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Her white pickup truck was still parked in the driveway, packed with luggage for her trip. Lucas died in prison in 2001. At some point he removed the tape from her mouth. 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. Yosemite National Park conducted a winter survey for one week in February 2008. Just before dusk, as she packed up her car for her trip to Sausalito, a blue-and-white International Scout came down the dirt road toward her house and stopped. He talked about Bigfoot all the time, recalls Kathy Amey, Stayner's cousin. The Zone of Death is the 50-square-mile (129.50 km 2) area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a result of a reported loophole in the Constitution of the United States, a person could theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder. 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. New victim details released. The Yosemite Valley, home to many of the famous cliffs and waterfalls in the park, was expected to reopen for day-use only on Sunday morning before a full opening Monday morning, when a flood warning for the area was set to expire. 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. But not everyone felt overjoyed by Stevens return. Heres what Raider Nation is saying, Update: 4 killed in mass shooting in Kern County, deputies say. She previously worked for The Bees sister paper, the Merced Sun-Star, and earned her bachelors degree from Fresno State. All rights reserved. Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! I Know My First Name Is Steven was a dramatic television movie that aired in 1989. Despite the fact that California has not executed anyone since a 2006 court ruling found flaws in the states capital punishment system, Stayner remains on death row as of May 2022. Maybe you'll get a scholarship.' On Feb. 15, 1999, 42-year-old Carole Sund, her 15-year-old daughter Juli, and Julis 16-year-old friend Silvina Pelosso all went missing while staying at Cedar Lodge in El Portal, California, according to HISTORY. The officers confiscated his marijuana and let him go. But aside from those flights of fancy, Stayner is remembered as shy and self-effacing. Delbert and Kay Stayner sat motionless, hand in hand, eyes fixed on their son as he stood before the federal magistrate, clad in a yellow prison jumpsuit, his wrists and ankles shackled, and entered a plea of not guiltya strategy that left the door open for an insanity defense. Big melt begins for Sierra Nevada snowpack told Ada County jurors on Monday that she tested three DNA profiles in connection with Vallow's murder case, including . With much of Yosemite Valley closed from Friday night to Wednesday amid flood risk from Sierra snowmelt, the national park is gearing up for an unusual few days with quiet in the valley and . Capitola Village ready for peak season as it recovers from January storm, Storms bring tornado, flooding to the east coast. When Armstrong's decapitated body was found, witnesses said they spotted a vehicle that authorities later traced back to Stayner. Special Agents of the NPS Investigative Services Branch (ISB) worked with multiple laboratories and agencies in an effort to identify the victim. August 27, 2002 / 10:21 AM / CBS NEWS. Stayner was sentenced to death for the four murders and remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California. The motel is where Cary Stayner worked as a handyman and on February 15, 1999, Stayner knocked on Sund's door. Carole Sund, 42, her daughter Juli Sund, 15, of Eureka, CA, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, a friend visiting from Argentina, were vacationing together. Finally she let him in. The message nature is trying to give us, he said, is we really need to learn to live within the limits of where we live and where we plant.. Published by Statista Research Department , Oct 14, 2022. Hows it look near you? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. I cant go to prison for the rest of my life and be happy without seeing it.. His mother cried softly and rested her head against her husband's chest. 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. TV crews and reporters swarmed over the Yosemite region and descended on the Modesto Holiday Inn, where the families of the missing tourists maintained a vigil. Cary later told reporters that he almost drove his car into the Merced River in excitement. Stayner wanted a movie about his story to air once a week, so he spoke with a producer about it. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions . A human skull, found across the street from the meadow, brings investigators closer to identifying the victim. 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. Stayner told investigators that he hadnt initially intended to murder Armstrong, but when he saw her alone outside her cabin, he could no longer resist the temptation to kill again. He later admitted that he would have kept killing until he was caught. Forecast map: California rivers bulge with snowmelt, but no major floods expected. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. He told Carole and the girls not to panic. Cary was questioned about the killing, but he had an alibihe said he had been at work when the shooting took placeand was not considered a suspect, says a Merced detective who worked on the case. Despite its reputation, Yosemite is still one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. Cary Stayner killed four women near Yosemite National Park in 1999. Stayner admitted that he had escaped earlier crimes, but he could not resist the urge to kill Armstrong. It's a cheerful place with a communal dining room that fills each morning with visiting school groups and two dozen nature instructors in their twenties. Ten years after his Stevens death, Carole Sund, 42, her daughter Juli, 15, and 16-year-old Silvina Pelosso, a family friend from Argentina, went missing while touring Yosemite. On Thursday morning, July 22, Dr. Desmond Kidd, Yosemite National Park's medical director, had just finished a busy 24-hour shift at the park's clinicit was, after all, the height of the summer tourist seasonand the 36-year-old physician was beat. 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. Fresno coroner identifies her, Pedestrian, 56, killed in hit-and-run IDd by Fresno coroner. The new season of 'Wild Crime' begins October 24 on Hulu. He would go hiking and sunbathing in the nudist colony of Laguna Del Sol on days off. With the murders in Yosemite Valley, the dual nature of the wildernessthe threat lurking behind the beautycame again into unnerving focus. Seasons one and two feature the elite detective squad of the National Park Service as they investigate brutal murders committed in America's most majestic wilderness. He said, 'No, I don't think they'd like this stuff.' Cary Stayner worked as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge Motel in Merced, California, from 2003 to 2007. Ethan Varian is a Bay Area News Group reporter covering housing for The Mercury News and East Bay Times. Once inside the room, he pulled out a gun and said he was there to rob them. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. On August 6, two weeks after his arrest, Cary Stayner shuffled into a courtroom at the U.S. District Courthouse in Fresno to answer federal murder charges in the death of Joie Armstrong. Dear Abby: Am I overreacting to my European daughter-in-law's behavior? 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. We never really got along well after he came back. But this time Stayner's victim was able to attempt an escape. Stayner claimed he never sexually assaulted any of the women and wanted to keep their deaths as humane as possible.. Until the Yosemite murders, perhaps the most terrifying crime against women in the national parks occurred in May 1996, when two experienced backpackers, Julianne Williams, 24, and Lollie Winans, 26, were knifed to death at their campsite a few hundred yards off the Appalachian Trail in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. 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. Cary's euphoria over his brother's return soon faded. Armstrong was able to jump through the window of the moving truck, but Stayner chased her down and beheaded her. Kenneth Parnell, who by the time he raped Steven Stayner, was his father all night. The Muir Wall is a 33-pitch line just left of the famed Nose.. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Loophole He graduated from Colorado College with a BA degree in history and the University of Southern California with an MS degree in journalism. Stacey set off on a hike with a 77-year-old man who was on the trip; he grew tired and rested while she continued and was last seen standing on a rock. In July, they found a fourth womans decapitated corpse. One of Cary Stayners more recent mugshot photos, taken in 2010. 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. By then his father had lost his job at a Merced tomato cannery and had moved with Kay into a trailer park in the town of Atwater, where two of Stayner's three sisters also lived. A few months later, in Texas, the alleged killer provided even more details, saying that he and the alleged victim had had lunch together, eating "some fried chicken wrapped in tinfoil" and beer, before he killed her. Four months after Stayner killed three women and had seemingly gotten away with it, he decided to kill again. Joie Armstrong was just 26 years old when she was murdered by Cary Stayner in July 1999. He showed me his cartoons, Miller says. Investigators thought this might be a breakthrough in the case, and went to meet this alleged serial killer, whose name and frightening backstory is revealed in "Wild Crime.". more. But in December 1972, the Stayner family's own sense of security was disrupted forever, with results that many believe helped shape the person Stayner became. He had information about the crime that only the killer would know, investigators said, but some of his statements led detectives to wonder if he was lying. Just beyond it lay something else: a woman's body, clad in a white T-shirt and blue jeans. While the number of murders in Yosemite has decreased in recent years, the park still has a higher rate of crime than other national parks. Flickr/wbauerCedar Lodge in El Portal, California. There is no definitive answer to this question as different national parks have different policies and procedures in place for dealing with bodies that are found within their boundaries. California flooding: 80% of Sierra Nevada snowpack hasnt melted yet He hid her lifeless body, with its head nearly severed, in the underbrush. 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. On February 12, 1999, Carole Sund, her daughter Juli 15, and Silvino Pelosso 16, left their Eureka, California home for a vacation. The National Park Service, an Interior Department division, is in charge of managing the parks. 