Yosemite Suspect Admits Killings, Sources Indicate

A motel handyman has confessed to killing four women in the Yosemite area over the past six months, telling federal authorities he acted alone as he hunted down and killed each victim and then methodically covered up his crimes, according to sources familiar with the case.

Cary Stayner, a 37-year-old wilderness buff who had been questioned and then passed over as a suspect months ago, made a full confession Saturday to abducting and killing three tourists in February and to beheading a female park employee last week, the sources said.

On Monday night, Stayner told San Francisco’s KBWB-TV in a jailhouse interview that he had dreamed about killing women for 30 years.

He described in detail how he killed sightseers Carole Sund, her 15-year-old daughter, Juliana, and family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16. Last week, he said, he struck up a chance conversation with Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, and could not resist the urge to kill her when he realized she was alone.

“I am guilty,” Stayner said. “I did murder Carole Sund, Juli Sund, Silvina Pelosso and Joie Armstrong. . . . None of the women were sexually abused in any way.”

To their families, he said, “I am sorry their loved ones were where they were when they were. I wish I could have controlled myself and not done what I did.”

His confession has led investigators to scrutinize Stayner, a native of the farm town of Merced, for other killings, including the 1990 shotgun slaying of his uncle.

“He’s a Ted Bundy type,” said one source familiar with the murder investigation, referring to a serial killer who stalked young women in the Pacific Northwest and Florida. “The bottom line is that this guy, if left unchecked, was going to kill again--and again and again.”

Sources said Stayner, a handsome, seemingly friendly man with a talent for drawing cartoons, is a meticulous predator who managed by himself to overwhelm his victims through a combination of stealth, cunning and brutality. They said he took great pains to hide evidence, whether it was by burning bodies or by manufacturing false clues to throw investigators off his trail.

In the tourist slayings, the sources said, Stayner admitted that he wet motel towels to make it appear as if Sund and the teenagers had taken morning showers and left without incident, when in fact they had been abducted the night before.

The bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso were found burned in a car trunk. An anonymous letter--which Stayner confessed to writing--later led investigators to Juliana Sund’s body, sources said. The teenager’s head was nearly severed.

Stayner appeared briefly Monday in federal court in Sacramento, where he is charged only in the most recent slaying. His attorney, federal public defender John Balazs, declined to comment on the allegations.

The arrest of Stayner has raised troubling questions about the FBI’s massive manhunt that followed the Sund-Pelosso slayings.

For four months, FBI agents working on the Yosemite tourist slayings were pointing in an entirely different direction. They said they had the culprits behind bars on unrelated charges. Their efforts were focused on a loose-knit group of San Joaquin Valley methamphetamine abusers with lengthy prison records that included convictions for sex crimes. The group did not include Stayner.

FBI’s Public Assurances

In public statements over the past six weeks, lead investigators again assured the public that the investigation was in its final stages, with agents working to reconcile conflicting statements and shore up the case. Already, one of the methamphetamine abusers had implicated himself, sources had said, and there were fibers and other physical evidence that seemed to tie the group to the slayings.

As late as Friday, after investigators found Armstrong’s body submerged in a stream near her home at the park’s western edge, agents underscored that there was no link between the two cases.

Federal authorities now concede that they are asking themselves some tough questions: Did they target the wrong men and overlook a suspect who was right under their noses? Stayner worked as a maintenance man in the same El Portal lodge where the Sunds and Pelosso were staying and were last seen. How could a federal gran djjury and the FBI manhunt, which employed scores of agents at its height, not home in on Stayner until a fourth murder had occurred?

Sources close to the case say that one of the reasons authorities were confident they were on the right track was a report from the FBI crime lab in Washington. The report linked acrylic fibers found on and near the body of Juliana Sund with vehicles belonging to two of the meth users who had emerged as prime suspects in the slayings, sources said. One of the early suspects then implicated himself through numerous statements, telling investigators that the fibers had come from a blanket used to hide Sund’s body, sources said. But the statements were often conflicting, and agents questioned whether his discrepancies were caused by drug use or embellishment.

When some investigators wondered if the suspect was implicating himself in a crime he did not commit, the lab assured them that the fibers matched up, sources said. “It’s either an incredible coincidence or the lab screwed up,” said a source close to the case.

Some agents were so certain that the group of meth abusers were responsible that--even in light of Stayner’s confession--they wonder if the group played some role in the Sund case. But sources say that Stayner’s confession was so spontaneous and precise that they now believe he acted alone.

A top FBI interrogator elicited the confession from a calm, matter-of-fact Stayner over several hours, the sources said. They said he first confessed to the Armstrong killing and then to killing Carole Sund and the two girls. It came without a lot of prodding, they said, almost spilling out.

Sources said knives were used in the slayings and the suspected murder weapon in the Armstrong killing has been recovered.

Authorities have not dismissed completely the possibility that Stayner had accomplices, including one of the ex-convicts previously under suspicion.

Authorities latched onto Stayner after a ranger saw his light blue vehicle near Armstrong’s home in the quiet enclave of Foresta on Wednesday night.

