I Know My First Name Is Steven (24 page)

"So I called for another unit using my portable radio. Fortunately, there was another unit coming down Main. It was Russell VanVoorhis, and he stopped them right in front of the Salvation Army Store. As soon as he said he had them, I got into my patrol car and went up to the location."

Continued Warner, "When I got there, VanVoorhis was holding the little boy in his arms, and he says to
me, 'Would you believe it?
This is Timmy White!' And
I found it hard to believe, because Timmy had had his hair dyed dark brown.

"So VanVoorhis was basically talking to Timmy, and I started talking to this older boy. I asked him if he was with Timmy, and he says he was. I asked him his name and he told me it was Steven Stayner, and then VanVoorhis says, 'He says he's been missing from Merced for seven years.' Then I turned to Steven and asked him if this was true and he said, 'Yes. I was taken from Merced seven years ago.'

"Well," drawled Warner, "you know how you can get into a can of worms sometimes. Well, it was getting to that point . . . we were really getting into something there! It kind of got me . . . shocked me, you know to hear the kid say, 'I was taken seven years ago.' "

The officers put Timmy in VanVoorhis's car, Steven got in Warner's car, and they drove the short block back to the station and entered the back door. Said Timmy later, "I really felt that I was safe then."

Once inside, VanVoorhis took Timmy to an interrogation room while Warner placed Dennis/Steven in the booking room, locked the door, and telephoned Chief Johnson.

"I was at home in bed asleep when the phone rang," Johnson recalled. "It was such a mess that I couldn't understand all of what was happening, so I got up and got dressed and was at the station in about twenty minutes. I guess I couldn't understand what was going on when Warner called me because Steve's story was so absolutely incredible."

With confusion beginning to reign at the police station, one of the officers placed a call to the Whites'
home. As Angela remembers it, "I don't remember his name, but I remember exactly what he said. He said, 'Hi. I'm calling from the Ukiah Police Department, and we have a little boy down here who says his name is Timmy White, and he looks like your son.' And I said, 'We'll be right down!'

"I hung up the phone and started getting dressed real fast, and I was telling Jim about it while I was getting dressed. And so Jim, being the real logical one, calls the police station and says, 'Did someone just call here and say that they had found Timmy White?' And they said, 'Yes, we did.' And then Jim starts getting all excited and dressed real fast. And we got Nickie up and wrapped her up in a blanket and took her to the car and got in and raced down to the police station.

"On the way down there I was thinking, and I said to Jim, 'He'd never be dead, would he? They wouldn't let me come down there unless they were real sure that that was him and he was okay, would they?' And Jim assured me that he would be okay, but it was a really long drive to town. I just kept all these things going over in my mind so that by the time we got there I was a wreck!"

Angela was so excited when they finally arrived that, she said, "I jumped out of the car and ran into the station. And the first officer I saw just pointed down the hall, and I didn't even wait to hear what he said. I just ran down to this room where another officer was standing at the end of the hall, and I looked in and here's this grubby-looking little kid with real dark hair. And I just said, 'That's not Timmy!' And then . . . I don't remember. I was on the floor . . . I guess I had fainted.

"There was the build-up to see my blond-headed son and then this! And the policeman at the door said I scared the hell out of him because, he said, 'If this isn't Timmy,
then who is it?'
And he helps me up and says, 'Come on . . . come and look closer. I think they dyed his hair.' So I went in the room, and I knelt down in front of him, and I was looking at Timmy like I didn't know him. And he just sat there silently twiddling his little thumbs. He was real nervous. He didn't blink or anything. He just stared straight ahead. And then I knew it was him, and I pulled him into my arms and he didn't do anything. He didn't cry, he didn't laugh, he didn't say, 'Mom,' he didn't say anything. He just let me hold him for, probably, fifteen to twenty minutes."

About that wonderfully joyous moment, Angela concluded, "I just kissed him and held him. Then Jim and Nickie came in, and I let Jim hold him, but I wanted him back. Then, when I was holding him again, he and Nickie started eyeing each other. But Timmy kept twiddling his thumbs. I'd never seen him do that before, and he's never done it since. But he did it that night."

