Transcript of Evil in Eden (Rebroadcast)

In 2010, a family of 4 in California goes missing. Investigators spend years looking for answers. Is this a family on the run, or is the truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this is What Happened to the McStays? Follow What Happened to the McStays for weekly episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Or if you can't wait, the entire series is streaming now ad-free for subscribers to 20/20 True Crime+. Find 20/20 True Crime+ on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial today. This is a story of 2 brothers, one hero and the other a monster.

Oh, my brother.

A serial killer in a national park is a story, but there was more to this story because you had a serial killer whose brother had been a national celebrity.

7 long years ago, a youngster in California vanished.

Today, he showed up with another boy.

5-year-old Timothy White.

He literally said, I was not gonna let that child go through what I had already been through.

Books, television, movies— it was absolutely incredible.

The moment that Steven Stayner is abducted is the moment that this story really begins.

There's going to be a homecoming. You would imagine sheer joy, that the entire family would be ecstatic, but one member is not so thrilled.

He was cold, hateful.

A vicious, vicious killer, but he's even It's even more twisted than that.

We have recovered 2 bodies.

You could never imagine something so heinous happening in and around Yosemite.

I mean, this is a story that decades later they're still talking about it.

Maybe, just maybe, we're gonna find this girl alive.

He was handsome. He was warm, like a big teddy bear. He was just our friend. It is frightening just to think what he was thinking the whole time.

This is Yosemite. These things don't happen in Yosemite.

Yosemite actually means people who kill.

I laid out the blanket. I guess I knew what I was gonna do, 'cause I had the knife with me.

You never expect so much terror to happen in such a beautiful place.

Monster!

This story starts in Merced, California. It's in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by almond groves and peach orchards.

It's a small farming town in the Central Valley of California, which is in the huge shadow of Yosemite. Merced, they, they call the gateway to Yosemite.

I started singing bye-bye, Miss American Pie.

We're talking 1972. American Pie was on the radio.

This'll be the day that I die.

This is the year of Watergate. It was the year that Pong was introduced.

The Brady Bunch.

The Brady Bunch. We became the Brady Bunch.

The Stainers lived on Betty Street. It was a middle-class kind of a neighborhood.

The parents were Delbert and Kay, and Kerry was the oldest of 5 children. He had a younger brother, Steven, and 3 sisters, too.

Del worked as a mechanic in a peach cannery.

His mother Kay was, was always described as distant, somewhat aloof, a woman who raised her children with sort of a— almost a coldness.

Kerry was a nice guy. He was kind of a quiet guy. Our days would be just get on our bikes in the morning and go to the park, hang out with friends, or skateboard.

He loved his brother, hung out with him, played with him, looked out for him. Steven had walked almost all the way home. That's when it happened. A man in a car offered him a ride.

So at the same time that the Stayner boys are growing up in Merced, about 2 hours away in Yosemite, there's a little stooped, pasty, nebbishy guy named Ken Parnell.

Kenneth Parnell was working at the Yosemite Lodge doing the books for them. He was convicted previously of molesting a child.

But he found a job in Yosemite because that kind of guy could find a job in Yosemite. A lot of people run to Yosemite to get away from things.

And Kenneth decided that he was going to abduct a young boy. He was able to recruit a coworker of his.

A slow-witted fella named Irvin Murphy. And finally on December 4th, it was a sleety wintry day. He and Irvin Murphy got into Ken's big white Buick and drove into Merced.

Stephen, what happened that afternoon? Do you remember when you were walking home from school?

And they saw this little boy, 7-year-old Steven Stayner.

Steven had left school, headed straight south from here, 4 blocks, and when he was on Yosemite Parkway, which leads to Yosemite National Park, he was approached by an Irvin Murphy. Murphy had some religious tracts with him, which he'd been using to approach other kids. He asked Steven if he thought that his mother would be willing to make a charitable donation to the church. At that point, Parnell drove up in this old white Buick. Murphy opened the rear door, and Steven got in. Instead of taking a right so he could go to his home, they continued directly eastbound.

They're driving out of Merced, going up Highway 140.

Kenneth Parnell stops the car, and he goes to a payphone. He comes back and tells Steven, your parents, I just spoke to them. They no longer want you.

And Parnell then told him that you're going to be my son. He was a 7-year-old, thoroughly confused kid. I think that he was probably used to an authoritative approach by his parents, so when Parnell told him him that Hearns had said that he was going to go with him, I think he probably believed it.

Steven's abduction was sudden, wrenching, brutal.

And yet he's going to be hiding in plain sight for years.

The moment that Steven Stayner is abducted is the moment that this story of 2 brothers really begins and was absolutely pivotal in terms of the monster coming to life.

December 4th, 1972, Steven Stayner was abducted on Highway 140 in the city of Merced by individuals driving an older model white Buick.

And they're driving east towards Yosemite.

Parnell lived most of his life in Yosemite at the lodge. He kept Steven in his room for about a week after that.

He kept giving him this cough syrup to sedate him. I think that Parnell felt that the more confused and sedated that he could keep Steven in for the first several weeks, the better chance he stood to erase his connection back to his own family.

When Steven was 3, When Steven didn't make it home from school, his parents immediately were alerted.

Merced was the lead police department. And so they really mounted a large effort to search. And they searched. And there was just nothing there.

It happened here at this corner. And it was such a classic situation, the kind against which parents are constantly warning their children. The next morning, there was an empty desk in the 2nd grade class at Charles Wright School. When he was missing, it rocked the Stayner family. It hurt the family dynamic, and it crushed Del Stayner.

He just becomes a broken man, really. Kay becomes even more distant, more aloof. She's sort of raising her children almost robotically.

Kay and Delbert became colder to their other children.

