by Echols, Mike
"I knew it wasn't right mainly because it was never done to me [before]. My father didn't do it! I just basically thought that it was something sorta' normal that I never had known about before. And it hurt. It hurt a lot, and I kept crying . . . but Parnell just ignored me and kept on doing it."
The next morning Parnell awoke early and left his son to finish his drug-induced sleep. When he returned a few hours later he found Dennis engrossed in play with Queenie. While gone, Parnell had traded in his old possibly recognizable white Buick and, using some money given him by his mother, bought an equally old but unknown and better-running white Rambler American.
Parnell told his son that they were going on a trip. Unknown to Dennis, while exchanging automobiles the previously complacent Parnell was startled to learn of Bob Augustine's—Dennis's maternal grandfather's—recent relocation: he had moved his house trailer to Judy's Trailer Park, just a few hundred feet from the little red cabin. Said Murph succinctly, "Parnell decided to split." Although Bob's grandson had never visited him there, and neither one knew of the other's proximity, Parnell was taking no chances. He was anxious to leave the San Joaquin Valley where Dennis had been born and had spent all of his young life with his own family and head for northern California.
In response to a phone call from Parnell, Murph hitchhiked to Cathy's Valley that afternoon and brought with him—as the ex-con had instructed—Parnell's last paycheck and some blank signature cards to open a new savings account at the Wells Fargo Branch Bank in the Yosemite Valley. Parnell had hatched a scheme to blackmail the simple-minded kitchen cleaner by threatening to identify him as the kidnapper unless Murph agreed to deposit a portion of each of his own paychecks into this new account; and since he no longer had a job, Parnell could certainly use the money, for he further dictated to Murph that only he would make withdrawals.
Then, shortly before dusk on Monday, December 18, 1972, Dennis Gregory Parnell climbed into the Rambler's front seat with his puppy, Queenie; his new dad and rapist, Kenneth Parnell, climbed into the driver's seat; and they both waved good-bye to Murph and drove off.
From Soledad Penitentiary in 1984 Parnell boasted that he drove Dennis "right through Merced" that night. However, Dennis is certain that they traveled north through Mariposa and then northwest toward Mt. Bullion. But then the seven-year-old fell asleep for the balance of the trip, apparently through Oakland, across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, past San Quentin Penitentiary, and another fifty-five miles on north to Santa Rosa.
It was long after ten P.M. when "Kenneth E. Parnell and son" registered at the Tropics Motel on Santa Rosa's south side and were assigned to room 18. Parnell parked at the door and tenderly carried his sleeping son inside. Gently, he laid Dennis on the bed, undressed the boy down to his briefs, and covered him up. Santa Rosa was the Sonoma County seat, the heart of the fabled California wine country, a small yet bustling city of 50,000 . . . and an innocuous middle-class "hometown" that Parnell had carefully and shrewdly chosen.
When they awoke the next morning, Parnell took Dennis to a nearby café for breakfast. As they walked back from breakfast Dennis saw the cracking stucco walls and weathered, tilted signs that typified the Tropics and its equally dilapidated neighbors along Santa Rosa Avenue, former tourist courts that dotted this backwater that had once been U.S. 101. Now bypassed by the freeway from San Francisco, they languished as low-income transient accommodations by the week or by the month, cramped accommodations which would serve as Dennis's home for most of the next eighteen months.
Four days later, fearing that someone might discover them, Ken moved himself and Dennis to another aging motel, the Pelissier, across town on quiet Mendocino Avenue. It was a family-type place, clean and run by an accommodating yet reserved Pakistani family . . . just right for the anonymity Parnell sought. It was amid the sparse furnishings of room 16 at the Pelissier that Dennis spent his first of eight Christmases away from his own family, quietly opening the three presents from his new dad, a toy rifle, a toy bow and arrow, and a Hot Wheels Race Track set, playing idly with them as Ken smugly sat back, lit a cigarette, and watched the holiday fare on TV.
Christmas was bleak at the Stayner home in Merced. Everyone in the family bought and wrapped a special present for Steven, partly because they still considered him a very real part of their family, partly because they felt that doing so would somehow help to bring him home. But it didn't, and Christmas was very sad.
