I Know My First Name Is Steven

by Echols, Mike

  During the first week after Steven disappeared, volunteers and peace officers searched Merced County north to south and east to west but turned up no leads. Some minimal searching was done in neighboring Mariposa County, including a search of the home of a known homosexual pedophile and child pornographer just outside the county seat, but the man's treasure trove of nude photographs of young boys held no clues to Steven's disappearance.

  Much of the search of Merced County was conducted by the male members of the local Mormon Stake, who carefully covered specific areas on detailed county maps in four-wheel-drive vehicles and on horseback while their wives brought a steady supply of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, jello and fruit salads, and pies to the unofficial search headquarters at the Stayners' house. Years later Cary tearfully recounted this episode: "I don't like to be around a lot of people, so I stayed outside as much as I could. And I remember going out one night after Steve disappeared and wishing on a star that my brother would come back home. And I did that almost every clear night from then until Steve finally came back home. I never did tell anybody about it, but I remember wishing on a star that my little brother would come back home." He finished his tale with tears in his eyes.

  Sharon Carr, whose birthday party Steven had attended the day before he disappeared, was very much affected. Steven had given her a stuffed koala bear, and after his disappearance she became very protective of it. Referring to Sharon, Kay said, "If you even mentioned Steve five or six years after he had disappeared, this little gal would break into tears. We had to do a lot of whispering when she was around. I could talk about Steve when he was gone without really being upset, but Sharon just came unglued if you even mentioned Steve."

  Del was by far the most upset by Stevie's disappearance. The morning after Stevie vanished, Del asked his Mormon bishop, Ben Walton, to call Stevie's name in to the prayer roll in Salt Lake City so that "if Stevie was still alive by the time his name got on the prayer roll, nothing bad would happen to him. It bothered me that Stevie had disappeared and he hadn't been baptized. He would have been baptized when he was eight years old, but he disappeared before that. And that always bothered me." Then, in awe, Del added, "And every person in this valley prayed for my Stevie . . . I just couldn't believe that."

  Chief Kulbeth recalled that by the third day psychics were volunteering information. "We never did go to them. It's something that I certainly did not have any confidence in, yet at the same time, when you have a serious case like this, you're not going to ignore anything."

  One of the psychics whose information Kulbeth checked asked to be driven east on Highway 140, and as Merced Police drove her past a trio of little red cabins at Judy's Trailer Park in Cathy's Valley, she "lost the trail." The police retraced the route with her several times, but each time the trail ended for her just past the cabins, Kulbeth said. Almost unbelievably, during the seven years that Steven was missing, the cabins were never checked out.

  By the end of that first week, Sergeant Moore had requested and received from Sacramento a list of all known sex offenders in Merced and the surrounding counties; however, since Parnell had never been registered as a convicted child molester as required by California law, his name was not on the list. Next, Moore asked F.B.I. Agent Walsh to contact Lee Shackleton, Chief Park Ranger in charge of law enforcement in Yosemite National Park, to obtain a list of all Curry Company employees, but this was not done until the following March, and when received, the list contained the names of only half of the employees, that half paid the week of December 4, 1972; the Curry Company then paying half of its employees on alternating weeks with Parnell's pay period ending on the alternating week. Therefore Parnell's name was not available for checking against the F.B.I.'s list of convicted sex offenders and child molesters, where his name did appear. Also, copies of the Missing Juvenile flyers were given to Shackleton, but for whatever reason, neither he nor his men developed any leads, and no one then in Yosemite National Park recalls ever having seen one of the flyers.

  Outspoken F.B.I. Agent Walsh has his own feelings about these failures. "The boy was in the park for quite awhile, living with a park employee. Shackleton and his men couldn't find him . . . a seven-year-old boy. That boy should have been found by them.

  "The problem was we were dealing with the rangers. They were supposed to get that list for us, and they didn't get us a good list. At that time we were virtually persona non grata [with the park rangers]. Shackleton was uncooperative with the Merced office of the F.B.I. At the time the Yosemite Park Company [then known as the Curry Company] had more than forty percent of their employees that had a record of felony arrests and/or convictions.*

  "We and the United States Attorney were sure grim to see the number of people with sex violations working in the park. I do know that they [the Curry Company] have a propensity for hiring perverts. But the best opportunity to solve the case was in Yosemite National Park. Didn't somebody see a little seven-year-old boy nude around a dormitory?"

  Chief Kulbeth agreed, though his reply was muted in comparison with his friend Walsh's. "One of the first theories concerning Steven's disappearance centered around the park. We knew from past experience that there were a lot of criminals and sex offenders up there working not for the Park Service, but in other jobs up there . . . [but] due to the mere fact that Steven was last seen on the road leading up to Yosemite National Park, we asked [for] assistance from the Park Service in getting some of the flyers with his photograph on them distributed up there. We weren't up there. The F.B.I. didn't have an office up there either. Lee Shackleton was the one in charge, but somehow Parnell just slipped through their fingers."

