SAN FRANCISCO -- The sorrowful mystery of what happened to three tourists who disappeared from Yosemite National Park was in large part answered Friday when the authorities announced that a body found along a highway leading to the park was that of the last missing person.
On Friday evening, the authorities said that the body found halfway between where the three women were last seen six weeks ago and where their charred rental car was found last week with two bodies in the trunk was that of Julie Sund.On Monday, the authorities had identified one of the bodies in the trunk as that of Julie's mother, Carole Sund. The authorities now assume that the other body found in the car, whose identity was close to being positively identified through DNA tests, is that of the third member of the trio, Silvina Pelosso, a family friend visiting from Argentina.
But big questions still remain in a case that has captured the attention of much of the nation: Who killed these women, where and why?
The women's disappearance touched off the most intensive missing-persons search in recent memory, involving six law-enforcement agencies, and the women's fate has sparked fear among residents of the small, quaint towns in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where the bodies were found, that a killer or killers are among them. But it has also created a deeper, wider fear, especially among women, that no one is safe anywhere when an innocent weekend adventure for three can result in such a horror story.
At a news conference Friday evening in Sonora, the Tuolumne County seat, James Maddock, the FBI special agent in charge of the case, said that investigators searching for suspects were still following up on hundreds of tips that have been made to an FBI hot line over the last week. He said the case was being designated "a major case" so that the authorities could bring as many resources as they needed to solve the crime.