The Yosemite Murders (True Crime) [Mass Market Paperback]

Dennis McDougal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2000 | Series: True Crime

Since he was seven, Cary Stayner had dreamed of capturing women . . . and killing them

They were crimes that grabbed headlines around the world and stunned America. Four women dead, their bodies charred and horribly mutilated. Now Dennis McDougal, acclaimed author of the spellbinding true crime tour de force Mother's Day, brings his considerable investigative and narrative skills to the Yosemite murders to give you the most complete account of what really happened. Drawing on several personal conversations with the confessed killer and interviews with the victims' families, McDougal presents the definitive story, and answers many lingering questions. What demons drove this quiet handyman and nudist colony habitue to burn, mutilate, and murder four women he didn't even know?  How did he overpower a woman and two teenaged girls?  And most disturbing, did the glory-seeking FBI actually hinder the investigation, leaving the killer free to kill once more before he was caught?

THE YOSEMITE MURDERS offers valuable insight into these savage and senseless murders in the heart of America's most beautiful wilderness.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Since he was seven, Cary Stayner had dreamed of capturing women . . . and killing them

They were crimes that grabbed headlines around the world and stunned America. Four women dead, their bodies charred and horribly mutilated. Now Dennis McDougal, acclaimed author of the spellbinding true crime tour de force Mother's Day, brings his considerable investigative and narrative skills to the Yosemite murders to give you the most complete account of what really happened. Drawing on several personal conversations with the confessed killer and interviews with the victims' families, McDougal presents the definitive story, and answers many lingering questions. What demons drove this quiet handyman and nudist colony habitue to burn, mutilate, and murder four women he didn't even know? How did he overpower a woman and two teenaged girls? And most disturbing, did the glory-seeking FBI actually hinder the investigation, leaving the killer free to kill once more before he was caught?

THE YOSEMITE MURDERS offers valuable insight into these savage and senseless murders in the heart of America's most beautiful wilderness.

About the Author

Dennis McDougal, an investigative reporter who worked for the Los Angeles Times for ten years, is the author of several true crime books: In the Best of Families, Angel of Darkness, and Mother's Day. He is also the coauthor of Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (January 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345438345
• ISBN-13: 978-0345438348
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.9 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #939,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Media Studies
  • #41 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Professional & Technical > Law

More About the Author

With the recent publication of "Five Easy Decades" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Dennis McDougal has authored a total of nine books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in a career that has spanned over 40 years. Currently, he is working on "The Acid Chronicles," a documentary film about the history and renaissance of LSD as a powerful tool in the treatment of mental illness.

Before he began covering movies and media for the Los Angeles Times in 1983 and, more recently, the New York Times, McDougal was a staff writer at the Riverside Press-Enterprise (1973-1977) and the Long Beach Press-Telegram (1977-1981). A UCLA graduate, McDougal holds a Bachelor's in English and a Master's in Journalism.

In 1981, he was awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and spent a year teaching and studying in Japan and Canada, as well as at the Palo Alto campus. Over the years, his journalism has won over 50 honors, including the National Headliners Award and several Associated Press awards.

Before turning his attention full-time to writing books in 1993, McDougal reported on the glamorous and occasionally corrupt aspects of Hollywood as a staff writer for ten years at the Los Angeles Times. As a Times investigative reporter concentrating on movies, television and pop music, McDougal took readers behind the scenes of pop star Michael Jackson's troubled career, beginning with his "Victory" tour in the early 1980s; exposed the waste and mismanagement of Band Aid, USA for Africa, Farm Aid, and other "pop charities" of the 1980s; and followed celebrity courtroom dramas, such as the so-called "Cotton Club" murder trial, which featured former Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans in a major supporting role. He was a producer for CNN during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

McDougal's reporting has taken him to the top of San Francisco's Mt. Tamalpais at sunrise with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, Rodney King's rap music debut, Ethiopia with Harry Belafonte, Tokyo with former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer's Washington Heights bedroom for a discussion of the elements of good sex. He has interviewed dozens of celebrated men and women who have influenced our lives: pop stars, politicians, moguls and cultural icons.

A contributing writer with TV Guide through the 1990s, his last story for the magazine was the murderous saga of actor Robert Blake and his late porn queen wife Bonny Lee Bakley. McDougal and co-author Mary Murphy turned that story into the book "Blood Cold" (Putnam, 2002), which Mark Sennet Productions optioned for a motion picture. McDougal is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has also written for Los Angeles Magazine, Brill's Content, Premiere, and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine.

McDougal has been a lecturer in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, the University of Memphis, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. He and his wife, Sharon, live near Memphis, Tennessee, have five children, and ten grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book on a tragic case, February 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Yosemite Murders (True Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)

McDougal once again goes beyond the headlines of a tragic California crime and offers up more information on the Sund/Pelosso/Armstrong murders of Yosemite in 1999 that you will find anywhere else. "The Yosemite Murders" paints the horrifc picture of Cary Stayner, a 37-year-old good-looking slacker who confessed to the killings of four beautiful, meaningful women. This book details the 1972 kidnapping and seven year debacle of Cary's younger brother Steven. Also, McDougal digs into the Stayner background to deliver more information than we have ever read about this poor family. And whether Steven's disappearance and reemergence into a media darling had any impact on Cary's future. He also brings to issue whether or not the FBI may have committed heinous errors and led to the death of an innocent Yosemite employee. McDougal lays the case out in an easy-to-understand order that never panders to the lowest common denominator. This book is FAR from boring. It brings a very complex case into focus and is the necessary text for the federal trial against Stayner later this year. I have read approximately 3,000 true crime books, and without a doubt, "The Yosemite Murders" ranks near the very top.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well done, August 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Yosemite Murders (True Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book covers a lot of detail, HOWEVER it is tastefully done. No voyeuristic and tasteless details of the victims murders and allows them their dignity. I dislike true crime books which gleefully share all the grisly details, I think it violates the victims, again, when this sort of thing is done. The author has done well on this aspect by relating only the necessary facts. It does delve into Cary's childhood which includes Steven Stayner,of course.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where's the ending?, July 12, 2011

By 

M. Giles "Mom of two boys" (Military Wife, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Yosemite Murders (True Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have been a reader of True Crime for over a decade. I had watched the "I know my name is Steven" show when I was young and always remembered bits and pieces of it. I specifically searched for that book and found this one as well. I read about Steven Stayner's ordeal first, and then about Cary. I think it's a bummer he wanted so badly to be in the spotlight. Anyway, I found this book to be disappointing. Sure it had all the details of the crimes and how he was apprehended, but there was no ending! I think it's pretty safe to assume this book was published before Cary even went to trial. After I read it, I had to Google the outcome of the case because the book left me hanging. I would like to know what went on during the trial, what extra details came to light, etc. I expect that from a True Crime book, and I really felt like this was an incomplete account of the whole story.