Stayner sentenced to death: Judge chokes up describing ‘unbearable mental torture’ for families

SAN JOSE -- An emotional judge formally sentenced Yosemite murderer Cary

Stayner to death Thursday following a call from the victims' family to ''step

forward and take his sentence now.''

Judge Thomas Hastings briefly excused himself while describing the crimes

but returned to mete out three death sentences and 45 additional years in

prison for the former motel handyman.

Stayner admitted killing Eureka resident Carole Sund, her daughter Juli and

their Argentine friend Silvina Pelosso during a 1999 sightseeing trip.

Jens Sund of Eureka, Carole's husband and Juli's father, urged Stayner to

accept his fate and drop his legal appeals like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy

McVeigh, who was executed in June 2001.

''I only wish the murderer here could step forward and take his sentence

now instead of prolonging it for years and years,'' Sund said, glancing toward

Stayner, who sat facing away from a packed courtroom of family, media and

jurors.

Stayner probably can't waive his first appeal, an automatic review by the

state Supreme Court that is likely to take several years.

Silvina's father, Jose Pelosso, who returned from his home in Argentina for

the formal sentencing, wondered whether Stayner can ''accept and admit the

crimes he has committed.''

Dressed in a red and orange Santa Clara County Jail uniform, Stayner

displayed no emotion when Hastings confirmed the jury's verdict of death,

handed down in October after a three-month trial.

For others, the finality of Thursday's ruling, though not unexpected,

dredged up many emotions.

Santa Rosa natives Francis and Carole Carrington, Carole's parents and

Juli's grandparents, wept as Hastings detailed Stayner's crimes in rejecting a

defense motion to reduce the jury's death sentence to life without parole.

''I've never seen anything so close to black and white, evil and good as

Cary Stayner and our children,'' Francis Carrington said outside court.

''One of the hardest things for me is thinking how Carole felt when he tied

her up and she knew he didn't just want money,'' a teary Carole Carrington

said. ''How horrible she must have felt in the last few minutes of her life.

And the girls, how they must have been terrified.''

Even Hastings, a veteran jurist who presided over the trial of Richard

Allen Davis in the Polly Klaas kidnap-murder, left the bench when he choked up

describing the ''unbearable mental torture'' that Stayner inflicted on his

victims' families.

Hastings returned two minutes later, red-faced and sniffling.

He rejected a defense motion for a new trial based on claims of more than

100 judicial errors and allegations of jury misconduct, including a charge

that three jurors didn't disclose during pretrial questioning that they had

been molested as children.

Stayner's molestation and his brother Steven's abduction by a child

molester were key elements in his defense.

Hastings ruled the jury questionnaires were vague and that even if the

omissions amounted to misconduct, the strength of the rest of the

prosecution's case against Stayner was overwhelming.

Ten jurors attended the sentencing and all declined comment afterward.

Delbert Stayner, Cary Stayner's father, was disappointed in the rulings,

and said jurors may have been unfairly swayed by the Carringtons' visible

support for the death penalty in their many public appearances during the

trial.

Stayner, 41, was taken into custody in July 1999 in connection with the

decapitation death of Yosemite park naturalist Joie Armstrong, 26. 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. Federal prosecutors aren't expected to seek custody,

leaving Stayner to face capital punishment in California.

The Sunds and Pelosso were staying at the lodge where Stayner lived and

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

later in separate, remote locations.

Carole Sund and Pelosso were bound with duct tape, strangled with a rope

and put inside the trunk of their rental car, which was set afire and hidden

among trees.

Stayner admitted sexually assaulting Juli Sund at the hotel before taking

her to a scenic overlook, telling her he loved her and slitting her throat.

Stayner told agents when he saw the Sunds and Pelosso in the room through a

crack in the curtains, he knew they were vulnerable because there was no man

around. He said he had a recurrent fantasy of attacking, sexually assaulting

and killing women and girls but hadn't acted on the desire before.

Stayner's defense conceded he killed the three but claimed he was insane at

the time, saying his obsessive thoughts and compulsions led to a psychotic

break with reality in which he couldn't control himself.

In August, the nine-man, three-woman jury took five hours to convict

Stayner of three counts of first-degree murder and five special circumstances

that allowed capital punishment. After more than three weeks of testimony from

doctors and mental health experts, jurors rejected Stayner's claims of

insanity.

On Oct. 16, after less than five hours of deliberations, jurors returned a

verdict of death.

The trial was moved to San Jose from Mariposa County, where most of the

crimes occurred, because of the case's notoriety in the small rural county.

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

lcarter@pressdemocrat.com.