Steven Gregory
Stayner (April 18, 1965 – September 16, 1989) was an American kidnapping
victim. On December 4, 1972, seven-year-old Stayner was abducted in Merced,
California, by child molester Kenneth
Parnell. He was held by his abductor 38 miles (61 km) away in Mariposa
County, California, and later in Mendocino County, California, until he was
aged 14, when he managed to escape with another of Parnell's victims,
five-year-old Timothy White.
Birth and family
Steven Stayner
was the third of five children born to Delbert
and Kay Stayner in Merced,
California. He had three sisters and an older brother, Cary. In 2002, Cary was
convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of four women.
Kidnapping
On the afternoon of December 4, 1972, Stayner was approached
on his way home from school by a man named Ervin
Edward Murphy, who had become acquainted with convicted child rapist Kenneth Parnell as they both worked at
a resort in Yosemite National Park.
Murphy, described by those who knew him as a trusting, naïve, and simple-minded
man, had been enlisted by Parnell (who had passed himself off to Murphy as an
aspiring minister) into helping him abduct a young boy so that Parnell could "raise him in a religious-type
deal," as Murphy later stated.
Acting on instructions from Parnell, Murphy passed out
gospel tracts to boys walking home from school that day and, after spotting
Stayner, claimed to be a church representative seeking donations. Stayner later
claimed that Murphy asked him if his mother would be willing to donate any
items to the church. When the boy replied that she would, Murphy then asked
Stayner where he lived and if he would be willing to take Murphy to his home.
After Stayner agreed, a white Buick driven by Parnell pulled
up, and Stayner willingly climbed into the car with Murphy. Parnell then drove
a confused Stayner to his cabin in nearby Catheys
Valley instead. Unbeknownst to Stayner, Parnell's cabin was located only
several hundred feet from his maternal grandfather's residence.
Parnell molested Stayner the first night at the cabin.
Parnell began raping Stayner thirteen days later, on December 17, 1972. After
Stayner told Parnell many times during that first week that he wanted to go
home, Parnell told Stayner that he had been granted legal custody of the boy
because his parents could not afford so many children and that they did not
want him anymore.
Parnell began calling the boy Dennis Gregory Parnell, retaining Stayner's real middle name and
his real birth date when enrolling him in various schools over the next several
years. Parnell passed himself off as Stayner's father, and the two moved
frequently around California, living in locations including Santa Rosa and
Comptche. Parnell allowed Stayner to begin drinking at a young age and to come
and go virtually as he pleased. Parnell had also moved from one menial job to
another, some of his work requiring travel and leaving Stayner unguarded,
causing an adult Stayner to remark he could have easily used these absences as
opportunities to flee, but was unaware how to summon help.
One of the few positive aspects of Stayner's life with
Parnell was the dog he had received as a gift from him, a Manchester Terrier that he named Queenie. This dog had been given to Parnell by his mother, who was
not aware of Stayner's existence during the period when he was being held by
Parnell.
For a period of eighteen months, a woman named Barbara Mathias lived with Parnell and
Stayner. According to Stayner, Mathias, along with Parnell, raped him on nine occasions
at the age of nine. In 1975, on Parnell's instruction, Mathias tried to lure
another young boy, who was in the Santa
Rosa Boys' Club with Stayner, into Parnell's car. The attempt was
unsuccessful. Mathias later claimed to have been completely unaware that "Dennis" had been kidnapped.
Escape
As Stayner entered puberty, Parnell began to look for a
younger child to kidnap. Parnell had used Stayner to attempt to kidnap children
on prior occasions, but all the kidnapping attempts were unsuccessful. This
caused Parnell to believe Stayner lacked the means to be an accomplice. Stayner
revealed later that he had intentionally sabotaged these failed kidnappings. On
February 14, 1980, Parnell and a teenage friend of Stayner's named Randall Sean Poorman kidnapped
five-year-old Timmy White in Ukiah.
Motivated in part by the young boy's distress, Stayner decided to return the
boy to his parents.
On March 1, 1980, while Parnell was away at his night security
job, Stayner left with White and hitchhiked into Ukiah. After they were unable
to locate White's home, they went to a police station.
By daybreak on March 2, 1980, Parnell had been arrested on
suspicion of abducting both boys. When the police checked into his background
they found a previous sodomy conviction from 1951. Both children were reunited
with their families that day. In 1981, Parnell was tried and convicted of
kidnapping White and Stayner in two trials. He was sentenced to seven years,
but was paroled after serving five.
Parnell was not charged with the numerous sexual assaults on
Stayner and other boys because most of them occurred outside the jurisdiction
of the Merced County prosecutor or
were by then outside the statute of limitations. The Mendocino County prosecutors, acting almost entirely alone, decided
not to prosecute Parnell for the sexual assaults that occurred in their
jurisdiction.
Murphy, for helping kidnap Stayner, and Poorman, for helping
kidnap White, was convicted of lesser charges. Both claimed they knew nothing
of the sexual assaults on Stayner. Mathias was never arrested. Stayner
remembered the kindness "Uncle" Murphy had shown
him in his first week of captivity while they were both under the influence of
Parnell's manipulation, and he believed that Murphy was as much Parnell's victim
as he and Timmy were. Stayner's kidnapping and its aftermath prompted
California lawmakers to change state laws "to
allow consecutive prison terms in similar abduction cases."
