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World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 14 - Cary Stayner - Full Episode

July 20, 2021 / 43:19

This episode covers the life and crimes of Cary Stayner, including his childhood, the impact of his brother Steven's abduction, and his eventual transformation into a serial killer. Key discussions include Stayner's confession to the murders of four women in Yosemite National Park, the psychological factors contributing to his violent behavior, and the investigation that led to his arrest.

The episode details Cary Stayner's troubled upbringing in Merced, California, and the family dynamics that shaped him. It highlights the trauma of his brother Steven's kidnapping and the subsequent attention Steven received upon his return, which left Cary feeling overshadowed and neglected.

Stayner's violent fantasies began at a young age, and the episode discusses his escalating behavior leading up to the murders in 1999. The narrative describes how he lured his victims, including Carole Sund and her daughter Juli, and the brutal nature of their murders.

The investigation into the disappearances of the women is detailed, including the discovery of their bodies and Stayner's eventual confession during an interview with reporter Ted Rowlands. The episode emphasizes the chilling aspects of Stayner's personality and his attempts to distance himself from the sexual violence associated with his crimes.

Ultimately, Cary Stayner was convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to death. The episode concludes with reflections on his monstrous nature and the lasting impact of his actions on the victims' families.

TL;DR

Cary Stayner's childhood trauma led to him becoming a serial killer, murdering four women in Yosemite National Park in 1999.

