All language subtitles for Episode 05 Cary Stayner

-On March 2, 1980, 7 years
after he had been kidnapped

by a pedophile,

14-year-old
Steven Stayner returned home

to his family
in Merced, California.

-Cary later had said that
"There was clearly

a number-one son in the house.

I was pushed aside,
and I was left,

you know, to fend for myself."

-Tormented by his brother's
ordeal and twisted by the abuse

he claimed to have
suffered as a child,

Cary Stayner
became a serial killer.

-When he's 7, he starts
to have these fantasies

of capturing and killing women.

-In 1999, in the Yosemite
National Park in California,

he kidnapped and brutally
murdered four women.

-He said he couldn't
contain himself,

that there was no way that
he could stop this urge to kill.

-The cold-blooded murder
of four innocent women

makes Cary Stayner one of
the world's most evil killers.

For 5 months in 1999,

fear pierced the peace
and tranquility

of Yosemite National Park
in California.

In that time,
one man abducted four women.

He allegedly raped two of them
and viciously murdered them all.

-Yosemite is one
of those places.

It's the crown jewel of national
parks in the United States,

and the idea that these women
were possibly murdered

after visiting a national park,

specifically Yosemite,
really unnerved people.

-Then, on Saturday,
July the 24th, 1999,

investigators arrested
a handyman

at a local lodge, Cary Stayner.

The 37-year-old was
the prime suspect

in four monstrous murders
in the national park.

While in custody
in Sacramento, California,

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,

and while they're on a break
from questioning him,

he confesses to the news crew

before he even confesses
to the FBI.

-He told his version of events
to a local TV news reporter,

Ted Rowlands.

-The interview
was conducted in a room.

We were separated by glass
and used telephones.

He picked up the phone, and the
first thing he said to me was,

"I want you to contact
Hollywood producers,

and I would like a movie of
the week made about my story,"

and I thought,
"Movie of the week?

This is the same thing
that his brother, Steven,

had had made about his story."

Immediately struck me as,
"Wow. Okay.

This guy is thinking
about his brother."

He immediately went from asking
for this movie of the week

to a full confession.

The first things
out of his mouth

after asking for the movie
of the week was,

"I am guilty.

I killed Carole Sund,
Juli Sund, Silvina Pelosso.

-But Stayner adamantly denied
that he had sexually assaulted

the women that he had murdered.

-Cary Stayner has got quite
a strong narcissistic strand

to his personality.

He didn't want to be seen
as the sexual predator

that he actually was.

He wants to be this tough,
dangerous predator, this hunter,

and that's inconsistent
with the label of a rapist

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,

that he feels ashamed
of who he is.

He feels ashamed
of what he's experienced.

-Stayner's story began
nearly 60 years ago.

-Cary Stayner was born
in August 1961,

in Merced, California.

His father, Delbert,
was a Korean War veteran,

a stiff staff sergeant
who married his mother.

Together,
they had five children,

three girls and two boys.

Close family, but there's not
much doubt in my mind

it was also an abusive family.

It was dysfunctional.

-According to a defense
psychiatric report,

even his mother claimed
to have been abused as a child.

-This family do have
quite a dark history

when you look behind
the closed doors,

so there's a multigenerational
history of abuse going on.

-There were early warning signs
that Cary was having problems

coping as an infant.

-When he's 3 years old,
he starts engaging in a behavior

called trichotillomania,

and this basically
refers to hair pulling.

This is really concerning stuff
because you have

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

who really was trying to
take back some power,

take back some control
over something

that he felt he didn't
have control over,

and this was the way
that it was manifested.

-Age 7, Cary formed violent
fantasies about women.

-He told me
that he had memories

going all the way back
to his childhood,

when he was in his family car
in the supermarket parking lot

fantasizing about killing and
tying up the female checkers.

Thinking that he was that young
and having these urges,

if right, really is
a window into his world.

-But when he's 7, he starts
to have these fantasies

of capturing and killing women,
and for me,

that suggests that he's got
this idea from somewhere.

He's equated violence and sexual
violence with power somehow.

-Growing up,
Cary and his brother, Steven,

7 years younger,
shared a room.

-Cary's younger brother,
Steven,

was absolutely the apple
of his father's eye.

He was the single one,
if you like,

in the family of five children
that the father identified with.

