20/20 - Evil in Eden (Rebroadcast)

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

Steven and Cary Stayner: The tale of two brothers' horror and heroism. (OAD 1/25/2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. This is a story of two brothers. One hero and the other, a monster.

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. Seven long years ago, a youngster in California vanished. Today he showed up with another boy. Five-year-old Timothy White. He literally said, I was not going to let that child go through

what I had already been through. Books, television, movies. It was absolutely incredible. The moment that Stephen Stainer is abducted is the moment that this story really begins. 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. He was cold, hateful. A 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. I mean, this is a story that decades later they're still talking about it. Maybe, just maybe, we're going to find this girl alive. He was handsome. He was warm. Like a big teddy bear, he was just our friend. Just to think what he was thinking the whole time. This is Yosemite. These things don't happen in Yosemite.

Yosemite actually means the people who kill. I laid out the blanket. I guess I knew what I was going to do was I had the knife with me. You never expect so much terror to happen in such a beautiful place. This story starts in Merced, California. It's in the middle of nowhere surrounded by almond groves and peach orchards. 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. Someday. I started singing by American Pie. We're talking in 1972. American Pie was on the radio. This is the year of Watergate. It was the year that Pong was introduced. The Brady Bunch.

The Stainers lived on Betty Street. It was a middle-class kind of a neighborhood. The parents were Delbert and Kay, and Kerry was the oldest of five children he had a younger brother Stephen and three sisters too. Dell worked as a mechanic in a peach cannery. His mother Kay was was always described as distant somewhat aloof, a woman who raised her children with sort of a almost a coldness. Kerry was a nice guy. He was kind of a quiet guy. Our days would be

just getting on our bikes in the morning and go to the park, hang out with friends, or skateboard. He loved his brother, hung out with him, played with him, looked out for him. Stephen had walked almost all the way home. That's when it happened. A man in a car offered him a ride. So at the same time that the Stainer boys are growing up in Rosed, about two hours away in Yosemite,

there's a little stooped, pasty, nebushy guy named Ken Parnell. Kenneth Parnell was working at the Yosemite Lodge. lodge doing the books for them. He was convicted previously of molesting a child. But he found a job in Yosemite because that kind of guy could find a job in Yosemite. A lot of people run to Yosemite to get away from things. And Kenneth decided that he was going to abduct a young boy. He was able to recruit a coworker of his. A slow-witted fella named Irvin Murphy. 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 Merced. Stephen, what happened that afternoon? Do you remember when you were walking home from school? And they saw this little boy, seven-year-old Stephen Steiner. 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 would. was approached by Irvin Murphy. Murphy had some religious tracts with him, which he'd been using to approach other kids. He asked Stephen if he thought that his mother

would be willing to make a charitable donation to a church. At that point, Parnell drove up in this old white Buick. Murphy opened the rear door, but Stephen got in. Instead of taking a right so he could go to his home, they continued directly eastbound. They're driving out of Merced going up Highway 140. 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.

And Parnell then told him that you're going to be my son. He was a seven-year-old, thoroughly confused kid. I think that he was probably 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. Stephen's abduction was sudden, wrenching, brutal. And yet he's going to be hiding in plain sight for years. The moment that Stephen Stainer is abducted is the moment that this story of two brothers really begins

and was absolutely pivotal in terms of the monster coming to life. December 4th, 1972, Stephen Stainer was abducted on Highway 140 in the city of Merced by individuals driving an older model white viewing. And they're driving east toward Yosemite. Now, there's most of his life in Yosemite at the lodge. He kept Stephen in his room for about a week after that. He kept giving him this cough syrup, the sedate him. I think that Parnell 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. When Stephen didn't make it home from school, his parents immediately were alerted. Merced was the lead police department, and so they really mounted a large effort to search, and they searched. And there was just nothing there. It happened here at this corner, and it was such a classic situation, the kind against which parents are constantly warning their children. The next morning, there was an empty desk in the second grade class at Charles Wright School. When he was missing, it rocked the Stainer family.

It hurt the family dynamic and it crushed Del Stainer. He just becomes a broken man, really. Kay becomes even more distant, more aloof. She's sort of raising her children almost robotically. Kay and Delvert became colder to their other children. Carrie is very upset. I've heard stories about him going out and wishing a star that his brother would come home. Maybe he had some guilt

because I believe he was supposed to have been with his brother. Delbert kind of saw Stephen as his real son and Kerry kind of felt abandoned, neglected. A few weeks after he kidnapped Stephen, Parnell pulled up stakes and he started drifting around California. They moved first to Santa Rosa. They would stay in flea bag motels, a crappy trailer or a broken-down house.

Stephen Stainer had a new father figure, and it was Kenneth Parnell, who by day was his father, and by night, was his rapist. 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. Those were the days where you'd get a copy of a record. You know, there was no email. 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. Parnell and Stephen ended up in the little town of Comche, California, which is in Mendocino County. Comche was really tiny. It had maybe a post office and a general store.

