Yosemite Murder Case Opens

Nearly two years after law officers say he confessed to killing three Yosemite sightseers, motel handyman Cary Stayner returned to criminal court here Monday for a hearing to determine if he will stand trial for the 1999 slayings that sent a wave of fear up the spine of California.

In the first day of a preliminary hearing that is expected to stretch for most of this week, prosecutors set out to convince Judge Thomas Hastings that Stayner should be tried for the murder of Eureka resident Carole Sund, her 15-year-old daughter, Juli, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, a family friend visiting from Argentina.

Jens Sund, the father of Juli and husband of Carole, testified that initial befuddlement turned to concern and then horror as the three victims failed to turn up after their getaway to the national park in mid-February 1999.

“Carole usually stayed in touch,” he said.

As Sund testified, Stayner sat impassively in an orange jail jumpsuit a dozen feet away, his head bowed. The two men never appeared to make eye contact.

Prosecutors also put half a dozen workers or guests of the Cedar Lodge on the witness stand.

One woman said she saw Stayner muttering to himself a few mornings before the slayings. An employee at the Cedar Lodge, where the women stayed, said Stayner unexpectedly disappeared on the day they were abducted.

Employees of the lodge’s restaurant testified about last seeing the victims as they ate dinner, Carole eating a vegetable burrito, while the two teenagers had hamburgers and fries.

The hearing is expected to explore the grim details of the abduction and triple slaying later this week, as several FBI agents and other law enforcement officials present findings of the criminal investigation. Prosecutors are expected to play portions of a videotape of Stayner’s lengthy interview with an FBI interrogator.

Law officers have said in court papers that Stayner admitted to killing the three sightseers and later a fourth woman, Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong.

Stayner pleaded guilty in federal court late last year to Armstrong’s slaying, after striking a plea bargain to escape the death penalty.

Mariposa County prosecutors do not expect to announce whether they will seek the death penalty in the three other slayings until after the preliminary hearing is completed. Law enforcement insiders say the delay is a formality, and the prosecution is expected to push for capital punishment.

Stayner’s attorney, Santa Monica lawyer Marsha Morrissey, will probably attempt to negotiate another plea bargain to spare Stayner’s life, but prosecutors may prove less willing than their counterparts in the federal court case, in part because the victims’ families are pushing for the case to go to trial.

“We just want to find out what happened,” said Carol Carrington, the mother of Carole Sund. “We want to find the truth. Let justice prevail.”

Her husband, Francis, said he would support the death penalty for Stayner, calling him “a sexual killer who tortures people and then kills. If he doesn’t qualify, who does?”

The hearing marked the first time Pelosso’s family faced Stayner in person.

During one break, Jose Pelosso succumbed to the weight of the 2-year-old tragedy and began to weep softly. His surviving daughter, Paula, stroked his face.

The case has attracted widespread attention in part because of the circumstances of Stayner’s upbringing. His younger brother, Steven, was abducted as a child by a pedophile but managed to escape seven years later, only to die as a young adult in a motorcycle accident. The brother’s story became a book and a TV movie.

Morrissey, Stayner’s attorney, offered to waive the preliminary hearing, saying she believed it would only drum up further publicity that could taint potential jurors. But prosecutors refused to budge, saying that a full preliminary hearing was necessary to get on the record testimony from witnesses who might not be available if a change of venue is granted.

Stayner reportedly told law officers that he used the ruse of fixing a leaky pipe to get into the room of Carole Sund and the others at the Cedar Lodge in February 1999. He is accused of binding the three with duct tape and gagging them before strangling the mother and Silvina Pelosso. Juli Sund’s throat was slashed.

After a massive manhunt across the central Sierra and the San Joaquin Valley, the bodies of Carole Sund and Pelosso were discovered in the trunk of their burned-out rental car along an old logging road North of Yosemite. Authorities found the body of Juli Sund a week later alongside a reservoir on a highway that leads to the park.