WEDNESDAY. AUGUST 28, 2002
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A
Convict could face death row
The Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A former hotel handyman was convicted Monday of the 1999 slayings of three Yosemite park tourists in a crime that shattered the serene image of one of America's most treasured places.
Cary Stayner, 41, was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and a charge of kidnapping. He could face the death penalty because the jury found the crimes were committed during other felonies, including burglary and attempted rape.
Defense lawyers conceded that Stayner killed Carole Sund, 42, her daughter, Juli, 15, of Eureka and Silvina Pelosso, 16, of Argentina, but they said he was insane and asked jurors to convict him of second-degree murder
— a verdict that would have spared him the death penalty.
The three women had been staying at the rustic motel where Stayner worked as a handyman outside Yosemite National Park.
Their slayings in February 1999 went unsolved for nearly six months until Stayyner struck again, snatching Yosemite nature guide Joie Armstrong and beheading her near her cabin in the park. He's serving life in prison without chance of parole after pleading guilty in federal court to first-degree murder in Armstrong's death.
"It's a vindication of our feeling that this definitely is a death penalty case and that it was a horrendous crime," said Carole Carrington, the mother of Carole Sund.
Stayner's lawyers plan to present an insanity defense to try and spare his life. Jurors have already heard extensive testimony from experts that Stayner was impaired by a medial of mental illness symptoms and a deformed brain.
At this stage in the trial, that evidence was used by the defense to show he didn't kill intentionally.
In the sanity phase, the defense will build on that foundation to try to prove that Stayner didn't know he was killing or didn't know it was wrong. If that strategy fails, a third phase of the trial will be held to determine if he should be sent to death row.
Stayner told FBI interrogators that he had fantasized for months about sexually assaulting young girls and then killing them.
On the night of Feb. 15, 1999, he said he saw "easy prey" through the open blinds of Room 509 at Cedar Lodge.
He went to the room where he lived at the lodge and grabbed his killing "kit" that included duct tape, rope, a knife and a gun. He used a ruse to get in the room, pretending to check for a leak.
Stayner strangled Carole Sund while the girls were bound and gagged in the bathroom. He dumped her body in their rental car trunk. He also strangled Pelosso, then put her body in the car trunk.
Early the next morning, Stayer drove Juli to a reservoir in the Sierra foothills, sexually assaulted her, then slashed her throat. He covered her naked body with brush on a hillside and left.
Stayner ditched the rental car off a rural highway and took a $125 cab ride back to Yosemite. He told investigators that he wasn't upset about what he had done, he was only concerned about getting to work in time.
He later returned to the car and torched it.
Scores of law enforcement officers unsuccessfully scoured the region looking for clues to where they vanished, but there was barely a sign of the three for more than a month until the scorched car was found by a hunter.
The two bodies, burned beyond recognition, were found in the trunk. A week later, investigators found the decomposing body of Juli.
Missing girl's remains identified
Second body found behind rental home; man jailed for rape now primary suspect
The Associated Press
OREGON CITY, Ore. - A body found over the weekend in a barrel has been identified as one of two girls who vanished from their apartment complex last winter, police said Monday night.
Police Chief Gordon Huiras said the 12-year-old girl, Ashley Pond, had been identified through dental records.
Both bodies were found behind the rental home of a man who authorities say is a suspect in the girls' disappearance.
Her remains had been found Sunday, one day after authorities discovered the body of 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis in a shed.
The suspect, Ward Weaver,
had been jailed since Aug. 15 on
an unrelated rape charge, and hasn't been charged in the girls' deaths. However, chief deputy district attorney Greg Horner said Monday that he would present the case to a grand jury.
Weaver's attorney, Tim Lyons, said "We are going to await the return of the indictment and see what the charges are and proceed from there."
The girls disappeared last winter, prompting a nationwide search that ended over the weekend just a few hundred yards from the apartment complex where they had lived.
FBI investigators returned to Weaver's property Monday with high-tech equipment, a backhoe, shovels and pickaxes to search for any evidence that might be hidden in the earth.
FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said investigators didn't believe there were any more bodies on the property, but said they "want to clear the property to make sure there's nothing else."
The girls' relatives said Monday they were frustrated and devastated that the bodies were found so close to the girls' apartment complex.
"Detectives and police stood out here all hours with posters and they were right here all along," said Terri Duffey, Miranda's aunt. "They came in and out of that driveway 100 times and they were right there, I mean right there and we couldn't do anything."
A security fence erected by police around the property has become a makeshift memorial — festooned with flowers, teddy bears, and notes in which people have expressed their grief.
"We are never going to forget what happened. This is going to hurt my daughter for the rest of her life," said Wes Duffey, Miranda's grandfather.
Weaver said weeks ago that he was a suspect in the FBI investigation, but denied any involvement. Weaver agreed to the search because he wanted to "bring closure to the families,"
mis attorney told The Oregonian.
Lwons did not elaborate.
weaver was charged earlier this month with raping his 19-year-old son's girlfriend. His distraught son, Francis Weaver, then told emergency dispatchers that his father had killed Ashley and Miranda.
"I'm very glad that Ward will never be able to hurt anyone ever again, nor destroy any more lives," Francis Weaver told KATU-TV in Portland late Sunday.
Last summer, Ashley had accused Weaver of molesting her, but he denied the allegations and was never charged. Family members and friends have said they had a close, and at times inappropriate, relationship.
Ashley's family last saw her on Jan. 9 eating breakfast with her younger sister before school. On March 8, Miranda disappeared from the same low-income apartment complex south of Portland.
Wildfires cause damage across U.S. as firefighters struggle to tame blazes
The Associated Press
FENTON LAKE STATE PARK, N.M. — A wildfire burned Monday across 2,200 acres of ponderosa pine and pinon forest in northern New Mexico, quickly devoured four summer homes and forced campers and homeowners to evacuate.
"It's traveling quite rapidly, spotting along the way," said Dolores Maese, a spokeswoman for the Santa Fe National Forest.
People evacuated from Seven Springs, which Maese called a community of "a few hundred homes," and an area called Thompson Ridge. Fire officials did not know how many people fled.
"Before I left,I could see right
down the canyon and the flames were leaping up the trees," said Doug Supritime, who has lived in Seven Springs for 10 years. "That's when I knew it was time to get out."
It was not immediately known what caused the fire in and near Fenton Lake State Park, about 50 miles north of Albuquerque.
Elsewhere, a helicopter that was fighting a wildfire in southwestern Colorado crashed Monday, injuring all four people on board.
The Bell 206 helicopter was making an initial attack on a wildfire about 15 miles west of
"Before I left, I could see right down the canyon and the flames were leaping up the trees. That's when I knew it was time to get out."
Doug Shuprine Seven Springs resident
Saguache when it went down, said Larry Helmerick, a fire information officer with the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center.
One person suffered severe head, back and neck injuries. The others suffered minor injuries, according to Mark Struble,
spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
Crews in southwest Oregon and northern California hoped to complete a nearly 300-mile containment line around a 50containment wouldn't be declared until later in the week, fire officials said.
No structures had been damaged by the fire, which started Saturday in the Shoshone National Forest. Authorities asked 30 to 40 residents of Red Canyon and the occupants of 15 summer cabins along Pass Creek to evacuate.
In central Wyoming, firefighters guarded ranch houses against a wildfire that had grown to 5,120 acres in two days.
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