THE STAYNER FAMILY TRAGEDIES

Article BY MARTIN SHELL - Art by Carina Hellman

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Prolific Russian writer Leo Tolstoy couldn’t have fathomed the black pit of despair that would curse the Stayner family of 1655 Bette Street in Merced, CA circa 1972. Woefulness, doom and gloom would stalk this unhappy family like an unwanted and persistent evil specter.

The familial pain started on December 4th, 1972 with the abduction of little 7-YO Steven Gregory Stayner by a cunning and self-possessed paedophile named Kenneth Eugene Parnell (DOB=9/26/1931—1/21/2008—Age 76). This perverted bag of crap was 41 and already proficient at procuring little boys to molest so he and his dim-witted “friend” Ervin Edward Murphy moved in on that cold and rainy December day and kidnapped Steven on his way home from school in Merced, CA. Both creeps worked at Yosemite Lodge. Their canny ruse was pretending they were two earnest holy-rollers looking for donations. Steven, being young and innocent reckoned his Mormon mum “Kay” would be happy to give to a religious cause. He had no idea that freak Parnell would just want to take and take from him only what satisfied the greedy pervo’s own disgusting needs. Steven’s innocence was soon enough decimated thanks to Paedo Parnell and the devil became fully invested in the Stayner family and Lucifer never stopped raining perpetual nightmares on that unfortunate family. The Devil always has henchman here on Earth glad to do his dirty work. Some more eager than others.

Innocent Steven was molested on the first night of his abduction by the oleaginous pederast. He had no idea that his grandfather lived within cooee distance from the shack Parnell had taken him to, which puts an exclamation point on the absolute bad luck that followed this family like a slimy snail trail. Steven was now named Dennis Parnell and he was to call the molesting monster who abducted him “Dad”. Parnell and “Dennis” now lived an itinerant lifestyle while the pederast had the young boy sex-slave he always dreamed of having and Steven was to grow up under the thumb of a perverted and selfish child-rapist not knowing the love of the family he was ripped away from. What chance did he ever really have once that transpired?

Before Steven’s untimely death on September 17th, 1989 at the age of 24 via motorbike it would be learned through a made-for-TV movie and subsequent book “I Know My First Name Is Steven” by author Mike Echols (more on him later…) just what Steven endured for those 7 dreadful years with his “Dad” Kenneth Parnell. Steven was one of the very few abducted children able to find their way back to their devastated families. Steven was re-united with the rest of the Stayners after March 1st, 1980 when he helped another young boy the Paedo Parnell kidnapped, escape from his nefarious clutches. On February 14th, 1980, ironically Valentine’s Day, Parnell had Steven’s teen pal Sean Poorman help him abduct 5-YO Timmy White from Ukiah, CA. Little Timmy White was saved from a childhood-ruining fate like Steven’s but would also later die tragically at the untimely age of 35. Timothy James White was a Los Angeles, CA Deputy Sherriff (and a married dad with two children) when he died way before his time on April 1st, 2010 of a blood clot (pulmonary embolism). It seems almost everyone involved in the Stayner tragedy had a gloomy end.

Mike Echols (whose birthday was also on April Fool’s Day (1944), the day Tim White died in 2010) also died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 58 on January 10th, 2003 while in jail. He was the author of the manuscript for the 1989 infamous TV movie about Steven’s hellish plight (“I Know My First Name Is Steven”) which was later published as a book in 1991. Echols was distrusted by some because he worked to expose paedos but many people believed he himself was a closet one. He infiltrated “NAMBLA” (North American Man-Boy Love Association) and started “Better A Millstone” an anti-paedophile organization. In researching the grievous fate of the Stayners, I noticed many people were critical of Mike Echols and the way he wrote his tome on Steven. Many complained that the passages on the abuse Steven faced were too graphic. Many accused the author of doing so as a way to delight in crypto child-porn. I disagreed at first because my take on it was he was trying to illustrate the repugnant abuse Steven endured. Now, I seriously question that because in the end Mike Echols seems to self-destruct in a way that seems almost too hard to believe in retrospect. He seemed to only fuel people’s accusations that he was indeed a closet paedo by the child porn he would expose and his trouble with Law Enforcement seemed to always involve indecent exposure, “mooning” and genital exposing episodes. Echols. His last name also reminded me of the ill-fated destiny of one of the “West Memphis Three” men who was wrongly imprisoned for the three heinous child murders in Arkansas on May 5th, 1993. Damien Echols (born Michael Wayne Hutchison on December 11th, 1974) escaped Arkansas Death Row by the skin of his teeth in 2011. Echols seems to be an unlucky last name in the annuls of True Crime.

