Who are Steven and Cary Stayner?

Two brothers tied to Yosemite, one a hero, the other a monster.

Steven Stayner, lauded a hero when he helped another child escape from a paedophile, after enduring years of the same abuse and not wanting the child to endure the same fate. His brother, Cary Stayner, a murderer of four innocent women.

They Stayner family lived in the secluded town of Merced, California, also known as the gateway to Yosemite National Park.

Steven, the youngest brother, was abducted on December 4th 1972 when he was just 7 years old. Sleet was falling when an old Buick pulled up next to him as he walked home from school. Kenneth Parnell, the driver, a Ukiah hotel clerk offered him a ride home and Steven accepted, not realising that he would not be home for a very long time.

Kenneth Parnell had told Steven, "Your parents, I just spoke to them. They no longer want you."

"Your parents, I just spoke to them. They no longer want you."

When Steven did not make it home, his parents sounded the alarm. Merced was the lead police department, they searched and searched but there was nothing to be found.

Cary was devastated, you would find him, going out and wishing on a star, wishing that his brother would come home.

Steven, for seven years, was held captive and sexually abused by Parnell, forced to call him Dad and told that his parents abandoned him.

Steven Stayner with his Kidnapper and Abuser Kenneth Parnell

Steven was told his new name was Dennis Parnell, and he was enrolled in school. Despite his circumstances, he flourished there.

A previous admirer, Lori Duke said that "he had a great personality. He was spunky. You could see that he wanted to play and be with kids and be normal."

While Steven was a freshman at Mendocino High School, some 300 miles to the South, Cary was an upperclassman at Merced High School.

And Cary had a reputation of "the kid who had his brother kidnapped."

Cary was known as a very good cartoonist, very creative and was always wearing at hat, because he was compulsively pulling his hair out. Understandably, Cary had a tough time emotionally during his childhood.

Some may say that this is the reason he exhibited some behaviours that made others uncomfortable, this included, exposing himself to his sister's friend.

He was known to have a compulsion of getting physically close to a woman in a sexual way, but he was unable to develop any sort of interpersonal relationships with them.

The contrast between the brothers is astounding. You have one, who is being subjected to unspeakable horror for years, but by all appearances is a jovial kid with a girlfriend. The other brother was at home, had no interests in girls, was anti-social, he was known as a "creepy loner."

By the time Steven was 14, Parnell realised that Steven was growing up and that he was no longer going to be controlled by Parnell. So he wanted another child he could abuse.

So, he abducted 5-year old Timothy White, who, like Steven, was walking home from school.

For two weeks, Steven watched Timothy suffer the separation from his family, and that is when he took matters into his own hands.

"I was not going to let that child go through what I had already been through. And if I didn’t take care of it now, it would just get worse."

On March 1st 1980, Steven waited until Parnell was at work and then fled with Timothy, carrying the boy when he got tired. The pair hitchhiked to the Ukiah Police Station. That is where, Steven was hailed a hero for rescuing the young child.

Steven Stayner and Timothy White

When Steven explained to the police what happened to him and Timothy, he also told the police, "I know my first name is Steven", the most iconic moment in Steven's remarkable story.

Steven's story in America was momentous, within days he is on "Good Morning America", and on the show, he shares that it felt "great" to be home. His parents "didn't change that much," but his brothers and sisters, "they changed a lot. I never recognized either of them."

At a press conference outside the Stayner house, everyone was smiling, there was jubilation, but many comment on Cary in his baseball cab, not smiling at all. As a older brother, he now has a very strange relationship with this brother who he missed but is a completely different person and receiving all of this attention.

Steven Stayner with his brother Cary in the background, wearing the baseball cap

The brothers, four years apart in age, shared a room but did not get a long, Steven, who was used to being supposedly an only child, now had brothers and sisters, and he did not understand the rules of the household. Furthermore, he was constantly attacked for this sexuality at school and was forced to face his abuser in court.

Parnell was convicted on kidnapping and false imprisonment charges, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, but only served five - less time than he held Steven captive. As soon as he was out, Ken Parnell went back to what he was doing for years and he procured another child to abuse, it was only this time that he was caught and sent to prison again, where he died in 2008.

Whilst Steven was grappling with life after his imprisonment, his brother had his own set of troubles. After high school he seemed lost, as if he did not know where he was going.

He was known to take refuge in nearby Yosemite, where he would drive up and get lost in nature.

Steven Stayner's fame was short-lived, he grew up, got married and had kids. He was known by his wife as very proud and very grounded.

Tragically, Steven Stayner was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1989. He was only 24.

Shortly after, an uncle with him Cary Stayner was close was shot and killed in a home they shared together. The case was never solved. By this point Cary was suffering mentally, he had nervous breakdowns, one of which was violent.

He stated that he felt like jumping in a truck, driving it through the shop and killing the boss and killing everybody in the office and then torching the place.

Friends and co-workers would say later that he struggled with impulses he didn't understand and was susceptible to fits of rage.

This was very shocking behaviour and he was encouraged to seek mental health but he did not, he ended up taking refuge in Yosemite.

So , his new job as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge in 1997, was perfect as it gave him access to his beloved Yosemite. And this is where he would ruin the lives of four women and their families.

Stayner had been at Cedar Lodge for two years. On the night after Valentines Day 1999, he knocked on the door of Room 509 saying he needed to make a plumbing repair. However, what the guests did not know what that Cary had been laid off for the winter season and was not actually at work.

The guests, Carole Sund, her teenage daughter Juli and their friend Silvina Pelosso were sexually assaulted and strangled them. The bodies of Carole and Silvina were found in their rental car a month later about 50 miles away, and investigators - alerted by an anonymous letter that Cary said he wrote - found Juli's body near a reservoir. Her throat had been slashed.

His final victim was five months later. The community surrounding Yosemite lulled in a false send of calm and security - especially when the FBI announced that those they believed responsible for the murders were in custody, in fact they were the wrong men.

July 21, 1999, Stayner saw Joie Armstrong, a 26-year-old naturalist at Yosemite who taught children about nature in the park. Something changed in him and he was described as getting the urge to kill again.

Joie Armstrong

Her friends reported her missing and police found signs of a struggle at her cabin, and half a mile away, they found her body. Her severed head was found several feet away in the water.

These brutal killings quickly became related, and the police brought Stayner into questioning, due to him leaving a substantial amount of evidence in and around Armstrong's cottage.

He confessed to murdering Joie Armstrong, describing the brutal killing as "if he was reading a soup label."

Soon after, he confessed to murdering Carole Sund, Juli Sund and Silvina Pelosso.

He also told the police that he started imagining killing women and girls when he was just 6 or 7 years old.

Whilst confessing and in custody, Cary said he wanted producers in Los Angeles, he wanted a movie-of-the-week made about his story. There was a movie made about Steven Stayner, and he wanted the same treatment, he wanted the world to know his name.

Some people find it difficult to associate one brother with the other as they are both so different. Sometimes google searches do not collate them together. Their personalities and their lives are polar opposites, within the same family.

Cary Stayner is now 57 years old, he was sentenced to death in 2002 and remains on death row.

Is there a direct cause and effect between what happened to Steven and what Cary did? Is jealousy the root of all evil, is evil born or bed?

If Steven had grown up normal, happy and healthy, would Cary still have been a serial killer?