Yosemite Probe Focuses on Ex-Cons

Four months after three Yosemite sightseers were abducted and killed, federal authorities say they have found physical evidence--including clothing and other fibers--that appears to connect the slayings to a group of Central Valley ex-convicts with violent pasts.

Investigators say their murder investigation is coming together well, but they remain frustrated by important gaps in evidence and don’t expect to file criminal charges for weeks, perhaps months.

They say the clothing fibers and other physical evidence place some of the suspects near one or more of the bodies of victims Carole Sund, 42, her 15-year-old daughter, Juliana, and family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16. But the evidence does not yet include a smoking gun that could quickly prove the case, such as fingerprints, DNA or matching blood type.

Federal authorities say more than one suspect is talking, but they have yet to obtain a confession from any of them. While one man now in jail, Eugene “Rufus” Dykes, has incriminated himself during interrogation, authorities say, his statements are conflicting and at times self-serving, possibly underplaying his role in the crimes.

Dykes, 32, and his half brother, Michael “Mick” Larwick, are among the prime suspects targeted by investigators, who believe there were probably three principal participants in the Yosemite slayings and several others who helped cover them up. All three of the prime suspects are in custody on other charges.

Larwick has denied any role in the slayings. Dykes has no attorney and has made no public statements about his guilt or innocence.

James Maddock, the FBI’s lead agent in the investigation, refused to discuss the details of the case, but said significant strides have been made.

“We’re making substantial progress and have come a long way to putting this together,” Maddock said. “While we have a ways to go, I am completely confident that we’ll have a prosecutable case against those responsible.”

Investigators still don’t know where the abduction or murders took place, the precise role of each suspect or the exact motive.

But they now believe that Carole Sund and Pelosso, whose badly burned bodies were found in the trunk of their charred rental car in a Tuolumne County forest, were killed before the fire was set. Though there has been no final verdict by pathologists on the cause of death, the medical examinations done so far suggest that the women were already dead and the fire was intended to destroy evidence.

Juliana Sund’s decomposing body was found 30 miles away, near the Don Pedro Reservoir.

Another high-ranking federal official said there are at least three working theories of how and where the three women were abducted. These include the possibility that they were kidnapped from the Cedar Lodge in El Portal, where they left behind a few personal belongings in their room as if they planned to come back or were interrupted during packing.

“We still don’t have a scenario from beginning to end,” the federal official said. “We don’t know where the abduction happened or how it happened, don’t know where the killings took place. If we knew where the murder took place, we might be able to locate someone who saw something or find more physical evidence.”

The two half brothers are part of a vagabond group of friends and acquaintances centered in the Modesto area who are being investigated by the FBI, detectives from the sheriff’s departments of Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties and the Modesto police. Most of the cadre share a background of heavy drug use and jail time for violent offenses, including sex crimes.

Dykes was taken into custody March 5 for a parole violation after a 2 1/2-hour standoff with law officers. He was released from prison on parole in January, just a month before the three tourists disappeared outside Yosemite late in the evening of Feb. 15.

Larwick, 42, was arrested March 16 after an armed 14-hour standoff with police. He is accused of wounding an officer who tried to stop him for a routine traffic ticket.

The third suspect is a 21-year-old Modesto man who is a friend of Dykes.

Authorities say the investigation has been hampered in part by the wildly inconsistent stories told by suspects and witnesses, who are nearly all part of a drug culture that favors the use of methamphetamine.

“These guys are pathologically incapable of telling a straight story,” a federal official said. “In [Dykes’] own warped mind, he’s trying to shift the ultimate moral responsibility to someone else.”

The victims’ family members say they remain confident that investigators are on the right track.

“In my own heart I feel it’s them, and that it was drug-induced,” said Francis Carrington, Carole Sund’s father. “These guys take methamphetamine and stay awake for three or four days and then all of a sudden they just snap, and do something crazy. . . . You’re dealing with dynamite.”

Dykes, one federal investigator said, has not yet confessed.

Instead, the prison parolee has made statements that are “very self-incriminating, as well as statements that are incriminating of others,” the law enforcement official said. “It’s impossible at this point to say what part is true and what part isn’t,” though agents have made some progress on corroborating some of the details.

Dykes is talking, the official said, to get the onus “off him and onto his brother. He’s trying to confuse people, trying to save himself from retribution in prison,” where he doesn’t want to be targeted by other inmates who take a dim view of a child killer.

The physical evidence collected so far has investigators convinced that they are on the right track, but they are pushing to get a full confession. “It would be helpful to get a whole story from soup to nuts so we can piece it all together,” one investigator said.

Among the possible abduction scenarios authorities are still struggling with is that the women may have been kidnapped or carjacked in Modesto, where they were scheduled to catch a plane, or that they took a wrong turn and veered deep into Tuolumne County, where their bodies were ultimately found.