Steven died tragically on September 17th, 1989 when his Kawasaki motorcycle collided (he wasn’t wearing a helmet as someone stole his in July or August of 1989) into a stalled vehicle driven by an illegal alien from Mexico, 28-YO migrant worker Antonio Loera. He left behind his wife Jody Edmondson whom he married in 1985 and their two little children 3-YO Ashley and 2-YO Steven Jr. Those who research the abduction of Steven Stayner will be thunderstruck by how little justice he received for his life (and family) being ruined by a wretched paedophile. Kenneth Parnell only served 5 of the paltry 8 years he was sentenced to for the abduction and seven-year molestation of Steven Stayner (his cohort in the illegal act, Ervin Murphy served only 2 years of a 5-year sentence) and Antonio Loera only served 90 days in jail with 1 year of probation (and a measly $100. fine) for killing Steven. Steven’s wife Jody hired famed San Francisco lawyer of ZODIAC Killer fame, Mr. Melvin Belli “The King of Torts”, to sue Merced County for $5 million dollars for the poor road conditions. Why was justice not served properly to Steven Stayner at any stage and was anyone ever outraged? I certainly was in researching his sad case. Why wasn’t the disgusting woman named Barbara Mathias ever brought in for crimes of child rape and aiding and abetting a filthy, paedo kidnapper? She lived with the freak Parnell and Steven Stayner for 18 months and had sex with Parnell and under-aged Steven while Parnell was raping Steven. Her own abused and neglected children were raped by Paedo Parnell. I know hardly anyone paid a steep price for killing the soul of the young Steven Stayner but this pervy and down-low pig of a chick got off scot-free. The Steven Stayner case is one of the most disgusting cases one will come across and the lack of justice and the velvet glove treatment given to his abusers will just make you want to projectile vomit. It’s a top to bottom disgrace!

Parnell, ever the recidivist, died on January 21st, 2008 while in a Vacaville Prison. He was an inmate because in November of 2002 he tried to “buy” a 4-YO boy in Berkeley, CA, thanks to scant justice for his evil and wicked deeds. With Steven Stayner dead and gone and justice never properly served to him for all he had lost, the next True Crime tragedy to happen to the Stayner family was to befall Steven Stayner’s Uncle Jerry, Jesse Jerrold Stayner (42) who was mysteriously killed in his own home on Brantley Street in Merced, CA on December 26th, 1990 with his own .22. His murder has never been solved. At the time Jerry lived with his nephew Cary Stayner (more on him later…), Steven’s older brother.