Carrie was very upset.

I've heard stories about him going out and wishing on a star that his brother would come home.

Maybe he had some guilt because I believe he was supposed to have been with his brother.

Delbert kind of saw Steven as his real son, and Kerry kind of felt abandoned, neglected.

A few weeks after he kidnapped Steven, Parnell pulled up stakes, and he started drifting around California. They moved first to Santa Rosa. They would stay in fleabag motels. a crappy trailer or a broken-down house.

Steven Stayner had a new father figure, and it was Kenneth Parnell, who by day was his father and by night was his rapist.

Parnell told him that his name was going to be Dennis Parnell, and he enrolled him in school, and the school failed to get the records. Those were the days where you'd get a copy of a record. You know, there was no email.

The state does not know. In the summer of 1976, just a couple of weeks before the bicentennial, it's been 4 years since Steven was told Ken Parnell was his father. Parnell and Steven ended up in the little town of Compche, California, which is in Mendocino County.

Comanche was really tiny. It had maybe a post office and a general store. And he kept him on the grounds in a trailer.

So this is where Ken Parnell used to live many years ago. It's a good place to hide.

It's a long ways from anywhere out here.

Nobody knew what was going on behind closed doors and that this wasn't a father-son at all.

By this time, I'm pretty certain that Parnell felt, I've got him emotionally locked in. So he knew that this kid was going nowhere.

From all outward appearances, he adjusted to that new life. There was no school out there, so every day he had to get on a bus.

This picture, it just describes what he looked like. His personality, his hairdo, his flannel shirt, his smile. My name is Lori, and Steven Stayner was my boyfriend in high school. He had a great personality. He was spunky. You could see that he wanted to play and be with kids and have fun. Growing up with him consisted of a lot of fishing, riding bicycles.

He sort of reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. He had the same haircut and same shape face even.

He made his way into getting into athletics his freshman year of high school. He had a level of maturity to him that most of the kids didn't have.

And I think part of that was, you know, he was already smoking cigarettes.

A lot of kids had freedom, but not his kind of come and go as he pleased, which makes me wonder, why didn't he just leave?

The answer is that Steven now has attached to Parnell on some parental level. And that's still his dependency day in and day out for food, clothing. And let's face it, it sounds like Parnell basically let him do Whatever he wanted to do as far as drugs, alcohol. And so his comfort level now has set in.

Because of the sexual abuse, I think that played into it, too. He knew that that wasn't normal. I don't think he wanted to have other people know about it. In some ways, it was just easier to go along with what was happening to him.

Steven still has a reality that he has a real family someplace else.

We were walking home and he started crying. He said, I want to go home to my real home. We just let it go. We had been drinking some beer and, you know, kids.

While Steven is a freshman at Mendocino High School, some 300 miles to the south, his brother Kerry was an upperclassman at Merced High School.

He was Cary Stayner, the kid who had his brother kidnapped. There was a pall over him.

He actually was voted most creative. Cary was very well known for his drawings. I think that he was a very, very good cartoonist, especially even with humor. He always wore a hat every time you would see him.

He was wearing the hat because he was compulsively pulling Emotionally, Cary had a tough time during his childhood. I don't remember Cary ever having a girlfriend. I never saw him with a girl.

Cary started acting wildly inappropriately towards females. He exposed himself to one of his sister's friends.

It seemed as though he had a compulsion with trying to get close to women or be sexual with them, but He was unable to develop any sort of interpersonal relationships with any women.

There's a surreal contrast in this. You have one brother who's been subjected to just unspeakable horror for years, but by all appearances, he's a happy-go-lucky, jovial kid with a girlfriend. You have the other brother who's left at home, and it wasn't that he was just a loner, he was a bit of a creepy loner.

So in 1979, Steven's now 14. He's been with Parnell for 7 years. And Parnell then moves him to a very new remote location. Then he can sort of, in his mind, stay one step in front of law enforcement.

Ken Parnell takes Steven to this small little town called Manchester, kind of along the coast of Northern California.

Ken is looking for another prepubescent boy. Steven knew what was going to happen, and Steven knew that that was wrong.

And he was going to end that.

What Steven would do in response would make him world famous.

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In 1979, Ken Parnell pulled up stakes again, and he moved with Steven to a small cabin in Manchester, California. which is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by almost nothing. This is, for Ken and for Steven, a turning point.

It was a one-room shack, very old and cold.

At some point, Parnell and Steven together realized that Steven was growing up and that he was no longer going to be able to be controlled by Parnell. Parnell wanted another kid.

So in February of 1980, Ken Parnell goes back to the exact same MO that he used to get Steven Stayner. He paid a local kid to ride with him to the little town of Ukiah, California, puts this high school kid out on the street to go find him a boy, and he finds 5-year-old Timothy White walking home from school.

Steven watched Timmy suffer through This separation from his family for 2 weeks and decided finally that he had to do something about it.

He literally said, I was not going to let that child go through what I had already been through, and if I didn't take care of it now, it would just get worse.

Eventually, Steven got the courage to take Timmy White out of that house, and when Kenneth Parnell went to work, The 2 hitchhiked to the town of Ukiah.

It's dark, and Timmy can't remember where he lives. So Steven figures the best thing to do is to take him to the police station.

Keep in mind, Steve Stayner was known as Dennis for 7 long years. But when he arrives at that police station, he says something that will be embedded in the public consciousness I know my first name is Steven.

And that became the title of a book. It became a television movie and it made Steven famous.

7 long years ago, a youngster in California vanished.

Everyone thought he was dead at this point. He'd rescued another boy.

This is Steven today. He is holding 5-year-old Timothy White.

Who could make this up? Every television network, every magazine cover, every movie executive— there wasn't anyone not interested.

