. He told him he was facing a paternity test and wanted to avoid responsibility for the child. He used the saliva to seal the envelope and he used it for the stamp. On the page in the notepad on top of the one he used to write the “We had fun with this one” letter, he wrote some names and words. He pressed really hard so they would leave an impression on the page underneath. The FBI had noticed the indented writing on the letter. Cary recited some of the things he wrote, and they were Hispanic names, Mexican food items, and other things he made up. No one could guess something like that, he was the guy. Cary said he had been carefully watching TV forensic shows on Ted Bundy and other serial killers for quite a while and he took mental notes on what led to them getting caught. He knew the indented writing would throw the investigators off his trail. He said, “Ted Kaczynski gave me the idea for the envelope.” He sent the letter because he didn’t want Juli lying outside in the elements.
For people that don’t know, Ted Kaczynski was also known as the Unabomber who injured and killed people by mailing bombs. He sent letters to several national papers and the FBI had his manifesto posted in the Washington Post and his writings were recognized, so that’s what Cary was apparently studying.
He said the attack on the tourists at Cedar Lodge happened the day after Valentine’s day. He was gone most of the day because he was at his girlfriend’s house. She had two daughters and they were his original intended victims. On Valentine’s Day, he tried to call his girlfriend because he was feeling lonely, but she didn’t answer. The next day, February 15th, he went over to her property to do some repairs. They had an on-again, off-again type of relationship. Cary said he didn’t really like his girlfriend, but he liked her daughters who were 8 and 11 years old. Rinek asked what his fantasy was, and he said, “Kill the mother and rape the daughters.” He did not want to have sex with his girlfriend, he wanted to force her two daughters to have sex with each other, then he would rape them. After he was done, he was going to kill them.
Cary admitted that he was just using his girlfriend to get to her daughters, and he fantasized about the girls when he tried to have sex with his girlfriend. One night, his girlfriend mentioned that her electricity was out, and she was using tiki torches for light. She had another boyfriend who was away that night, so Cary was going to show up unannounced. He wanted to use the torches to burn the house down when he was done with everything, but he couldn’t find the house she was living in. He later realized that he didn’t have a weapon with him, so he decided to be more prepared next time, and he put a kit together. He said he didn’t necessarily intend to kill his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day if he was able to get through to her, but it was always in his mind.
The next day after he finished the repairs for her, his girlfriend made dinner for him and her daughters. As he was preparing to leave her home, he decided not to carry out his plan because he liked the girls and took pity on them because they were so young. This was a lie and he later admitted that he was absolutely going to carry out his plan, but a man who lived as a caretaker on the property came by and Cary got nervous. If this man hadn’t been there, he would have gone through with it.
Cary’s girlfriend was later interviewed by the FBI and she said she had only been intimate with Cary on two occasions. She confirmed that he had problems maintaining an erection and he was never able to reach climax. He seemed to be very frustrated and ashamed by this. The last time they attempted sex was right before the attack on the tourists at the lodge and he experienced the same problem and asked her to perform oral sex on him instead, but that didn’t work either. Cary went back to the Cedar Lodge and he was deeply frustrated, so he decided to relax in the hot tub for awhile, but the water was green and dirty. He cleaned it, but by the time he finished it was past closing hour for the pool area, so he went for a walk instead. He noticed four young girls staying at the lodge and decided to do some “research”. There were only two cars in the entire parking lot that night. The one the group of four girls arrived in and the red Pontiac Grand Prix that Carole Sund had rented.
Cary walked by the room where the four girls were staying, but he couldn’t see in because that room had a small opaque bathroom window facing the parking lot. He had seen a man with the girls the previous night, so he ultimately decided not to target them since he couldn’t confirm if they were alone or not. He walked to the 500 building where the Grand Prix was parked and the curtain to room 509 was open about a foot, so he could see Juli and Silvina in bed watching TV and Carole was propped up in another bed reading a book. A mother and two daughters, just like his original plan. There was no one else in the building, so if they screamed, it wouldn’t be heard. Cary said that he had been surveilling guests at the lodge for an entire year as potential targets.
