Cary Stayner, the motel handyman charged in the highly publicized murders of three Yosemite National Park tourists and a naturalist last year, is expected to plead guilty today in one of the slayings.
Robert Rainwater, Stayner's defense attorney, said Tuesday that his client will plead guilty in federal court to charges that he decapitated Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong in July 1999.
With the plea, Stayner, 39, will avoid a possible death penalty but agree to life in prison "without the possibility of release," Rainwater said.
Stayner still could receive a death sentence in a separate state trial for the earlier killings of three Yosemite tourists, Carole Sund of Eureka, her 15-year-old daughter Juliana and family friend Silvina Pelosso, 16.
Federal prosecutors declined to discuss the Armstrong plea, scheduled for this afternoon in Fresno before U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii.
Armstrong's mother, Leslie Armstrong, apparently did not want a trial in the grisly case.
"I do know in the past she has expressed to us she did not want to sit though a trial," said Carole Carrington, the mother of Carole Sund and grandmother of Juliana. "She did not feel she could do it . . . and hear all the details. So I think for her it's a very good thing."
As for the Sund case, Carole Carrington and her husband, Francis, said they want prosecutors to take it to trial.
"My feeling is we should let the American justice system work," said Francis Carrington. He added that he was not convinced that Stayner had acted alone in the February 1999 killings of the Sunds and Pelosso.
"It's our very strong feeling that Mr. Stayner had help in the case," Carrington said. "We'd like it to come out."
The Sunds and Pelosso, who was visiting from South America, disappeared from a motel just outside the park in El Portal, sparking an extensive search and national publicity.
The burned bodies of Carole Sund and Pelosso were found weeks later in the trunk of a car abandoned on a forest road. An anonymous letter, which Stayner later confessed to writing, led investigators to Juliana Sund's corpse at another location.
Though initially questioned in the case, Stayner was not charged until he was picked up five months later in the Armstrong slaying and confessed to authorities that he had carried out all four killings. He has said he acted alone.
