Girl who stayed at Cedar Lodge testifies in Yosemite murder case
Patty
By Michael Baker
The Fresno Bee
(Published Tuesday, July, 16, 2002, 1:50 PM)
SAN JOSE -- A 16-year-old girl today recalled her brush with confessed
triple-murderer Cary Stayner as she, her sister and two friends played
in a hot tub at a Mariposa County lodge more than three years ago.
"He had a hairy chest, so my friend, my sister and her friend joked
about it a little bit when we got back to the hotel room," said Aerin
Murphy, who was 12 when she encountered Stayner on Feb. 14, 1999.
The next night, Stayner would con his way inside the motel room of
tourists Carole Sund, her daughter Juli and their friend Silvina
Pelosso. Carole and Silvina were strangled inside the room; Stayner
sexually assaulted Juli in the room before taking her to a remote
foothill location and slashing her throat. Aerin's time on the stand
highlighted the first morning of testimony today in the trial of
Stayner in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Aerin said she and her friends did not fear Stayner during their
encounter.
Stayner would later confess to the FBI that he had initially planned
to assault Aerin, her sister and their friends, but was scared away
because they were traveling with a man. Aerin's father, Bill Murphy,
said in an interview after his daughter's testimony that he and
another man had been staying with the family at the Cedar Lodge motel
over the President's Day weekend, but both men had left the night of
Feb. 14 to return to Watsonville to work the next day.
Also testifying this morning was Carole Sund's husband, Jens Sund, who
talked about his wife and the two girls missing a rendezvous with him
at San Francisco International Airport on Feb. 16.
Although Stayner confessed to the killings after his arrest in July
1999, he has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity. If
the jury finds Stayner guilty of the triple murder and that he was
sane at the time of the slayings, jurors will then decide whether he
should be executed or given life in prison without parole.
The death-penalty trial was moved from Mariposa County to Santa Clara
County because of pretrial publicity.
The Sunds and Silvina were staying at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal,
where Stayner lived and sometimes worked as a handyman, when they
disappeared Feb. 15, 1999. Their bodies were discovered in March 1999
in two separate and remote locations.
Stayner, 40, was detained for questioning on July 24, 1999, by the FBI
in connection with the decapitation murder of Yosemite park naturalist
Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26. He also confessed to that murder. He avoided
the death penalty in that case by pleading guilty in federal court and
accepting a life-in-prison sentence.
Patty
PARK HANDYMAN ALLEGEDLY KILLED TRIO
By Daniel Vasquez
San Jose Mercury News
Aerin Murphy was 12 when she climbed into a hot tub at Cedar Lodge
motel with her sister and two girlfriends. The stranger already inside
the spa was Cary Stayner.
A day later, the Yosemite handyman allegedly killed a woman and two
teenage girls from the same motel. But at first, Murphy and her group
were his intended prey, Stayner later confessed.
The 16-year-old Watsonville girl testified Tuesday for prosecutors in
the second day of Stayner's capital murder trial. Her family says
she's alive because Stayner was scared off when he saw her father and
a male friend with the girls.
``It's like a car going across the center lane and taking out the car
next to you,'' Bill Murphy, Aerin's father, said after his daughter
and wife, Tracy, took the stand in a San Jose courtroom.
Stayner is accused of abducting and killing Carole Sund, 42, her
daughter Juli, 15, both from Eureka, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, a close
friend visiting from Argentina. The three tourists vanished after
checking into Cedar Lodge, a motel near Yosemite that Stayner had
worked at before being laid off.
``He had a very hairy chest,'' Aerin told the jury about Stayner,
adding that nothing else about him stood out at the time.
She had no idea that the sight of her group clad in swimsuits sent
Stayner to his room, where he kept the murder kit -- which contained a
gun, knife, duct tape and rope -- that he eventually used with the
Sunds and Silvina Pelosso, prosecutors said.
``It's definitely freakish,'' Aerin said outside the courtroom about
her brush with a killer. ``But knowing he's behind bars is keeping me
comforted.''
Stayner confessed to the killings in July 1999, the same month he
beheaded 26-year-old Joie Armstrong, a Yosemite nature guide. He is
serving life in a federal prison after pleading guilty to that murder.
Now state prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The trial was
moved to Santa Clara County after a judge determined there was too
much pretrial publicity for a fair trial in Mariposa County, where the
killings occurred.
Tuesday's testimony brought out the tale of two families who crossed
paths with Stayner that week of Valentine's Day 1999: The Murphys, who
survived the experience, and the family of Jens Sund. He lost his
wife, Carole, and daughter, Juli.
Sund was the prosecution's first witness on Tuesday. He has avoided
pretrial hearings in the past, sending one of his siblings because he
could not stand to hear the details of what happened to his wife and
daughter.