He had access to the master key that opened every room. He had gone to the office to get the key when he decided to clean the pool and he might need it to get into room 509, but he didn’t want anyone to know he took the key, so he went back to the office and pretended to drop it in the drawer. He went to his room to collect his kit which included duct tape, rope, a gun, and a large, serrated knife and he headed over to the 500 building. Instead of using the key to enter the room, he concocted a new plan. He knocked on the door and said there was a leak in that wing and he was looking for the source. He had also knocked on several doors near that room first to announce that he was maintenance. He had opened the doors and went inside long enough to make it sound like he was checking on something, but Carole thought something was off and she refused to open the door. She spoke to Cary through the window and refused to let him in three times.
He let her know that there was water seeping into the sheetrock and they needed to move into another room. If he checked and there was not damage, they could just stay put, but she still resisted. He said he was going to get the manager and that’s when she finally opened the door. Once he was inside, he said he needed to look in the fan duct and he went to the bathroom, climbed on the toilet, and pulled down the fan to make it all look legit. He put the fan back in place and came out of the bathroom with his gun drawn. He said he was desperate for money to get out of the country, and he asked for their money and car keys. Carole reached for her purse, but he ordered her back to her bed, bound and gagged her with duct tape and he did the same to the girls.
He carried Juli and Silvina to the bathroom and set one on the floor and one in the bathtub. He went back to Carole, tied her hands to her feet with rope, kneeled on her back, and strangled her to death with a rope. Cary said he felt absolutely nothing when he murdered her. No anger, no rage, nothing. No emotion at all. He described himself as killing her “nonchalantly.” He did complain about how difficult it actually is physically to strangle someone and it hurt the nerves in his hands from pulling on the rope so hard. He carried Carole’s body out in a sheet and placed it in the trunk of the rental car. He was not concerned about being seen with a body in the parking lot because it was late, and there were no other guests nearby. He did unscrew the light bulb in the trunk to make sure he wasn’t casting a light on what he was doing though. He said he carefully placed Carole’s body in the trunk. Not out of respect, he wanted to make sure she was carefully positioned so he could make room for more bodies.
Cary went back to the room and brought Juli and Silvina back into the bedroom. He assumed the girls were sisters and told them he had taken their mother to the room next door. He wasn’t sure if he had shut the bathroom door all the way when he was killing Carole and he could hear Silvina crying while he did it. Cary cut the clothing off Juli and Silvina with a knife and that’s why there were little pieces of fabric left behind in the room, which the investigators were having a hard time figuring out. Cary said he wanted to rape the girls, but he realized that Silvina had her period. He tried to force the girls to have sex with each other, but Silvina refused, and she kept crying. Cary was annoyed by her tears and the fact that she had her period was a “turnoff” for him, so he led her into the bathroom and strangled her with the rope and left her body in the bathtub.
He went back out to Juli, but he heard Silvina making noises, so he went back into the bathroom, and she was still breathing. He covered her nose with duct tape until her breathing stopped. He sexually assaulted Juli for hours and had his typical issues with dysfunction. He said for the first time in his life, he felt that he was in control though. He took her gag off so she could comply with his demands. She asked if he was going to kill her, and he didn’t respond. She also asked to go to the bathroom, but he couldn’t do that because Silvina’s body was in there, so he took her to the room next door and moved Silvina’s body to the trunk of the Grand Prix. While she was in the bathroom, he made Juli shave her pubic hair because his fantasies were all about prepubescent girls.
He tied her up so she couldn’t get away and he disconnected the phone. Around 5 AM, he decided they needed to get out of there. Cary went back to room 509 to clean up. He packed the women’s bags, loaded everything into the backseat of the rental car and made it look like they checked out. He put wet towels on the bathroom floor, so it looked like they showered before leaving and he took the Jerry Maguire movie they rented out of the VCR and put it on the dresser. He figured he had left some trace evidence behind, maybe he shed some hair on the bedspreads, so he planned to come back later and clean up more.