-Then, when Cary
was 11 years old,

tragedy struck the already
troubled Stayner family.

-The decisive moment in Cary's
young life came in December 1972

when he was aged 11,
and his younger brother,

Steven, then age 7,

was abducted by a pedophile

and kept for 7 years.

-This is something that has
a devastating effect

on the family,

so this family member has gone,
and what do you do?

To have something like this
happen during your childhood

is going to have
a devastating impact on you,

especially yourself having
experienced sexual abuse.

-Stayner would later claim
that his Uncle Jesse

sexually abused him
when he was a child.

-For children who experience
these types of things,

they feel like nowhere
is safe for them,

nowhere is secure for them

because your family is supposed
to be your sanctuary.

-The impact that abduction had,
not just on the Stayner family

as a whole, but also on Cary,
was catastrophic.

Cary's father, Delbert,

was distraught,
absolutely distraught,

would cry, would blame Cary for
not looking after his brother,

would say, "Oh, he's the one son
I really loved."

Those vital years
between 11 and 18

were lived in the shadow
of the disappeared Steven,

a kind of almost unimaginable
torture, torment.

-Adding fuel to the fire
that was raging within Cary,

his father heaped responsibility
onto the young boy's shoulders.

-I think he was perhaps,
to a degree,

blamed for the fact
that Steven had gone missing,

and his parents
would say to him,

"Make sure that you
watch your sisters."

So he's charged with the
monitoring and the surveillance

of women, of girls,
at quite a young age,

and he's having quite
a heavy adult responsibility

placed on him.

-Then, on March 2, 1980,
Cary's kidnapped brother,

Steven, suddenly returned home.

-As if by magic,
Steven escapes from his captor

along with another
little boy and reappears.

If there could be said to be
one single moment or trigger

for what became
his killing spree,

it was almost certainly the
return of his brother in 1980,

when Cary was nearly 19.

-Anxiously there to greet him,
his parents, three sisters,

and 18-year-old brother, Cary,

Steven Stayner had escaped
with a much younger boy,

5-year-old Timmy White.

-Steven Stayner's story
made international news.

It was a little boy that escaped
captivity from a pedophile

and basically single-handedly
was responsible

for saving himself,

saving another child, and
putting a pedophile behind bars,

so Cary Stayner's brother,
Steven, was a hero.

-After 7 years,
Parnell thinks that Steven

is really getting
a bit too old for him.

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.

Steven realizes
that this cannot be right.

-He rescued that child
and got out of there

and went to the police,
and he said,

"I know my first name
is Steven,"

and that later became
a book and a movie,

and the U.S. was captivated
by this story of this young man

who, you know, overcame
all this terrible abuse

and then put his life
on the line

to save this 5-year-old child.

-The TV movie called
"I Know My First Name is Steven"

was quickly made.

-Cary Stayner was home
during all of this,

watching his brother
get all these accolades

and had all of the attention
of his despondent parents,

who had been so sad for 7 years
with a missing child.

They were now elated to have
their little boy back,

and I think
it affected Cary a lot.

-Cary later said that.

He said, "I felt like
my parents --

There was clearly a number
one son in the house,

and that was Steven,
and so I was pushed aside,

and I was left, you know,
to fend for myself."

-Steven's appearance
on "Good Morning America"

with his parents further
spurred Cary's simmering rage.

-Delbert is seen hugging
his son,

something that he's
seemingly failed ever to do

to his elder brother, Cary.

Never showed much affection,
but all of a sudden,

Delbert is reunited with,
in a way, the golden youth.

There is no doubt in my mind
that this made

Cary Stayner incredibly angry.

-He's not known for being Cary.

He's known for being the brother
of the boy who went missing.

That's not going to have
a good impact on you.

That is going to really
devastate your own sense

of your identity.

Here's a man who is
spiraling out of control.

He's going towards something,

but we don't quite know
what that is yet.

-Steven's return only heightens
the feeling

that his elder brother

has of being somehow a shadow
in the Delbert family life.

-Then, on September 17, 1989,
9 years after being reunited

with their son, Steven,
the Stayner family

was once again blighted
by tragedy.

-When Steven returned,

the tragedies for this family
were far from over.

So Steven got married,
and he had children,

but he was killed
in a hit-and-run accident

only as a young man,

so his life was
quite brutally ended.