And he kept him on the grounds in a trailer. So this is where Ken Parnell used to live many years ago. It's a good place to hide. It's a long ways from anywhere out here. Nobody knew what was going on behind closed doors and that this wasn't a father's son at all. 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. From all outward appearances, he 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. This picture describes what he looked like. His personality, his hairdo, his flannel shirt, his smile. My name is Lori and Stephen Steiner was my boyfriend in high school. He had a great personality. He was spunky. You could see that he wanted to play and be with kids and be normal. Growing up with him consisted of a lot.

of fishing, riding bicycles. He sort of reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. He had the same haircut and same shape, face even. 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. 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? 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. 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. In some ways, it's just easier to go along with what was happening to him. Stephen still has a reality that he has a real family someplace else. We were walking home and he started crying. He said, I want to go home to my real home. We just let it go. We have been drinking some beer and, you know, kids.

Stephen is a freshman at Mendocino High School, some 300 miles to the south. His brother, Kerry, was an upperclassman at Merced High School. He was Carrie Stainer, the kid who had his brother kidnapped. There was a pall over him. He actually was voted most creative. Kerry was very well known for his drawings. I think that he was very, very good cartoonist, especially even with humor. He always wore a hat every time you would see him.

He was wearing the hat because he was compulsively pulling his hair out. Emotionally, Carrie had a tough time during his childhood. I don't remember Carrie ever having a girlfriend, and I never saw him with a girl. Carrie started acting wildly and appropriately towards females. He exposed himself to one of his sister's friends. 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.

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. 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. So in 1979, Stephen's now 14. He's been with Parnell for seven years. 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. Ken Parnell takes Stephen to this small little town called Manchester, kind of along the coast of Northern California. Ken is looking for another prepubescent boy. Stephen knew what was going to happen, and Stephen knew that that was wrong. And he was going to end that. What Stephen would do in response would make him world themes. This episode is sponsored by the podcast, The First 48.

For homicide detectives, the clock starts the moment the body is found. If they can't get a lead in the first 48 hours, the chance of solving the case is cut in half. The First 48 has been telling those stories on A&E for two decades. Now it's a weekly podcast, and you can follow it right now wherever you get to. your podcasts. Each week, the First 48 takes you inside the critical first two days of a homicide investigation, the interrogations, the dead ends, the breakthroughs that crack a case wide open. Every hour matters. Every lead either holds up or falls apart. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. Listen to and follow the First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. That's the First 48. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. In 1979, Ken Parnell pulled up stakes again, and he moved with Steve into a small cabin in Manchester, California,

which is in the middle of nowhere surrounded by almost nothing. This is for Ken and for Stephen a turning point. It was a one-room shack, very old and cold. 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. Parnell wanted another kid. So in February of 1980, Ken Parnell goes back to the exact same memo that he used to get Stephen Steiner. He paid a local kid to ride with them to the little town of Ucaia, California.

Puts this high school kid out on the street to go find him a boy. And he finds five-year-old Timothy White walking home from school. Stephen watched Timmy suffer through this separation from his family for two weeks. for two weeks and decided finally that he had to do something about it. He literally said, I was not gonna let that child go through what I had already been through. And if I didn't take care of it now, it would just get worse. Eventually, Stephen got the courage to take Timmy White out of that house,

and when Kenneth Parnell went to work, the two hitched hiked to the town of Yucaya. 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. Keep in mind, Steve Stainer was known as Dennis for seven long years. But when he arrives at that police station, he says something that will be embedded in the public consciousness forever. I know my first name is Stephen. And that became the title of a book.

It became a television movie, and it made Stephen famous. Seven long years ago, a youngster in California vanished. Everyone thought he was dead at this point. He'd rescued another boy. This is Stephen today. He is holding five-year-old Timothy White. Who could make this up? Every television network, every magazine cover,

every movie executive, there wasn't anyone, not interest. There he is. There he is. Stephen was a national hero. He returns to Merced triumphant. Stephen's return has been a joyous event. Within days, he's on Good Morning America. Good morning, Stephen and Mr. and Mrs. Stainer. And Stephen, how does it feel to be home?

Feels great. Did you remember your parents well? They didn't change that much. I recognized them when I got out of the car. What about your brothers and sisters? Well, they changed a lot. I never recognized either one of them. Mr. Ms. Stainer, how did this affect your other four children?

When Steve disappeared, the older two were very upset, and I think kind of became very quiet children from the experience. There was a press conference outside the Stainer House on Betty Street, and everyone is smiling. There's a lot of jubilation. This is really some sort of a miracle that Stephen's come home. But if you look in the background, there's something worth noting. And it's Kerry in his baseball cap.

And he's not smiling at all. 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. In the television movie, there's a scene where he's finally reunited with his brother, Carrie. 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 Kerry was all that thrilled to see his brother. They shared a room, they didn't get along. Stephen didn't understand the rules that he was now expected to live by. Steven, what have these years been like for you adjusting, getting over the seven years you were away from home? For seven years, I'd been supposedly an only child. Now I had...

to compete with a brother and three sisters. 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. When you look back on that, why do you think that is, Stephen? Well, there's several reasons. I was told I was adopted. You believed it?

Yes, I believed it. Kay, what about for you? How do you think it's been for Stephen? I think he's done fantastic. I'm very proud of the way he's kind of joined right with the rest of us and he doesn't give us any problems. 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.

The adults all thought Stephen was a hero, but none of the adults had to go to high school with Stephen. It is generally known that there was homosexual activity involved in Stephen's abduction. 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, you know, being molested and everything else. His sexuality was constantly under attack. There's a scene in the movie in a locker room. What was it kind of exciting for you?

