Yosemite Park Killer: When A Victim Turns Into A Murderer | World’s Most Evil Killers | Real Crime

real stories tapes true crime is your new true crime podcast fix in our first season we'll explore suspicious deaths at a california hospital and a skydiver landing dead on a suburban driveway with a bag containing guns drugs and night vision goggles to join our investigation search and subscribe to real stories tapes true crime on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you find your podcasts on march 2nd 1980 seven years after he'd been kidnapped by a pedophile fourteen-year-old steven steiner returned home to his family in merced california carrie later said that it was clearly a number one son in the house i was pushed aside and i was left you know to fend for myself tormented by his brother's ordeal and twisted by the abuse he claimed to have suffered as a child carey stayner became a serial killer when he's seven he starts to have these fantasies of capturing and and killing women in 1999 in the yosemite national park in california he kidnapped and brutally murdered four women he said he couldn't contain himself that there was no way that he could stop this urge to kill the cold-blooded murder of four innocent women makes carrie steiner one of the world's most evil killers for five months in 1999 fear pierced the peace and tranquility of yosemite national park in california in that time one man abducted four women he allegedly raped two of them and viciously murdered them all yosemite is one of those places it's a the crown jewel of national parks in the united states the idea that these women were possibly murdered after visiting a national park specifically yosemite really unnerved people then on saturday july the 24th 1999 investigators arrested a handyman at a local lodge carrie steiner the 37 year old was the prime suspect in four monstrous murders in the national park while in custody in sacramento california he pulled a major surprise while he's being held somehow he's able to get a 25-minute interview with a local news crew and while they're on a break from questioning him he confesses to the news crew before he even confesses to the fbi he told his version of events to local tv news reporter ted rowlands the interview was conducted in a room we were separated by glass and used telephones he picked up the phone and the first thing he said to me was i want you to contact hollywood producers and i would like a movie of the week made about my story and i thought movie of the week this is the same thing that his brother stephen had had made about his story immediately struck me as wow okay this guy is thinking about his brother he immediately went from asking for this movie of the week to a full confession first things out of his mouth after asking for the movie of the week was i am guilty i killed carol's son julie's son sylvia pelosi but steiner adamantly denied that he had sexually assaulted the women that he had murdered kerry steiner has got quite a strong narcissistic strand to his personality he didn't want to be seen as the sexual predator that he actually was he wants to be this tough dangerous predator this this hunter and and that's inconsistent with with the label of a rapist or a sex offender the roots of narcissism are very often in shame and i think that's very much what shapes kerry stainer's life that he feels ashamed of who he is he feels ashamed of what he's experienced stayner's story began nearly 60 years ago kerry stainer was born in august 1961 in merced california his father delbert was a korean war veteran a stiff staff sergeant who married his mother together they had five children three girls and two boys close family but there's not much doubt in my mind it was also an abusive family it was dysfunctional according to a defense psychiatric report even his mother claimed to have been abused as a child this family do have quite a dark history when you look behind the closed doors so there's a multi-generational history of abuse going on there were early warning signs that carey was having problems coping as an infant when he's three years old he starts engaging in a behavior called trichotillomania and this basically refers to hair pulling this is really concerning stuff because you have a three-year-old child who is essentially engaging in an act of self-harm this suggests to me that this was a young lad who really was trying to take back some power take back some control over something that he felt he didn't have control over and it this was the the way that it was manifested age seven kerry formed violent fantasies about women he told me that he had memories going all the way back to his childhood when he was in his family car in the supermarket parking lot fantasizing about killing and tying up the female checkers thinking that he was that young and having these urges if right really is a window into his world but when he's seven he starts to have these fantasies of capturing and killing women and for me that suggests that he's got this idea from somewhere he's equated violence and sexual violence with power somehow growing up kerry and his brother stephen seven years younger shared a room kerry's younger brother stephen was absolutely the apple of his father's eye he was the single one if you like in the family of five children that the father identified with then when kerry was 11 years old tragedy struck the already troubled stayner family the decisive moment in kerry's young life came in december 1972 when he was aged 11 and his younger brother stephen then aged seven was abducted by a pedophile and kept for seven years this is something that has a devastating