-Steven's untimely death
sparked a descent for Cary

into the dark side
of his personality.

-Ironically, when Steven
was killed in the car accident,

Cary was sharing a house
with his Uncle Jesse

and working for
a local mirror-making company.

Steven's death was the trigger
for Cary Stayner

to escalate to violence.

-In 1990, Cary's
Uncle Jesse was found dead

in the house they shared.

Cary Stayner later claimed
as part of his defense

that his uncle
sexually abused him as a child.

It led some to suggest that

Stayner may have had something
to do with his murder,

but at the time,
no one was charged.

-When you look back
at the circumstances

surrounding Uncle Jesse's death,

it was believed that he was
killed

by a drifter
who was around the property,

but that individual was
never actually identified

and convicted of
that particular murder.

-Cary Stayner was questioned
about it and was a suspect,

but was not tried for it,

and Cary Stayner told me that
he did not commit that murder.

-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.

-He is liked by his workmates.

He's regarded as approachable,
as kindly.

You could trust him with anyone.

You might leave
your children with him.

He's absolutely --
couldn't be a nicer man,

and yet, underneath that,
beneath the surface,

Stayner is profoundly
challenged, unbalanced,

a man at war with himself,
at war with his own desires,

at war with his own fury
at what's happened to him,

at the way he's grown up.

-In 1995, Cary Stayner's rage
boiled over.

-One of his coworkers
come across him one day,

basically pounding his fist
into a plank of wood

and saying that
he feels really anxious.

He feels really nervy and scared
and that he feels like

going and killing
all of his coworkers.

He's seen by a psychiatrist,

but he doesn't receive
any ongoing treatment.

It's considered, "Okay. This
looks like it was a one-off."

-He became more and more
isolated.

His parents then
moved away from Merced

where he had been born
and brought up.

Then he was left on his own.

His Uncle Jesse was dead.

His brother was dead.

He had left the job
he'd had for quite some time.

-He decided that he was going
to go off the radar.

He was going to go
and live in the woods.

This guy was going off the grid.

-In 1997, Cary Stayner was hired
as the resident handyman

at the Cedar Lodge Motel

in the Yosemite National Park
in California.

-At the same time, gets a room
above the diner

in the hotel upstairs.

Now, it's quite a big motel,
50-plus rooms,

plenty of coming and going,
rather beautiful.

It was on the edge
of Yosemite National Park.

-At first, all seemed
to be going well for Cary

in this new
picture-perfect setting.

-Everybody loved this guy,
all of his coworkers,

his supervisors.

Everybody said,
"This was the nicest guy."

-You know, he fits in
with this, this laid-back

kind of hippie lifestyle

of a guy who kind of
is quite transient

and goes from job to job,

and you just let people be
who they wanted to be,

so I think he fitted right in.

-But unbeknownst
to those around him,

the affable handyman
was at war with himself.

-His only respite
was hiking in the woods,

and he developed an appetite
for nude sunbathing.

I suspect that he was
having difficulty

controlling
his own sexual desires

and that perhaps nudity
and nudism shared with others

was a way of coping with that.

He was desperately trying
to keep himself under control,

and there's no doubt,
in my mind, of that.

-Stayner spent more and more
time alone in the woods

indulging his peculiar habits.

-Cary Stayner's
other occupation,

apart from hiking
and nude sunbathing,

was smoking marijuana,

which he did on a regular
and persistent basis.

Now, I am not for one moment

suggesting
that inspired him to kill.

I am not linking one
with another.

What I am saying is
it probably further underlines

the imbalance in
Cary Stayner's personality.

-Stayner became obsessed
with Bigfoot,

a mythical beast that,
legend has it,

inhabits the forests
of America's Pacific Northwest.

-He's firmly convinced
that Bigfoot does exist,

and, indeed, becomes almost
obsessed with Bigfoot

and finding Bigfoot.

-I think in terms
of what Bigfoot represents

for Cary Stayner, it's that
childish kind of pursuit

of the monster under the bed.

You quite enjoy
talking about it.

You quite enjoy the feeling
of kind of fear

that you know isn't real fear
because you're actually safe.

He hasn't felt the ability
to have a safe space

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.

He's not had the opportunity
to do this as a child.

