I Know My First Name Is Steven (11 page)

From prison in 1984 Parnell smugly said of his use of Dennis's real middle name, date, and place of birth, and the name of a real elementary school: "You have a lot of qualms about a lot of things in that situation. And I had various reasons for listing Yosemite Elementary. First of all, I had come out of the Park. And I had worked down there." He paused and then ventured, "It just followed the pattern." Still failing to discern acceptance in the author's expression, Parnell lamely added, "It fell right in."

So, on the day that school Christmas holiday ended, Dennis was back in school, albeit with a different name and a new dad, and 170 miles from home . . . and, too, with a new family history to remember, one taught rather than remembered. But although he was not happy at this new school—once again he was a new kid without friends—Dennis was beginning to settle into his forced identity as Kenneth Parnell's son. After all, he was just seven years
old, and he had to look to Parnell as his primary caretaker—as social workers like to phrase it—and he wasn't even sure where he was. Dennis had always been extraordinarily close to his real father, continually following him around. Thus acclimated to having a strong father figure to whom he could relate, what with the nurturing, affectionate, dependent closeness Ken showed his youngest son the vast majority of the time, Dennis quickly adapted to being Kenneth Parnell's son. Therefore the two readily gave the appearance of "father and son" oft recalled by their acquaintances years later when the truth finally became known.

In late January, even though he was employed full-time, Ken went to the local office of the California Department of Human Resources, claimed that he was underemployed, and filed for financial aid. The request was denied.
*

On February 24,1973, Ken and Dennis moved from the Pelissier Motel into an old, forty-foot long, dilapidated rental house trailer with peeling grayish-pink paint at the scruffy Mt. Taylor Trailer Park out on Santa Rosa Avenue. But Dennis relished their new
home, for there were trees for him to climb and for Queenie to sniff, and other children to play with, and, as Dennis later recalled, Ken liked to do whatever made him happy . . . except, that is, for ending his repetitive sexual assaults on his young son. However, on the whole, Dennis saw his lot as improving. He was quickly becoming assimilated into his second-grade class at his new school, Kawana Elementary. He really liked his teacher, Ms. Englehart, and she him, for on April 6—just five weeks after Dennis had entered her class—she wrote in a report, "Dennis has adjusted quite well to the work and routine of our classroom. He is well liked by the other children, and I am glad to have him."

But Eleanor Lindvall, the school secretary, thought Mr. Parnell's behavior strange, for almost every day Ken would call her to give specific, ever-changing instructions about whether he would pick up Dennis after school, or whether Dennis should go to a babysitter's, or whether Dennis should ride the school bus home. She thought this odd, for he was the only parent who did this on a daily basis, but she never did or said anything to question Parnell's behavior.

Early 1973 was a very difficult, emotional time for Del and Kay. During that first winter a little boy's cowboy boot, somewhat like those Steve had been wearing when he disappeared, was found washed up on the bank of Bear Creek in north Merced. Steve's sister Cindy said, "They started dragging the creek, looking for his remains. Dad got real upset, but then he and
my mom looked at it and realized that it wasn't Steve's boot after all."

Steven's parents next wrote to Walter Cronkite at CBS-TV and Frank McGee at NBC-TV, asking that they help try to locate their son through their news programs, but both wrote back saying that Steven's disappearance was old news and that therefore they couldn't help. Next Del and Kay sent copies of the "Missing Juvenile" flyer to TV stations all over the United States asking for the same kind of help, but the responses were nil there, too.

On into spring Del's friends and fellow employees searched until it seemed that they had covered every square foot of Merced County. Recounted Del, "About half of them were organized, but some, like friend Otto Doffee, searched on their own. And he was searching along this little irrigation ditch bank and he ran into a gunny sack. And he said his heart kind of jumped into his throat, because he knew there was something dead inside of it. So, he takes his pocket knife and goes to cutting it open. And when he got it partly cut open he could see hairs, but when he got it all the way cut open . . . well, it was a baby calf. Otto said he sat on that ditch bank after he got through doing that for about fifteen minutes, shaking like a leaf."