Episode

43:19
00:00:06
-On March 2, 1980, 7 years after he had been kidnapped
00:00:11
by a pedophile,
00:00:13
14-year-old Steven Stayner returned home
00:00:16
to his family in Merced, California.
00:00:19
-Cary later had said that "There was clearly
00:00:21
a number-one son in the house.
00:00:22
I was pushed aside, and I was left,
00:00:24
you know, to fend for myself."
00:00:27
-Tormented by his brother's ordeal and twisted by the abuse
00:00:32
he claimed to have suffered as a child,
00:00:35
Cary Stayner became a serial killer.
00:00:39
-When he's 7, he starts to have these fantasies
00:00:42
of capturing and killing women.
00:00:45
-In 1999, in the Yosemite National Park in California,
00:00:50
he kidnapped and brutally murdered four women.
00:00:54
-He said he couldn't contain himself,
00:00:56
that there was no way that he could stop this urge to kill.
00:01:02
-The cold-blooded murder of four innocent women
00:01:05
makes Cary Stayner one of the world's most evil killers.
00:01:11
♪♪
00:01:21
♪♪
00:01:30
For 5 months in 1999,
00:01:34
fear pierced the peace and tranquility
00:01:37
of Yosemite National Park in California.
00:01:41
In that time, one man abducted four women.
00:01:45
He allegedly raped two of them and viciously murdered them all.
00:01:50
-Yosemite is one of those places.
00:01:52
It's the crown jewel of national parks in the United States,
00:01:55
and the idea that these women were possibly murdered
00:01:59
after visiting a national park,
00:02:01
specifically Yosemite, really unnerved people.
00:02:05
-Then, on Saturday, July the 24th, 1999,
00:02:09
investigators arrested a handyman
00:02:12
at a local lodge, Cary Stayner.
00:02:15
The 37-year-old was the prime suspect
00:02:18
in four monstrous murders in the national park.
00:02:21
While in custody in Sacramento, California,
00:02:24
he pulled a major surprise.
00:02:28
-While he's being held, somehow he's able
00:02:30
to get a 25-minute interview with a local news crew,
00:02:34
and while they're on a break from questioning him,
00:02:37
he confesses to the news crew
00:02:38
before he even confesses to the FBI.
00:02:41
-He told his version of events to a local TV news reporter,
00:02:44
Ted Rowlands.
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-The interview was conducted in a room.
00:02:49
We were separated by glass and used telephones.
00:02:52
He picked up the phone, and the first thing he said to me was,
00:02:56
"I want you to contact Hollywood producers,
00:03:00
and I would like a movie of the week made about my story,"
00:03:05
and I thought, "Movie of the week?
00:03:08
This is the same thing that his brother, Steven,
00:03:11
had had made about his story."
00:03:14
Immediately struck me as, "Wow. Okay.
00:03:17
This guy is thinking about his brother."
00:03:20
He immediately went from asking for this movie of the week
00:03:24
to a full confession.
00:03:27
The first things out of his mouth
00:03:29
after asking for the movie of the week was,
00:03:31
"I am guilty.
00:03:33
I killed Carole Sund, Juli Sund, Silvina Pelosso.
00:03:37
-But Stayner adamantly denied that he had sexually assaulted
00:03:40
the women that he had murdered.
00:03:43
-Cary Stayner has got quite a strong narcissistic strand
00:03:46
to his personality.
00:03:48
He didn't want to be seen as the sexual predator
00:03:50
that he actually was.
00:03:52
He wants to be this tough, dangerous predator, this hunter,
00:03:56
and that's inconsistent with the label of a rapist
00:03:59
or a sex offender.
00:04:02
The roots of narcissism are very often in shame,
00:04:04
and I think that's very much what shaped Cary's famous life,
00:04:08
that he feels ashamed of who he is.
00:04:10
He feels ashamed of what he's experienced.
00:04:13
-Stayner's story began nearly 60 years ago.
00:04:17
-Cary Stayner was born in August 1961,
00:04:20
in Merced, California.
00:04:22
His father, Delbert, was a Korean War veteran,
00:04:27
a stiff staff sergeant who married his mother.
00:04:33
Together, they had five children,
00:04:35
three girls and two boys.
00:04:39
Close family, but there's not much doubt in my mind
00:04:42
it was also an abusive family.
00:04:44
It was dysfunctional.
00:04:46
-According to a defense psychiatric report,
00:04:49
even his mother claimed to have been abused as a child.
00:04:54
-This family do have quite a dark history
00:04:57
when you look behind the closed doors,
00:04:59
so there's a multigenerational history of abuse going on.
00:05:05
-There were early warning signs that Cary was having problems
00:05:08
coping as an infant.
00:05:11
-When he's 3 years old, he starts engaging in a behavior
00:05:13
called trichotillomania,
00:05:15
and this basically refers to hair pulling.
00:05:17
This is really concerning stuff because you have
00:05:19
a 3-year-old child who is,
00:05:21
essentially, engaging in an act of self-harm.
00:05:23
This suggests, to me, that this was a young lad
00:05:26
who really was trying to take back some power,
00:05:29
take back some control over something
00:05:31
that he felt he didn't have control over,
00:05:34
and this was the way that it was manifested.
00:05:37
-Age 7, Cary formed violent fantasies about women.
00:05:42
-He told me that he had memories
00:05:44
going all the way back to his childhood,
00:05:46
when he was in his family car in the supermarket parking lot
00:05:50
fantasizing about killing and tying up the female checkers.
00:05:55
Thinking that he was that young and having these urges,
00:06:00
if right, really is a window into his world.
00:06:05
-But when he's 7, he starts to have these fantasies
00:06:08
of capturing and killing women, and for me,
00:06:11
that suggests that he's got this idea from somewhere.
00:06:14
He's equated violence and sexual violence with power somehow.
00:06:19
-Growing up, Cary and his brother, Steven,
00:06:22
7 years younger, shared a room.
00:06:24
-Cary's younger brother, Steven,
00:06:26
was absolutely the apple of his father's eye.
00:06:28
He was the single one, if you like,
00:06:31
in the family of five children that the father identified with.
00:06:35
-Then, when Cary was 11 years old,
00:06:38
tragedy struck the already troubled Stayner family.
00:06:41
-The decisive moment in Cary's young life came in December 1972
00:06:48
when he was aged 11, and his younger brother,
00:06:51
Steven, then age 7,
00:06:54
was abducted by a pedophile
00:06:58
and kept for 7 years.
00:07:03
-This is something that has a devastating effect
00:07:05
on the family,
00:07:07
so this family member has gone, and what do you do?
00:07:12
To have something like this happen during your childhood
00:07:14
is going to have a devastating impact on you,
00:07:16
especially yourself having experienced sexual abuse.
00:07:21
-Stayner would later claim that his Uncle Jesse
00:07:24
sexually abused him when he was a child.
00:07:27
-For children who experience these types of things,
00:07:30
they feel like nowhere is safe for them,
00:07:32
