True Crime Vault: Evil in Eden

Speaker 1 Score the perfect gift at Dicks Sporting Goods. Start your wish list with top picks from Nike, Jordan, FP Movement, and more.

Speaker 1 Shop trending shoes, golf gear, water bottles, and more of this year's hottest gifts. Need it fast? Stop by your local store or use the Dicks app for quick pickup or delivery.

Speaker 1 Visit DicksportingGoods.com to shop this year's best holiday gifts at Dick's.

Speaker 5 Welcome to the True Crime Vault, home to 2020's most chilling stories.

Speaker 3 This is a story of two brothers, one a hero and the other, a monster.

Speaker 8 A serial killer in a national park is a story. But there was more to this story because you had a serial killer whose brother had been a national celebrity.

Speaker 9 Seven long years ago, a youngster in California vanished. Today he showed up with another boy.

Speaker 10 Five-year-old Timothy White.

Speaker 11 He literally said, I was not going to let that child go through what I had already been through.

Speaker 6 Books, television, movies. It was absolutely incredible.

Speaker 3 The moment that Stephen Stainer is abducted is the moment that this story really begins.

Speaker 6 There's going to be a homecoming. You would imagine sheer joy that the entire family would be ecstatic.
But one member is not so thrilled.

Speaker 6 he was cold hateful the vicious vicious killer but he's even more twisted than that we have recovered two bodies you could never imagine something so heinous happening in and around yosemite

Speaker 19 I mean this is a story that decades later they're still talking about maybe just maybe we're gonna find this girl alive

Speaker 20 He was handsome. He was warm, like a big teddy bear.
He was just our friend.

Speaker 20 It is frightening just to think what he was thinking the whole time.

Speaker 6 This is Yosemite. These things don't happen in Yosemite.

Speaker 8 Yosemite actually means the people who kill.

Speaker 21 I lay down the blanket. I guess I knew what I was trying to do because I had the knife with me.

Speaker 23 Never expect so much terror to happen in such a beautiful place.

Speaker 7 Mozart!

Speaker 8 This story starts in Merced, California.

Speaker 8 It's in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by almond groves and peach orchards.

Speaker 3 It's a small farming town in the Central Valley of California, which is in the huge shadow of Yosemite. Merced, they call the gateway to Yosemite.

Speaker 3 I started singing pie,

Speaker 3 this American Pie.

Speaker 8 We're talking 1972. American Pie was on the radio.

Speaker 8 This is the year of Watergate.

Speaker 8 It was the year that Pong was introduced. The Brady Bunch.
The Brady Bunch.

Speaker 8 We became the Brady Bunch.

Speaker 26 The Stainers lived on Betty Street.

Speaker 25 It was a middle-class kind of a neighborhood.

Speaker 23 Parents were Delbert and Kay, and

Speaker 23 Kerry was the oldest of five children. He had a younger brother, Stephen, and three sisters, too.

Speaker 3 Del worked as a mechanic in a peach cannery.

Speaker 8 His mother, Kay, was always described as distant, somewhat aloof, a woman who raised her children with sort of

Speaker 8 almost a coldness.

Speaker 28 Kieri was a nice guy.

Speaker 8 He was kind of a quiet guy.

Speaker 28 Our days would be just getting our bikes in the morning and go to the park, hang out with friends, or skateboard.

Speaker 29 He loved his brother, hung out with him, played with him, looked out for him.

Speaker 30 Stephen had walked almost all the way home. That's when it happened.
A man in a car offered him a ride.

Speaker 8 So at the same time that the Stainer boys are growing up in Resed, about two hours away in Yosemite,

Speaker 8 there's a little stooped, pasty, nebishy guy named Ken Parnell.

Speaker 23 Kenneth Parnell was working at the Yosemite Lodge doing the books for them.

Speaker 23 He was convicted previously of molesting a child.

Speaker 8 But he found a job in Yosemite because

Speaker 8 that kind of guy could find a job in Yosemite. A lot of people run to Yosemite to get away from things.

Speaker 3 And Kenneth decided that he was going to

Speaker 3 abduct a young boy. He was able to recruit a coworker of his.

Speaker 8 A slow-witted fella named Irvin Murphy.

Speaker 8 And finally on December 4th, it was a sleety wintry day, he and Irvin Murphy got into Ken's big white Buick and drove into Mercedes.

Speaker 30 Stephen, what happened that afternoon? Do you remember when you were walking home from school?

Speaker 8 And they saw this little boy, seven-year-old Stephen Stainer.

Speaker 17 Stephen had left school, headed straight south from here, four blocks, and when he was on Yosemite Parkway, which leads to Yosemite National Park, he was approached by an Irvin Murphy.

Speaker 25 Murphy had some religious tracts with him, which he'd been using to approach other kids.

Speaker 31 He asked Stephen if he thought that his mother would be willing to make a charitable donation to a church.

Speaker 17 At that point, Parnell drove up in this old white Buick.

Speaker 25 Murphy opened the rear door, but Stephen got in.

Speaker 2 Instead of taking a right so he could go to his home, they continued directly eastbound.

Speaker 8 They're driving out of Merced, going up Highway 140.

Speaker 6 Kenneth Parnell stops the car and he goes to a pay phone. He comes back and tells Stephen, your parents, I just spoke to them.
They no longer want you.

Speaker 17 And Parnell then told him that you're going to be my son.

Speaker 25 He was a seven-year-old, thoroughly confused kid.

Speaker 17 I think that he was probably

Speaker 2 used to an authoritative approach by his parents. So when Parnell told him that parents had said that he was going to go with him, I think he probably believed it.

Speaker 30 Stephen's abduction was sudden, wrenching, brutal.

Speaker 8 And yet he's going to be hiding in plain sight for years.

Speaker 3 The moment that Stephen Stainer is abducted is the moment that this

Speaker 3 story of two brothers really begins and was absolutely pivotal in terms of the monster coming to life.

Speaker 25 December 4th, 1972, Stephen Stainer was abducted on Highway 140 in the city of Merced by individuals driving an older model white Buink.

Speaker 23 And they're driving east towards Yosemite.

Speaker 8 Parnell lives most of his life in Yosemite at the lodge.

Speaker 8 He kept Stephen in his room for about a week after that.

Speaker 32 He kept giving him this copser to sedate him.

Speaker 32 I think that Carnell felt that the more confused and sedated that he could keep Stephen in for the first several weeks, the better chance he stood to erase his connection back to his own family.

Speaker 3 When Stephen didn't make it home from school, his parents immediately were alerted.

Speaker 25 Merced was the lead police department.

Speaker 26 And so they really mounted a large effort to search.

Speaker 32 And they searched.

Speaker 25 And there was just nothing there.

Speaker 30 It happened here at this corner. It was such a classic situation, the kind against which parents are constantly warning their children.

Speaker 30 The next morning, there was an empty desk in the second grade class at Charles Wright School.

Speaker 3 When he was missing, it rocked the Stainer family. It hurt the family dynamic, and it crushed Del Stainer.

Speaker 8 He just becomes a broken man, really.

Speaker 8 Kay becomes even more distant, more aloof. She's sort of raising her children almost robotically.

Speaker 23 Kay and Delbert became colder to their other children.

Speaker 36 Carrie is very upset. I've heard stories about him going out and wishing to start that his brother would come home.

Speaker 36 Maybe he had some guilt because I believe he was supposed to have been with his brother.

Speaker 23 Delbert kind of saw Stephen as his real son, and Carrie kind of felt abandoned, neglected.

Speaker 8 A few weeks after he kidnapped Stephen, Parnell pulled up stakes and he started drifting around California.

Speaker 8 They moved first to Santa Rosa, they would stay in fleabag motels, a crappy trailer or a broken down house.

Speaker 3 Stephen Stainer had a new father figure, and it was Kenneth Parnell, who by day was his father and by night was his rapist.

Speaker 24 Parnell told him that his name was going to be Dennis Parnell and he enrolled him in school and the school failed to get the records.

Speaker 32 Those were the days where you'd get a copy of a record.

Speaker 25 You know, there was no email.

Speaker 8 In the summer of 1976, just a couple of weeks before the bicentennial, it's been four years since Stephen was told Ken Parnell was his father.

Speaker 8 Parnell and Stephen ended up in the little town of Compchee, California, which is in Mendocino County.

Speaker 23 Comp Chee was really tiny. It had maybe a post office and a general store.

Speaker 23 And he kept him on the grounds in a trailer.

Speaker 37 So this is where Ken Parnell used to live many years ago.

Speaker 38 It's a good place to hide.

Speaker 35 It's a long ways from anywhere out here.