Armstrong’s body was discovered Thursday, partially submerged in a drainage ditch. After an all-points bulletin, deputies saw Stayner’s l International Scout on Thursday afternoon in El Portal, where he lived and worked at the Cedar Lodge.

Stayner allowed a search of his vehicle, but balked at having the officers look in his backpack, which they seized out of fear that it might contain the dead woman’s head, according to an affidavit filed Monday in federal court in Fresno. The head was later located in the stream by her house.

On Friday, Stayner failed to show up for work, prompting suspicions. But sources said the major break came when authorities matched tire prints at Armstrong’s house with photographs of the tires on Stayner’s car.

Investigators caught up with him Saturday at a nudist colony in Sacramento County after being tipped off by a guest who heard Stayner’s name on the news.

An affidavit filed Monday said Stayner admitted killing Armstrong. In addition, sources said, Stayner laid out in explicit detail how he had abducted and killed the three tourists in February, then covered up the crime by burning their rental car. The confession was so specific that a variety of evidence was recovered, the sources said, declining to elaborate.

Stayner appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski in a crowded Sacramento courtroom Monday to hear the charges against him. Sitting stiffly erect--almost military in his bearing--Stayner did not utter a word, but nodded affirmatively each time he was asked if he understood his rights.

Tanned and muscular, with short-cropped hair, he wore a bright orange jail uniform. Nowinski ordered that Stayner be held on the charges against him and transported as soon as possible to a Fresno jail where all future proceedings will be conducted.

Stayner’s arrest sent investigators scrambling in other jurisdictions. Merced County authorities said Monday that they are reopening the unsolved murder of Stayner’s uncle, Jesse Stayner. He was shot to death nine years ago in the home that he shared with his nephew in what police suspected at the time was a robbery.

Authorities said the recent events have led them to rethink the case.

“He lived in the house when the uncle died. When he was interviewed at that time, he was not made a suspect in the case,” said Henry Strength, Merced County assistant sheriff.

In Santa Barbara, police want to determine Stayner’s whereabouts in April 1985, to see if he might be connected to the murder of model Kim Morgan, who was decapitated. “We would be remiss as a law enforcement agency if we didn’t take a look at this case,” said Sgt. Brian Abbott.

Friends and Family Shocked

In the side-by-side farm towns of Merced, Atwater and Winton, where Stayner grew up and rode his bike through the almond and onion fields and fished the irrigation canals, close friends and relatives said they had a hard time believing the news.

They recall a sweet kid who made his mark at Merced High School through his pen, drawing funny and satirical cartoons that appeared in the school newspaper.

“It’s a terrible shock to us all, everyone who knows Cary,” said Sandy Cox, who owns a Merced glass company where Stayner worked. “None of us ever thought this was possible. The Cary who’s being portrayed on the news, that’s not the Cary we’ve known for many years. My heart bleeds for his family. They have been through so much heartache, and now to go through this.”

Stayner’s younger brother, Steven, is best remembered as the victim of an abduction when Cary was 10. Steven Stayner was kidnapped in 1972 on a Merced street and raised for seven years by a drifter who sexually abused him. The youth escaped from abductor Kenneth Parnell in 1980 but died in 1989 at the age of 24 in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident. Hollywood made a made-for-TV movie about the saga, titled “I Know My First Name Is Steven.”

Residents and friends said the family was close-knit. The father worked at a local cannery as a mechanic and he and his wife enjoyed camping in their spare time, passing on their love of the outdoors to their oldest son.

The seven-year separation and Steven’s return home to a hero’s welcome apparently affected Cary. Their mother, Kay, characterized the homecoming at the time as bittersweet. “When Steve came home,” she said, “everybody else all got shoved in the background and here’s this hero.”

Family friends said Cary Stayner, who has never married, found solace in the backwoods and occasionally visited nudist camps.

In El Portal, which has been besieged by FBI agents and the media, residents were getting testy. The siege mentality was most pronounced at the Cedar Lodge, which was hit by a wave of cancellations after news spread nationwide that an employee was arrested in the Yosemite cases. Hotel employees were ordered not to give interviews.

Many residents of El Portal say they knew who Cary Stayner was, but few knew much about him. They said he was sociable and friendly. As a maintenance worker at the Cedar Lodge, he would sometimes deliver extra towels or a rollaway bed to a guest’s room.

Many residents know him to be one of several locals who enjoy swimming nude at various places on the Merced River.

All of those interviewed said they would never suspect him of being capable of the killings.

“It’s really amazing to me,” said one hotel worker. “Cary was really mellow and laid-back.”

He paused, letting the latest news sink in. “I guess he didn’t let anyone else into that other world.”

Times staff writers Dave Lesher, Virginia Ellis, James Rainey and Mark Gladstone and Associated Press also contributed to this story.

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Yosemite-Area Killings

Motel handyman Cary Stayner has confessed to four Yosemite-area slayings, three in February and one last week, sources familiar with the investigation said. The suspect lived and worked at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal where the three February victims were last seen.