Judge orders trial for Stayner: Defendant’s tape-recordings graphically tell of the slayings of Silvina Pelosso and the Sunds

MARIPOSA -- For 2 1/2 days, the families of Carole and Juli Sund and

Silvina Pelosso stepped grim-faced out of the courthouse to answer intensely

personal questions about the trio's murders.

But Wednesday afternoon, they greeted the notepads, cameras and microphones

in a decidedly different mood, heads held triumphantly and smiles gleaming.

Moments earlier, Judge Thomas C. Hastings ruled there is sufficient

evidence to order Cary Stayner to stand trial on three murder charges and five

special circumstances in the women's slayings.

''When the judge ruled, I felt like standing up and yelling, 'Yea!'''

Francis Carrington said, his arm around his wife, Carole, as they stood at the

foot of Mariposa County's historic courthouse. ''We look forward to a full

trial and a full sentencing hearing, and we'll be there to see it through for

our girls.''

The Carringtons, Carole Sund's parents and Juli's grandparents, praised the

three-attorney prosecution team for an efficient, powerful presentation of

evidence suggesting Stayner planned the killings of the Yosemite National Park

tourists.

Stayner, 39, will be arraigned in Mariposa County Superior Court on July

16, when additional hearing dates will be set.

The special circumstance allegations, including multiple murders, burglary,

robbery, forced oral copulation and attempted rape, allow the prosecution to

seek the death penalty.

Prosecutor George Williamson, a former head of the state Justice

Department's criminal division who specializes in capital cases, said Mariposa

County District Attorney Christine Johnson's decision on whether to pursue a

death sentence is ''imminent.''

Stayner's attorney, Marcia Morrissey, said the possibility of a death

penalty ''will certainly alter the way the case proceeds.''

In the winter, in an agreement that spared him a possible federal death

sentence, Stayner agreed to plead guilty in U.S. District Court to murdering

Joie Armstrong, a 26-year-old naturalist in Yosemite National Park. He was

sentenced to life without possibility of parole.

He has pleaded innocent in the Sund-Pelosso case, which is being held in

state court because the killings occurred outside national park boundaries.

Pelosso, an exchange student from Argentina, was visiting the Sunds. They

were on a sight-seeing trip to the park at the time of the slayings.

Authorities were focused on Central Valley drug dealers until Stayner was

arrested in July 1999, two days after Armstrong's slaying.

In a statement to FBI agents in connection with that case, he also

confessed to strangling Pelosso, 16, and Carole Sund, 42, and sexually

assaulting Juli Sund, 15, before slitting her throat.

The three women disappeared from the Cedar Lodge motel in El Portal after

sight-seeing in Yosemite on Valentine's Day.

The bodies of the elder Sund and Pelosso were found a month later in their

burned rental car near Long Barn in the Stanislaus National Forest. Juli

Sund's body was found the following week at a vista point at Lake Don Pedro in

Tuolumne County.

In court Wednesday, prosecutors played more than three hours of Stayner's

tape-recorded statement, in which he describes in graphic detail -- at times

dispassionately and other times in tears -- how he ''researched'' which women

would be his victims, how he killed each of them and his numerous efforts to

throw investigators off his tracks.

After he tricked Carole Sund into opening the motel room door by saying he

needed to fix a leak, Stayner said he bound and gagged the women and forced

the girls in the bathroom and Sund onto a bed. It was about 10 p.m.

He said Carole Sund was killed first. ''I didn't realize how much it took

to strangle a person,'' Stayner told FBI agents. ''It's not easy.''

He said he had no feelings afterward: ''It was like I performed a task.''

After putting Sund in the trunk of her rental car, he said he killed

Pelosso, using a different grip on the rope because his fingers got numb when

he killed Carole Sund.

The graphic description of his daughter's death was more than Jose Pelosso

could bear.

Pelosso, who had been listening to a translator on headphones, abruptly

stood from his seat and stormed past others to the aisle, throwing off the

headphones and yelling names at Stayner in Spanish.

Sobbing, he was escorted outside by friends and bailiffs and driven away

from the courthouse.

Stayner did not react to the outburst.

Stayner's taped confession continued with a description of sexually

assaulting Juli Sund and his realization that, after several hours with his

victims, he would need to leave the motel.

After he removed Juli Sund's gag of black duct tape, she asked him a

question.

''She asked me if I was going to kill her,'' Stayner said. ''I didn't say

anything.''

He said he drove her to a scenic overlook in Tuolumne County and as the sun

rose, he decided he had to kill her -- although he said he had begun to like

the teen-ager.

''I told her I loved her and slit her throat,'' Stayner said. He estimated

it was 6 a.m.

Several times during his statement, Stayner described how he cleaned up

hairs, drops of blood, bits of fabric and other trace evidence because he had

seen TV shows about forensic evidence.

He said he wiped down the rental car to erase fingerprints and even paid

someone $5 to supply saliva on an envelope so he wouldn't leave DNA evidence

on an anonymous letter he sent to the FBI telling them where to find Juli

Sund's body.

After the confession was played, Morrissey said the judge's ruling to hold

Stayner over for trial wasn't unexpected. She had offered to waive the

preliminary hearing, but the prosecution declined.

Morrissey declined to say when she might file a change of venue motion to

move the trial out of Mariposa County.

Law enforcement sources close to the case say it may be impossible in the

rural county of 17,000 to seat a jury of residents who haven't formed an

opinion about the case, especially with details of the confession now public.

You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 521-5205 or e-mail

lcarter@pressdemocrat.com.