Being around all those naked guys. Where Stephen at least is strong enough to fight back. The bullying was just unending. While Stephen already has these two sides buffeting him, the adults who say is a hero and the kids who are just picking up, and mercilessly, he's got to deal with Parnell as well. There he is, sitting in the courtroom, and he's got to point to Ken Parnell. Ultimately, Kenneth Parnell did face charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment,

but he was never tried for sexual assault in this case. In the end, there was not sufficient evidence to prove those charges. It was outrageous. There was out-and-out fury over the sentence. 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. 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.

While Stephen was kind of struggling to his own life after his return, Kerry was at a high school, and having his own troubles. I think Kerry after high school seemed a little lost like he didn't know where he was going. When his life was starting to spin out of control, he took refuge in Yosemite. 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. Whatever demons were clambering around in his head by being naked by smoking pot, he could find the peace that he so desperately needed. One of the things that made a huge impact on him was he was convinced that he saw Bigfoot. Any opportunity that Carrie got, he couldn't wait to tell people about it,

driving through an area known as Foresta, and Bigfoot leaping out of the woods in the dark of night. It turns out there's a lot of the woods. with this incredibly deep obsession with Bigfoot is ultimately going to have incredibly tragic consequences. This sanctuary would turn out to be the very setting where Kerry Stainer's murderous demons would be unleashed. 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. But the Stainer brothers were struggling, each of them both in their own ways. Stephen's celebrity was pretty short-lived. He did make some money for consulting on the TV film. She actually had a bit part as one of the police officers

rescuing himself. He blew almost all of that money on cars and drugs and booze. He worked some menial jobs. He got married. He had two kids. He was very proud of who he was when he told me. He was not ashamed. ashamed at all. He was just very well grounded, you know, for a person that had gone through

what he went through. But then at the age of 24, he was riding a motorcycle without a license. He was riding home from work and a vineyard worker pulled out in front of him and hit him and flipped him. You just have to feel like this poor man was dealt such a horrific hand of cards in life and in death. You know, Stephen really did the best that he could. For seven years he subjected to unspeakable horrors. He did work for a living. He did fall in love. He did have two kids.

I see him as being on a good path, and that's how I prefer to think of him, you know. This one, it says, Dear Laurie, Hi, how's everything in Comche? Good, I hope. Wah, wah, wah. He used to always say that. It's not everybody that gets a letter

from a famous person, namely me. me. Love always Steve. So I cherish these letters forever. Stephen was gone now, but in a big sense so was Carrie. Carrie had no direction. He thought his life was going nowhere. Carrie never recovered from his own emotional difficulties and then coupled with Stephen's tragic death. Well, not long after Stephen died, Carrie's uncle was shot and killed in the home they shared together.

they shared together. Kerry was very close to his uncle. Stephen's dead. Uncle Jerry's murdered. This rage is starting to bubble up. Kerry has a couple of nervous breakdowns. One was fairly violent. It 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. And that's when I told him, you need to go see a doctor, Kerry. They got him to a mental health center, but it He left. Kerry is literally crying out for help. He's literally saying, I'm losing my mind. What a lot of people didn't know at the time was that Carrie was having these dreams and these fantasies about killing women. Carrie was a lost soul and he ended up taking refuge in a place that he loved and that was Yosemite. In the fall of 97, he drove his international scout to the tiny town of El Porto, which is the door.

step to Yosemite National Park. By this time, Kerry's in his 30s, and he lands a job as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge. 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. Working at the Cedar Lodge gave Cary access to his beloved Yosemite. His idea of serenity was to maybe smoke a little pot and to sunbathe naked. Oh he was always naked. No tan lines on him. I hung out 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 come on, never anything like that. Not even the hint of it. But not everyone at Cedar Lodge was was enamored of him. There's a woman named Trish Houts. She and her husband ran the restaurant that was attached to the lodge. They had a teenage daughter that Carrie spent an uncomfortable amount of time with. 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. He was cold, hateful.

I've dealt with cold and hateful people before. Trish was in some way sort of a savant. She seems to be the only one who saw this side of Carrie. 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. Winter is a spectacle. When the granite is iced in beautiful white snow,

you really get to understand how extraordinary these walls are. Among the small group of people who did come to the Cedar Lodge to go see Yosemite was Carol Sond, her daughter, Julie, 16, and their friend named Sylvina Paloso. The three of them are on a trip twofold. Look at colleges and then also to enjoy Yosemite. They had a red Pontiac that they had rented for this trip. This was an opportunity for them to show Sylvina, who was visiting from Argentina, one of

the most beautiful places on earth. And they spent the day touring the park, going to a lot of highlights they went ice skating 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 they had dinner at the restaurant then he went to the front desk and got a movie they were gonna go watch back in their room all of this rage that have been building up and carry all of these years he finally decides he's going to act upon it I watched the 500 building home I can

The window was open. The curtain was open, and I can see inside that there's two, no woman, no man. 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. Something clicks, and at that moment, Carrie Stater knows it's time. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Across Canada in a Volvo. Destination. Vancouver.