Speaker 3 Nobody knew what was going on behind closed doors and that this wasn't a father-son at all.

Speaker 6 By this time, I'm pretty certain that Parnell felt I've got him emotionally locked in. So he knew that this kid was going nowhere.

Speaker 39 Wayfair's big sale is returning. Get ready for Way Day.
For four days only, score up to 80% off all things home with free shipping on everything.

Speaker 39 From October 26th through 29th, score Wayfair's best deals, like up to 80% off area rugs up to 60% off mattresses up to 60% off bedroom furniture and more exclusive door buster deals so mark your calendar and shop wayday starting October 26th at Wayfair.com

Speaker 12 Wayfair every style every home a message from McAfee

Speaker 12 Wondering why the post office is texting you or why you owe thousands of dollars in toll fees? Because someone's trying to scam you? The good news, McAfee can help.

Speaker 12 With McAfee's award-winning scam detection, it's easy to tell what's real and what's fake over text, in your inbox, and online. If they're fake...
You want a free gift? Seriously?

Speaker 12 If they're faking it, they're not making it past us. Get award-winning scam detection today.
McAfee.com slash keep it real.

Speaker 8 From all outward appearances, he'd adjusted to that new life. There was no school out there, so every day he had to get on a bus and ride for 30 minutes.

Speaker 11 This picture

Speaker 41 just describes what he looked like.

Speaker 11 His personality, his hairdo, his flannel shirt, his smile.

Speaker 11 My name is Lori, and Stephen Stainer was my boyfriend in high school.

Speaker 11 He had a great personality.

Speaker 11 He was spunky. You could see that he wanted to play and be with kids and be normal.

Speaker 11 Growing up with him consisted of a lot of fishing, riding bicycles.

Speaker 42 He sort of reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.

Speaker 28 He had the same haircut and same-shaped face even.

Speaker 28 He made his way into getting into athletics his freshman year of high school. He had a level of maturity to him that most of the kids didn't have.

Speaker 28 And I think part of that was, you know, he was already smoking cigarettes. A lot of kids had freedom but not his kind of come and go as he pleased which makes me wonder why didn't he just leave

Speaker 43 the answer is that Stephen now has attached to Parnell on some parental level and that's still his dependency day in and day out for food clothing and let's face it it sounds like Parnell basically let him do whatever he wanted to do as far as drugs alcohol and so his comfort level now is set in.

Speaker 25 Because of the sexual abuse, I think that played into it too. He knew that that wasn't normal.
I don't think he wanted to have other people know about it.

Speaker 25 In some ways, it's just easier to go along with what was happening to him.

Speaker 43 Stephen still has a reality that he has a real family someplace else.

Speaker 11 We were walking home and he started crying.

Speaker 16 He said, I want to go home to my real home.

Speaker 11 We just let it go. We have been drinking some beer and, you know, kids.

Speaker 25 While Stephen is a freshman at Mendocino High School, some 300 miles to the south, his brother Carrie was an upperclassman at Merced High School.

Speaker 29 He was Carrie Stainer, the kid who had his brother kidnapped.

Speaker 35 There was a paw over him.

Speaker 28 He actually was voted most creative. Carrie was very well known for his drawings.

Speaker 28 I think that he was very, very good cartoonist, especially even with the humor.

Speaker 28 He always wore a hat every time you would see him.

Speaker 3 He was wearing the hat because he was compulsively pulling his hair out. Emotionally, Carrie had a tough time during his childhood.

Speaker 29 I don't remember Kerry ever having a girlfriend. I never saw him with a girl.

Speaker 8 Carrie started acting wildly inappropriately towards females. He exposed himself to one of his sister's friends.

Speaker 3 It seemed as though he had a compulsion with trying to get close to women or be sexual with them, but he was unable to develop any sort of interpersonal relationships with any women.

Speaker 8 There's a surreal contrast in this. You have one brother who's been subjected to just unspeakable horror for years, But by all appearances, he's a happy-go-lucky, jovial kid with a girlfriend.

Speaker 8 You have the other brother who's left at home, and it wasn't that he was just a loner, he was a bit of a creepy loner.

Speaker 43 So in 1979, Stephen's now 14. He's been with Parnell for seven years.

Speaker 43 And Parnell then moves him to a very new remote location. Then he can sort of, in his mind, stay one step in front of law enforcement.

Speaker 23 Ken Parnell takes Stephen to this small little town called Manchester, kind of along the coast of Northern California.

Speaker 8 Ken is looking for another prepubescent boy. Stephen knew what was going to happen, and Stephen knew that that was wrong.

Speaker 11 And he was going to end that.

Speaker 25 What Stephen would do in response would make him world famous.

Speaker 8 In 1979, Ken Parnell pulled up stakes again and he moved with Stephen to a small cabin in Manchester, California, which is in the middle of nowhere surrounded by almost nothing.

Speaker 8 This is, for Ken and for Stephen, a turning point.

Speaker 11 It was a one-room shack, very old and cold.

Speaker 25 At some point, Parnell and Stephen together realized that Stephen was growing up and that he was no longer going to be able to be controlled by Parnell.

Speaker 25 Parnell wanted another kid.

Speaker 8 So in February of 1980, Ken Parnell goes back to the exact same memo that he used to get Stephen Stainer.

Speaker 8 He paid a local kid to ride with them to the little town of Ukiah, California. Puts this high school kid out on the street to go find him a boy.

Speaker 8 And he finds five-year-old Timothy White walking home from school.

Speaker 25 Stephen watched Timmy suffer through this separation from his family for two weeks and decided finally that he had to do something about it.

Speaker 11 He literally said, I was not going to let that child go through what I had already been through.

Speaker 11 And if I didn't take care of it now, it would just get worse.

Speaker 3 Eventually, Stephen got the courage to take Timmy White out of that house. And when Kenneth Parnell went to work,

Speaker 3 the two hitched hiked to the town of Ukiah.

Speaker 8 It's dark, and Timmy can't remember where he lives. So Stephen figures the best thing to do is to take him to the police station.

Speaker 6 Keep in mind, Steve Stainer was known as Dennis for seven long years.

Speaker 6 But when he arrives at that police station, he says something that will be embedded in the public consciousness forever.

Speaker 46 I know my first name is Stephen.

Speaker 8 That became the title of a book, It became a television movie. And it made Stephen famous.

Speaker 9 Seven long years ago, a youngster in California vanished.

Speaker 8 Everyone thought he was dead at this point. He'd rescued another boy.

Speaker 5 This is Stephen today.

Speaker 10 He is holding five-year-old Timothy White.

Speaker 6 Who could make this up? Every television network, every magazine cover, every movie executive, there wasn't anyone not interest.

Speaker 7 There he is. There he is.

Speaker 8 Stephen was a national hero.

Speaker 8 He returns to Merced triumphant.

Speaker 30 Stephen's return has been a joyous event.

Speaker 8 Within days, he's on Good Morning America.

Speaker 9 Good morning, Stephen and Mr. and Mrs.
Stainer. And Stephen, how does it feel to be home?

Speaker 47 Feels great.

Speaker 9 Did you remember your parents well?

Speaker 48 They didn't change that much.

Speaker 48 I recognized them when I got out of the car.

Speaker 9 What about your brothers and sisters?

Speaker 48 They changed a lot. I never recognized either one of them.

Speaker 9 Mr. Ms.
Stainer, how did this affect your other four children?

Speaker 5 When Steve disappeared, the older two were

Speaker 49 very upset and I think kind of became very quiet children from the experience.

Speaker 8 There was a press conference outside the Staner house on Petty Street, and everyone is smiling. There's a lot of jubilation.
This is really some sort of a miracle that Stephen's come home.

Speaker 7 Greatest thing ever happened to all of us.

Speaker 8 But if you look in the background, there's something worth noting, and it's Carrie in his baseball cap, and he's not smiling at all.

Speaker 3 Carrie, as the older brother, had a very strange relationship now with his younger brother Stephen, who was getting all of this attention and who was a different person.

Speaker 8 In the television movie, there's a scene where he's finally reunited with his brother Carrie. Carrie.

Speaker 8 And Carrie comes in looking almost like a shaggy-haired surfer. And he's jubilant.
He's so thrilled to see his brother. There's nothing to suggest that Carrie was all that thrilled to see his brother.

Speaker 4 They shared a room, they didn't get along.

Speaker 3 Stephen didn't understand the rules that he was now expected to live by.

Speaker 50 Stephen, what have these years been been like for you, adjusting, getting over the seven years you were away from home?