-Bigfoot was what Cary Stayner
was when he wasn't an affable,

likable person.

Bigfoot was
the real Cary Stayner.

I think that's where
the obsession lay,

and I think the whole concept
of his obsession with Bigfoot

was his obsession
with his own dark side.

There was the Cary Stayner
that was eventually

to emerge into the light.

Somewhere inside, he was
harboring this other personality

which sometimes
he simply had to let out.

But by the time we've got
to the end of 1998,

we have a man who is fraying,

is the word
that jumps into my mind.

It's as if he's quietly
coming apart,

but he's coming apart
steadily, increasingly,

and how does he cope with that?

Up until that point,
he's done everything he can to,

quote, control himself.

"I've got to be in control.
I've got --

My father would want me
to be in control.

That's what we are
supposed to do."

-So he got a job
as a maintenance man,

and this is where I think

he starts to spend
a lot of time on his own.

He's thinking.
He's ruminating.

And I think it's only
going to go one way now.

-By 1999, hippie handyman
Cary Stayner

was a serial-killing time bomb.

On February the 14th,
Valentine's Day,

he was primed to explode.

Stayner's victims --'
a mother, her teenager daughter,

and her young friend.

Yosemite National Park,
California, USA.

It was the low season, and there
were only a few tourists around.

Would-be serial killer
and handyman Cary Stayner

was working
at the Cedar Lodge motel,

and all seemed fine.

-He's struggling
to control himself,

struggling to be what his father
would have wanted him to be,

struggling to be
all right when he wasn't,

and you suddenly have,
literally, an explosion.

-I think when we look at
the time that he starts killing,

he is not in a good place.

He's quite chaotic.
He's quite disorganized.

He's smoking a lot of marijuana,
and we know

that this has an impact
on people's perceptions,

on their thinking,
their train of thoughts.

-On Valentine's Day,
Stayner struck.

-Quite by chance,
he sees a mother,

daughter,
and the daughter's friend

pull into the parking lot
of the Lodge

in a red Pontiac Grand Prix.

They've rented it.

Her name was Carole Sund.

Her daughter was called Juli,

and her daughter's friend
from Argentina was visiting,

an exchange student
called Silvina.

-Silvina was 16 years old,
and Juliana was just 15.

-Stayner told me that he knew

that they were the only
occupants in the entire building

and that he noticed them
earlier in the day

and that one of his fantasies
that he had been thinking about

was to capture and torture
two young girls.

-He's been spending quite
a lot of time on his own.

He's been smoking quite a lot of
marijuana at this point in time,

and he's confronted
with this happy family,

this happy family
that he's never had.

-He knocked on the door and
said, "I'm the maintenance man,

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.

Carole is cautious.

She says, "Hang on a minute."

Doesn't open the door,
and she goes back.

Stayner's on the other side
of the door.

"No. There's no leak.
I can't see anything."

"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 --

I'll lose my job, you know,
if you don't let me in."

Stayner is very persuasive.

Carole Sund makes the fatal
mistake of opening the door.

-As soon as he got into
the room, he pulled out his gun.

He took Silvina and Juli,
the teenagers,

and put them in the bathroom,
locked the door

and then came out and strangled
Carole Sund in the hotel room.

-Stayner had killed her.

He took her body and dumped it
in the trunk

of the family's rented car.

He then returned to the room.

-Brought both girls out
and began

to sexually assault them,
we later found out.

He then killed Silvina Pelosso
after she started screaming

and was not
cooperating with him.

He took Silvina's body, then,

and put it into the trunk
along with Carole's,

came back and spent
a few hours sexually abusing

and torturing Juli Sund
inside the hotel room.

-And now the fantasy
really comes to life.

Stayner has convinced himself

that he has some
kind of relationship

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

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,

put her in the car and drove
with the bodies in the trunk.

-Behind the wheel
of the rental car,

Stayner headed east
out of the park.

-He ended up taking Juli to a
reservoir called Lake Don Pedro

which is about 90 miles
from Yosemite.

It's very remote.

-They drive in
the Pontiac Grand Prix

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

as if she were his bride
and he were the bridegroom.

He carries her to this vantage
point and sits her down.

-Around sunrise,
Stayner slit the girl's throat.

-He left her to die
on this hillside.

Now he had to get rid
of the car.