left to leave. Travel west through. Approaching. Continue toward you've arrived. Adventure in comfort with Volvo. Whether you prefer gas, plug-in hybrid, or fully electric, there's a Volvo for everyone. Learn more at VolvoCars.ca.ca. Carrie had been looking for victims that night. Eventually He actually spied Carol and the girls through the window of their room and decided to knock on their door. I knocked on the door and said I was maintenance. I had to leak the room upstairs. 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 her pajamas, they're watching Jerry McGuire on the VCR. What can I do for you? Show me to money. They're done for the day. He persists. says I'll have to move to a different room if the leap goes on and they let me in

I went to the bathroom to check the fan where I told him the leak probably would be when I came out of the bathroom I pulled a gun out and I told him that money the keys of the car he takes Carol's daughter Julie and her friend Sylvina

Pelosi and herds them into the bathroom then he ties up Carol with duct tape and then strangles her with a length of rope 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. Came back in and pulled the girls out of the bathroom

and sexually assaulted them. Sylvino resisted. She was hysterical. He brought her into the bathroom and strangled her. So he takes Julie, puts her into the bathroom in room 510 next door. He then takes Sylvina's body, puts her in the trunk along with Carol Sund, and returns to get Julie.

Five o'clock or seven morning, I told Julia, I had a someplace to go. And I wouldn't harm her. I'll put her in the car. Her hands are ducted in front of her. I wrapped a pink blanket around her. And just drove. I didn't know where I was coming.

I didn't know what I was going. The next time Carrie Stainer is seen is 100 miles away in Sierra Village when he uses a payphone to call a cab to get back to the Cedar Lodge. 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. As we were approaching Yosemite Valley, he said he would show me the cabin to where he saw Bigfoot,

and he pointed off to a ways back. 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. 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 were scared. We thought that they were crashed somewhere.

There was snow up there. There was icy roads. As each day went by and there was no trace of these three women, it became a larger and larger story. A very mysterious story. Three people have disappeared at Yosemite National Park in California. 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. These things don't happen in Yosemite. The week of Carol, Julie, and Sylvina's disappearance from El Prattel, I had been approached because I was the kidnapping coordinator in my office. Ten days of combing the outskirts of Yosemite where the trio had been visited. there are no new leads. This is the largest search that has ever been mounted in Yosemite at any time. It included going up and down the roads looking for places where their car could have gone off. I'm just devastated. I don't I can't imagine how three people in a red car could disappear. When covering it you really were empathizing with the families.

We're handling out posters. We're doing everything possible. And the pain that you could be doing everything possible. that you could feel from the Sund family and the Palosos who had come from Argentina. Ask people here in America to help us. We went up to El Patel to the Cedar Lodge, and we started doing our interviews. One of the people they interviewed was this helpful handyman named Carrie Stainer. He was not at all flustered. He just didn't set off any alarm bells.

He even told them a story about Stephen. At one point, he was a story about Stephen. even was opening all the rooms for the FBI to gather evidence. Tonight, a desperately needed break in a month-long search for those three missing visitors to Yosemite. About a month after the disappearance of Carol Julian Sylvina, there was a big break in the case because California Highway Patrol officer reported the location of the missing rented vehicle. This is about 60, 70 miles from the Cedar Lodge.

20 years ago, I was a member of the Evidence Response Team. This looked a lot different, but behind me is where the vehicle was located. This is a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix, but it was so completely burned, there were no paint, rubber, plastic, upholstery. 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. There was no way for us to it. There's no way for us to identify who was in that trunk. The forest where the car was found is just a short walk to Sierra Village, where Kerry made the phone call to get the cab back to Yosemite.

Evidence was found throwing 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. It was a crucial piece of evidence. We get the pictures back and we have Julie and And Sylvina doing handstands in the room. We see all their pictures that they took going through Yosemite. And this is a picture of Sylvina and Carol sitting in the far bed.

We came to learn that this picture was taken about 20 minutes before Carrie's Dana knocked on their door. 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. We have recovered two bodies from the trunk of the vehicle. No identification has been made.

When the discovery of the bodies in the burned out vehicle are made, I wouldn't say it affected the community. I would say it affected the nation. Two bodies have been found, but there are still many unanswered questions. This was an enormous story.

A huge, huge story. And 2020 decided to do an hour on it. My producer, John Meyerson, I went straight out to Yosemite to cover it. We had an interview with Selena's mother, and she was the picture of despair and grief. I knew from the very beginning that my girl was there. How?

I don't know. Don't ask me. Just felt. Her mother's intuition was sadly correct. It was Sylvina in the trunk of that car, Sylvina, along with Carol Sund. As a father, I feel terrible. I'm supposed to die.

When they realized it was Sylvina and Carol, then the big mystery was, where's Julie? What are you hoping that Julie is still alive? Hoping against hope that they've got her somewhere. It's the realization that there's a third victim out there that may still be alive, send us into a frenzy. And my mind went to, oh my God, she's out there. She's being held prisoner.

Something terrible is being done to her. Okay, let me show you that area. 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 Sun. Maybe, just maybe, we're going to find this girl alive.

