Several miles away, in El Portal, Cary Stayner was apparently enjoying the fear and confusion he had created. A few nights after the killings, the handyman returned to the logging road and set fire to the Pontiac; the same week, he dropped Carole Sund's wallet on a street in Modesto in a bid to throw off the authorities. Later, he wrote an anonymous letter to the FBI, directing them to the place where he had dumped Juli Sund's corpse.

At the Cedar Lodge he maintained a cool facade, even escorting FBI agents from room to room so they could gather fiber samples. The only time he seems to have commented on the killings, says a female coworker, was the afternoon he cast an annoyed glance at a pair of FBI agents having lunch in the diner. "Why didn't the FBI ever search for my brother?" he muttered.

On July 21, Joie Armstrong arrived at the Yosemite Institute around 8 a.m., worked a normal day, and drove the five miles home. Her boyfriend and her other roommate were away. Aware of the murders of the three tourists at the Cedar Lodge, she had told colleagues at the Institute that she'd worried about spending a night alone at her isolated cabin.

Just before dusk, as she packed up her car for her trip to Sausalito, a blue-and-white International Scout came down the dirt road toward her house and stopped. According to his confession, Stayner stepped out of his vehicle, approached Armstrong's pickup truck, and said hello.

Stayner apparently attempted to put the wary young woman at ease by asking if she had ever seen Bigfoot in the area, adding that he had once spotted the creature in the fields just beyond her cabin. When he realized Armstrong was alone, he pulled a gun and ordered her inside the cabin, where he bound her hands and gagged her with duct tape. Then he ordered her back outside. In the gathering darkness, he shoved her into the front seat of his Scout and began to drive back up the road.

But this time Stayner's victim was able to attempt an escape. At a parking area where the dirt track from her cabin joins the Foresta road, Armstrong managed to open the Scout's passenger door and leap out of the moving vehicle. She staggered to her feet and began running through the brush and trees along Crane Creek, heading toward a cabin where friends lived a few hundred yards away. Stayner jumped out and crashed through the woods in pursuit. Armstrong made it 150 yards before he caught her. Grabbing her from behind, he drew a long knife and cut her throat, continuing to slash until he had decapitated her. He dumped the body in the drainage ditch and discarded the severed head 40 feet away.

Stayner returned to his Scout and fled back up the road toward the Yosemite exit. He didn't get very far. On El Portal Road, a few miles short of the Cedar Lodge, his vehicle broke down, and he flagged down a ride from a passing Yosemite park ranger. The ranger later recalled that Stayner had been easygoing, affable, and calm. Incredibly, nothing had seemed amiss.