Graphic photo said to show Stayner tried to hide Juli's body
Patty
Graphic photo said to show Stayner tried to hide body
By Daniel Vasquez
San Jose Mercury News
Prosecutors began zeroing in on physical evidence they say shows Cary
Stayner was a sane sadistic killer, showing jurors Wednesday the first
graphic photo of the body of 15-year-old Juli Sund, one of three
Yosemite tourists killed by Stayner.
Juli's father, Jens Sund, quietly left the courtroom moments before
the image of a nude, badly decomposed body flashed on an overhead
projector. Prosecutors had warned him about the content.
The photo shown Wednesday revealed a gaping, six-inch neck wound that
left Juli Sund almost beheaded.
Her body appeared to be partially covered by brush in the photo, a
detail that prosecutors may use to show Stayner was thinking clearly
enough to avoid being caught.
Stayner has confessed to killing a Eureka woman, Carole Sund, 42, her
daughter, Juli, and family guest Silvina Pelosso, 16, of Argentina. He
has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Authorities say Stayner also burned the rental car belonging to Carole
Sund after he stuffed her body and Silvina's body in the trunk.
When the photo was shown, Stayner bowed his head, covered his eyes
with both hands and never looked up.
``He can do whatever he wants in court,'' Francis Carrington, a
relative of two of Stayner's victims said outside court. ``But he
can't bring back Juli, Carole or Silvina. He can't bring back those
beautiful people.''
Other relatives of the victims sat still in the first row of the court
gallery and wept while the grisly photo was displayed.
Challenge failed
Initially, defense attorneys attempted to have the color image thrown
out.
``The photo will be extremely prejudicial,'' Michael Burt, one of
Stayner's attorneys, argued in court. ``We are stipulating Mr. Stayner
killed three victims, the only issue is his mental state.''
Prosecutors want the death penalty for Stayner, who committed the
killings in February 1999.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas C. Hastings denied the
defense request to keep the photo from jurors, saying prosecutors had
the right to present crime scene evidence, particularly when it can
add information about how a victim died.
In his confession to FBI agents shortly after he was caught in July
1999, Stayner said he strangled Carole Sund and Pelosso almost
immediately after abducting the trio from a motel near Yosemite.
Assaulted
He sexually assaulted Juli Sund in the motel room, he said, then took
her to a remote area near Don Pedro Reservoir to assault her again
before cutting her throat.
Stayner said he heard Juli Sund dying when he left her.
``Gurgling would be expected to be heard,'' said Sally Aiken, a
pathologist from Spokane, Wash., who analyzed evidence for the FBI on
the Stayner case. She said Juli Sund bled to death.
The man who found the car in the Long Barn area, east of Sonora, took
the witness stand Tuesday.
James Powers said he found the burned car on a ``plinking'' trip,
target practice with a rifle. He knew police were looking for a red
car, and after investigating a bit, he realized the car he found
matched.
But then he went on shooting his rifle a few times before calling the
FBI.
``I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer,'' Powers said in court.
Patty
Photo of Juli Sund's abused body is shown, and Stayner trial
pathologists describe three deaths.
By Michael Baker
The Fresno Bee
(Published Thursday, July, 18, 2002, 11:04 AM)
SAN JOSE -- Francis and Carole Carrington forced back tears as the
courtroom projector flashed a picture of their dead granddaughter
lying abused on a deserted hillside.
Backs straight, lips drawn tight and chins slightly raised, the couple
strained against emotion and searched for dignity Wednesday as they
sat in Cary Stayner's death-penalty trial.
"I was surprised. I didn't know how I was going to take it," Francis
Carrington said.
Two or three times, Carrington reached slowly to his cheek to wipe
below his eyes. But his chin never dropped as two forensic
pathologists described the gruesome deaths experienced by his
daughter, Carole Sund, Argentine exchange student Silvina Pelosso and
his granddaughter, Juli Sund.
"I think you have to look at it in a relative way," Carole Carrington
said. "He can't hurt the girls anymore.
After the graphic death descriptions, Carole Carrington rose from her
seat and placed an arm around the shoulder of Silvina's mother, Raquel
Pelosso, who returned the gesture.
They then walked shoulder to shoulder out of the courtroom.
"You never know when you're going to be enveloped in tears," Carole
Carrington said. "You just try to do it in private."
The autopsies of the three victims were the focus of the third day of
testimony in Stayner's trial for the murders of Carole Sund, 42; Juli,
15; and Silvina, 16. Stayner admitted his crimes to FBI agents in a
taped confession that could be played for the jury as early as today.
Stayner conned his way into the three's motel room Feb. 15, 1999, at
Cedar Lodge in the Mariposa County town of El Portal, where the mother
and her wards were staying while sightseeing at Yosemite National
Park.
He strangled Carole and Silvina, stuffed their bodies into the truck
of their rental car and then burned the red Pontiac Grand Prix with
the bodies in the trunk.
Stayner sexually assaulted Juli, took her to a remote hillside near
Tuolumne County's Lake Don Pedro and slashed her throat.
Long Barn resident James Powers testified that March 18, 1999, he
found the sightseers' torched car off a dirt road in the Stanislaus
National Forest near his hometown.
After Powers left the stand, forensic pathologist O.C. Smith of
Memphis, Tenn., described his examination of the burned remains of
Carole and Silvina.
"Both Ms. Pelosso and Mrs. Sund were dead before the fire," Smith
said, pointing to the absence of soot in Carole's lungs.
Smith said that while he didn't have sufficient remains to determine
the exact cause of death, he could not rule out strangulation.
Smith said it can take about four minutes for a person to die by that
means. In Stayner's confession, he said he wrapped a rope around the
necks of Carole and Silvina and pulled for about five minutes before
their bodies went limp.