nowhere is secure for them
00:07:34
because your family is supposed to be your sanctuary.
00:07:37
-The impact that abduction had, not just on the Stayner family
00:07:43
as a whole, but also on Cary, was catastrophic.
00:07:50
Cary's father, Delbert,
00:07:51
was distraught, absolutely distraught,
00:07:55
would cry, would blame Cary for not looking after his brother,
00:07:59
would say, "Oh, he's the one son I really loved."
00:08:03
Those vital years between 11 and 18
00:08:07
were lived in the shadow of the disappeared Steven,
00:08:15
a kind of almost unimaginable torture, torment.
00:08:20
-Adding fuel to the fire that was raging within Cary,
00:08:24
his father heaped responsibility onto the young boy's shoulders.
00:08:29
-I think he was perhaps, to a degree,
00:08:30
blamed for the fact that Steven had gone missing,
00:08:34
and his parents would say to him,
00:08:35
"Make sure that you watch your sisters."
00:08:37
So he's charged with the monitoring and the surveillance
00:08:40
of women, of girls, at quite a young age,
00:08:43
and he's having quite a heavy adult responsibility
00:08:45
placed on him.
00:08:47
-Then, on March 2, 1980, Cary's kidnapped brother,
00:08:51
Steven, suddenly returned home.
00:08:56
-As if by magic, Steven escapes from his captor
00:09:01
along with another little boy and reappears.
00:09:05
If there could be said to be one single moment or trigger
00:09:09
for what became his killing spree,
00:09:12
it was almost certainly the return of his brother in 1980,
00:09:16
when Cary was nearly 19.
00:09:21
-Anxiously there to greet him, his parents, three sisters,
00:09:25
and 18-year-old brother, Cary,
00:09:28
Steven Stayner had escaped with a much younger boy,
00:09:32
5-year-old Timmy White.
00:09:35
-Steven Stayner's story made international news.
00:09:38
It was a little boy that escaped captivity from a pedophile
00:09:43
and basically single-handedly was responsible
00:09:46
for saving himself,
00:09:48
saving another child, and putting a pedophile behind bars,
00:09:51
so Cary Stayner's brother, Steven, was a hero.
00:09:56
-After 7 years, Parnell thinks that Steven
00:10:00
is really getting a bit too old for him.
00:10:02
He is a pedophile, and so he tells the boy
00:10:05
he's got a replacement,
00:10:07
a little boy called Timmy White who was 5 years old.
00:10:11
Steven realizes that this cannot be right.
00:10:15
-He rescued that child and got out of there
00:10:17
and went to the police, and he said,
00:10:19
"I know my first name is Steven,"
00:10:20
and that later became a book and a movie,
00:10:23
and the U.S. was captivated by this story of this young man
00:10:26
who, you know, overcame all this terrible abuse
00:10:30
and then put his life on the line
00:10:31
to save this 5-year-old child.
00:10:33
-The TV movie called "I Know My First Name is Steven"
00:10:37
was quickly made.
00:10:39
-Cary Stayner was home during all of this,
00:10:41
watching his brother get all these accolades
00:10:44
and had all of the attention of his despondent parents,
00:10:47
who had been so sad for 7 years with a missing child.
00:10:51
They were now elated to have their little boy back,
00:10:55
and I think it affected Cary a lot.
00:10:58
-Cary later said that.
00:10:59
He said, "I felt like my parents --
00:11:01
There was clearly a number one son in the house,
00:11:03
and that was Steven, and so I was pushed aside,
00:11:06
and I was left, you know, to fend for myself."
00:11:09
-Steven's appearance on "Good Morning America"
00:11:12
with his parents further spurred Cary's simmering rage.
00:11:16
-Delbert is seen hugging his son,
00:11:20
something that he's seemingly failed ever to do
00:11:22
to his elder brother, Cary.
00:11:25
Never showed much affection, but all of a sudden,
00:11:28
Delbert is reunited with, in a way, the golden youth.
00:11:33
There is no doubt in my mind that this made
00:11:39
Cary Stayner incredibly angry.
00:11:42
-He's not known for being Cary.
00:11:44
He's known for being the brother of the boy who went missing.
00:11:47
That's not going to have a good impact on you.
00:11:49
That is going to really devastate your own sense
00:11:52
of your identity.
00:11:53
Here's a man who is spiraling out of control.
00:11:56
He's going towards something,
00:11:58
but we don't quite know what that is yet.
00:12:00
-Steven's return only heightens the feeling
00:12:05
that his elder brother
00:12:06
has of being somehow a shadow in the Delbert family life.
00:12:11
-Then, on September 17, 1989, 9 years after being reunited
00:12:17
with their son, Steven, the Stayner family
00:12:20
was once again blighted by tragedy.
00:12:23
-When Steven returned,
00:12:25
the tragedies for this family were far from over.
00:12:28
So Steven got married, and he had children,
00:12:30
but he was killed in a hit-and-run accident
00:12:33
only as a young man,
00:12:35
so his life was quite brutally ended.
00:12:38
-Steven's untimely death sparked a descent for Cary
00:12:42
into the dark side of his personality.
00:12:46
-Ironically, when Steven was killed in the car accident,
00:12:51
Cary was sharing a house with his Uncle Jesse
00:12:57
and working for a local mirror-making company.
00:13:01
Steven's death was the trigger for Cary Stayner
00:13:05
to escalate to violence.
00:13:09
-In 1990, Cary's Uncle Jesse was found dead
00:13:13
in the house they shared.
00:13:15
Cary Stayner later claimed as part of his defense
00:13:18
that his uncle sexually abused him as a child.
00:13:22
It led some to suggest that
00:13:24
Stayner may have had something to do with his murder,
00:13:28
but at the time, no one was charged.
00:13:31
-When you look back at the circumstances
00:13:33
surrounding Uncle Jesse's death,
00:13:36
it was believed that he was killed
00:13:37
by a drifter who was around the property,
00:13:41
but that individual was never actually identified
00:13:44
and convicted of that particular murder.
00:13:46
-Cary Stayner was questioned about it and was a suspect,
00:13:49
but was not tried for it,
00:13:52
and Cary Stayner told me that he did not commit that murder.
00:13:57
-By 1991, Cary Stayner was working at
00:14:00
the Merced Glass and Mirror Company.
00:14:03
On the surface, all seemed fine, but that would be short-lived.
00:14:09
-He is liked by his workmates.
00:14:12
He's regarded as approachable, as kindly.
00:14:15
You could trust him with anyone.
00:14:16
You might leave your children with him.
00:14:18
He's absolutely -- couldn't be a nicer man,
00:14:23
and yet, underneath that, beneath the surface,
00:14:26
Stayner is profoundly challenged, unbalanced,
00:14:31
a man at war with himself, at war with his own desires,
00:14:36
at war with his own fury at what's happened to him,
00:14:41
at the way he's grown up.
00:14:43
-In 1995, Cary Stayner's rage boiled over.
00:14:48
-One of his coworkers come across him one day,
00:14:51
basically pounding his fist into a plank of wood
00:14:54
and saying that he feels really anxious.