Speaker 47 For seven years I'd been supposedly an only child. Now I had

Speaker 47 to compete with a brother and three sisters.

Speaker 50 You were away for seven years and a lot of people still wonder why you didn't try to escape before you finally did escape three years ago.

Speaker 50 When you look back on that, why do you think that is, Stephen?

Speaker 47 Well, there's There's several reasons. I was told I was adopted.

Speaker 50 You believed it?

Speaker 47 Yes, I believed it.

Speaker 50 Kay, what about for you? How do you think it's been for Stephen?

Speaker 51 I think he's done fantastic.

Speaker 51 I'm very proud of the way he's kind of joined right in with the rest of us, and he doesn't give us any problems.

Speaker 25 I tried to explain to her that they might consider, you know, some professional counseling, and she told me that she didn't believe that that was going to be necessary.

Speaker 8 The adults all thought Stephen was a hero, but none of the adults had to go to high school with Stephen.

Speaker 30 It is generally known that there was homosexual activity involved in Stephen's abduction.

Speaker 36 Stephen was constantly being made fun of when he came back, which is really sad because the poor guy has just been through all these seven years of,

Speaker 36 you know, being molested and

Speaker 36 everything else.

Speaker 8 His sexuality was constantly under attack. There's a scene in the movie in a locker room.

Speaker 26 What was it kind of exciting for you?

Speaker 36 Being around all those naked guys?

Speaker 8 Where Stephen at least is strong enough to fight back.

Speaker 8 The bullying was just unending.

Speaker 8 While Stephen already has these two sides buffeting him, the adults who say he's a hero and the kids who are just picking on him mercilessly, he's got to deal with Parnell as well.

Speaker 8 There he is sitting in the courtroom, and he's got a point at Ken Parnell.

Speaker 6 Ultimately, Kenneth Parnell did face charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment, but he was never tried for sexual assault in this case.

Speaker 6 In the end, there was not sufficient evidence to prove those charges.

Speaker 8 It was outrageous. There was out and out fury over the sentence.

Speaker 51 I'm angry that he will be back out on the street. I thought laws were to protect the innocent children, and it's not, because he will be out, and he possibly will do it again, quite probably.

Speaker 8 Ken Parnell went back to what he'd been doing for years. He found someone else to help him find another boy, only this time he was caught.
And he was sent to prison again where he died in 2008.

Speaker 23 While Stephen was kind of struggling to do his own life after his return, Kerry was out of high school and having his own troubles.

Speaker 29 I think Kerry after high school seemed a little lost, like he didn't know where he was going.

Speaker 3 When his life was starting to spin out of control, he took refuge in Yosemite.

Speaker 8 He had this international scout, pale blue, and he would just drive out Highway 140 into Yosemite and disappear up into the woods and get high.

Speaker 6 Whatever demons were clamoring around in his head, by being naked, by smoking pot, he could find the peace that he so desperately needed.

Speaker 3 One of the things that made a huge impact on him was he was convinced that he saw Bigfoot.

Speaker 6 Any opportunity that Carrie got, he couldn't wait to tell people about driving through an area known as Foresta

Speaker 6 and Bigfoot leaping out of the woods in the dark of night.

Speaker 6 It turns out that this incredibly deep obsession with Bigfoot is ultimately going to have incredibly tragic consequences.

Speaker 6 This sanctuary would turn out to be the very setting where Carrie Stainer's murderous demons would be unleashed.

Speaker 23 By 1989, the Stainer family had fallen far from the spotlight. The world had moved on.
The Berlin Wall fell. There was a big earthquake during the World Series in San Francisco.

Speaker 23 But the Stainer brothers were struggling, each of them both in their own ways.

Speaker 8 Stephen's celebrity was pretty short-lived.

Speaker 8 He did make some money for consulting on the TV film. He actually had a bit part as one of the police officers rescuing himself.

Speaker 8 He blew almost all of that money money on cars and drugs and booze. He worked some menial jobs.
He got married. He had two kids.

Speaker 52 He was very proud of who he was when he told me.

Speaker 6 He was not ashamed at all.

Speaker 52 He was just very well grounded, you know, for a person that had gone through what he went through.

Speaker 8 But then at the age of 24, he was riding a motorcycle without a license.

Speaker 11 He was riding home from work

Speaker 11 a vineyard worker pulled out in front of him and hit him and flipped him.

Speaker 6 You just have to feel like this poor man was dealt such a horrific hand of cards in life and in death.

Speaker 8 You know, Stephen really did the best that he could. For seven years, he's subjected to unspeakable horrors.

Speaker 8 He did work for a living, he did fall in love, he did have two kids.

Speaker 28 I see him as being on a good path, and that's how I prefer to think of him, you know.

Speaker 11 This one,

Speaker 11 it says, dear Lori, hi, how's everything in Comshe? Good, I hope. Wah, wah, wah.
He used to always say that.

Speaker 11 It's not everybody that gets a letter from a famous person, namely me. Love always Steve.

Speaker 22 So I cherish these letters

Speaker 24 forever.

Speaker 23 Stephen was gone now, but in a big sense, so was Carrie. Carrie Carrie had no direction.
He thought his life was going nowhere.

Speaker 3 Carrie never recovered from his own emotional difficulties, and then coupled with Stephen's tragic death.

Speaker 23 Well, not long after Stephen died, Carrie's uncle was shot and killed in the home they shared together. Carrie was very close to his uncle.

Speaker 8 Stephen's dead. Uncle Jerry's murdered.
This rage is starting to bubble up. Carrie has a couple of nervous breakdowns.
One was fairly fairly violent.

Speaker 36 He stated that he felt like jumping in the truck, driving it through the shop, and killing the boss, and killing everybody in the office, and then torching the place.

Speaker 36 And that's when I told him, you need to go see a doctor, Carrie.

Speaker 8 They got him to a mental health center, but he left. Carrie is literally crying out for help.
She's literally saying, I'm losing my mind.

Speaker 23 What a lot of people didn't know at the time was that Carrie was having these dreams and these fantasies about killing women.

Speaker 3 Kerry was a lost soul, and he ended up taking refuge in a place that he loved, and that was Yosemite.

Speaker 23 In the fall of 97, he drove his International Scout to the tiny town of El Porto, which is the doorstep to Yosemite National Park.

Speaker 23 By this time, Kerry's in his 30s and he lands a job as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge.

Speaker 28 The Cedar Lodge is this rustic lodge seven miles outside the gate of Yosemite. It is surrounded by and filled with these wonderful wooden bear sculptures.

Speaker 3 Working at the Cedar Lodge gave Carrie access to his beloved Yosemite. His idea of serenity was to maybe smoke a little pot and to sunbathe naked.

Speaker 55 Oh, he was always naked. No tan lines on him.
I hung out at the river with him, a lot of times alone. He never hit on me, and I know he never hit on any of my friends.
Never that uncomfortable

Speaker 55 come on, never anything like that.

Speaker 55 Not even a hint of it.

Speaker 8 But not everyone at Cedar Lodge was enamored of him. There's a woman there named Trish Houts.
She and her husband ran the restaurant that was attached to the lodge.

Speaker 8 They had a teenage daughter that Carrie spent an uncomfortable amount of time with.

Speaker 15 My daughter would start freaking out because he would just stand there and stare at my child as she's swimming in the pool. And I said, You go towards my daughter ever, and I will destroy you.

Speaker 56 He was cold, hateful.

Speaker 15 He said, I've dealt with cold and hateful people before.

Speaker 8 Trish was, in some ways, sort of a savant. She seems to be the only one who saw this side of Carrie.

Speaker 23 By February 1999, Carrie had been at the Cedar Lodge about two years and the winters were very desolate. Not a lot of tourists visit the park that time of year.

Speaker 20 Winter is a spectacle.

Speaker 57 When the granite is iced in beautiful white snow, you really get to understand how extraordinary these walls are.

Speaker 23 Among the small group of people who did come to the Cedar Lodge to go see Yosemite was Carol's Sund, her daughter Julie, 16, and their friend named Silvina Peloso.

Speaker 3 The three of them are on a trip twofold. Look at colleges and then also to enjoy Yosemite.

Speaker 3 They had a red Pontiac that they had rented for this trip. This was an opportunity for them to show Silvina, who was visiting from Argentina, one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Speaker 8 And they spent the day touring the park, going to a lot of the highlights. They went ice skating.
skating.

Speaker 23 That night, most of the other guests had actually gone home. And their room was about as far as you can get from the lobby and the restaurant in a dark corner of the lot.

Speaker 8 They had dinner at the restaurant, then they went to the front desk and got a movie they were going to go watch back in their room.