After Smith testified, forensic pathologist Sally Aiken of Spokane,
Wash., took the stand to describe Juli's autopsy. Aiken said the girl
bled to death from a 61/2-inch slash wound to the front of her neck
that "passed below the left ear to below the right ear."
As prosecutor Michael Canzoneri placed the picture of Juli's body on
the projector and the gruesome image was displayed to the courtroom,
Aiken began describing how she was found nude March 25 and partially
decomposed, with arms across her chest and duct tape on her ankles.
The picture was displayed for less than a minute.
During the testimony, Stayner wiped his eyes with tissue and rocked
back and forth.
The admitted killer's emotions did not impress the Carringtons or Jose
or Raquel Pelosso.
"I think he can do anything he wants, but he can't bring back Juli,
Carole or Silvina," Francis Carrington said. "He can't bring back
those beautiful people."
After his arrest in July 1999, Stayner confessed to killing the
sightseers and Yosemite park naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26.
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 should be executed or given life in prison
without parole.
Agnes Heep
>``The photo will be extremely prejudicial,'' Michael Burt, one of
>Stayner's attorneys, argued in court. ``We are stipulating Mr. Stayner
>killed three victims, the only issue is his mental state.''
>
His "mental state" is no mystery at all. He got his rocks off by
raping and murdering his victims. And he hid the bodies so he could
hopefully get away with it and do it again--which he did.
Patty
Most Sund, Pelosso relatives stay in courtroom as lawyers show
gruesome pictures of victims
July 18, 2002
By LORI A. CARTER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT (Santa Rosa CA)
SAN JOSE -- As testimony continued Wednesday in the triple-murder
trial of Cary Stayner, Sund and Pelosso family members steeled
themselves to be assaulted once more with the nightmarish details of
their loved ones' slayings.
Carole and Francis Carrington, Carole Sund's parents and 15-year-old
Juli's grandparents, spoke quietly with family friends at the end of a
long, windowed courthouse hallway.
Jens Sund, Carole's husband and Juli's father, lost himself in a
glossy magazine.
Jose and Raquel Pelosso stepped outside for a smoke and a ray of
sunshine as they thought of their 16-year-old daughter, Silvina.
But back in courtroom 30 in the Santa Clara Hall of Justice, gruesome
details of the women's deaths in February 1999 were being displayed.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Juli Sund gestured
with a finger across her throat to illustrate the teen's fatal injury.
As Dr. Sally Aiken began describing her initial examination of Juli's
decomposed remains, a red-eyed Jens Sund could not bear to hear and
left the packed courtroom.
Despite Stayner's confession to the FBI and his attorney's admissions
that he killed the women, the prosecution is meticulously presenting
each bit of evidence -- however gruesome -- to prove its case to the
nine-man, three-woman jury.
Stayner, 40, has pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity.
Stayner's lawyer said his mind is "broken" and he suffers from a
variety of mental problems that overpowered his ability to reason.
If the jury finds Stayner guilty, the trial moves on to the sanity
phase. He could be sentenced to death or to a mental institution.
Stayner is already serving a federal life-without-parole sentence for
the murder of Yosemite nature guide Joie Armstrong, 26, five months
after the Sund-Pelosso slayings.
Wednesday, the third day of trial, began with a desk clerk who saw
Stayner at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal outside Yosemite on Feb. 17,
and a housekeeper who saw the Sund-Pelosso room the morning after the
trio disappeared but did not disturb it.
Photos of the room taken by detectives later showed the room in a
different state of cleanliness, which the prosecution is expected to
explain later with Stayner's confession.
Stayner, who lived at the lodge and sometimes worked as a handyman
there, told FBI agents that after he killed the women he returned to
the room to destroy any evidence he may have left behind -- a trick he
said he learned from watching the Discovery Channel.
Long Barn resident James Powers told the jury about the day he was out
target shooting and found the car Carole Sund had rented.
Stayner has said he had Sund and Pelosso's bodies in the trunk of the
car when he drove to the hilltop where he killed Juli. After leaving
Juli's naked, bloody body splayed on the ground with little more than
brush covering her, he said he drove the car to another remote
location and torched it with the other women's bodies in it.
Powers found the car on March 18, 1999. Juli's body was found only
after Stayner sent an anonymous letter to the FBI with directions of
where to find it.
The case had a powerful impact on the North Coast, where the Sund and
Carrington families have ties from Santa Rosa to Eureka. Carole
Carrington Sund met her future husband while they were students at
Montgomery High School. The Carringtons were successful developers in
Sonoma County before they moved to Eureka, where the Carrington Co.
now operates.
As testimony about the discovery of the bodies began Wednesday, Dr.
O.C. Smith of the University of Tennessee regional forensics center
recounted in graphic detail the body parts recovered from the trunk of
the burned-out rental car.
Stayner averted his eyes during the description, leaning on his elbows
with his face in his hands.
Sund and Pelosso family members struggled through Aiken's explanations
about what happened to Juli's remains as decomposition progressed, and
they weathered the overhead projector display showing a photo of her
body as it was discovered.
Carole Carrington said they try to detach themselves as much as
possible from the gruesome details.
"I want to make sure the jury sees it. I can take it," she said.
Autopsies of Carole Sund and Pelosso could not establish a cause of
death. However Stayner has said he strangled them in the hotel room.
Throughout the court hearings, Francis Carrington has tried not to
look at Stayner.
"But I did today," he said. "And I thought, 'How can he live with
himself?' You can't imagine how one person can do so much harm to
another."
Asked about Stayner's apparent emotional response to the evidence,
Carrington said: "He can do anything he wants, but he can't bring back
Carole and Juli and Silvina. He can't bring back those beautiful
people."
