Kenneth Parnell

Kenneth Eugene Parnell (September 26, 1931 – January 21, 2008) was an American convicted sex offender, child rapist, and kidnapper infamously known for committing the abductions of 7-year-old Steven Stayner in Merced, California, in 1972 and 5-year-old Timothy White in Ukiah, California, in 1980.

Parnell married 15-year old Patsy Jo Dorton in 1949, had a daughter in 1951, and divorced in 1957.

Later that year he married again and had another daughter.

Parnell denied in that same interview having been sexually abused himself, although Mike Echols' book I Know My First Name Is Steven claims that he was molested at the age of 13 by a boarder in a rooming house that his mother owned in Bakersfield.

More than a decade after the sodomy case, Parnell was convicted of armed robbery in Utah.

While imprisoned for this charge, his second wife filed for divorce.

In March 1951, Parnell was arrested for raping a young boy and impersonating a police officer; he was sentenced to four years in prison.

Parnell had lured the child through use of a deputy sheriff's badge he bought at an army-navy surplus store.

He escaped from a state institution in Norwalk, but was recaptured.

While investigators were checking into Parnell's past, the 1951 sodomy conviction came to light, although at the time Stayner insisted that Parnell had not sexually abused him.

Parnell was tried for kidnapping Stayner and White, but not for sexual abuse.

He was convicted of both kidnappings and served five years of his seven-year prison sentence.

Edward Murphy, Parnell's accomplice from the Stayner kidnapping, was sentenced to five years imprisonment and paroled after two years.

Sean Poorman, Stayner's schoolfriend who abetted Parnell in the White kidnapping, was sentenced to a term in a juvenile work camp.

Barbara Mathias, Parnell's girlfriend who lived with him and Stayner for some time, was never charged with any violation and cooperated with authorities in Parnell's trials.

Parnell claimed to have married a third and final time in 1968, but no records were ever found to substantiate this.

Parnell’s father, Cecil Frederick, died July 31, 1972, in Denver.

On December 4, 1972, Parnell abducted seven-year-old Merced resident Steven Stayner with the help of Edward Ervin Murphy, a co-worker at the Yosemite Lodge, where Parnell worked as a night auditor.

Stayner was taken to Catheys Valley.

(Parnell's cabin was, unbeknownst to Stayner, located only several hundred feet from his maternal grandfather's residence.) Parnell went on to tell Stayner that his parents couldn't afford to keep him any more, that a judge had given Parnell legal custody of him, and that his new name was "Dennis".

Stayner lived as Parnell's "son" for seven years, during which he was repeatedly sexually abused.

In addition to the molestation, Stayner later claimed that Parnell's attitude altered from severe beatings to sometimes "spoiling" him.

As Steven got older and entered puberty, Parnell's sexual interest in Stayner waned and Parnell sought a new boy to "build his family".

He had attempted another kidnapping with his mistress Barbara Mathias, but that failed to go to plan.

He also conscripted Stayner into aiding him in kidnappings, but Stayner had always failed to grab the targeted child to the point Parnell stopped using Stayner as an accomplice, berating him for being an "incompetent".

Years later in interviews, Stayner admitted to intentionally sabotaging the kidnappings.

On February 14, 1980, Parnell abducted five-year-old Timothy White from Ukiah with the help of Sean Poorman, a minor and an acquaintance of Stayner.

Weeks afterward, Stayner escaped Parnell's house with White; he later said he did not want the boy to suffer the abuse that he had endured.

Stayner waited until Parnell had gone to his night shift job as a clerk at a local motel on March 1, 1980, and, carrying White on his back, hitchhiked 40 miles to Ukiah.

Unfamiliar with the city, Stayner decided the best option was to seek out the local police, who originally considered him a delinquent, until an exhaustive search of missing child posters and a piecemeal interrogation confirmed he was a missing child as well.

By daybreak the following morning, Parnell had been arrested.

Stayner died in 1989 of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.

In a 2000 interview about his 1951 crime, Parnell said he kidnapped and molested the boy because his wife was pregnant and that he "had to find another outlet."

He claimed to have been married three times, but only one record of his marriage is known.

In January 2003, Parnell was arrested again after trying to coerce his caregiver's sister, Diane Stevens, into buying him a four-year-old boy for $500.

He was convicted in 2004 for attempting to purchase a child for sex and died in prison.

Kenneth Eugene Parnell was born in Amarillo, Texas to Cecil Frederick and Mary Olive (Pollard) Parnell, during the region's Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression.

He later moved with his mother, his two half-sisters, and a half-brother to Bakersfield, California, where his mother operated a boarding lodge.

Parnell was raised mostly without his father, who abandoned the family when Parnell was six.

After that time he was in and out of juvenile custody for car theft and arson.