Speaker 8 All of this rage that had been building up in Carrie all of these years, he finally decides he's going to act upon it.

Speaker 21 I I watched Dresser Ridge Car in the 500 building all by itself. The window was open, the curtain was open, and I can see inside that there's two men and women coming out there to tell me.

Speaker 8 For Kerry, he's been planning this for years. There's a fantasy that he's created in his mind.
And this is the night when all of this rage is finally let loose.

Speaker 3 Something clicks, and at that moment, Carrie Stater knows it's time.

Speaker 23 Carrie had been looking for victims at night. Eventually he spied Carol and the girls through the window of their room and decided to knock on their door.

Speaker 23 I knocked on the door, said I was maintenance. We're going to leak the room upstairs.

Speaker 28 Carol answers and he says to her, I need to come in and look for the leak. And she said, absolutely not.
Girls are in their pajamas. They're watching Jerry Maguire on the VCR.

Speaker 33 What can I do for you?

Speaker 24 Show me the money.

Speaker 28 They're done for the day.

Speaker 8 He persists. Says I'll have to move to a different room if the leak goes on.
They let me in. I went to the bathroom to check the fan, where I told them to leave the problem with me.

Speaker 8 When I came out of the bathroom, I pulled my gun out. And I told my love the money and the keys in the car.

Speaker 8 He takes Carol's daughter, Julie, and her friend, Sylvina Peloso, and herds them into the bathroom. Then he ties up Carol with duct tape and then strangles her with a length of rope.

Speaker 8 And when he was done, he bundled her up and put her in the trunk of a Pontiac that she'd rented that was outside the hotel room door.

Speaker 23 Came back in and pulled the girls out of the bathroom and sexually assaulted them. Sylvina resisted.
She was hysterical. He brought her into the bathroom and strangled her.

Speaker 3 So he takes Julie, puts her into the bathroom in room 510 next door. He then takes Sylviana's body, puts her in the trunk along with Carol's son, and returns to get Julie.

Speaker 3 It was getting pretty late. It was probably 5 o'clock or so in the morning.
I told Julia, we had to get someplace to go. And I went to Harbor.
I put her in the car.

Speaker 3 Her hands are ducked out in front of her. I wrapped a pink blanket around her and just drove.
I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I was going to do.

Speaker 23 The next time Kerry Stainer is seen is 100 miles away in Sierra Village when he uses a payphone to call a cab to get back to Cedar Lodge.

Speaker 40 He said that he had come down from Yosemite with some other people and that they left him there, stranded him with no way back.

Speaker 40 As we were approaching Yosemite Valley, he said he would show me the cabin to where he saw Bigfoot and he pointed off off to a ways back which you could see there was a cabin and he said that Bigfoot came out ran around the side of the cabin and into the trees

Speaker 3 after leaving Yosemite the plan was for Carol Julie and Sylvina to meet Carol's husband Yen's son at the San Francisco airport well the girls didn't show up at the airport we started calling the sheriff and the police I mean we're scared we thought that they were crashed somewhere there was snow up there There's icy roads.

Speaker 3 As each day went by and there was no trace of these three women, it became a larger and larger story.

Speaker 13 Very mysterious story. Three people have disappeared at Yosemite National Park in California.

Speaker 6 I remember distinctly sitting in the newsroom when the word came that there were three women missing from Yosemite. The very last thing that you think of at first is that foul play occurred.

Speaker 6 These things don't happen in Yosemite.

Speaker 13 The week of Carol,

Speaker 28 Julie, and Sylvina's disappearance from El Pratelle, I had been approached because I was the kidnapping coordinator in my office.

Speaker 22 10 days of combing the outskirts of Yosemite where the trio had been visiting, there are no new leads.

Speaker 28 This is the largest search that has ever been mounted in Yosemite at any time.

Speaker 28 It included going up and down the roads looking for places where their car could have gone off.

Speaker 57 I'm just devastated.

Speaker 44 I can't imagine how three people in a red car could disappear.

Speaker 3 When covering it, you really were empathizing with the families.

Speaker 58 We're handling out posters, we're doing everything possible.

Speaker 3 And the pain that you could feel from the Sund family and the Pelosos who had come from Argentina.

Speaker 49 Ask people here in America

Speaker 24 to help us.

Speaker 54 We went up to El Portal to the Cedar Lodge and we started doing our interviews.

Speaker 8 One of the people they interviewed was this helpful handyman named Carrie Stainer. He was not at all flustered.

Speaker 23 He just didn't set off any alarm bells. He even told them a story about Stephen.
At one point, he even was opening all the rooms for the FBI to gather evidence.

Speaker 39 This episode is brought to you by Cars.com. On Cars.com, you can shop over 2 million cars.

Speaker 39 That means over 2 million new car possibilities, like making space for your growing family, becoming the type of person who takes spontaneous weekend camping trips, or upgrading your commute.

Speaker 39 Wherever life takes you next, or whoever you're looking to be, there's a car for that on Cars.com. Visit Cars.com to discover your next possibility.

Speaker 59 The Lincoln Wishlist sales event is happening now. Here's what's on everyone's wish list.
Enjoying holiday jingles with brilliant 3D audio that surrounds you?

Speaker 8 Check.

Speaker 59 Watching snow flurries through the panoramic vista roof?

Speaker 48 Check.

Speaker 59 Packing up presents with the spacious Lincoln Splitgate? Check. Everything you want.
All standard on the 2025 Lincoln Navigator SUV.

Speaker 59 Visit your local Lincoln retailer or learn more at lincoln.com for exceptional offers on 2025 Lincoln Vehicles Today.

Speaker 9 Tonight, a desperately needed break in a month-long search for those three missing visitors to Yosemite.

Speaker 28 About a month after the disappearance of Carol Julian Silvina, there was a big break in the case because a California Highway Patrol officer reported the location of the missing rented vehicle.

Speaker 28 This is about 60-70 miles from the Cedar Lodge.

Speaker 18 20 years ago, I was a member of the evidence response team.

Speaker 37 This looked a lot different. But behind me is where the vehicle was located.

Speaker 37 This is a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix, but it was so completely burned there were no paint, rubber, plastic, upholstery.

Speaker 37 The initial inspection of the vehicle, we knew we had two bodies based on the remains that were still in the trunk. So there was not much left.

Speaker 37 There was no way for us to identify who was in that trunk.

Speaker 23 The forest where the car was found is just a short walk to Sierra Village where Carrie made the phone call to get the cab back to Yosemite.

Speaker 37 Evidence was found thrown free from the car that didn't burn. There were the car keys, some shoes, personal CD player, but most importantly there was a camera found.

Speaker 37 It was a crucial piece of evidence.

Speaker 28 We get the pictures back and we have Julie and Sylvina doing handstands in the room. We see all their pictures that they took going through Yosemite.

Speaker 28 And this is a picture of of Sylvina and Carol sitting in the far bed. We came to learn that this picture was taken about 20 minutes before Carrie Stanner knocked on their door.

Speaker 28 So you look at these pictures of these wonderful vivacious people and you just want to go home and hug your family because it's too late for them.

Speaker 18 We have recovered two bodies from the trunk of the vehicle. No identification has been made.

Speaker 28 When the discovery of the bodies in the burned-out vehicle are made,

Speaker 28 I wouldn't say it affected the community, I would say it affected the nation.

Speaker 41 Two bodies have been found, but there are still many unanswered questions.

Speaker 19 This was an enormous story, a huge, huge story. And 2020 decided to do an hour on it.
My producer John Meyerson and I went straight out to Yosemite to cover it.

Speaker 19 We had an interview with Sylvina's mother, and she was the picture of despair and grief.

Speaker 49 I knew from the very beginning that my girl was there.

Speaker 2 How?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Don't ask me.

Speaker 19 Just felt her mother's intuition was sadly correct. It was Sylvina in the trunk of that car, Sylvina, along with Carol Sund.

Speaker 32 As a father,

Speaker 32 I feel terrible.

Speaker 24 I'm supposed to die.

Speaker 23 When they realized it was Sylvina and Carol, then the big mystery was, where's Julie?

Speaker 52 What are you hoping? That Julie is still alive?

Speaker 58 Hoping against hope that they've got her somewhere.

Speaker 28 The realization that there's a third victim out there that may still be alive sent us into a frenzy. And my mind went to, oh my god, she's out out there.
She's being held prisoner.

Speaker 28 Something terrible is being done to her.

Speaker 24 Okay, let me show you that area.

Speaker 19 In the middle of all this frantic searching, arrives this letter to authorities with a taunting, tantalizing clue, with a crude map that may finally solve the mystery of what happened to Julie's son.

