True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology)

by Jack Rosewood

  Armstrong talked about swimming in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir – an azure blue body of water located on the Tuolumne River, cooled by the snowmelt from the surrounding Sierra Nevada mountain range - with Raffaeli, and her joy easily bubbled up through her words.

  “I want people to know how happy she was and how amazing she was,” said Fox. “She was so spirited, she was so magnetic and so fun. People have referred to her as a bright star, a bright spark in their lives.”

  “I love Michael with my soul and every last cell in my body,” she wrote. “I love the big meadow with all its daisies and incredible history.”

  And in an email to another friend, written just before she was killed, Armstrong said, “You should come see this place - I wonder if you ever will. I love my garden and living in Yosemite - one of the most beautiful places in the whole wide world.”

  Her father, Frank, had warned her to be careful after the Sund-Pelosso murders, but Armstrong told him not to worry, that the police had announced that the killers were safely ensconced behind bars.

  While her boyfriend was away on a three-day hiking trip and their other roommate was away on business, Armstrong had made plans to visit a friend in Sausalito, a city north of San Francisco. After a few days with them, she planned to visit her grandmother in San Jose.

  When she never showed, her friends reported her missing, and on July 22, officials were asked to do a welfare check on Joie Armstrong.

  Officers arrive at the scene

  When they arrived, park rangers found her truck packed and ready to go outside her home. Even more strange, they saw that her door was partially open, and they immediately realized something was wrong.

  One of the rangers went inside, and he could hear music playing in the background. The little hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, he called for backup, because he knew without seeing any outlying evidence that he had just stepped into a crime scene.

  Once backup arrived, they formed a search party and began combing the area.

  “Right from the beginning we have broken sunglasses on the porch, a tipped over watering can,” said Hopkins. “And in one of the bedrooms, the furniture is askew and the bed was a mess.”

  It was clear that there was no chance for the person who perpetrated the crime to come back and clean up.

  A gruesome discovery

  In fact, the crime scene was so sloppy at Joie Armstrong’s cabin – there were mismatched tire tracks as distinctive as a fingerprints, more than a few footprints, crushed branches mapping out a trail – that it didn’t take long for investigators to locate her body.

  Within a few hours, Yosemite’s medical director Dr. Desmond Kidd found Armstrong’s body, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. Her head, however, was gone.

  Nearly gagging, Kidd headed back to the ranger in charge of the search and said, “We have an 11-44 [police code for a dead body]. And she’s been decapitated.”

  For Armstrong’s family, however, nothing would bring back the nature-loving girl who had a solar-heated shower and carried buckets from the creek in which she died to water her garden.

  “Joie was phenomenal,” her mother, Leslie Armstrong, told the Sacramento Bee a week after her death. “She truly strived to be the best that she could be.”

  The vegetarian had recently climbed both Mount Shasta and part of Yosemite’s El Capitan, and had a habit of charming pretty much everyone she met with her warm smile and comfortable, approachable demeanor.

  Just before she moved from Orlando to her new job in Yosemite, a photographer, Cullen Newman, noticed Armstrong in a coffee shop and asked if she’s be interested in doing a photo shoot.

  It would be Newman’s photos that would give the world an intimate look at Armstrong after her death, and Newman’s memorial website that would give others a chance to remember the vibrant girl.

  A fight for her life

  Stayner had apparently gone to the Foresta area where Armstrong’s cabin was in hopes of again spotting Bigfoot.

  He is adamant about seeing one of the creatures near there, and when he saw Armstrong loading up her car and watering her garden before she left, he got of his vehicle - a baby blue 1979 International Scout featuring a different tire on each wheel - to talk to her.

  Stayner apparently attempted to put the wary young woman at ease by asking if she had ever seen Bigfoot in the area, adding that he had once spotted the creature in the fields just beyond her cabin.

  She denied having ever seen Bigfoot, but their talk gave Stayner a chance to determine if Armstrong was alone or if someone else was packing up with her to leave.

