The Yosemite Murders from 1999

Stayner was the older brother of Steven Stayner the kid who was kidnapped back in the early 70's at age 11 by Kenneth Parnell and held captive 7 years. There was a movie about that case called "I Know My Name Is Steven". Steven Stayner was killed in 80 in a motorcycle crash.

Cary Stayner claimed his uncle Jesse, who he lived with, molested him when he was 11.

One correction to my post above. Steven was 7 when he was kidnapped. Cary was 11 at the time.

OP, where did you hear that one of the victims was decapitated while alive????

Cary Stayner had a request during his interrogation. He wanted to be provided with child porn for his confession. The whole Stayner family was one screwed up mess of sexual abuse. Stayner admitted he'd fantasized about killing women since he was 7 years old. He's still on death row. What's taking them so long to put that wild dog down?

What is the name of the show on Hulu?

^evil in eden 20/20

I remember this case, and it seemed horribly ironic he was Steven Stayner's brother. Steven h8mawlf came to a sad end--I seem to recall after his escape, he was subject to homophobic slurs related to the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his kidnapper, married very young, probably at least in part to prove he wasn't gay, and died in a car crash at 21. Though Cary Stayner may have been predisposed to sexual violence it's hard to believe his brother's ordeal didn't play a major role in pushing a disturbed kid into real deviance. That one criminal act, the abduction of Steven, had ripple effects over decades and victims beyond the family. Another reason I support the death penalty.

The man can not be rehabilitated. He needs to be put down .

He died in a motorcycle accident at like 32 not 21

I recall Steven feeling very guilty because eventually he helped Parnell entrap and molest other boys. And admitted to having enjoyed it.

Both stories are very, very dark. Maybe best to stay away, they can really mess with your worldview.

R3- It is in my attached article. He basically did the same thing to Juli Sund- She was "nearly decapitated"

This guy was a fucking animal. For some reason, those details floored me.

And the way he strangled the mom and the Argentinian friend, one by one, without any of the others knowing as they were all in separate rooms.

Truly, truly frightening.

Steven died at 24

Yosemite Sam?

His trial was that last time was even close to being on a jury. During jury selection, I was called back to the courthouse three times I think.

[quote] He died in a motorcycle accident at like 32 not 21

Steven was born in 65 and died in 89.

OP do you get your jollies bringing up such evil stories?

I saw this on 20/20 last Friday. He said he and had these fantasies since he was 7! The last victim was a crime of opportunity as he just stumbled upon her packing up her car for a trip. They said she was happily chatting with him before he turned on her. As they were talking, he kept looking at the door behind her to make sure nobody was in the house. I have to admit since he was very good looking, I wouldn't suspect he was a psycho either.

Was it true that Steven molested kids after he was married? I could swear I read that on Wikipedia or somewhere, but now it's gone.

DL fave Corin "Corky" Nemec starred in the TV movie

Stayner really looks demented now.

No R16- the Hulu 20/20 thing spurred my memory. This is a pretty maudlin thread, I know. It really horrified me for some reason.

R19, that is the Pelosso girl's father from Argentina.

R19, wow, he aged!

I remember when this happened -- felt terrible for the mother/daughter, but even moreso for the Argentinian girl.

R15 do the math..not 21

R22 that is the father of the Argentinian girl.

Off topic, but for years I thought it was pronounced YOZE-might.

Steven really did look like Shaggy Rogers, as one of his friends opined. I don't think his reunion with his family was as magical as it was depicted by the media. The mother was reportedly very cold and strange, and his body language in evidence when he's sitting next to her during the GMA interview speaks volumes. Both boys had that same vague, mask-like quality to their faces when photographed together.

How did the sisters turn out?

Parents seem like total assholes. How can a kid be 7 years a sex slave and captive, suffer Stockholm syndrome, become a child abuser himself, and just go back to normal.

Did any of these people procreate? I can’t help thinking there is some horrible gene in them that shouldn’t be perpetuated.

I mean, the TV movie showed his reunion was difficult and no fairytale. He was gone age 7-14, told his parents willingly threw him away, violently raped all those years. He was a person who was a hero, rescuing the little boy kidnapped after him before he could ever be assaulted. But no one in his world was equipped to nurture him after he came "home".

He never did come home.

Steve had two kids

R8 Carl is on death row at San Quentin. He may never be executed, but he will never leave that prison.

