This week (March 16-23) in crime history – Lastania Abarta
shot and killed her former lover in Los Angeles (March 16, 1881); Robert Blake
was acquitted of murder (March 16, 2005); Judge Roy Bean died (March 16, 1903);
Raymond Clark II pleaded guilty to the murder of a Yale University grad student
(March 17, 2011); Yosemite Murders (March 18, 1999); Nazi General Friedrich
Fromm was executed for helping plot failed assassination of Adolph Hitler
(March 19, 1945); Tokyo subway was attacked with nerve gas by terrorists (
March 20, 1995); Alcatraz prison closed (March 21, 1963); Seven teachers were indicted
for child abuse at the McMartin preschool (March 22, 1984)
Highlighted crime
story of the week -
On March 18, 1999, the bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina
Pelosso are found in a charred rental car in a remote wooded area of Long Barn,
Califonia. The women, along with Sund’s daughter Juli, had been missing since
February when they were last seen alive at the Cedar Lodge near Yosemite
National Park. Juli Sund’s body was found thirty miles away a week after the
car was found. Compounding the mystery, Carole Sund’s wallet had been found on
a street in downtown Modesto, California, three days after they had
disappeared.
Police initially focused their investigation on a group of
methamphetamine users in Northern California, but this changed in July when
Joie Ruth Armstrong, a 26-year-old Yosemite Park worker, was brutally killed near
her cabin in the park. The discovery of her body led detectives to Cary
Stayner, 37, who worked at the Cedar Lodge motel, where the Sunds were last
seen. Stayner was tracked down and caught at a nudist colony in Northern
California. He confessed to the murder of Armstrong and then surprised the
detectives by admitting that he was also responsible for the murders of the
Sunds and Pelosso.
Years earlier, Stayner had been on the other end of another
high-profile crime. His younger brother, Steven, was abducted in Merced when
Cary was eleven years old. Steven Stayner was held for more than seven years by
a sexual abuser, Kenneth Parnell. Following his escape, a television movie, I Know My First Name is Steven,
dramatized the incident. Steven Stayner died in a tragic motorcycle accident
when he was twenty-four. Cary Stayner pleaded guilty to the Armstrong murder in
2001 and was convicted of the other three murders in 2002 and was sentenced to
death. He is currently incarcerated at San Quentin Prison awaiting appeals of
his conviction.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that includes Murder
and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:
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