effect on the family so this family member has gone and what do you do to have something like this happen during your childhood is going to have a devastating impact on you especially yourself having experienced sexual abuse steno would later claim that his uncle jess sexually abused him when he was a child for children who experience these types of things they feel like nowhere is safe for them nowhere is secure for them because your family is supposed to be your sanctuary the impact that abduction had not just on the stainer family as a whole but also on carey was catastrophic kerry's father delbert was distraught absolutely distraught would cry would blame carey for not looking after his brother would say oh he's the one son i really love those vital years between 11 and 18 were lived in the shadow of the disappeared stephen a kind of almost unimaginable torture torment adding fuel to the fire that was raging within kerry his father heaped responsibility onto the young boy's shoulders i think he was perhaps to a degree blamed for for the fact that stephen had gone missing and his parents would say to him make sure that you watch your sisters so he's charged with the monitoring and the surveillance of women of girls at quite a young age and he's having quite a heavy adult responsibility placed on him then on march 2nd 1980 carey's kidnapped brother stephen suddenly returned home as if by magic stephen escapes from his captor along with another little boy and reappears if there could be said to be one single moment or trigger for what became his killing spree it was almost certainly the return of his brother in 1980 when carrick was nearly 19. anxiously there to greet him his parents three sisters and eighteen-year-old brother kerry steven steiner had escaped with a much younger boy five-year-old timmy white stephen steiner's story made international news it was a little boy that escaped captivity from a pedophile and basically single-handedly was responsible for saving himself saving another child and putting a pedophile behind bars so carrie stainer's brother stephen was a hero after seven years parnell thinks that steven's really getting a bit too old for him he is a pedophile and so he tells the boy's got a replacement of a little boy called timmy white who is five years old stephen realizes that this cannot be right he rescued that child and got out of there and went to the police and he said i know my first name is stephen and that later became a book in a movie and the u.s was captivated by the story of this young man who you know overcame all this terrible abuse and then put his life on the line to save this five-year-old child the tv movie called i know my first name is stephen was quickly made kerry steiner was home during all of this watching his brother get all these accolades and had all of the attention of his despondent parents who had been so sad for seven years with a missing child they were now elated to have their little boy back and i think it affected carrie a lot carrie later said that he said i felt like my parents there was clearly a number one son in the house and that was uh stephen and so i was pushed aside and i was left you know to fend for myself steven's appearance on good morning america with his parents further spurred kerry's simmering rage delbert is seen hugging his son something that he signally failed ever to do to his elder brother carey never showed much affection but all of a sudden delbert is reunited with the in a way the golden youth there is no doubt in my mind that this made carrie stano incredibly angry he's not known for being carey he's known for being the brother of the boy who went missing that's not going to have a good impact on you that is going to really devastate your own sense of your identity here's a man who is spiraling out of control he's going towards something but we don't quite know what that is yet stephen's return only heightens the feeling that his elder brother has of being somehow a shadow in the delbert family life then on september 17 1989 nine years after being reunited with their son stephen the steiner family was once again blighted by tragedy when stephen returned that the tragedies for this family were far from over so stephen got married and he had children but he was killed in in a hit and run accident only as a young man so so his life was quite brutally ended stephen's untimely death sparked a descent for carey into the dark side of his personality ironically when stephen was killed in the car accident carey was sharing a house with his uncle jess and working for a local mirror making company stephen's death was the trigger for kerry stayner to escalate to violence in 1990 carey's uncle jess was found dead in the house they shared kerry steiner later claimed as part of his defense that his uncle sexually abused him as a child it led some to suggest that steiner may have had something to do with his murder but at the time no one was charged when you look back at the circumstances surrounding uncle jesse's death it was believed that he was killed by a drifter who was around the property but but that individual was was never actually identified and convicted of that particular murder carrie stainer was questioned about it and was a suspect but was not tried for it and carrie stanner told me that he did not commit that murder by 1991 carrie steiner was working at the merced glass and mirror company on the surface all seemed fine but that would be short-lived he is liked by his workmates he's regarded as approachable as kindly you could trust him with anyone you know leave your children with him he's absolutely couldn't be a nicer man and yet