The Yosemite Murders by Dennis McDougal

Author:Dennis McDougal [McDougal, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49353-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

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By Sunday, the FBI's conviction that the Armstrong murder and the Sund-Pelosso case were unrelated was rapidly crumbling. With Stayner's hideously unbelievable tale taking on more and more credibility by the hour, the TourNap task force's confidence in Rufus Dykes's various murder confessions did a fast fade. The investigators held on to a belief in the scientific evidence that had been gathered to prove that Carole, Juli, and Silvina had died at the hands of a crank gang, but Cary Stayner's knowledge of the most intimate inside details of their investigation, coupled with his increasingly brazen declaration that he and he alone committed all four murders, left their working theories about the crimes in total shambles.

Besides impounding Stayner's Scout for search and analysis, agents quickly sealed off Stayner's studio apartment above the Cedar Lodge restaurant so that when the inevitable press corps showed up in El Portal on Sunday morning, they were stopped at the dark green side door which bore a sign reading employees only.

Previously garrulous waitresses, desk clerks and other lodge employees were now mum. Only Yosemite Motels owner Gary Fischer or his official spokesman, Jerry Rankin, a former journalist who managed a motel in nearby Mariposa, were allowed to speak to the press, and they had little to say beyond “no comment” and how shocked they were by the news.

“He was well-groomed, well-mannered, and wellspoken, friendly without being effusive,” Rankin said, describing Cary Stayner. “You just don't expect this type of thing in a rural atmosphere. Essentially, this is an urban crime that happened in a rural area.”

A bartender at the lodge restaurant summed up the paranoia among the rest of the Cedar Lodge staff in two sentences: “I can't say anything. I'll get in trouble.”

On condition of anonymity, one hotel worker volunteered, “It's really amazing to me. Cary was really mellow and laid-back. I guess he didn't let anyone else into that other world.”

Just down Highway 140 at Indian Flat RV Park, where the Cedar Lodge gag order was not in effect, employee Bob Reed articulated the collective skepticism that had developed in El Portal toward the somber swagger and specious omniscience of James Maddock and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Lots of people here know [Cary],” said a tightlipped Reed. “I'm not going to believe it until it's proven. They have been wrong about people here before.”

Sixteen-year-old Aaron Ludwig, an El Portal native who knew and liked easygoing, dope-smoking Cary Stayner, was not shy about observing that Cary “was a cool guy.” Letty Barry, manager of the Yosemite Redbud Lodge, said Stayner frequently stopped in for a candy bar on his way to the Two-Five nude beach.

“Everyone knew his car,“said Barry.

Jake Youngdale, another local teen, remembered a summer social at El Portal's Carroll N. Clark Community Center during which he and others were discussing the meth gang from Modesto. Stayner happened by and interrupted with what, in retrospect, seemed an ominous statement:

“ ‘For all the FBI knows, it could have been two punk kids in El Portal who did it,’ ” Youngdale recalled Stayner telling him and his friends.

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