Descending to the rocky riverbank, one of the rangers, accompanied by a Mariposa County detective, came upon a handsome, solidly built man smoking a joint and sunbathing in the nude. In June the chief of the FBI's Sacramento office, James M. Maddock, confidently announced that we have all of the main players in jail, but we are in no rush to charge them.. Details appear to match the death in Summit Meadow, and they find evidence Lucas described. Cary Stayner later admitted that hed told the women there was a leak to gain access to their room, then strangled Carole and Silvina, put their bodies in the trunk of their car, and forced Juli to ride with him for hours as he searched for a place to dump the corpses. TV crews and reporters swarmed over the Yosemite region and descended on the Modesto Holiday Inn, where the families of the missing tourists maintained a vigil. Gorgeous photos show Yosemite right before valley flood closure But from February to July 1999, this national park was anything but peaceful. Homicides in the 54 national parks are rare; indeed, 64.5 million visitors thronged the parks in 1998, and remarkably, there were no murders. In 2019, his backpack was discovered between Aspen Valley and Smith Peak. Yosemite murders Sund pontiac burnt out Discovery of the bodies in the Stanislaus Forest and Lake Pedro The Sund family's worst fears were confirmed when a hiker wandered onto the site of a burned-out red 1999 Pontiac, hidden off Highway 108, in the Stanislaus Forest region on March 18. Police questioned Stayner at the time, but he was clean-cut and had no real criminal history, so they didnt believe he had anything to do with it. Authorities found tire tracks from his truck as well as a red mechanics hat that belonged to him. For five months, it now appeared, the killer had been living under the noses of investigatorsfixing leaks and handing out bed linens at the Cedar Lodge until the urge to murder had struck again. Cold Cases - Investigative Services (U.S. National Park Service) Episode 2: A Suspect (October 24, 2022) - "Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas tells Don and Kim he strangled a female hitchhiker in Yosemite. We have an 11-44, he said, using the police code for a dead body. He gave them his testimony, confessing to killing a young woman in the national park by strangulation. He blames his own brother for becoming a serial killer. Due to a court ruling on capital punishment, there have been no executions in the state of California since 2006. In fact, Yosemite is ranked as the third most dangerous national park in the United States, behind only Yellowstone and Glacier. In a setting of beauty and grandeur, a twisted soul was on the loose, a murderer who revived gnawing fears that our national parks are no longer safe. The Yosemite Murders - CBS News Armstrong made it 150 yards before he caught her. He absolutely knew that it existed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. But shortly after that encounter, FBI investigators compared tire tracks at the crime scene with photographs of Stayner's treadsand got a perfect match.