I Know My First Name Is Steven

by Echols, Mike

  Their neighbors, the Pipers, thought Ken and Dennis odd. They were never invited into the caretaker's cabin, and when they dropped by to give Dennis a ride to school the teen would always be waiting outside for them, rain or shine. William "Billie" Piper assessed Ken Parnell as one of the strangest, most secretive people he had ever met, and said that when Ken did talk to him he wouldn't look him in the eye. "Then, as soon as I turned away, he'd look right at me. It would make me feel kind of funny in a way."

  Perhaps this was because of the real reason Parnell had moved to the Stornettas' ranch: according to former Mendocino County D.A. Joe Allen and his Chief Deputy D.A. George McClure, Ken had actually been hired by Duke Stornetta to guard the brothers' hidden commercial plots of marijuana, which they grew in secluded areas of the Mountain View Ranch. McClure went on to say that during the 1970s and early 1980s some members of the Stornetta family were known to be cultivating cannabis and that the area's resident deputy sheriff had an income "many times greater than could be accounted for by his salary, although his usual public explanation was that he had been a very shrewd real estate investor."

  The officers continued their story by saying that in Mendocino County in those days old-timers and newcomers alike who grew pot were arrested, except for the old-timers who grew it in the area under the jurisdiction of that particular deputy. Also, the lawmen told of a close relative of the Stornetta brothers, their cousin Henry ("Stogie") Stornetta trying to hire someone to kill his wife. Stogie's plot was uncovered, and this led to an investigation in which the same deputy sheriff opened Stogie's safe under a court order, dutifully reporting to the judge that he found "no drugs and nothing unusual . . . just fifty to two hundred thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds."

  Stogie was tried and convicted and served time in prison, but one of these two former peace officers facetiously mused about the source of Stogie's cash and about the purpose to which Parnell had put the good wages he'd more than likely received for services rendered to the Stornettas.

  Duke Stornetta liked Parnell's strange, quiet son and often took Dennis along with him when he went deer hunting or was out in the fields putting out salt for his sheep. But, he said, "The boy would never talk. He'd answer my questions, but I could never make him talk first. . . he'd just answer my questions. Even Parnell, you know, he almost never spoke. If you would see them out in the yard at the cabin and say hello, off they would go . . . [Parnell would] just turn and walk in the cabin with the boy. Parnell was a very peculiar type of fellow, but I never realized what he did to the boy."

  Behind the cabin's closed door Parnell was still committing fellatio and sodomy on Dennis, but the frequency was continuing to decline as his sexual attraction to younger boys increased. Dennis said that while they lived at the ranch Parnell tried several times to coerce him into helping to kidnap a boy from Santa Rosa. But Dennis adamantly refused to help, although it wasn't long before Parnell found one of Dennis's friends who was willing to help him kidnap a new son-cum-sex partner.

  Sean Poorman and Dennis had known each other since the seventh grade, but the two had never been really good friends. But Dennis got to know Sean better while he was hitchhiking to school in Mendocino City, since he and Sean rode the Mendocino school bus from Elk, the village where Sean lived. A dark-haired teenager, ruggedly handsome Sean Poorman lived with his mother, Chris, his two brothers Shea and Jim, ten and thirteen, and Henry K. "Hank" Mettier, Jr., their mother's live-in boyfriend, in a rented redwood-shingled house next to the power station on the Philo-Greenwood Road at the edge of Elk.

  Shea and Jim were much brighter and more socially adept than their brother Sean, a slow learner who was easily frustrated in the classroom and in most social situations. According to Sean's sworn statement, Mettier was a small-time drug dealer, having previously been arrested and convicted for selling pot in Marin County. Now, though, his operation was much more discrete . . . and lucrative.

  During the fall of 1979 Damon Carroll and Sean came to know each other better and better, and one day Damon took Sean home to meet his mother, but Kathryn Vinciguerra immediately developed a dislike for Sean and his relationship with her son. "Sean was older," she said. "He was very manipulative of Damon, and Damon kind of put Sean on a pedestal. Damon was just fetching, and would do anything for Sean. Sean was definitely the leader." Kathryn did not involve herself in picking her children's friends. However, her son's friendship with Sean was different. "I did have a dream, and it was quite vivid, about Sean having a devilish personification, and I felt very strongly that it was not a good relationship for Damon. I felt that I had to communicate it to Damon, and I did so, and a little later on Damon came to me and told me that he did understand and respect my intuition about Sean."

