Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Yosemite Murderer” Cary Stayner Pt. 1

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

As a troubled teen in the ‘70s, Cary Stayner experienced violent fantasies and compulsions, as well as the traumatic kidnapping of his brother. He found refuge in Yosemite National Park as an adult, but unfortunately, it didn't halt his spiral into murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of violence, pedophilia, sexual assault of children, and rape that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. 18-year-old Kerry Stainer shouldered through the crowd of reporters standing on his front lawn. Finally, through the sea of press, he caught a glimpse of his brother, Stephen, for the first time in seven years. Carrie embraced Stephen as cameras flashed. All the sadness, guilt, and anger from their years apart vanished immediately. Carrie couldn't believe he finally had his brother back.

It was the miracle his family needed. Pulling back from the hug, Carrie could see in Stephen's eyes that he didn't quite recognize his older brother. But before he could say anything, his mother and father surged toward Stephen, crying from happiness. Immediately, Carrie was pushed out of the way. The reporters closed in, trying to capture the reunion, and Carrie suddenly found himself on the outside looking in. At first, he was too happy to mind, but as he watched his parents doad on Stephen,

Carrie felt a familiar pang of resentment creeping in. Old sensations of frustration and anxiety swelled in Carrie as the crowd of journalists formed a semicircle around his kid brother, yelling questions and calling him a hero. All of a sudden, Carrie realized he could disappear and nobody would care. At this thought, all of Carrie's excitement drained from his body, replaced by a white, hot fury. He turned and walked away from his family.

Anger and pain swirled in Carrie's head. As cameras flashed, an insatiable desire to hurt something, someone surged through him. He took a breath. He wouldn't let that voice inside of him win. At least not today. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers,

a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we'll delve into the tortured and twisted mind of Carrie Stainer, better known as the Yosemite Killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast

for free on Spotify. In today's episode, we're exploring Carrie's dark family history and how Yosemite National Park offered a refuge from the troubled teens' violent fantasies and compulsions. Next time, we'll follow Carrie's spiral into murder and the wild goose chase he planned for police. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

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only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. To some people, life is a series of choices. Every day you wake up and write your own path by making decisions. Others view life as a predetermined script that you can only act out. Sometimes, no matter what we think about the idea of free will,

it can feel like there are too many outside forces controlling your life. Your family, your socioeconomic status, even your genetic code, all impact the decisions you make throughout life. The question then becomes whether you have any power at all. Is your fate your own or is it chosen for you? It seems like Carrie Anthony Stainer inherited his fate from the moment he was born on August 12, 1961, in Merced, California. From the outside perspective, his parents provided a good home for their firstborn. However, Carrie never received much affection from his parents.

This lack of tenderness was a family trait from long before Carrie's birth. His mother, Kay, had a bleak childhood of her own. Growing up, the only form of physical touch she received from her father was late at night when he snuck into her room and molested her. This was terrifying to Kay, but any time she cried, she was punished and shamed. As a result, she grew into a serious woman who was uncomfortable showing affection. Not even the birth of her first child could change her. this. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a note,

Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. In 2010, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health published a longitudinal study about motherly affection. The study led by Dr. Joanna Maselko measured how affectionate and attentive moms acted toward their eight-month-old babies and tracked the children. children's emotional well-being for the next 30 years. They found that kids who didn't receive tangible expressions of love experienced higher rates of anxiety, hostility, and interpersonal sensitivity. But baby Carrie didn't have to wait 30 years to feel the impact of Kay's coldness.

He could only scream and cry, desperately seeking attention. But this only made Kay pull away more, and Carrie's father, Delbert, had an even worse reaction. Around the time of Carrie's birth, Delbert had back surgery. This meant that he couldn't pick up and hold the crying child. Instead, he yelled at Carrie for making noise, which scared the infant. However, Carrie quickly adapted to his parents' lack of affection. When he was two years old, he stopped crying as much and started self-soothing in a troubling new way. Whenever he was upset, Carrie ripped out chunks of his hair.