00:14:56
He feels really nervy and scared and that he feels like
00:15:00
going and killing all of his coworkers.
00:15:02
He's seen by a psychiatrist,
00:15:04
but he doesn't receive any ongoing treatment.
00:15:06
It's considered, "Okay. This looks like it was a one-off."
00:15:10
-He became more and more isolated.
00:15:13
His parents then moved away from Merced
00:15:16
where he had been born and brought up.
00:15:18
Then he was left on his own.
00:15:19
His Uncle Jesse was dead.
00:15:21
His brother was dead.
00:15:23
He had left the job he'd had for quite some time.
00:15:26
-He decided that he was going to go off the radar.
00:15:28
He was going to go and live in the woods.
00:15:30
This guy was going off the grid.
00:15:33
-In 1997, Cary Stayner was hired as the resident handyman
00:15:38
at the Cedar Lodge Motel
00:15:40
in the Yosemite National Park in California.
00:15:44
-At the same time, gets a room above the diner
00:15:48
in the hotel upstairs.
00:15:52
Now, it's quite a big motel, 50-plus rooms,
00:15:55
plenty of coming and going, rather beautiful.
00:15:58
It was on the edge of Yosemite National Park.
00:16:01
-At first, all seemed to be going well for Cary
00:16:04
in this new picture-perfect setting.
00:16:07
-Everybody loved this guy, all of his coworkers,
00:16:09
his supervisors.
00:16:11
Everybody said, "This was the nicest guy."
00:16:13
-You know, he fits in with this, this laid-back
00:16:14
kind of hippie lifestyle
00:16:17
of a guy who kind of is quite transient
00:16:19
and goes from job to job,
00:16:21
and you just let people be who they wanted to be,
00:16:23
so I think he fitted right in.
00:16:25
-But unbeknownst to those around him,
00:16:28
the affable handyman was at war with himself.
00:16:32
-His only respite was hiking in the woods,
00:16:36
and he developed an appetite for nude sunbathing.
00:16:40
I suspect that he was having difficulty
00:16:41
controlling his own sexual desires
00:16:44
and that perhaps nudity and nudism shared with others
00:16:48
was a way of coping with that.
00:16:50
He was desperately trying to keep himself under control,
00:16:54
and there's no doubt, in my mind, of that.
00:16:57
-Stayner spent more and more time alone in the woods
00:17:00
indulging his peculiar habits.
00:17:03
-Cary Stayner's other occupation,
00:17:06
apart from hiking and nude sunbathing,
00:17:07
was smoking marijuana,
00:17:10
which he did on a regular and persistent basis.
00:17:14
Now, I am not for one moment
00:17:15
suggesting that inspired him to kill.
00:17:19
I am not linking one with another.
00:17:22
What I am saying is it probably further underlines
00:17:27
the imbalance in Cary Stayner's personality.
00:17:32
-Stayner became obsessed with Bigfoot,
00:17:35
a mythical beast that, legend has it,
00:17:38
inhabits the forests of America's Pacific Northwest.
00:17:42
-He's firmly convinced that Bigfoot does exist,
00:17:45
and, indeed, becomes almost obsessed with Bigfoot
00:17:49
and finding Bigfoot.
00:17:52
-I think in terms of what Bigfoot represents
00:17:55
for Cary Stayner, it's that childish kind of pursuit
00:17:59
of the monster under the bed.
00:18:01
You quite enjoy talking about it.
00:18:03
You quite enjoy the feeling of kind of fear
00:18:05
that you know isn't real fear because you're actually safe.
00:18:08
He hasn't felt the ability to have a safe space
00:18:11
in which to nurture these kind of,
00:18:14
these scary monster-type stories.
00:18:16
So I think that's why that comes out when he's an adult.
00:18:19
He's not had the opportunity to do this as a child.
00:18:21
-Bigfoot was what Cary Stayner was when he wasn't an affable,
00:18:25
likable person.
00:18:27
Bigfoot was the real Cary Stayner.
00:18:31
I think that's where the obsession lay,
00:18:33
and I think the whole concept of his obsession with Bigfoot
00:18:38
was his obsession with his own dark side.
00:18:41
There was the Cary Stayner that was eventually
00:18:44
to emerge into the light.
00:18:46
Somewhere inside, he was harboring this other personality
00:18:51
which sometimes he simply had to let out.
00:18:53
But by the time we've got to the end of 1998,
00:18:58
we have a man who is fraying,
00:19:03
is the word that jumps into my mind.
00:19:05
It's as if he's quietly coming apart,
00:19:07
but he's coming apart steadily, increasingly,
00:19:11
and how does he cope with that?
00:19:13
Up until that point, he's done everything he can to,
00:19:14
quote, control himself.
00:19:16
"I've got to be in control. I've got --
00:19:17
My father would want me to be in control.
00:19:19
That's what we are supposed to do."
00:19:22
-So he got a job as a maintenance man,
00:19:25
and this is where I think
00:19:27
he starts to spend a lot of time on his own.
00:19:30
He's thinking. He's ruminating.
00:19:32
And I think it's only going to go one way now.
00:19:35
-By 1999, hippie handyman Cary Stayner
00:19:39
was a serial-killing time bomb.
00:19:42
On February the 14th, Valentine's Day,
00:19:45
he was primed to explode.
00:19:47
Stayner's victims --' a mother, her teenager daughter,
00:19:51
and her young friend.
00:19:56
Yosemite National Park, California, USA.
00:20:00
It was the low season, and there were only a few tourists around.
00:20:05
Would-be serial killer and handyman Cary Stayner
00:20:08
was working at the Cedar Lodge motel,
00:20:11
and all seemed fine.
00:20:13
-He's struggling to control himself,
00:20:15
struggling to be what his father would have wanted him to be,
00:20:18
struggling to be all right when he wasn't,
00:20:21
and you suddenly have, literally, an explosion.
00:20:25
-I think when we look at the time that he starts killing,
00:20:27
he is not in a good place.
00:20:29
He's quite chaotic. He's quite disorganized.
00:20:31
He's smoking a lot of marijuana, and we know
00:20:34
that this has an impact on people's perceptions,
00:20:37
on their thinking, their train of thoughts.
00:20:40
-On Valentine's Day, Stayner struck.
00:20:47
-Quite by chance, he sees a mother,
00:20:51
daughter, and the daughter's friend
00:20:53
pull into the parking lot of the Lodge
00:20:55
in a red Pontiac Grand Prix.
00:20:57
They've rented it.
00:20:59
Her name was Carole Sund.
00:21:01
Her daughter was called Juli,
00:21:03
and her daughter's friend from Argentina was visiting,
00:21:06
an exchange student called Silvina.
00:21:08
-Silvina was 16 years old, and Juliana was just 15.
00:21:14
-Stayner told me that he knew
00:21:16
that they were the only occupants in the entire building
00:21:20
and that he noticed them earlier in the day
00:21:23
and that one of his fantasies that he had been thinking about
00:21:27
was to capture and torture two young girls.
00:21:31
-He's been spending quite a lot of time on his own.
00:21:33
He's been smoking quite a lot of marijuana at this point in time,
00:21:36
and he's confronted with this happy family,
00:21:39
this happy family that he's never had.
00:21:42
-He knocked on the door and said, "I'm the maintenance man,
