by Echols, Mike
"That's nice," Dennis parried with angry sarcasm.
Then Parnell surprised both boys by asking, "You want to go to Pirates' Cove and have a hamburger?"
"Sure!" was their joint response, and off they went.
A Point Arena friend of Dennis's, Marsha Beall, remembered the incident. "My cousins own the Pirates' Cove and one of them, Darla Reynolds, said that when they came in she looked at the little boy and she thought, 'Wow! He really resembles that little boy in the newspaper [referring to Timmy's picture in The Ukiah Daily Journal].' But you know how you think of something and then you take a second look and go, 'Oh, but I don't want to get involved.' "
Also, a couple of days after the dinner at Pirates' Cove, on February 27, Kim Peace saw Dennis and Timmy sitting in Parnell's car in the parking lot at the Manchester General Store. Then, that same evening, when she saw Timmy's picture in the newspaper, Kim recalled, "I kept thinking to myself, 'Where had I seen that little kid before?' And then it finally dawned on me that that was the little kid I had seen with Dennis in the parking lot in Manchester!"
Like Dennis before him, Timmy spent some of his time playing with small plastic toys Ken had bought at a flea market. But when Dennis was home the two often went across the road to the barn to feed Dennis's rabbits and chickens, climb the trees, and play hide-and-seek inside the barn and around the shearing shed and holding pens. As the two boys got to know each other better, Dennis told Timmy about his own life. Recalled Timmy, "He said he was my age and he got kidnapped by Parnell." And that, said Timmy, really scared him, for he couldn't even imagine himself as old as Dennis and still living with Parnell.
Dennis felt that sooner or later Parnell would sexually assault Timmy, and so the teenager began carrying his Bowie knife strapped to his side or hidden inside his boot. Ironically, Parnell was also concerned about the little boy's welfare and warned Timmy "Not to go with anyone and not to talk to strangers."
By the fourth day of his ordeal Timmy remembers that he considered Dennis to be "like a big brother" and he trusted the teenager enough to ask him to take him home. Dennis agreed to do so, but persistent rains and a lack of vehicles along the Boonville to Manchester road out front, plus Parnell's daytime presence at the cabin, caused a number of delays in Dennis's planned effort.
In Ukiah the investigation continued. But police had no clues and were at a virtual dead end trying to solve Timmy's disappearance. Detective Sergeant Dennis Marcheschi, now in charge of the investigation, said, "I think I probably lived with his family during that time, going over all his habits, where he went, what kind of food he enjoyed, his sleep patterns . . . I don't think there was anything about Timmy that I didn't know.
"Then, toward the end of the second week, Dick Finn from the D.A.'s office flew with me to Los Angeles to interview Timmy's natural father down there, and we spent the next four or five days contacting and interviewing every family member in the L.A. area. The Ventura County sheriff's office even gave us an office and all of the help in the world. They set up communications with all the family members, too. But still we had absolutely zero."
Filled in Chief Johnson, "In the meantime we had the sheriff's Aero Squadron activated, and they flew thirty-five or forty hours searching for Timmy. The creeks were running pretty good at that time and so they were searched, but still nothing. He had absolutely vanished right off the face of the earth. No ransom note had showed up, and we had searched everywhere and found nothing. So it became pretty apparent at that point that it was a kidnapping and not just a disappearance."
Even with Timmy concealed at his cabin, Parnell continued his habit of having a beer at the Samoa Club every morning after work. Jim Bertain, the bar's owner, said, "He used to sit in here every morning and we would be talking about the White kid. We'd be wondering what happened to him, and Parnell suggested that maybe he got washed away in a creek."
Also while Timmy was at the cabin, another interesting yet confusing twist occurred when Dennis telephoned Damon and invited him to come to the cabin for the weekend, Damon's impression being that Dennis wanted to do anything to get Timmy out of his hair . . . or, perhaps, get someone else to take Timmy home. "I remember this clear. This was on a Thursday [February 28] that I talked to Dennis, and he wanted me to come spend the weekend. I knew that Timmy White was there because Sean had told me. I didn't want to have anything to do with it, cause, like, if for some reason Ken got the idea I knew, I'd be in big trouble."