He was afraid that employees might be asked to provide samples, so he shaved off all his body hair after the crime so there would be nothing to compare it to. Since Juli had cooperated with Cary, he didn’t want to end her life right away.....he felt a bond with her. He thought he loved her and wanted to “keep her”, but he just didn’t see how that would be possible. He told Juli he was going to take her somewhere else, but he wasn’t going to hurt her. She was nakes and wrapped in a pink blanket from one of the beds and he led her out to the rental car. He put her in the passenger seat and put her seat belt on. She was not gagged, but bound loosely by her hands and she was briefly left alone while he dropped off the master key. When he came back and she was still in the car, he believed that was proof that she cared about him and wanted to be with him.
He headed west on Highway 140 to Mariposa, then caught Route 49 north. He said he didn’t know where to go, he just kept driving. He asked Juli questions about herself and he found out later that everything she told him was a lie. She told him her name was Sarah. Once the sun was starting to come up, Cary knew he couldn’t keep her much longer, so he pulled into the parking lot for the vista point above Don Pedro Lake. There’s a hiking trail that veers off from the parking lot and cuts across the ridge. He carried Juli down the trail in his arms and said it was “like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold.” He said he carried her because it was cold, and she didn’t have any shoes on. He felt nothing as he discussed the other murders, but he cried when he talked about Juli.
He stopped along the trail, spread the blanket out, raped her again and said he wished he could keep her, but he knew he couldn’t. He told her she had a good chance of getting away when he first emerged from the bathroom at Cedar Lodge because the gun wasn’t loaded. He took his knife out, told her he loved her, and he wished he could keep her, and slit her throat. Cary said, “She was a very likeable girl. She was very calm.” She made a hand gesture and Cary interpreted this as her asking him to finish her off, so he looked away and she died about 15-20 seconds later. He said, “I didn’t want her to suffer the way the other two did.” He spread her legs in a sexual pose, just as he had done with Joie’s body. He removed the duct tape from her hands and hid it under a log. He cut some branches and brush to cover her body, then tossed the knife as far as he could down the hill. He stood over her and took in the view, then headed back to the rental car.
He opened the trunk and cut the nightclothes off Carole’s body because he didn’t want it to appear that she had been kidnapped from the Cedar Lodge. He cut the duct tape off Carole and Silvina because he knew his fingerprints could be on it. He did forget the pink blanket on the hillside, but he went back to get it, threw it in a plastic bag and tossed it off the side of the highway. Another car pulled into the lot just as he was leaving. He stopped at a gas station to get something to drink and pulled around back to avoid surveillance cameras. When he got back on the road, he was surrounded by Highway Patrol cars, but it was just a coincidence and it had nothing to do with him. He drove as far north as the New Melones (Mah-lone-ees) Lake, a reservoir on the Stanislaus River.
He was planning to drive the car with the bodies in the trunk off the boat ramp into the lake, but there were some fishermen there. He dumped a pillowcase from room 509 in a dumpster there and it contained the women’s clothes, the sheets from the motel, and the duct tape. He drove around for awhile, but the wintery roads made it difficult to find an area to stash the car. He found the road near Long Barn that ended in a clearing. He drove as far in as he could go, wiped down the car with gloves from his kit, scattered some of the women’s belongings on the hill around the car, such as: Carole’s purse, some rope, and Juli’s shoes. He took out his pocketknife and carved into the hood of the rental car, “We have Sarah”. Due to the condition of the car, the FBI never even saw this note, but they were able to find it after the confession.
He walked to Sierra Village to catch a bus home, but realized he didn’t wipe down the area in the trunk lid where he took the light bulb out and he would miss the bus if he went back. He went and got some breakfast, then he took $200 from Carole’s wallet to get a cab. He had the driver drop him off at the Yosemite Lodge in the park. He was on call that night in case there was a maintenance emergency at Cedar Lodge, so he had to be back before 5 PM. When he got home, he was too exhausted to clean rooms 509 and 510, but he was able to do so the following night. He noticed some blood on one of the pillows and in the bathtub where Silvina had been. He was aware of Luminol testing, so he scrubbed the tub with bleach and changed the sheets, but he forgot to replace one of the pillowcases and the pink blanket he took to wrap around Juli. He was asked how he knew to do all of this and he said, “I watch the Discovery Channel.”