00:21:44
and we have a problem in the bathroom.
00:21:46
Could you let me in to fix it?"
00:21:48
-It's 11:00 at night at this point.
00:21:49
Carole is cautious.
00:21:52
She says, "Hang on a minute."
00:21:54
Doesn't open the door, and she goes back.
00:21:56
Stayner's on the other side of the door.
00:21:58
"No. There's no leak. I can't see anything."
00:22:00
"No. I know, ma'am. I've got to come in. I've got to --
00:22:02
You've got to let me in. I'm absolutely --
00:22:04
I'll lose my job, you know, if you don't let me in."
00:22:07
Stayner is very persuasive.
00:22:09
Carole Sund makes the fatal mistake of opening the door.
00:22:15
-As soon as he got into the room, he pulled out his gun.
00:22:18
He took Silvina and Juli, the teenagers,
00:22:21
and put them in the bathroom, locked the door
00:22:24
and then came out and strangled Carole Sund in the hotel room.
00:22:30
-Stayner had killed her.
00:22:32
He took her body and dumped it in the trunk
00:22:34
of the family's rented car.
00:22:36
He then returned to the room.
00:22:39
-Brought both girls out and began
00:22:42
to sexually assault them, we later found out.
00:22:45
He then killed Silvina Pelosso after she started screaming
00:22:51
and was not cooperating with him.
00:22:54
He took Silvina's body, then,
00:22:56
and put it into the trunk along with Carole's,
00:22:58
came back and spent a few hours sexually abusing
00:23:02
and torturing Juli Sund inside the hotel room.
00:23:07
-And now the fantasy really comes to life.
00:23:11
Stayner has convinced himself
00:23:14
that he has some kind of relationship
00:23:17
with the 15-year-old Juli Sund.
00:23:20
She is somehow an object of his affections.
00:23:24
She is to be cherished in the mad fantasy world
00:23:28
that he's created for himself.
00:23:30
-Then he said he decided to take Juli
00:23:34
out in the early morning hours before the sun came up,
00:23:38
put her in the car and drove with the bodies in the trunk.
00:23:43
-Behind the wheel of the rental car,
00:23:45
Stayner headed east out of the park.
00:23:48
-He ended up taking Juli to a reservoir called Lake Don Pedro
00:23:54
which is about 90 miles from Yosemite.
00:23:58
It's very remote.
00:24:01
-They drive in the Pontiac Grand Prix
00:24:03
to a local beauty spot with a view.
00:24:07
The sun comes up, and he picks Juli Sund up
00:24:13
out of the passenger's seat of the Pontiac
00:24:15
as if she were his bride and he were the bridegroom.
00:24:20
He carries her to this vantage point and sits her down.
00:24:27
-Around sunrise, Stayner slit the girl's throat.
00:24:34
-He left her to die on this hillside.
00:24:39
Now he had to get rid of the car.
00:24:42
-Stayner dumped the rental car with the dead bodies
00:24:45
of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso in the trunk.
00:24:50
He then called a cab to take him 90 miles back to the Lodge.
00:24:55
Then, in a bizarre twist, the taxi driver later
00:24:58
gave a telling insight into the man
00:25:01
who just committed a series of murders.
00:25:05
-He says to the female cab driver,
00:25:08
"Do you believe in Bigfoot?"
00:25:10
on the way back to the motel, and she says, "No,"
00:25:14
and he says, "Well, you should."
00:25:16
And in my view, that's an indication,
00:25:18
a firm, clear indication,
00:25:20
that Bigfoot is the dark side of Cary Stayner.
00:25:25
-The serial killer was dropped off back
00:25:27
at the Cedar Lodge motel,
00:25:29
and he acted as if nothing had happened.
00:25:32
-Back to the motel, back to work,
00:25:37
Stayner, careful, careful man, has cleaned the room.
00:25:41
I mean, he is the motel's handyman, after all.
00:25:43
He's made sure not to leave any traces.
00:25:45
The Pontiac Grand Prix is gone.
00:25:46
The room is clean.
00:25:48
-Two days went by, and still nobody suspected a thing.
00:25:52
-No one raises any alarm.
00:25:54
Carole's husband tries to track her down,
00:25:58
but thinks she's just making away.
00:25:59
They were going to meet at San Francisco Airport.
00:26:02
-Concerned that he had not covered his tracks sufficiently,
00:26:05
Stayner returned to the car.
00:26:08
-A few days later, he drove back there,
00:26:11
found the car and brought with him gasoline.
00:26:14
He took evidence out of the car and then torched it.
00:26:18
From there, he decided to throw the FBI off
00:26:21
by taking Carole Sund's wallet and drive it to Modesto,
00:26:26
which was in the other direction.
00:26:28
-Four days after their disappearance,
00:26:31
the women were finally reported as missing.
00:26:34
Then, when the wallet was found 4 days later, 8 miles away
00:26:38
in Modesto, California,
00:26:40
the authorities suspected foul play.
00:26:43
-The wallet was found by somebody
00:26:44
who was just walking down the street,
00:26:45
picks it up and takes it to the police.
00:26:47
As soon as they found that wallet,
00:26:49
the case changed immediately
00:26:52
from a missing-persons case to a criminal case.
00:26:56
-The investigators focus their attention on finding the car
00:27:01
that the women had rented for their trip.
00:27:04
-It was a red Pontiac,
00:27:06
so this gave investigators something to search for,
00:27:09
and because this took place at a national park,
00:27:12
it had immense attention, not only from the media,
00:27:15
but from the American public.
00:27:17
-The entire staff working at the Cedar Lodge
00:27:20
were questioned within days of the murders,
00:27:22
including the genial handyman, Cary Stayner.
00:27:27
-The FBI said that he seemed stoic and calm as can be,
00:27:32
but to him, he said his heart was racing.
00:27:36
He was nervous, and he was convinced
00:27:39
that the FBI was going to be coming back
00:27:42
to arrest him at any moment.
00:27:44
-A month went by,
00:27:45
and the women's bodies had still not been found.
00:27:49
-The women had vanished, and the case was getting cold.
00:27:52
Then the next break happened.
00:27:54
The car was located by a local man
00:27:56
who was out hunting in the woods.
00:27:58
Inside the trunk of the car were two bodies,
00:28:01
Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso,
00:28:04
and the car was burnt to the point
00:28:06
where their bodies were unrecognizable.
00:28:09
In fact, they had to use DNA testing
00:28:10
to positively identify them.
00:28:12
-In Cary Stayner's case,
00:28:15
he left the bodies in a car for 2 days,
00:28:18
and then he set fire to it.
00:28:21
So we've got two problems here, really.
00:28:23
We have the fact that the bodies are starting to decompose,
00:28:26
and then we've got the effect of fire.
00:28:28
That sort of fire is really quite ineffective
00:28:31
at destroying a body,
00:28:33
so it is a challenge to the forensic investigators,
00:28:36
but by no means one that can't be overcome.
00:28:39
-But Stayner was far from being considered the prime suspect.
00:28:43
-By this time, Stayner is --
00:28:45
You know, how could he possibly be an object of interest?
