Transcript for Cary Stayner confesses to killing four innocent women in 1999: Part 9
What would she do without me? Jeffrey rinek and Cary Stayner have been in the car for two hours from that nudist camp when they finally arrive at the FBI offices in Sacramento. Neither Jeff nor I really knew why we were there and talking to him. We didn’t know what his involvement was, if any. The three of us are settled in the room eating pizza. As a general rule, when law enforcement is interrogating a suspect, they don’t order pizza. It’s not textbook. It was grasping at straws to figure out, where do we start to begin the interview. Cary Stayner starts launching off into, this is gonna be my last meal as a free man. Out of the blue, he looks at the agents and says, “I can give you closure.” I said, “Cary, what exactly do you mean closure, and about what?” And he says, you know why we’re here. And he told us, “Hey, I can answer some questions about Joie and more.” And we didn’t know what that was. They thought Cary Stayner was a witness to something. And suddenly, out of the blue, he’s dangling a confession to these FBI agents who I think were shocked in many ways. But he has a condition, an absurd, horrible condition. Who would go into an FBI office and ask two FBI agents to see child pornography? That’s not your everyday request. And he said not just a couple, three, four images. I’m talking about a stack that high. Well, can you imagine what these FBI agents are thinking? What in the heck are we dealing with here? You never say no to them. You basically put them off saying, “We’re going to get to that. I know you want that. I’d like you to have it.” But you move it down the ladder. They managed to buy some time. So in the meantime, “What do you have?” And then Cary starts to talk about Joie. Okay, we’re going to start talking about her. In the interview, Jeff continues the bond that they had created in that car ride and wants Stayner to continue to talk. If it hadn’t been for bonding over Steven in that car ride, this whole confession might never have happened. It seemed like she was alone. I had a backpack, small green backpack. In the backpack, I had a .22 revolver. He was talking about some very grisly things as if he was reading a soup label. She stepped up on the porch. And she was talking to me. And then she turned around. And that’s when I pulled out the gun and put it to her head. She turned around and freaked out. It’s very unsettling to listen to Cary Stayner. He’s calculating. He’s creepy. I took her into the back corner of the house, to the bedroom. I duct taped her and gagged her. You’re doing fine. This is hard. You’re being good, brave. Go ahead. The thing that Jeff does in a very magical way is to not be judgmental, to keep Cary talking. The bottom line is, nobody’s going to talk to you if they think you’re disgusted by what they’re saying. She resisted quite a bit. Mm-hmm. I didn’t hit her or anything. I just used threats and the gun to subdue her. As I was trying to duct tape her hands behind her back, she kept fighting me. He wanted us to know he was not beating her or being violent or sadistic. He wants to control what we think of him. It becomes pretty clear to me that he’s just this big, emotionless monster. And Joie comes across as heroic. ‘Cause she was a fighter. And he was a coward. He successfully binds her with the duct tape. And he binds her to the point where all she can pretty much do is walk. The key to everything is what Cary Stayner says next. The question always has been, why was Joie’s body found where it was found in the woods? How did it get there? Why did it get there? And Cary Stayner is about to reveal exactly what happened. And as I was driving, she started going crazy, just jumping all over the place in the back of the truck. And I couldn’t really control her. And she fell out through the window, on the road right in front of the barn. She didn’t fall out. She was fighting every way she could to get out of that car and she did. And he didn’t expect it. The idea that she was able to, bound, fling herself out of the moving car in an almost superhuman way, is absolutely astounding. I slammed the truck into park and jumped out. And she got up off the ground and started running. And he calmly got out. And he ran down. And he chased her. And somewhere back in there is where he caught her. What did you do next? Took the knife from my back pocket. And I slit her throat. The investigators told me that I should be very proud of her, that because she fought there was a lot of evidence. Cary Stayner has lived up to his promise. He gave them the confession, Joie Armstrong. But remember, he said he had more. The “And more” now is what’s critical, without him getting his precious kiddie porn. We were advised that he could not have the condition he wanted. Now, my biggest fear was in place. We still weren’t sure that he had done sund/pelosso. Jeff was very empathetic. And he was saying, “I can already see a change in you. You seem like you’re feeling better. You know, whatever this is that’s inside you, you need to get it out.” There was a dramatic period of silence that was followed by him saying, “Okay, let’s do it.” I knocked on the door. I said that I was maintenance. And there was a leak in a room upstairs. And they let me in. So now he’s giving the agents this blow by blow of every gruesome detail. The pelosso girl couldn’t speak very good English, was crying a lot. And Juli was very calm. And at the same time, he’s giving them a glimpse inside these strange thoughts that he was having. She was very cooperative. She did everything I told her to do, no tears, no nothing. He constantly reminds us that she was cooperative, that she did everything he wanted her to do. The things he wanted to do to her, that somehow she wanted him to. He’s painting a picture as if he has some kind of relationship with Juli. I put her in the car and just drove. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I was going to do. You’re at don Pedro. It’s this beautiful reservoir. And he’s telling us a story about how he’s gonna have to let her go, almost like he’s doing her a favor. This has nothing to do with love. It has everything to do with playing out this violent fantasy in his head. I took Juli out of the car. And I carried her down the pathway. I asked him, “How did you carry her?” And he goes “You know, like this.” And I said, you mean like a groom carries a bride? And he says, “Yeah, like that.” I laid out the blanket. And I guess I knew what I was gonna do. ‘Cause I had the knife with me. And I slit her throat. It was a brutal homicide. What actually happened had no relation to, in any way, to what he was describing to us. But he said after he killed her, he stood here. And he marveled out at the view of the rising sun. It was so hard to understand how someone could just disassociate from what they had just done and look out and enjoy the beauty of nature. But it’s not over. Bombshells are on the way. I loved Cary. I could not believe what I just heard.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