The mother and daughter who were found dead after disappearing from Yosemite National Park. I mean, this is a story that decades later, they're still talking about it. This was an enormous story, a huge, huge story. What in the heck are we dealing with here? Okay. What day was it that you murdered her? This is an absolute tragic story of two brothers, one hero and victim and the other a monster. The story of Stephen Stainer and the story of Carrie Stainer are going to

intersect again in a way no one could have anticipated. 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. How do you feel? I know my first name is Stephen. But it turns out the monsters weren't gone.

Carrie Stainer was very close by. All of this rage that have been building up in Kerry, he finally decides he's going to act upon it. It was right there. He was right there. Carrie Stanner is a vicious, vicious killer, but he's even more twisted than that. And they're about to find out just how twisted. So as winter merges into spring,

the entire valley just seems to come to life. Everything turns green again. It's a completely different feeling. It's March 1999, and this spring is different, because there is a palpable fear in Yosemite Park. A very mysterious story. Three people have disappeared. The sons were last seen near the Yosemite Valley.

Where the trio had been visiting. In February, Carol Sunned and her daughter Julie, and their teenage friend, Sylvina Pelosi, had gone missing from the Cedar Lodge. I can't imagine how three people in a red car could disappear. This doesn't happen in the national parks. There was a sense of panic. There was nobody here. Even the locals stopped coming in. You can't overstate.

the sense of fear there. Everybody was afraid. Everybody wanted to know what had happened. But there's still no sign of the bodies for about a month until a hiker stumbles across a burned out Pontiac. We have recovered two bodies from the trunk of the vehicle. When the FBI announced that only two bodies had been found, that stumped everybody. I urge anyone with information to immediately call the FBI tip line. When they realized It was Sylvina and Carol. Then the big mystery was, where's Julie? 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. For about a week, searchers combed the countryside, the roads, the ditches, the rivers, everywhere near that car. But no, Julie. Oh, my God, she's out there. She's being held prisoner. something terrible is being done to her.

In late March, the FBI got another big clue. We are pursuing significant and potentially very viable leads. This one came in the mail. And when the letter was opened, you see a lined paper, and on the top it says, we had fun with this one. And there's a crude map, and the map shows Route 120, it shows Vista Point, it shows Don Pedro Reservoir,

reservoir and it's about 40 miles away from where the car was found. They bring up a cadaver dog and within 10 seconds of going to where this map points out, they find Julie's body. Earlier this afternoon, investigators discovered the body of a homicide victim. The body of 15-year-old Julie Sund was identified earlier in the week. When you saw where Julie Sund took her last breath, the gravity of this story really hit home. Just to think of her being alone, away from her mom and Sylvina, and wondering what happened, it was terrible. Frances, was that also for you the hardest part?

That was the end of, you know, any hope. I've told the family that we won't stop until we find out what happened, until we've resolved this. So as we move into the summer of 1999, Yosemite is getting back to normal. The tourists are coming back. And now five months have passed. There has been no more murder. So the sense around Yosemite was that it was safe.

It was safe because the people that were responsible for this horrific crime, according to the FBI, were in custody. When they made the announcement that we have the killers, they believe they have the killers, believe they have the killers in custody. Huge. Absolutely huge. We do not believe that there is anyone else there on the loose who is not in custody.

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. With the FBI's assurance relative sense closure is near. Once they went down that road, it seemed like they just had tunnel vision. And they weren't looking at anything else.

People may have thought the right people were in custody, and they certainly wanted to believe the right people were in custody, but they weren't the right people. Kerry Stanton was still working here at the lodge. He was still living here on the premises. He was still an active member of the community. He was not an unknown quantity. I'll say that.

People knew who he was. He was not someone who hid. didn't really see him as a suspect. He didn't raise alarm bells for anybody. Stainer was free. I mean, he had gotten away with triple murder. On the more westerly aspect of the park is a little area called Foresta.

You can look down and see this gorgeous meadow. And it was called Big Meadow for good reason. And down in that meadow was an old house. It's called the Green Cabin. It's owned by the Park Service and it's leased for a dollar a year to the Yosemite Institute, which runs educational programs throughout the park. Living there in the summer of 1999

was a 26-year-old woman named Joey Armstrong. She was really kind, and she was sensitive, she was loving, she was generous, she was smart. Joey was a naturalist at Yosemite. Her job was to take children and teach them them the nature of Yosemite. I asked her if she was ever afraid, and she said no, and we knew they had suspects in custody.

She had memorialized it 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. But it turns out the monsters weren't gone. Carrie Stainer was very close by. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto

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There's actually a road that, connects from where the Cedar Lodge is into 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. 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. He wasn't out hunting for anybody. but an opportunity presented itself. You know, Carrie Stannert is down here in this area. He sees up at the green cabin this petite, blonde girl. It's almost the weekend, and Joey's very excited. She's got a trip planned to meet some friends. She's just going in and out of her house, packing up her truck,

getting ready to leave. 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. 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?

And it turned out to be a situation where evil truly meets opportunity. I'm just over there throwing rocks in the creek and just after no-share walked out again and again. It seemed like she was alone. He comes closer, and as he comes closer, she is what he thinks he once. Something instantly changes with Carrie Steiner 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. 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. He's talking to her and he's making conversation. He was a guy who, you know, big and strong and athletic. And as he's

movie star white teeth. He would have just been like a little oddity. But as he's talking to her about Bigfoot, he's trying to look behind her and look over her shoulders to see if anyone's in the house. And then pretty quickly, it would have gone to flat-out terror. That's what I pulled out the gun.