There he is!

There he is!

Steven was a national hero. He returns to Merced triumphant.

Steven's return has been a joyous event.

Within days, he's on Good Morning America.

Good morning, Stephen, and Mr. and Mrs. Stayner. And Stephen, how does it feel to be home?

Feels great.

Did you remember your parents well?

Um, they didn't change that much.

I recognized them when I got out of the car.

What about your brothers and sisters? They changed a lot.

I never recognized either one of them.

Mr. and Mrs.

Stayner, how did this affect your other 4 children? When Steve disappeared, the older 2 were very upset and I think kind of became very quiet children from the experience.

There was a press conference outside the Stayner house on Betty Street and everyone is smiling. There's a lot of jubilation. This is really some sort of a miracle that Steven's come home.

Greatest thing ever happened.

But if you look in the background, there's, there's something worth noting, and it's Kerry in his baseball cap, and he's not smiling at all.

Kerry, as the older brother, had a very strange relationship now with his younger brother Stephen, who was getting all of this attention and who was a different person.

In the television movie, there's a scene where he's finally reunited with his brother And Kerry comes in looking almost like a shaggy-haired surfer, and he's jubilant. He's so thrilled to see his brother. There's nothing to suggest that Kerry was all that thrilled to see his brother.

They shared a room. They didn't get along. Steven didn't understand the rules that he was now expected to live by. Steven, what have these years been like for you adjusting, getting over the 7 years you were away from home?

For 7 years, I'd been supposedly an only child.

Now I had to compete with a brother and 3 sisters. You were away for 7 years, and a lot of people still wonder why you didn't try to escape before you finally did escape 3 years ago. When you look back on that, why do you think that is, Steven?

Well, there's several reasons. I was told I was adopted.

You believed it?

Yes, I believed it.

Kay, what about for you?

How do you think it's been for Steven?

I think he's done fantastic.

I'm very proud of the way he's kind of joined right in with the rest of us, and he doesn't give us any problems.

I tried to explain to her that they might consider, you know, some professional counseling, and she told me that she didn't believe that that was going to be necessary.

The adults all thought Steven was a hero. But none of the adults had to go to high school with Steven.

It is generally known that there was homosexual activity involved in Steven's abduction.

Steven was constantly being made fun of when he came back, which is really sad because the poor guy's just been through all these 7 years of, you know, being molested and everything else.

His sexuality was constantly under attack. There's a scene in the movie in a locker room.

What was it, kind of exciting for you being around all those naked guys?

Where Steven at least is strong enough to fight back. The bullying was just unending. While Steven already has these 2 sides buffeting him, the adults who say he's a hero and the kids who are just picking on him mercilessly, he's got to deal with Parnell as well.

There he is sitting in the courtroom, and he's got a Ultimately, Kenneth Parnell did face charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment, but he was never tried for sexual assault in this case. In the end, there was not sufficient evidence to prove those charges.

It was outrageous. There was out-and-out fury over the sentence.

I'm angry that he will be back out on the street. I thought laws were to protect the innocent children and the victims. It's not because he will be out and he possibly will do it again, quite probably.

Ken Parnell went back to what he'd been doing for years. He found someone else to help him find another boy, only this time he was caught and he was sent to prison again where he died in 2008.

Steven was kind of struggling through his own life after his return. Cary was out of high school and having his own troubles.

I think Cary, after high school, seemed a little lost, like he didn't know where he was going. When his life was starting to spin out of control, he took refuge in Yosemite.

He had this International Scout, pale blue, and he would just drive out Highway 140 into Yosemite and disappear up into the woods and get high.

Whatever demons were clamoring around in his head, by being naked, by smoking pot, he could find the peace that he so desperately needed.

One of the things that made a huge impact on him was he was convinced that he saw Bigfoot.

Any opportunity that Carey got, he couldn't wait to tell people about driving through an area known as Foresta and Bigfoot leaping out of the woods in the dark of night.

'Cause we're monsters.

It turns out that this incredibly deep obsession with Bigfoot is ultimately going to have incredibly tragic consequences. would turn out to be the very setting where Cary Stayner's murderous demons would be unleashed.

Happy New Year!

By 1989, the Stayner family had fallen far from the spotlight. 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. He 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 2 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, you know, for, 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 like 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 7 years, he's subjected to unspeakable horrors. He did work for a living. He did fall in love. He did have 2 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 Comanche? 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, who was Shot and killed in the home they shared together. Kerry was very close to his uncle.

Stephen's dead. Uncle Jerry's murdered. This rage is starting to bubble up. Kerry has a couple of nervous breakdowns. One was fairly violent.

He'd stated that he felt like jumping in the 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. And 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 7 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. Oh, 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's a woman there named Trish Houtz. She and her husband ran the restaurant that was attached to the lodge. They had a teenage daughter that Kerry 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, and I will destroy you. He was cold, hateful, but I've dealt with cold and hateful people before.

Trish was, in some ways, sort of a savant. She seems to be the only one who saw this side of Kerry.

By February 1999, Carrie had been at the Cedar Lodge about 2 years, and the winters were very desolate. Not a lot of tourists visit the park 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 to go see Yosemite was Carol Sund, her daughter Julie, 16, and their friend named Silvina Peloso.

The 3 of them are on a trip twofold: 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 he 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 gray car in the 500 building all by itself. The window was open. The curtain was open. I can see inside that there's 2 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 Stayter knows it's time. A new podcast series from ABC Audio in 2020 goes inside a case that has captivated the nation.

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Carrie had been looking for victims Eventually, he spied Carol and the girls through the window of their room and decided to knock on their door.

I knocked on the door, said I was maintenance. We had a leak in the room upstairs.