Also, Steven's disappearance was a factor in the messy business breakup of two Chinese brothers who had operated a supermarket on Yosemite Parkway and lived in the Stayners' neighborhood. When their business failed, they had a falling out which each blamed on the other, one starting a rumor which accused the other of killing Steven, cutting up his body, and dumping it into the sewer at the store. Del heard about this
from co-workers at the CC&G Cannery and went to the police. They tried to get the accused brother to voluntarily take a polygraph examination, but he refused. Just to make sure, though, the police dug up the sewers up and down Yosemite Parkway, but no body or body parts were found.

Late that spring, when Cary helped Del repaint the garage, Del cautioned his oldest son not to paint over the pencil-scrawled signature, "Steven Stayner," one of the last reminders to his family of six that once they had been seven.

At the Mt. Taylor Trailer Park Dennis's new father continued his secretive sex assaults on his young son. One night after a particularly odious, painful session of anal intercourse, Parnell fell asleep; seeing this, Dennis got dressed and, making doubly sure that his dad was asleep, the eight-year-old stole out the trailer's front door, intent on running away and returning to his family in Merced. Hurriedly he walked south several blocks along busy Santa Rosa Avenue before he became lost, panicked, and gave up. Sobbing and shaking with fear, he finally found his way back to the trailer before his dad awoke. This was to be Dennis's last attempt to return to his own family for many, many years to come.

Finally summer arrived and with it the opportunity for Dennis to meet and play with more of the neighbor children, his popularity with the boys increasing considerably when he had finally saved enough of his allowance to buy a G.I.Joe set. Also during that summer Ken began letting Dennis drive the car when they went
places around Santa Rosa. Remembered Dennis, "When he first let me drive we were on our way to a flea market in the park. I sat on his lap and he worked the pedals and I just worked the steering wheel. But I only got to drive for about five minutes because I spent most of the time off on the sides of the road."

Summer vacation didn't last long enough for Dennis, and on September 6 he entered the third grade at Kawana Elementary. He soon discovered a neighbor boy he hadn't known before in his class, but they had yet to become friends. According to Dennis, at first he and Kenny Matthias were enemies: "We rode the same bus, and when the bus stopped on the way home I would run through the bus door. Kenny would be right on my butt, but I was faster and so I'd get on down the road, and he'd give up chasing me. Then I'd turn around and yell, 'Fuck you, you stupid jerk,' and stuff like that. I used to get him pissed!"

In 1973 Kenny Matthias was a jug-eared kid with a pixyish smile. He looked much the same in 1984 as he recounted the initial animosity between him and Dennis: "He started saying smart things to me on the bus. I let it slide for a couple of days, and then finally it built up inside of me and I had to get him back. So I started chasing him down the road when he got off the bus, and one day I did catch him and we got in a fight. I beat him up, too! And that made his dad mad, so Ken came over to see my parents.

"I didn't get in trouble about it because my dad always told me to stick up for my rights and fight. I guess Ken didn't have that same philosophy, because he said he would rather see Dennis walk away from a fight. And it was then that we shook hands and we
were friends ever since then. We got pretty close, too. In Santa Rosa we had an acre lot, and we would always go out in the back and play army on the mounds with his G.I.Joe sets."

Soon Dennis headed for the Matthias' home every day after school. Ken quickly realized that his son had stumbled onto the ideal babysitting arrangement, so he asked Barbara, Kenny's mother, if she would keep his son after school and feed him supper. Recalled Dennis, "She said, 'All right.' He paid her for it. And so I got
real
acquainted with the Matthias family."

In the late fall of 1973, third-graders Dennis and Kenny decided to experiment with an adult vice . . . smoking. Ken chain-smoked unfiltered Camels and Dennis stole and hid a pack from his father's carton. Then, when Kenny came over, Dennis pulled them out and they lit up. "We sat there and acted big and tough, and did little things like Parnell would do, like blowing smoke rings," Dennis recalled.

As Kenny tells it, "I came over and Ken was in the back bedroom sleeping. I had been trying to get Dennis to smoke, so naturally I smoked some cigarettes, too. But then Ken woke up and came in and caught us hiding behind the couch smoking. He started yelling and grabbed Dennis by the arm and slapped him open-handed and then he told me to go home."