Carl first attacked the tourists. He sexually assaulted and killed the mother and the Argentinian student. He put them in the trunk of their car and set them on fire. He took the daughter of the dead mother in his truck to an edge of the mountain. He told prosecutors "I had fun with this one". He forced her to give him a blow job, which she did as he said she thought that would save her life. He told her she did great, then he cut her neck and pushed her over. This I remember from the prosecution's case. Later he killed a biologist working for the Yosemite Institute- by decapitating her.

Having a family member kidnapped and being a victim of childhood trauma does not make you do these things. He is a psychopath. Unfortunately, it seems psychopaths are born that way.

R34 here

I am glad park rangers are now trained as LEO's and carry a firearm. These wilderness parks attract misfits and killers and I am glad the rangers can now shoot them down if they are caught engaging in violence.

Cary Stayner was a very good looking man. He was tan from hiding out in a nudist camp for several days before his arrest. He looks like total shit now. Hard to believe it’s the same man. I guess he eventually got the face he deserves.

I am so glad I happened to catch this 20/20.

I totally remembered the younger brother being kidnapped & being held as a sex slave for years. I remember the child molester bringing home a younger boy after Stayner had aged & Stayner escaping with the little boy.

That was as far as I knew what happened.

I had no clue Steven died so young or the child he rescued died so young as well. I also had no fucking clue Steven's brother was a cold blooded psycho who went on a murderous rampage later on. It just blew me away.

I recently took a guided Yosemite tour and the guide said the rangers are too busy looking for felons to wooryabout how long you’ve been parked in the park!

OP, I am from Northern California, and I have never forgotten these women. In the 2000s, Stayner's confession transcript was released, and I read the whole thing. Two details are burned into my memory:

- After he had strangled the mother, he tried to force Silvina to perform oral sex on Juli, but Silvina was crying too hard to do it. Stayner became irritated with her, took her to the bathroom, forced her to kneel in the tub, and strangled her.

- Juli suffered the longest: she was raped multiple times, in two different locations, and was forced to make conversation with Stayner as she was driven to the site of her murder — she must have had a glimmer of hope that he would let her go, if only she said the right things. After he raped her for the last time, he stroked her hair and told her he loved her. Then he cut her throat. But he did it badly. She gestured at him to finish her off, but, even though he sobbed to investigators that he didn't want her to "suffer like the others," he didn't do anything. He just turned his head. Juli crawled a few feet away, curled up into a fetal position, and bled out.

I'm a woman and a lesbian, and there's something about his treatment of these women — trying to make two terrified teenagers "have sex" with each other for his entertainment before he murdered them, playing at "romance" before he cut Juli's throat, refusing to grant her last request and end her suffering — that makes the Yosemite case especially disturbing to me.

Jesus, their final moments were heartbreaking and horrific.

I recall reading that Cary may have killed Steven also, tampering his motorcycle. The Stayners are one of those families that evil truly settled into.

Well, this has put me off sex with women.

R39- My god. Bless them.

"She gestured at him to finish her off,"

This is highly unlikely. He might have told investigators this, but I've never seen where he said so, and it's doubtful a victim would tell her attacker to continue killing her.

Idk R43 I think if you're at a certain point and you believe that your wounds are fatal, you'd ask to be put out of your misery. Not saying it happened here, but it's logical

What a strange compulsion from age 7..to kill women. Could he have hated his mom or just inherent?

Inherent, I guess. Or else he would have killed his mother or at least tried, considering that is the woman who he had access to for the longest amount of time. Creeps like this often depend on their mothers for "character references" when they fuck up, as any paedophile whose mother has thrown every other family member under the bus for knows.

People make a fuss aboutt Ted Bundy being handsome, but it just doesnn;t come through i photographs at all. But Cary Stayner was stunning: handsome face, piercing blue eyes, and muscular.

I have a friend who actually noticed an extremely handsome and scary guy staring intensely and creepily at his own (pregnant) girlfriend in their parked pickup truck (where she had been waiting for my friend) in a parking lot near Yosemite at about that time. He was so unnerved by the guy he wanted to call the cops on him, but he couldn't very well accuse the guy just of staring--but my friend and his girlfriend hightailed it out of there. He saw the guy again on the news a few nights later when they arrested him--it was Stayner.