Carol answers, and he says to her, I need to come in and look for the leak. And she said, absolutely not. The girls are in their pajamas. They're watching Jerry Maguire on the VCR.

What can I do for you?

Show me the money. They're done for the day.

He persists, says he'll have to move to a different room if the leak goes on.

And they let me in. I went to the bathroom to check the fan where I told them the leak probably would be. When I came out of the bathroom, I pulled my gun out, and I told them I wanted the money and the keys to the car.

He takes Carol's daughter, Julie, and her friend, Silvina Peloso, And herds them into the bathroom. Then he ties up Carol with duct tape and then strangles her with a length of rope. And when he was done, he bundled her up and, and put her in the trunk of a Pontiac that she'd rented that was outside the hotel room door.

He came back in and pulled the girls out of the bathroom and sexually assaulted them. Sylvina resisted. She was hysterical. He brought her into the bathroom. And strangled her.

So he takes Julie, puts her into the bathroom in room 510 next door. He then takes Silvina's body, puts her in the trunk along with Carol Sund, and returns to get Julie.

It was getting pretty late. It's probably 5 o'clock or so in the morning. I told Julia we had to get someplace to go. I went to her room, I put her in the car. Her hands were duct taped in front of her. I wrapped a pink blanket around her and just drove. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I was going to do.

The next time Cary Stayner is seen is 100 miles away in Sierra Village when he uses a payphone to call a cab to get back to Cedar Lodge.

He said that he had come down from Yosemite with some other people and that they left him there, stranded him. with no way back. As we were approaching Yosemite Valley, he said he would show me the cabin to where he saw Bigfoot, and he pointed off to a ways back. You could see there was a cabin, and he said that Bigfoot came out, ran around the side of the cabin, and into the trees. After leaving Yosemite, the plan was for Carol, Julie, and Silvina to meet Carol's husband, Yen Sun, at the San Francisco airport. Well, the girls didn't show up at the airport. We started calling the sheriff and the police. I mean, we were scared. We thought that they were crashed somewhere. There was snow up there. There's icy roads. As each day went by and there was no trace of these 3 women, it became a larger and larger story.

A very mysterious story. 3 people have disappeared at Yosemite National Park in California.

I remember distinctly sitting in the newsroom when the word came that there were 3 women missing from Yosemite. The very last thing that you think of at first is that foul play occurred. These things don't happen in Yosemite.

The week of Carol, Julie, and Silvina's disappearance from El Portal, I had been approached because I was the kidnapping coordinator in my office.

10 days of combing the outskirts of Yosemite where the trio had been visiting, there are no new leads.

This is the largest search that has ever been mounted in Yosemite at any time. It included going up and down the roads looking for places where their car could have gone off.

I'm just devastated.

I don't—

I can't imagine how 3 people And a red car could disappear.

When covering it, you really were empathizing with the families. We're handing out posters, we're doing everything possible. And the pain that you could feel from the Sund family and the Pelosos who had come from Argentina.

Ask people here in America to help us.

We went up to El Portal to the Cedar Lodge. And we started doing our interviews.

One of the people they interviewed was this helpful handyman named Cary Stayner. He was not at all flustered.

He just didn't set off any alarm bells. He even told them a story about Steven. At one point, he even was opening all the rooms for the FBI to gather evidence.

Tonight, a desperately needed break in a month-long search for those 3 missing visitors to Yosemite. About a month month after the disappearance of Carol Julene Selvina, there was a big break in the case because California Highway Patrol officer reported the location of the missing rented vehicle. This is about 60, 70 miles from the Cedar Lodge. 20 years ago, I was a member of the evidence response team. This looked a lot different, but behind me is where the vehicle was located. This is a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix, but it was so completely burned, there were no paint, rubber, plastic, upholstery. The initial inspection of the vehicle, we knew we had 2 bodies based on the remains that were still in the trunk. So there was not much left. There was no way for us to identify who was in that truck.

The forest where the car was found is just a short walk to Sierra Village, where Kari made the phone call to get the cab back to Yosemite.

Evidence was found thrown free from the car that didn't burn. There were the car keys, some shoes, personal CD player, but most importantly, there was a camera found.

It was a crucial piece of evidence.

We get the pictures back. And we have Julie and Silvina doing handstands in the room. We see all their pictures that they took going through Yosemite. And this is a picture of Silvina and Carol sitting in the far bed. We came to learn that this picture was taken about 20 minutes before Cary Stayner knocked on their door. So you look at these pictures of these wonderful, vivacious people, And you just want to go home and hug your family because it's too late for them.

We have recovered 2 bodies from the trunk of the vehicle. No identification has been made.

When the discovery of the bodies in the burned-out vehicle are made, I wouldn't say it affected the community. I would say it affected the nation.

2 bodies have been found, but there are still many unanswered questions. This was an enormous story, a huge, huge story, and 20/20 decided to do an hour on it. My producer John Meyerson and I went straight out to Yosemite to cover it. We had an interview with Selvina's mother, and she was the picture of despair and grief.

I knew from the very beginning that my girl was dead.

How?

I don't know. Don't ask me.

Just felt—

Her mother's intuition was sadly correct. It was Silvina in the trunk of that car. Silvina along with Carol Sund.

As a father, I feel terrible.

I'm supposed to die.

When they realized it was Silvina and Carol, then the big mystery was, where's Julie?

What are you hoping? That Julie is still alive?

Hoping against hope that they've got her somewhere.

The realization that there's a 3rd victim out there that may still be alive sent us into a frenzy, and my mind went to Oh my God, she's out there. She's being held prisoner. Something terrible is being done to her.

Okay, let me show you that area.