Speaker 19 Maybe, just maybe we're going to find this girl alive.

Speaker 6 The mother and daughter who were found dead after disappearing from Yosemite National Park.

Speaker 15 I mean, this is a story that decades later they're still talking about it.

Speaker 19 This was an enormous story. A huge, huge story.

Speaker 6 What in the heck are we dealing with here?

Speaker 34 What day was it that you murdered her?

Speaker 3 This is an absolute tragic story of two brothers, one hero and victim, and the other, a monster.

Speaker 6 The story of Stephen Stainer and the story of Carrie Stainer are going to intersect again in a way no one could have anticipated.

Speaker 6 Stephen Stainer is a seven-year-old boy who gets plucked off the streets walking home from school by a pedophile. He's held captive for seven years.
Miraculously, he escapes.

Speaker 14 How do you feel, man?

Speaker 2 Great.

Speaker 46 I know my first name is Stephen.

Speaker 19 But it turns out the monsters weren't gone.

Speaker 19 Carrie Stainer was very close by.

Speaker 8 All of this rage that have been building up in Carrie, he finally decides he's going to act upon it.

Speaker 22 He was right there. He was right there.

Speaker 8 Carrie Sanders a vicious, vicious killer. But he's even more twisted than that.
And they're about to find out just how twisted.

Speaker 20 So, as winter merges into spring,

Speaker 20 the entire valley just seems to come to life. Everything turns green again.

Speaker 22 It's a completely different feeling.

Speaker 19 It's March 1999, and this spring is different because there is a palpable fear in Yosemite Park.

Speaker 13 A very mysterious story.

Speaker 22 Three people have disappeared.

Speaker 61 The sons were last seen near the Yosemite Valley.

Speaker 22 Where the trio had been visiting.

Speaker 42 In February, Carol's son and her daughter Julie and their teenage friend Sylvina Pelosa had gone missing from the Cedar Lodge.

Speaker 44 I can't imagine how three people in that red car could disappear.

Speaker 8 This doesn't happen in the national parks. There was a sense of panic.
There was nobody here.

Speaker 3 Even the locals stopped coming in.

Speaker 19 You can't overstate the sense of fear there. Everybody was afraid.
Everybody wanted to know what had happened.

Speaker 8 But there's still no sign of the bodies for about a month until a hiker stumbles across a burned-out Pontiac.

Speaker 18 We have recovered two bodies from the trunk of the vehicle.

Speaker 23 When the FBI announced that only two bodies had been found, that stumped everybody.

Speaker 18 I urge anyone with information to immediately call the FBI tip line.

Speaker 23 When they realized it was Sylvina and Carol,

Speaker 23 then the big mystery was, where's Julie?

Speaker 41 Investigators in California continue searching for the third of three women who disappeared from Yosemite National Park. Two bodies have been found, but there are still many unanswered questions.

Speaker 19 For about a week, searchers combed the countryside, the roads, the ditches, the rivers, everywhere near that car.

Speaker 19 But no Julie.

Speaker 28 Oh my god, she's out there, she's being held prisoner, something terrible is being done to her.

Speaker 23 In late March, the FBI got another big clue.

Speaker 18 We are pursuing significant and potentially very viable leads.

Speaker 23 This one came in the mail.

Speaker 28 And when the letter was opened, you see a lined paper,

Speaker 28 and on the top it says, We had fun with this one

Speaker 28 and there's a crude map and the map shows Route 120 it shows Vista Point it shows Don Pedro Reservoir and it's about 40 miles away from where the car was found

Speaker 28 They bring up a cadaver dog and within 10 seconds of going to where this map points out, they find Julie's body.

Speaker 47 Earlier this afternoon, investigators discovered the body of a homicide victim.

Speaker 8 The body of 15-year-old Julie Sund was identified earlier in the week.

Speaker 3 When you saw where Julie Sund

Speaker 3 took her last breath, the gravity of the story really hit home.

Speaker 44 Just to think of her being alone,

Speaker 56 away from her mom and Sylvina.

Speaker 16 and wondering what happened, it was terrible.

Speaker 52 Francis, was that also for you the hardest part?

Speaker 16 That was the end of, you know, any hope.

Speaker 58 I've told the family that we won't stop until we find out what happened, until we've resolved this.

Speaker 8 So as we move into the summer of 1999,

Speaker 8 Yosemite is getting back to normal.

Speaker 8 The tourists are coming back.

Speaker 6 And now five months have passed. There has been no more murder.

Speaker 3 So the sense around Yosemite was that it was safe. It was safe because the people that were responsible for this Harfa crime, according to the FBI, were in custody.

Speaker 19 When they made the announcement that we have the killers, they believe they have the killers in custody.

Speaker 22 Huge.

Speaker 19 Absolutely huge.

Speaker 18 We do not believe that there is anyone else there on the loose who is not in custody.

Speaker 6 These two men were half-brothers. They had criminal records.
They were violent offenders. So there's a sense of relief that, hey, we got these guys, everything's okay.

Speaker 22 With the FBI's assurance, relative sense, closure is near.

Speaker 23 Once they went down that road, it seemed like they just had tunnel vision. And they weren't looking at anything else.

Speaker 8 People may have thought the right people were in custody, and they certainly wanted to believe the right people were in custody,

Speaker 8 but they weren't the right people.

Speaker 15 Carrie Stainer was still working here at the lodge. He was still living here on the premises.
He was still an active member of the community.

Speaker 38 He was not an unknown quantity, I'll say that. People knew who he was.

Speaker 3 He was

Speaker 38 not someone who hid.

Speaker 23 Didn't really see him as a suspect. He didn't raise alarm bells for anybody.

Speaker 3 Stainer was free. I mean, he had gotten away with triple murder.

Speaker 38 On the more westerly aspect of the park is a little area called Foresta.

Speaker 38 You can look down and see this gorgeous meadow, and it's called Big Meadow for good reason. And down in that meadow was an old house.

Speaker 8 It's called the Green Cabin. It's owned by the Park Service and it's leased out for a dollar a year to the Yosemite Institute, which runs educational programs throughout the park.

Speaker 8 Living there in the summer of 1999 was a 26-year-old woman named Joey Armstrong.

Speaker 45 She was really kind and she was sensitive. She was loving.
She was generous.

Speaker 45 She was smart.

Speaker 28 Joey was a naturalist at Yosemite. Her job was to take children and teach them the nature of Yosemite.

Speaker 45 I asked her if she was ever afraid, and she said no.

Speaker 45 We knew they had suspects in custody.

Speaker 23 She had memorialized it

Speaker 23 in her diary. At one point, even wrote, The monsters are gone, meaning the FBI had gotten the people who did this and they were behind bars.

Speaker 19 But it turns out the monsters weren't gone. Carrie Stainer was very close by.

Speaker 3 There's actually a road that connects from where the Cedar Lodge is into

Speaker 3 Yosemite. It's a back road that very few people know about.
The end of the road is where Joey Armstrong was living. And that's the road that Carrie Stainer took that day.

Speaker 8 He drove his International Baby Blue Scout up to Foresta, where he'd seen Bigfoot. He went up there with some regularity.
He had gotten out of his truck and he was looking around.

Speaker 8 He wasn't out hunting for anybody.

Speaker 8 But an opportunity presented itself.

Speaker 28 Now, Carrie Stainer is down here in this area. He sees up at the green cabin

Speaker 24 this petite blonde girl.

Speaker 6 It's almost the weekend and Joey's very excited. She's got a trip planned to meet some friends.

Speaker 42 She's just going in and and out of her house, packing up her truck, getting ready to leave.

Speaker 28 Her Toyota Tacoma is parked here. The back hatch is open.
He then approaches her as she's putting things in and out of her truck.

Speaker 42 You just wonder about the randomness of it all. What if she was in the cabin? What if she'd packed up a half hour earlier? What if she'd left?

Speaker 3 And it turned out to be a situation where evil truly meets opportunity.

Speaker 21 Now you just throw her thong rocks in the creek and just have her nurse or watch out again and again and seem like she's alone.

Speaker 28 He comes closer and as he comes closer, she is what he thinks he wants.

Speaker 3 Something instantly changes with Carrie Stayter and he's ready to kill again. Just like in the first murders, he goes back to his truck and he gets his murder kit.

Speaker 28 He gets out his backpack. He's got a gun.
He's got duct tape. He's got a knife.
He's standing somewhere in this vicinity and he's talking to her and he's making conversation.

Speaker 8 He was a guy who, you know, is big and strong and athletic and has these movie star white teeth. He would have just been like a little oddity.