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. But not long after he arrived back at the log cabin he shared with other park employees in Yosemite Village, his pager went off. Eight years later, Cary Stayner took a job as a handyman at Cedar Lodge, a motel just outside the El Portal entrance to Yosemite National Park. We have an 11-44, he said, using the police code for a dead body. He rented a room above the Cedar Lodge Restaurant & Lounge, a 1950s-themed diner with red Naugahyde banquettes and a vintage jukebox, and did odd jobs around the motel. After traveling all over the world, I finally understand where my heart belongs Burma. The cab driver, Jenny Paul, was bemused by the haggard-looking man who asked to be driven to the Yosemite Lodge (the former workplace of his younger brother's abductor), a 90 mile, $125 trip. Yosemite Valley to close due to flood risk from melting Sierra snowpack Five months earlier, the disappearance of Yosemite visitors Carole Sund, 42, of Eureka, California; her daughter Juli,15; and Juli's friend Silvina Pelosso, a 16-year-old visiting from Argentina, had touched off one the biggest searches in the history of the Sierra Nevada. It is difficult to imagine a more heinous crime in American or National Park history than this one. Year over year crime in Yosemite Lakes has decreased by 7%. The Yosemite InstituteJoie Armstrong was just 26 years old when she was murdered by Cary Stayner in July 1999. In Canada, homicides represent a fraction of the total number of police-reported violent Criminal Code offences each year. He absolutely knew that it existed. Later that day, he called the police when they failed to answer his call. He didn't feel he had a chance. 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. Legal Statement. Case Info: The partial remains of a homicide victim were found in Yosemite National Park's Summit Meadow along Glacier Point Road in 1983. The previous day, Cary Stayner had noticed her while walking through the area and decided to kill her. "I knew I had to get a hold of law enforcement and get somebody up there to look at it.". The body of Juli Sund was discovered near Lake Pedro in Tuolumme County. The teenager was on a trip with her father with a group that had stopped at a camp site that afternoon. There are ten2,000 acres of national parks and monuments in the United States, an additional 248,000 acres of national monuments. A forest fire had roared through this area in 1990, and many of the pine trees here were still blackened and skeletal. Carole Sund was taken into the bathroom by Stayner and immediately strangled to death and put in the trunk of her rental car. 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. Armstrong had never shown up, and her friends feared something had happened to her. At 14, he led another abducted boy -- 5-year-old Timmy White to freedom from their captor Kenneth Parnell. He gave them his testimony, confessing to killing a young woman in the national park by strangulation. Those arrested were summoned to appear before a grand jury by mid-April. Authorities found tire tracks from his truck as well as a red mechanics hat that belonged to him. 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. Investigators would eventually turn to a forensic anthropologist, who suggested the deceased was a young woman. Stayner appears to have told few people outside of his immediate family where he was going. 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. [2] He was already serving a life sentence for Joie Ruth Armstrongs murder when he was sentenced to death. California Supreme Court rules Fresno Unifieds contract illegal. The two frequented the Merced River together, but when Ronnie would run down to skinny dip with the girls, Cary refused to join him. And she's been decapitated.. The series features exclusive interviews with the victims close friends and detectives, who reveal details about her involvement in an alleged cult. Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, an ebullient, strawberry-blond naturalist at the nearby Yosemite Institute and a casual acquaintance of Kidd's, had been planning to spend the weekend visiting friends in Sausalito. YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK -- Hundreds of travelers flocked to Yosemite Thursday before the park shuts down Friday and through the weekend over flood . SERIAL KILLER WHO MAY HAVE COMMITTED 90 MURDERS IS LINKED TO YET ANOTHER KILLING. On March 19, 1999, police found the bodies of Carole and Silvina in the trunk of the burnt vehicle. The decapitated body of Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, was discovered in Yosemite National Park on July 22, 1999. Already, near-overflowing rivers triggered the closure of much of Yosemite National Park on Friday. Two dozen FBI agents commandeered part of the headquarters of the Stanislaus Hot Shots, a forest firefighting squad based in the old gold-rush town of Sonora, to sift through the little evidence they had been able to collect. In the early morning hours of September 13, 1999, three women were brutally murdered in Yosemite National Park. He was ordinary.. Officials from the State Office of Emergency Services said they are working with local authorities in the Tulare Lake Basin area to prepare for more flooding in the weeks and months ahead. Steven had been the apple of his father's eye, a close family friend says. "That's when it hit us.". Lollie Winans & Julie Williams - Shenandoah National Park In May of 1996, 26-year-old Lollie Winans and 24-year-old Julianne Williams set out for a trip to Shenandoah National Park with their golden retriever. (California Department of Corrections). In a narrow ditch filled with three feet of still water, Kidd spotted a key ring glinting in the sun. Snowfall rests on trees in Yosemite Valley on January 19, 2023, in Yosemite National Park. The National Park Service and the National Park Foundation are credited with making this possible, according to the report. "I don't know that what we found was proof," said Tucker, "but I felt like we had found the scene that he described.". Rangers had cordoned off the area around Armstrong's secluded house with yellow police tape. His stories about housing, business and culture have been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Guardian US, among others. Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand. For weeks hundreds of FBI agents, California Highway Patrol officers, and National Park Service rangers combed Yosemite's rugged backcountry with dogs and helicopters. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Yosemite National Park is a well-known picturesque natural wonder. Hows it look near you? Environment | Now Dennis McDougal, acclaimed author of the spellbinding true crime tour de force Mother's Day, brings his considerable investigative and narrative. 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. In two and a half years of working in Yosemite, Kidd had helped rescue a number of hikers who had lost their way, but before he headed out of Yosemite Village in a convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles toward the nearby hamlet of Foresta, he learned that this search was different. The suspect, Cary Stayner, 37, was arrested in connection with the triple murders in February. Cary Stayner was born and raised inMerced, CA, and his family life was rife with tragedy, which he eventually added to himself. We need to help bring justice to these people, to the families.". But the more significant flood danger is in the Tulare Basin of the Central Valley, where the long-dry Tulare Lake once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River has been replenished after reservoirs failed to contain this winters rains. He lifted Juli from her seat and carried her up a steep hill toward the Don Pedro Reservoir overlook. A man was arrested, Community Health System board chair Farid Assemi steps down, but many members still tied to him. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. 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. Then Armstrong's mutilated body was discovered. The case remained unsolved for years, until DNA evidence led authorities to arrest a man named Cary Stayner in 2002. Get Morning Report and other email newsletters. "We had no idea of the who, what, when, where, why, or how this hand had come to Summit Meadow," said Kim Tucker, former criminal investigator at the National Park Service. There was a 60% response rate. The man responsible for the killings was 37-year-old Cary Stayner, a handyman at a motel near Yosemite State Park. Belize - 37.79 per 100k people. 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. Steven became a celebrity: There was national newspaper and television coverage, as well as a book and a TV miniseries chronicling Steven's seven years as the sex slave of Kenneth Parnell, a drifter, convicted pedophile, and former employee of the Yosemite Lodge, inside the national park. A new season of an ABC News Studios docuseries called Wild Crime, set to begin streaming Monday, follows a nearly 40-year-old murder cold case in Yosemite National Park and how investigators finally identified the victim. Based on what Cary Stayner told the authorities in his confession, this is what happened next. Bundy abducted Roberta "Kathy" Parks, 20, from Oregon State University around 11 p.m. During questioning, Stayner stunned investigators by offering to confess in exchange for child pornography. 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. Steven Stayner, Cary Stayners brother, was kidnapped in 1972 and the only living relative of the elder Stayner was his brother, who died in 2013. The Chilling Murders Of Three Yosemite Tourists. He had only come to rob them, he said. Motel handyman Cary Stayner is shown in a July 29, 1999, mugshot, was charged Oct. 20, 1999, with capital murder in the killings of three Yosemite sightseers. Required fields are marked *. The wallet with Sunds money and credit cards was discovered in a home in Modesto, California. But shortly after that encounter, FBI investigators compared tire tracks at the crime scene with photographs of Stayner's treadsand got a perfect match. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The man responsible for the killings was 37-year-old Cary Stayner, a handyman at a motel near Yosemite State Park. Will it get $36 million back. When Steven turned 14, Parnell forced him to help him abduct another victim, five-year-old Timothy White. He says he killed four women -- a park naturalist and three sightseers. Before Armstrong's death, the last homicide inside Yosemite's boundaries occurred in 1987, when a man pitched his wife off a precipice to collect on her insurance policy. Murphy offered to take the boy home, but Kenneth Parnell instead brought him to him. I love the big meadow with all its daisies and incredible history.. In the stillness of that summer morning, the only sounds were the songs of meadowlarks and clear water rushing over smooth rocks in the creek, not far from the spot where Armstrong's body was found. Michael Larwick and his half-brother Eugene Dykes were both being held in the Modesto County jailLarwick on charges of shooting a Modesto police officer, Dykes for drug possession and parole violations.