In the middle of all this frantic searching arrives this letter to authorities with a taunting, tantalizing clue, with a crude map that may finally solve the mystery of what happened to Julie Sund. Maybe, just maybe, we're gonna find this girl alive.

The mother and daughter who were found dead after disappearing from Yosemite National Park.

I mean, this is a story that decades later they're still talking about it.

This was an enormous story, a huge, huge story.

What in the heck are we dealing with here?

Okay, what day was it that you murdered her?

An absolute tragic story of 2 brothers, one hero and victim and the other a monster.

The story of Steven Stayner and the story of Cary Stayner are going to intersect again in a way no one could have anticipated. Steven Stayner is a 7-year-old boy who gets plucked off the streets walking home from school by a pedophile. He's held captive for 7 years Miraculously, he escapes.

How do you feel?

Great.

I know my first name is Steven. But it turns out the monsters weren't gone. Cary Stayner was very close by.

All this rage that had been building up in Cary, he finally decides he's going to act upon it.

He was right there. He was right there.

Cary Stayner is a vicious, vicious killer. But he's even more twisted than that. And they're about to find out just how twisted.

So as winter merges into spring, the entire valley just seems to come to life.

Everything turns green again.

It's a completely different feeling.

It's March 1999, and this spring is different because there is a palpable fear in Yosemite Park.

A very mysterious story.

3 people have disappeared.

The Sunds were last seen near the Yosemite Valley.

Where the trio had been visiting.

In February, Carol Sund and her daughter Julie and their teenage friend, Silvina Peloso, had gone missing from the Cedar Lodge. How many people in a red car could disappear?

This doesn't happen in the national parks. There was a sense of panic.

There was nobody here. Even the locals stopped coming in.

You can't overstate the sense of fear there. Everybody was afraid. Everybody wanted to know what had happened.

But there's still no sign of the bodies for about a month until a hiker stumbles across a burned-out Pontiac.

We have recovered 2 bodies from the trunk of the vehicle.

When the FBI announced that only 2 bodies had been found, that stumped everybody.

I urge anyone with information to immediately call the FBI tip line.

When they realized it was Silvina and Carol, then the big mystery was, where's Julie?

continue searching for the 3rd of 3 women who disappeared from Yosemite National Park. 2 bodies have been found, but there are still many unanswered questions. For about a week, searchers combed the countryside, the roads, the ditches, the rivers, everywhere near that car, but no Julie.

Oh my God, she's out there. She's being held prisoner. Something terrible is being done to her.

In late March, the FBI got another big clue.

We are pursuing significant and potentially very viable leads.

This one came in the mail, and when the letter was opened, you see a lined paper, and on the top it says, we had fun with this one. And there's a crude map, and the map shows Route 120, it shows Vista Point, it shows Don Pedro Reservoir, and it's about 40 miles away from where the car was found. They bring up a cadaver dog, and within 10 seconds of going to where this map points out, they find Julie's body.

Earlier this afternoon, investigators discovered the body of a homicide victim.

The body of 15-year-old Julie Sund was identified earlier in the week.

When you saw where Julie Sund took her last breath, the gravity of this story really hit home.

Just to think of her being alone, away from, from her mom and Sylvina and wondering what happened, it was terrible.

Francis, was that also for you the hardest part?

That was the end of, you know, any hope.

I've told the family that we won't stop until we find out what happened, until we've resolved this.

So as we move into the summer of 1999, Yosemite's getting back to normal. The tourists are coming back.

And now 5 months have passed. There has been no more murder.

So the sense around Yosemite was that it was safe. It was safe because the people that were responsible for this horrific crime, according to the FBI, were in custody.

When they made the announcement that we have the killers, they believe they have the killers in custody. Huge. Absolutely huge.

We do not believe that there is anyone else there on the loose who is not in custody.

These 2 men were half-brothers. They had criminal records. They were violent offenders. So there's a sense of relief that, hey, we've got these guys, everything's okay. With the FBI's assurance, relatives sense closure is near.

Once they went down that road, When they went down that road, it seemed like they just had tunnel vision and they weren't looking at anything else.

People may have thought the right people were in custody, and they certainly wanted to believe the right people were in custody, but they weren't the right people.

Gary Stayner was still working here at the lodge. He was still living here on the premises. He was still an active member of the community.

He was not an unknown quantity, I'll say that People knew who he was. He was not someone who hid.

Didn't really see him as a suspect. He didn't raise alarm bells for anybody.

Stayner was free. I mean, he had gotten away with triple murder. On the more westerly aspect of the park is a little area called Foresta. You can look down and see this gorgeous meadow, and it's called Big Meadow for good reason. And down in that meadow was an old house.

It's called the Green Cabin. It's owned by the Park Service and it's leased out for a dollar a year to the Yosemite Institute, which runs educational programs throughout the park. Living there in the summer of 1999 was a 26-year-old woman named Joey Armstrong.

She was really kind and she was sensitive. She was loving. She was generous. She was smart.

Joey was a naturalist at Yosemite. Her job was to take children and teach them the nature of Yosemite.

I asked her if she was ever afraid and she said no.

and we knew they had suspects in custody.

She had memorialized it in her diary. At one point, even wrote, the monsters are gone, meaning the FBI had gotten the people who did this, and they were behind bars.

But it turns out the monsters weren't gone. Cary Stayner was very close by.

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There's actually a road that connects from where the Cedar Lodge is into Yosemite. It's a back road that very few people know about. The end of the road is where Joey Armstrong was living, and that's the road that Cary Stayner took that day.

He drove his International Baby Blue Scout up to Foresta where he'd seen Bigfoot. He went up there with some regularity. He had gotten out of his truck and he was looking around. He wasn't out hunting for anybody, but an opportunity presented itself.

You know, Cary Stayner is down here in this area. He sees up at the green cabin this petite blonde girl.