Vietnam Vet Jerry was a dispatcher at “Leavitts Trucking” and went home that day for lunch only to be ambushed and killed with his own gun. He was shot 3 times…once in the chest and twice in the head. Not only was his killer never found but there is much high-strangeness in this perplexing cold case. Jerry had the company dog “Digger” (a schnauzer) with him that day and “Digger” was found the next day in Jerry’s company truck behind “Beacon Gas Station” on Jean Street and Yosemite Way…the very same streets little Steven Stayner was abducted from 18 years prior on 12/4/1972. “Digger” was found alive and safe and the truck’s keys were in the ignition. The abandoned vehicle crime scene was so odd on its own it reminded me of another cold case that happened 10 years later in Asheville, NC where the still-to-this-day-missing Zebb Wayne Quinn’s (18) car was found two weeks after his equally bizarre January 2nd, 2000 vanishing. His abandoned car was found January 16th in the “Three Little Pigs” restaurant parking lot and near the Mission St. Joseph’s Hospital his mother, a nurse, worked at. Inside the planted vehicle was a 3-month old baby girl puppy (not his), a plastic hotel key, empty beverage bottles and a jacket also not Quinn’s. Orangey-pink lips and exclamation points were also drawn on the car’s rear window with lipstick! I had never heard of dogs being eerily placed and found alive in cars after a terrible crime had transpired until these two very creepy unsolved cases, but I digress.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why so many believe that Cary Stayner, now a convicted Serial Killer (of 4 women) residing on Death Row in San Quentin Prison in CA was perhaps his Uncle Jerry’s killer on the day after Christmas 1990. Cary was arrested on July 24th, 1999 at the Laguna Del Sol Nudist Camp for the July 21st, 1999 murder of 26-YO German-born, “Yosemite Institute” naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong who lived with two roommates on Foresta Road in Yosemite National Park. Joie was alone that Wednesday as her boyfriend and her other roommate were out of town. She was packing up to head to Sausalito and Santa Rosa to visit friends and eventually her grandmother the day she was slaughtered and decapitated. If one has read David Paulides’ creepy “Missing 411” tomes about the mysterious vanishings and deaths that happen in National Parks and Forests and is privy to what a secretive killing floor Yosemite National Park is especially, it’s understandable why Joie didn’t want to be alone in that cabin home that summer. Still, it didn’t save her and she was brutally attacked and killed before she had a chance to begin her cheery sojourn towards northern California.

Joie was found on July 22nd, 1999, decapitated and half of what remained of her ravaged body was submerged in a creek’s drainage ditch. Her hands and mouth had been bound by duct tape. Her head was found less than 50 feet from her body. It was a ghastly end for such a peaceful and loving woman who never harmed anybody. But this was his fourth kill as a Serial Killer. On President’s Day February 15th, 1999 Cary Stayner, a maintenance employee at the Cedar Lodge Motel in Yosemite Valley killed all 3 female occupants in Room #509. Carole Sund (42) had come to El Portal, CA for a mini-vacation with her 15-YO daughter Juli Sund and their family friend from Argentina 16-YO Silvina Pelosso. The Sunds were from Eureka, CA and planned to kick around Yosemite, where Carole honeymooned with her Danish husband Jens in 1978, until February 16th. All three were slaughtered the day before they were to leave to meet up with the rest of the Sund family. The successful triple murder, the first for the Serial Killer, was probably aided by the fact that occupancy of the motel was down that winter and there were no other guests in their building. Cary knocked on the door claiming a multi-room plumbing issue was at hand and brandished a .22 caliber gun and bound and gagged the three frightened females with duct tape. He then forced the two young girls into the bathroom and then strangled Carole on the bed with the rope he brought along and shot her as well. He placed the dead body of Carole into the trunk of the red rental car the family picked up in Modesto, CA and then strangled the young Argentinian girl Silvina in the bathtub and shot her as he did Carole. He placed her dead body in the trunk with Carole’s cadaver. He didn’t kill 15-YO Juli right away and the story goes that he moved her to another room and tried to rape her and forced her to perform sexual acts (as Stayner was impotent and suffered from OCD which manifested itself in various forms such as trichotillomania and obsessive cleanliness) until he left the hotel with her around 4 AM, naked and ensconced in a blanket, still bound by duct tape. In the rental car he drove 90 miles with Juli Sund to Lake Don Pedro in Tuolumne County. There, he virtually decapitated her as he would completely do to Joie Armstrong 5 months later. He dumped her blanket wrapped body, with only the duct tape still on it under a poison oak bush and posed her arms in a pious position crossed neatly on her chest. He then abandoned the red rental vehicle on an old logging road on Highway 108 and torched it with Carole’s and Silvina’s moribund bodies in the trunk. With no way to get back to Cedar Lodge, Cary made his way to the Sierra Village Market and called a cab. I would call where he had the cab driver drop him off as very strange but the complete Stayner tragedies in totality are extremely strange…he requested to be driven to Yosemite Lodge where his younger brother Steven’s pervo kidnapper worked when he snatched Steven in 1972! From there he still had to find his way back to Cedar Lodge but before that, he made his way back to Tuolumne County and torched the red rental car entombing the dead bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso. He took Carole’s wallet and ponderously dumped it at an intersection in Modesto, CA at Tully & Briggsmore. The wallet was found on 2/19/1999 by a shady and crooked couple (Rachel Lou Campbell & Alexis Paiz) from the notoriously seedy and meth-riddled area aka “the airplane district” of Modesto, CA. They were well-known forgers so they stole Carole’s credit cards.

