Ep 216 : The Tragic Story of Steven Stayner
Mama Mystery with Kelly Evans
Kelly Evans
4.6 • 996 Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we dive into one of California’s most haunting family stories — the Stayners of Merced. In 1972, seven-year-old Steven Stayner was kidnapped and held captive for seven years before bravely escaping and rescuing another child. Two decades later, his older brother Cary Stayner shocked the same community when he confessed to murdering four women near Yosemite National Park.
This episode unpacks both halves of this tragic story — Steven’s abduction and survival, the years of trauma that followed, and the unraveling of Cary’s quiet life that led to the 1999 Yosemite murders. It’s a story about family, grief, and the thin line between victim and villain — a real-life Cain and Abel story written across generations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Mama Mystery. I am your host, Kelly, and today's story is one that is going to be |
| 0:15.5 | kind of long. And if you're choosing to watch this on YouTube, it's probably a good idea. |
| 0:20.0 | There's a lot of names and faces that you're going to want to remember. |
| 0:23.4 | But this is a case that I came across and I kind of heard it in multiple circles and I just |
| 0:28.3 | didn't know much about it. |
| 0:29.8 | And then once I kind of started, it's like an onion. |
| 0:33.2 | It just has all these layers and aspects to this story that really make it a true tragedy. So I want to |
| 0:38.8 | hear your thoughts on what you think about this entire story by the end. Today we are talking about |
| 0:45.6 | the tragic life of Stephen Stainer. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Delbert and Kay Stainer were raising five kids in Merced, California, |
| 0:56.9 | a Central Valley town often called the Gateway to Yosemite. The siblings were Carrie, who was the |
| 1:02.9 | oldest, then three sisters, Cindy, Jody, and Corey, and then the youngest son, Stephen Gregory |
| 1:09.6 | Stainer, born April 18th of 1965. |
| 1:13.2 | Delbert was a U.S. Army veteran who worked long stretches in canneries after stints in sawmills. |
| 1:19.9 | He logged decades at California canters and growers and later at Atwater Canning before he |
| 1:25.5 | eventually retired. |
| 1:27.1 | The family homewife was a working class, |
| 1:29.4 | steady family. They went to church on Sundays, school during the week, kids playing outside |
| 1:35.1 | till dinner. And then tragedy hit in December of 1972. It was a Monday afternoon in early |
| 1:42.9 | December when seven-year-old Stephen left Charles Wright Elementary and started his familiar walk home. |
| 1:49.0 | On the way, a man named Irvin Edward Murphy, who was new to town and described later by acquaintances as naive and easily led, struck up a conversation with Stephen. Murphy said he was collecting |
| 2:03.0 | items for a church and asked whether Stephen's mom might have anything to donate. When |
| 2:08.6 | Stephen said yes, Murphy asked where he lived and if Stephen could show him. It turns out |
... |
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