It's almost the weekend, and Joey's very excited. She's got a trip planned to meet some friends.

She's just going in and out of her house, packing up her truck, getting ready to leave.

Her Toyota Tacoma is parked here. The back hatch is open. He then approaches her as she's putting things in and out of her truck.

You just wonder about the randomness of it all. What if she was in the cabin? What if she'd packed up a half hour earlier?

What if she'd left?

And it turned out to be a situation where evil truly meets opportunity.

And I'm just over there throwing rocks in the creek and just after another short walk out again and again. It seemed like she's alone.

He comes closer, and as he comes closer, she is what he thinks he wants.

Something instantly changes with Cary Stayner, and he's ready to kill again. Just like in the first murders, he goes back to his truck and he gets his murder kit.

He gets out his backpack. He's got a gun, he's got duct tape, he's got a knife. He's standing somewhere in this vicinity. He's talking to her and he's making conversation.

Here was a guy who, you know, was big and strong and athletic and has these movie star white teeth. He would have just been like a little oddity. But as he's talking to her about Bigfoot, he's trying to look behind her and look over her shoulder to see if anyone's in the house. And then pretty quickly, it would have gone to flat-out terror.

That's when I pulled out the gun and put it to her head. She turned around, freaked out. I told her to go inside.

He uses the gun to direct her to the back of the house and into this rear bedroom. He starts binding her with the duct tape that he's brought in his kit. She fights with everything she has. He barely was able to overcome her.

She was very strong, and I don't mean I don't mean just a strong woman in the sense of emotionally strong, but she was physically strong.

This was supposed to be easy for Kerry. This was, you know, his fantasy was that nobody's supposed to fight back. Then she did.

She's totally controlled. And then he takes her and guides her here.

He picked her up and tossed her in the backseat and started driving away.

The first sign Joey Ruth Armstrong was in trouble was when she didn't meet up with a friend in Marin County on Wednesday.

When Joey doesn't show up, obviously her friends are bewildered and they're frightened, absolutely freaked out.

Her friends called Yosemite, and now the search was on for Joey Armstrong. I received a page and I called in and They asked if I was available for a search. We're covering a number of leads that are not confined to the park. Uh, that's about all I can tell you at this point.

As they came in and looked, they could not find her. And they also found debris on the floor of the cabin. They found broken sunglasses. They found a red mechanic's wrap. They were very concerned.

You know, you're just looking for anything that doesn't fit. And then a few feet down the stream, I noticed what I thought was an inanimate object kind of bobbing in the water. And I went over and I, you know, saw that it was a person.

To their shock and dismay, they saw that her head had been removed.

This was just as grisly a scene as you could possibly imagine. It was incredible and horrible what had happened to Joey Armstrong.

You know, in your own personal life, you have said many times before, I can't imagine the pain of losing a child.

You don't believe it's you.

You don't believe it's her. You, you're going, no, no. Cary Stayner left behind a load of evidence. And he knew it. Unlike the first 3 murders where he left virtually no evidence, he knew that he had left a very easy trail for investigators.

About 2 hours north of Yosemite is a nudist colony, which turned out to be the key to the whole thing.

A car ride is about to happen. And during During that car ride, the story of Steven Stayner and the story of Carrie Stayner are going to intersect again in a way no one could have anticipated.

Laguna del Sol is like any other resort. Except people don't have clothes on. There's camping and there's some cabins and there's some shuffleboard and volleyball, and there's a restaurant and a bar and a darts league.

I'm told people go to Laguna del Sol from all over the country.

I don't think you're trying to hide if you're going to a nudist colony, and it's the last place that Cary Stayner would be a free man.

The Yosemite Park Natural The 26-year-old's body was found Thursday near her Yosemite home.

Joy Armstrong's murder sent shockwaves through Yosemite Valley. Here was another murder in the Yosemite area, and this time it was actually in the park.

This is the second high-profile murder case connected to Yosemite this year. 3 tourists disappeared from the El Portal area in February and were later found dead.

People didn't know what to think. Were they connected? Were they not connected? If they weren't connected, then what's happening?

I called some of the investigators to ask them, do you think they're related? And it was a resounding no.

And we have absolutely no reason to believe, no indication that there is any linkage at all.

You don't want to cause undue panic. You don't want to cause undue concern until you know the facts.

We got 60 teams going out. There wasn't really much time for us to speculate on whether this was related. I mean, it quickly became related. Somebody had spotted a very unique vehicle, a blue and white International Scout, the same vehicle that Carrie Stayner drove. On the same road where Joey lived around the same time that she was murdered, and that was the first thing that authorities followed up on.

The tracks of the vehicle that drove away from Joey's house left very clear tracks, and they were able to get very clear pictures. And then they started looking for this guy, Kerry Stayner, because he would be a natural witness to interview.

I was sitting in the bar having lunch, and somebody came in and said, they're looking for Cary Stayner. And I said, what?

And he's really now starting to feel that noose tighten around his neck.

Now Cary Stayner realizes he has to get out. He packs up and leaves and ends up driving to that nudist colony, Laguna del Sol.

He pitched a tent outside, went in. There's a bar and restaurant, and he was socializing with people inside and struck up a conversation with a woman there.

Things—

well, things are not so well now.

I decided to pack up my stuff, in fact, and I'm headed north.

They had put a BOLO, be on the lookout for, on the news, and so it had gone out that people were looking for Cary Stayner.

Authorities set off a manhunt for him yesterday.

And it just so happens the woman he struck the conversation with saw the news, and I immediately picked up the phone and called FBI and told them that I knew where this person was.

That morning, FBI Agent Jeff Reinert gets a call. He's supposed to meet up with a couple of other agents at Laguna del Sol right away.