-Stayner dumped the rental car
with the dead bodies

of Carole Sund and
Silvina Pelosso in the trunk.

He then called a cab to take him
90 miles back to the Lodge.

Then, in a bizarre twist,
the taxi driver later

gave a telling insight
into the man

who just committed
a series of murders.

-He says to the female
cab driver,

"Do you believe in Bigfoot?"

on the way back to the motel,
and she says, "No,"

and he says, "Well, you should."

And in my view,
that's an indication,

a firm, clear indication,

that Bigfoot is
the dark side of Cary Stayner.

-The serial killer
was dropped off back

at the Cedar Lodge motel,

and he acted as
if nothing had happened.

-Back to the motel,
back to work,

Stayner, careful, careful man,
has cleaned the room.

I mean, he is the motel's
handyman, after all.

He's made sure
not to leave any traces.

The Pontiac Grand Prix is gone.

The room is clean.

-Two days went by, and still
nobody suspected a thing.

-No one raises any alarm.

Carole's husband tries
to track her down,

but thinks
she's just making away.

They were going to meet
at San Francisco Airport.

-Concerned that he had not
covered his tracks sufficiently,

Stayner returned to the car.

-A few days later,
he drove back there,

found the car and brought
with him gasoline.

He took evidence out of the car
and then torched it.

From there, he decided
to throw the FBI off

by taking Carole Sund's wallet
and drive it to Modesto,

which was
in the other direction.

-Four days after
their disappearance,

the women were finally
reported as missing.

Then, when the wallet was found
4 days later, 8 miles away

in Modesto, California,

the authorities
suspected foul play.

-The wallet was found
by somebody

who was just walking
down the street,

picks it up
and takes it to the police.

As soon as they found
that wallet,

the case changed immediately

from a missing-persons case
to a criminal case.

-The investigators focus their
attention on finding the car

that the women had
rented for their trip.

-It was a red Pontiac,

so this gave investigators
something to search for,

and because this took place
at a national park,

it had immense attention,
not only from the media,

but from the American public.

-The entire staff working
at the Cedar Lodge

were questioned
within days of the murders,

including the genial
handyman, Cary Stayner.

-The FBI said that he seemed
stoic and calm as can be,

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

to arrest him at any moment.

-A month went by,

and the women's bodies
had still not been found.

-The women had vanished,
and the case was getting cold.

Then the next break happened.

The car was located
by a local man

who was out hunting
in the woods.

Inside the trunk of the car
were two bodies,

Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso,

and the car was burnt
to the point

where their bodies
were unrecognizable.

In fact, they had
to use DNA testing

to positively identify them.

-In Cary Stayner's case,

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.

We have the fact that the bodies
are starting to decompose,

and then we've got
the effect of fire.

That sort of fire is
really quite ineffective

at destroying a body,

so it is a challenge
to the forensic investigators,

but by no means
one that can't be overcome.

-But Stayner was far from being
considered the prime suspect.

-By this time, Stayner is --

You know, how could he possibly
be an object of interest?

I mean,
"I may work at the hotel,

but all sorts of people
work at the hotel."

And, in fact, the local police
drag in all sorts

of potential villains,
you know, drug dealers,

local armed robbers.

They've got about seven
or eight possible suspects,

and at one point they even say,

"I'm sure we've got, you know,
the perpetrator in custody."

-He comes onto the radar
of the investigation,

and he's actually quite helpful
with the investigators.

He shows them around the lodge.

He answers their questions,
and I think,

at this point in proceedings,
he does, I think,

enjoy that feeling of being
close to the investigation,

of knowing how much

or how little the police
know themselves,

and I think this is
something that he feels

that he's going
to get away with.

-But the body of 15-year-old
Juliana Sund was still missing,

and in yet another
extraordinary turn,

Cary Stayner wrote
a letter to the FBI.

-Stayner becomes so confident,
and, indeed, in a way

so arrogant
that he decides to write the FBI

to tell him where
they can find Juli's body

and draws them a little map
and tells them,

"We had a lot of fun together."

-Two weeks after the car was
found, the FBI got the letter,

went out to this spot
in a reservoir,

and there, lo and behold,
was Juli Sund's remains.

-The 15-year-old girl's
decomposed body was found hidden

in the underbrush by the
Merced River in Modesto County.