  After Steven's disappearance Kay reinstructed her four remaining children not to accept candy or rides from strangers and always to come straight home from school. But she kept a stiff upper lip as she continued to cook, clean, and care for her family. She was truly a rock for the family during this time, when Del was so deeply affected by the loss of his beloved Stevie. Said he, "I had a lot to do with my kids before Stevie's disappearance. But afterward, I was a hard guy to get along with. I just couldn't stand to see my family broken up with Stevie's bein' missing."

  Chapter Three

  Parnell and Murphy

  "My track record is that I don't tell the truth."

  Kenneth Eugene Parnell was born the son of Mary O. and Cecil Frederick Parnell in Amarillo, Texas, September 26, 1931, just at the beginning of the Texas panhandle's infamous dust-bowl days. It was his mother's second marriage, and one that proved unhappy. Kenneth was the only child of this union, but Mary had custody of her children from her first marriage to "a Mr. Costner," as she referred to him when the author interviewed her—one boy and two girls.

  Ken's father became increasingly unhappy with his wife's overbearing, dictatorial, pious control of other people's lives, including his own. Among other maxims Mary Parnell insisted that everyone in her family fall toe-and-heel with her rigid fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and woe unto the child or husband who did not. Cecil Parnell did not, and in 1937 he was history.

  Shortly thereafter Mary took her brood west on the Santa Fe Railroad and settled in Bakersfield, in California, the state at that time revered as the land of milk and honey by hundreds of thousands of escapees from the dust and unemployment of Texas and the Midwest. Once there she struggled mightily to start a new life.

  But shortly before the family had departed for California the absence of his father so upset five-year-old Kenneth that he spent several hours pulling out four of his teeth with a pair of pliers. "My recollection of the day of separation—just as any kid would obviously be, I was upset. I wanted to go with my dad, and of course I didn't. I just simply did not want to leave where I was at. I didn't want to come to California. Children tend not to want to have their world upset," he convincingly concluded.

  Once in Bakersfield, Mary began working as a nurse's aide and joined and quickly became one of the staunchest members of the Assembly
of God Church. She required her children to accompany her to services every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening, rain or shine. This was in addition to the compulsory weekday ritual of making her children get down on their knees with her and pray just before they left for school. Said she, "My children never did go to school without prayers. They wouldn't go to school without having their prayers any more than they would go without their books or clothes. They all expected that." And daily she taught the Bible to Kenneth and his half-brother and half-sisters.

  After a few years in Bakersfield, Mary felt she could better provide for her family back in Texas and so packed her brood up and returned, this time to Waxahatchie, just south of Fort Worth. For three years she worked hard and saved her money, but in early 1944 she returned with her children to Bakersfield, this time for good. She immediately invested her savings in a boardinghouse—housing and feeding the oil field roughnecks—so as to take advantage of the war-related oil boom then in progress in Bakersfield and nearby Oildale. This was not, however, a happy time for Kenneth.

  In the spring of 1945 one of his mother's boarders befriended the slender, troubled thirteen-year-old and, after establishing a degree of trust in the fatherless boy, coerced the lad to engage in fellatio. This—young Kenneth's first-known homosexual encounter—was the apparent catalyst for his setting fire to a pasture very soon thereafter. He was found out, taken into custody, and locked up in Bakersfield Juvenile Hall. A psychiatrist who examined him at the time, Dr. Richard D. Lowenberg, recommended temporary placement for Parnell in the Juvenile Hall "in the hope that his marked emotional immaturity mixed with his sophisticated disposition toward perversion might be overcome."

  After several months in Juvenile Hall, Kenneth was released in the early summer of 1945. But that fall, shortly after his fourteenth birthday—and still chafing under his mother's strict rules—Kenneth stole an automobile, was arrested, and, after a court hearing, was sent to the California Youth Authority's Fred Nelles School in Whittier, a residential facility for juvenile male offenders. Parnell remained there from October 1945 to February 1947, during which time, he later reported, he engaged in homosexual behavior both passively and actively.*

  Upon his release from Whittier in 1947 Kenneth returned to live with his mother in Bakersfield. He entered the ninth grade but was already so far behind in his studies that his promotion to the tenth grade the following September was really a disservice to him. In December 1947, sixteen-year-old Kenneth was "arrested as a homosexual"—as the legal record of the time so quaintly put it—for public sex acts. Released to his mother's custody, just two months later Parnell stole another car and landed in the California Youth Authority's Lancaster facility.

  Parnell, virtually out of control by this time, escaped from Lancaster within weeks and returned to Bakersfield, where he became sexually attracted to a young boy, his freely stated reason for returning. Parnell was at liberty only a few days before he was again arrested and placed in the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield, where he attempted suicide by drinking disinfectant. After emergency treatment at Kern General Hospital, Parnell was sent to the state mental hospital at Napa, northeast of San Francisco, for ninety days. But before the ninety days were up Parnell escaped again, went to San Francisco, where he stole another car, returned to Bakersfield to see the young boy with whom he was so infatuated, and was re-arrested and returned to the Lancaster facility, where he remained until his release as a seventeen-year-old in May 1949.