So as I'm driving and proceeding down here, the next train of thought was, oh my God, we're going to a nudist colony. For me, A nudist colony means Peter Sellers, a shot in the dark, and a guy walking across the screen with a guitar over his genitals.

Laguna del Sol, a nudist colony. It's not a place I ever thought I would be in my FBI career. The manager came out, man, and said, yeah, he's inside sitting at the corner booth, and you'll be able to find him because he's the only one wearing clothes.

Got here, parked, And as they walk into the restaurant area, Stayner gets up and puts his hands up.

He's thin, he's athletic, he's tall, he is handsome. He looks like a movie actor to me, and he's very soft-spoken and cooperative.

He didn't do the, hey, who are you? Why are you handcuffing me? What's going on here? Put him in the car, and he and Jeff followed. Drove off and I followed.

It's just the two of them. Stayner's in the front seat. Reinick has no idea the magnitude of what is happening. Nobody told him that Cary Stayner is a suspected murderer.

What happened during that drive between Cary Stayner and that FBI agent changed the story forever.

It was a very pleasant drive. We were 2 guys that were just stuck together.

One thing that Special Agent Reinick is really good at is getting people to open up.

You meet someone and you're asking them questions about themselves.

Jeff being Jeff said, hey, Stayner, you're not by any relation to Steven Stayner.

He'd been kidnapped from a Merced street corner in 1972 when he was just 7 years old.

He goes, have you ever seen that, that movie?

I know my first name is Steven.

And that's when Staner said, yeah, that's my brother.

In that moment, he's just connecting with some guy he's supposed to pick up. Well, this is horrible. You're Steven Staner's brother. That's terrible what happened to him.

And he went on to describe that unlike the world expected, life was not happily ever after.

All of a sudden, Cary Staner gets upset. He gets emotional about his brother Steven. My brother was held captive for 7 years and his abductor Kenneth Parnell only got 7 years. How can that be fair?

And he asked me if I thought that was just and I told him absolutely no.

Something truly remarkable happened in that car. Kerry Stayner, who had Such trouble with relationships and intimacy and connections, developed a connection with Jeff Reinick that would absolutely change this case. So after that, they actually bond over something else. It's a movie. It's called Billy Jack.

And the very popular song associated with that movie called One Tin Soldier.

One tin soldier rides away.

And I said to him, you know, you look just like Billy Jack. Have you ever seen the movie? And he said no. I kept asking him, you sure you haven't seen Billy Jack? Nope, haven't seen Billy Jack.

Well, there's this line in the movie that— it's a classic line. After they finish their long ride and they've had their little bonding moment over Steven, they're walking into the FBI field office and Cary stops and says, I'm gonna take this right foot and I'm gonna whop you.

That side of your face, there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Really?

It's a weird little moment where he just finished saying he'd never seen this movie, but he knew the classic line.

He's laughing, I'm laughing. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good, you know.

You know, now they're walking in and they're having a good laugh together, and then things sort of take an odd turn.

But remember, Agent Reinick doesn't really know what it's about or what to expect. Kerry Stayner, on the other hand, knows exactly what he has planned, and it's going to be a bombshell. Jeffrey Reinach and Kerry Stayner have been in the car for 2 hours from that nudist camp when they finally arrive at the FBI office 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 3 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 starts launching off into This is going to 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, Kerry, what exactly do you mean closure? And about what? He says, you know why we're here.

And he told us, hey, I can answer some questions about Joey and, and more. And we didn't know what that was.

They thought Kerry 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 2 FBI agents to see child pornography? That's not your everyday request. And he said, and not just a couple, 3, 4 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 Kerry starts to talk about Joey.

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, a 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 was talking to me, and then she turned around. 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.

Took her to the back corner of the house, to a bedroom where 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 Cari 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. I didn't hit her. 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 Joey comes across as heroic because 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 Cari Stayner says next. The question always has been, why was Joey's body found where it was found, in the woods? How did it get there? Why did it get there? And Cari Stayner is about to reveal exactly what happened.

And as I was driving, she started going crazy and 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 in the park and jumped out. 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, he caught her.

What did you do then? I took a knife in 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— Joey 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 Sanfilippo.

Jeff is 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.

Well, there was a dramatic period of silence. That was followed by him saying, okay, let's do it.

I knocked on the door, said I was maintenance, we had a leak in the room upstairs, and they let me in.

So now he's giving the agents this blow-by-blow of every gruesome detail.

The Peloso girl couldn't speak very good English, was crying a lot, and Julie was very calm.

And at the same time, he's He's giving him a glimpse inside these strange thoughts that he was having.

She was very cooperative. She did everything I told her to do. No tears or 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 Julie.

I put her in the car and just drove. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I was gonna do.

You're at Don Pedro'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 Julie out of the car. I carried her down the pathway.

I asked him, how did you carry her? And he goes, you know, like this. And I said, do you mean like a groom carries a bride? And he says, yeah, like that.

I laid out the blanket. I guess I knew what I was going to do because I had the knife with me.

It was a brutal homicide. What actually happened had no relation to, in any way, 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, the beauty of nature.

But it's not over. Bombshells are on the way.

I loved Carrie.

I could not believe what I just heard.

My name is Lena, and I grew up In a small town right outside Yosemite National Park. My sister and I met Cary in 1998. My mom was a waitress at the Cedar Lodge where Cary was a maintenance man and lived above the restaurant. They were in a relationship. I must have been 10, 11 years old. He was in his 30s. He was handsome. He was warm, like a big teddy bear, a safe person to be around. We were excited when Cary would come over. He would buy us a new Beanie Baby almost every time we saw him, because that was pretty big in the '90s. My sister and I would be walking up the driveway, and we'd see Cary Stayner coming up in his Scout, and we'd jump in the truck, and he'd give us a ride up to our house. I loved him a lot. I don't know if he knew how much I did. He was a happy part of our life. such a happy part that turned into such a dark part of our life.