Speaker 8 But as he's talking to her about Bigfoot, he's trying to look behind her and look over her shoulder to see if anyone's in the house. And then pretty quickly it would have gone to flat out terror.

Speaker 21 That's when I pulled out the gun. I put it to her head.
She turned around and freaked out. I told her to go inside.

Speaker 28 He uses the gun to direct her to the back of the house and into this rear bedroom.

Speaker 33 He starts binding her with the duct tape that he's brought in his kid.

Speaker 28 She fights with everything she has. He barely was able to overcome her.

Speaker 38 She was very strong. And I don't mean just a strong woman in the sense of emotionally strong, but she was physically strong.

Speaker 8 This was supposed to be easy for Carrie. This was, you know, his fantasy was that nobody's supposed to fight back.
Then she did.

Speaker 28 She's totally controlled. And then he takes her and guides her

Speaker 3 here.

Speaker 8 He picked her up and tossed her in the back seat and started driving away.

Speaker 5 The first sign Joey Ruth Armstrong was in trouble was when she didn't meet up with a friend in Marin County on Wednesday.

Speaker 6 When Joey doesn't show up, obviously her friends are bewildered and they're frightened, absolutely freaked out.

Speaker 3 Her friends called Yosemite and now the search was on for Joey Armstrong.

Speaker 38 I received a page and I called in and they asked if I was available for a search.

Speaker 18 We're covering a number of leads that are not confined to the park.

Speaker 18 That's about all I can tell you at this point.

Speaker 28 As they came in and looked, they could not find her and they also found debris on the floor of the cabin. They found broken sunglasses, they found a red mechanics wrap.
They were very concerned.

Speaker 38 You know, you're just looking for anything that doesn't fit. And then a few feet down the stream, I noticed what I thought was an inanimate object kind of bobbing in the water.

Speaker 33 And

Speaker 38 I went over and I, you know, saw that it was a person.

Speaker 33 To their shock and dismay, they saw that her head had been removed.

Speaker 42 This was just as grisly a scene as you could possibly imagine. It was incredible and horrible what had happened to Joey Armstrong.

Speaker 45 You know, in your own personal life, you have said many times before, I can't imagine the pain of losing a child.

Speaker 45 You don't believe it's you. You don't believe it's her.

Speaker 45 You're going, no, no.

Speaker 3 Terry Stainer left behind a load of evidence, and he knew it.

Speaker 3 Unlike the first three murders, where he left virtually no evidence, he knew that he had left a very easy trail for investigators.

Speaker 8 About two hours north of Yosemite is a nudice colony, which turned out to be the key to the whole thing.

Speaker 57 A car ride is about to happen.

Speaker 6 And during that car ride, the story of Stephen Stainer and the story of Carrie Stainer are going to intersect again in a way no one could have anticipated.

Speaker 8 Laguna del Sol is like any other resort,

Speaker 8 except people don't have clothes on. There's camping and there's some cabins and there's some shuffleboard and volleyball and there's a restaurant and a bar and a darts league.

Speaker 19 I'm told people go to Laguna del Sol from all over the country.

Speaker 23 I don't think you're trying to hide if you're going to a nudes colony and it's the last place that Carrie Stainer would be a free man.

Speaker 22 The Yosemite Park naturalist was found decapitated.

Speaker 6 The 26-year-old's body was found Thursday near her Yosemite home.

Speaker 3 Joey Armstrong's murder sent shockwaves through Yosemite Valley. Here was another murder

Speaker 3 in the Yosemite area, and this time it was actually in the park.

Speaker 5 This is the second high-profile murder case connected to Yosemite this year. Three tourists disappeared from the El Portal area in February and were later found dead.

Speaker 3 People didn't know what to think. Were they connected? Were they not connected? If they weren't connected, then what's happening?

Speaker 23 I called some of the investigators to ask them, do you think they're related?

Speaker 23 And it was a resounding no.

Speaker 18 And we have absolutely no reason to believe no indication that there is any linkage at all.

Speaker 34 You don't want to cause undue panic. You don't want to cause undue concern

Speaker 34 until you know the facts.

Speaker 30 We got 60 teams going out.

Speaker 38 There wasn't really much time for us to speculate on whether this was related.

Speaker 8 I mean it quickly became related.

Speaker 3 Somebody had spotted a very unique vehicle, a blue and white International Scout, the same vehicle that Carrie Stainer drove.

Speaker 3 On the same road where Joey lived around the same time that she was murdered. And that was the first thing that authorities followed up on.

Speaker 54 The tracks of the vehicle that drove away from Joey's house left very clear tracks, and they were able to get very clear pictures.

Speaker 28 And then they started looking for this guy, Carrie Stainer, because he would be a natural witness to interview.

Speaker 15 I was sitting in the bar having lunch and somebody came in and said, they're looking for Carrie Stainer. And I said, what?

Speaker 6 And he's really now starting to feel that noose tighten around his neck.

Speaker 3 Now, Carrie Stainer realizes he has to get out. He packs up and leaves and ends up driving to that nudist colony, Laguna del Sol.

Speaker 23 He pitched a tent outside, went in, there's a bar and restaurant, and he was socializing with people inside and struck up a conversation with a woman there.

Speaker 63 Things are not so well now. I've decided to pack up my stuff, in fact, and I'm headed north.

Speaker 35 They had put Ebola, be on the lookout for, on the news.

Speaker 34 And so it had gone out that people were looking for Kerry Stainer.

Speaker 62 Authorities set off a manhunt for him yesterday.

Speaker 23 And it just so happens the woman he struck the conversation with saw the news.

Speaker 63 And I immediately picked up the phone and called FBI and told them that I knew knew where this person was.

Speaker 42 That morning, FBI agent Jeff Reinach gets a call. He's supposed to meet up with a couple of other agents at Laguna del Sol right away.

Speaker 28 So as I'm driving and proceeding down there, the next train of thought is,

Speaker 33 oh my god, we're going to a nudist colony.

Speaker 2 For me, a nudist colony

Speaker 28 means Peter Sellers, a shot in the dark, and a guy walking across the screen with a guitar over his genitals.

Speaker 34 Laguna del Solo nudist colony. It's not a place I ever thought it would be in my FBI career.

Speaker 34 The manager came out, man and said, yeah, he's inside sitting at the corner booth and you'll be able to find him because he's the only one wearing clothes.

Speaker 3 Got here, parked, and as they walk into the restaurant area, Stainer gets up and puts his hands up.

Speaker 33 He's thin, he's athletic, he's tall, he is handsome. He looks like a movie actor to me, and he's very soft-spoken and cooperative.

Speaker 24 He didn't do the, hey, who are you?

Speaker 34 Why are you handcuffing me? What's going on here?

Speaker 34 Put him in the car

Speaker 34 and he and Jeff drove off and I followed.

Speaker 3 It's just the two of them. Stainer's in the front seat.
Reinich has no idea

Speaker 3 the magnitude of what is happening. Nobody told him that Carrie Stainer is a suspected murderer.

Speaker 19 What happened during that drive between Kerry Stainer and that FBI agent changed the story forever.

Speaker 28 It was a very pleasant drive. We were two guys that were just stuck together.

Speaker 6 One thing that Special Agent Reinick is really good at is getting people to open up.

Speaker 28 You meet someone and you're asking them questions about themselves.

Speaker 34 Jeff being Jeff said, hey, Stainer.

Speaker 34 You're not by any relation to Steven Stainer.

Speaker 25 He'd been kidnapped from a Mercedes street corner in 1972 when he was just seven years old.

Speaker 34 He goes, have you ever seen that movie?

Speaker 46 I know my first name is Stephen.

Speaker 34 And that's when Stainer said, yeah, that's my brother.

Speaker 8 In that moment, he's just connecting with some guy you're supposed to pick up.

Speaker 14 Well, this is horrible.

Speaker 8 You're Stephen Stanner's brother. That's terrible.
What happened to him?

Speaker 28 And he went on to describe that, unlike the world expected, life was not happily ever after.

Speaker 6 All of a sudden, Carrie Stanner gets upset. He gets emotional about his brother, Stephen.
My brother was held captive for seven years and his abductor, Kenneth Parnell, only got seven years.

Speaker 6 How can that be fair?

Speaker 28 And he asked me if I thought that was just and I told him absolutely no.

Speaker 3 Something truly remarkable happened in that car.

Speaker 3 Carrie Stainer, who had such trouble with relationships and intimacy and connections, developed a connection with Jeff Reinick that would absolutely change this case.

Speaker 42 So after that, they actually bond over something else. It's a movie.

