Steven Stayner

I Know My First Name is Steven

"Book cover" Book cover
Author	Mike Echols
Language	English
Publisher	Pinacle Books
Publication date	1999 revised Edition
Publication place	United States
Media type	(Paperback)
Pages	351 pp (paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0 7860 1104 1 (paperback)
Preceded by	ISBN 1 5581 7563 6 (paperback 1991 1st Edition)

Steven Gregory Stayner (April 18, 1965 – September 16, 1989) was an American child who became famous after he was kidnapped as a seven-year-old and held captive by his abductor, to be reunited with his family seven years later.

Biography

Steven was born, the third of five children of Delbert and Kay (Née Augustine) Stayner in Merced, California. Steven had three sisters; his older (and first-born) brother is the 2001 convicted Yosemite serial killer, Cary Stayner.

Kidnapping

On December 4, 1972, while returning home from school, Steven was abducted by Kenneth Parnell, a self-proclaimed protestant minister, multiple felon and convicted child molester.

Parnell kept Steven with him, telling people that the boy was his son, and calling him Dennis Gregory Parnell. "Dennis" and Parnell moved frequently around California with Parnell putting him into a series of schools. One of the few positive aspects to come out of Steven's life with Parnell was his dog, a Manchester Terrier whom Steven named Queenie. This dog had been given to Parnell by his mother (who never knew about "Dennis" during the whole period Steven was living with Parnell) on a visit he made a few days after the abduction, leaving the boy in the care of an educationally challenged co-worker of Parnell's, named Edward Ervin Murphy who had been an unwitting accomplice in the kidnapping of Steven and who Parnell had befriended and coerced.

Parnell repeatedly molested the boy, starting with oral sex and moving onto sodomy. Kenneth Parnell babysat for the parents of one of Steven's friends, Kenny. Kenny's mother was always fighting with her alcoholic husband Bob, eventually she moved in with Parnell and "Dennis." One evening, "Dennis" was invited into bed with Parnell and Barbara, and the nine-year-old boy was forced to have sex with her. Eventually, Parnell and Barbara separated, and Parnell's sexual abuse of Stayner was renewed.

Escape

As Steven entered puberty, Parnell began to look for a younger child. On February 14 1980, Parnell kidnapped five-year-old Timmy White in Ukiah, California. Motivated in part by the young boy's distress, Steven decided to escape with him, intending to return the boy to his parents and then escape himself (Steven believing that Parnell had legal custody of him). On March 1, 1980, while Parnell was away at his night security job, Steven left with Timmy and hitchhiked into Ukiah, unable to locate Timmy's home address he decided to get Timmy to walk into the Police Department before escaping himself. But before he could successfully do so the two children were spotted and stopped by the police, Steven immediately identifying Timmy White and advising them of his own true identity and story.

By daybreak on March 2 1980 Parnell had been arrested on suspicion of abducting both boys, after the police checked into Parnell's background they found a previous sodomy conviction from 1951. Both children were subsequently reunited with their families that day. In 1981 Parnell was tried and convicted of kidnapping Timmy and Steven in two separate trials. Parnell was not charged with the numerous sexual assaults on Steven Stayner and other boys as most occurred outside the jurisdiction of the Merced county prosecutor, those assaults that did were by then (as the law stood) outside the statute of limitation, whilst the Mendocino County prosecutors, acting almost entirely alone, decided not to prosecute the sexual assaults that occurred in their jurisdiction. A teenage boy, who had helped abduct Timmy White, and Murphy (neither of who knew of the sexual assaults) were both convicted of lesser charges. Barbara was never arrested.Steven remembered the kindness "Uncle" Murphy had shown him in his first week of captivity, whilst they were both under the influence of Parnell's manipulation, and considered Murphy as much a victim of Parnell as Steven and Timmy.

Kenneth Parnell's prison sentence for the abductions of Steven and Timmy was considerably less than the seven years he had kept Steven prisoner. Steven's kidnapping prompted lawmakers in California to change state laws "to allow consecutive prison terms in similar abduction cases."

Life afterwards

Steven married Jody Edmondson on June 13 1985, and they went on to have two children, a son and daughter.

On September 16 1989, just before 5:00pm PDT while riding home after his shift at Pizza Hut, where he was a supervisor, his motorcycle was in collision with a car that pulled out of Richwoods Meats on Santa Fa Drive (where Steven had worked, bagging hamburger meat, in 1984). Steven received head injuries that were to prove fatal - he died in the Merced County Medical Center at 5:35pm PDT. He was driving without a license (suspended for a third time, due to excessive traffic violations) and without his helmet, which had been stolen a few days before. Over 500 people attended his funeral, including then-14-year-old Timmy White, who helped carry Steven's coffin into church.

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 leave of absence from his job, acted as an adviser for the production company (Lorimar-Telepictures) and had a non speaking part, playing one of the two policemen who escort 14 year old 'Steven' (played by Corky Nemec, Luke Edwards playing the younger Steven) through the crowds to his waiting family, on his return to his Merced home. Although pleased with the dramatisation Steven did complain that it showed him as a somewhat "obnoxious, rude" person, especially towards his parents, something he refuted whilst publicising the miniseries in the Spring of 1989. The two part miniseries was first broadcast (in the USA) by NBC May 21-22 1989. Screening rights were sold to a number of international television companies including the BBC, who screened the miniseries in mid July of the following year, later still, it was released as a feature length movie.

The production was based on a manuscript by Mike Echols, who had researched the story and met all the key people, including Stayner and Parnell. After the premiere of I Know My First Name is Steven, winning (among others) four Emmy Award nominations, including one for Corky Nemec, Mike Echols published his book I Know My First Name is Steven in 1991. In the epilogue to his book, Echols describes how he infiltrated NAMBLA. In 1999, much to the disgust of the Stayner family, Mike Echols wrote an additional chapter - about Cary Stayner - at the request of his publisher who then re-published the book.

The title for the film and book are taken from the first paragraph of Steven's written Police statement, given during the early hours of 2 March 1980 in Ukiah, it reads (note the incorrect spelling of his real family-name);

"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."

Aftermath

Ten years after Steven's death, the city of Merced asked its residents for proposals for names of city parks which would honor Merced's notable citizens. Steven's parents proposed that one be named "Stayner Park". This idea was eventually turned down and the honor was given to another Merced resident on account of Steven's brother Cary Stayner having confessed to, and been charged with, the 1999 Yosemite multiple murders, admid fears that calling a park "Stayner Park" would be associated with Cary rather than Steven. Efforts still exist to create a statue in Merced in Steven's honor. However, residents of Ukiah, the hometown of Timmy White, carved a statue showing a teenage Stayner carrying a young Timmy White while escaping their captivity. Fundraisers for the statue have stated that it is meant to honor Steven Stayner and give hope for families of missing and kidnapped children that they are still alive.

In 2004, Kenneth Parnell, then aged seventy-two, was convicted of trying the previous year to persuade a woman to procure him a young boy for five hundred dollars. Although Stayner was dead, a written statement he had made before his death was used as evidence in Parnell's 2004 trial. Timmy White, now a full-grown man, had been subpoenaed to testify in the trial.

See also

• Pedophilia

Anti child abuse organisations

United Kingdom

• Childline Anti child abuse charity
• NSPCC Children's charity
• Internet Watch Foundation
• The Children's Society

Further reading

• Steven's own words on child abduction & sexual abuse on www.stevenstaynermemorial.org
• I Know My First Name is Steven, by Mike Echols. Pinnacle Books, New York. 1999. ISBN 0786011041

External links

• I Know My First Name is Steven at IMDb
• Steven Stayner memorial