00:28:48
I mean, "I may work at the hotel,
00:28:50
but all sorts of people work at the hotel."
00:28:52
And, in fact, the local police drag in all sorts
00:28:57
of potential villains, you know, drug dealers,
00:28:59
local armed robbers.
00:29:02
They've got about seven or eight possible suspects,
00:29:05
and at one point they even say,
00:29:06
"I'm sure we've got, you know, the perpetrator in custody."
00:29:10
-He comes onto the radar of the investigation,
00:29:13
and he's actually quite helpful with the investigators.
00:29:16
He shows them around the lodge.
00:29:18
He answers their questions, and I think,
00:29:21
at this point in proceedings, he does, I think,
00:29:24
enjoy that feeling of being close to the investigation,
00:29:27
of knowing how much
00:29:28
or how little the police know themselves,
00:29:31
and I think this is something that he feels
00:29:33
that he's going to get away with.
00:29:35
-But the body of 15-year-old Juliana Sund was still missing,
00:29:40
and in yet another extraordinary turn,
00:29:42
Cary Stayner wrote a letter to the FBI.
00:29:47
-Stayner becomes so confident, and, indeed, in a way
00:29:49
so arrogant that he decides to write the FBI
00:29:53
to tell him where they can find Juli's body
00:29:56
and draws them a little map and tells them,
00:30:00
"We had a lot of fun together."
00:30:01
-Two weeks after the car was found, the FBI got the letter,
00:30:05
went out to this spot in a reservoir,
00:30:08
and there, lo and behold, was Juli Sund's remains.
00:30:12
-The 15-year-old girl's decomposed body was found hidden
00:30:15
in the underbrush by the Merced River in Modesto County.
00:30:20
-When the facts came out about the condition of Juli's body,
00:30:23
the fact that she had been murdered, cut,
00:30:27
her neck almost cut off,
00:30:30
that put this case into a whole nother realm.
00:30:32
When the details of Juli's murder
00:30:35
and the brutality of that murder was released,
00:30:38
that sent another shock wave through the region
00:30:42
because people now knew
00:30:43
that these women were not only murdered,
00:30:46
but brutally murdered and possibly tortured.
00:30:48
-But serial killer Cary Stayner was not done yet.
00:30:53
Soon he would strike again, and this time
00:30:57
Stayner would do it with even more terrifying ferocity.
00:31:01
♪♪
00:31:06
By the end of June 1999, police had discovered the dead
00:31:11
and mutilated bodies of three women.
00:31:14
They had been viciously murdered
00:31:16
in the Yosemite National Park, California.
00:31:20
They were found dumped in the woods about 80 miles
00:31:23
from the Cedar Lodge motel where they had been staying.
00:31:28
But the killer, Cary Stayner, the handyman at the same motel,
00:31:32
was not even a suspect.
00:31:34
-The FBI was convinced that they had the killers in custody.
00:31:39
They believed that they had solved the case,
00:31:40
and they were just working on getting more evidence
00:31:43
because they truly believed that these methamphetamine users
00:31:47
and dealers were responsible,
00:31:49
even though the real killer was sitting at the hotel
00:31:53
where those girls were the whole time.
00:31:55
-Three months passed.
00:31:57
No one comes knocking on Cary Stayner's door to arrest him.
00:32:00
Stayner has remained undetected, uncharged,
00:32:03
still the affable handyman at the Cedar Lodge motel.
00:32:07
-But it was only a matter
00:32:08
of time before Stayner would kill again.
00:32:13
-The balm that I think he felt
00:32:16
from the killings of Carole and her daughter
00:32:20
and her daughter's friend was wearing off,
00:32:24
and I think he felt that he needed another victim.
00:32:29
-On July 21, 1999, Stayner found his next target,
00:32:34
26-year-old Joie Ruth Armstrong, a park worker.
00:32:39
-She was one of these girls that just loved
00:32:42
being out in nature,
00:32:44
and you could see it in her face, big smile.
00:32:46
Her mother talked about how happy
00:32:48
she was to have this position
00:32:50
and how happy she was to be living
00:32:52
in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
00:32:54
-Joie was loading her car outside the cabin in the forest
00:32:58
where she and fellow park workers stayed.
00:33:01
The location was about a 30-minute drive from the lodge
00:33:04
where Stayner was based.
00:33:07
-Stayner would say that once he realized she was alone,
00:33:11
something clicked in him.
00:33:13
He said that he was in an area that he often went to
00:33:17
because he had seen Bigfoot there.
00:33:19
-And I think they struck up some kind of conversation
00:33:21
about working in the park, and here he's got
00:33:24
another opportunity that's presented itself to him.
00:33:28
-She was by herself.
00:33:29
She's getting ready to go meet some mates for a hike
00:33:33
up in Northern California,
00:33:35
so she was packing her car in Yosemite Valley
00:33:38
getting ready to leave when Cary Stayner noticed her.
00:33:42
He approached Joie with his gun, forced her inside her house
00:33:48
and put duct tape around her mouth and her hands
00:33:53
and got her into his car and was taking off to kidnap her,
00:33:58
but she was able to jump out of the car and run for her life.
00:34:03
-But taped and bound, she did not get far.
00:34:06
-She was unable to outrun Stayner,
00:34:08
so he was able to park his car,
00:34:10
run around, and tackle her and grab her.
00:34:12
-He absolutely loses his temper, and he attacks her
00:34:15
so violently that he effectively decapitates her,
00:34:18
cuts her throat, but so violently
00:34:21
that it effectively separates her head from her body.
00:34:25
-He told the FBI that there was so much blood on her head
00:34:28
that when he looked at it, he couldn't even see her face.
00:34:32
-We have an escalation of what he's doing.
00:34:35
He's abducted her.
00:34:36
He's bound her.
00:34:37
He's gagged her, beheads her.
00:34:42
At least we can say it would be a very rapid death at the end,
00:34:45
and a very brave young woman
00:34:47
to try and escape from such horrible circumstances.
00:34:50
-This time, however, Stayner had sealed his own fate.
00:34:55
-Ultimately, that's the murder that leads back
00:34:56
to the other three.
00:34:58
Had he not committed that fourth murder,
00:35:00
I don't know that he would have been caught.
00:35:02
-The next day, on July 22, 1999, an alert park ranger
00:35:08
found Joie's body.
00:35:10
It was clear that the current suspects were,
00:35:13
in fact, innocent.
00:35:15
-When Joie Armstrong turned up dead,
00:35:17
it didn't take long for the FBI
00:35:19
to tell the public that, indeed, they were wrong,
00:35:22
and the real killer was still out there.
00:35:24
This now re-ignited the entire case,
00:35:27
and it took it to another level.
00:35:29
The idea that a young woman was decapitated
00:35:33
inside the park was unnerving to everyone,
00:35:36
and now it was all hands on deck
00:35:40
because there was a murderer on the loose.
