Down by the meadow, in front of the simple green cabin where the young naturalist had lived, cardboard signs urged visitors to "let Foresta heal." On a tree stump at the edge of the meadow near Joie Armstrong's cabin, three white candles, bits of colored glass, and purple flowers were arranged as a shrine. In the stillness of that summer morning, the only sounds were the songs of meadowlarks and clear water rushing over smooth rocks in the creek, not far from the spot where Armstrong's body was found.

By his own account, Cary Stayner seems to have been obsessed with the idea that these mountains and forests were the stalking ground of a malevolent Bigfoot—that incarnation of our primal fear of the wild, that terrifying yet oddly alluring symbol of the deep woods—but it's impossible to know if the beast really was on his mind the evening he says he murdered Joie Armstrong, and if a deranged conviction that the mythical Sasquatch lurks in Yosemite truly did possess his imagination the night the Sunds and Pelosso were killed. Or perhaps Stayner's Bigfoot was just one more ruse in a cruel game, another way to distract the world from the simple, twisted heart of a murderer.

Joshua Hammer wrote about the war in Kosovo for the August issue of Outside.