Two of the trio were not found until Jim Powers, a 40-YO carpenter came upon the torched rental car between tree stumps on March 18th, 1999 on an old, dirt logging road (Wheeler Road) along Highway 108 in Long Barn, CA (“Stanislaus National Forest”). A roll of undeveloped film was found nearby the grisly scene. This roll had photographs of the happy vacationing triad in their last carefree days on Earth before their holiday turned needlessly wicked and homicidal.

With the charred car being found the fate of the mysterious vanishings of the Sunds and Silvina Pelosso was solved but what monster committed the heinous triple homicide? On March 24th, 1999 the Modesto FBI received an anonymous and taunting letter with a map that explained where Juli Sund’s body could be found. They found Juli’s dead body on a remote and steep incline near a reservoir above Lake Don Pedro. Just as the map illustrated. On March 25th, 1999 Juli’s body was found with black duct tape around her ankles and her head almost extracted from her nude body. The menacing and taunting note exclaimed “we had fun with this one” but why the use of the royal “we”? In the end Cary Stayner confessed to all 4 murders but in digging deep in the case one will see that many, even to this day are left with reasonable doubt that he committed all 4 murders alone. His first entrance into his Serial Killing career produced an almost expert execution with 3 victims and the second expedition with one victim was exceedingly sloppy with trace evidence left all about and his own vehicle was seen in the area at the time of the Joie Armstrong murder.

Cary Anthony Stayner was arrested on July 24th, 1999 while at the Laguna Del Sol Nudist Camp. From the beginning he was very calm and cooperative when dealing with law enforcement and confessed to all the murders almost immediately. He was indicted on 8/5/1999 for Joie’s murder, pled NOT guilty the next day, plead guilty on 11/30/2002 and received LIFE in prison. On 5/22/2002 he plead not guilty by reason of insanity for the Sunds/Pelosso murders and gets sentenced to DEATH on 12/12/2002. He is on Death Row in San Quentin prison in CA with the infamous ex-Modesto, CA denizen Scott Lee Peterson. The Carrington’s (Carole Sund’s parents) had a foundation created in Carole’s name and strangely enough the Carole Sund Foundation aided in the ill-fated search for Laci & Conner Peterson when they went missing on Christmas Eve 2002 in Modesto, CA.

I want to end the re-telling of the Stayner Family tragedies by addressing a pesky issue that continued to pop up in my research. Regarding Cary Stayner’s short but blazing Serial Killer career many along the way have strong doubts he acted alone. Not just minor players but the FBI and family members on the victim’s side (Sund & Carrington) and the Stayner side. I’ll point to those who question it and some behaviour on the killer’s part that makes it seem more than plausible. In the end, the reader is to decide for themselves…

• Cary Stayner tells the FBI in vivid detail how he raped and denigrated victims Juli Sund & Silvina Pelosso. He denies such things during his candid interviews with KNTV’s Ted Rowlands. There were also major discrepancies in how he described the state of Juli’s discarded body and how it actually appeared when found.

• Referred to the killings using the pronoun “we”. Claimed to have learned many cover-up tricks and tactics from true crime TV.