underneath that beneath the surface steiner is profoundly challenged unbalanced a man at war with himself at war with his own desires at war with his own fury at what's happened to him the way he's grown up in 1995 kerry steiner's rage boiled over one of his co-workers come across him one day basically pounding his fist into a plank of wood and saying that he feels really anxious he feels really really nervy and scared and that he feels like going and killing all of his co-workers he's seen by a psychiatrist but he doesn't receive any ongoing treatment it's it's considered okay this looks like it was a one-off he became more and more isolated his parents then moved away from her said where he'd been born and brought up then he was left on his own uncle jess was dead his brother was dead he left the job he'd had for quite some time he decided that he was going to go off the radar he was going to go and live in the woods this this guy was going off the grid in 1997 gary steiner was hired as the resident handyman at the cedar lodge motel in the yosemite national park in california at the same time gets a room above the diner in the hotel upstairs now it's quite a big motel 50 plus rooms plenty of coming and going rather beautiful is on the edge of yosemite national park at first all seemed to be going well for kerry in this new picture-perfect setting everybody loved this guy all his co-workers his supervisors everybody said this was the nicest guy he fits in with this this laid back kind of a hippie lifestyle of a guy who kind of is quite transient and goes from from job to job and you just let people be who they wanted to be so i think he fitted right in but unbeknownst to those around him the affable handyman was at war with himself his only respite was hiking in the woods and he developed an appetite for nude sunbathing i suspect that he was having difficulty controlling his own sexual desires and that perhaps nudity and nudism shared with others was a way of coping with that he was desperately trying to keep himself under control and there's no doubt in my mind of that stayner spent more and more time alone in the woods indulging his peculiar habits kerry steiner's other occupation apart from hiking and nude sunbathing was smoking marijuana which he did on a regular and persistent basis now i am not for one moment suggesting that inspired him to kill i am not linking one with another what i am saying is it probably further underlines the imbalance in kerry steiner's personality steiner became obsessed with bigfoot a mythical beast that legend has it inhabits the forests of america's pacific northwest he's firmly convinced that bigfoot does exist and indeed becomes almost obsessed with bigfoot and finding bigfoot i think in terms of what bigfoot represents for kerry stayner it's that childish kind of pursuit of the the monster under the bed you quite enjoy talking about it you quite enjoy the feeling of kind of fear that you know isn't real fear because you're actually safe he hasn't felt the ability to have a safe space in which to nurture these kind of these scary monster type stories so i think that's why that comes out when he's an adult he's not had the opportunity to do this as a child bigfoot was what kerry stayner was when he wasn't a naffable likeable person bigfoot was the real kerry state i think that's where the obsession lie and i think the whole concept of his obsession with bigfoot was his obsession with his own dark side there was the carey stainer that was eventually to emerge into the light somewhere inside he was harboring this other personality which sometimes he simply had to let out but by the time we've got to the end of 1998 we have a man who is fraying is the word that jumps into my mind it's as if he's quietly coming apart but he's coming apart steadily increasingly and how does he cope with that up until that point he's done everything he can to quotes control himself i've got to be in control of them my father would want me to be in trouble that's what i'm what we are supposed to do so he got a job as a maintenance man and this is where i think he starts to spend a lot of time on his own he's thinking he's ruminating and i think it's only going to go one way now by 1999 hippie handyman carey steiner was a serial killing time bomb on february the 14th valentine's day he was primed to explode stayner's victims a mother her teenage daughter and her young friend yosemite national park california usa it was the low season and there were only a few tourists around would-be serial killer and handyman kerry steiner was working at the cedar lodge motel and all seemed fine he's struggling to control himself struggling to be what his father would have wanted him to be struggling to be all right when he wasn't and you suddenly have literally an explosion i think when we look at the time that he starts killing he is not in a good place he's quite chaotic he's quite disorganized he's smoking a lot of marijuana and we know that this has an impact on people's perceptions on their thinking their train of thoughts on valentine's day stayner struck quite by chance he sees a mother daughter and a daughter's friend pull in to the parking lot of the lodge in a red pontiac grand prix they've rented it her name was carol sund her daughter was called julie and her daughter's friend from argentina was visiting an exchange student called sylvana sylvana was 16 years old and juliana was just 15. stainer told me that he knew that they were the only occupants in the entire building and that he noticed them earlier in the day and that one of his fantasies that he had been thinking about was to capture and torture two