I Know My First Name Is Steven

by Echols, Mike

  Thanks to Shona's sharp instincts, Art Bishop was arrested at her home that afternoon, Shona concluding, "At that point I was bound and determined that Art Bishop would pay for the sexual abuse of my son because that happened when Graeme was alive, healthy, loyal, loving. Art Bishop sexually abused Graeme by taking the nude photographs of him. That in itself would have changed Graeme's life."

  As Shona summed up her son's death, "It's just awful when you realize the only thing you can do for your thirteen-year-old son is make up a basket of flowers to take to the cemetery. When you are asked to part with your child, you give part of yourself away. I think to lose a child is the most unnatural thing in the world. Art Bishop has ruined our lives. He has taken life from us. We exist. We don't live anymore. He took our hearts. I don't think anybody can ever understand what it means to get dressed to go to church to bury your child. I get upset just putting the dinner out. I go to pick up five plates, and it's a reminder that I don't have my son. I know that one day I'll die, too, and I'm glad that I know that now."

  And Shona has strong advice for other parents: "The thing I would say to parents is, I don't care what the situation is, whether it's a neighbor, an uncle, baseball coach, or whomever . . . take the time to personally interview that person. And if they are offended by it, tough luck! I have to live with that because I didn't do that. And take the time to say, 'You've called my son and I would like to meet you before you call him again.' And if the individual doesn't want to do that, then you say to your son, 'This was the offer I made to this individual, and he refused it, and I don't want you to have any contact with him.' And that goes for women, too. It's not just men that are harmful. But I would not hesitate to do that anymore. But, you see, I gave Art Bishop the right to his dignity as an individual not to be interviewed . . . not having to qualify to come into my son's life and our lives. And because of that we're in the position we are in today. Had people, parents been harsher, he might not have murdered these children.

  "There are parents who are maybe too busy, divorced, or maybe economically depressed or whatever, and here's an adult that enjoys their child's conversation and company, is nice to the child, helps the child with their problems, and can maybe afford to give the child some of their time . . . taking the child to see something that maybe the parent can't afford. In this sort of situation the child doesn't see himself as the victim. They have a friend. But it could be another Art Bishop."

  At Bishop's 1984 trial, six boys testified that he had forced them to strip naked, photographed them, and sexually assaulted them, but for some reason had not murdered them, although he had threatened them with the same pistol with which he had killed Kim Petersen.

  The jury found Bishop guilty of all five counts of first-degree murder and he was given a death sentence for each. Finally, after almost four years on death row at the Utah State Penitentiary at Draper, on June 10, 1988, Bishop was executed by lethal injection.

  But the horrible memories have hardly begun to fade.

  During the 1970s a similarly deadly homosexual pedophile, one Arthur C. Goode, Jr., kidnapped and killed a dozen or more young boys up and down the East Coast. In 1976 he was apprehended while traveling with then-ten-year-old Billy Arthes, whom he had kidnapped and forced to travel with him as a sex slave. The son of a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, young Arthes was the only one of Goode's victims to live to tell of his harrowing experiences with this murderer-sodomist of young boys.

  "I had a paper route in the afternoons, and when I went to get my papers at this corner, Goode approached me and started asking me questions about bike routes," Billy told the author. "I pointed off in a direction, and then he asked me to show him. At first I said no, but he persisted, and so I did. Then, when we were off in these woods, he grabbed me by the neck and said, 'You are going to do everything I tell you to door I will kill you.' And he showed me a list of people he had supposedly killed. He told me stories about how he had drugged some of them and a lot of really sick things. And for the first few days I begged him to kill me, too.

  "Outside a shopping mall in Falls Church [Virginia] he lured Kenneth Dawson [an eleven-year-old boy] into the woods. I was with them, but I just could not believe what was going on! Goode took everything that Kenneth had on off. Kenneth was crying and asking him, 'What are you doing? Are you going to leave me here?' Art assaulted him anally once and then put Kenneth's pants over his [Kenneth's] face and Kenneth's belt around Kenneth's neck and then he just strangled him. Art even had me hold the belt. He made me watch. I just stood there. I was a total blank. I just could not believe what was going on. The whole time, really . . . I couldn't run. I was just too stiff.

  "Art would make me sleep with him, and that is when he would have sex with me. He did it every one of the nine days I was with him. It was both oral and anal sex, and when it was anal intercourse he would put his hands around my neck and threaten to kill me."

  After more than a week traveling and sleeping with Goode, Billy was rescued by Baltimore police and Virginia state troopers who laid a trap for Goode in the basement of a home where he had secured work for himself and his young "son."

  "The Baltimore police really went out of their way . . . Please mention how grateful I am that they were that excellent!" Billy said of his rescue. "I will always be indebted to them . . . There is no way I could ever repay them. And my father has been extremely great. He has been my support through everything through my whole life. Really, it was my upbringing from both of my parents that enabled me to endure this. I could never, ever have asked for more from them!"