• His DNA was NOT on the anonymous letter envelope sent to the Modesto FBI. Stayner claims he paid someone $5. to lick the envelope for him and the DNA came up of Hispanic origin.

• Tuolumne County Sheriff Dick Roger~“There was not one shred of evidence or link to him as a suspect in the Sund/Pelosso homicides until he became a suspect in the homicide of Joie Ruth Armstrong”.

• Law Enforcement authorities believed Cary Stayner killed Joie but not the Sunds & Silvina Pelosso.

• Everyone agreed that Cary Stayner was odd and a little weird, but hardly anybody said that he creeped them out or was overly weird. Strange, but in a very likable and friendly way. A little off, but not so much in the way one would avoid him or stay away from him. A bit weird but always friendly and helpful, too nice and quiet. How does someone like that become a homicidal maniac one half of a Californian year?

• When he was a teen and would hang out with his friends and shoot his BB gun he would not shoot animals. A sociopath or psychopath would never have an issue with that and most of them start by hurting and killing small animals.

• Sarah Cox, a friend of Cary Stayner who described him as kind, gentle and easy-going claimed in May of 1999 Cary Stayner bragged to her that “he was already famous but no one knew it yet”. She had no idea what he meant by that and after all was said and done she said she always liked him and when she had to believe all he confessed to she had trouble accepting it. She couldn’t believe the Cary she knew would be so heartless and brutal. She couldn’t bridge those two divergent personas. So many had a hard time believing he was capable of murder and believed all he admitted to just didn’t add up.

• Francis Carrington (father of victim Carole Sund)~“It’s almost like someone else was directing everything in February of 1999 and Stayner just did what he was told”. Cary Stayner’s mother “Kay” Stayner thought this as well.

• Delbert Stayner (Cary Stayner’s father)~“I just hope and pray all the time that he didn’t actually do it and that he is hiding something (taking the fall) for somebody else.” His long suffering family never believed he was capable of bloody murder.

• Jens Sund (husband to Carole Sund and father of Juli Sund) and his lawyer Zachary Zwerdling believed Stayner was not the lone killer. Cary’s sister Jody Stayner also believes a cult was involved with the 4 killings.

• Cary Stayner~“I didn’t feel good about it. I say it’s like matter-of-factly I was doing this, you know. It’s like I’m a split personality.” But Cary Stayner, riddled with affective disorders pertaining to anxiety did NOT suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder. He had deep psychological issues but they seemed mostly rooted in high-anxiety and low self-esteem. Psychopaths think they are the bee’s knees, Cary Stayner never had that kind of chutzpah.

• During the second trial, Cary Stayner was emotional and broke down and blocked his eyes and ears when he had to look at the grisly crime scene photos of Juli Sund. When his FBI confession was played back in court, he blocked his ears. If he readily confessed, and was an abject psychopath, why would he even flinch at either scenario played back to him? He would either revel in it or not care a lick. That’s how sociopaths roll. Instead he rocked back and forth with high anxiety. He was always averting his eyes and cradling his face in his hands.

• US Senator from Iowa Charles Grassley was very vocal at the time with how bumbling he thought the FBI was and initially did not believe Stayner was the killer.

The final oddity that is loosely connected to the Stayner Family Tragedies is the allusion to Steven Stayner’s personal hell in a possible micro-pattern in the infamous but never completely understood “Smiley Face Killings” RE: a 2002 cluster that consisted of drowned and/or missing college-aged men in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I am fluently familiar with this oddity because I have always been interested in the “Smiley Face Killer” theory and spent many years studying and documenting the cases that may have been included in the controversial phenomenon. I wondered how people couldn’t bring themselves to care about the high percentile of college-aged males who went missing or ended up dead in a body of water after a night of drinking at bars or dorms. It was happening in specific and concentrated areas and I just wasn’t buying what law enforcement was selling (“Don’t worry, nothing to see here…just another unfortunate ‘death by misadventure’, nothing to worry about, folks…”) so I decided to really care and look into what others easily dismissed. The obvious pattern of crimes committed was elementary to even a layman “armchair detective”. No one had a conclusive explanation so that is probably what mired these tragic deaths into an area of debunked urban legends. It’s not true and someday the dead and Detectives Gannon and Duarte will be vindicated.