  When he was certain she was alone, he pulled a gun and ordered her inside the cabin, where he bound her hands and gagged her with duct tape. As with Carole Sund, he appeased Armstrong by telling her he only intended to rob her.

  In reality, however, he was planning “the most revolting thing I could possibly do.”

  And as twilight began settling over the national park, he ordered her back outside and forced her into the front passenger seat of his International Scout.

  His plans were to rape and murder his victim, and Armstrong likely knew that when she made her escape attempt, diving headfirst out the vehicle’s open window and running as fast as she could into the woods as soon as she regained her footing.

  Strong and determined

  When Armstrong met her killer, she had no intention of going quietly, and her struggle with Stayner – which continued after she made her mad dash through the woods she loved so much - ultimately led him to make serious mistakes that would ensure no other woman would die at his hands.

  Still, she was no match for the fit handyman, who threw his Scout into park, gave chase and tackled her, then dragged her further into the woods, where he drew out his knife and made his first slice across the pretty redhead’s throat.

  In his confession, he told authorities that Armstrong fought hard, and attempted to block the knife by pressing her chin to her chest.

  He was able to make a cut, however, and after doing so he dragged her a bit more, then placed his foot on her head and made another slice.

  “After the second cutting she was still struggling slightly, and I grabbed her leg and started dragging her, and just a few seconds later she went totally limp,” Stayner told authorities when he later confessed, his voice showing little emotion.

  He told them he attempted to cover his tracks but the trail of sticky, fresh blood was difficult to hide beneath the dirt and pine needles.

  Frustrated, he was about to leave when he turned back to the body, now resting at the edge of the creek where Armstrong collected water for her garden, and severed her head.

  He briefly considered keeping it at a trophy – much like the nipples collected by Wisconsin farmer Ed Gein or the collection of penises and hands jarred and saved by Jeffrey Dahmer – but instead tossed it into the creek.

  “So you felt pretty good that you were able to pull this off?” one of the interrogators asked.

  “I didn't feel good about it,” he said in response. “I say it’s like matter of factly I was doing this, you know. It’s like I’m a split personality.”

  Stayner went back to his Scout, intending to return to his Cedar Lodge home, but he didn’t get far. His vehicle broke down a few miles short of the lodge, so he caught a ride with a passing park ranger.

  The ranger later remembered his ride that evening, and recalled nothing unusual about the easygoing handyman.

  Inside, however, he should have been quaking in his boots.

  “It was a fight from start to finish,” said an investigator. “She tried to get away, and she almost did get away. And those several minutes of struggle left behind a lot of evidence. Her determined fight for life denied him the chance to cover up the crime scene, and it led to his capture and undoubtedly saved other lives.”

  A Valentine to an angel

  “I hate Valentine's Day,” wrote Eirik Ott to a website honoring the memory of Joi
e Armstrong. “And it’s not the candy hearts and Pepto-pink store displays and the manufactured sentiment, and it’s not the yearly reminder that I am once again single at this supposedly most romantic time of the year. No, I hate Valentine’s Day because it makes me think of Joie.

  “I went to college in Northern California,” he wrote. “Joie pulled coffee at the cafe where I organized a weekly poetry slam, so I would see her all the time. She spelled her name like the French word for joy... j-o-i-e... jwah... like joie de vivre, the joy of life, only she was just Joie.

  “She was a smile waiting to happen, a raised hand greeting me from across the room, a smattering of small talk while espresso wands frothed milk and warmed lattes. She was just ... the cute earthy crunchy girl behind the counter at my favorite cafe in my favorite college town during the best part of my whole young life. I walked into her coffeehouse on a particularly loathsome Valentine’s day with my shoulders hunched and my hands stuffed deep into my pockets and before I had a chance to order my usual — a large very hot no foam soy milk chai to-go — Joie had it halfway finished.