Because of his hair pulling, at the age of three, Carrie was diagnosed with trichotillomania, or TTM, which is an impulse control disorder. According to the DSM-5, some people with T-T-TTTM tear out their hair as a way to cope with feelings of anxiety. Children with this disorder show characteristics as young as 12 months old, and unfortunately, this makes pediatric T-T-M difficult to study because patients can't articulate their thoughts, feelings and actions. As a baby, Carrie couldn't comprehend his own feelings of rejection when his mother and father refused to hold him, and crying only got him yelled at. So to cope, he ripped his hair out, countering his emotional pain with a physical irritant. Carrie's relationship with his parents likely became even more strained with the birth of his siblings, three sisters and a younger brother named Stephen. Now, Carrie had to compete for

Kay and Delbert's already scarce attention. Carrie was almost four when Stephen was born and was already a quiet, anxious person. Stephen, however, was more outgoing. Carrie craved a connection with his father, but faltered where perhaps Stephen thrived. However, there was one place where Carrie knew he could gain his father's approval, in Yosemite National Park. The Stainer's hometown, Merced, has the nickname, the Gateway to, Yosemite for a reason. The town is just over 60 miles away from the stunning National Park.

Delbert loved the outdoors and often piled his family into the car for a long weekend of camping, hiking, fishing, and swimming. Carrie thrived in the wilderness. He was a natural outdoorsman, just like his father, and felt at home among the trees, fields, and rivers. Plus, Yosemite had a way of easing tension out of the Stainer family dynamics. The siblings, Bublings got along better, Delbert was more relaxed, and even Kay seemed happier in the park. Despite the bug bites and sunburns, Yosemite was a sanctuary for the eldest stainer. But it also served as an escape from Merced, where Carrie's life grew increasingly complicated. When Carrie was seven, he accompanied his mom on a trip to the grocery store.

While she picked out food for the family, Carrie suddenly imagined himself with a gun, firing bullets into the female cashiers. The vision was so graphic and sudden, it startled the young boy. Carrie knew hurting people was wrong, but he didn't know what to do. He couldn't tell his mother, she never wanted to hear about Carrie's emotions or struggles. Besides, the fantasy interested Carrie more than it scared him. Perhaps most of all, he wondered where the thoughts came from. Though the true answer is difficult to determine, we can make some guesses.

There's no telling who was aware of what was happening in the stainer house behind closed doors. Kay wanted to protect her children from the abuse she faced as a young girl, but child molestation is an insidious secret that can spread quietly. We're not sure when it began, but we know that Delbert sexually molested one of his daughters during her childhood. This could be a clue into Carrie's state of mind and where his issue started. According to the CDC, epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. While genetic code is firmly biological and can't be altered by behavior, there are proteins and chemicals that impact how the brain reads genes. External factors can change these proteins, which impact someone's health, personality, and even, according to recent research, trauma.

A 2015 study from a research team at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York found that a person's trauma not only marked or changed their genetic code, but also the genetic code of their children, and it did so by specifically increasing their likelihood of stress disorders. In short, the study scientifically legitimized the idea of generational trauma. This means that even if Carrie's parents raised him in the perfect psychological and behavioral environment, he could have inherited his mother's trauma along with the familial trauma that came as a result of his father's actions. This might explain why from a very young age, Carrie started to have some strange thoughts and desires. Carrie's violent fantasies developed quickly after the grocery

store incident. He continued to think about harming women, either capturing, beating, or killing them. But knowing he couldn't talk to his parents about these intrusive thoughts, Carrie kept them to himself. Because they went unchecked, Carrie's fantasies only developed into new nightmare scenarios. When he was eight, he imagined trapping one of his neighbors, a little girl, in an underground bunker. He stared at her while she played in the front yard, and he wondered what it might feel like to actually take her and what he would do once he had her to himself. And the urges didn't go away over time. By age 10, Carrie was still tear. carrying out chunks of his hair, while graphic visions popped into his head randomly.

It seemed that young Carrie was on an irresistible path to his eventual fate, but no one could have predicted the unexpected nightmare in store for the entire Stainer family. Coming up, Carrie's entire world crashes down in a single afternoon. Hi there, it's Carter from Parcast. If you haven't had a chance to check out the riveting True Crime series Solved Murders, there's no better time to tune in. Throughout the month of August, Solved Murders is featuring four celebrations that took a turn for the deadly in a special series we're calling party fowls. From a murder in the New York nightclub scene and the house party gone horribly wrong to a terrifying evening at the Tate residence and a

sex party with sinister results, go deeper inside four affairs remembered for all the wrong reasons. And if you like what you hear with party fowls and want to uncover more of history's most captivating cases, be sure to follow Solved Murders on Spotify. There you'll find a new episode released every Wednesday. Solved Murders is a Spotify original from Parcast. Listen free. on Spotify. Now back to the story. Growing up in Merced, California, Carrie Stainer was a happy, outdoorsy kid. At least, that's what it seemed like to anyone who looked at him, but beneath the surface,

violent fantasies swirled inside his head, and Carrie's family situation was only growing more confusing. Carrie had a close relationship with his extended family. His uncle Jesse lived in Merced, so Carrie spent a lot of time at his house. at his house, but Carrie's parents had no idea that Jesse had been molesting his own sons for years. One night when Carrie was 11, he went to his uncle's apartment for a sleepover. At first, it was like any other night with his cousins, but later, Jesse told the boys he had something to show them. As Carrie and his cousins leaned in, Jesse revealed pictures of young naked girls.

