I Know My First Name Is Steven (29 page)

The trial did not get under way after lunch that day because the defense brought up several more motions for consideration—all denied by Sabraw—including one wherein LeStrange sought a blanket prohibition of any mention by the State of "the alleged Merced kidnapping of Steven Stayner in 1972."

The next morning McClure offered the State's opening statement, consisting of a very logical, sequential explanation of Mendocino County's
kidnapping case against Parnell. When McClure had concluded, Sabraw offered LeStrange an opportunity to make his opening statement, but he reserved the right to do that until after he had presented his case. He never exercised this option.

At long last the trial began in earnest when McClure presented his first witness, Angela White. She testified that Timmy was her son, recounted her personal knowledge of the events of Valentine's Day 1980, identified the clothes her son wore that day, told about her search for him, and finally over LeStrange's vociferous objections—identified Timmy when Dick Finn brought him into the courtroom. Angela left the stand and the State next presented several witnesses who knew Timmy.

Several days later, in anticipation of testimony by Sean Poorman, a special hearing was held at the request of Edward M. Krug, attorney for Henry K. Mettier, Jr. He was in court to represent Mettier's stepson. By then Sean had been convicted in Mendocino County Juvenile Court on a charge of false imprisonment and packed off for two years "in placement" at a northern California residential juvenile facility. Mr. Krug now introduced a motion requesting that the Court not allow the news photographer or television cameraman to photograph or videotape Sean while he was on the stand, arguing that as a juvenile he should be protected.

Attorneys from the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
San Francisco Examiner,
the
Oakland Tribune,
and the
Sacramento Bee
argued strongly against any such prohibition, and McClure and LeStrange were in rare agreement with them. After hearing the arguments,
Judge Sabraw said that he would reserve his ruling until just prior to Sean's testimony and the trial continued with Timmy's schoolmate, seven-year-old Nat Kitcher.

Still more witnesses preceded the mid-morning recess, and when court resumed, Judge Sabraw ruled against Mr. Krug's motion and Sean was called to the stand. Quickly Mr. Krug approached the bench and requested that the State consider granting his client immunity from further prosecution in return for his testimony. McClure, LeStrange, Krug, Sean, and the court reporter followed Judge Sabraw to his chambers for a private discussion of the matter. McClure stated: "I have no objection to giving him immunity for any of those marijuana problems that he had. But unless I know what else we are talking about, if Mr. Poorman and Mr. Parnell buried twenty-five people in the woods, you know, I am not going to give anybody immunity for that." And that was the way it was handled . . . immunity was granted Sean Poorman for his minor offenses only.
*

With the hearing ended, everyone returned to the courtroom. Sean was sworn in and began his direct testimony for the State, his account of the kidnapping, however, not as accurate as others' recollections of the events. But considering the legal jeopardy he was in, it was as close as one could expect him to make it.

When McClure steered Sean into his conversations
with Parnell the day of the kidnapping, the teenager's responses became rather stilted. "We were going to abduct a little boy around—early that morning, and if we couldn't get one that morning, then we would in the afternoon. We talked about how we were going to partake in it, like you sit in the backseat, and I will sit in the front seat and we will go through some—go through some cruising around some schools, and then, basically, I would get out and grab a little kid."

Finishing his direct examination of Sean, McClure again brought Timmy into the courtroom, this time to identify Sean as the person who'd grabbed him and thrown him into Parnell's car. Again LeStrange objected, fearful of the sympathy the cute youngster's multiple appearances could engender with the jury. But Judge Sabraw again overruled his objection. Timmy entered and identified Sean.

With a transcript of the preliminary hearing in hand, LeStrange cross-examined the hunch-shouldered, sullen teenager using Sean's previous testimony to destroy the adolescent's contention that Parnell had
made
him kidnap Timmy by threatening him with a knife. All Parnell was doing, Sean finally admitted, "was cussing at me." With his meager success at spreading his client's guilt to include Sean, LeStrange forged ahead by pointing out additional discrepancies between Sean's preliminary hearing testimony and present testimony, but none was significant enough to further damage Sean's already limited credibility.