-When the facts came out about
the condition of Juli's body,

the fact that she had been
murdered, cut,

her neck almost cut off,

that put this case
into a whole nother realm.

When the details
of Juli's murder

and the brutality
of that murder was released,

that sent another shock wave
through the region

because people now knew

that these women
were not only murdered,

but brutally murdered
and possibly tortured.

-But serial killer
Cary Stayner was not done yet.

Soon he would strike again,
and this time

Stayner would do it with
even more terrifying ferocity.

By the end of June 1999,
police had discovered the dead

and mutilated bodies
of three women.

They had been viciously murdered

in the Yosemite
National Park, California.

They were found dumped
in the woods about 80 miles

from the Cedar Lodge motel
where they had been staying.

But the killer, Cary Stayner,
the handyman at the same motel,

was not even a suspect.

-The FBI was convinced that
they had the killers in custody.

They believed that
they had solved the case,

and they were just working
on getting more evidence

because they truly believed that
these methamphetamine users

and dealers were responsible,

even though the real killer
was sitting at the hotel

where those girls
were the whole time.

-Three months passed.

No one comes knocking on Cary
Stayner's door to arrest him.

Stayner has remained
undetected, uncharged,

still the affable handyman
at the Cedar Lodge motel.

-But it was only a matter

of time before
Stayner would kill again.

-The balm that I think he felt

from the killings of Carole
and her daughter

and her daughter's friend
was wearing off,

and I think he felt
that he needed another victim.

-On July 21, 1999,
Stayner found his next target,

26-year-old Joie Ruth Armstrong,
a park worker.

-She was one of these girls
that just loved

being out in nature,

and you could see it
in her face, big smile.

Her mother talked
about how happy

she was to have this position

and how happy
she was to be living

in one of the most
beautiful places in the world.

-Joie was loading her car
outside the cabin in the forest

where she and fellow
park workers stayed.

The location was about
a 30-minute drive from the lodge

where Stayner was based.

-Stayner would say that once
he realized she was alone,

something clicked in him.

He said that he was in an area
that he often went to

because he had seen
Bigfoot there.

-And I think they struck up
some kind of conversation

about working in the park,
and here he's got

another opportunity
that's presented itself to him.

-She was by herself.

She's getting ready to go meet
some mates for a hike

up in Northern California,

so she was packing her car
in Yosemite Valley

getting ready to leave
when Cary Stayner noticed her.

He approached Joie with his gun,
forced her inside her house

and put duct tape around
her mouth and her hands

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.

-But taped and bound,
she did not get far.

-She was unable
to outrun Stayner,

so he was able to park his car,

run around,
and tackle her and grab her.

-He absolutely loses
his temper, and he attacks her

so violently that he effectively
decapitates her,

cuts her throat,
but so violently

that it effectively separates
her head from her body.

-He told the FBI that there was
so much blood on her head

that when he looked at it,
he couldn't even see her face.

-We have an escalation
of what he's doing.

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,

and a very brave young woman

to try and escape from
such horrible circumstances.

-This time, however,
Stayner had sealed his own fate.

-Ultimately, that's the murder
that leads back

to the other three.

Had he not committed
that fourth murder,

I don't know that
he would have been caught.

-The next day, on July 22, 1999,
an alert park ranger

found Joie's body.

It was clear that
the current suspects were,

in fact, innocent.

-When Joie Armstrong
turned up dead,

it didn't take long for the FBI

to tell the public that,
indeed, they were wrong,

and the real killer
was still out there.

This now re-ignited
the entire case,

and it took it to another level.

The idea that a young woman
was decapitated

inside the park
was unnerving to everyone,

and now it was all hands on deck

because there was
a murderer on the loose.

-A blue and white
1979 International Scout

was seen parked near
the scene of the crime.

Of the afternoon
of the 22nd of July,

two park rangers
looking for the car

in fact found
37-year-old Cary Stayner.

-One of the things
that he liked to do in the park

was go find a spot along
the river and sunbathe naked.

So after killing Joie Armstrong,
he went to one of these spots

and was out sunbathing naked

when two park rangers
came across

and talked to him, confiscated
his backpack, and let him go.

-Stayner was interviewed again
at the Cedar Lodge.

Again, he was allowed
to be free.

