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