Carrie had seen women and girls skinny dipping in Yosemite, but this was different. When it was time to turn out the lights, Uncle Jesse asked his nephew to sleep in his bed. Carrie didn't think there was anything wrong with that, so he agreed. That night, Jesse molested his nephew, then went back to sleep as if nothing happened. The next morning, Carrie had no idea if the incident was bad, or if he should tell anyone. Carrie loved his uncle Jesse. He listened in a way that his parents didn't. And in many ways he thought of Jesse as a second father.

But now, the 11-year-old didn't know what to do. Carrie wasn't alone. Child Safe, a child advocacy center, explains that in situations where children are close with their molester, they can normalize or justify the act to protect the offender. Exacerbating the issue, Carrie came from a home with little to no communication, and he wasn't about to isolate the one adult who talked to him. Besides, Carrie had enough distractions to keep his mind off the strange event. He played baseball, did well in school, skateboarded with his friends, and even developed an interest in drawing.

After that night at his uncle's house, Carrie quickly fell back into his normal routine. But a short time later, everything changed in a single afternoon. On December 4, 1972, Carrie's younger brother, Stephen, was walking home from school alone as he typically did. Unfortunately, seven-year-old Stephen would never make it home that day. Panicked, Kay and Delbert Stainer checked with their other children, their neighbors, and Stephen's friends. Nobody had seen him. The Stainers called the police. After asking around, officers discovered that Stephen was last seen walking home from school,

but the trail went cold after that. It was every parent's nightmare. Stephen's disappearance shattered the Stainer family. Kay retreated from everything, only interacting with her children when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, she spent all her time alone. Delbert was the opposite. He completely broke down. It seemed like when he wasn't crying, he was yelling at his other kids.

And Carrie was shocked by the change. His father had always been so stoic, but without his favorite son, he crumbled. Carrie's already low self-worth plummeted. every time he found his father crying over Stephen's belongings. Kerry believed that if he had disappeared, his parents wouldn't care nearly as much. Understandably, Stephen's disappearance consumed the Stainer family. Instead of going to Yosemite on weekends, Kay and Delbert drove around California, following vague and ultimately useless tips in hopes that they'd find their son.

At first, Kerry went with them. He missed his little brother. At night, he sat up. outside and wished on the stars to bring Stephen back home. As the older brother, he felt guilty that he'd failed to protect Stephen. But as weak stretched to months, Carrie's sadness turned to resentment. His parents could only think about Stephen. One day while in the garage, Carrie spotted a place on the wall where Stephen had written his name. He took a brush and painted over the word. He wanted to move on, but it was impossible to escape his perfect sibling. In middle school, Carrie's classmates only knew him as the kid whose brother got kidnapped. The whispers he heard in the halls ate at him, and he became even quieter than normal.

Since he'd continued his habit of pulling out his hair, he started to wear a baseball cap to cover the patches. That said, it wasn't all bad. Carrie was placed into advanced classes and developed a knack for drawing. He even became something of a celebrity among his peers who loved the caricatures he drew. He kept to himself but was relatively well-liked. To most, he would have seemed like an average teenager, and like any teen, Carrie acted out. When he was 12 or 13, Carrie and his friends streaked naked in front of a couple of girls in their neighborhood, who laughed at the seemingly innocent antics.

Carrie laughed too, but exposing himself exhilarated him in a way he'd never felt before. Exhibitionism or showing one's genitals to someone who doesn't consent, likely made Carrie feel sexually in control, which he desperately felt like he needed, especially because puberty brought on a new sexual frustration. Carrie struggled with erectile dysfunction, or ED, which was perhaps caused by his compounding psychological issues. A 2016 study from a University of Malaya Medical Center team of researchers found that psychological reasons had a significant impact on a person's erection.