Del couldn't bear to see his other children opening their presents without his Stevie there and so he slipped quietly into his room and cried as he talked to Stevie's picture, asking his son where he was and when he would be coming home.
Being a single parent was difficult for Ken. When he wasn't in prison, he lived a bachelor's life, going and coming as he pleased. But in Santa Rosa he always hired someone to stay with Dennis while he went job-hunting and, later, when he worked. Usually he got sitters through a local babysitting service, but before the first one arrived, Ken indoctrinated Dennis with some Parnell family background, though not the complete truth, and Parnell cautioned Dennis to never, ever say anything to anyone about his being taken from Merced or the by-then almost daily sexual abuse, threatening Dennis with a severe spanking and being locked up in a children's home should he ever say anything about their secrets.
After Christmas, Ken began work as a day front desk clerk at the Santa Rosa Holiday Inn. On January 2, 1973, he registered his son in the second grade at Steele Lane Elementary School in the Bellevue Union School District, stating on the enrollment form: Name, "Dennis G. Parnell"; Date of Birth, "April 18, 1965"; Place of Birth, "Merced, California"; Former School, "Yosemite Elementary, Yosemite National Park" . . . a real school, but one never attended by Dennis Parnell or Steven Stayner. That same month the Bellevue Union School District Office in Santa Rosa received the following letter:
Mr. and Mrs. Delbert Stayner
1655 Bette Street
Merced, California 95340
County Superintendent of Schools:
Would you please distribute the enclosed bulletins to all primary schools in your district? Hopefully we are sending enough; if not, please let us know.
George Hogan, Special Consultant, Office of the Chief Deputy, in Sacramento, suggested this as a means of getting the bulletins to all schools.
Steven may not be in school, but a child may have seen or heard of Steven in his or her neighborhood. We must cover any and all possibilities.
We appreciate your cooperation and thank you for any help.
Sincerely,
[signed] Delbert & Kay Stayner
A copy of this letter and bulletin (i.e., the "Missing Juvenile" flyer) never reached Steele Lane, and it was years later that Del and Kay learned that the letters and bulletins they had so hopefully sent were thrown in the trash at the Bellevue Union School District Office, as well as at many other California school district offices. But an anonymous Steele Lane Elementary School office employee wrote on the back of a form forwarded to Dennis's next school: "Steele Lane did not receive any records from former school." However, like Steele Lane, the next school also failed to insist on receiving his records, and this brief note was the extent of concern for Dennis G. Parnell's lack of records and a birth certificate shown by any of the half-dozen public schools he attended as Kenneth Eugene Parnell's son.
From prison in 1984 Parnell smugly said of his use of Dennis's real middle name, date, and place of birth, and the name of a real elementary school: "You have a lot of qualms about a lot of things in that situation. And I had various reasons for listing Yosemite Elementary. First of all, I had come out of the Park. And I had worked down there." He paused and then ventured, "It just followed the pattern." Still failing to discern acceptance in the author's expression, Parnell lamely added, "It fell right in."
So, on the day that school Christmas holiday ended, Dennis was back in school, albeit with a different name and a new dad, and 170 miles from home . . . and, too, with a new family
history to remember, one taught rather than remembered. But although he was not happy at this new school—once again he was a new kid without friends—Dennis was beginning to settle into his forced identity as Kenneth Parnell's son. After all, he was just seven years old, and he had to look to Parnell as his primary caretaker—as social workers like to phrase it—and he wasn't even sure where he was. Dennis had always been extraordinarily close to his real father, continually following him around. Thus acclimated to having a strong father figure to whom he could relate, what with the nurturing, affectionate, dependent closeness Ken showed his youngest son the vast majority of the time, Dennis quickly adapted to being Kenneth Parnell's son. Therefore the two readily gave the appearance of "father and son" oft recalled by their acquaintances years later when the truth finally became known.