Meanwhile, in the booking room where Steven had been locked up, Officer Warner, Chief Johnson, Detective John Williams, and Sergeant Vernon Black tried repeatedly to get information out of him about his dad's description and whereabouts. For seven years Kenneth Parnell had been the only parent the teenager had known, and now Steven was loath to say anything that would betray his "dad." With great conviction and fervor, Steven recalled, "I just felt gratitude toward him for taking care of me. You know, he
took care of me for seven years, so what am I going to do? Return the favor by turning him in?"

As Chief Johnson put it, "He wasn't going to tell us who his dad was until we promised that if the man was sick, we would see that he got some help. Then, finally, he told us what his dad's name was and where he was working. But that took a lot of talking on our part."

Most of the questioning was done by Bob Warner, who remarked, "At the time, he was real hesitant because he considered Parnell as his dad and he was trying to protect him. I asked him basically where they came from, and he said that they came from over on the coast, but he wouldn't tell me exactly where. I got to kind of fishing around, trying to pinpoint where he went to school and so forth . . . found out he went to school in Point Arena. Then we got into Parnell and he wasn't telling us his name at first. He just said that his dad was at work. So we fished a little bit further, and finally he did tell us that his dad was working up at The Palace Hotel as a security guard. So at that time I informed Captain Maxon and he made arrangements to go and arrest Parnell."

Recalling his irritation, Steven said of the officers' quizzing, "I had finally given them all the information they wanted . . . that he was wearing a green plaid jacket, gray plaid slacks, that it was his first day as the security guard for The Palace. I had to tell them what his moustache looked like, whether he waxed it or not. And so finally they had enough information, so they went over there and picked him up. They practically wanted me to give them his life story before they'd even go over there!"

While Chief Johnson and Sergeant Bach stayed with Steven, Officer Warner, accompanied by Sergeants Budrow and Nelson, along with Detective Williams, made up an arrest party to go to The Palace Hotel. "We drove up to the hotel and walked into the lobby and I asked if they had a Parnell working there," Warner recalled. "The desk clerk said, 'Yes.' And I had just started to ask him where he was when Parnell just happened to walk around the corner and the desk clerk said, 'Here he is now.' And so we asked him to step out front. And when he had stepped out front, we told him that we were arresting him for kidnapping and we read him his rights. Then we drove him back to the station and locked him up in a booking room."

Once Parnell had been brought to the station, Steven said that a truculent police officer bullied him into identifying his father. "One of the cops takes me to the window of the room where they've got him and says to me, 'All right, I want you to look at him and I want you to tell me if it's him or not.' And I didn't want to face him. But I go, 'All right.' And I looked in the window and the cop says, 'Is that him?' And I said, 'Yeah, that's him.' And I started to turn around and go back to the room I was in. Then the cop grabbed my arm and opened the door to where Parnell was and pushed me in. And he says again, 'Are you
sure
that's him? Take a good look at him.
Is that him?'
And I screamed,
'Yes, yes . . . that's him! It's him! Now get my
. . .
get me out of here!'

"Parnell just sat there looking at me. Then I pushed my way back out the room and I went back to the room I had been in before. From that point on I never did speak to Parnell again . . .
ever!"

While the boys were at the station the police took photographs of them both. One Polaroid shows a sullen, unsmiling Steven; Timmy, though dirty and disheveled wears an impish grin in his. During the picture-taking, Timmy had his parents with him, but Steven was alone, frightened, and locked in a room, all of which served to heighten the adolescent's increasing fear that he was being considered a suspect in Timmy's kidnapping.

This impression of Steven was borne out by Bob Warner: "He never did show any emotion. He was just a stony-faced, serious type of a kid. He never showed his feelings one way or the other. He knew, I think, that what Parnell was doing was wrong, and that was why he brought Timmy back to Ukiah. He didn't want it to continue because he knew what he had gone through."

Besides Steven's concern about being implicated in Timmy's kidnapping—i.e., being mistaken for Sean Poorman—there were other things worrying him. He remembered having witnessed his real father, Del, suffer a slipped disk when he himself was just five, and all through the intervening years he had thought that his dad had suffered a heart attack. "At that age I didn't know how old my dad really was," recalled Steven. "I thought that he was around fifty years old. During that seven years I figured he'd be about sixty when I returned. And with thinking that he had a heart condition, my main worry was if he was still alive."

