Only a few feet from where Yosemite killer Cary Stayner sits in court in ankle chains, there are vivid reminders of the three tourists he's accused of murdering.
Photos taken during their February 1999 visit to the national park show teen-agers Silvina Pelosso and Juli Sund, arms wrapped around each other, with a wispy waterfall plunging from the granite cliffs in the background.
Another shows Sund and her mother, Carole, smiling while sitting on unmade beds in the room the three shared at Cedar Lodge, where Stayner lived and worked as a handyman outside the park.
In any other setting they'd be happy snapshots from a memorable vacation. Instead, they're being used to identify the women who disappeared, using the very photos they took on their ill-fated adventure as evidence in the preliminary hearing against Stayner.
As the hearing continued Tuesday in Mariposa Superior Court to determine if there's enough evidence against Stayner to proceed to trial on murder charges, those photos stood in bleak contrast to ones taken by investigators when the bodies of the three were found a month after they vanished.
A hunting guide testified that he found the torched once-red rental car March 19, 1999, while scouting for deer in a forest near Long Barn, a tiny community in the Sierra Nevada.
In one set of photos, the car was scorched gun-metal gray and the charred remains of Carole Sund, 42, and Pelosso, 16, in the trunk were indistinguishable. Skull fragments were the only body parts barely recognizable. Forensic scientists had to identify the bodies.
A week later, following a crudely drawn map of Lake Don Pedro that arrived anonymously at an FBI office three weeks earlier, agents located the naked body of Juli Sund, 15, covered in brush off a trail near the reservoir.
The former cheerleader was found lying spread-legged, her face blackening with decomposition while long hair flowed from her head in a patch of green grass. A strip of black tape wrapped around her ankle had been used to bind her legs.
FBI agent Christopher Hopkins testified that Stayner later led investigators to the site and pointed out where he had tossed the roll of duct tape and the knife he used to slash Juli's throat.
Francis Carrington, the father of Carole Sund and grandfather of Juli, said outside court that it was difficult to take in Hopkins' testimony about discovering the bodies and hearing them referred to as
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CA Is Burning said:
Connie Weiss said:
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