young girls he's been spending quite a lot of time on his own he's been smoking quite a lot of marijuana at this point in time and he's confronted with this this happy family this happy family that he's never had he knocked on the door and said i'm the maintenance man and we have a problem in the bathroom could you let me in to fix it it's 11 o'clock at night at this point carol is cautious she says hang on a minute it doesn't open the door and she goes back stainless on the other side of the door no there's no leak i can't see anything no i know ma'am i've got to come in i've got to you've got to let me know i'm absolutely i'll lose my job you know you don't let me in the stain is very persuasive carol sun makes a fatal mistake of opening the door as soon as he got into the room he pulled out his gun he took sylvina and julie the teenagers and put them in the bathroom locked the door and then came out and strangled carol's son in the hotel room steiner had killed her he took her body and dumped it in the trunk of the family's rented car he then returned to the room brought both girls out and began to sexually assault them we later found out he then killed sylvina peloso after she started screaming and was not cooperating with him he took sylvina's body then and put it into the trunk along with carol's came back and spent a few hours sexually abusing and torturing julie's son inside the hotel room and now the fantasy really comes to life stayner has convinced himself that he has some kind of relationship with the 15 year old julie sun she is somehow an object of his affections she is to be cherished in the mad fantasy world that is created for himself then he said he decided to take julie out in the early morning hours before the sun came up put her in the car and drove with the bodies in the trunk behind the wheel of the rental car steiner headed east out of the park they ended up taking julie to a reservoir called lake don pedro which is about 90 miles from yosemite it's very remote they drive in the pontiac grand prix to uh local beauty spot with a view the sun comes up and he picks julie's sunday up out of the passenger seat of the pontiac as if she weighs bride in here with a bridegroom he carries her to this vantage point and sits her down around sunrise stayner slit the girl's throat he left her to die on this hillside now he had to get rid of the car steiner dumped the rental car with the dead bodies of carol sund and sylvina peloso in the trunk he then called a cab to take him 90 miles back to the lodge then in a bizarre twist the taxi driver later gave a telling insight into the man who just committed a series of murders he says to the female cab driver do you believe in bigfoot on the way back to the motel and she says no and he says well you should and in my view that's an indication a firm clear indication that bigfoot is the dark side of kerry's state the serial killer was dropped off back at the cedar lodge motel and he acted as if nothing had happened back to the motel back to work staying at careful careful man let's clean the room i mean he is the motel's handyman after all he's made sure not to leave any traces the pontiac grand prix is gone the room's clean two days went by and still nobody suspected a thing no one raises any alarm carol's husband tries to track her down but thinks she's just making a way they were going to meet a san francisco airport concerned that he had not covered his track sufficiently stayner returned to the car a few days later he drove back there found the car and brought with him gasoline he took evidence out of the car and then torched it from there he decided to throw the fbi off by taking carol's son's wallet and drive it to modesto which was in the other direction four days after their disappearance the women were finally reported as missing then when the wallet was found four days later eight miles away in modesto california the authorities suspected foul play the wallet was found by somebody was just walking down the street picks it up and takes it to the police as soon as they found that wallet the case changed immediately from a missing person's case to a criminal case the investigators focused their attention on finding the car that the women had rented it for their red pontiac so this gave investigators something to search for and because this took place at a national park it had immense attention not only from the media but from the american public the entire staff working at the cedar lodge were questioned within days of the murders including the genial handyman kerry stayner the fbi said that he seemed stoic and calm as can be but to him he said his heart was racing he was nervous and he was convinced that the fbi was going to be coming back to arrest him at any moment a month went by and the women's bodies had still not been found the women had vanished and the case was getting cold then the next break happened the car was located by a local man who was out hunting in the woods inside the trunk of the car were two bodies carol sund and sylvina peloso and the car was burnt to the point where their bodies were unrecognizable in fact they had to use dna testing to positively identify them in kerry stayner's case he left the bodies in a car for two days and then he set fire to it so we've got two problems here really we have the fact that the bodies are starting to decompose and then we've got the effects of fire that sort of fire is really quite ineffective at destroying a body so it is a challenge to the forensic investigators but by no means one that can't be overcome but stato is far from being considered the prime suspect by this time stayner is you know how