Yosemite Suspect Pleads Not Guilty

A motel handyman, who has reportedly confessed to killing four women in the Yosemite National Park area this year, pleaded not guilty Friday to federal murder charges in U.S. District Court here.

Standing tall and erect in a bright yellow jail jumpsuit, a tan and fit Cary Stayner rolled his shoulders once and sighed as his attorney entered the not guilty plea in the murder last month of Joie Ruth Armstrong, a 26-year-old nature teacher at the park.

Separate murder charges in the February deaths of three Yosemite tourists also are expected to be brought against Stayner, 37. Those proceedings will be held in state court because the victims were killed outside the park and beyond federal jurisdiction.

Stayner’s arraignment Friday had the air of a big event with television and newspaper reporters from throughout the state camping out overnight to snatch seats in the small courtroom.

As at a prize fight, entry passes printed “USA vs. Cary Stayner” were handed out to a press and public eager to glimpse the handsome and soft-spoken wilderness buff, accused of beheading Armstrong and suspected of sexually assaulting and nearly beheading another victim.

But the same Stayner who talked so willingly just a few weeks ago--allegedly confessing to the FBI and a TV reporter that he killed Armstrong and tourists Carole Sund, her 15-year-old daughter, Juliana, and family friend Silvina Pelosso--kept mum throughout the 10-minute proceeding.

He did not so much as cock his head, not even to take in the sad picture of his parents huddled in a corner of the first row. No stranger to sensational crime, Delbert Stayner wrapped his arm around his wife, Kay, and gently stroked her shoulder.

Nearly three decades ago, a pedophile named Kenneth Parnell kidnapped their 7-year-old son, Steven, and held him for more than seven years as a sex slave until Steven escaped, his past family life so dim that he could not recall his last name or the faces of his four siblings.

Parnell was tried, but his conviction and eight-year prison sentence did not end the Stayners’ nightmare, which continued with Steven’s death in a 1989 motorcycle accident.

On Friday, his parents were seated opposite the victims whose kin had fallen prey, according to a federal grand jury indictment, to another sexual predator, the Stayners’ oldest son.

A spokesman for the Sund family, Juliana’s uncle Ken Sund, said it was not easy coming face to face with a man who for months had lived only in his imagination. “It takes a certain stomach to have to face that person. . . . I didn’t want to be here,” he said.

Sund praised the work of the FBI, even though its investigation failed to uncover Stayner until Armstrong was killed. Stayner had been twice questioned and scratched off the suspect list as the FBI focused on a group of ex-convicts with lengthy records for sexual crimes and violence.

“I cannot talk negatively about the FBI investigation,” Sund said.

Federal Public Defender Robert Rainwater declined to say how Stayner’s purported confessions might complicate his case. It is common for a defendant to plead not guilty at an arraignment, even when there has been a confession.

Rainwater said he would be willing to listen to any plea bargain offer from the government. A hearing is set for Aug. 19.