Even though he felt that he had thoroughly cleaned the car, he decided to go back and torch it, so he drove over with a can of gasoline on the night of February 18th. He poured the gas inside, over the backseat, and threw the match in. He took off running up the hill and he heard a loud explosion. He got three-quarters of the way back to his truck when he realized he left the gas can behind, so he ran back to get it and the fire set off the Grand Prix’s horn, so it was blaring. So, he ran to his vehicle and hid behind a tree as a snowplow driver was passing. He went back to get the credit card insert from Carole’s wallet and drove to Modesto and threw it out the window as he passed through an intersection.
He wanted investigators to think the person that committed the crime was from Modesto. He was so nervous for the first few weeks after the murders that he lost 15 pounds. He was interviewed once by the FBI, and he thought they were going to get him right away. He monitored the news closely and he was thrilled that other people had been blamed for his crimes. Rinek asked Cary if he would have stopped killing if he hadn’t been caught and he immediately shook his head no. He wouldn’t have stopped, and he almost killed again before he was picked up.
After he had packed up his stuff and left the Cedar Lodge, he actually drove to his girlfriend’s house and if you recall, her and her two daughters were the original intended victims. He got to her place at 12:45 AM and she said it was unusual for him to show up without an invitation, especially when it was so late. He told her his car had broken down and it was at a friend’s house, so she invited him to stay the night, but her other boyfriend was there. Once Cary realized this, he left, and decided not to attack them that night. The entire confession lasted six hours and he was arrested and taken to jail. Rinek handed Cary a pen and paper and told him to write some apology letters to the victims. He chose to only write a letter to Juli.
He wrote, “Dear Juli,
There are not enough words in the universe or days left in my life to express to you how sorry I am for what I have done to you, your mother, and your friend. My weakness to control my evil desires has led us both to this crossroad. You, on one hand, have crossed over to a place of which I can now only dream of going, and I am going someplace far worse. My thoughts of you are of a very sweet young woman who had a wonderful life ahead of her, but as it turns out I destroyed any hope of that. No more days with your family and friends. No more breaths of fresh air. No more sun shining on your face. No more dreams of light to be. All of it thrown away like yesterday’s trash. My memories of your last few seconds will haunt me till the day I die, and rightfully so. The things I told you before I ended your life are things I have never been able to tell anyone else. Perhaps it was fear of rejection, or perhaps it was just plain fear of love, an emotion I have never experienced from anyone but my parents. But I can’t blame my emotion, or lack of, for what I did. I know right from wrong, and I don’t think that I am insane, but there is a craziness that lurks in my mind. Thoughts I have tried to subdue as long as I can remember. I’m just sorry that you were there when the years of fantasizing my darkest dreams became a reality in the flesh.”
Cary had not been on anyone’s radar during the initial parts of the investigation. When investigators went back to the lodge to collect blankets in May, the manager had him use his master key to help them. The killer was helping to gather evidence from his own crime. Rinek kept his word to Cary and he drove to his parent’s home the next morning to deliver the news. Del and Kay recognized Rinek from the news about the Joie Armstrong case, so before he could even tell them anything, they said he didn’t do it, he could never do anything wrong. Rinek explained that he provided a full confession, and they cried the whole time. He did assure them that Cary chose to confess and got nothing for it, so he did it for the right reasons.
Cary agreed to drive around to the crime scenes with investigators to show them everything he did and find other evidence he hid. He still claims that the Sund-Pelosso murders were his first ones ever, but he said that a year prior, in the summer of 1998, he planned to attack two preteen Finnish girls who were staying at the Cedar Lodge and he tried to enter their room at 2 AM with the master key, but for some reason, it didn’t work. A woman who was with the girls woke up and heard the lock being jiggled. She looked out the window and banged on the glass, so he left. She also called security, and they called Cary to go check things out. Just two weeks before he got caught, he saw a group of women on the Merced River near the 25 Mile Per Hour Beach. As he approached them with his gun, a man walked up to them, so he left.
He said that when the rangers questioned him shortly after discovering Joie’s body and he didn’t want them to search his backpack, it’s because he had his “kit” inside. While they searched his vehicle, he quietly removed his gun, knife and gloves from the backpack, and he was able to hide them under rocks and logs that were nearby.