I put it to her head. She turned around and freaked out. I told her to go inside. He uses the gun to direct her to the back of the house and into this rear bedroom. He starts binding her with the duct tape that he's brought in his kid.

She fights with everything she has. He barely was able to overcome her. She was very strong, and I don't mean just a strong woman in the sense of emotionally strong, but she was physically strong. 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. She's totally controlled, and then he takes her.

and guides her here. He picked her up and tossed her in the back seat and started driving away. The first sign Joey Ruth Armstrong was in trouble was when she didn't meet up with a friend in Morin County on Wednesday. When Joey doesn't show up, obviously her friends are bewildered and they're frightened, absolutely freaked out. Her friends called Yosemite and now the search was on for Joey Armstrong. I received a page and I called in and they asked if I was available for a search. We're covering a number of leads that are not confined to the park.

That's about all I can tell you at this point. 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. 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 and I went over and I, you know, saw that it was a person. To their shock and dismay, they saw that her head had been removed. This was just as grisly as scene as you could possibly imagine. It was incredible and horrible what had happened to. to Joey Armstrong. You know, in your own personal life, you have said many times before, I can't imagine the pain of losing a child. You don't believe it's you, you don't believe it's her.

You're going, no, no. Carrie Stainer left behind a load of evidence, and he knew it. Unlike the first three murders where he left virtually no evidence, he knew that he had left a very easy trail for investigators. About two hours north of Yosemite is a nudist colony, which turned out to be the key to the whole thing. A car ride is about to happen. And during that car ride, the story of Steven Stainer

and the story of Carrie Stainer are going to intersect again in a way no one could have anticipated. Laguna del Sol is like any other resort, 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. I'm told people go to Laguna del Sol from all over the country. I don't think you're trying to hide if you're going to a nudist colony and it's the last place that Carrie Stainer would be a free man.

The Yosemite Park Naturalist was found decapitated. The 26-year-old's body was found Thursday near her Yosemite home. Joy Armstrong's murder sent shockwaves through Yosemite Valley. Here was another murder in the Yosemite area, and this time it was actually in the park. This is the second high-profile murder case connected to Yosemite this year. Three tourists disappeared from the El Portale area in February and were later found dead. People didn't know what to think. Were they connected?

Were they not connected? If they weren't connected, then what's happening? I called some of the investigators to ask them, do you think they're related? And it was a resounding no. We have absolutely no reason to believe, no indication that there is any linkage at all. You don't want to cause undue panic. You don't want to cause undue concern. you know the facts.

We've got 60 teams going out. There wasn't really much time for us to speculate on whether this was related. I mean it quickly became related. Somebody had spotted a very unique vehicle, a blue and white international scout, the same vehicle that Carrie Stainer drove. On the same road where Joey lived around the same time that she was murdered, and that That was the first thing that authorities followed up on. The tracks of the vehicle that drove away from Joey's house left very clear traps and they were

able to get very clear pictures. And then they started looking for this guy, Carrie Steiner, because he would be a natural witness to interview. I was sitting in the bar having lunch and somebody came in and said, they're looking for Carrie Steiner. And I said, what? And he's really now starting to feel. that noose tighten around his neck.

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. 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. Things are not so well now. I decided to pack up my stuff in fact and I'm headed north. They had put Ebola being on the lookout for on the news, and so it had gone out that people

were looking for Carrie Steiner. Authority set off a manhunt for him yesterday. And it just so happens, the woman he struck the conversation with, saw the news. And I immediately picked up the phone and called FBI and told them that I knew where this person was. That morning, FBI agent Jeff Rhinon gets a call. He's supposed to meet up with a couple of other agents at Laguna del Sol right away. So as I'm driving and proceeding down there, the next train of thought was, oh my God, we're going to a nudist colony.

For me, a nudist colony means Peter Sellers, a shot in the dark, and a guy walking across the screen with a guitar over his genitals. The Guned El Sol A Nudas Colony. It's not a place I ever thought I would be in my FBI career. The manager came out, men, 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 I'm wearing clothes. Got here parked and as they walk into the restaurant area, Stainer gets up and puts his hands up. 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. He didn't do the, hey, who are you? Why are you handcuffing me? What's going on here? Put him in the car? and he and Jeff drove off and I followed. It's just the two of them. Stainer's in the front seat. Rinek has no idea the magnitude of what is happening.

Nobody told him that Carrie Stainer is a suspected murderer. What happened during that drive between Carrie Stainer and that FBI agent changed the story forever. It was a very pleasant drive. We were two guys that were just stuck together. One thing that Special Agent Reinek is really good at is getting people to open up. You meet someone and you're asking them questions about themselves. Jeff being Jeff said, hey, Stainer, you're not paying in relation to Steven Stainer. He'd been kidnapped from a Merced Street Corner in 1972 when he was just seven years old.

He goes, have you ever seen that movie? I know my first name is Steven. And that's when Stann said, yeah, that's my brother. In that moment, he's just connected him with some guy who's supposed to pick up. Well, this is horrible. You're Stephen Stanners' brother. That's terrible what happened to him. And he went on to describe that unlike the world expected, life was not happily ever after.