It was well after midnight by the time the Ukiah police telephoned their counterparts in Merced and confirmed Steven's story. "When I called," said
Warner, "their dispatcher didn't know anything about Steven or his kidnapping, but she put a sergeant on the line and he said, 'Yes, we're missing a boy by the name of Steven Stayner. He was taken from our streets seven years ago.' He told me that he'd get in touch with his chief and call me back. Then, a short time later, he called and said that they had two investigators on the way up here."

When Warner returned to the booking room to tell Steven he had called Merced Police and that a pair of officers were on their way to Ukiah to take him home, Steven's first question to Warner was, "Is my dad still alive?"

He was. The police sergeant in Merced was Mark Dossetti, and shortly after receiving that telephone call from Bob Warner, he phoned the Stayners to say that he had some news about their son and that he would be at their door shortly. Del and Kay's first thought was that something had happened to their oldest son, Cary, off on a camping trip to Yosemite National Park with his buddies. But when Dossetti arrived and told them that apparently their long-lost son Steve had been found alive and well in Ukiah, they found it almost impossible to believe. "I just sat down and cried," Del said. "I couldn't believe that he was finally coming home!"

It was around three that morning when eleven-year-old Cory was awakened by conversation coming from the living room. With her Boston terrier, Willie, barking and jumping all over her bed, she got up and went to the living room, arriving at her parents' side just as
Dossetti was telling of Steven's discovery. Sleepy, at first she didn't understand what was being said: "I heard Dad asking, 'Is it Cary?' And the policeman said, 'No, it's about your son, Steve.' And then I figured that he was coming back. I never did think that it was anything bad. I was just glad that he was finally coming home!"

Dossetti returned to the police station, but later, after he had received confirmation of Steven's identification from the Merced officers who had gone to Ukiah, he returned just before daybreak and confirmed the good news for the Stayners. This time Cindy and Jody joined Cory and their parents, and they all went into the kitchen and sat around the table while Kay fixed coffee and Dossetti sat down and visited briefly with the clan. Said Jody, "I was just stunned. I couldn't believe it! When Cindy came in and woke me up and told me, 'Well, they found Steve and he's
alive,
' I was just in shock. I would love to relive that moment. . . it was great! I loved it!"

After Dossetti left, Cory and her dad went from house to house around the neighborhood, telling their friends the good news. One of the first was next-door neighbor Alex Flores, who recalled Del as saying that he had burst into tears when Dossetti told him that Steven had been found alive: "He told me several times over the past seven years that he was miserable because of Steve's disappearance. But Sunday I told him, 'Delbert, you can begin to live again.' "

Remembered Del, "When the police officer came and told us it was Stevie, I musta hugged him a good deal. But since they never had no body to show me, I always believed Stevie was alive."

Just before four that morning, Ukiah Police Detective John Williams asked Steven to give him a statement in his own words. While Williams typed, Steven began: "My name is Steven Stainer [sic]. I am fourteen years of age. I don't know my true birth date, but I use April 18, 1965. I know my first name is Steven, I'm pretty sure my last name is Stainer [sic], and if I have a middle name, I don't know it." Then Steven went on for two and one-half pages, telling of his strange odyssey with Kenneth Eugene Parnell, the man who had been his "father" for seven years, ending by signing the statement, "Steven Stainer" [sic].

Detective Williams affixed the time and date—"0415 hours, Sunday, March 2, 1980"—before he and Sergeant Bach took Steven to breakfast at the Denny's Restaurant in Ukiah.

Since shortly after midnight, the
Ukiah Daily Journal
had been trying to get information from the police. The considerable bustle of activity at the small city's normally quiet police station had tipped them off that something big was afoot. In turn, Chief Johnson realized that it would only be a matter of time before rumors would be running wild. So, at approximately 4:30 A.M., Sunday, March 2, 1980, while Steven was out eating breakfast, Johnson telephoned the story of Steven and Timmy's return to the Associated Press office in San Francisco, the world's first word of the boys' safe return. "As soon as I had given it to the wire service and hung up, the phone started ringing and just didn't stop," said johnson, "and about two hours later the helicopters from the San Francisco TV stations
started arriving, along with scores of reporters. That's when we decided to call a press conference."