00:35:43
-A blue and white 1979 International Scout
00:35:47
was seen parked near the scene of the crime.
00:35:50
Of the afternoon of the 22nd of July,
00:35:53
two park rangers looking for the car
00:35:56
in fact found 37-year-old Cary Stayner.
00:36:00
-One of the things that he liked to do in the park
00:36:02
was go find a spot along the river and sunbathe naked.
00:36:06
So after killing Joie Armstrong, he went to one of these spots
00:36:10
and was out sunbathing naked
00:36:12
when two park rangers came across
00:36:15
and talked to him, confiscated his backpack, and let him go.
00:36:19
-Stayner was interviewed again at the Cedar Lodge.
00:36:22
Again, he was allowed to be free.
00:36:25
They took samples and photographs of his tires
00:36:28
to match tire tracks at the scene,
00:36:30
but they allowed Stayner to stay free for another day.
00:36:34
-With the net closing in, Stayner fled.
00:36:38
-After matching the tire tracks,
00:36:39
the FBI went back to arrest Cary Stayner at the Cedar Lodge.
00:36:42
When they got there, he was gone,
00:36:43
so they put out an all-points bulletin.
00:36:46
-The FBI found him on July the 24th, 1999,
00:36:51
just 48 hours after his fourth murder.
00:36:55
-Somebody had seen the news reports that
00:36:58
they were looking for Cary Stayner,
00:37:00
and there was a photo of him, and lo and behold,
00:37:02
he was at a nudist camp up in the Sacramento area.
00:37:07
So he had driven from Yosemite to this nudist camp
00:37:10
and was just sitting at the restaurant at the nudist camp
00:37:14
when the FBI came to interview him a third time
00:37:18
with the intent of taking him into custody.
00:37:20
-By this point, I'm absolutely certain in my own mind that
00:37:22
Stayner knew he was going to be caught and was,
00:37:24
in fact, quite happy to be caught.
00:37:26
I think, in a way, he had acknowledged that he was
00:37:31
so badly distorted as a personality
00:37:35
that he wanted to be incarcerated.
00:37:39
-When Stayner was arrested,
00:37:41
Ted Rowlands got the call that changed his life,
00:37:45
and the exclusive confession that he was able to secure
00:37:50
helped to convict a serial killer.
00:37:52
-I was alerted by my station that an arrest
00:37:55
had been made in Joie Armstrong's murder,
00:37:58
so I immediately went to Sacramento.
00:38:01
I went to the jail to see
00:38:02
if I could get an interview with Stayner.
00:38:04
So I asked the jailer if they would call up and inquire
00:38:08
whether he would be open for me to come up and interview him,
00:38:12
and the jailer called up to the cell block
00:38:15
and received word that Stayner did not want to talk.
00:38:19
So I decided that I was going to keep asking,
00:38:23
and I ended up spending the day going back and forth
00:38:26
from the courthouse to the jail and harassing the jailer.
00:38:29
"Please call up. I'd like to see if he'll talk to me now."
00:38:33
-Eventually, the reporter's persistence paid off.
00:38:37
-I remember walking back into the jail
00:38:39
thinking to myself I was wasting my time,
00:38:41
and the jailer looked at me like, "Ugh. You're back."
00:38:44
And I said, "You know, one more time,
00:38:46
can you just ask him one more time if he'll talk?"
00:38:48
And the jailer got off the phone and said,
00:38:50
"By God, he's going to talk."
00:38:52
And immediately I froze and thought, "Oh, my gosh."
00:38:59
Within 2 minutes, I was on an elevator
00:39:02
going up to the prison tier,
00:39:05
and I could see through the glass.
00:39:08
I could see Cary Stayner go out of his cell
00:39:10
and start walking towards me and coming right up to the glass,
00:39:14
and there I was 3 feet away from this serial killer,
00:39:19
and we were talking face-to-face
00:39:21
using a telephone going back and forth.
00:39:25
-Stayner coldly admitted to the four murders
00:39:28
that he had committed in the Yosemite National Park.
00:39:32
-From the moment he walked in,
00:39:34
he was rigid and very clinical the way he spoke.
00:39:40
His voice didn't go up or down.
00:39:42
There was little or no emotion.
00:39:45
Even when he talked about the murders,
00:39:46
his demeanor was just detached.
00:39:51
-Cary Stayner confessed,
00:39:53
but despite evidence to the contrary,
00:39:56
he refused to admit to key elements of the crimes.
00:39:59
-He admitted to the murders, but he glossed over the details.
00:40:04
In fact, he lied.
00:40:05
He lied about some of the story to me.
00:40:09
He told me that he never physically abused
00:40:12
or tortured any of his victims.
00:40:14
I think he lied to me because he wanted to take credit
00:40:18
for the murders,
00:40:20
but he was embarrassed about the torture and the sexual assault,
00:40:23
and he didn't want the public to know about that.
00:40:26
-I think a killer who confesses is sometimes
00:40:28
getting some of it off his chest,
00:40:30
but who's to say, for example,
00:40:32
that Cary Stayner hadn't killed again?
00:40:34
Did he kill other people?
00:40:36
It's entirely possible.
00:40:38
-And I asked him, also, to give the families a message.
00:40:41
"What would you say to the Sund, Pelosso, Armstrong families?"
00:40:46
And he said that he would like to tell the families
00:40:50
that he's sorry that their loved ones
00:40:53
were where they were when they were,
00:40:55
and that, to me, was really haunting
00:40:58
because what he was really saying was,
00:41:00
"I couldn't help myself.
00:41:01
There was nothing I could do about it."
00:41:04
It seemed as though he was trying to convince me
00:41:06
that he was somehow a hero
00:41:08
for resisting for 30-plus years of his life,
00:41:13
saying that he had had these urges to torture and kill women
00:41:17
since he was a 7-year-old child.
00:41:22
It was a way to articulate that this demon inside him
00:41:27
was too powerful.
00:41:29
-Cary Stayner was eventually tried and convicted
00:41:32
on four counts of murder as well as additional felonies.
00:41:37
He was sentenced to death on December the 12th, 2002,
00:41:41
and is now behind bars
00:41:42
in San Quentin State Prison, California,
00:41:45
awaiting the death penalty.
00:41:48
-There is nothing sympathetic about this man.
00:41:51
He is, and remains, a monster, thankfully,
00:41:56
not able to commit further murders.
00:41:59
If part of Cary Stayner saw himself as Bigfoot,
00:42:04
it was the part that went hiking in the wilderness.
00:42:08
He was the monster in the woods.
00:42:11
He was the man whom everybody should be afraid of,
00:42:15
but, of course,
00:42:17
he didn't present that to the outside world
00:42:19
working as a handyman in a motel,
00:42:22
but that's what he thought he was, and that's what he became.
00:42:27
-The savage and senseless murders of four innocent women
00:42:32
in the pristine environs of the Yosemite National Park
00:42:36
in California marks Cary Stayner as one
00:42:40
of the world's most evil killers.
00:42:43
♪♪
00:42:52
♪♪
00:43:02
♪♪

