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Yosemite Park Killer: Cary Stayner · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:01
  Discretion is advised. This is treated murder. Murderers, rapists, and kidnappers
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  often choose to shift blame away from themselves, pointing the finger at some kind
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  of traumatic event that changed the course of their lives and made them turn towards
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  crime. Detectives and criminal psychologists also examined the upbringing and history of killers,
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  searching for anything that might have acted as a turning point molestation, abandonment,
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  violence. But for one serial killer, his turning point was a little more
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  unusual, the childhood kidnapping of his own younger brother. Carrie Stainer had three
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  sisters but only one brother, Stephen, who was four years younger than Carrie.
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  When Stephen was seven years old, he disappeared. Although his family had
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  no idea what happened to him, Stephen was being held captive less than forty
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  miles away, kept in the house of the man who abducted him, a
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  pedophile by the name of Kenneth Parnell. By the time seven years had passed,
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  the chances of Stephen still being alive were slim to none. Even before
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  Stephen went missing, Carrie had not been like the other kids. He'd always
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  been anxious, developing trichotillomania as a toddler, which made him pull out his
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  own hair. Despite medication, he continued to compulsively pluck the hair from his
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  scalp, causing bald spots that the other kids made fun of him for later.
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  He reported having dark sexual fantasies from a very young age, imagining kidnapping,
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  raping, and killing women, even before his own brother became the victim
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  of the same kind of criminal. Stephen's abduction became the center of Carrie's teenage
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  years. While his parents grieved, Stephen, their older son felt neglected and
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  pushed aside. He was shockingly intelligent and creative, but none of his academic
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  pursuits satisfied him. His dark fantasies got stronger and stronger in his teenage years,
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  and he eventually acted on them by exposing his genitals to a friend of
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  his sisters. Then, essentially a miracle took place. Stephen Steiner, who
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  was now a teenager, managed to escape captivity alongside Timothy White, another kidnapped
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  boy. He was an instant celebrity, even featuring in a TV series called
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  I Know My First Name Is Stephen. Carrie felt like his family's forgotten child,
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  the son that they didn't pay attention to. After his graduation, Carrie
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  had gotten a job working at a glass company. He later said that while
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  he was at work installing windows, he constantly fantasized about killing all of his
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  co workers by crashing a truck into his workplace and then lighting it on fire.
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  During this time, tragedy struck the Stainer family again. After surviving seven
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  years of sexual abuse in captivity, Stephen was in a fatal motorcycle crash.
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  He'd only lived for ten years after his escape. In his early thirties,
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  Carry tried to kill himself with carbon monoxide poisoning, but his suicide attempt failed.
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  Four years later, he spent time in a mental health facility after having
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  a breakdown, but after his symptoms got better, he was discharged. Carrie
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  tried to self medicate, using drugs to distract himself. All they did was
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  make him more and more unstable. In nineteen ninety seven, Carrie started work
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  as a general handyman at the Cedar Lodge motel, close to one of the
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  entrances to Yosemite National Park. The lodge soon became a hunting ground full of
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  the kind of prey that he'd always fantasized about catching. Over a six month
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  period in nineteen nine, four people connected to the motel were violently killed.
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  In February nineteen ninety nine, Carol Yvonne Sunned, her fifteen year old daughter
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  Julie Sunned, and a sixteen year old exchange student, Sylvina Paloso, were
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  staying at Cedar Lodge and went missing. Two of the bodies, Carol's and
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  Sylvina's, were found almost a month later, crammed into the trunk of Carol's
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  rental car. The car had been set on fire, and Carol and Sylvina's
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  charred remains needed to be identified with dental records. Even with a degree of
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  damage the fired caused to the bodies. The autopsy found that Sylvina had been
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  raped while Carol had been strangled. Both victims had also been shot. One
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  week after the two bodies were located, somebody sent a note to the local
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  police, reading quote, we had fun with this one, with a sketch
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  of a map drawn underneath. At the location indicated by the map, police
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  found jewe's body. She had been sexually assaulted before having her throat cut.
