SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A motel handyman confessed to the beheading death of a naturalist at Yosemite National Park, the FBI said in an affidavit filed Monday.
Cary Stayner, who was arrested Saturday, provided details about the slaying of Joie Ruth Armstrong that only police knew about, the affidavit said. Stayner, 37, also is identified as the prime suspect in the murders of three Yosemite sightseers earlier this year, even though he originally was questioned and ruled out as a suspect in those killings.Stayner caught the attention of park rangers again last week after someone spotted his sport utility vehicle near Armstrong's residence Wednesday night an hour after she was last seen there.
Armstrong's decapitated body was found Thursday nearby. Her head wasn't found until later.
FBI agents had questioned Stayner after the body was found -- even searching his backpack for her head -- but let him go. They decided to take him in again after learning that he had failed to show up to work at the Cedar Lodge.
He was arrested Saturday at a nudist colony near Wilton after someone there heard news reports and called authorities.
FBI agents wondered whether they could have prevented Armstrong's murder by linking Stayner to the three earlier killings weeks ago.
"I struggled with that issue for the last 24 hours and I continue to do so," James M. Maddock, FBI special agent-in-charge of Sacramento, said Sunday. "I'm confident we've done everything that reasonably could have been done."
Maddock said Stayner also is believed to have played a role in the killings of Carole Sund, her daughter Juli, and family friend Silvina Pelosso of Argentina. The three were last seen alive at a lodge in El Portal where Stayner worked as a maintenance man.
Stayner previously was questioned in the slayings but ruled out as a suspect, Maddock said. He did not elaborate.
Investigators in that case had focused on a loose-knit band of ex-cons in Modesto who have histories of sex and drug offenses. Authorities had said they were confident that most of those responsible in the sightseer killings were already in custody on unrelated charges.
Stayner, who grew up in California's mostly rural Central Valley region, has a family history peppered with tragedy.
His younger brother, Steven, was kidnapped at age 7 in 1972 and raised for seven years by his abductor, who sexually abused him. In 1980, the boy escaped, and his story inspired headlines nationwide and a television miniseries. But in 1989 he died at age 24 in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident.
Armstrong was last seen alive Wednesday at the park offices of Yosemite Institute in El Portal.
El Portal is also the town where the victims in the previous slayings were last seen alive in February during a sightseeing trip. The three women had stayed at the Cedar Lodge, where Stayner has rented a room above the restaurant for the past two years.
He was hired there in August 1997 and was laid off in January of this year because of a slowdown in business.
He was rehired March 20, a day after Mrs. Sund's and Silvina's bodies were found in the trunk of their rental car.