  Ken returned to Bakersfield and moved back in with his mother, and a few months later he began a series of short-term jobs, first as a kitchen worker at Kern General Hospital, then as a stock boy for Smith's Market, and later as a stock boy for the local Sears, Roebuck store. During this time he married Patsy Jo Dorton and she, too, moved in with Ken's mother.

  But Parnell's sexual attraction to young boys caught up with him on March 20, 1951. Driving Mary's prewar black Chevrolet coupe, Parnell approached three young grade-school boys playing near Kern General Hospital. Flashing a fake deputy sheriff's badge he had bought at a Bakersfield Army-Navy surplus store that morning, he talked one of the trio—nine-year-old Bobby Green—into accompanying him.

  He drove the frightened youngster east out of Bakersfield and into a remote area in the Kern River Canyon where he sexually assaulted him. For an instant he thought about killing the child to prevent him from telling what had happened, but nineteen-year-old Parnell decided against it and instead casually drove the terrified lad back to the hospital and let him out. Immediately young Bobby ran home and tearfully told his parents what had happened.

  On the morning of March 26, 1951, Bobby Green's father signed a complaint against Kenneth Eugene Parnell before Justice of the Peace Stewart Magee alleging that Parnell had committed three felonies on his son: "First count, child stealing; second count, the infamous crime against nature;"—Parnell had anally sodomized the boy—"third count, the act of copulating the sexual organ, to wit: the penis of him, the said Kenneth Eugene Parnell, with the mouth of Bobby Green." The Kern County sheriff's office wasted no time in arresting Parnell at the Sears, Roebuck store late that morning, and neither did Justice Magee: he held Parnell's preliminary hearing at two o'clock the same afternoon.

  Justice of the Peace Magee offered Parnell the opportunity to retain an attorney, but Parnell declined the offer. Magee then began the preliminary hearing questioning him. For what was quite possibly the first and last time in his life Parnell answered each question honestly and straightforwardly.

  Magee: Now, it is alleged here in this complaint, the first count in this complaint, that on or about the twentieth day of March, this year, in Kern County, you did take and entice one Bobby Green from his natural parent. Is that true?

  Parnell: Yes, sir.

  Magee: In the second count in this complaint it alleges that you did commit the infamous crime against nature. Is that right?

  Parnell: Yes, sir.

  Magee: In the third count in this complaint there is a violation of Section 288a, which you heard me read to you in specific language. And did that occur too, here in Kern County?

  Parnell: Yes, sir.

  Deputy D.A. Clayton Cochran began his cross-examination of Parnell by establishing that Parnell drove to an area near Kern General Hospital, flashed the fake badge at the three young boys, and coerced one of them to get into the car with him. Next he led Parnell through the drive out of Bakersfield into the rugged Kern River Canyon, up a remote road, and to the point where he had stopped the car. Then Parnell matter-of-factly told about his sexual assault on scared nine-year-old Bobby Green.

  Cochran: What did you do then?

  Parnell: Well, I told the boy to get out, that I wanted to stretch my legs. And so then we walked up on one of the hills there and set down and talked awhile. And that is when I told him what I was going to do, and committed the act.

  Cochran: What did you say to the boy at that time?

  Parnell: Well, at first I asked him what he had in his pockets, and he showed me.

  Cochran: In his pockets?

  Parnell: Yes. And then I asked him if he had any scars on him, and he said no at first. Then he showed me two or three. Where they were at the time I don't remember. And then I asked him if he had done anything similar to the counts that are held against me. And he said no. And so then I told him that I was going to do those things. And so then is when I done those things.

  Cochran: Did you ask him to take his clothes off?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: Did you have him take all of his clothes off?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: And did you take any part of your clothing off?

  Parnell: No.

  Cochran: The little boy resisted, did he not?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: He did not want to do that, did he?

  Parnell: No.

  Cochran: Did he cry at any time?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: Did you
have to use force with him?

  Parnell: No.

  Cochran: Did you not, at some time, hold his hands?

  Parnell: No.

  Cochran: Then after his clothes were removed what was the first thing you did? Did you open your trousers and take from your trousers your sexual organ?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: And what was the first thing you did to the little boy?

  Parnell: Well, I put my penis in his rectum.

  Cochran: You got the penis between his buttocks, the little cheeks of his buttocks, I presume, did you not?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: How long were you in attempting this act by the rectum?

  Parnell: As to the exact time, I don't know. Maybe two or three minutes.

  Cochran: Then what did you do after that?

  Parnell: Well, I placed the penis in his mouth.

  Cochran: You placed your penis in his mouth?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: And then you forced him to suck on the penis. Is that right?

  Parnell: That is correct.

  Cochran: How long did that act continue?

  Parnell: Oh, a minute, maybe; maybe not that long.

  Cochran: Did you reach a climax so there was any . . .

  Parnell: Yes, I did.

  Cochran: An emission?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: Then after this, what did you do then? Did you tell him to put his clothes on again, or what?

  Parnell: Yes, I did.

  Cochran: And you got back in the automobile, did you?

  Parnell: Yes.

  Cochran: Did you attempt to harm him in any way?

  Parnell: No.

  Cochran: Did you have in mind at one stage harming him?

  Parnell: A flash like . . .