One of the most disturbing things Stayner told Jeff was that Carol, Savina, and Julie were not his first choice.

Kerry actually planned to kill a whole other set of people, and this was a complete surprise to them.

Having gone most of the day, I was at a girlfriend's house. And, uh, I guess it was this girlfriend and her 2 daughters were my original intended victims.

I could not believe what I just heard. I was literally trying to get my mouth going to hear that again to make sure I had heard what he said.

I'm sorry, say that again. I misunderstood you. That's what I was seeing. Her daughters were my original intended victims.

Had we not gotten Stayner, they could have been next.

The day after Valentine's Day, he had intended that that would be the day that he carries out his fantasy, and the object was His then-girlfriend and her 2 daughters. While he was there, there was another person on the grounds that stopped in and deflected what he could do.

So Cary abandoned his initial plan to kill his girlfriend and her daughters.

He said when he got back to the Cedar Lodge that night, he was really ramped up.

I got back to the motel late. I took a soak in the hot tub, tried to calm down. And the hot tub was dirty. It sounds a little annoyed. So I took a walk around the property.

He's actually stalking. He's looking. He's predatory. As he's walking past the 500 building, he sees who we now know to be Carol, Julie, and Selvina.

The FBI has been summoned to help find 3 missing women.

He was right under everyone's nose the entire time. He was right there. He was right there. I do remember him always carrying his backpack. I remember seeing it in the truck. It was always with him, like a woman carries a purse. I later learned that he had a murder kit, murder and rape kit, in his backpack that he wanted to use against my mom, my sister, and I. It is frightening just to think that the things that were inside of it and what he was thinking the whole time.

Late last night, federal authorities arrested this man, 37-year-old Cary Stayner.

The FBI went in and spoke with my mom privately to let her know that Cary Stayner had confessed to initially wanting to kill my mom and rape and kill my sister and I. I kept it quiet for 20 years. I didn't address it. My whole family My mom was extremely shocked. As a mother myself, I don't know if I would have been able to handle that. My daughter is the same age right now that I was when I met Kerry. I think at such a young age, I learned that you couldn't trust adults. I still have issues trusting people, and I don't know if I'll ever feel completely safe. We're survivors, but it doesn't mean that we're not affected. Took a really big part of our life away. It destroyed part of my childhood. I had not been back to the Cedar Lodge until last year, and it sent chills up and down my spine. I just remember he would show. us how to dive perfectly. My sister and I both wanted to be the best at it. It feels like it was so long ago that you forget that it even happened, like a dream or you— a movie that you watched, and it almost doesn't even feel like it was you.

There's a big part of me that still wonders if he still thinks of those 2 little girls that adored him so much. Because we think about him all the time. So does he even remember? Does he care?

Everybody wondered what was going on in his mind. Everybody wondered why.

I went to ask if Kerry wanted to talk. And within minutes, I'm face to face with him and he just opened up. I now had answers to all of our questions.

I asked him if he would bring us back to these places because he was talking about evidence.

He took us to all the spots and he knew exactly where everything was.

And he pointed out in that direction and he said he took the roll of duct tape and the knife, and he threw it out there as far as he could. With the recovery of the duct tape and the watch and the knife, which was the murder weapon, now we're talking evidence.

With the confession and all the forensic evidence, Cary Stayner was found guilty and was sentenced to death. He has spent years in San Quentin Prison on death row. He's now 57 years old.

I don't forgive him. I can't. But at the same time, I still have a hard time looking at him as a monster.

Kerry was the monster in the forest. Bigfoot was never supposed to be real, and then he became that real thing.

I went to ask if Kerry wanted to talk, and he just opened up. He told me that he'd had these feelings since he was a 7-year-old child and had been resisting these feelings for years. It was almost as if he was trying to get credit for being a good soldier. He said, I want a movie of the week made about my story. There was a movie made about Steven Stayner. And he wanted the same treatment. He wanted the world to take note.

As far as I know, he's never talked to anyone about the effect Steven might have had on his crimes. I'm not sure there is any direct cause and effect. Steven could have grown up normal, happy, and healthy, and Cary still would have been a serial killer.

It's difficult to picture what Cary has done because knowing Steve, their personalities are completely opposite. The only time Steve would kill anything like a fish is because we were going to eat it. You know what I mean? I wouldn't think that he would think of himself as one, but he is a hero.

Stephen was a hero to a lot of people.

Because of Stephen, Timothy White got a second chance at a childhood, but like Stephen, didn't live long. He died at the age of 35 of a blood clot to the lung.

There's a statue in Merced now of Stephen and Timothy White, and they're holding hands. Yes, terrible things happened to Stephen, but his legacy is that he saved saved another kid from having to suffer those same terrible things. That's really how he should be remembered.

We understand why the Stayner brothers' story garnered so much global attention, but when it's all over, who should we really be remembering? The sons? Silvina Peloso? Joey Armstrong?

These are beautiful The only solace I get is that she's with God Almighty, and I, I will see her again.

Joey's legacy carries on in Yosemite. There's something now called Armstrong Scholars.

Every summer, 2 or 3 Armstrong Scholars A group of girls between the ages of 15 and 18 are brought into the park to spend a week exploring, learning about it, which is exactly why Joey was there in the first place.

And you can't take my dreams away.

Whatever terrible things happen in the world, I think people come to beautiful places like this because they know that nature has healing power.

This is the place of beauty where evil will be vanquished.

And that's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm David Muir.

And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at ABC News in 2020, good night.

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