One private detective whose site is long defunct found a series of micro-patterns in the proximity of the hot-bed area of the “Smiley Face Killer” cases. He claimed to have found a series of deaths that spelled out a name. The name spelled was NEMEC and that word was used because the child actor who played Steven Stayner in the TV Movie “I Know My First Name Is Steven” was Corin Nemec. The name “NEMEC” spells out the towns in Wisconsin and Minnesota where the inebriated college men vanished from or ended up dead in a body of water. It always struck me as very weird and a bit absurd because I could never figure out who would remember Corin Nemec except another child who was perhaps a fan at the time the tv movie was making headlines and why would someone orchestrate killings to spell out his last name? It is indeed a strange tie to the already strange and tragic tale of the Family Stayner. Here is what the acronym “NEMEC” stood for RE: the 2002 “SFK” crimes…

New London, MN-8/1/2002—Daniel Lee Newville (18)

Eau Claire, WI-9/29/2002—Craig Burrows (23)

Minneapolis, MN-10/31/2002—Christopher Jenkins (21)

Eau Claire, WI-11/6/2002—Michael Noll (22)

Collegeville, MN-11/9/2002—Joshua Cheney Guimond (21) NEVER FOUND!

Cary Stayner was actively on trial at the time of these 5 vanishings in MN and WI. All ended up dead in a lake except the still missing Joshua Guimond.

I had mentioned famed San Francisco lawyer Melvin Mouron Belli earlier as being hired by Steven Stayner’s widowed wife to sue Merced, CA after his death in 1989. ZODIAC taunted Belli and wrote letters to him during his active killing season in CA in 1968 and 1969. This same detective who found the “SFK” micro-patterns also found a ZODIAC link (My own find of the common word “Tuolumne” will be familiar to ZODIAC enthusiasts who know ZODIAC made a pay-phone call at the cross of Spring Road & Tuolumne Street in Vallejo, CA on the 4th of July in 1969 after he murdered 22-YO Darlene Ferrin. Tuolumne County was where Cary Stayner dumped the bodies in the Sund/Pelosso murders).

In 2001, University of MN student Ken Christiansen (19) died after drinking with his college buddies in Duluth, MN on April 13th, 2001 which happened to be a “Friday The 13th” as well as “Good Friday”. His last name has “Christian” in it and near where his body was found in Chester Creek three days later, there was graffiti of a blue cross that read “Jesus Saves” and next to it was a smiley face, hence the moniker “The Smiley Face Killer”. Other graffiti in the area that ties this “SFK” clue to ZODIAC, at least in a loose way is also the placement of a Gary Snyder poem under the Chester Creek Bridge about the death of young, white males that was originally published in August of 1969 in San Francisco, CA where the area was deeply concerned with both Vietnam and The ZODIAC Killer at the time. A line in the poem states “The Christian has long been dead”. Ken Christiansen? I’m not sure but when I was deeply researching “SFK” I knew next to nothing about ZODIAC and now I am pretty fluent with the case so it makes me wonder if that detective who had that fascinating website on “The Smiley Face Killer” and discovered all the micro patterns knew far more than he ever let on. The micro-patterns were so extraordinarily clever and canny I had always wondered if the detective was hella smart or if HE was “The Smiley Face Killer”. In 2012 I went back to dig into my own “SFK” research and using his acronym model I tried to find hidden clues and micro-patterns but none were found and instead of spelling out certain words it was just an amalgamation of alphabet soup. Sometime after 2012 the website ceased to exist but I never forgot the clues it purported. I had always wanted to contact him and ask him questions on the “SFK” micro-patterns and victims but something held me back and since I had wondered if he was the actual killer, because those clues were far too pat and perfect to be believed, I am glad I never did.