  “She handed it to me, I slipped a dollar bill into the kitty, and I turned to go, but she didn't let go of the chai. She kinda held it, and I looked up to find her eyebrows furrowed with concern. She said something about me looking sad, and I told her I had just broken up with my girlfriend, so this was going to be another Valentine's day alone, and she just smiled and laughed and said, ‘I’ll be your Valentine!’

  “It was such a sweet gesture. I hardly knew her, but every time I would see her walking the streets of Chico after that, I would call out: ‘Yo, what's up, Valentine?’ and she would smile and wave and shout it back to me. And then one day, she was gone.

  “Someone at the coffeehouse told me she had graduated and moved to Yosemite National Park to do some kind of nature girl stuff with the parks service, and that made perfect sense. I could totally see her leading a tour of kids through a stand of redwoods while pointing out wild miner’s lettuce and species of birds. I don't remember the second-to-the-last time I saw Joie’s face, but I will never forget the last.

  “I was strolling along a downtown Chico sidewalk weaving between college kids when I happened to glance at the newspaper dispenser in front of the greasy spoon diner, and I brick-walled it, man, I stopped dead in my tracks. It was July 23, 1999, and there on the front page of the local paper was a big snapshot of my Valentine Joie Armstrong, just a-smiling like she does. The headline shouted in bold letters that her body had been found in Yosemite National Park. She had been found partially submerged in a drainage ditch. She had been decapitated.

  “The FBI had been investigated the killing of three tourists in Yosemite the winter before, and now they suspected this latest death was committed by the same person. Two day later, they had their suspect, a motel handyman named Cary Stayner who readily confessed to all four murders. He said he had been obsessed with killing women since he was 7 years old. He said he would have killed more had he not been caught. And he got caught because of Joie.

  “She fought hard. She bit, she kicked, she scratched, she ran. When Stayner dragged her into his pickup and roared down a dirt road to take her to a more secluded location, Joie leapt from the passenger side window and tumbled to the forest floor. She fought him with everything she had, Stayner eventually ended her struggles, but not before her DNA was thick beneath each fingernail and scattered throughout the cab of his truck. It was this hard evidence that solidified the case against her killer and contributed to four counts of first degree murder. Cary Stayner is currently sitting in a cell on death row in San Quentin penitentiary. His lawyers have filed an appeal to his death sentence.

  Joie Armstrong was 26 years old, and I barely knew her. She would be 41 now, and I still think of her as my Valentine.”

  Others remember the joy of knowing Joie

  He was not alone in remembering Armstrong as an amazing, vibrant person.

  She had captured the hearts of everyone working at Yosemite because of the passion she brought to her role helping young people connect with nature.

  “She was one of the finest naturalists and science teachers I ever met,” said John Carlstroem, executive director of the Headlands Institute, Yosemite’s sister campus. “There are going to be a lot of sad kids when they find out she's gone.”

  Chapter 7: Closing in on Cary Stayner

  There were reports of a sighting of an 1979 International Scout spotted near Armstrong’s house the night she died, causing police issued an alert for the vehicle.

  On July 22, it was spotted by two rangers about 12 miles from the entrance to the park, sitting on the shoulder alongside California 140 above the Merced River.

  Along the river’s banks, rangers found Stayner, lounging naked in the sun smoking a joint.

  “He looked like he would live in work in a place such as El Portal,” said special agent Chris Hopkins of the FBI of the lanky man, who seemed to be about 6’1” or 6’2” when he stood up to greet agents. “He looked like he enjoyed camping and spending time outdoors.”

  He told them he worked as a handyman at Cedar Lodge, and rangers took him in for questioning.

  “When law enforcement agents questioned Stayner about being in Joie’s neighborhood in his Scout, he denied ever being there,” said Hopkins.

  Authorities questioned him a bit more before letting him go, although not until after they’d confiscating his backpack in hopes of getting a warrant to search it and secured permission to search his vehicle.

