At His Sentencing, Yosemite Killer Apologizes to Family

In a gripping courtroom apology, a weeping Cary Stayner turned to face the family, friends and fiance of Joie Armstrong on Thursday to seek their forgiveness for killing the Yosemite naturalist.

“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,” Stayner said, locking eyes with his victim’s mother, Lesli Armstrong, who held his gaze through her own tears until he was done.

“I’m so sorry,” he went on, haltingly. “I wish there was a reason. But there isn’t. It’s senseless.”

Stayner offered his impromptu apology moments before he was ordered by U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii to serve the rest of his life in prison without the chance of parole for the July 21, 1999, murder of Armstrong.

His words contrasted sharply with the hollow tone of his confession, during which he chillingly described to two FBI agents how he cut off Armstrong’s head, then contemplated keeping it before tossing it--in a rage--into the same creek where he left her body.

Outside the courthouse, Lesli Armstrong said she was surprised but gratified by the killer’s words.

“He sounded sincere,” she said. “He’s devastated. I’m devastated. We’re all devastated. I ached for him. I ached for me. I ached for everything. I wish we could take it all back and make it all different.”

Stayner’s sentencing was a formality, brought about more than a month ago by a plea bargain that spares him a federal death sentence but guarantees that he will never be free.

But it was pivotal in the sense that it shifts his fate to state court, where he still faces possible death sentences in the slayings of three Yosemite tourists.

Carole Sund and her daughter Juli, of Eureka, and family friend Silvina Pelosso, of Argentina, disappeared five months before Armstrong was killed, last seen at the motel where Stayner lived and worked as a handyman.

Armstrong’s case was in federal court because she was killed in a national park, while the sightseers were killed outside Yosemite’s borders. Stayner is expected to be arraigned in Mariposa County before year’s end.

Stayner, 39, had little or nothing to gain by apologizing Thursday, since his sentence had already been arranged. It was his last chance to speak publicly about the case, and his attorneys said it was something he wanted to do.

Dressed in a bright yellow jumpsuit with chains restraining his arms and feet, Stayner took a few deep breaths and 40 seconds to steel himself before he finally broke the awkward silence.

He talked about giving in to his “terrible dark dreams,” the “craziness that lurked” in his mind for as long as he could remember, and expressed his sorrow, his shame, his wish to be forgiven.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Delbert and Kay Stayner cried as they listened to their son, whom they visit once a week at the Fresno County jail.

Wearing her daughter’s rings, Lesli Armstrong said she and her family turned down an opportunity to address Stayner in court because they “didn’t have anything else to say that I hadn’t already said.”

She said she accepts Stayner’s apology and will save room in her heart to forgive him some day for taking away Joie, who used to teach children that it was wrong to kill bugs.

“I wish he really knew how wonderful Joie was,” Lesli Armstrong said. “This is an end of a chapter. But closure kind of implies it’s all over and you can forget about it and go on. And that will never happen.”