"I don't think there was any doubt at all that Sean knew more than what he was telling," McClure said
later, "and I say that because at one point I had heard he was saying, 'Some other things happened, but I am not so mad at Parnell at this point that I want to go into it.' And I had some long conversations with Dick Finn about how much do we want to delve into this kid's life . . . it had been screwed up enough as it was. I think that things happened to Sean by Parnell and that Sean had observed what Parnell had done to other kids."

Joe Allen agreed. "Poorman, I think, was in a position of attempting to protect himself as much as possible. He was a suspicious, paranoid kid, and perhaps rightly so, considering the environment that he lived in . . . hanging out with kidnappers and child mo lesters . . . I don't think he had any vested interest in telling the truth. He wanted to tell enough of the truth to get himself off the hook, but maybe not enough of the truth to make himself look like the full, willing participant that I'm convinced he was. Poorman had no conscience about assisting Parnell with various matters. What they were we can speculate."

Sean testified most of the afternoon, and when he finally stepped down, his former best friend Steven Stayner took his place on the stand . . . but not before LeStrange again objected to testimony which he knew could damage his client. Countered George McClure, "As an offer of proof, I might mention to the Court [that] we expect Steven Stayner at some point to say that the reason he thought that Mr. Parnell had abducted Timmy White was based on the fact that he had previously had the same thing happen to him." After hearing both sides, Judge Sabraw agreed to allow
Steve's testimony about his own kidnapping and the teen took the stand and was sworn in.

His testimony began with his giving his "other" name, and then picking up his life's tale as of February 1980. Then, after a few more questions, McClure had Timmy brought in so that Steve could identify him. This accomplished, Timmy left the courtroom.

A few minutes later, LeStrange objected yet again when McClure asked Steve if Parnell had ever asked for his help in kidnapping a boy, but Judge Sabraw allowed the question and Steve answered affirmatively. The sixteen-year-old made a very good witness for the State and capably held his own during LeStrange's cross and re-cross-examination before stepping down on the third day of trial testimony.

Next Ukiah police officers Bob Warner, Larry Maxon, and John Williams testified in succession, each telling about his part in the events of the night of March 1, 1980. Court adjourned that day after Finn's testimony about serving the search warrant at the cabin.

The following day Steve and Finn were recalled briefly to the stand before the State called its final witness, Sgt. Lunney. At no point did McClure ask Steve any questions about Parnell's sex assaults on him or on other boys.

When Lunney stepped down, LeStrange put Parnell on the stand, and after slowly spelling his name for the court clerk, the balding kidnapper faced his attorney as LeStrange elicited from him a very long, convoluted story about the events of November 1979 through March 1, 1980. And when LeStrange asked Parnell if anyone lived with him at the Mountain View
Ranch in late 1979, he replied, "Yes, Steven Stayner. I called him Dennis."

Getting back to his story, Parnell said that he'd met "Hank" Mettier, Jr., in Elk in the fall of 1979 and that Mettier had told him that he knew he had kidnapped Dennis and asked for details about it. Parnell then vaguely related that Mettier threatened "the ones I care about. . . my mother and Dennis" should he not help Mettier kidnap a boy.

Parnell's recollection was that his next meeting with Mettier occurred in Ukiah at The Palace Hotel, when "he wanted to know how I came into possession of Dennis. And he reminded me that if I didn't cooperate, why, he would do either one of two things, and I don't remember what. . . "

After listening to this long tale, those in the courtroom finally heard this strange man tell his version of the events of February 13, 1980, the day before Timmy's kidnapping. He said that Hank phoned him: "He wanted me to go pick up Sean and bring him to Ukiah." Parnell went on to say that he did as he was told, picking up Sean in Elk before retrieving Dennis at the Point Arena school bus stop, the only portion of his testimony which matched Steve's.