could he possibly be an object of interest i mean i may work at the hotel but all sorts of people work at the hotel and in fact the local police drag in all sorts of potential villains you know drug dealers local armed robbers they've got about seven or eight possible suspects and at one point they even say i'm sure we've got the you know the perpetrator in custody he comes onto the radar of the the investigation and he's actually quite helpful with the investigators he shows them around the lodge he answers their questions and i think at this point in proceedings he does i think enjoy that feeling of being close to the investigation of knowing how much or how little the police know themselves and i think this is something that he feels that he's going to get away with but the body of 15 year old juliana sund was still missing and in yet another extraordinary turn kerry stayner wrote a letter to the fbi steiner becomes so confident and indeed in a way so arrogant that he decides to write to the fbi to tell him where they can find julie's body it draws them a little map and tells them we had a lot of fun together two weeks after the car was found the fbi got the letter went out to this spot in a reservoir and there lo and behold was julie's son's remains the 15 year old girl's decomposed body was found hidden in the underbrush by the merced river in modesto county when the facts came out about the condition of julie's body the fact that she had been murdered cut her neck almost cut off that put this case into a whole other realm when the details of julie's murder and the brutality of that murder was released that sent another shockwave through the region because people now knew that these women were not only murdered but brutally murdered and possibly tortured but serial killer kerry steiner was not done yet soon he would strike again and this time stana would do it with even more terrifying ferocity by the end of june 1999 police had discovered the dead and mutilated bodies of three women they had been viciously murdered in the yosemite national park california they were found dumped in the woods about 80 miles from the cedar lodge motel where they had been staying but the killer kerry stayner the handyman at the same motel was not even a suspect the fbi was convinced that they had the killers in custody they believed that they had solved the case and they were just working on getting more evidence because they truly believed that these methamphetamine users and dealers were responsible even though the real killer was sitting at the hotel where those girls were the whole time three months pass no one comes knocking on kerry's dana's door to arrest him stayner has remained undetected uncharged still the affable handyman at the cedar lodge motel but it was only a matter of time before stayner would kill again the bomb that i think he felt from the killings of carol and daughter's daughter's friend was wearing off and i think he felt that he needed another victim on july 21 1999 steiner found his next target 26 year old joye ruth armstrong a park worker she was one of these girls that just loved being out in nature and you could see it in her face a big smile her mother talked about how happy she was to have this position and how happy she was to be living in one of the most beautiful places in the world joye was loading her car outside the cabin in the forest where she and fellow park workers stayed the location was about a 30-minute drive from the lodge where steiner was based steiner would say that once he realized she was alone something clicked in him he said that he was in an area that he often went to because he had seen bigfoot there and i think they strike up some kind of conversation about working in the park and here he's got another opportunity that's presented itself to him she was by herself getting ready to go meet some mates for a hike up in northern california so she was packing her car in yosemite valley getting ready to leave when kerry stainer noticed her he approached joey with his gun forced her inside her house and put duct tape around her mouth and her hands and got her into his car and was taking off to kidnap her but she was able to jump out of the car and run for her life but taped and bound she did not get far she was unable to outrun stainer so he was able to park his car run around and tackle her and grab her he absolutely loses his temper and he attacks her so violently that he effectively decapitates her cuts her throat but so violently and it effectively separates ahead from her body he told the fbi that there was so much blood on her head that when he looked at it he couldn't even see her face we have an escalation of what he's doing he's abducted her he's bound her he's gagged her behead sir at least we can say it would be a very rapid death at the end and a very brave young woman to try and escape from such horrible circumstances this time however stayner had sealed his own fate ultimately that's the murder that leads back to the other three had he not committed that fourth murder i don't know that he would have been caught the next day on july 22nd 1999 an alert park ranger found joy's body it was clear that the current suspects were in fact innocent when joey armstrong turned up dead it didn't take long for the fbi to tell the public that indeed they were wrong and the real killer was still out there this now reignited the entire case and it took it to another level the idea that a young woman was decapitated inside the park was unnerving to everyone and now it was all hands on deck because there was a murderer on the loose a blue and white 1979 international scout was seen parked