  They questioned Stayner again the next day at his small apartment at Cedar Lodge – a neat, tidy room that he swept and dusted clean every day - and he once more denied have been anywhere near the Foresta area where Armstrong had lived.

  The trouble was, he had been spotted by two different witnesses, which for Hopkins, “set off bells and whistles” for the FBI.

  They took photographs of the tire tread on his International Scout parked outside his room.

  That night he sold his TV and his VCR along with his stereo and some CDs at the Cedar Lodge bar, telling his co-workers that he needed some cash to get his truck fixed for a potential move north.

  About this time, the FBI was comparing photographs of the tire tread on Stayner’s distinctive International Scout to the tracks found at Armstrong’s cabin, and realized they had a perfect match.

  “I liked him as a suspect,” Hopkins said.

  Giving feds the slip

  Meanwhile, Stayner – who had left the area - was bitching to anyone who would listen about his backpack, which police had confiscated because they had not yet found Armstrong’s head, and wondered if perhaps it might be inside the bag that Stayner was so reticent to give up. (Stayner had, actually, contemplated keeping Armstrong’s decapitated head, but ultimately rejected the idea, but authorities at the time had no way of knowing it.)

  When they finally took a look inside the dark green JanSport backpack, they found the book “Black Lightning” a fictional tale about a Seattle-based serial killer by New York Times bestselling horror novelist John Saul, a camera, a Corona beer bottle, sunflower seeds, a harmonica and suntan lotion.

  Armstrong’s head was eventually located underwater, 40 feet downstream, where the current had swept it away after Stayner disposed of it.

  A familiar hideout

  The next day, authorities went to the Cedar Lodge to arrest Stayner, but the handyman hadn’t showed up for work that day, which was unusual for him.

  Unable to arrest him, FBI agents instead searched his apartment, unearthing evidence they said not only linked him to Armstrong’s murder, but also to the Sund-Pelosso murders.

  The information shortly appeared on the news, along with photos of the suspected killer.

  Despite the growing body of evidence against him mounting back at Yosemite, Stayner was in his element.

  He had pitched a tent at his favorite clothing optional resort, Laguna Del Sol, located on 150 acres outside Sacramento, and was
hanging out with resort regulars, although he still kept to himself.

  That night, he drank a vodka-cranberry juice – “Not too strong. I don’t do alcohol,” he told the bartender - according to Janet Damant in an interview with Esquire magazine.

  Damant was there to play darts, while Stayner was relaxing and watching the news. Damant recognized Stayner from a visit he’d made in March, when he’d caught her attention with a Yosemite T-shirt and a cap with Cedar Lodge above the bill.

  Damant asked him about the murders, but he didn’t say much, she told the magazine.

  “The cops are just too much,” he told Damant. “They’re everywhere. I just had to get out.”

  On this night, Damant made a point of asking Stayner how he was doing as he nursed his vodka-cranberry as he sat at the resort’s beach-inspired brown beadboard bar.

  “Not so good,” Damant recalled him saying.

  She asked if he had been laid off again, and he said no.

  “It’s just that things changed really fast,” he said. “So I packed up my truck, and I'm heading north. Maybe Oregon. Or Utah.”

  The next morning, Damant was watching the news, and heard the anchor announce that the FBI was searching for Cary Stayner, and they flashed a number for anyone with information to call.

  Damant called the number, then alerted the resort’s manager, Steven Sailors, who sent groundskeepers to tend the bushes near Stayner’s tent. Stayner thought little of the surveillance, since he’d already combed through the newspaper and hadn’t seen his name.

  He was eating breakfast when three FBI agents and two sheriff's deputies arrested him at his table a few minutes later.

  One of the FBI agents was Jeff Rinek, who had been called in at the last minute to pick up Stayner. He had been planning a romantic weekend with his wife, Lori – the boys were away from home for a few nights and the two had the house to themselves – but like many other times when he had disappointed his wife, including one special birthday, the phone rang.