But Parnell's account of the day of the kidnapping was the very antithesis of Sean's. Parnell's version had the teenager disappearing from The Palace Hotel before Parnell got off work that morning and himself going over to the Samoa Club for a beer and to shoot the bull for a spell. Next, he said, he went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store and bought a box spring, tied it to the roof of his Maverick, and—still without Sean—drove out of Ukiah, stopping at eleven for
lunch at El Rebozzo Mexican Restaurant. Lunch finished, Parnell asserted he got back into his car and drove home alone.

Parnell matter-of-factly intoned that he arrived at his cabin about one-thirty, fixed himself a cup of coffee, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and was then startled when Sean burst into the cabin and said, " 'We kidnapped a kid.' "

Then LeStrange asked his client when he first saw Timmy. Parnell replied, "It was about the twentieth. Hank brought him up to the cabin with a couple of sacks. I still didn't want him to leave him there, and he said he would get him in the next day or two." In response to his attorney's question about why Mettier brought Timmy to the cabin, Parnell launched into a spirited yet confusing story about his paycheck being late, his driving to Ukiah to pick it up, his running into Mettier at The Palace Hotel on February 16, and Hank's telling him that he had Timmy and wanted Parnell to take care of "the boy until he could work something out." Finally, LeStrange had Parnell deal with the problem of Steve's testimony that he first saw Timmy in the Maverick on February 14. Weakly Parnell explained, "Dennis might have been confused. He is right. He did see the boy in the car, but he just doesn't know the day."

Then it was McClure's turn to cross-examine Parnell, and after a few stale questions and answers, Parnell bumbled into a most confusing scenario about Mettier's reasons for kidnapping Timmy, summing it up with: "I think he mentioned something that he had worked out some kind of deal for making some money or trading the kid for dope."

McClure's cross-examination of Parnell continued into a second day when he opened by trying to make some sense out of Parnell's 1979-1980 cash flow, the only clear information being Parnell's statement that he made $600 a month at The Palace Hotel.

All through the trial McClure had noticed Parnell taking extreme interest in the legal minutiae of the proceedings: "During the trial, Parnell would turn to Scott and I could hear him talking, and he would say, 'Does
that
protect my appeal right? Do you think I could appeal on
that
issue?' He was almost paranoid about whether or not [he had] an appeal right on everything [LeStrange] did. And that probably indicates to some degree that the guy is looking into law books beforehand. He's got an idea about what kind of things are appealable and what kind of things you have to watch out for."

And in fact, during the time Steven was living with Parnell, the kidnapper owned an old law book in which he penciled in defenses in the margins for four different crimes: kidnapping, rape, robbery, and murder. Parnell had been arrested, tried, and convicted for the first three, but never the fourth, and he angrily refuses to respond when questioned about this.
*

After Parnell finished his testimony, LeStrange presented a series of defense witnesses to try and support Parnell's story about his whereabouts on Valentine's Day 1980, but Jim Bertain, who owned the Samoa Club, couldn't recall whether Parnell was at the bar
the day of Timmy's kidnapping; the lady who managed El Rebozzo couldn't recall Parnell having lunch there that day; and the couple who operated the Salvation Army Thrift Store where Parnell claimed to have bought the box spring didn't remember him either.

Steve's close friend from Comptche, Damon Carroll, then took the stand for the defense and gave a confusing recollection of the events of February and March 1980, rife with conflicts when compared to his sworn statements during the preliminary hearing.

McClure then offered a half-dozen State's witnesses in rebuttal, the shocker being Hank Mettier himself, who upon entering the courtroom looked about nervously. He was like a fish out of water. It was obvious that being there was
not
his preference.

As Mettier squirmed on the witness stand, McClure conducted a verbal block-and-parry with the conservatively dressed, convicted drug dealer as he went on to establish that Sean Poorman lived with him, called him "Dad," and referred to him as his "stepfather." Later, McClure asked the short, neatly bearded Met
tier about his whereabouts from November 1979 through February 1980.