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  Police carried out interviews of all the employees at the motel, but they
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  didn't view Carrie as a suspect. Four months later, a headless body was
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  found in the same area and later identified as twenty six year old Joey Ruth
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  Armstrong, a naturalist who worked for the Yosemite Institute. Unlike the previous three
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  victims, Joey had only been killed the previous day, making it easier for
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  investigators to follow the trail of the killer. Eyewitnesses had seen Carrie's vehicle parked
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  outside Joey's cabin the day before her body was found, but he was nowhere
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  to be seen. The FBI was involved and track carried to a nudest resort
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  where he was staying and rested him on suspicion of murder. During questioning,
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  Carrie made an unusual choice. He immediately confessed to killing Joey, but told
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  investigators that he had also murdered Carol, Julie and Sylphe and he had been
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  the one to send the map of where Julie's body could be found. Now
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  investigators had a man in custody who had openly admitted to four violent crimes.
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  It would be highly unusual for a man this violence and sadistic to only have
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  started killing in his late thirties, and detectives began to examine other cases that
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  Carrie could have been involved in when he was younger. Once they started looking,
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  the clues were everywhere. At nineteen eighty one, a young woman named
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  Patricia Dahlstrom had testified against a cult leader, Donald Gibson, who had sexually
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  assaulted her. Donald was an acquaintance of Carrie. Carrie even went to his
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  trial to support the man. Two years later, Patricia went missing in Yosemite
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  National Park and her skeletal remains were found the following year. Had Carrie murdered
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  Patricia as revenge for testifying against his friend? It definitely looks that way.
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  Another cold case, at nineteen ninety four, two severed hands were found in
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  the Serra Nevada Foothills, followed by a decapitated handless body two months later.
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  The following year, the remains were positively identified as a twenty four year old
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  woman named Sherlyn Murphy. Her killer was never identified, and to this day,
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  despite extensive searching, her missing head has not been found. Was it
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  possible that Carrie also murdered male victims. Investigators considered the possibility that he had
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  been also responsible for the disappearance of twenty year old Michael Madden, who had
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  gone missing on his way to California's Stanislos National Forest. Yosemite National Park,
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  where Carrie seemed to commit all of his crimes, was only seventy five miles
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  away from there. There was also one potential victim who was closer to home,
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  Carrie's uncle, Jesse Stainer, who had been shot to death in nineteen
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  ninety. The murder weapon was Jesse's own gun, and the killer was never
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  found. Later, Carrie claimed that his uncle had molested him when he was
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  a little boy. Although he was never found guilty of killing his uncle,
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  he had a connection with the victim as well as a possible motive for killing
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  him. Because Joey Armstrong had been killed on federal land, Carrie went to
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  trial in federal court. Desperate to avoid a death sentence, he decided to
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  plead guilty to all the charges against him, a hefty list of first degree
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  murder, kidnapping, and aggravated sexual abuse that had resulted in death. Despite
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  seemingly completely unbothered even proud during his confession, he showed a completely different reaction
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  during his sentencing in front of the court, Carrie began sobbing, saying,
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  quote, I wish I could tell you why I did such a thing,
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  but I don't even know myself. I'm so sorry. I wish there was
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  a reason, but there isn't. It's senseless. Carry avoided a death sentence,
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  instead being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In
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  state court. Facing charges for another three murders, Carrie changed his tactic and
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  pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. While a doctor testified that Carrie had
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  autism, OCD and abnormal sexual desires, as well as a potential history of
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  sexual abuse, Carrie was found to be sane. He was found guilty a
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  first degree murder of all three victims, as well as the kidnapping of one
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  victim he'd remove from the scene. For these charges, Carrie was sentenced to
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  death in two thousand and two. Since then, Carrie has been imprisoned on
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  death row at California's San Quentin State Prison, but nobody has been executed in
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  California since two thousand and six. The Stainer family lost their two boys,
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  one a victim and one a perpetrator. Somehow, Carrie lived through the experience
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  of his brother being abducted by a monster and then grew up to be a
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  monster himself. That's ten Minute Murder for today, brief and binge able true
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