All of a sudden, Carrie Stainer gets upset. He gets emotional about his brother, Stephen. My brother was held captive for seven years, and his abductor, Kenneth Parton, Cornell only got seven years. How can that be fair? And he asked me if I thought that was just. And I told him absolutely no. Something truly remarkable happened in that car. Carrie Stainer, who had such trouble with relationships and intimacy and connections, developed a connection with Jeff Reinich that would absolutely change this case.

So after that, they actually bond over something else. It's a movie. It's called... movie. It's called Billy Jack. And the very popular song associated with that movie called One Tin Soldier. One Tin Soldier rides away. 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? No, haven't seen Billy Jack. Well, there's this line in the movie that it's a classic line. After they finished 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.

And I'm going to whop you on that side of your face. There's not a damn thing you can do about it. Really? It's a weird little moment where he just finished saying he'd never seen this movie. But he knew the classic line. He's laughing, I'm laughing, I'm laughing. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good, you know. You know, now they're walking in, and they're having a good laugh together.

And then things sort of take an odd turn. But remember, Agent Reynick 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. Jeffrey Reynick 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. Neither Jeff nor I really knew why we were there and talking to him. We didn't know what his involvement was, if any. The three of us are settled in the room eating pizza.

As a general rule, when law enforcement is interrogating a suspect, they don't order pizza. It's not textbook. It was grasping at straws to figure out where do we start to begin the interview. Carrie starts launching off into, this is going to be my last meal as a free man. Out of the blue, he looks at the agents and says, I can give you closure. I said, Carrie, what exactly do you mean close? and about what? He says, you know, why we're here. And he told us, hey, I can answer some questions about Joey and more.

And we didn't know what that was. They thought Carrie Standard was a witness to something. And suddenly, out of the blue, he's dangling a confession to these FBI agents who I think were shocked in many ways. But he has a condition. An absurd, horrible condition. 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, Not just a couple, three, four images. I'm talking about a stack that high. Well, can you imagine what these FBI agents are thinking? What in the heck are we dealing with here? 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. They managed to buy some time. So in the meantime, what do you have? And then Kerry starts to talk about Joey. Okay. We're going to start talking about that. her. In the interview, Jeff continues the bond that they had created in that car ride and

wants Stainer to continue to talk. If it hadn't been for bonding over Stephen in that car ride, this whole confession might never have happened. It seemed like she was alone. Mm-hmm. I had a backpack, a small green backpack. In the backpack, I had a 22 revolver. He was talking about some very grisly things, as if he was reading a soup label. She stepped up on the porch and was talking to me and she turned around and so I pulled out the gun and put it to her head and she turned around and freaked out. It's very unsettling to listen to Carrie Stainer. He's calculating. He's creepy. Took her to the back corner of the house to a big and I duct tape her and kicked her and

cacked. You're doing fine. This is hard. You're being good. Brave. Go ahead. The thing that Jeff does in a very magical way is to not be judgmental to keep Carrie talking. The bottom line is nobody's going to talk to you if they think you're disgusted by what they're saying. She insisted quite a bit. I didn't hear her or anything. I just used threats and the gun to subdue her because I was trying to duct tape her hand. I was trying to duct tape her hands here and her back. She kept fighting me.

He wanted us to know he was not beating her or being violent or sadistic. He wants to control what we think of him. It becomes pretty clear to me that he's just this big, emotionless monster. And Joey comes across as heroic because she was a fighter and he was a coward. He successfully binds her with the duct tape, and he binds her to the point where all she can pretty much do is walk. The key to everything is what carries.

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? And Carrie Stainer is about to reveal exactly what happened. I was driving. She started going crazy and just jumping all the way the place in the back to the truck. I couldn't really control her. And she fell off through the window on the road right in front of the barn. She didn't fall out. She was fighting every way she could to get out of that and she did and he didn't expect it. The idea that she was able to, bound,

fling herself out of the moving car in an almost superhuman way is absolutely astounding. I slammed a truck in the park and jumped out, she'd got up off around and started running. And he calmly got out and he ran down and he chased her. And somewhere back in there is where he caught her. What did you do? I took the knife in my back pocket and I slither the throat.

The investigators told me that I should be very proud of her. That because she fought, there was a lot of evidence. Carrie Stainer has lived up to his promise. He gave them the confession, Joey Armstrong. But remember, he said he had more. The and more now is what's critical. Without him getting his precious kitty porn. 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 Pelosi. Jeff is very empathetic, and he was saying, I can already see a change in you. You seem like you're feeling better. Whatever this is that's inside you, you need to get it out. There was a dramatic period of silence that was followed by him saying,

okay let's do it I knocked out the door and said I was maintenance and we had a leak in the room upstairs and they let me in so now he's giving the agents this blow by blow

of every gruesome detail the Pelosi girl couldn't speak for you in English was crying a lot and Julie was very calm and at the same time he's giving him a glimpse inside these strange thoughts

that he was having She was very cooperative. She did everything I told her to do. No tears don't let him. He constantly reminds us that she was cooperative, that she did everything he wanted her to do. The things he wanted to do to her that somehow she wanted him to.

He's painting a picture as if he has some kind of relationship with Julie. I put her in the car and this drove. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I was going to do. You're at Don Patriot's this 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.