Speaker 6 It's called Billy Jack. And the very popular song associated with that movie called One Tin Soldier.

Speaker 11 One Tin Soldier by the way.

Speaker 28 And I said to him, you know, you look just like Billy Jack. Have you ever seen the movie? And he said, no.
I kept asking him, you sure you haven't seen Billy Jack?

Speaker 28 And he said, nope, I haven't seen Billy Jack.

Speaker 8 There's this line in the movie that it's a classic line.

Speaker 8 After they finish their long ride and they've had their little bonding moment over Stephen, they're walking into the FBI field office and Kerry stops and says, I'm going to take this right foot.

Speaker 21 And I'm going to whop you on that side of your face.

Speaker 28 There's not a damn damn thing you can do about it, really.

Speaker 8 It's a weird little moment where he just finished saying he'd never seen this movie. But he knew the classic line.

Speaker 8 He's laughing, I'm laughing, I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good, you know.

Speaker 8 You know, now they're walking in and they're having a good laugh together. And then things sort of take an odd turn.

Speaker 6 But remember, Agent Reinick doesn't really know what it's about or what to expect. Carrie Stainer, on the other hand, knows exactly what he has planned, and it's going to be a bombshell.

Speaker 60 With new gentler-scented Clorox disinfecting wipes, clean finally smells as good as it feels on everything from lamps to ceiling fans,

Speaker 60 even on your kid's toy shark.

Speaker 60 Oh, ouch. Clorox disinfecting wipes now available in

Speaker 60 ooh, crisp lemon. Find it on Amazon.
Clorox Clean Feels Good.

Speaker 8 Every story you love.

Speaker 60 Every invention that moves you.

Speaker 53 Every idea you wished was yours.

Speaker 60 all began as nothing

Speaker 53 just a blank page with a blinking cursor

Speaker 46 asking a simple question

Speaker 53 what

Speaker 7 do you see

Speaker 60 great ideas start on mac

Speaker 7 find out more on apple.com slash mac

Speaker 6 Jeffrey Reinick and Carrie Stainer have been in the car for two hours from that nudist camp when they finally arrive at the FBI offices in Sacramento.

Speaker 34 Neither Jeff nor I really knew why we were there and talking to him. We didn't know what his involvement was, if any.

Speaker 28 The three of us are settled in the room eating pizza.

Speaker 8 As a general rule, when law enforcement is interrogating a suspect, they don't order pizza.

Speaker 34 It's not textbook. It was grasping at straws to figure out where do we start to begin the interview.

Speaker 28 Carrie starts launching off into, this is going to be my last meal as a free man.

Speaker 6 Out of the blue, he looks at the agents and says, I can give you closure.

Speaker 28 I said, Kerry, what exactly do you mean closure and about what? He says, you know, why we're here.

Speaker 34 And he told us, hey, I can answer some questions about Joey and more. And we didn't know what that was.

Speaker 19 They thought Kerry Stanner was a witness to something. And suddenly, out of the blue, he's dangling a confession to these FBI agents, so I think we're shocked in many ways.

Speaker 8 But he has a condition.

Speaker 60 An absurd, horrible condition.

Speaker 34 Who would go into an FBI office and ask two FBI agents to see child pornography? That's not your everyday request. And he said, and not just a couple, three, four images.

Speaker 34 I'm talking about a stack that high.

Speaker 6 Well, can you imagine what these FBI agents are thinking? What in the heck are we dealing with here?

Speaker 43 You never say no to them. You basically put them off saying, we're going to get to that.
I know you want that. I'd like you to have it.
But you move it down the ladder.

Speaker 8 They managed to buy some time. So in the meantime, what do you have?

Speaker 8 And then Carrie starts to talk about Joey.

Speaker 8 Okay, we're going to start talking about her.

Speaker 3 In the interview, Jeff continues the bond that they had created in that car ride and wants Thaner to continue to talk.

Speaker 42 If it hadn't been for bonding over Stephen in that car ride, this whole confession might never have happened.

Speaker 21 It seemed like she was alone.

Speaker 21 I had a backpack, a small green backpack.

Speaker 7 In the backpack, I had a 22 revolver.

Speaker 34 He was talking about some very grisly things, as if he was reading a soup label.

Speaker 21 She stepped up on the porch and was talking to me, and then she turned around. So I pulled out the gun and put it to her head.
She turned around and freaked out.

Speaker 6 It's very unsettling to listen to Carrie Stainer.

Speaker 3 He's calculating.

Speaker 6 He's creepy.

Speaker 21 Took Took her to the back corner of the house, to a bedroom.

Speaker 21 I dug taken her in Ken.

Speaker 21 You're doing fine.

Speaker 21 This is hard. You're being good.
Brave. Go ahead.

Speaker 43 The thing that Jeff does in a very magical way is to not be judgmental, to keep... Carrie talking.

Speaker 43 The bottom line is nobody's going to talk to you if they think you're disgusted by what they're saying.

Speaker 21 She resisted quite a bit.

Speaker 47 I didn't care for anything.

Speaker 21 I just used threats and the gun to subdue her. As I was trying to duct tape her hands behind her back, she kept fighting me.

Speaker 28 He wanted us to know he was not beating her or being violent or sadistic.

Speaker 38 He wants to control what we think of him.

Speaker 34 It becomes pretty clear to me that he's just this big, emotionless monster. And Joey comes across as

Speaker 34 heroic because she was a fighter and he was a coward.

Speaker 28 He successfully binds her with the duct tape and he binds her to the point where all she can pretty much do is walk.

Speaker 19 The key to everything is what Carrie Stainer says next. The question always has been, why was Joey's body found where it was found in the woods? How did it get there? Why did it get there?

Speaker 19 And Carrie Stainer is about to reveal exactly what happened.

Speaker 21 As I was driving, she started going crazy and just jumping all over the place in the back of the truck. I couldn't really control her.

Speaker 21 And she fell off through the window on her building right in front of the barn.

Speaker 23 She didn't fall out. She was fighting every way she could to get out of that car, and she did, and he didn't expect it.

Speaker 3 The idea that she was able to bound, fling herself out of the moving car in an almost superhuman way is absolutely astounding.

Speaker 21 I slammed the truck in the park and jumped out and she got up off the ground and started running.

Speaker 28 And he calmly got out and he ran down and he chased her and somewhere back in there is where he caught her.

Speaker 21 What did you do there?

Speaker 21 I took the knife in my back pocket and I slid her through.

Speaker 45 The investigators told me that I should be very proud of her.

Speaker 45 That because she fought,

Speaker 45 there was a lot of evidence.

Speaker 6 Harry Stainer has lived up to his promise. He gave them the confession, Joey Armstrong.
But remember, he said he had more. The and more

Speaker 6 now is what's critical. Without him getting his precious kiddie porn.

Speaker 28 We were advised that he could not have the condition he wanted. Now my biggest fear was in place.
We still weren't sure that he had done San Peloso.

Speaker 34 Jeff is very empathetic and he was saying, I can already see a change in you. You seem like you're feeling better.
You know, whatever this is that's inside you, you need to get it out.

Speaker 28 There was a dramatic period of silence that was followed by him saying, okay, let's do it. I knocked on the door and said those patients, we're going to leak the room upstairs.

Speaker 23 They let me in. So now he's giving the agents this blow-by-blow of every gruesome detail.

Speaker 7 The Pelosi girl couldn't speak very English, was crying a lot,

Speaker 7 and Julie was very calm.

Speaker 23 And at the same time, he's giving him a glimpse inside these strange thoughts that he was having.

Speaker 21 She was very cooperative.

Speaker 21 She did everything I told her to do.

Speaker 28 He constantly reminds us that she was cooperative, that she did everything he wanted her to do.

Speaker 34 The things he wanted to do to her that somehow she wanted him to.

Speaker 23 He's painting a picture as if he has some kind of relationship with Julie.

Speaker 23 I put her in the car and just drove. I didn't know where I was going.
I didn't know what I was going to do.

Speaker 34 You're at Don Pedro's beautiful reservoir and he's telling us a story about how he's going to have to let her go almost like he's doing her a favor.

Speaker 43 This has nothing to do with love. It has everything to do with playing out this violent fantasy in his head.

Speaker 43 I put Julia on the car.

Speaker 43 I carried her down the pathway.

Speaker 28 I asked him, How did you carry her? And he goes, you know, like this.

Speaker 28 And I said, you mean like

Speaker 61 a groom carries a bride?

Speaker 28 And he says, yeah, like that.

Speaker 21 I laid down the blanket and I guess I knew what I was going to do because I had the knife with me.