Bundy tried to get me in his car when I was a girl in WA...he was good looking at had charisma but my dad had warned me of bad people once when his car broke down in the interstate near Seattle and had to go for help..b4 cell phones. someone said my dad saved my life with that years later with the Bundy incident.

There was a BI awhile ago suggesting that Cary had been involved in his brother's death.

He was jealous of the attention he got from others & wanted him out of the picture.

Steven had died after his story was made by Hollywood.

I've never heard o anyone charged with his death.

[quote]I had no clue Steven died so young or the child he rescued died so young as well.

I didn't realize that the child he rescued died young too.

I see that the motel where Staynor worked at -- the Cedar Lodge Motel in El Portal -- is still up and running.

It wouldn't be datalounge if not at least one poster finds the serial killer in question hot. You bitches never disappoint!

He got a bit chunky.

R43, I know it's almost too pitiful to believe, but that detail was reported by many journalists. Here's an excerpt from an Associated Press article from 1999 (the author does not mention the sexual assault that also occurred in this location):

[quote]With dawn approaching, Stayner turned off at Lake Don Pedro and carried his third victim up a worn dirt path to a small clearing overlooking the water. He cut her throat more than once. By then she begged for death with gestures, he said, pointing her forefinger at her temple, 'pulling' the imaginary trigger with her thumb. He couldn't shoot her, he told her, because there were no bullets in his gun.[/quote]

I've read of multiple other cases where mortally wounded victims, or those who had been unbearably tortured, finally begged their attackers for death. I can imagine doing the same, if I were in pain and had no hope left.

[quote] I recently took a guided Yosemite tour and the guide said the rangers are too busy looking for felons to wooryabout how long you’ve been parked in the park!

I've been to Yosemite at least a dozen times, and I would say the scariest thing isn't a fear of murderers lurking in the pine trees, but rather tourists doing incredibly reckless, stupid things -- people wading in pools right next to Nevada Falls and Yosemite Falls; dangling off steep precipices; unfit and unprepared hikers attempting Half Dome.

I first visited Yosemite in 2003 and we stayed at the Cedar Lodge. I remember being awakened late at night by a ruckus outside and it turns out two huge raccoons were battling over a trash barrel.

A woman I knew from Ukiah said that the grandfather's house was really close to where Steven Stayner was held hostage all those years. She was hesitant to say it but she said the rumors were that the grandfather had something to do with Steven's abduction. I know it's a rumor and nothing more but that family had some fucked up shit going on.

Cary is terrifying. I don't think such a man can be rehabilitated. Such unimaginable pain he caused.

Agreed, R57. I can't believe he's still breathing the air, and sucking up taxpayer resources, at San Quentin. No redemption is possible for a person like that; his continued existence serves no one.

I stayed at the Cedar Lodge last November, I'd forgotten it was associated with these crimes. But in November, you want a nice warm place to stay, not too far from the park.

The room was fine, nothing remarkable. The breakfast buffet was terrible, not recommended.

Steven died in a head on collision. Nothing to do with his brakes.

I opined in the Leslie Van Houten thread that she should be let out after 50 years. Time for her to be paroled.

But the piece of shit Cary Stayner needs to be locked up in unpleasant conditions until the day he dies. He is fucking evil.

It furthers my Van Houten argument. There needs to be a distinction, and a different way to punish crimes like Van Houten's and crimes like Stayner's. You can't fucking give them the same punishment.

R59 the Yosemite Bug hostel has an amazing restaurant in Midpines not far from there.

R61

Wasn't Van Houten a part of the Charles Manson gang? Their crimes were just as horrific.

That he had to be given illegal porn in order to confess speaks of the monster he was. No soul inside him.

[quote]I've read of multiple other cases where mortally wounded victims, or those who had been unbearably tortured, finally begged their attackers for death.

One of John Wayne Gacy's survivors said he begged for Gacy to just hurry up and kill him. Gacy told him, "I'm getting round to it."

R10 You recall wrong. Parnell tried to get him to help him abduct other boys when he got "too old," but Steven thwarted those attempts. Parnell paid another teenage boy to help him abduct Timmy White. When Parnell left for work, Steven brought Timmy to a police station It's how Steven ended up being recovered.

I remember reading that a few months before Steven was found, he got drunk with some other kids and broke down and saying stuff like, "I'm not who you think I am."

