Stayner hearing in Yosemite killings set: Carrington, Sund, Pelosso families to attend weeklong proceedings in Mariposa County courthouse

Carole Carrington sees meaning in things she never noticed before.

She has an orchid someone gave her in Modesto after her daughter, her

granddaughter and their friend were killed near Yosemite National Park in

1999. Five months later, Cary Stayner, their accused killer, was arrested

after another woman in the park was murdered.

In bloom when she received it, the orchid still gives Carrington moments of

peace.

''It bloomed in Christmas. Then this year, it bloomed two days before

Carole's birthday. Then there were two blooms, three blooms and then finally a

fourth,'' she said.

She wrote a letter to the mother of Stayner's fourth victim, Joie

Armstrong.

''I think there's a message here,'' Carrington wrote to Leslie Armstrong.

Today, 29 months after Carole Carrington Sund, 42, her daughter Juli, 15,

and her friend Silvina Pelosso, 16, of Argentina disappeared, Stayner faces a

preliminary hearing in Mariposa County Superior Court on charges of killing

and sexually assaulting the women.

Stayner, 39, who pleaded guilty last year in federal court to avoid a

possible death sentence for Armstrong's slaying, was sentenced to life in

prison without the possibility of parole.

In the Sund-Pelosso case, he faces three murder charges and five special

circumstances that could bring the death penalty. He has pleaded innocent,

although he has admitted the killings to reporters and FBI agents.

State prosecutors have yet to say whether they will pursue capital

punishment.

The Carringtons, Sunds, Pelossos and extended family members will spend the

week in the foothills outside Yosemite, listening to evidence against Stayner

in Mariposa's 147-year-old, white clapboard, Greek revival-style courthouse.

The preliminary hearing, after which Judge Thomas C. Hastings will decide

whether there is enough evidence to proceed with trial, is expected to last at

least five days.

Stayner is being housed in Mariposa County Jail, separated from other

inmates for his own safety, Sheriff's Lt. Brian Muller said. The sheriff has

increased security in and around the courthouse for the hearing, which is

expected to receive worldwide media attention.

Carole Carrington said last week the family members have been steeling

themselves for another look at the man who admitted killing the women. Raquel

and Jose Pelosso and their daughter, Paula, have flown in from Argentina for

the hearing.

''We know it's not going to be an easy time,'' she said. ''We've heard a

lot of the things already that will come out in court.''

The Sunds and Pelosso were vacationing at the rustic Cedar Lodge in El

Portal, where Stayner also lived and sometimes worked as a handyman, when they

vanished Feb. 15, 1999.

Stayner's family was involved in another high-profile crime.

When he was 10 years old, his younger brother, Steven, was kidnapped from

their hometown of Merced and held for seven years by a convicted molester in

Sonoma and Mendocino counties. The case made national headlines in 1980 when

Steven escaped from Kenneth Parnell. Steven Stayner died in a motorcycle crash

in 1989.

His parents, Delbert and Kay Stayner of Winton, a town north of Merced,

have attended their son's court proceedings.

During a sentencing hearing in the Armstrong case, Cary Stayner said he

''gave in to the terrible dark dreams that I tried to subdue. The craziness

that lurked in my mind for as long as I can remember became a reality in this

terrible crime.''

In his confession, Stayner told investigators he entered the women's Cedar

Lodge motel room, saying he had to fix a leak in the bathroom. Once inside, he

said he pulled a pistol and told the women to lie face down on their beds,

then bound their hands with duct tape and gagged them.

He said he strangled Carole Sund and Pelosso in the motel room and sexually

assaulted the girls. He then drove Juli and the two bodies to a remote

reservoir, where he slashed Juli's throat, he said.

Nearly a month later, the burned bodies of Silvina and Carole Sund were

discovered in their rented car near Long Barn in the Stanislaus National

Forest. A week after that, Juli's body was found near Lake Don Pedro in

Tuolomne County.

Stayner was arrested in July 1999 in connection with Armstrong's murder.

The 26-year-old nature guide was found beheaded near her cabin in the park.

Stayner was caught three days later.

All four of the murdered women have ties to the North Coast.

Carole Sund was a member of the Carrington family, whose patriarch,

Francis, made his fortune in real estate. Sund and her husband, Jens, attended

high school in Santa Rosa before moving north to Eureka, where Juli grew up

and where the Carrington Co. now operates.

Pelosso was visiting the Sunds, who had been friends with her mother,

Raquel, since she and Carole met as students.

Armstrong attended elementary schools in Forestville and Santa Rosa and had

grandparents in Santa Rosa. She is buried in Sebastopol.

The prosecution team is composed of Mariposa County Deputy District

Attorney Kimberly A. Fletcher, Deputy Attorney General Michael Canzoneri and

Solano County Deputy District Attorney George Williamson, the former head of

the attorney general's criminal division. Williamson was assigned as a special

prosecutor in the case.

Stayner's defense attorney will be Marcia A. Morrissey of Santa Monica, who

has tried four death penalty cases and 15 noncapital murder cases and

represented defendants in at least seven death penalty cases.

Hastings, who retired from the Santa Clara County Superior Court, presided

over the trial of Richard Allen Davis in Polly Klaas' murder.

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

lcarter@pressdemocrat.com.