Carrie was plagued by anxiety and low self-worth and a complicated sexual past, and his inability to perform sexually only accelerated these feelings. Embarrassed over his ED, Carrie found it nearly impossible to have a normal relationship with women, despite the number of interested girls. About three years after his brother vanished, Carrie entered high school, and girls took notice of the handsome, quiet kid. He was outdoorsy and a talented artist. Even becoming a cartoonist for the school's paper,

he always wore a baseball hat to cover the bald spots he created tearing out his own hair, but girls still wondered about the mysterious stainer boy. Even when his friends tried to set him up, Carrie's dating life went nowhere. He preferred to spend time by himself, skipping lunch to smoke cigarettes outside and spending his weekends alone in Yosemite. Instead of interacting with real women, he drew them in his journals. Despite his inability to connect with girls on a deeper level,

Carrie was still desperate to get close to them. But eventually, drawing naked bodies wasn't enough. So Carrie took action. He started off small, walking into rooms when he knew his female cousins were changing, hoping to catch a glimpse of their naked bodies. As he grew more comfortable, he prowled around the bathroom, while they were in the shower. A few times, he even tried to videotape them so he could relive the moment later.

Whenever this happened, his cousins yelled at him, but didn't seem to take it too seriously. They thought Carrie was weird but harmless. They just made sure to lock doors and shut the blinds when he was around. Just like pulling out his hair to cope with negative feelings, Carrie was addressing his issues with women indirectly. A real relationship would give the girl power to hurt him, but his way gave him all the control. Still, despite the enjoyment he took from this, Carrie needed more. He wanted to see women in real life, even touch them, all on his own terms.

When he was 16, Carrie's younger sister invited a friend for a sleepover. That night, he snuck under the girl's bed and tried to grope her breasts. She told him to go away, and at first, Carrie complied, but he quickly returned and stood in the doorway completely naked. The girl yelled at him again and he finally left. Carrie wasn't that bothered by her reaction. He didn't ask for her consent, so he didn't care about her rejection. Still, he wished that she was more like the women in his fantasies, submissive, trapped, and cowering.

Carrie's violent and intrusive images hadn't let up, and they were constantly evolving. he imagined rapes and beatings. When he learned about the Holocaust in school, he started fantasizing about piles of bodies and similar images. These images fascinated and aroused Carrie, but they also disturbed him. Though he acted on his desires to spy on and touch women,

he drew the line at enacting his violent fantasies. Even still, he likely didn't want to get rid of the daydreams. He probably just wanted a little more control. As a way to cope, Carrie spent time at his uncle Jesse's house smoking weed. Marijuana made life seem so much more manageable. As a bonus, Jesse didn't talk about Stephen as much as Carrie's parents. At home, Carrie had to walk on eggshells, but his uncle's apartment was a haven. Carrie also found solace at Yosemite National Park.

He'd go camping with friends, cousins, or by himself. His idea of a perfect day was smoking a joint after, Skinny Dipping in a river. Even when he wasn't in the park, Kerry constantly thought and read about the outdoors, but he was more fascinated by the mysteries of the wilderness than forestry or zoology. One of his favorite subjects was Bigfoot, the mythical creature who'd been a legend since the 1800s. As a kid, Carrie and his siblings pretended to hunt Bigfoot in the park.

Now, Carrie took the giant beast more seriously than ever. He felt connected to the outcast creature, both of the other. of them could truly exist in the wilderness. One March weekend when Kerry was 18, he and his friends headed home from a camping trip, tired but happy. Carrie turned on the radio, hoping to get some music. Instead, he heard a static line news report.

Shushing his friends, he turned the volume up. The radio announcer said that his brother, Stephen, was heading back home at that very moment. He'd escaped his captors after seven long years, The nightmare was over. Carrie was so excited he sped back to Merced to see his baby brother. He didn't consider the incredible amount of change and turmoil that awaited him. When 14-year-old Stephen arrived, the reporters camped out on the Stainer's front lawn went crazy.

Kay threw her arms around her youngest son. Delbert sobbed and grabbed onto Stephen's arm as though he would never let go. Seeing this, Carrie felt a cold rush of jealousy. Carrie listened as his brother explained that a pedophile named Kenneth Parnell kidnapped him and raised Stephen as his own son. On a regular basis, Parnell molested the young stainer boy. Carrie felt horrible, but his empathy slowly dimmed as Stephen talked about his life with Parnell. Despite this horrible fate, Stephen said he acclimated to his new life.

Parnell enrolled him in school and he was a popular football player with a cute girlfriend. Hearing this made Carrie's gut clench. Of course his perfect brother was a star athlete who dated pretty girls. Not only was Stephen the

All-American Golden Boy, he was also apparently a hero. When Stephen got too old for Parnell, the pedophile kidnapped a five-year-old boy. Stephen said he couldn't watch another boy experience what he had. So he grabbed the child and hitchhike to a police station.

