There was a 60% response rate. Carole Sund was taken into the bathroom by Stayner and immediately strangled to death and put in the trunk of her rental car. It was built in 1977 to provide lodging to visitors heading to the entrance to Yosemite National Park, just across Highway 140. I took her to the bathroom, put her in the bathtub and strangled her, Stayner said of one of his victims in an audio confession. The series tries to connect Cary's story thematically to the role of media, emphasizing a reporter's claim that Cary's motive for the murders was wanting his own movie of the week. Despite his brothers traumatic ordeal, Cary Stayner turned to kidnapping and murder himself 27 years later. Investigators went to meet the alleged killer in the Sacramento county jail in August 1984. Jamaica - 43.85 per 100k people. This is throwing them a big lifeline, said Jon Rosenfield, a biologist with conservation advocacy group San Francisco Bay Keeper. The river wasnt forecast to reach much beyond its flood stage of 10 feet, but if it hits 12 feet at the Pohono Bridge, it could flood the main roads in and out of Yosemite Valley. The Kings River is off limits due to swift-moving water as more water has been released upstream from the Pine Flat Reservoir to make way for melting snow, Verboon said. Stayner and White hitchhiked to a police station in 1980 and he was declared a hero for saving the young boy. The Chilling Murders Of Three Yosemite Tourists. The National Park Service, in addition to managing the visitor centers, campgrounds, and other facilities at national parks, provides public services at other sites. I cant go to prison for the rest of my life and be happy without seeing it.. At Amistad National Recreation Area, a woman was found floating in a reservoir in about 5 feet of water. A jail is also located in Yosemite National Park, a national park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Then Armstrong's mutilated body was discovered. more. Cary Stayner cruelly murdered four young women. It is home to nearly 2.2 million acres (0.011 million km2) of private land, according to the park. The park has gotten a lot more snow to add to its snowpack since then -- as has much of the high . Jesus, he said, and ran back to the ranger in charge. New victim details released. The same week the two bodies were found, an anonymous letter was sent to the FBI with a hand-drawn map. Months later, however, another body turned up. Where will Californias record melting snow go, and when will it happen? They put up billboards, passed out leaflets, consulted psychics, and according to family friends were never the same again. The mountains were the only place where he could have some freedom to feel like a person and take control of his destiny.. Twenty-six-year-old Joie Armstrong worked at Yosemite State Park as a nature guide. He then carried her corpse out to the car, and she too was placed in the trunk. There is a holding cell in the park ranger station in Yosemite Valley, but it is not used as a jail. All rights reserved. Yosemite National Park is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States, attracting over four million visitors each year. Then he ordered her back outside. Stayner apparently attempted to put the wary young woman at ease by asking if she had ever seen Bigfoot in the area, adding that he had once spotted the creature in the fields just beyond her cabin. Indefinite flood warnings were also in effect for areas near rushing rivers in parts of Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties, where some 60,000 acres of farmland are under about 3 feet of water brought by last months powerful atmospheric river storms. Carole Sund answered, and he told her he was there to repair a leak. He was a cool guy who mixed easily with the rest of the staff, according to a waitress at the diner. Yosemite National Park is closing most of the Yosemite Valley as the Merced River was expected to exceed 10 feet . Your email address will not be published. The body of Juli Sund was discovered near Lake Pedro in Tuolumme County. Almost immediately, authorities received a lucky break: A park employee had noticed a blue and white 1979 International Scout parked near Armstrong's house the night of her death, and police had issued a be-on-the-lookout alert for the vehicle. While there are many stories about people murdered while hiking, and people who come up missing from national parks, the crimes committed by Stayner were brutal, and not ones locals will soon forget. But from February to July 1999, this national park was anything but peaceful. For law enforcement and park officials in and around Yosemite, the gruesome discovery of Armstrong's corpse marked the return of a nightmare that most had thought was long over. Special Agents of the NPS Investigative Services Branch (ISB) worked with multiple laboratories and agencies in an effort to identify the victim. Cary Stayners trial has been relocated from Mariposa County to Santa Clara County, California. All rights reserved. It hardly helped that such fears are belied by statistics: Of the four million visitors to Yosemite last year, just 15 were victims of violent crimes, a 70 percent drop from six years earlier. Armstrong had never shown up, and her friends feared something had happened to her. He was previously a housing and homelessness reporter at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in Sonoma County. You couldn't have told him anything different. The affectless way that Stayner talked about the creature made it difficult to know whether he feared it or identified with it. He hid her lifeless body, with its head nearly severed, in the underbrush. He was held captive for seven years before he miraculously escaped and returned to his family. According to PEOPLE, Stayner said he murdered his victims for simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Hed given in to the continuous fantasy of killing women that had reportedly been circling in his thoughts for over 30 years. Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 - March 12, 2001) was an American convicted serial killer.Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. There are ten2,000 acres of national parks and monuments in the United States, an additional 248,000 acres of national monuments. In Kings County, residents in low-lying areas near the rising rivers have been placing sandbags on their properties and moving items to higher ground to prepare. The girls body lay near a stream, and her head was in the water she and her friends drank from. Stayner returned to his Scout and fled back up the road toward the Yosemite exit. They found beer cans, wrapped-up tin foil, a canteen and what seemed like a piece of fabric that could have been from the victim's jacket. Market data provided by Factset. He told Carole and the girls not to panic. AP (file) In a news story that transfixed the country in the winter of 1999, three Yosemite park tourists were murdered in a crime that . 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. The new season of 'Wild Crime' begins October 24 on Hulu. Bundy abducted Roberta "Kathy" Parks, 20, from Oregon State University around 11 p.m. The case remained unsolved for years, until DNA evidence led authorities to arrest a man named Cary Stayner in 2002. Some criminologists say it is highly unlikely that a serial killer would begin his spree by confidently targeting three victims at once, though Stayner insists that he had never killed before. When he realized Armstrong was alone, he pulled a gun and ordered her inside the cabin, where he bound her hands and gagged her with duct tape. In July, they found a fourth womans decapitated corpse. In the spring of 1984, when the case had gone cold, investigators were contacted by the California Department of Justice, who gave them a tip that an alleged serial killer was confessing to murders across the country, including one that could fit the profile of the Yosemite case. Armstrong made it 150 yards before he caught her. However, it is safe to say that a significant number of bodies are found in national parks each year, as these areas are often remote and difficult to access. And she's been decapitated.. Harriette Cole: My friend's mom didn't recognize me at my job, and she was very rude. This story was originally published October 24, 2022, 8:00 AM. Heading out the door? Stayner was a guest at Tuolumnes Cedar Lodge for two years in 1991 before killing Carole and Juli Sund and Silvino Pelosso. Rangers had cordoned off the area around Armstrong's secluded house with yellow police tape. In the dead of winter, when snow dusts the granite peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the night temperatures drop below freezing, the Cedar Lodge is often nearly deserted, with most of the staff on hiatus until spring. At a parking area where the dirt track from her cabin joins the Foresta road, Armstrong managed to open the Scout's passenger door and leap out of the moving vehicle. Looking for someone to talk to about Armstrong, I parked and walked toward a cluster of homes, where an elderly woman spotted me as I approached; she seemed to tense and then darted inside a cottage and slammed the door behind her. With naked and smoking marijuana, he found peace he desperately needed. He was eventually apprehended at a nudist colony two hours north of Yosemite. He drove west along the Merced River Canyon, unclear about his exact destination, making small talk with his captive. Tony Garcia was arrested Feb. 9 and charged with first-degree murder for the . Five months earlier, three female tourists had vanished from their hotel room at the Cedar Lodge, near Yosemite's entrance, and had been found a month later, brutally murdered. Venezuela - 36.69 per 100k people. The man responsible for the killings was 37-year-old Cary Stayner, a handyman at a motel near Yosemite State Park. Cary Anthony Stayner was born in Merced, California, an agricultural town of 65,000 people that sprawls across the eastern flank of the San Joaquin Valley and calls itself the Gateway to Yosemite. North . By his own account, Cary Stayner seems to have been obsessed with the idea that these mountains and forests were the stalking ground of a malevolent Bigfootthat incarnation of our primal fear of the wild, that terrifying yet oddly alluring symbol of the deep woodsbut it's impossible to know if the beast really was on his mind the evening he says he murdered Joie Armstrong, and if a deranged conviction that the mythical Sasquatch lurks