In late January, even though he was employed full-time, Ken went to the local office of the California Department of Human Resources, claimed that he was underemployed, and filed for financial aid. The request was denied.*
On February 24,1973, Ken and Dennis moved from the Pelissier Motel into an old, forty-foot long, dilapidated rental house trailer with peeling grayish-pink paint at the scruffy Mt. Taylor Trailer Park out on Santa Rosa Avenue. But Dennis relished their new home, for there were trees for him to climb and for Queenie to sniff, and other children to play with, and, as Dennis later recalled, Ken liked to do whatever made him happy . . . except, that is, for ending his repetitive sexual assaults on his young son. However, on the whole, Dennis saw his lot as improving. He was quickly becoming assimilated into his second-grade class at his new school, Kawana Elementary. He really liked his teacher, Ms. Englehart, and she him, for on April 6—just five weeks after Dennis had entered her class—she wrote in a report, "Dennis has adjusted quite well to the work and routine of our classroom. He is well liked by the other children, and I am glad to have him."
But Eleanor Lindvall, the school secretary, thought Mr. Parnell's behavior strange, for almost every day Ken would call her to give specific, ever-changing instructions about whether he would pick up Dennis after school, or whether Dennis should go to a babysitter's, or whether Dennis should ride the school bus home. She thought this odd, for he was the only parent who did this on a daily basis, but she never did or said anything to question Parnell's behavior.
Early 1973 was a very difficult, emotional time for Del and Kay. During that first winter a little boy's cowboy boot, somewhat like those Steve had been wearing when he disappeared, was found washed up on the bank of Bear Creek in north Merced. Steve's sister Cindy said, "They started dragging the creek, looking for his remains. Dad got real upset, but then he and my mom looked at it and realized that it wasn't Steve's boot after all."
Steven's parents next wrote to Walter Cronkite at CBS-TV and Frank McGee at NBC-TV, asking that they help try to locate their son through their news programs, but both wrote back saying that Steven's disappearance was old news and that therefore they couldn't help. Next Del and Kay sent copies of the "Missing Juvenile" flyer to TV stations all over the United States asking for the same kind of help, but the responses were nil there, too.
On into spring Del's friends and fellow employees searched until it seemed that they had covered every square foot of Merced County. Recounted Del, "About half of them were organized, but some, like friend Otto Doffee, searched on their own. And he was searching along this little irrigation ditch bank and he ran into a gunny sack. And he said his heart kind of jumped into his throat, because he knew there was something dead inside of it. So, he takes his pocket knife and goes to cutting it open. And when he got it partly cut open he could see hairs, but when he got it all the way cut open . . . well, it was a baby calf. Otto said he sat on that ditch bank after he got through doing that for about fifteen minutes, shaking like a leaf."
Also, Steven's disappearance was a factor in the messy business breakup of two Chinese brothers who had operated a supermarket on Yosemite Parkway and lived in the Stayners' neighborhood. When their business failed, they had a falling out which each blamed on the other, one starting a rumor which accused the other of killing Steven, cutting up his body, and dumping it into the sewer at the store. Del heard about this from co-workers at the CC&G Cannery and went to the police. They tried to get the accused brother to voluntarily take a polygraph examination, but he refused. Just to make sure, though, the police dug up the sewers up and down Yosemite Parkway, but no body or body parts were found.
Late that spring, when Cary helped Del repaint the garage, Del cautioned his oldest son not to paint over the pencil-scrawled signature, "Steven Stayner," one of the last reminders to his family of six that once they had been seven.
At the Mt. Taylor Trailer Park Dennis's new father continued his secretive sex assaults on his young son. One night after a particularly odious, painful session of anal intercourse, Parnell fell asleep; seeing this, Dennis got dressed and, making doubly sure that his dad was asleep, the eight-year-old stole out the trailer's front door, intent on running away and returning to his family in Merced. Hurriedly he walked south several blocks along busy Santa Rosa Avenue before he became lost, panicked, and gave up. Sobbing and shaking with fear, he finally found his way back to the trailer before his dad awoke. This was to be Dennis's last attempt to return to his own family for many, many years to come.