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 85
    Most shocking
  • 80
    Most heartbreaking
  • 80
    Biggest twist
  • 80
    Biggest cultural impact

Episode Highlights

  • Cary Stayner's Dark Transformation
    Cary Stayner, tormented by his brother's ordeal, became a serial killer after years of abuse.
    “Tormented by his brother's ordeal and twisted by the abuse he claimed to have suffered.”
    @ 00m 27s
    July 20, 2021
  • Cary Stayner's Confession
    While in custody, Cary Stayner confessed to a local news crew before the FBI.
    “He picked up the phone, and the first thing he said to me was, 'I want you to contact Hollywood producers.'”
    @ 02m 56s
    July 20, 2021
  • The Return of Steven Stayner
    On March 2, 1980, Cary's kidnapped brother Steven returned home, triggering a series of events.
    “If there could be said to be one single moment or trigger for what became his killing spree, it was almost certainly the return of his broth”
    @ 09m 12s
    July 20, 2021
  • The Brutality of Juli's Murder
    The details of Juli Sund's murder shocked the community, revealing a brutal crime.
    @ 30m 32s
    July 20, 2021
  • Cary Stayner's Arrest
    Stayner was finally arrested after a series of murders, marking the end of his spree.
    @ 36m 51s
    July 20, 2021
  • Stayner's Confession
    Cary Stayner confessed to the murders but downplayed the details, revealing his detachment.
    @ 39m 28s
    July 20, 2021

Episode Quotes

  • The impact that abduction had...was catastrophic.
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 14 - Cary Stayner - Full Episode
  • "Do you believe in Bigfoot?".
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 14 - Cary Stayner - Full Episode
  • "I couldn’t help myself.".
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 14 - Cary Stayner - Full Episode
  • "He is, and remains, a monster.".
    World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 14 - Cary Stayner - Full Episode

Key Moments

  • Dark Transformation00:27
  • Cary's Confession02:56
  • Family Tragedy06:41
  • Abduction Impact07:43
  • Killing Spree20:47
  • Murder at Sunrise24:27
  • Final Arrest36:51
  • The Monster Revealed42:27

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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