Yosemite Sightseer Murders

Case background and investigation

Carole Sund, 42, her 15-year-old daughter Juli and Silvina Pelosso, a 16-year-old family friend from Argentina, were visiting Yosemite National Park in February 1999. They were staying at Cedar Lodge, a motel outside the park, and were last known to be alive on February 15. Their disappearance set off a search that the FBI later described as the largest ever mounted in the Yosemite area, according to ABC News.

The burned remains of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso were found on March 18, 1999, in the trunk of their rental car. About a week later, Juli Sund's body was found at a separate location after investigators received an anonymous note with a map, according to Wikipedia's summary of the case. The San Francisco Chronicle later reported that Carole Sund and Pelosso had been strangled and that Juli Sund's throat had been cut.

The case remained open for months. On July 21, 1999, Joie Armstrong, 26, a naturalist who worked as a guide with the Yosemite Institute, was attacked near her cabin inside the park. Her decapitated body was found the next day. Attention turned to Cary Stayner, a maintenance worker at Cedar Lodge, and FBI agents arrested him on July 24 at the Laguna del Sol nudist resort, according to Wikipedia's summary. ABC News reported that he confessed to killing Armstrong and then to the murders of the three tourists.

Because Armstrong was killed on federal land, that case was prosecuted in federal court. Stayner pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The state case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose. Stayner pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his lawyers argued that he suffered from long-standing mental illness. On August 26, 2002, a San Jose jury found him guilty of three counts of first-degree murder along with special circumstances that included kidnapping, sexual assault and burglary of the victims' motel room; the Chronicle reported that jurors rejected one special circumstance relating to robbery. The jury recommended death in October, and on December 12, 2002, Judge Thomas C. Hastings imposed that sentence after denying a defense motion for a new trial.

Stayner remains under a sentence of death. According to Wikipedia, citing a Courthouse News report, the California Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence in April 2026. California has not carried out an execution since 2006.