  Kim Peace also got "bad vibes" from Sean: "Sean's brother, Jim, was a very nice guy. They were best friends. But Sean was a troublemaker and into drugs . . . always cutting school, always getting in trouble with the law. And Jim was quite the opposite. He never was in trouble."

  Sean first became acquainted with Parnell in November of 1979. Said Damon, a witness to their first meeting: "They went down to the beach and talked privately. It was really strange, because Ken was bringing Dennis to spend the weekend with me and Sean. As soon as they showed up Ken said, 'Sean, I've got something to talk to you about.' And they went down to the beach and talked for a while. And it was strange, thinking what would Ken have to do with Sean, 'cause Ken really didn't know him that well."

  Dennis recalls that this occurred when Ken realized that he could make money selling marijuana that he probably took surreptitiously from the Stornettas' crop he had been hired to guard. In another twist Sean said that that fall he had learned about Dennis having been kidnapped years before by Parnell and that when he told Mettier, Hank had seemed extraordinarily interested in it.

  The relationship between Sean Poorman and Ken Parnell grew in mid November when, invited by Dennis but at Ken's insistence, Sean came to the cabin to spend the weekend. Said Sean, "Ken picked me up in front of the Elk Post Office. I didn't even want to go, but I had to be polite. I didn't feel like going all the way back up in the sticks. And Parnell picked me up and started talking about how he wanted me to sell some marijuana for him. Then he got into this business of how he wanted a kid. I said, 'Why don't you adopt one?' And he gave me some reason how he couldn't do that . . . it was too much of a hassle, he had to pay out some money. He said he would just like to find some kid who doesn't have a home, whose mother and father don't like him anymore, and he's thinking about running away from home.

  "And I got the impression that this guy was weird . . . he's telling me how he wants a kid, just pick him up off the street and bring him up here. He wanted a little kid, about five or six years old. He wasn't putting me on, either. He was really serious cause he whipped out a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and kind of waved it in my face and said, 'You help me find a kid and this is yours.' And I says, 'Well, I'll do my best.' I thought it was cuckoo; I mean, I thought maybe I should hit him up for a hundred," Sean laughed.

  When Parnell and Sean got to Manchester, Parnell stopped at the general store and bought a fifth of Jack Daniels and then drove straight to Point Arena High School, picked up Dennis, and took both boys to the Pirates' Cove drive-in for hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Although while they ate there was no conversation about selling marijuana or kidnapping little boys, Parnell quickly brought up both subjects again once they were on the road to the cabin. According to Sean, Dennis had told Ken that he, Sean, would be a likely person to hire to "strong-arm some kid and bring him to the cabin." On the way to the ranch Parnell explained to Sean just how he wanted the kidnapping accomplished . . . even to the point of handing Sean a bottle of the Nytol sleeping pills with which he was to dose the intended victim. Sean slipped the pills into his pocket and later used them himself.

  About sunset the trio arrived at the cabin and Ken gave the boys the fifth of Jack Daniels and told them to enjoy it wh
ile he sacked out for a nap before driving to his graveyard shift at The Palace Hotel. Although Dennis occasionally drank beer and hard liquor on his own, beginning that night Parnell not only allowed his son to drink whiskey in his presence but often purchased it for him.

  When Ken returned the next morning he woke the groggy teenagers from their alcohol-induced slumber and drove them to Elk, dropping Sean off at the post office before taking Dennis south to Point Arena High. All the way into Elk, Ken reminded Sean of his offer: "Fifty dollars for a kid, and another twenty if you bring this kid up in a couple days." And Dennis saw Ken hand Sean a bunch of dime baggies of pot to sell when he got out at Elk, admonishing him not to spend the proceeds.

  For Dennis, Christmas 1979 was quiet and very melancholy. For the first time in several years he found himself repeatedly thinking about his own parents, brother, and sisters in Merced, and sorely wishing that he was back there with them.