When Cary was being interviewed by Ted Rowlands KNTV reporter, he said he wanted Los Angeles producers to be contacted because he wanted a movie of the week to be made about his story. The reporter asked Cary if he would have continued killing and he said definitely. He would have continued to kill until he was caught or killed himself.
Unfortunately, since Steven and Cary were brothers, their stories will always be linked together and the media portrayed Cary as “The other son”. He didn’t have his own story, it became an addition to Steven’s and it began to overshadow the hero Steven was for saving himself and Timmy White after they were both kidnapped. During real video footage of Steven doing a news conference, just days after his return, Cary is standing in the background, watching, and his face looks emotionless. He suddenly just walks away while Steven was talking.
The writer of the TV movie interviewed Cary: He said he didn’t get along very well with Steven when he came back. He was just a normal kid who did what anyone would do, yet he was labeled a hero. This ate Cary up inside and his father Del told him that he wasn’t acting like he didn’t want to be part of the family. He said he didn’t need to be loved that much, but he would have liked a little bit.
Cary Stayner sent a letter from jail to a Fresno newspaper, explaining that he wanted to sell his story so he could pay “as much restitution to my victims’ families as possible.” Criminologist Mike Rustigan Said, “Anything a serial killer says is suspect. A guy that has the capacity to behead a victim, to ruthlessly abduct them and mislead the police...I don't think that he’s now suddenly struck with pangs of remorse.”
A California newspaper published a letter from Cary: “In response to J.L Richards letter August 11th I have to say J.L....Your right, way too much attention has been placed on me. The media blitz to uncover the “How and why?” someone like me could become a murderer is very unnverving. Any public sympathy should not be directed towards me but to my victims and their family. As for my thirst for notoriety, if anyone knows the tainted picture of reality that a made for T.V. movie paints, it’s me. After my brother’s movie aired, I was disgusted. I wished that it had never been made.”
The people closest to Cary said he was very creative and artsy, calm and serene. His sister Cory said he was always unwell, mentally. He was happiest when he was isolated.
When he was 7, he remembers sitting in the front seat of his parent’s station wagon, looking into the grocery store and looking at the female cashiers. He would fantasize about tying them up and killing them.
In September of 2000, a deal was struck where Cary Stayner was allowed to plead to life in prison without the possibility of parole, instead of getting the death penalty. Joie’s mother, Leslie Armstrong told a reporter that she wavered between her Christian beliefs and wanting to “personally beat him to death.” She decided to take the deal to avoid the prolonged appeals and she knew that his death wouldn’t bring her daughter back. She said that everyone loved Joie, she had the highest respect for her daughter and she was exquisite. The state proceeded with its capital case in June of 2001. As the confession played, Cary plugged his ears and cried. Silvina’s father was so overwhelmed by the confession that he lunged towards Cary at one point.
Cary was tried in federal court for Joie Armstrong's murder since it occurred on federal land. To avoid a possible death sentence, he pleaded guilty to premeditated first-degree murder, felony first-degree murder, kidnapping resulting in death, and attempted aggravated sexual abuse resulting in death. During sentencing, he cried and delivered an apology. He said, “I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. I wish I could tell you why I did such a thing, but I don’t even know myself. I’m so sorry. I wish there was a reason. But there isn’t. It’s senseless. If there is a God in heaven, I pray for his forgiveness. I cannot expect any forgiveness from Mrs. Armstrong or her family for taking Joie from them. I cannot even ask forgiveness from my own family who I have hurt so deeply and who have already suffered so much. I have to live with the terrible reality of what I have done. I am very sorry that everyone else must live with it too.”
In state court, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for the murders of Carold Sund, Juli Sund, and Silvina Pelosso. His lawyers claimed the Stayner family had a history of sexual abuse and mental illness, manifesting itself not only in the murders, but also his obsessive-compulsive disorder and his request to be provided with child pornography, in return for his confession. Dr. Jose Arturo Silva testified that Cary had obsessive-compulsive disorder, mild autistm, and paraphilia (pair-a-fill-ee-a) which is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. He was found sane and convicted of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and one count of kidnapping by a jury on August 27th, 2002. He was sentenced to death at San Quentin State Prison in California, but California’s last execution was held in 2006, so that’s where he currently remains.
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