near the scene of the crime on the afternoon of the 22nd of july two park rangers looking for the car in fact found 37 year old kerry steiner one of the things that he'd like to do in the park was go find a spot along the river and sunbathe naked so after killing joey armstrong he went to one of these spots and was out sunbathing naked when two park rangers came across him talked to him confiscated his backpack and let him go stainer was interviewed again at the cedar lodge again he was allowed to be free they took samples and photographs of his tires to match tire tracks at the scene but they allowed steiner to stay free for another day with the net closing in stayner fled after matching the tire tracks the fbi went back to a rest carry stainer at the cedar lodge when they got there he was gone so they put out an all points bulletin the fbi found him on july the 24th 1999 just 48 hours after his fourth murder somebody had seen the news reports that they were looking for carrie steiner and there was a photo of him and lo and behold he was at a nudist camp up in this sacramento area so he had driven from yosemite to this nudist camp and was just sitting at the restaurant at the nudist camp when the fbi came to interview him a third time with the intent of taking him into custody by this point i'm absolutely certain in my own mind that stana knew he was going to be caught and was in fact quite happy to be called i think in a way he had acknowledged that he was so badly distorted as a personality that he wanted to be incarcerated when stayner was arrested ted rowlands got the call that changed his life and the exclusive confession that he was able to secure helped to convict a serial killer i was alerted by my station that an arrest had been made in joey armstrong's murder so i immediately went to sacramento i went to the jail to see if i could get an interview with stayner so i asked the jailer if they would call up and inquire whether he would be open for me to come up and interview him and the jailer called up to the cell block and received word that standard did not want to talk so i decided that i was going to keep asking and i ended up spending the day going back and forth from the courthouse to the jail and harassing the jailer please call up i'd like to see if he'll talk to me now eventually the reporter's persistence paid off i remember walking back into the jail thinking to myself i was wasting my time and the jailer looked at me like ugh you're back and i said yeah one more time can you just ask him one more time if he'll talk and the jailer got off the phone and said by god he's gonna talk and immediately i froze and thought oh my gosh within two minutes i was on an elevator going up to the prison tear and i could see through the glass i could see kerry standard go out of his cell and start walking towards me and coming right up to the glass and there i was three feet away from this serial killer and we were talking face to face using a telephone going back and forth steiner coldly admitted to the four murders that he had committed in the yosemite national park from the moment he walked in he was rigid and very clinical the way he spoke his voice didn't go up or down there was little or no emotion even when he talked about the murders his demeanor was just detached kerry steiner confessed but despite evidence to the contrary he refused to admit to key elements of the crimes he admitted to the murders but he glossed over the details in fact he lied he lied about some of the story to me he told me that he never physically abused or tortured any of his victims i think he lied to me because he wanted to take credit for the murders but he was embarrassed about the torture and the sexual assault and he didn't want the public to know about that i think a killer who confesses is sometimes getting some of it off his chest but who's to say for example that kerry steiner hadn't killed again did he kill other people it's entirely possible i asked him also to give the families a message what would you say to the son peloso armstrong families and he said that he would like to tell the families that he's sorry that their loved ones were where they were when they were and that to me was really haunting because what he was really saying was i couldn't help myself there was nothing i could do about it it seemed as though he was trying to convince me that he was somehow a hero for resisting for 30 plus years of his life saying that he had had these urges to torture and kill women since he was a seven-year-old child it was a way to articulate that this demon inside him was too powerful kerry steiner was eventually tried and convicted on four counts of murder as well as additional felonies he was sentenced to death on december the 12 2002 and is now behind bars in san quentin state prison california awaiting the death penalty there is nothing sympathetic about this man he is and remains a monster thankfully uh not able to commit further murders if part of kerry stayner saw himself as bigfoot it was the part that went hiking in the wilderness he was the monster in the woods he was the man whom everybody should be afraid of but of course he didn't present that to the outside world working as a handyman in a motel but that's what he thought he was and that's what he became the savage and senseless murders of four innocent women in the pristine environs of the yosemite national park in california marks carey steiner as one of the world's most evil killers

Channel: Real Crime

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Id: wr1NViXRcJ4

Length: 43min 16sec (2596 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 09 2021