Lawyer: Stayner killed trio, but was insane at time

SAN JOSE -- Moments after the prosecutor painted a graphic picture of the

1999 murders of three Yosemite tourists, Cary Stayner's lawyer acknowledged

Monday that the former motel handyman committed the crimes, but said he was

insane at the time.

''Cary Stayner killed Mrs. Sund and Juli Sund and Silvina Pelosso. That's

not an issue in this case,'' defense attorney Marcia Morrissey told jurors in

her opening arguments in Santa Clara Superior Court.

''The big question for you to decide is whether Cary Stayner's brain and

his reasoning skills were so impaired at the time'' that he could not

distinguish right from wrong, she said.

Stayner, 40, is on trial in the killings of Yosemite National Park tourists

Carole Sund, 42, her daughter Juli, 15, and their Argentine friend, Silvina

Pelosso, 16, who were visiting the park from the Sunds' Eureka home.

He is charged with three counts of murder, one count of kidnapping and six

special circumstances that could trigger the death penalty if he is convicted.

If Morrissey's strategy works, Stayner could be committed to a state mental

hospital for the rest of his life.

After Stayner's July 1999 arrest in connection with the decapitation death

of Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong, 26, a former Sonoma County resident, he

confessed on tape to FBI agents that he killed Armstrong and that five months

earlier he had slain the Sunds and Pelosso.

Stayner pleaded guilty in federal court to Armstrong's murder in exchange

for a life sentence instead of a potential death penalty.

However, in the state case that began Monday, prosecutors are pressing for

the death sentence. Stayner has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of

insanity.

In his hourlong opening statement, plain-spoken prosecutor George

Williamson carefully led the nine-man, three-woman jury from the carefree

times of the Half Dome tourists through their gruesome murders at the Cedar

Lodge in El Portal and at a scenic overlook in Tuolumne County.

The trio were staying at the lodge, where Stayner lived and worked, when

they disappeared Feb. 15, 1999. Their bodies were discovered weeks later.

Carole Sund and Pelosso had been bound with black duct tape, strangled with

a rope and thrown inside the trunk of their rental car, which was set afire

near Mi-Wuk Village. Juli Sund had been sexually assaulted and her throat was

slit. Her body was found on a hill overlooking Don Pedro Reservoir.

''This evidence is going to be horrific for you,'' Williamson warned

jurors. ''It will be graphic and terrible, but that's the evidence. Murder's

not pretty.''

In January 1999, Carole and Juli Sund were happy, vibrant people and

Pelosso was enjoying American life, he said. But that changed dramatically

when they encountered Stayner at the motel.

Williamson said he will show, often using Stayner's confession, that

Stayner fantasized about, planned and plotted to kill women. He told jurors of

Stayner's so-called murder kit -- a backpack with a gun, a knife, a rope and

duct tape packed in preparation for killing.

''They crossed paths with this defendant, with his urges, his wants, his

needs for control and power and his fantasies,'' he said, winning the jurors'

rapt attention. ''Little did they know, they were going to be dead in little

more than 24 hours. They never had a clue.''

Stayner, wearing a cream-colored oxford shirt and khakis, sat with his back

to courtroom observers. He occasionally put his head in his hands and at one

point held a tissue in his balled fist. Morrissey said he cried throughout

opening statements.

Carole and Francis Carrington, Carole Sund's parents and Juli's

grandparents, said they have little sympathy for Stayner, despite his alleged

mental problems.

''He knew what he was doing or he wouldn't have tried to mislead

everybody,'' Francis Carrington said. ''There's no question about it.''

Carole Sund met her future husband, Jens, while they were students at

Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa. Her parents made their fortune in real

estate in the Santa Rosa area. The Sunds moved to Eureka, where Juli grew up

and where Carrington Co. now operates.

From the start of her opening statement, Morrissey acknowledged the

brutality of the crimes but said jurors should concentrate on why they

occurred.

''Was Cary Stayner acting as a rational person or were these actions of an

irrational person -- a person with a broken mind that had lost touch with

reality?'' she asked.

''There was no law and order, there was no right and wrong, only robotlike

actions of compulsion.''

Morrissey displayed a large portrait of a gap-toothed Stayner as a

first-grader and unfolded a large chart of the Stayner family tree,

color-coded with what she said were mental difficulties each family member

suffered.

She said the problems included pedophilia, obsessive-compulsive disorders,

suicidal thoughts and mental retardation. At age 2, Stayner began suffering

from trichotillomania, a hair-pulling disorder that she said was the first

sign that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

''He was born with a badly, visibly misshapen head,'' she said. ''His

brain, what's inside his misshapen head, is badly damaged.''

At age 6, while waiting in the car for his mother, he fantasized that she

had been kidnapped and tortured; later, the images grew to include underground

trap doors and tigers, Morrissey said.

By age 11, the thoughts became more violent, with Holocaust-type carnage,

she said. Also that year, Stayner was allegedly molested by an uncle.

The kidnapping of his brother, Steven, that year worsened Stayner's state

of mind, she said. Steven, 7, was kidnapped by a drifter named Kenneth

Parnell, who kept him as his own son and regularly molested him for seven

years.

The pair were living in Ukiah in 1980 when Parnell grabbed another child,

5-year-old Timothy White. That abduction so incensed Steven Stayner, then 14,

that he escaped with the little boy and took him to the Ukiah police station.

Parnell was arrested and convicted. The story eventually was made into a TV

movie and a book.

In 1986, when Cary Stayner was 24, his father was charged with molesting

his sisters and the parents separated. Three years later, Steven Stayner was

killed in a motorcycle crash.

Seven years ago, Stayner had a mental breakdown after which he was

diagnosed with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Morrissey said.

She said she offered the information not as an excuse or justification for

the crimes, but as ''something that bears upon his mental state.''

Also Monday, Judge Thomas Hasting denied another defense request for a

change of venue. The trial already had been moved from Mariposa County because

of pretrial publicity.

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

lcarter@pressdemocrat.com.