Even though Damon declined the invitation, he phoned Dennis back the next night and told him about the $15,000 reward that was being offered for Timmy's safe return. He said that he then encouraged Dennis to take Timmy into Ukiah himself and claim the money, then reflected, "I should have gone out there 'cause he probably wanted me to help him return the kid. Then I could have got the $15,000 reward."
But even without Damon's encouragement Dennis had already made plans to return Timmy to Ukiah, his prime motivation having nothing to do with the reward. He has never directly admitted it, but Dennis's later actions and remarks point directly to a sibling rivalry centering on the attention Parnell was lavishing on Timmy. Dennis had been thwarted one evening by Parnell's failure to go to work, and other evenings by the persistent rain when he and Timmy got soaked to the skin.
However, Dennis had no way of knowing Parnell planned to kill him and then, with help from a teenage acquaintance of Dennis, bury his body in a grave he and his accomplice had already dug along the upper, uninhabited reaches of the Garcia River. That done, Parnell would pull up stakes and move with Timmy to the cabin in Arkansas. But during the last two weeks of February 1980, the same winter rains made it impossible to access the remote upper reaches of the Garcia River, and delayed his plan.
As Saturday, March 1 dawned, Sergeant Marcheschi left southern California, driving north to follow up on yet another tip about Timmy's disappearance, this time a psychic in San Jose suggested by the F.B.I. As the sun came up Marcheschi departed Los Angeles in a repaired Ukiah Fire Department car he had picked up in L.A. and, as he drove, mentally reviewed the case, arriving in San Jose late that afternoon for his meeting with the psychic.
Recounted Marcheschi about the session, "She had Parnell's physical stature, hair, age, the fact that he had been an abused child and had served time for the same offense. Too, she described the cabin and that there were animals around it, but by that time both of us were mentally exhausted, and so I went to bed."
Chapter Nine
Nightfall, March 1, 1980
"Is my dad still alive?"
The sun set a little past six that Saturday. Because of the typical, rainy, wintery coastal weather, it was the first sunset that Dennis and Timmy had seen since Timmy's kidnapping on Valentine's Day. With the rainclouds gone, the dark pavement in front of the cramped old cabin reflected the glistening twilight, and with his dad almost ready to leave for work, Dennis was thinking of his plan to finally get Timmy back home.
The boys' dad, Ken, usually slept from late afternoon until nine at night, but today he had gone to sleep just after lunch and was up before sunset. For seven months he had been the graveyard shift desk clerk at The Palace Hotel in Ukiah, but tonight he would start his new position as the hotel's security guard. A punctual man, Ken was going to make certain that he arrived early enough to review his duties with the evening manager.
As was his habit, as soon as Ken awoke, he had a cup of instant coffee Dennis had fixed him with superheated water from the kitchen tap. Now, several cups and chain-smoked Camels later, the boys' dad was ready to leave. Characteristically saying little to his sons, Kenneth Parnell went out the front door, climbed into his seven-year-old white-over-purple Ford Maverick, and drove off east and into the gathering dusk for his hour-long commute over the winding, twisting county road toward the Anderson Valley, Boonville, and Mendocino's county seat.
Outwardly, Dennis was tranquil as he peered through the cabin window and saw his dad depart. But for several minutes he continued t
o stare contemplatively at the now-deserted road, lost in thought. . . thought about his own family in Merced, about the hell he had been through over the past seven years, about his determination that the same fate would not befall Timmy, about his fears of what lay ahead for him that night, and about his anger at his dad for the attention he had begun to give his new little brother.
Turning his attention to Timmy, Dennis watched as the grubby little boy sat cross-legged in the middle of Parnell's bed, "reading" his comic books. In some ways the teenager had begun to like the slight, now-brunet five-year-old and to care about his safety. Dennis was reasonably sure that Parnell had yet to make a sexual move on Timmy, but just the thought of it made the teenager shudder visibly.
