Episode 1: In the Shadow of Yosemite - Part 1: Steven Stayner
On a cold March night in 1980, two boys, aged 14 and 5 stood outside a Ukiah police station, deciding what to do next. Local police were in the middle of a frenzied investigation into the recent abduction of 5-year-old Timmy White. They could scarcely imagine that not one, but two missing boys could stumble into their midst and, in the process, solve their own abductions. This is the story of Steven Stayner.
The Escape
The two boys made their way to the nearest road. They had no money, no transport, and were far from any town. The older boy had surmised that they needed to get to Ukiah, a tiny city almost 63 km away from where they were in Point Arena, near Manchester, California. They had to move fast and to put distance between them and anyone who might pursue them. They made their way through the brush for about 400 metres until they hit a road and flagged down a car. The driver slowed down and eventually pulled up beside them. Both boys climbed in.
The plan was to take the younger boy home, but he didn’t know his address, or even the name of the street he lived on. They made their way to Seminary Avenue, home of the Ukiah Police Department. The teenager told the younger boy to enter the building and tell a police officer who he was. Before they could formulate the next steps, a police officer, Bob Warner spotted a child standing alone in the dark. He recognised the boy as the very one that they had been frantically searching for. He had been missing for the past 16 days.
Timothy White had been missing, presumed abducted, since the 13th of February 1980. It was now the 1st of March. Before officers could reunite Timmy with his parents, they first had to figure out what had happened to him. Police took statements from both boys. The older boy began his statement with the following words:
‘My name is Steven Stainer [sic]. I am fourteen years of age. I don't know my true birthdate, but I use April 18, 1965. I know my first name is Steven, I'm pretty sure my last is Stainer [sic], and if I have a middle name, I don't know it’.
The officers on duty could scarcely believe it. Not one, but two missing boys had walked directly into their midst! Steven Stayner was abducted in December 1972, at the age of 7. When he presented himself at the police station in Ukiah, he had been missing for almost seven and a half years.
Meanwhile in Merced
Meanwhile, in the city of Merced, Kay Stayner responded to a knock on her front door. A police officer introduced himself and told her that he was here to speak to her about her son. The officer informed them that their son, Steven, had been found alive and well in Ukiah, and they could see him soon.
They wanted to go to their son right away but were told that it wasn’t possible to see him right now, as he was helping the police with their investigation. They were assured that he would be brought to them as soon as possible and told to sit tight and wait at home. They had been waiting at home for more than seven years. They were tired of waiting. They wanted answers.
Steven’s Early Life
Steven Stayner was born on 18th April 1965 to parents, Delbert and Kay Stayner in Merced, California, a farming town that later became incorporated as a city. It was known locally as the ‘gateway to Yosemite’, and Yosemite would feature heavily in the lives of the Stayner family in ways that they could hardly imagine. Kay and Del married in 1960 and began building a family straight away. Steven was the middle child of five.
Day of Abduction
The 4th of December 1972 was a Monday. Kay Stayner was preparing to collect her son, Steven, from school. He was in second grade at Charles Wright Elementary Mission school. She was running late. Steven had left school and begun walking home to the house he shared with his family on Bette Street. It wasn’t unusual for him to make his own way home. It was less than a kilometre by foot, and he knew the way.
In a televised interview with ABC News, Steven said that he was ‘stopped by a man along the street’, just a few blocks from his house’. He said that they had asked him if he or his mother ‘wanted to donate something to a church’. Steven said, ‘I told him that my mother would probably want to. And so, he offered me a ride home’. He refused this offer numerous times, but after a while, he relented and accepted.
According to his kidnappers, Kenneth Parnell and Edward Ervin Murphy, Kay and Del had allegedly given permission for Steven, their 7-year-old son to stay the night with the two adult strangers. Later that week, Steven said that one of his abductors, most likely Parnell, ‘went out, and came back and said that he went to court and had gotten possession of me. And said that I was his’.
Parnell told Steven that he was now his father, and within the first week, insisted that he call him ‘Dad’, which Steven continued to do for the duration of his time with Parnell. He also gave him a new name. He was no longer Steven Stayner, but Dennis Gregory Parnell. Parnell enrolled him in school, using his real date of birth, and while perpetrating the ruse of being father and son, moved him several times throughout the state of California, including, Santa Rosa, Comptche and Point Arena.
