California’s Yosemite Park Killer Has Sat On Death Row For 25 Yrs

A death row sentence in America is by no means an expeditious process. One of California's most notorious serial killers has spent the last quarter-century on death row for hideous crimes he committed in and around Yosemite National Park.

The average U.S. death row inmate spends more than 10 years incarcerated before being executed or released due to exoneration, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. A California man who brutally murdered four people (possibly more) in the late nineties has been a resident of one of the state's highest maximum security prisons north of San Francisco for 25 years now.

The story continues to haunt many who live in this area just 50 miles northwest of where the lodge still operates.

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It's not common for criminals sentenced to death in America to still be breathing air as long as death row inmate Cary Stayner has. He's still being fed and protected from the elements, unlike the nearly 180,000 homeless people in California.

Stayner was convicted of the deaths of four people in July of 1999, including a mother, her daughter, and a park ranger, according to allthatsinteresting.com. Stayner worked as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge just outside Yosemite National Park. The corpses of two of his victims were discovered in a burnt-out car in the forest 18 miles east of the city of Sonora; a fellow female co-worker's body was found decapitated inside park grounds.

I stayed at the Cedar Lodge in the summer of 2022. My family owns property in Sonora, just down Highway 108 from where two of his victims were discovered. The story continues to haunt many who live in this area just 50 miles northwest of where the lodge still operates.