CORCORAN, Calif. -- An imprisoned convict whom the FBI was relying on to help solve the case of three slain Yosemite National Park sightseers says he falsely implicated himself in hopes he'd get off easy on unrelated charges.
During a prison interview with The Associated Press, Eugene "Rufus" Dykes said Thursday that he told investigators so many different stories -- some linking himself and others to the murders -- that he couldn't think of any more."If they only listened to me from the beginning," Dykes said. "I told them I didn't do it."
Carole Sund, 42, her daughter, Juli, 15, and family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16, vanished on Feb. 15 from the Cedar Lodge in El Portal, on Yosemite's western doorstep.
Last month, authorities announced that the killers were likely a group of people who were already in jail for other crimes. But just days later they arrested a handyman for the beheading of Yosemite naturalist Joie Ruth Armstrong.
The handyman, Cary Stayner, then confessed to killing the Sunds and Pelosso, leading family members of the victims to question why investigators spent so much time focusing on a group of jailed ex-cons and drug abusers.
On Thursday, Dykes, who is in prison on a parole violation, offered a reason why.
He said when the FBI first interviewed him, he told them he never met the three sightseers and had nothing to do with their disappearance. But then he started making up stories and telling them what he knew about unrelated crimes because they told him "everything would be a walk" as long as he didn't kill any of the women, he said.
At one point, Dykes, who has no lawyer, even signed a statement saying he killed Carole Sund, slashing her throat at a remote mountain spot. He said he had heard there were no bullets at the crime scene, so he figured a knife was used.
Agents repeatedly took him out of jail and drove him around the Sierra Nevada foothills, looking for that crime scene.
"I'd tell them to stop and I'd get out," Dykes said. "Then I'd say 'Nope, this doesn't look familiar.' "
FBI agent Nick Rossi would not comment Thursday on any of Dykes' claims.
Dykes said he feels badly that someone else died before FBI agents caught the alleged killer. He said he doesn't know Stayner, who was indicted Thursday in the beheading of Armstrong.
Stayner, who lived and worked at the Cedar Lodge, has not been charged in the sightseers' murders, though he is the only suspect named by the FBI.
Dykes, 32, was never identified as a suspect in the sightseers case but was at the center of a loose-knit band of "cranksters" that became the focus of investigations by the FBI-led task force and a federal grand jury in Fresno.
He got into a standoff with police less than a month after the women disappeared, and was locked up on a parole violation.
Dykes was not clear about why he would implicate himself in a possible death penalty case, except to say that as a three-strikes candidate, he knew he could be put away for the rest of his life for far less. He said if that was the case, he would rather incriminate himself for a crime he didn't commit.
"Why half step?" he said.