Steven had settled into a life that was not his own, and learned to live with the discomfort of being somewhere he did not belong, sharing a home with someone who was an ever-looming threat to him, emotionally and physically. It became his new normal. He was Dennis Parnell. Kenneth Parnell was now his father, and this was the reality of his life.
Parnell’s Background
Kenneth Eugene Parnell was born in Amarillo, Texas in 1931, to Cecil and Mary Parnell. He eventually moved to Bakersfield, California with his mother and three half siblings. His mother ran a boarding house, and young Kenneth was known by local authorities as a juvenile delinquent, frequently in and out of custody for crimes ranging from car theft to arson.
In 1949, he married a 15-year-old girl, Patsy Jo Dorton. By 1951, Patsy was pregnant with a daughter. That same year, Parnell approached an 8-year-old boy, brandishing a sheriff’s deputy badge. He had acquired the badge months earlier from a navy surplus store. He took the boy to a remote area, where he sexually assaulted him. Parnell was arrested and in 1952, and was sentenced to almost four years in prison, which he served in San Quentin State Prison.
By 1957, his divorce from his first wife was finalised, and he married for the second time later that year. In the 1960s, he was convicted of armed robbery and grand larceny in Utah and served six years for those charges. In March 1980, he was working as a night clerk at the Palace Hotel in Ukiah and training to work security. He had gotten a second gig as a caretaker on a ranch in Port Arena, near Manchester, and as such, was living rent-free in the remote, one-room shack. This was the same isolated cabin in which he had kept the two boys.
Murphy’s Background
Edward Ervin Murphy met Parnell when they worked together at Yosemite Lodge in Yosemite National Park. This resort was two hours away from Steven’s home in Merced. Sources who knew Murphy have described him as being naïve, trusting, and as possibly having a learning difficulty or a low IQ. Parnell allegedly told Murphy that he was an aspiring Christian minister. He convinced Murphy to help him to find and ‘save’ a little boy, so that Parnell could raise the child in a religious household. In hindsight, this may seem absurd to us now, but Parnell was convincing enough to have Murphy believe his story.
On the day of the abduction, Murphy handed out gospel pamphlets, under instructions from Parnell. Later, Steven would say that Murphy showed him great kindness in the first week after his abduction. He said that he felt that Murphy was also being manipulated by Parnell. At the time of his arrest in 1980, Murphy was still working as a janitor at the Yosemite Lodge. It appears that Murphy and Parnell did not have any substantial contact after 1972.
Parent’s & Police Efforts
On the afternoon of Steven’s abduction, Kay was late to pick up him up. After a couple of hours, the dread and panic set in, and they called the police. The police began a street-by-street canvas, erected roadblocks, interviewed potential witnesses and pooled resources in an attempt to locate the missing 7-year-old.
Steven’s Life Post-Abduction
Parnell, and Steven, now living as Dennis, presented as father and son in whichever communities they lived in. Between 1972 and 1976, they lived in a series of trailers, dingy motels and shacks, including some time spent in Santa Rosa. Parnell enrolled Steven in Kawana Elementary School, Santa Rosa, under his new, assumed name. The school failed to request his records, and thus, a chance to identify Dennis as the missing boy that all of California was searching for was lost.
Timothy White’s Abduction
On the 13th of February 1980, Parnell recruited a classmate and acquaintance of Steven’s from his school in Point Arena. Sean Poorman, who was 14 years old, was promised payment in the form of marijuana and money to be Parnell’s willing accomplice. If he showed any hesitation, Parnell reportedly threatened and coerced him to comply to his demands. Poorman was tasked with scouting for a male child for Parnell to abduct.
According to testimony from Poorman, on the day in question, he noticed Timmy White, a 5-year-old boy playing outside his home in Ukiah. Timmy refused to go with Poorman, who dragged him to the waiting car. Parnell quickly dyed Timmy’s light blonde hair brown and began the grooming process that he had used so successfully on Steven, seven years earlier. He told the boy that his new name was Tommy, and that Steven, or ‘Dennis’, as he was being called, was his new older brother. On Saturday 1st of March 1980, Steven finally had the opportunity to act. He waited until Parnell had left the shack to go to work, and then put his escape plan into action.