Abruptly Dennis turned away from the approaching dark outside and went to the kitchen counter and made bologna sandwiches for their supper. He laid out the meal on the small kitchen table, along with bananas and milk, and called Timmy to come and eat. Silently the two consumed what they knew without speaking would be their last meal at the remote one-room cabin they called home.
As he got up from the table, Dennis told Timmy to put on his gray-green jacket against the damp, chill breezes from the coast, and the teenager donned his dirty gray hooded sweatshirt. Dennis then went to the bureau which he shared with his father and pulled his Bowie knife from under the rumpled pile of clothes in his drawer, swiftly slipping its sheathed blade out of sight into his right boot. Then he knelt by his trembling Manchester Terrier, Queenie—his constant companion throughout his seven-year ordeal—and assured her that he would come back for her. Standing abruptly, Dennis took Timmy firmly by the hand and without looking back guided the boy out the front door and onto the tiny porch.
Closing the door behind him, Dennis scooped Timmy into his arms and briskly cut through the damp grass in front of the cabin before angling across the wet pavement toward the barn. A fleeting pang of fear hit the teenager as he passed the ranch house and for an instant thought about how angry Parnell would be if he should suddenly return home to find his sons out on the road, trying to escape. But Dennis had made up his mind to get Timmy back to his family and, well, he really didn't know what he would do then . . . but that decision would just have to wait. They had set out, and that was enough to worry about for now.
Remembering their previous attempts to hitchhike into Ukiah—with Timmy complaining about being cold, wet, and hungry—Dennis quickened his pace to put as much distance as possible between them and the cabin before Timmy's inevitable, "Ohhhh! I want to go inside!"
Glancing over his shoulder every few seconds, his heart pounding loudly as it crept up his throat, Dennis felt he had walked for miles. However, they were only a quarter of a mile from the cabin, up the hill and around the bend. Again he looked back fearfully and was startled to see approaching headlights reflecting off the distant wet pavement. He froze in fear for a moment before setting Timmy down in front of him and haltingly sticking out his thumb. It took an eternity and seemed an apparition, but the car finally drew near and braked to a halt. Dennis grabbed Timmy's hand and excitedly ran to the passenger door. When he jerked it open, a smiling brown face illuminated by the dash greeted him with, "Buenos noches!" Confused but not hesitating at this stroke of luck, the boys climbed in. But once inside, Timmy was frightened, remarking later, "I thought that this guy was going to kidnap me, too!"
But Timmy nestled into the safety of Dennis's lap as his big brother-protector shut the door and their Samaritan drove them off toward Boonville and safety, Dennis feeling a deep sense of relief that they were finally on their way.
The Mexican national knew little English, and therefore communication with him was difficult, but Dennis did understand that he was following a friend who was having car trouble and, almost unbelievably, he was following his friend all the way into Ukiah!
As they twisted through the deep, brooding redwood forests east of the ranch, Dennis briefly explained to the driver that he and his little brother were on their way from Point Arena to their home in Ukiah. The mahogany face nodded and smiled, whether in understanding or kindness Dennis did not know.
On through the pitch-black night they drove, following the confining road as it dropped down into a canyon and threaded itself across the high, narrow Rancheria Creek bridge before finally curling down the eastern side of the first coastal mountain range and entering the broad, clear-cut Anderson Valley.
The three figures in the front seat of the battered old Volkswagen square-back stared silently at the road ahead, Dennis alone glancing briefly to the left as they passed the Boonville Airport where he had once wanted to attend Anderson Valley High School's popular pilot training program. Reaching California 128, they turned right and drove into the sleepy agricultural community of Boonville, where the Mexican pulled up behind his friend's car across from The Horn of Zeese—Cup of Coffee—Restaurant . . . that odd little language, Dennis thought, that the Boonters (natives) used. Some of his friends could actually speak this odd language which their forefathers devised over a hundred years before to converse secredy when in the presence of outsiders.
