California teenager, Susan Robin Bender, who went missing 37 YEARS AGO could be buried in Yosemite National Park, cops say
- Susan Robin Bender was 15 when she was last seen at the Modesto Greyhound station on April 25, 1986, en route to see a friend in Carmel
- An eyewitness saw Bender get into a green van: on August 15, Raymond Lewis Stafford, who had briefly worked with Bender’s mother, was arrested in Texas
- A woman who lived with Stafford in the 1980s said he confessed that he had killed a ‘female’ and buried her near the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite
A 76-year-old man arrested in Texas earlier this month on charges of murdering a California teenager almost 40 years ago confessed to burying a body near Yosemite, according to reports.
Raymond Lewis Stafford was arrested on August 15 in Wills Point, 50 miles east of Dallas, where he had been living for around five years.
He has been charged with the murder of 15-year-old Susan Robin Bender, who was last seen getting into a green van at a Greyhound Bus Depot on April 25, 1986 in Modesto, California.
On Monday it emerged that Stafford allegedly told a woman he lived with in the 1980s that he had killed ‘a female’ and buried the body near Yosemite.
He said, according to court records obtained by SFGate.com, that he drove to a campground near the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite National Park and dug the grave.
The name of the campground has not been made public.
Susan Robin Bender was 15 when she disappeared in 1985. On August 15, Raymond Lewis Stafford, 76, (right) was arrested and charged with her murder
Bender is believed to have known Stafford, who worked for her mother, SFGate reported.
The eyewitness who saw Bender getting into a green van said she appeared to go willingly.
Stafford was known to own a green van, and he was arrested on suspicion of an unrelated burglary a month after the teenager vanished.
Stafford appeared to be hiding in plain sight for decades.
Less than a year after Bender disappeared, Stafford, then 38, ran for Modesto City Council.
He was asked by Modesto Bee newspaper about his criminal record, but, according to SFGate, told the paper in July 1985 it was a result of his ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Bender was last seen getting into a green van at a Greyhound bus station in Modesto, California
Patricia Chupco, the mother of Susan Robin Bender, knew Stafford as he had worked for her
Stafford reportedly told a woman in the 1980s that he had buried a woman near a campground by the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite (pictured)
His arrests were listed as soliciting an undercover officer for sex, operating an unlicensed private investigator business and carrying a badge saying he was a PI.
Stafford said that his campaign was focused on policies to protect children from sex offenders.
‘We don’t spend any time getting the people who are molesting our children,’ he said.
Five months later, in December 1986, Stafford was convicted of setting a business on fire and pleaded guilty to making a false police report.
Stafford reportedly faked a kidnapping to avoid appearing in court, the paper said.
In 1994, he emerged once again on law enforcement’s radar, and was put on the sex offenders register under the alias Gregg Tunningley for abusing a 13-year-old girl in California.
Patricia Chupco, Bender’s mother, told the Bee that her daughter’s clothes and diary had been found in the possession of a man, who she could not name as he was not publicly identified as a suspect.
New court records, accessed by SFGate.com, identify the man as Stafford.
He is expected to be extradited to California to face trial.
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