That fall Dennis was ill a good deal of the time, first with the mumps and then with impetigo, ailments which caused him to miss twenty-seven out of thirty-nine school days and resulted in Ken's taking him to a doctor for the first time since the kidnapping. Ken stayed with Dennis during the entire appointment and made a point of answering all the doctor's probing
background questions—even those directed to Dennis—himself.

With his relative job security (he'd worked at the Holiday Inn for ten months), in early November Ken felt flush enough to rent a large wood-frame house at 1107 Sonoma Avenue in central Santa Rosa. It was a wonderful place for Dennis and Queenie to romp and play together, what with a tall spruce tree for Dennis to climb in front and a fenced yard in back for Queenie, and seven rooms which afforded Dennis more space and privacy than he had ever before experienced.

In some ways, though, Dennis looked on the move as a setback, for he had to leave the comfortable environment of his third-grade class at Kawana Elemen tary to attend a new school, Doyle Park Elementary, and he felt that the move also meant leaving behind his new best friend, Kenny Matthias. But Dennis's father surprised him when, right after the move, he allowed Dennis to have his first-ever overnight guest, Kenny. At the time there was more to Ken's relationship with the Matthias family than his son's friendship with Kenny. Not only was there a not-so-platonic relationship developing between Barbara and the occasionally heterosexual Ken, but the crafty pedophile-kidnapper had also begun to eye young Kenny as yet another sexually attractive boy. But Parnell didn't move in on Kenny . . . yet.

By this time Parnell had happily realized that living in Santa Rosa fulfilled his expectations perfectly: he had neither seen nor heard any newspaper, radio, or TV accounts of the kidnapping since his arrival and therefore felt the danger of his son's identity being
discovered was almost nonexistent; he had a good job, earning him good money; his life with Dennis had settled into what was for him a happy routine; and he had a live-in sex partner who compliantly satisfied his perverted sexual needs and provided him an entrée to other young boys. Indeed, so confident was Parnell about his life in Santa Rosa that he occasionally treated his son and himself to a meal at the Denny's Restaurant on the freeway from San Francisco . . . an odd choice in that it enjoyed a considerable traveling clientele from all over California.

While living on Sonoma Avenue, Ken sold his Rambler American and in its place purchased an even older beige station wagon of unknown make. Dennis remarked that the wagon was a klunker. In late fall 1973 Ken tricked some Mexicans into buying it at the K-Mart parking lot, the local informal Saturday morning car mart Said Dennis, "Then the Mexicans decided that they didn't want it and they tried to get their money back, [but] they were stuck with it. Then he bought an old blue-and-white two-door Ford which he kept for about a year and a half. He changed cars pretty often."

As Christmas 1973 approached, reporter Janice Cruickshank of the
Mercury
in San Jose (California) traveled to Merced to interview Kay. Wrote Cruickshank: "The only unique thing about Steve, she [Kay] said, was that he got along well with everyone. 'His friends included older children as well as younger ones. He loved babies, and dogs, and kitty cats and anything that was alive,' she recalled." Cruickshank
continued: "There are reminders of Steven everywhere in the Stayner home. He liked to write his name, his mother laughingly recalls. Then with a slight crack in her voice, she said, 'He had his name written on fences, outside walls, in his bedroom. So we don't scrub too many walls—we don't paint, either.' "

As to hope for Steven's return, Kay concluded: " 'Sure, I know that there is a fifty-fifty chance that Steven is dead and that at any time they could come and say, "Well, we found him—it's not good, but we found him—at least you know." I pray that if he is dead, please let us know, because this not knowing is enough to drive you insane.' "

Chapter Five

The Parnell Family

"You know your dad's a faggot?"

In 1973 Barbara Matthias's husband, Bob, was a blue-collar worker with the City of Santa Rosa Street Department, a man of average height with a muscular build . . . and a man who frequently drank to excess. An amateur watchmaker who haunted local flea markets, Bob invited Ken to join him that fall in what soon became a mutual interest, spending their weekends going from one peoples' market to another in Sonoma and Marin Counties while back at home Barbara took care of her four children still at home—Lloyd, 4; Kenny, 8; Vallerie, 11; Christy, 12—and Dennis. Two older boys whom Dennis never knew—Robert,Jr., and Gary—were in jail: one for dealing drugs, the other for manslaughter.