They took samples
and photographs of his tires

to match tire tracks
at the scene,

but they allowed Stayner
to stay free for another day.

-With the net closing in,
Stayner fled.

-After matching the tire tracks,

the FBI went back to arrest
Cary Stayner at the Cedar Lodge.

When they got there,
he was gone,

so they put out
an all-points bulletin.

-The FBI found him on July
the 24th, 1999,

just 48 hours
after his fourth murder.

-Somebody had seen
the news reports that

they were looking for
Cary Stayner,

and there was a photo of him,
and lo and behold,

he was at a nudist camp
up in the Sacramento area.

So he had driven from Yosemite
to this nudist camp

and was just sitting at the
restaurant at the nudist camp

when the FBI came
to interview him a third time

with the intent
of taking him into custody.

-By this point, I'm absolutely
certain in my own mind that

Stayner knew he was going
to be caught and was,

in fact, quite happy
to be caught.

I think, in a way,
he had acknowledged that he was

so badly distorted
as a personality

that he wanted
to be incarcerated.

-When Stayner was arrested,

Ted Rowlands got the call
that changed his life,

and the exclusive confession
that he was able to secure

helped to convict
a serial killer.

-I was alerted by my station
that an arrest

had been made
in Joie Armstrong's murder,

so I immediately
went to Sacramento.

I went to the jail to see

if I could get
an interview with Stayner.

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,

and the jailer called up
to the cell block

and received word that Stayner
did not want to talk.

So I decided that I was
going to keep asking,

and I ended up spending
the day going back and forth

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."

-Eventually, the reporter's
persistence paid off.

-I remember walking back
into the jail

thinking to myself
I was wasting my time,

and the jailer looked
at me like, "Ugh. You're back."

And I said,
"You know, one more time,

can you just ask him
one more time if he'll talk?"

And the jailer got off
the phone and said,

"By God, he's going to talk."

And immediately I froze
and thought, "Oh, my gosh."

Within 2 minutes,
I was on an elevator

going up to the prison tier,

and I could see
through the glass.

I could see Cary Stayner
go out of his cell

and start walking towards me and
coming right up to the glass,

and there I was 3 feet away
from this serial killer,

and we were talking face-to-face

using a telephone
going back and forth.

-Stayner coldly admitted
to the four murders

that he had committed
in the Yosemite National Park.

-From the moment he walked in,

he was rigid and very
clinical the way he spoke.

His voice didn't go up or down.

There was little or no emotion.

Even when he talked
about the murders,

his demeanor was just detached.

-Cary Stayner confessed,

but despite evidence
to the contrary,

he refused to admit
to key elements of the crimes.

-He admitted to the murders,
but he glossed over the details.

In fact, he lied.

He lied about some
of the story to me.

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

for the murders,

but he was embarrassed about the
torture and the sexual assault,

and he didn't want the public
to know about that.

-I think a killer who confesses
is sometimes

getting some of it
off his chest,

but who's to say, for example,

that Cary Stayner
hadn't killed again?

Did he kill other people?

It's entirely possible.

-And I asked him, also,
to give the families a message.

"What would you say to the Sund,
Pelosso, Armstrong families?"

And he said that he would
like to tell the families

that he's sorry
that their loved ones

were where they were
when they were,

and that, to me,
was really haunting

because what he was
really saying was,

"I couldn't help myself.

There was nothing
I could do about it."

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,

saying that he had had these
urges to torture and kill women

since he was a 7-year-old child.

It was a way to articulate
that this demon inside him

was too powerful.

-Cary Stayner was eventually
tried and convicted

on four counts of murder
as well as additional felonies.

He was sentenced to death
on December the 12th, 2002,

and is now behind bars

in San Quentin
State Prison, California,

awaiting the death penalty.

-There is nothing sympathetic
about this man.

He is, and remains,
a monster, thankfully,

not able to commit
further murders.

If part of Cary Stayner
saw himself as Bigfoot,

it was the part that went
hiking in the wilderness.

He was the monster in the woods.

He was the man whom everybody
should be afraid of,

but, of course,

he didn't present
that to the outside world

working as a handyman
in a motel,

but that's what he thought he
was, and that's what he became.

-The savage and senseless
murders of four innocent women

in the pristine environs
of the Yosemite National Park

in California
marks Cary Stayner as one

of the world's
most evil killers.