Finally summer arrived and with it the opportunity for Dennis to meet and play with more of the neighbor children, his popularity with the boys increasing considerably when he had finally saved enough of his allowance to buy a G.I.Joe set. Also during that summer Ken began letting Dennis drive the car when they went places around Santa Rosa. Remembered Dennis, "When he first let me drive we were on our way to a flea market in the park. I sat on his lap and he worked the pedals and I just worked the steering wheel. But I only got to drive for about five minutes because I spent most of the time off on the sides of the road."
Summer vacation didn't last long enough for Dennis, and on September 6 he entered the third grade at Kawana Elementary. He soon discovered a neighbor boy he hadn't known before in his class, but they had yet to become friends. According to Dennis, at first he and Kenny Matthias were enemies: "We rode the same bus, and when the bus stopped on the way home I would run through the bus door. Kenny would be right on my butt, but I was faster and so I'd get on down the road, and he'd give up chasing me. Then I'd turn around and yell, 'Fuck you, you stupid jerk,' and stuff like that. I used to get him pissed!"
In 1973 Kenny Matthias was a jug-eared kid with a pixyish smile. He looked much the same in 1984 as he recounted the initial animosity between him and Dennis: "He started saying smart things to me on the bus. I let it slide for a couple of days, and then finally it built up inside of me and I had to get him back. So I started chasing him down the road when he got off the bus, and one day I did catch him and we got in a fight. I beat him up, too! And that made his dad mad, so Ken came over to see my parents.
"I didn't get in trouble about it because my dad always told me to stick up for my rights and fight. I guess Ken didn't have that same philosophy, because he said he would rather see Dennis walk away from a fight. And it was then that we shook hands and we were friends ever since then. We got pretty close, too. In Santa Rosa we had an acre lot, and we would always go out in the back and play army on the mounds with his G.I.Joe sets."
Soon Dennis headed for the Matthias' home every day after school. Ken quickly realized that his son had stumbled onto the ideal babysitting arrangement, so he asked Barbara, Kenny's mother, if she would keep his son after school and feed him supper. Recalled Dennis, "She said, 'All right.' He paid her for it. And so I got real acquainted with the Matthias family."
In the late fall of 1973, third-graders Dennis and Kenny decided to experiment with an adult vice . . . smoking. Ken chain-smoked unfiltered Camels and Dennis stole and hid a pack from his father's carton. Then, when Kenny came over, Dennis pulled them out and they lit up. "We sat there and acted big and tough, and did l
ittle things like Parnell would do, like blowing smoke rings," Dennis recalled.
As Kenny tells it, "I came over and Ken was in the back bedroom sleeping. I had been trying to get Dennis to smoke, so naturally I smoked some cigarettes, too. But then Ken woke up and came in and caught us hiding behind the couch smoking. He started yelling and grabbed Dennis by the arm and slapped him open-handed and then he told me to go home."
That fall Dennis was ill a good deal of the time, first with the mumps and then with impetigo, ailments which caused him to miss twenty-seven out of thirty-nine school days and resulted in Ken's taking him to a doctor for the first time since the kidnapping. Ken stayed with Dennis during the entire appointment and made a point of answering all the doctor's probing background questions—even those directed to Dennis—himself.
With his relative job security (he'd worked at the Holiday Inn for ten months), in early November Ken felt flush enough to rent a large wood-frame house at 1107 Sonoma Avenue in central Santa Rosa. It was a wonderful place for Dennis and Queenie to romp and play together, what with a tall spruce tree for Dennis to climb in front and a fenced yard in back for Queenie, and seven rooms which afforded Dennis more space and privacy than he had ever before experienced.
In some ways, though, Dennis looked on the move as a setback, for he had to leave the comfortable environment of his third-grade class at Kawana Elemen tary to attend a new school, Doyle Park Elementary, and he felt that the move also meant leaving behind his new best friend, Kenny Matthias. But Dennis's father surprised him when, right after the move, he allowed Dennis to have his first-ever overnight guest, Kenny. At the time there was more to Ken's relationship with the Matthias family than his son's friendship with Kenny. Not only was there a not-so-platonic relationship developing between Barbara and the occasionally heterosexual Ken, but the crafty pedophile-kidnapper had also begun to eye young Kenny as yet another sexually attractive boy. But Parnell didn't move in on Kenny . . . yet.
