Evidence Of Murder

Her mother, sister and family friend had been missing for a month by the time Gina Sund read her poem in front of the thousand or so people who gathered in Modesto, Calif., March 14 to pray for the trio's safe return. "Deep in my heart I know something my mind does not want to learn," said Gina, 13, of Eureka, Calif. "I try to stay strong because I know that's what you'd want your baby to be, but, Mommy, I don't want you to leave me."

Whatever hopes Gina may have harbored were crushed last week when authorities found the burned-out Pontiac Grand Prix that had been rented by Gina's mother Carole Sund, 42, for a holiday trip to Yosemite National Park with her daughter Julie, 15, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, a friend from Argentina. Opening the trunk of the charred wreck, hidden 100 yds. off a remote highway, law-enforcement officials discovered two bodies. By week's end, the victims had not yet been identified nor the cause of death released. There was some speculation that the blaze was so intense, a third body may have been completely incinerated.

Despite a thorough search, there was no sign of a third body or of suspects. The FBI noted, however, that only someone from the area would probably be familiar with the location where the car was found, off the narrow logging roads and at a spot deep in the woods, where locals often dump trash. "We want resolution, and this brings us a step forward--this has been a fight," said Francis Carrington, Sund's father and head of Carrington Co., a Eureka-based real estate firm. The family had offered more than $300,000 reward for anyone with information connected to the disappearance.

Though the discovery answered vital questions in the case, authorities seemed no closer to determining exactly why or by whom the three were abducted. According to a reliable report, Sund and the girls were last seen Feb. 15, the day after they checked in to the Cedar Lodge, a hotel on Yosemite's western edge. Pelosso, the daughter of a friend Sund met in 1973, when she spent her high school senior year in Argentina, had joined the Sunds for a three-month vacation. The Sunds had shown her Disneyland and the Bay Area, and on Feb. 12, Sund flew to San Francisco with the girls and rented a car so they could drive to Yosemite. They stopped in Stockton, where Julie Sund competed in a state cheerleading contest, then continued to the park, arriving two days later.

The girls were reportedly eating dinner at the hotel the next night when Sund entered the restaurant, paid the bill quickly and ushered the girls outside. Before leaving, the girls said they would return to finish their burgers, though they never did. The next day the three were scheduled to return to San Francisco, where they would meet Sund's husband Jens, 43, and the foursome would fly to Phoenix for a trip to the Grand Canyon. Jens Sund, who has known Carole since high school and who is a vice president at Carrington Co., did not find his wife at the San Francisco airport and assumed she had flown ahead. She was not in Phoenix either, but he played a round of golf there the next day and, when she had still not even attempted to contact him, he called the police.

Authorities have named no suspects. But in connection with their investigation, they have questioned Billy Joe Strange, 39, a night janitor at the Cedar Lodge restaurant who was arrested on March 5 for violating parole. Having twice been convicted of assaulting women, he is being held without bail in the Mariposa County jail. According to local newspaper reports, the FBI has searched Strange's home, impounded his borrowed van and seized his payroll records. A roommate, Darrell Stephens, 55, told the Fresno Bee, "The FBI has been harassing us for two weeks now... The only reason they got [Strange] is because he was working there that night, and he was the only one working. It was just his bad luck. [Strange and I] didn't do anything; they're just fishing." Days after making these statements, Stephens, convicted in 1978 of rape and robbery, was jailed for failing to register as a sex offender.

Even with clues from the burned car, agents are unsure where they might next find answers. The landscape has sharp ravines, alpine lakes and mineshafts dating back to the gold-rush days of the mid-1800s. There are many places to hide evidence of a crime.