  When the New Year began Parnell ended his sex acts with his son—"on about January third or fourth" Dennis recalls—but increased his efforts to kidnap a new, younger sex partner and possibly, it had begun to appear, rid himself of Dennis.

  Steven's second-grade school photograph from Charles Wright Elementary School in Merced, California (1972). (Courtesy of the Merced Sun-Star)

  Steven (in the middle, behind Santa Claus) attends a friend's birthday party. This was the last picture taken of him before he was kidnapped (December 3, 1972).

  Steven scrawled his name on his family's garage wall December 1972 . . . the day before he was kidnapped by Kenneth Parnell.

  Del and Kay Stayner pose for the author outside the Fishermen's Grotto Restaurant on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf on March 4, 1980, just two days after Steven returned home.

  Parnell is sullen in this mugshot taken by Ukiah Police shortly after his arrest on March 2, 1980.

  Edward Ervin Murphy smokes a hand-rolled cigarette in his cluttered third-floor room in the residential Hotel Covel in downtown Modesto, California.

  The service station in Yosemite Parkway in Merced, California, where Parnell and Murphy kidnapped Steven on December 4, 1972 . . . just three blocks from Steven's home. The station wagon is parked in the same spot where Parnell drove up and convinced Steven to get into his car.

  Parnell lived in the Curry Company's dorm F (employee housing) in Yosemite National Park. He hid the boy in his room there for several days.

  Nineteen-year-old Steven poses in the doorway of room 18 at the Tropicana Motel in Santa Rosa, California, where he and Parnell spent their first Christmas together in 1972.

  Steven revisits the old rental trailer where he lived with Parnell at the Mt. Taylor Trailer Park in Santa Rosa, California.

  Registered as "Dennis Parnell" in sixth grade, Steven (last row, fifth from the right) poses for this class photo. Four of the other boys in his class were victims of Kenneth Parnell's attentions as well. (Courtesy of Bill Patton.)

  Steven had lived as "Dennis Parnell" for five years when this seventh-grade school picture was taken. (Courtesy of the Stayner Family.)

  Kenneth Parnell and his "son," Dennis, pose for a photo at the home of his landlady, Tyne Cordeiro, near Comptche, California, in 1978. (Courtesy of Tyne Cordeiro.)

  This is the caretaker's stark cabin at the Mountain View Ranch where Steven lived with Parnell – without electricity or indoor plumbing – from July 1979 until March 1, 1980.

  Steven stands in front of the Mountain View cabin where he lived with Parnell from July 1979 until March 1, 1980.

  Some of the evidence successfully used by Mendocino County to prosecute Parnell in the kidnapping of Timmy White: Timmy's underwear and boots, the bottle of sleeping pills used to drug him, the hair coloring used to dye his hair, and the Peterbilt cap worn during the kidnapping by Sean Poorman.

  Barbara Matthias's son Lloyd was sixteen when the author interviewed him outside Barbara and John Allen's remote trailer home in northern Mendocino County.

  Dave Johnson was Ukiah's police chief when Timmy disappeared on Valentine's Day 1980.

  Pat Hallford was the Merced County District Attorney who successfully prosecuted Parnell and Murphy for the 1972 kidnapping of Steven Stayner.

  Timmy White and his mother Angela are shown here on the night they were reunited at the Ukiah Police Station. (Courtesy of the White Family Collection.)

  Steven and Timmy as they appeared at the end of their press conference, the morning of their return. This photograph appeared on the front page of major newspapers around the world. (John Storey/San Francisco Chronicle.)

  Steven poses with his youngest sister, Cory, at the Fishermen's Grotto Restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California, when he and the author first met, March 4, 1980, just two days after he returned home.

  Timmy White beams at Steven after presenting him with a check for $15,000 as his reward for returning him to his parents. (AP/Wide World Photos.)

  The summer after his safe return home, fifteen-year-old Steven cradles his beloved Manchester Terrier, Queenie, which was given to him by Parnell. To the left behind Steven is his name, which he had scrawled on the garage wall the day before he was kidnapped.