  Early the morning of April 5,1984, Arthur C. Goode, Jr., was put to death in the electric chair at the Florida State Prison at Stark for the rape-murder of nine-year-old Jason Verdow. The night before his execution, during an eerie death-row press conference, a reporter asked Goode if he had made any special requests of the warden before his execution. A grinning Goode said, "Yes, I asked him to bring in a nine-year-old boy so I could have sex with a little boy for one last time before they kill me . . . but he wouldn't do it."

  Of Goode's execution, Billy sighed, "Justice was carried out, I feel, but it wasn't carried out fully, because Goode is not suffering anymore, but his victims, the families of his victims, everybody whose lives he did hit. . . they are still suffering."

  There are many who disagree with executing the Arthur Goodes and Arthur Bishops of this world. Some feel that there are alternatives to both incarceration and execution. One such person is Dr. Fred S. Berlin, Co-Director—along with Dr. John Money—of the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Sexual Disorders Clinic in Baltimore . . . a program which at one time unsuccessfully attempted to treat Goode.

  In part, Dr. Berlin said in a lengthy interview I conducted with him in 1985: "Going back about seventeen years, there was some research at Johns Hopkins in the area of human sexuality and particularly in the area of the biological aspects of human sexuality. In terms of the clinic as it is now structured, that has really been going on for the last four to five years. The term used to refer to someone who is sexually attracted to children is 'pedophile.' If they are exclusively attracted to children, the term 'fixated pedophile' has sometimes been used. If they are attracted to adults as well as children, the term 'regressed pedophile' has sometimes been used. So, all that pedophilia really tells us is that this is a person experiencing sexual attraction to children in the way most of us don't, but it does not necessarily mean that we know something about that individual and his character or any other aspects of what he is all about as a person.

  "At present we have as outpatients in the community approximately 150 men. At any given time we usually have about eight people who are hospitalized. And at any given time we might be seeing in treatment approximately forty individuals who are incarcerated. In types of people we are treating, we treat on an outpatient basis exhibitionism and pedophilia, but we have also seen people with voyeurism, sexual sadists, and sexual masochists. Too, we have seen
a number of rapists, some of whom seem to be individuals where rape is a reflection of a sexual compulsion. Overall the success rate has been very high: in excess of eighty-five percent of the people seem to be doing well. We have a handful, literally, of females.

  "Most of the people we see are people who want intimacy and affection and love—all the things that most of us want—from children. And most of the men we are seeing have been involved with young boys in homosexual pedophilia.

  "We and a couple of other centers have been working with males who become involved with young boys. I don't think you can 'cure' it, but we have had a high percentage of success. Just as the alcoholic can learn to control himself and resist temptation, I think these men in most of the instances that we have been involved in have been able to do that as well. [However] sexual sadists—who are clearly the most dangerous of pedophiles—draw the most attention because the consequences of their actions are clearly the most horrifying and alarming.

  "Interestingly enough, some of the men who are sexually attracted to little boys might have a better chance of trying to develop an erotic interest in females than in adult men. Too, many, if not most, homosexual pedophiles are in no way sexually attracted to men. To them, pornography isn't the centerfold of Playgirl, but rather a little boy in his undergarments in the Sears catalog.

  "What we do is to try and suppress the patient's sexual appetite with medicine, the idea being that if you hunger sexually for children, hopefully you would be less hungry in that fashion and it will make it easier to resist temptation if you control one's behavior appropriately. The medicine we use Depo-Provera—is a form of progesterone. What it does is it lowers the hormone testosterone in the body, and so by lowering the testosterone we lower the sexual libido. We know we are lowering the testosterone with the medicine we give because we give it by injection and it is deposited into the muscle and released out of the muscle into the bloodstream and then we give a blood test to confirm that.

  "Now, I am not suggesting that this is a cure. I think it clearly seems to be helping some people to help themselves, but the treatment we have also has to include counseling. That is a very important part of our approach to the problem. The injection of Depo-Provera is only a part of a much bigger picture.

  "Many of the men that we now label pedophile victimizers are simply the former victims of other pedophiles that have now grown up and were warped by their experience. It is very clear that some youngsters are warped in the development of their sexuality as a result of premature sexual involvement with adults.

  " If we look at the variety of kids that become involved sexually with adults, thankfully, most of them don't become pedophiles. But if we look at a group of pedophiles, tragically, most of them were involved sexually with adults when they were children. One of the things we have seen over and over again is the little boys who become involved sexually with men: there were things about it that they didn't like, but they were also turned on sexually. They were erotically aroused at a time in their life when they weren't prepared to deal with it. Because they were turned on to sex early in their lives, they began to persuade their friends—other little boys—to become involved sexually with them.

  "Then, by the time they were older, they had developed habits that they really had a difficult time breaking. They had learned to enjoy having sex with boys and the fact that they were now finding out that it was wrong didn't seem to change the fact that there was a tremendous desire to do it. Indeed, many homosexual pedophiles are simply the former victims grown up. It is very rare indeed that we see someone who is biologically intact [and] who had healthy early experiences who comes to us presenting predilections of homosexual pedophilia."

  I completed my interview with John Walsh by asking him, "Why do you continue going around the country talking about missing and exploited children?" His answer surged forth like a flood.