``We wanted to show Silvina as much of California as possible,'' Jens
Sund told the jury about his family's invitation to show Silvina
around on her first visit to the states.
His face reddened and his voice strained as a prosecutor showed him a
group of eight photographs depicting the adventures the trio had in
the hours before their deaths.
Other relatives wept quietly as he pointed out the faces of his lost
loved ones. In some of the photos, Silvina pretends to hold a mixed
drink while posing with a huge smile next to a juke box at the Cedar
Lodge.
The last snapshot shows Juli doing a handstand in blue and white
pajamas. A time-stamp indicates that photo was taken shortly before
Stayner knocked on the motel room door, pretending to be a repairman
responding to a leak.
Prosecutors say they have remnants of Juli's pajamas as evidence,
gathered from pieces left behind after Stayner cut off her clothes.
Investigators recovered the snapshots from one of the victim's
cameras, which were found near Carole Sund's rental car. Stayner had
allegedly abandoned and burned the car with Carole Sund's and
Silvina's bodies in the trunk.
For Carole Sund's father, Francis Carrington, those photos would've
become fodder for a vacation photo album. Instead, they have become
evidence of his daughter's and granddaughters' final moments alive.
``We have those photographs,'' he said Tuesday outside the courtroom.
``And we treasure them.''
JC
"Patty" <eartha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f0e77308.02071...@posting.google.com...
They have the remnants of Juli's cut up pyjamas - wonder if they were found
with her body. I don't remember ever reading that before. And the photo of
her in them, date stamped the same fateful night. That would have been
helpful to investigators early on. The photos must have been when the burned
out car was found with the camera and stuff scattered around it.
I'm glad he didn't plead guilty because I'm looking forward to the info
that's going to come out about him, his childhood, and his brain scans. I'm
particularly interested in his childhood. I think there's going to be heaps
of stuff to come out. It's gonna be way interesting in terms of nature v.
nurture.
JC
Patty
Excerpt from Associated Press article by Brian Melley:
A teen-age girl who gawked at Stayner in a hot tub at Cedar Lodge the
night before he said he killed three tourists testified that he didn't
do anything to cause alarm.
"I had no concerns," Aerin Murphy testified in Santa Clara Superior
Court on the first day of testimony in Stayner's triple-murder trial.
Later, after hearing of the killings, Aerin's family learned something
even more chilling: Stayner had intended to prey on them.
It has been hard for the Murphys to cope with the fact that they were
spared from the horrors at the rustic motel where Stayner said he
chose three victims after Valentine's Day weekend 1999.
"It's like a car going across the center lane and taking out the car
in front of you," said Bill Murphy, Aerin's father. "It's so freakish
the way it happened, and we were just so lucky."
Tracy Murphy, Aerin's mother, is haunted by the slayings of Carole and
Julie Sund and Silvina. She has seen a therapist and now is extra
cautious when staying at hotels.
"My heart goes out to their family," Tracy Murphy said outside court.
"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it."
Stayner confessed to investigators that he initially focused on
Murphy's daughters, but he said he hesitated carrying out a plan to
kill them because he had seen a man with them. His lawyers contend
that he should be acquitted on grounds of insanity.
Bill Murphy was with his wife and daughters over the weekend, but he
left early to return home to Watsonville.
Aerin and Tracy Murphy were among witnesses who helped prosecutors
establish the events leading up the disappearance of Silvina and the
Sunds during their visit to Yosemite National Park.
On the last night they were seen alive, Julie and Silvina were in the
Cedar Lodge restaurant, hamming it up for photos at the bar and juke
box.
"They were having a great time," said Aerin, who is now 16.
Prosecutor George Williamson showed photos taken during the Sunds'
trip, and witnesses identified the girls and the mother in different
snapshots.
One photo projected on a screen for jurors to see showed Carole Sund
sitting on a rumpled bed at Cedar Lodge with Silvina seated beside
her.
Jens Sund, Carole's husband and Julie's father, took a long look at
the picture and said it was his wife of 21 years and Silvina, a friend
from Argentina.
Guests and workers at Cedar Lodge were asked to identify Stayner, and
they all pointed to him seated by his lawyers.
Patty
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/3609718p-4635781c.html
Teen recalls close brush with Stayner, death
Killer said in a taped confession that the witness and four others
would have died.
By Michael Baker
The Fresno Bee
(Published Wednesday, July, 17, 2002, 10:20 AM)
SAN JOSE -- Aerin Murphy had no idea how close she sat to horrific
death.
All she remembers about sharing a hot tub with her sister and two
friends Feb. 14, 1999, is that the man who sat next to them -- later
identified as serial killer Cary Stayner -- had a hairy chest.
