Confession Was a Bid for Leniency, Man Says

The methamphetamine-abusing convict who led an FBI task force astray for months in the Yosemite sightseers case says he feels bad that someone else had to die before they caught the alleged real killer.

During a prison interview with Associated Press, Eugene “Rufus” Dykes said Thursday that he gave investigators so many different stories he could not think of any more, including versions implicating himself and others in the crimes.

“If they only listened to me from the beginning,” Dykes said. “I told them I didn’t do it.”

Dykes also said he does not know Cary Stayner, who was indicted Thursday in the beheading of Yosemite naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong. Sources say that Stayner has also confessed to single-handedly killing Carole and Juliana Sund and Silvina Pelosso, who vanished on a Yosemite vacation.

Stayner, a handyman who lived and worked at the Cedar Lodge where the sightseers were last seen alive Feb. 15, is scheduled to be arraigned today in the Armstrong case at U.S. District Court in Fresno.

Dykes, 32, is serving time for a parole violation and is scheduled to be released in March.

He said that when the FBI first interviewed him, he told them he never met the three sightseers and had nothing to do with their disappearance. But then he started making up stories and telling them what he knew about unrelated crimes because they told him “everything would be a walk” as long as he did not kill any of the women, he said.

At one point, Dykes, who still does not have a lawyer, even signed a statement saying that he killed Carole Sund, slashing her throat at a remote mountain spot, then leaving. He said he had heard there were no bullets at the crime scene, so it was easy to figure out that a knife was used.

Agents repeatedly took him out of jail and drove him around the Sierra foothills, looking for the crime scene.

“I’d tell them to stop and I’d get out,” he said. “Then I’d say ‘Nope, this doesn’t look familiar.’ ”

They finally put him in prison for violating his parole.

But Dykes said they kept coming back, continuing to believe he was involved. They played a phone conversation between two of his acquaintances. On it, a girl says Dykes confessed to her. Another time, he said, an agent told him there were clothing fibers linking him to Juliana’s body.

“I knew he was a liar,” Dykes said.

And so was he, thinking all they would be able to get him for was perjury.

He was taken from Corcoran State Prison to Fresno two weeks ago to be interviewed again by agents. Ironically, Armstrong’s body was found that same day.

“I told them ‘I gave you guys 80 stories. I don’t have any more.’ ”

After Stayner confessed, they came back to give him a polygraph test. The representative from the attorney general’s office asked him 14 questions, including whether he killed any of the women or burned the rental car. He said the attorney general’s representative told him and the two investigators present that he passed the test.

Now he is hoping that investigators fulfill their promise to free him for providing information that helped them solve unrelated crimes, as long as he had nothing to do with the sightseers.

He promised to change his life when he gets out.

“I swear I’ll never get in trouble again,” he said.