in Yosemite truly did possess his imagination the night the Sunds and Pelosso were killed. It wasnt the first time the Stayner family name had been in the news, however. Lucas died in prison in 2001. The disturbing note, later determined to have been identified as written by Stayner, read, "We had fun with this one." One week later the FBI, acting on an anonymous tip, discovered Juli Sund's corpse dumped in heavy underbrush by an overlook at the Don Pedro Reservoir, several miles from the logging trail where the car had been found. Police questioned Stayner at the time, but he was clean-cut and had no real criminal history, so they didnt believe he had anything to do with it. He fled to the Laguna del Sol nudist colony where he lived in hiding. Stayner ditched the car a few hundred yards down a little-used logging trail off California 108, walked two miles into Sierra Village, and telephoned for a cab after dawn. The detectives also name who they believe is the most likely perpetrator. He said he felt like he was having a breakdown and said he was all nervous and didn't know why, the colleague later told the San Francisco Chronicle. How It Really Happened Yosemite Murders In the early morning hours of September 13, 1999, three women were brutally murdered in Yosemite National Park. Did someone fire a gun to break up the fight? Right now, the anxiety has been reduced and I think were looking pretty good.. Today, Cary Stayner remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison just outside of San Francisco. They also said hed been sexually assaulted by an uncle as a child, which had contributed to his violent fantasies. The story continues to get stranger and more unbelievable. In addition to the flood warnings, huge swaths of the Lake Tahoe area, as well as Lassen and Plumas to the north and Mono County to south, were under a flood watch, one level below a warning. Armstrong and her boyfriend, Michael Raffaeli, another instructor, commuted a few miles to the Institute from their pine cabin, which they called The Green House. SERIAL KILLER WHO MAY HAVE COMMITTED 90 MURDERS IS LINKED TO YET ANOTHER KILLING. Yosemite Valley to reopen as Big Melt flood, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), H-1B: Feds want criminal charges over application fraud for Silicon Valleys favorite visa, Yosemite Valley to reopen as Big Melt flood concerns persist across California, California flooding: 80% of Sierra Nevada snowpack hasnt melted yet. Authorities said he strangledCarole and Pelosso and sexually assaulted and killed Juli. I said, 'Why don't you submit some of this stuff to colleges? Some were stuffed into the trunks of rental cars, their bodies burnt. The second season of Wild Crime is titled Murder in Yosemite and is available on Hulu and Disney Plus. George Penca, 30, went missing on June 17, 2011 . Their bodies could only be identified by dental records. In 2019, his backpack was discovered between Aspen Valley and Smith Peak. One place that he said he had committed a homicide was "a mountainous national park in California," said Tucker, which gave investigators a potential lead for the first time in the case. The second season of "Wild Crime" on Hulu launches on Oct. 24. Yosemite Valley to close due to flood risk from melting Sierra snowpack (California Department of Corrections). Where will Californias record melting snow go, and when will it happen? That inundated agricultural communities and farmland but returned natural habitat to the flood plain, a boon for native fish and wildlife that have struggled after years of drought. The theory: There is a 50-square-mile region in Yellowstone National Park where sloppy district boundaries would make the prosecution of serious criminal offenses unconstitutional in other words,. Her body was found 27 feet away from her head in a drainage ditch. In high school, he also found a measure of self-expression as the cartoonist for the high school newspaper, the Statesman, showing so much promise that classmates assumed he would someday draw his own comic strip professionally. He was convicted of all four murders and sentenced to death in August 2002. But aside from those flights of fancy, Stayner is remembered as shy and self-effacing. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. On March 19, a hiker found a burned-out Pontiac on a logging road near the northeastern edge of the park, about 100 miles from the Cedar Lodge. Cary Stayner killed four women near Yosemite National Park in 1999. The case at the heart of this season begins in June 1983 when a man out walking with his friends' son in Yosemite National Park finds a hand in a meadow. Cary later told reporters that he almost drove his car into the Merced River in excitement. "That's when it hit us.". Kenneth Parnell and 14-year-old Steven Stayner shortly before the boys escape. He didn't get very far. Police focused their investigation on an unknown vagrant whom Cary claimed was lurking around the house shortly before the killing. Around 11 p.m. Stayner, who was carrying a toolbox with duct tape, rope, a knife, and a gun hidden inside, knocked at the door of 509 and identified himself as the motel handyman. Stayner claimed he never sexually assaulted any of the women and wanted to keep their deaths as humane as possible.. Steven was subjected to abuse and manipulation for seven years before he reached the age of 14. During questioning, Stayner stunned investigators by offering to confess in exchange for child pornography. Cary Stayner, Steven's older brother,was a handyman at the Cedar Lodge just outside the park where the women were staying, according to the Modesto Bee. In a setting of beauty and grandeur, a twisted soul was on the loose, a murderer who revived gnawing fears that our national parks are no longer safe. He stayed in his room and smoked grass, and he went out camping in the mountains with his pals. Then in July, a teacher at the Yosemite Institute, Joie Ruth Armstrong, went missing. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. With cooler weather expected, some have breathed a sigh of relief, said Kings County Supervisor Doug Verboon, There is no immediate concern, and I believe the cold weather next week is going to really help us out, Verboon said. Environment | The previous day, Cary Stayner had noticed her while walking through the area and decided to kill her. Park rangers received a flood of phone calls from parents and youth group leaders asking if certain areas of the park should be avoided; requests for guided hikesespecially from womenrose sharply. Two days later, the handyman was eating lunch at Laguna Del Sol, a clothing optional resort near Sacramento, when the cops took him into custody, drove him to Sacramento, and booked him on suspicion of murder. Among the parks largest units is WrangellSt. It was Carole Sund's missing rental car, and her charred, bound body was found stuffed in the trunk alongside the body of Pelosso. Down by the meadow, in front of the simple green cabin where the young naturalist had lived, cardboard signs urged visitors to let Foresta heal. On a tree stump at the edge of the meadow near Joie Armstrong's cabin, three white candles, bits of colored glass, and purple flowers were arranged as a shrine. Any danger ( it seems) comes on four legs: mountain lions, black bears. In the spring of 1984, when the case had gone cold, investigators were contacted by the California Department of Justice, who gave them a tip that an alleged serial killer was confessing to murders across the country, including one that could fit the profile of the Yosemite case. In Yosemite Lakes you have a 1 in 38 chance of becoming a victim of crime. Established: 1964 Size: 1.5 million acres Visitors: 7.2 million annually Deaths: 254 Set in the Nevada desert, Lake Mead's high temperatures are brutal and the rugged terrain claims an average 25. Then, in 1990, police discovered Jerry Stayner sprawled dead in the bedroom of the house where he lived with Cary, with a shotgun wound to the chest. A series of killings near Yosemite National Park that rocked Central California is nearing its 20th anniversary. Although it's a mystery as to why Stayner decided to take the lives of four people, he did claim that voices instructed him to do so. The two hitchhiked to Ukiah, California, and were taken into custody by the police. Murphy offered to take the boy home, but Kenneth Parnell instead brought him to him. One man shot after brawl at Fresno park. Silently, quickly, he strangled the woman with a rope. On April 1, 2010, Timothy White died as a result of what turned out to be a pulmonary embolism. Their bodies were found near the popular hiking trail, and their deaths sent shockwaves through the park and the surrounding communities. Stayner admitted that he had escaped earlier crimes, but he could not resist the urge to kill Armstrong. TV14 Crime Documentaries TV Series 2021. A series of killings near Yosemite National Park that rocked Central California is nearing its 20th anniversary. Cary's younger brother, seven-year-old Steven, disappeared without a trace one afternoon while walking home from school alone down the Yosemite Highway. She previously worked for The Bees sister paper, the Merced Sun-Star, and earned her bachelors degree from Fresno State. Stayner jumped out and crashed through the woods in pursuit. You should, he said, because he's real., The Yosemite Institute lies a few miles up the road from the Cedar Lodge: a rustic encampment of wooden cabins and trailers set in a clearing in a pine forest. At 14, he led another abducted boy -- 5-year-old Timmy White to freedom from their captor Kenneth Parnell. Driver remained on scene, Neglected cemetery called insult to all veterans. Fresno County planning changes, Man killed at fire in concrete drain in Fresno identified. All Access Digital offer for just 99 cents! LiveCopter 3 has a view from above of waterfalls leading into Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite on April 28, 2023. "How could we have missed someone we felt was part of our family?" National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The bodies of Silvina and Carole were discovered inside the rental car he abandoned with the group. Stayner would later tell both the FBI and a San Jose TV reporter that he had his first violent fantasy about women when he was seven years old: On a shopping trip with his mother, he envisioned opening fire on the supermarket cashiers, slaughtering them en masse.
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