  "Why do I continue? It is not the best thing I could be doing for my family right now, but I will point out one thing: Adam didn't have a chance. The system let Adam down. Who the hell is going to go out and battle for the new Adams? I want to tip those scales for those little people. I will never be able to understand how this country has allowed these crimes to be perpetrated to the tremendous extent that they have.

  "This is no longer a catharsis. It is no longer therapeutic for me. I need to be with my family. I probably need a week off. . . I probably need a day off! I probably could use a good night's sleep. But I know what is happening. I know as I land in a different city every day. I see the slides of the mutilated and raped children . . . the horrible things that are done to them. The public doesn't see it. Juries don't see it in many cases when they should. I see it and I know what is happening. I know how terrorized they are. I can feel it! I interview them and talk to them.

  "I had eleven little girls give me a plaque in Colorado . . . sexual assault victims with tears in their eyes. Double victims of the system. They said, 'Thanks for speaking out for us and helping us. We want some justice in the system.'

  "I know that nightmare . . . what a child goes through when they are sodomized, tortured, raped, murdered. . . . You have just got to do something to stop it."

  Right now, today, we must begin to care about the safety of our own children, our relatives' children, our neighbors' children, and even strangers' children by being ever-vigilant about the backgrounds, motives, and interests of all persons with whom they come into contact, never forgetting that over eighty percent of all sexual assaults on boys and girls are perpetrated by persons they know.

  Further, we must make certain that all children are protected by being educated about the dangers of sexual assault and kidnapping and by making certain that they truly have someone whom they can trust and turn to whenever they feel so threatened. And we must call, lobby, speak to, and write to our elected officials to force them to pass laws which both adequately incarcerate and attempt to treat pedophiles while at the same time effectively keeping them away from children. We have been given the responsibility to care for and protect children and, therefore, we can do no less.

  * * * * *

  Since this book was first published in late 1991—outside of the terrible crimes that Cary Stayner has now confessed to—some interesting things have occurred and developed due to my researching and writingI Know My First Name Is Steven.

  As a result of researching and writing this book and publicity for it in late 1991 and early 1992, I became an aggressive child advocate. In January of 1992, I went undercover in San Francisco and infiltrated the North American Man/Boy Love Association—NAMBLA—for NBC-TV affiliate KRON-TV, which, in turn, led to additional coverage on NBC News, CNN, and Geraldo Rivera. This led to the gay and lesbian community—initially in San Francisco but soon spreading nationwide—to slam the door on this nefarious organization of child sex predators and child pornographers. And this led to their membership plummeting from a high of over 4,000 members to fewer than 400 today. In fact, at the 1994 Gay Pride Day Parade in San Francisco, gay community leaders told me that televangelist Jerry Falwell could march in the parade with greater impunity than could an acknowledged member of NAMBLA. (You can read the full story in my Author's Epilogue in my second book, Brother Tony's Boys [Prometheus Books, 1996: Amherst, NY].)

  As for Kenneth Eugene Parnell, Steven's kidnapper, after completing his parole in 1987 he went to work as a night watchman for a boys' home in Oakland, California. But his background and criminal record remained undiscovered until the Lorimar/NBC-TV miniseries of I Know My First Name Is Steven premiered in May 1989. He was fired and forced to move out of his apartment in the Oakland suburb of Berkeley. Once again Parnell folded his tent and disappeared.

  Although he was required to do so because of his 1951 Bakersfield, California, kidnapping and sexual assault conviction of nine-year-old Bobby Green, Parnell did not notify law enforcement authorities of his change of address. In 1995, a private investigator located Parnell for the author. I went to his house
and, surprisingly, Parnell welcomed me, proudly showing me a boy's bicycle and toys just inside his front door, saying, "I've got to keep up with the younger generation, Mike!"

  I called and gave Parnell's address to the Berkeley Police and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. Parnell was not prosecuted for failing to register his new address. Over the new few years, I kept in regular touch with Parnell in an attempt to keep track of him, occasionally taking him out to eat and interviewing him repeatedly. During one interview, Parnell challenged Steven's remark that he had sexually assaulted Steven "over 700 times," the child sex predator correcting his then dead victim with, "Steven never was very good at math. It was more like over 3,000 times."

  During these interviews, Parnell repeatedly reacted with shock and stuttered and coughed whenever I asked him about the murdered children's bodies found buried in Mendocino County—crimes that have never been solved. And he reacted the same way during an August 1999 dinner and on-camera interview with reporter Steve Noble of TV's Inside Edition and staff writer Lance Williams of the San Francisco Examiner, remarking disingenuously: "I know who killed and buried those two kids, but I can't remember his name right now." And these two children and their murderer all have yet to be identified.

  The sum of all of these experiences led the author to found the proactive, nonprofit, tax-exempt child advocacy organization Better A Millstone, Inc. (BAM). Calling itself "the Internet eyes and ears for law enforcement," BAM is composed of a group of Internet-savvy child advocates who lurk on-line and gatherintelligence and information about Internet child sex predators and child pornographers and then provide same to law enforcement around the world. Thus far BAM has helped in the identification and arrest of over sixty such criminals.