Later life and death
After returning to his family, Stayner had trouble adjusting
to a more structured household as he had been allowed to smoke, drink and do as
he pleased when he lived with Parnell. In an interview with Newsweek shortly after his escape,
Stayner 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? [...] Everything has changed. Sometimes I
blame myself. I don't know sometimes if I should have come home. Would I have been
better off if I didn't?"
Stayner underwent brief counseling but never sought
additional treatment. He also refused to disclose all the details of sexual abuse
he endured from Parnell. In a 2007 interview, Stayner's sister said that her
brother did not seek counseling because their father said Stayner "didn't need any". She added, "He [Steven] got on with his life but
he was pretty messed up." He was bullied by other children at school
for being molested and eventually dropped out. Stayner began to drink
frequently, and was eventually kicked out of the family home. His relationship
with his father remained strained.
In 1985, Stayner married 17-year-old Jody Edmondson, with whom he had two children: a daughter Ashley
and a son Steven Jr. He also worked with child abduction groups, spoke to
children about personal safety, and gave interviews about his kidnapping. He
joined the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints just before his death. At the time of his death, Stayner
was living in Merced and working at a pizza shop.
On September 16, 1989, Stayner sustained fatal head injuries
while on his way home from work when his motorcycle collided with a car in a
hit-and-run accident. The alleged driver of the car was later identified by
witnesses. Five hundred people attended his funeral, at which 14-year-old Timmy White was a pallbearer.
Media adaptations
In early 1989, a television miniseries based on his
experience, I Know My First Name Is
Steven (also known as The Missing
Years), was produced. Steven, taking a leave of absence from his job, acted
as an advisor for Lorimar-Telepictures
and had a non-speaking part, playing one of the two policemen who escort
14-year-old Steven (played by Corin
Nemec) through the crowds to his waiting family, on his return to his Merced
home. Although pleased with the dramatization, Stayner did complain that it
depicted him as a somewhat "obnoxious,
rude" person, especially toward his parents, something he refuted
while publicizing the miniseries in the spring of 1989. The two-part miniseries
was first broadcast by NBC on May 21–22, 1989. Screening rights were sold to a
number of international television companies including the BBC, which screened
the miniseries in mid-July of the following year; later still, it was released
as a feature-length movie.
The production, which received four Emmy Award nominations, including one for Nemec, was based on a
manuscript by Mike Echols, who had
researched the story and interviewed Stayner and Parnell, among others. After
the premiere, Echols published his book; also titled I Know My First Name is Steven, in 1991. In the epilogue to his
book, Echols describes how he infiltrated NAMBLA. In 1999, against the wishes
of the Stayner family, Echols wrote an additional chapter about Steven's older
brother Cary at the request of his publisher, which then re-published the book.
The title of the film and book are taken from the first
paragraph of Steven's written police statement, given during the early hours of
March 2, 1980 in Ukiah. It reads:
"My name is
Steven Stainer. 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, and if I have a middle name, I don't know it."
Steven's story was also included in the book Against Their Will by Nigel Cawthorne, a compilation of
stories of kidnappings.
In April 2022, Hulu released
a limited true-crime docuseries Captive
Audience: A Real American Horror Story following the life of Stayner and
his family and how the kidnapping impacted their lives. Particular attention
was paid to how the events impacted the life of Cary Stayner. The docuseries focused heavily on the miniseries and
featured appearances by both Corin Nemec and Todd Eric Andrews.
Aftermath
Ten years after Stayner's death, the city of Merced asked
its residents to propose names for city parks honoring Merced's notable
citizens. Stayner's parents proposed that one be named "Stayner Park". This idea was eventually rejected and the
honor was instead given to another Merced resident, because Stayner's brother
Cary confessed to, and was convicted of, killing four women in Yosemite in
1999; Merced city officials feared that the name "Stayner Park" would be associated with Cary rather than Steven.
In 2004, Parnell, then 72 years old, was convicted of trying
the previous year to persuade his caretaker's sister to procure for him a young
boy for five hundred dollars. Aware of Parnell's past, she reported this to
local police. Timmy White, then a
grown man, was subpoenaed to testify in Parnell's criminal trial. Although
Stayner was dead, his testimony at Parnell's earlier trial was read to jurors
as evidence in Parnell's 2004 trial. Parnell died of natural causes on January
21, 2008, at the California Medical
Facility in Vacaville, California, while serving a sentence of 25 years to
life.
White later became a Los
Angeles County Sheriff's Department Deputy. He died on April 1, 2010, at
age 35 from pulmonary embolism. Nearly five months later, on August 28, 2010, a
statue of Stayner and White was dedicated in Applegate Park in Merced. Residents of Ukiah, White's hometown,
carved a statue showing a teenage Stayner with young White in hand while
escaping their captivity. Fundraisers for the statue have stated that it is
meant to honor Steven Stayner and
give families of missing and kidnapped children hope that they are still alive.
Steven's father, Delbert
Stayner, died on April 9, 2013, at his home in Winton, California. He was
79 years old.
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