Transcript for Cary Stayner takes refuge in Yosemite: Part 4
By 1989, the Stayner family had fallen far from the spotlight. The world had moved on. The Berlin wall fell. There was a big earthquake during the world series in San Francisco. But the Stayner brothers were struggling, each of them both in their own ways. Steven’s celebrity was pretty short-lived. He did make some money for consulting on the TV film and actually had a bit part as one of the police officers rescuing himself. He blew almost all of that money on cars and drugs and booze. He worked some menial jobs. He got married. He had two kids. He was very proud of who he was when he told me. He was not ashamed at all. He was just very well-grounded, for a person that had gone through what he went through. But then, at the age of 24, he was riding a motorcycle without a license. He was riding home from work, and a vineyard worker pulled out in front of him and hit him and flipped him. You just have to feel this poor man was dealt such a horrific hand of cards in life, and in death. You know, Steven really did the best that he could. For seven years, he was subjected to unspeakable horrors. He did work for a living. He did fall in love. He did have two kids. I see him as being on a good path. And that’s how I prefer to think of him, you know. This one, it says, “Dear Lori, hi, how’s everything in comptche? Good, I hope. Wah-wah-wah.” He used to always say that. It’s not everybody that gets a letter from a famous person, namely me. Love always, Steve. So I cherish these letters. Forever. Steven was gone now, but in a big sense, so was Cary. Cary had no direction. He thought his life was going nowhere. Cary never recovered from his own emotional difficulties and then, coupled with Steven’s tragic death. Well, not long after Steven died, Cary’s uncle was shot and killed in the home they shared together. Cary was very close to his uncle. Steven’s dead, uncle Jerry’s murdered. This rage is starting to bubble up. Cary has a couple of nervous breakdowns. One was fairly violent. He stated that he felt like jumping in a truck, driving it through the shop and killing the boss and killing everybody in the office, and then torching the place. And that’s when I told him, “You need to go see a doctor, Cary.” They got him to a mental health center, but he left. Cary is literally crying out for help. He’s literally saying, “I’m losing my mind.” What a lot of people didn’t know at the time was that Cary was having these dreams and these fantasies about killing women. Cary was a lost soul. He ended up taking refuge in a place that he loved, and that was yosemite. In the fall of ’97, he drove his international scout to the tiny town of el portal, which is the doorstep to yosemite national park. By this time, Cary’s in his 30s, and he lands a job as a handyman at the cedar lodge. The cedar lodge is this rustic lodge seven miles outside the gate of yosemite. It is surrounded by and filled with these wonderful wooden bear sculptures. Working at the cedar lodge gave Cary access to his beloved yosemite. His idea of serenity was to maybe smoke a little pot and to sunbathe naked. Well, he was always naked. No tan lines on him. I hung out at the river with him, a lot of times alone. He never hit on me, and I know he never hit on any of my friends. Never that uncomfortable come-on. Never anything like that. Not even a hint of it. But not everyone at cedar lodge was enamored of him. There was a woman there named Trish hautz. She and her husband ran the restaurant that was attached to the lodge. They had a teenage daughter that Cary spent an uncomfortable amount of time with. My daughter would start freaking out ’cause he would just stand there and stare at my child as she’s swimming in the pool. And I said, “You go towards my daughter ever again and I will destroy you.” He was cold, hateful, but I’ve dealt with cold and hateful people before. Trish was, in some ways, a sort of savant. She seems to be the only one who saw this side of Cary. By February, 1999, Cary had been at the cedar lodge about two years. And the winters were very desolate. Not a lot of tourists visit the park at that time of year. Winter is a spectacle. When the granite is iced in beautiful white snow, you really get to understand how extraordinary these walls are. Among the small group of people who did come to the cedar lodge and go to see yosemite was Carole Sund, her daughter, Juli, 16, and their friend, named silvina pelosso. The three of them are on a trip two-fold. Look at colleges and then also to enjoy yosemite. They had a red pontiac that they had rented for this trip. This was an opportunity for them to show silvina, who was visiting from Argentina, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. And they spent the day touring the park, going to a lot of the highlights. They went ice skating. That night, most of the other guests had actually gone home. And their room was about as far as you can get from the lobby and the restaurant. In a dark corner of the lot. They had dinner at the restaurant. Then they went to the front desk, and got a movie they were gonna go watch back in their room. All of this rage that had been building up in Cary all of these years, he finally decides he’s going to act upon it. As I walked, there was a red car in the 500 building all by itself. The window was open, the curtain was open, and I can see inside that there was two young women, and the mother, and no man. For Cary, he’s been planning this for years. There’s a fantasy that he’s created in his mind. And this is the night when all of this rage is finally let loose. Something clicks and, at that moment, Cary Stayner knows it’s time. ??? All the ways, all the ways ???
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