"My friend, my sister and her friend joked about it a little bit when
we got back to the hotel room," Aerin, now 16, testified Tuesday at
the death-penalty trial of Stayner.
The girls were much younger then -- Aerin and friend Brianne McElhiney
were 12; and Andrea Murphy and friend Amy Roth were 15.
"They came back to the room, and they were giggling and talking and I
went to the other room," said Aerin's mother, Tracy Murphy.
The girls were simply being girls, unaware of the deadly danger they
narrowly escaped because Stayner, handyman at the Cedar Lodge hotel,
had misread the situation.
"I was in the pool, and there was four or five girls that were in
there, all very young," Stayner told the FBI in a taped confession
given after he was arrested and which will be played to the jury.
"They were parked down in the certain building. I think they were in
Room 177, but there was a man that was with them. Otherwise, they
would have been my victims."
Stayner didn't know Aerin and Andrea's father, Bill Murphy, had
returned to Watsonville and the girls were staying with their mother
so they could ski at Yosemite the next day.
Instead of assaulting the girls, Stayner's attention was drawn across
the parking lot to Room 509, where he would con his way inside the
motel room of tourists Carole Sund, her daughter, Juli, and their
friend, Silvina Pelosso.
Carole, 42, and Silvina, 16, were strangled inside the room; Stayner
sexually assaulted 15-year-old Juli in the room before taking her to a
remote foothill location and slashing her throat.
"It's like a car going across a center lane and taking out the car
next to you," Bill Murphy said of his family's close encounter with
tragedy. "It's just so freakish the way it happened, and we're just so
lucky."
Tracy Murphy spent time in therapy trying to recover from her brush
with death.
"I couldn't sleep," she said Tuesday. "I don't think a day passes I
don't think about that. My heart goes out to his victims."
Aerin's testimony highlighted the first day of witnesses in Stayner's
trial in Santa Clara County Superior Court and earned the gratitude of
the victims' families.
"It could have been her," said Carole Carrington, the mother of Carole
and grandmother of Juli. "It touched me so much when the girl
testified as to how close she was to being killed. She's turned into a
beautiful young girl."
Aerin's testimony also was intended to emphasize a point about
Stayner, 40, that prosecutor George Williamson had hammered at Monday
during his opening statement: "He's not a normal guy. He's a predator.
... He goes on the hunt."
Williamson whisked through 11 witnesses, including Aerin and Tracy
Murphy, on the second day of Stayner's trial.
First was Carole Sund's husband, Jens Sund, who testified about his
wife and the two girls planning their trip while he would stay at home
with the couple's other children and then fly to Phoenix to visit his
sister.
He told how the three Yosemite sightseers missed a rendezvous with him
Feb. 16 at San Francisco International Airport.
He said he was concerned at first, but figured that, because his
flight to the airport had been late, his wife and the girls had
continued to their next destination.
By the next day, Jens Sund began to worry when the three missed
another rendezvous with a friend. He called authorities to report them
missing and their rental car stolen.
Other witnesses, including an Avis Rental Car agent and several Cedar
Lodge employees, described how Carole and Juli Sund and Silvina, an
Argentine exchange student, made their way from home in Eureka and
arrived at the Mariposa County motel about 30 miles from the entrance
of Yosemite National Park.
Two Mariposa County sheriff's deputies described the state of the
tourists' hotel room after they had disappeared. Items were missing,
including a pillowcase and a sheet, Deputy Thomas Halencak said.
Other things didn't belong, such as small pieces of fabric, Halencak
said. Prosecutors contend the fabric was left from when Stayner cut
off Juli's pajamas before sexually molesting her.
Cross-examination of the witnesses by Stayner's attorneys was sparse,
likely because his lead counsel, Marcia Morrissey, has admitted her
client killed the three but argued he was insane at the time.
Prosecutors today plan to call witnesses to testify about finding the
sightseers' torched rental car with Carole's and Silvina's bodies in
the trunk, discovering Juli's body and studying a letter Stayner wrote
to the FBI.
Stayner confessed to killing the sightseers and Yosemite park
naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, after his arrest in July 1999.
He escaped the death penalty in Armstrong's murder after he pleaded
guilty in federal court and received a life prison sentence.
He has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to killing
the Sunds and Pelosso.
If the jury finds Stayner guilty of the triple murder and that he was
sane at the time of the slayings, jurors then will decide whether he
Agnes Heep
>Stayner confessed to investigators that he initially focused on
>Murphy's daughters, but he said he hesitated carrying out a plan to
>kill them because he had seen a man with them. His lawyers contend
>that he should be acquitted on grounds of insanity.
>
That doesn't sound like insanity to me. It sounds pretty calculating,
I think.