As Carrie stood in the background of this makeshift press conference, he felt completely numb. From the minute Stephen was born, he'd stolen all the attention. After his kidnapping, their parents placed Stephen on a pedestal, and now that he was back, it seemed he was even better than anyone remembered. It was an endless, tormenting cycle in which Carrie could not win. Between his parents, his fantasies, and his inability to express emotion, it seems that the odds have been stacked against Carrie. But Stephen had arguably been through worse, and he seemed fine to Carrie.

Not just fine, he excelled. Compared to his brother, Carrie suddenly realized that he was irrevocably broken, maybe even cursed. While his family happily welcomed Stephen back into their lives, Carrie found it hard to be in the same room as his brother. This was especially complicated since Stephen moved back into a bedroom with Carrie. Carrie thought Stephen acted like an entitled brat and the pair constantly butted heads, but their parents always sided with a younger sibling. As he was 18, Carrie could have found a new living situation.

He graduated high school and was voted most creative for his cartoons and comics. If he wanted to, he could have applied to arts. schools. However, Stephen changed everything. Before, Carrie had found a way to maintain normalcy, despite family rejection, sexual frustration, and his emotional instability. In the face of it all, he'd wanted better for himself. But now, he embraced his lifetime of bad luck. He decided that he wasn't good enough for college or an art career. He wasn't good enough for anything. So rather than apply to college, Carrie chose to stay home. For the next few years, Carrie settled into a dismal routine.

He worked odd jobs, smoked weed, and spent as much time as possible in Yosemite. And while his life stalled, Carrie's violent fantasies got worse. He still didn't want to act on them. But without hope for a loving relationship or further education, Carrie wondered if perhaps he was destined for something terrible. Coming up, tragedy pushes Carrie over the edge. Now back to the story. After the return of his brother in 1980,

18-year-old Carrie Stainer completely gave up. He sank into a pattern of smoking weed, working odd jobs, and escaping to Yosemite all while his fantasies consumed him. For the first time, the line between, between reality and fantasy started to blur for Carrie. One night while in the park, he drove down a narrow trail. His headlights rested for a moment on an old barn. And that's when he saw it.

A huge creature crouching in the shadows. The thing glared at Carrie with glowing red eyes, then turned and ran into the woods, shrieking loudly. Carrie was sure he'd just seen Bigfoot. When Carrie got home, he told everyone about the sighting. His family and friends weren't surprised to hear Carrie talking about the creature as though it were real, but the intensity of his conviction startled them. He was deadly serious and became angry if anyone even joked about the creature.

Carrie's bizarre interests didn't stop at Bigfoot. He fixated on the prophecies of 16th century astrologer Nostradamus, including one about a catastrophic Armageddon. It's possible Carrie was looking for some otherworldly explanation. for his violent fantasies. By this time, Carrie was seeing these scenes in his dreams, which meant he spent both his waking and sleeping moments, picturing piles of dead bodies and basements filled with decapitated heads.

There was a brief moment in the 80s when Carrie felt like he couldn't handle the constant turmoil swirling in his head, so he sought out psychiatric help. It's unclear what Carrie told his therapist during his sessions. It's possible he talked about, with trichotillomania, which still caused him to rip out his hair. Carrie probably didn't want to talk about his issues, but he did accept a prescription to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, and for a few months, Carrie took the medication, but there was just

one issue. Carrie found that he couldn't dream while on the medication. The naked, abused women, and piles of corpses, along with his less violent dreams, all vanished. For some people, this might have been a relief, but not to Carrie. He wanted to control his fantasies, not lose them completely, so he tossed the rest of his pills. Carrie returned to self-medication, which by this stage was mostly smoking weed with his uncle. Jesse had molested Carrie as a young boy, but the two had become very close after Stephen's disappearance. And now that Stephen was back, Jesse did his best to help Carrie. He got his nephew a job installing windows and windshields. which provided some stability and income.

And sometime in the 80s, when Kerry couldn't stand living with Stephen anymore, he moved in with Jesse. For a moment, things must have felt somewhat stable for Carrie, but it didn't last. In 1986, Delbert Stainer was accused of molesting his daughters. The report didn't clarify who turned him in, but the entire community was shocked.