  The Stayner family in front of their house at 1655 Bette Street in Merced, the same house they lived in when Steven was kidnapped (left to right, Cory, Jody, Steven, Cindy, Cary, Kay, and Del).

  On June 22, 1981, Steven bravely testified at Parnell's trial for kidnapping Timmy White. (AP/Wide World Photos.)

  During the summer of 1984, Steven worked bagging hamburger at the Richwood Meat Company plant between Merced and Atwater, California. On September 17, 1989, he was killed in a motorcycle-automobile accident in front of the plant.

  On June 13, 1985, Steven married Jody Edmonton in Atwater, California. (AP/Wide World Photos.)

  Steven Stayner holds his son Steven Gregory II, left, and daughter Ashley. (Mike Blaesser/Merced Sun-Star)

  Chapter Eight

  The Valentine's Day Kidnapping

  "Get the kid!"

  By early February 1980 Sean Poorman had still not kidnapped a young boy for Parnell and brought him to the remote cabin . . . but he had smoked up fifty dollars' worth of Parnell's pot and Ken was not happy. Already that year Ken had forced a very reluctant Dennis to accompany him to Santa Rosa on a "shopping trip" for another "son." Said Dennis, "It was the same thing"—as the attempts in 1975—"identical, exactly. We were there a couple of hours."

  On Wednesday, February 13, Parnell again picked up Sean in Elk and drove straight to his cabin by way of Boonville, leaving Dennis to take the Point Arena school bus and then ride the rest of the way home with the Pipers. According to Dennis, when he arrived at the cabin that afternoon, "Parnell told Sean right in front of me, 'Dennis is just no help at all. He never wants to help me.' And it made me mad. He said that I was worthless, and at the time I didn't know what he was talking about, but that made me so mad that I didn't speak to Parnell for the rest of the day. I was insulted." Later that evening Parnell said that they were going to Ukiah the next morning to pick up a box spring at a garage sale and he needed Sean's help to load the box spring.

  But Dennis knew better. Parnell had taken him and Sean into Ukiah several times early that month to follow one particular five-year-old boy. That boy's name was Timmy White.

  After fixing and eating sandwiches for supper, Dennis and Sean started pulling on yet another fifth of Jack Daniels, topping this off with a "nightcap" marijuana joint outside before coming back inside about 8 P.M. and falling into a stuporous alcohol-and-drug-induced slumber.

  Parnell had told Sean to wake him up at nine, but both boys were dead to the world by then and Parnell slept on until eleven, when he awoke with a start. Cursing, he angrily shook Sean awake, pulled on his shoes, and grabbed his partner-in-crime-to-be by the sleeve, sprinting out the door to his old Maverick. The car coughed alive and the pair roared off into the night.

  They arrived at the hotel at midnight and Parnell apologi
zed profusely to the evening desk clerk for his tardiness. Unconcerned, Sean watched a movie on the lobby TV. Later Sean curled up behind the front desk at Parnell's feet and fell asleep. At six-thirty the next morning, Valentine's Day, Parnell woke up Sean and sent him out for donuts and coffee. Then, when he got off at eight, he took Sean to McDonald's and over pancakes and sausage went over his kidnapping plans, twice having to spell out for the teenager exactly what role he was to play. About eight-thirty they left and went to scope out the "particular boy" among the children entering Yokayo Elementary.

  Failing to spot him, Parnell told Sean they would try again later, and they began a tour of garage sales advertised in the Ukiah Daily Journal. Sean said that Parnell bought a black briefcase for him at one and, inexplicably, little girl's clothes at another. Then they went to the Salvation Army thrift shop, where Parnell bought a box spring but did not take it with him. The Thrifty Drug store was their next stop, where Parnell bought a small bottle of Nytol sleeping pills and handed them to Sean. By then it was a little past eleven. Parnell drove back to Yokayo Elementary and the pair began again to troll South Dora Street for their intended victim, Sean remarking that at first they saw youngsters who had gotten out at eleven walking home, including a little boy whose Slinky toy he helped to retrieve from a sewer drain. But it was not until the Yokayo kindergartners got out at eleven-thirty that the two kidnappers began their task in earnest.