This is going to sound horrible, but with all the pics of Cary Stayner on that special and the talk about him nude sunbathing in view of guests...I felt the longing...

R63 Van Houten committed a single murder under duress at age 18. A very different situation. Manson died in prison where he belonged. But at this point, it's time to let Van Houten out. In her own way, she is a victim of Manson herself.

What can Van Hputen do for the world? For decades, she giggled and took bows for her role in the murders. The fact that her lawyer told her to act repentant doesn’t mean she’s fit to be in the world

Who yay or nays her releSe exactly..thought it was a parole board but upthread they said that board has recommended release like 3 other times?

I can't believe what happened to Carl Staynor's last victim, Joie Armstrong. She fought so hard. If there could have been just one person in the area, I doubt this could have played out the way it did. It just killed me to learn that he was trying to cut her head off while dragging her to some cover by the stream. I think he said in one confession that she kept trying to press her chin to her chest in order to stop him from sawing her head off. FUCK!

This asshole deserves the worst punishment there is. I don't blame women now who think ALL men can be sick fucks. One cannot explain how or why the guy did this. He had to hate women, period. He's also the worst fucking coward to live.

I think we can learn more if we subjected him to what his victims had to endure. At least gain some knowledge as to what or how things go through his empathy-less mind. We need to learn more because ya know there's some dudes out there that are just like him.

What happened to the parents? The media did not paint a warm picture of their mother. I’d like to learn more about their family members.

Interesting rumor that the grandfather may have been involved with the kidnapping. Wish we had more details.

You would think a fellow inmate would have off him by now.

California doesn't actually execute anyone on death row, so he will just remain in prison.

I remember when this occurred I thought for a time the Sund father may have done it. Of course we know now that's not at all what happened, but it took the police awhile to find Stayner and solve the case, so I tried playing detective and failed miserably. Those murders were absolutely gruesome. I've never forgotten them, just as I've never forgotten the Tate murders. I grew up in NoCal from the early 60's and there have been a lot of murders. Those two have stayed with me, along with the Chicago Nurses and the Zodiac.

Wow, this is truly one of the worst murders/true crime cases I have ever read about. I almost regret reading it....

(And I have read many “true crime” stories on DL).

I feel like the media did not do a good job of explaining just how monstrous and horrific (and disgustingly gruesome) these crimes were back in ‘99.

They also didn’t explain how evil Stayner was. He is pure evil and should have been killed long ago.

Animals are more merciful and “human” than that piece of trash, Cary Stayner.

I never thought I’d say this, but someone like Chris Watts almost looks “good” by comparison to him!

Also: the details about him originally “planning” on kidnapping, raping, and killing his girlfriend and her two young daughters before he did the “Yosemite murders” (those were his original “intended victims”—and the young 7 year old daughter of Cary’s gf thought he was “so nice” since he always bought her and her sisters Beanie Babies before he visited them....) was also very upsetting.

This was per 20/20 (that Cary told investigators this).

So he was originally intending on kidnapping and killing the gf and children (like his brother was kidnapped?)

WTF was wrong with that family?!? Wikipedia says that Steven and Cary Stayner’s *father* was in counseling for admitting to molesting his two young daughters (Steven and Cary’s sisters). And the mom stayed with him and let him stay at the house and then Cary allegedly began sexually abusing and/or sexually harassing his own sisters at age 10 (according to Wikipedia).

Again I say, WTF was wrong with that Stayner family?!?

R71

The Governor (Jerry Brown) has overruled the parole board's previous recommendation.

You should watch the most recent 20/20 episode. It was on the BTK serial killer.

Talk about another sick fuck.

I wish the guy who wrote the book about the boy who was raised as a girl (botched circumcision + a devious doctor named Dr. Money testing out nature-vs-nurture) would dig in and write about the Stayner family. This is some deeply fucked up shit. I too wish I'd never read about Cary Stayner. It's a haunting story. Poor everybody.

Here is a short excerpt from a book, it gives some great insight into the Stayner family- They were a SICK BUNCH, even the mother , if you ask me-

Rotten.

Their life on earth did indeed come to an end in a very grisly manner. We can at least solace in the knowledge that they entered the kingdom of heaven the minute they took their last breath on earth.

R82: "I guess God needed three new angels that night!"