This has nothing to do with love. It has everything to do with playing out this violent fantasy in his head. I carried her in the pathway. I asked him, how did you carry her? And he goes, you know, like this. And I said, do you mean like a groom carries a bronze? right? And he says, yeah, like that. I laid out the blanket and I guess I knew what I was going to do was I had a knife with me.

It was a brutal homicide. What actually happened had no relation to in any way what he was describing to us. But he said after he killed her, he stood here and he marveled out at the view of the rising sun. 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. But it's not over. Bombshells are on the way. I loved Carrie. I could not believe what I just heard.

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. My mom was a waitress at the Cedar Lodge where Carrie was a maintenance man and lived above the restaurant. They were in a relationship. I must have been 10, 11 years old. He was in his 30s. He was handsome. He was warm like a big teddy bear.

A safe person to be around. We were excited when Carrie would come over. He would buy us a new beanie baby almost every time we saw him because that was pretty big in the 90s. My sister and I would be walking up the driveway and we'd see Carrie Steyner coming up in his scout and jump in the truck and he'd give us a ride up to our house. I loved him a lot. I don't know if he knew how much I did. He was a happy part of our life.

Such a happy part that turned into such a dark part of our life. One of the most disturbing things Stainer told Jeff was that Carol, Savina, and Julie were not his first choice. Carrie actually planned to kill a whole other set of people and this was a complete surprise to them almost the day off the property I was at a girlfriend's house and this girlfriend her two daughters

of original intended victims I could not believe what I just heard I was literally trying to get my mouth going to hear that again to make sure I had heard what he said I'm sorry, I said that again, I misunderstood you. I was seeing that her daughters were my original intended to the victims.

Had we not gotten Stainer? They could have been next. The day after Valentine's Day, 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. While he was there, there was another person on the ground. that stopped in and deflected what he could do. So Kerry abandoned his initial plan to kill his girlfriend and her daughters.

He said when he got back to the Cedar Lodge at night, he was really ramped up. Yeah, back to the hotel late. I wanted to go to the siltan hot tub, trying to fall down. And the hot tub is dirty. So it was a little annoyed. So to the walk around the property.

He's actually stalking. He's looking. He's predatory. As he's walking past the 500 building, who we now know to be Carol, Julie and Sylvina. The FBI has been summoned to help find three missing women. He was right under everyone's nose the entire time. He was right there.

He was right there. 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. I later learned that he had a murder kit, murder and rape kit in his backpack that he wanted to use against my my mom, my sister, and I.

It is frightening just to think that the things that were inside of it and what he was thinking the whole time. Late last night, federal authorities arrested this man, 37-year-old Carrie Stainer. 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 and rape and kill my sister and I. I kept it quiet for 20 years. I didn't address it. My whole family fell apart.

My mom was extremely shocked. As a mother myself, I don't know if I would have been able to handle that. My daughter is the same age right now that I was when I met Carrie. 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. We're survivors, but it took a really really good. big part of our life away. It destroyed part of my childhood. I had not been back to the Cedar Lodge until last year, and it sent chills up and down my spine. I just remember he would show us

how to dive perfectly. My sister and I both wanted to be the best at it. It feels like it was so long ago that you forget that it even happened. Like a dream or you, a movie that you watched. And it almost doesn't even feel like it was you. There's a big part of me that's still, He still wonders if he still thinks of those two little girls that adored him so much. Because we think about him all the time. Does he even remember? Does he care? Everybody wondered what was going on in his mind.

Everybody wondered why. 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. I asked him if he would bring us back. back to these places because he was talking about evidence. He took us to all the spots and he knew exactly where everything was.

And he pointed out in that direction and he said he took the roll of duct tape and the knife and he threw it out there as far as he could. With the recovery of the duct tape and the watch and the knife, which was the murder weapon, now we're talking to evidence. 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. I don't forgive him.

I can't. But at the same time, I still have a hard time looking at him as a monster. Carrie was the monster in the forest. Bigfoot was never supposed to be real. And then he became that real thing. 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. It was almost as if he was trying to get credit for being a good soldier. He said, I want a movie of the week made about my story. There was a movie made about Stephen Stainer. And he wanted the same truth. treatment. He wanted the world to take note. 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. Stephen could have grown

up normal, happy, and healthy, and Kerry still would have been a serial killer. It's difficult to picture what Carrie has done because knowing Steve, their personalities are completely opposite. The only time Steve would kill anything like I feel like I feel. is because we were going to eat it. You know what I mean? I wouldn't think that he would think of himself as one, but he is a hero. Steve is a hero to a lot of people.

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. There's a statue of Mercedno of Stephen and Timothy White and they're holding hands. Yes, terrible things happen 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. 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, Sylvina Paloso, Joey Armstrong, These are beautiful people who met their death too soon. The only solace I get is that she's with God Almighty.

And I will see her again. Joey's legacy carries on in Yosemite. There's something now called Armstrong Scholars. Every summer, a group of girls between the ages of 15 and 18 are brought into the park to spend a week exploring, learning about it, which is exactly why Joy was there in the first place. And you take my dreams away. Whatever terrible things happen in the world,

I think people come to beautiful places like this because they know that nature has healing power. This is the place of beauty where evil will be vanquished. And that's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at ABC News in 2020. Good night. Two and five Canadians will hear Hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.