Homecoming
It was 1am on Sunday the 2nd of March 1980, when Steven was finally reunited with his parents, but it was not a private affair. Hundreds of onlookers, comprising of neighbours, local residents, media and law enforcement crowded onto Bette Street. Standing outside the family home, Steven pleaded with the press, ‘Please, I want to be alone with my family’, before disappearing inside. [57] Elsewhere, his abductor, Kenneth Parnell had been arrested, along with his accomplices, Murphy and Poorman.
Del and Kay enrolled Steven in school within days of his return. Steven had no respite from his ordeal, or space to process recent events. The news cameras followed everywhere. They were insatiable, and held no boundaries for what they could, or should film.
As minors, both Steven and Timmy were unable to consent to media interviews. They should not even have been interviewed by the police without a parent or guardian present, although at the time, this may not have been a point of law in California.
Aftermath
Steven struggled to slot back in with the family he had once known. In those early months after he was reunited, he probably felt as if he was living with a group of strangers, or at the very least, distant relatives. Years later, Steven would comment on the difficulties he faced upon his return. He said, ‘I returned almost a grown man, and yet my parents saw me at first as their 7-year-old. After they stopped trying to teach me the fundamentals all over again, it got better. But why doesn’t my dad hug me anymore? I guess seven years changed him, too’.
In December 1981, almost nine years to the day Steven had been taken, Parnell’s trial for Steven’s abduction began. Steven was a key witness. The entire trial was televised, including Steven’s testimony. Speaking later to Miller, Steven explained that he ‘didn’t want to get on the stand and talk about it’. He said, ‘I fought it the whole way’.
Trial
In June 1981, Parnell was convicted of the abduction of Timmy White and sentenced to seven years for the crime. Prior to Parnell's trials in 1981 and 1982, California law allowed for sentences for multiple offenses to be served concurrently. This meant that the offender could serve all of their sentences at the same time, rather than one after the other.
In February 1982, Parnell was found guilty of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. He was sentenced to seven years, but because of the concurrent sentencing laws at the time, 64 months of his sentence were stayed, as he was already serving a sentence for Timmy’s abduction. The net result meant he only had to serve an additional 20 months in prison for what he did to Steven. This was in addition to the existing seven-year sentence from the previous year.
Murphy was sentenced to five years in prison, with credit for 23 months already served. Murphy served just two years of his five-year sentence before being released. Barbara Mathias faced no charges for either the abuse or the attempted abduction. She was never arrested. Sean Poorman faced a lesser charge than Parnell and was designated to serve time for Timmy White’s abduction in a ‘juvenile work camp’.
Parnell only served five years of his total sentence. In January 2003, Parnell was arrested for attempting to buy a four-year old child. By this time, he was receiving 24-hour nursing care in his apartment in Berkeley, California, following a stroke. He also had emphysema and was diabetic. He had recruited his caregiver’s sister, Diane Stevens to buy him a child for USD $500. Stevens, aware of Parnell’s sordid history, contacted authorities, who set up a sting operation. In February 2004, Parnell was sentenced to 25 years in prison, under California’s ‘three strikes’ law. He died in a prison hospital of natural causes in January 2008. He was 76 years old.
TV Miniseries
At some stage in the mid-eighties, Steven was approached to sell the rights to his story for a television miniseries. The two-part miniseries, I Know My First Name is Steven (1989), was written by JP Miller and Cynthia Whitcomb, and directed by Larry Elikann. Steven was very happy to participate in the TV mini-series, both to tell his side of the story, and to provide financially for his family. The Stayner family were heavily involved in the development of the TV series. Steven even guest starred as a police officer in his own homecoming scene in the series. By the time the miniseries had aired in May 1989, Steven had married Jody Edmonson and had two children, Ashley, and Steven Junior. He was working at a pizza shop. He also worked with groups that searched for missing children and held talks with children to warn them about the dangers of speaking to strangers, personal safety, and some of the warning signs to look out for.
Legacy
On Saturday 16th September 1989, while riding his motorcycle home from work, a driver ran a stop sign and overtook Steven’s vehicle, causing a fatal collision. The driver fled the scene but was later identified as 28-year-old Antonio Loera. Loera was sentenced to three months for felony hit-and-run driving, with a twelve-month probation added. An earlier vehicular manslaughter charge had been dropped. Steven left behind a wife and two young children.
Timmy White entered law enforcement, and in 2005 became a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Deputy. Like Steven before him, Timothy gave lectures to children on his experiences. He married, and had two children, but sadly died from a pulmonary embolism in April 2010, at the age of just 35.
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