Steven Stayner (front right) pictured with his older brother, Cary (center).Photo: hulu
Anyone who owned a television in the ’80s will recognize the name Steven Stayner.
Kidnapped in 1972 at the age of 7, the California boy became a national hero when — seven years later — he not only escaped his longtime abuser but freed 5-year-old Timmy White who was being held captive alongside him.
Steven Stayner holds Timmy White.AP Photo/Sal Veder
But while Steven was relishing in his newfound fame and working to overcome the trauma inflicted upon him during his formative years, his older brother, Cary Stayner, stood in the background quietly turning sour.
“A lot of attention went to Steven — we all got a little jealous,” says one of the Stayner sisters in Hulu’s upcoming docuseriesCaptive Audience:A Real American Horror Story. “My older brother, Cary, he was off.”
Ten years after Steven died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 24, something inside of Cary snapped.
Between February and July of 1999 he brutally murdered three tourists and a naturalist in Yosemite National Park: Carole Sund, 42; Juli Sund, 15; Silvina Pelosso, 16; and Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26. Two of the women’s bodies were found burned in the trunk of their charred vehicle, one had her throat cut and the final victim had been decapitated.
Cary was arrested the same year, and in the trials that followed he was convicted of all four women’s murders and sentenced to death. Now 60, he remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison.
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An exclusive trailer for the three-part docuseries is below.
All three episodes ofCaptive Audience:A Real American Horror Storypremiere April 21 on Hulu.
source: people.com