As the boys sat mute in the car, waiting for their savior to finish checking his friend's car, Dennis became lost in a mental exercise as he reflected on his mission with Timmy, his fear of Parnell, what he was going to do once he had liberated Timmy, and his hidden Bowie knife—a barlow, the Boonters would call it—this making him a little collar jumpy (nervous). But the tweed sitting on his lap was innocently ignorant of his big brother's trepidation about what lay ahead.
Suddenly Dennis's ruminations were cut short, for after only a few minutes—it had seemed an entire evening to him—the Mexican was back in the car and they were soon continuing through Boonville toward the road's intersection with California 253 to Ukiah.
With their turn south they were again traversing a twisting, curving road, albeit a bit wider and better paved, as they climbed another coastal range and left behind the peaceful farms of the Anderson Valley. As Dennis settled back in the front seat and comfortingly wrapped his arms around Timmy's waist—as much to meet his own emotional needs as Timmy's—a wave of genuine care, concern, and determination to succeed swept over him as he recalled his feelings of love for his own younger siblings.
Retracing the route in June 1984, Dennis said, "We got over the last hill going into Ukiah and it really scared me, because I was trying to think about what I would do when we got there. I thought, 'It's me against the world. I'm alone now. There's no one to turn to and no one to help me make the decisions.' The main object and most important thing was to get Timmy home safe and sound. I just didn't think about doing anything else then. I knew that I'd be on the run then, but I didn't want to even think about it.
"The only person that I had to talk to was Timmy, and I didn't want to do that in front of this guy. I didn't know for sure how much English he could understand or nothin'. But then we started up South State Street and into Ukiah, and Timmy turns his head and whispers to me that we're near his babysitter's, and that's where he wants to go. So I told the guy to let us out by The Bottle Shoppe. Then Timmy and me walked over to where he said his babysitter lived, but nobody was home."
Timmy then told Dennis that he lived south of town, so they went back to South State Street and began trekking south. Once they reached the freeway, Timmy seemed totally lost, and Dennis became convinced that the five-year-old didn't know where he lived. They turned around and walked back north, stopping at a phone booth where the teenager looked up the address of the Ukiah Police Station. They continued north toward the police station and along the way double-checked Diane Crawford's home, but still no one was home.
At East Standley Street they turned east toward the police station, briefly passing along the southeast corner of The Palace Hotel as Dennis's heart jumped into his throat while he momentarily considered his options should Parnell see them. Dennis recalled, "Well, at that time I was thinking about using the knife on him if he came [at me].
I don't know if I would have or not, but that's what I was thinking at the time. I didn't think that he would have gone after Timmy. He would have tried and done something to me first. He wasn't afraid of me." Fortunately, the three did not meet.
Half a minute later Dennis and Timmy were safely across the street and hidden from The Palace Hotel by the surrounding two-story buildings and the narrowness of East Standley Street. . . and now they were only a block from their destination.
At the corner of the municipal parking lot, just west of the police station, Dennis paused and hunkered down eye-to-eye with Timmy. Comfortingly he put his hands on the frightened five-year-old's shoulders and told him to go in the front door of the station and give his name to the first policeman he saw. Dennis assured him that the officer would see that he got home safely.
Inside the station, veteran Patrol Officer Bob Warner had just begun the graveyard shift. It was shortly after eleven, and he was talking to the dispatcher near the station's glass front door when he saw something strange. Recalled Warner, "I was getting ready to leave the station when I noticed a small boy come to the front door, push the door open, and then look back out toward the street, and turn around and run back out. He just started to come inside the door, and then he turned and went back out. Of course, being that time of night and seeing a small boy doing such things, I got a little curious as to what was going on; so I went out the front and I saw this young boy running across the parking lot. I noticed another, older boy walking westbound on Standley, just approaching Main Street. I was afraid that if I just took off running that the older boy would also run and we might not get either one.
"So I called for another unit using my portable radio. Fortunately, there was another unit coming down Main. It was Russell VanVoorhis, and he stopped them right in front of the Salvation Army Store. As soon as he said he had them, I got into my patrol car and went up to the location."