Speaker 21 And I slid it through.

Speaker 28 It was a brutal homicide.

Speaker 34 What actually happened had no relation to in any way what he was describing to us.

Speaker 28 But he said after he killed her, he stood here and he marveled out at the view of the rising sun.

Speaker 28 It was so hard to understand how someone could just disassociate from what they had just done and look out and enjoy the beauty of nature.

Speaker 6 But it's not over. Bombshells are on the way.

Speaker 45 I loved Carrie.

Speaker 28 I could not believe what I just heard.

Speaker 20 My name is Lena and I grew up in a small town right outside Yosemite National Park. My sister and I met Carrie in 1998.

Speaker 20 My mom was a waitress at the Cedar Lodge where Carrie was a maintenance man and lived above the the restaurant.

Speaker 20 They were in a relationship. I must have been 10, 11 years old.
He was in his 30s. He was handsome.

Speaker 19 He was warm, like a big teddy bear.

Speaker 20 A safe person to be around. We were excited when Carrie would come over.

Speaker 20 He would buy us a new beanie baby almost every time we saw him because that was pretty big in the 90s.

Speaker 20 My sister and I would be walking up the driveway and we'd see Carrie Stayner coming up in his scout and jump in the truck and he'd give us a ride up to our house.

Speaker 22 I loved him a lot.

Speaker 20 I don't know if he knew how much

Speaker 24 I did.

Speaker 20 He was a happy part of our life.

Speaker 20 Such a happy part that turned into such a dark part of our life.

Speaker 3 One of the most disturbing things Stainer told Jeff was that Carol, Savina, and Julie were not his first choice.

Speaker 23 Carrie actually planned to kill a whole nother set of people, and this was a complete surprise to them.

Speaker 21 I've been gone most of the day, off the property I was at a girlfriend's house

Speaker 21 and

Speaker 21 this is this girlfriend and her two daughters my original intended victims.

Speaker 28 I could not believe what I just heard. I was literally trying to get my mouth going to

Speaker 28 hear that again to make sure I had heard what he said.

Speaker 21 I'm sorry I said I misunderstood

Speaker 21 And her daughters were my original intended victims.

Speaker 34 Had we not gotten Stainer,

Speaker 34 they could have been next.

Speaker 28 The day after Valentine's Day,

Speaker 28 he had intended that that would be the day that he carries out his fantasy. And the object was his then-girlfriend and her two daughters.

Speaker 28 While he was there, there was another person on the grounds that stopped in and deflected what he could do.

Speaker 3 So Kerry abandoned his initial plan to kill his girlfriend and her daughters.

Speaker 28 He said when he got back to the Cedar Lodge that night, he was really ramped up.

Speaker 21 I got back to the hotel and they went to go to a soap in the hot tub. Try to fall down.

Speaker 21 And the hot tub was dirty. Sounds a little annoying.
So I took a walk around the property.

Speaker 42 He's actually stalking. He's looking.

Speaker 28 He's predatory. As he's walking past the 500 building, he sees who we now know to be Carol, Julie, and Sylvina.

Speaker 61 The FBI has been summoned to help find three missing women.

Speaker 20 He was right under everyone's nose the entire time. He was right there.

Speaker 22 He was right there.

Speaker 20 I do remember him always carrying his backpack. I remember seeing it in the truck.
It was always with him, like a woman carries a purse.

Speaker 20 I later learned that he had a murder kit, murder and rape kit, in his backpack that he wanted to use against my mom, my sister, and I.

Speaker 20 It is frightening just to think that the things that were inside of it and what he was thinking the whole time.

Speaker 62 Late last night, federal authorities arrested this man, 37-year-old Carrie Stainer.

Speaker 20 The FBI went in and spoke with my mom privately to let her know that Carrie Stainer had confessed to initially wanting to kill my mom

Speaker 20 and rape and kill my sister and I.

Speaker 20 I kept it quiet for 20 years. I didn't address it.
My whole family fell apart.

Speaker 20 My mom was extremely shocked. As a mother myself, I don't know if I would have been able to handle that.

Speaker 20 My daughter is the same age right now that I was when I met Carrie.

Speaker 20 I think at such a young age, I learned that you couldn't trust adults. I still have issues trusting people, and I don't know if I'll ever feel completely safe.

Speaker 20 We're survivors, but it took a really big part of our life away. It destroyed part of my childhood.

Speaker 20 I had not been back to the Cedar Lodge until last year, and it sent chills up and down my spine.

Speaker 20 I just remember he would show us how to dive perfectly.

Speaker 20 My sister and I both wanted to be the best at it.

Speaker 22 It feels like it was so long ago that you forget that it even happened.

Speaker 20 Like a dream or you...

Speaker 19 a movie that you watched

Speaker 20 and almost doesn't even feel like it was you

Speaker 20 there's a big part of me that still wonders if he still thinks of those two little girls that adored him so much

Speaker 20 because we think about him all the time.

Speaker 20 Does he even remember? Does he care?

Speaker 19 Everybody wondered what was going on in his mind. Everybody wondered why.

Speaker 3 I went to ask if Carrie wanted to talk, and within minutes, I'm face to face with him, and he just opened up. I now had answers to all of our questions.

Speaker 28 I asked him if he would bring us back to these places because he was talking about evidence.

Speaker 34 He took us to all the spots and he knew exactly where everything was.

Speaker 28 And he pointed out in that direction

Speaker 28 and he said he took the roll of duct tape and the knife and he threw it out there as far as he could.

Speaker 28 With the recovery of the duct tape and the watch and the knife, which was the murder weapon, now we're talking evidence.

Speaker 19 With the confession and all the forensic evidence, Carrie Stainer was found guilty and was sentenced to death. He has spent years in San Quentin prison on death row.
He's now 57 years old.

Speaker 20 I don't forgive him.

Speaker 20 I can't. But at the same time, I still have a hard time looking at him as a monster.

Speaker 8 Carrie was the monster in the forest. Bigfoot was never never supposed to be real.
And then he became that real thing.

Speaker 3 I went to ask if Carrie wanted to talk. And he just opened up.
He told me that he'd had these feelings since he was a seven-year-old child and had been resisting these feelings for years.

Speaker 3 It was almost as if he was trying to get credit for being a good soldier.

Speaker 3 He said, I want a movie of the week made about my story.

Speaker 3 There was a movie made about Stephen Stainer.

Speaker 3 And he wanted the same treatment.

Speaker 2 He wanted the world to take note.

Speaker 8 As far as I know, he's never talked to anyone about the effect Stephen might have had on his crimes. I'm not sure there is any direct cause and effect.

Speaker 8 Stephen could have grown up normal, happy, and healthy, and Carrie still would have been a serial killer.

Speaker 11 It's difficult to picture what Carrie has done because, knowing Steve, their personalities are completely opposite.

Speaker 11 The only time Steve would kill anything like a fish is because we were going to eat it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 11 I wouldn't think that he would think of himself as one, but he is a hero.

Speaker 32 Steve is a hero to a lot of people.

Speaker 19 Because of Stephen, Timothy White got his second chance at a childhood, but like Stephen, didn't live long. He died at the age of 35 of a blood clot to the lung.

Speaker 8 There's a statue in Mersedno of Stephen and Timothy White, and they're holding hands.

Speaker 8 Yes, terrible things happened to Stephen, but his legacy is that he saved another kid. from having to suffer those same terrible things.
That's really how he should be remembered.

Speaker 6 We understand why the Stainer Brothers story garnered so much global attention, but when it's all over, who should we really be remembering? The sons,

Speaker 6 Sylvina Peloso, Joey Armstrong. These are beautiful people who met their death too soon.

Speaker 45 The only solace I get

Speaker 45 is that she's with God Almighty.

Speaker 45 And

Speaker 45 I will see her again.

Speaker 6 Joey's legacy carries on. In Yosemite, there's something now called Armstrong Scholars.

Speaker 8 Every summer, a group of girls from the ages of 15 and 18 are brought into the park to spend a week exploring, learning about it, which is exactly why Joey was there in the first place.

Speaker 7 And you can't take my dreams away.

Speaker 20 Whatever terrible things happen in the world, I think people come to beautiful places like this because they know that nature has healing power.

Speaker 20 This is the place of beauty where evil will be vanquished.

Speaker 19 And you can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday nights at 9 on ABC.

Speaker 27 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy, half-off holiday, because right now, Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 1 To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 27 Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 50 So that means a half day.

Speaker 35 Yeah?

Speaker 8 Give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch.

Speaker 64 Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow under 55 gigabytes of networks busy.

Speaker 64 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 39 See Mintmobile.com.