On the outside, the Stainers always seemed like a wholesome family. the parents took neighbors and friends camping all the time, and the entire town mourned Stephen when he disappeared. But now the truth was revealed. Carrie gratefully took refuge from the chaos in his new living situation. However, only three years after the sexual molestation charge, tragedy drove the family back together once more. On September 16, 1989, 24-year-old Stephen was riding his motorcycle with a

a helmet or license. A car pulled out of a driveway and collided with his bike, sending him over the handlebars into the car and onto the street. His death was sudden and tragic. The Stainer family barely had time to process or react to Stephen's passing before they suffered another loss. In December of 1990, Uncle Jesse was found laying on the floor with a shotgun hole and his head.

The Stainer family didn't know how to process yet another sudden death. Though many of them pitied Carrie for losing his surrogate father figure, some people were more suspicious. Jesse had molested Carrie at a young age. Maybe after all those years, Carrie just snapped. However, Carrie had a solid alibi, so police concluded that Jesse probably came home during a robbery and caught the intruder off guard. And after several months, the investigation into Jesse's death had made little progress.

That's when people in the community started to whisper, the Stainer family was cursed. While the community gossiped, Carrie unraveled. He became more withdrawn and reclusive than ever, which makes it hard to track his whereabouts for the next five years or so. What we do know is that Carrie's mind became more dark and confusing than ever. Whatever his uncle's sins, it seemed he'd had a stabilizing influence on Carrie. Now, without him, things got worse. One spring day in 1995, 33-year-old Carrie explained to a friend that he couldn't handle his own thoughts anymore. He felt happy one second, then furious the next.

A few days later, Carrie had a violent episode at work during which he punched a piece of wood over and over until his hands bled. When his coworker finally got him to stop, Carrie said he felt like getting into his car and driving through the shop, killing everyone inside. It seems that this was the first time Carrie had voiced one of his violent fantasies out loud, and his co-worker was horrified.

He convinced Carrie to go to Merced County Mental Health Center to seek help. Carrie agreed, but he wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. Indeed, when the mental health facility said he needed group therapy, Carrie walked out. Talking about his feelings went against generations of family's stubbornness. So just as he threw out his medication years earlier,

Carrie refused therapy. Although we didn't go further with professional help, this incident sparked it change inside of Carrie. He felt like he was at his rock bottom. He had nothing left to lose. He was sick of his life, sick of Merced, where nothing good ever happened to him, In the spring of 1997, he decided it was time to move somewhere new.

And where better to start over than the one place on earth that made him happy? So he packed his bags and headed for Yosemite National Park. Carrie drove to Cedar Lodge, a huge complex of rooms and buildings just west of the park. He applied to be a handyman, and with so many years of odd jobs, they happily accepted him. Carrie rented a room above the motel's restaurant and lounge, and things seemed to be going well. The staff treated him with warmth, and Carrie was surprised to find a community

in his fellow workers and outdoors enthusiasts. For the first time in his life, he started participating. He went to movie nights and on pizza outings. He fell into a peaceful routine, which included smoking and sunbathing naked in the park. Nudity was common in certain areas of Yosemite, and his friends often joined him. He simply loved being naked

and even called himself a sun worshipper. He could spend an entire day swimming and then laying on a rock to soak up the heat. Skinny dipping and drying in the sun, surrounded by nature, Carrie at last felt more control over his violent impulses. But his control wasn't absolute. Sitting by the lodge's diner

that had a clear view of the pool, Carrie regularly watched the little girls who stayed at the resort splashing around. Given his history of disturbing fantasies, he most likely dreamt about touching them, perhaps even hurting them. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't help himself. It might have been then that it dawned on Carrie. His fate was inescapable. If he couldn't find peace and freedom here in the place he felt most himself, then what hope did he have? Whether he knew it or not, Carrie Stainer was a tick-y- time bomb. With every passing day, a lifetime of unspoken rage, ignored pain, and twisted

fantasies bubbled closer to the surface, and it wouldn't be long before he finally snapped. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with part two of Carrie Stainer's story. We'll watch as Carrie finally unleashes his pent-up frustration with deadly consequences. You can find more episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a Killer Week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast.

Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Michael Motion, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Kit Fitzger. Gerald, with writing assistance by Joel Callan, fact-checking by Adriana Romero, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial killers stars Greg Polson and Vanessa Richardson.

Hi, listeners, it's Carter. Here's a quick reminder to check out the Solved Murder's Four Part Special Party Fowls. Every Wednesday in August, take a closer look at four celebrations that ended in horrific fashion. Follow the Spotify original from Parcast, Solved Murders. Listen free only on Spotify. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up, getting ready for bed,

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